Chapter II

IN WHICH INSPECTOR BLAIKIE DRAWS HIS CONCLUSIONS, AND LORD EALING
MAKES A PRIVATE INVESTIGATION

Lord Ealing overtook Inspector Blaikie, and descended with him in the lift. "Well," he asked, "what do you make of it?"

"I very much fear, my lord, that a brutal murder has been committed, and the body carried off in that trunk."

"But why on earth should the murderer carry off the body? Surely it would have been more natural to leave it behind."

"Yes, my lord, that's the puzzle."

"Look here, Inspector. There's one thing you ought to know before you get into touch with the Yard. Restington wasn't the real name of the man who occupied these rooms. There's a long story behind. I will explain later on. But you had better know at once...."

In his anxiety, Blaikie interrupted even the great Earl of Ealing. "Yes, who was he then?"

"His real name was Hugh Radlett. Ah, I see that conveys nothing to you."

"Radlett? I seem to know the name."

"Don't you remember the great Radlett disappearance, seven or eight years ago?"

"I ought to, my lord, but I can't. Something in America, wasn't it?"

"Yes, Mr. Radlett was the richest man in America--and that means, in the world."

"It's coming back to me," said Blaikie. "He clean vanished, didn't he, after some trouble with his wife?"

"Yes, a divorce case. When it was over, he simply disappeared. It made a great stir, at the time."

"Eight years ago, you say. Had nothing been heard of him ever since?"

"By the police, no. I have been in touch with him for some time past."

"I see. And you say this Mr. Restington was Hugh Radlett. Are you sure of this, my lord?"

"Absolutely. I was talking to him yesterday afternoon. I'll explain it all later, Inspector. But I wanted you to realise at once that this is going to be a really big case. You'll have to use all your wits on it, Inspector."

"I'll do my best, my lord."

"I'm sure you will. And now, you get on to Scotland Yard and see you wake them up all you can."

Visions of triumphant success came into Inspector Blaikie's mind. His career at Scotland Yard had been humdrum enough for the most part, and in the one great case that had come his way--The Brooklyn Murders--he had to admit that he had not distinguished himself. But here at length had come a chance of retrieving his reputation, and establishing his capacity once and for all. He threw out his chest and made great resolves. Even his chief at Scotland Yard, Superintendent Wilson, who was notoriously a hard man to please, should admit his prowess. And the great Lord Ealing should be shown what a really brainy police officer could do. The road to promotion was sure if he could please Lord Ealing. Already Inspector Blaikie was beginning to form a theory of the crime, and catching this man Rosenbaum ought to be a fairly simple business. He had so little start. Three hours--a mere nothing. Encumbered by his gruesome burden, he would be caught red-handed within the day.

Blaikie found his chief, Superintendent Wilson, at the Yard, and, as a result of his message, instructions were at once wired to the police throughout the country to be on the look-out for Rosenbaum and his trunk. Watch was set at all the ports; it was nearly impossible he should get away unnoticed. Many a policeman's heart beat faster with the hope of distinction as the messages from the Yard reached him. In a few hours, handbills describing Rosenbaum and the trunk were being posted up on the notice boards. The hunt was up.

Having sent his message over the telephone, merely to say that he would be late in arriving at his office, Lord Ealing hurried back to Hugh Restington's--or rather Radlett's--apartments, forcing his way through the growing crowd which obstructed the corridor. The whole hotel was buzzing with rumours. It was ten o'clock--an hour since the first discovery of the crime. The plain clothes man unlocked the door of the suite for him, and then re-locked it in face of the crowd.

In the sitting-room Lord Ealing found no one remaining except the hotel manager. Inspector Blaikie was still downstairs at the telephone, and the plain clothes policeman remained on guard outside. Murder or no murder, the business of the hotel had to go on, and the manager, relieved of Lord Ealing's oppressive presence, had recovered his authority, and peremptorily despatched Thomas, the hall porter, and the boy in buttons about their daily work. They had been told not to answer any questions, or give any information, about the crime; and they were all now parrying with dark hints the eager inquiries of the hotel residents and of their fellow-servants. A dozen versions of the mystery, based on these hints, were already abroad.

"I have taken the liberty, my lord," said the hotel manager, with a wave of the hand indicating a tray on which were glasses, whisky and soda, and a plate of sandwiches.

"Thank 'ee, Mounteagle," said Lord Ealing, pouring himself out a stiff whisky and soda. Then he turned again to the manager. "No need to keep you from your work, Mounteagle. You trot off and see those servants don't talk too much."

The manager, still humbly apologetic, retired. Just waiting for the door to close upon him, Lord Ealing sprang into action. He ran to the writing-table, and, working at feverish speed, went through the pile of letters and papers which lay upon it, and in an attaché case which stood there. Apparently, he did not find what he was seeking, for he darted into Radlett's bedroom, and made a hasty search of the papers lying upon the floor. He even looked in the pockets of the clothes lying on a chair. Again his search was apparently fruitless, for he came back into the sitting-room and opened the drawers of the writing-table one by one.

A minute later, he heard Blaikie's voice outside, and quickly took up a negligent attitude on the hearth-rug. Blaikie came in, after exchanging a word with the policeman outside the door. Lord Ealing, munching a sandwich and with his glass in his hand, moved towards the tray. "Dry work, Inspector. Mounteagle is always thoughtful. Help yourself."

"Where's everybody?" asked the Inspector. "I met the manager outside, and told him to get me ready a full list of all the people in this hotel, and what he knew about each."

"Yes, I told him to buzz off. He had sent the rest away when I got back here. I thought you would sooner have the place to yourself."

Blaikie said nothing. For a few minutes they consumed whisky and sandwiches in silence.

"Now, Inspector," said Lord Ealing, "you'd better have a thorough look round."

"You were going to tell me, my lord, about Mr. Radlett."

"Oh, all in good time. You have a good look round here, and then I'll come to the Yard with you, and say what I have to say to some one in authority. The first thing is to see what there is to be found in these rooms."

The Inspector was obviously crestfallen: he had hoped for Lord Ealing's confidence. But it was no use running the risk of offending the great man. "Very well, my lord, as you think best," he said reluctantly. "Will you join me in examining the rooms?"

"That's your job, Inspector. I'll leave it to you. But let me watch, if I may, and any suggestion I have to make...."

Blaikie was a skilled searcher. He seldom missed a clue, though often enough he failed to realise its significance. He was strong on fact, weak on inference. In most of his cases, he provided the facts, and his chief made the deductions. Superintendent Wilson liked working with him for this reason. He used to say that Blaikie had a nose like a ferret--and about the brains of a ferret as well. But Blaikie's chief had no doubts of his own ability, with the invaluable aid of his wife, to supply all the brains that were needed. He could seldom go out looking for clues; he had to stick to his office. Blaikie could be relied on to bring him the clues, and he could rely on himself to spin truth out of their strands. The Inspector had higher ambitions; but, if he ever made good, it would be on the basis of his plodding capacity for detailed observation.

He began now a systematic search of Hugh Radlett's bedroom, and Lord Ealing followed his movements with close attention. The fallen bedclothes, carefully shaken out and felt over, yielded nothing fresh. The stain on the top sheet, about three inches in diameter, was already dry. On the blanket next to it there was a faint stain, but no blood had penetrated through the top blanket. Blaikie saw that the stain, about eight inches from the top of the sheet, and nearly in the middle, came just about where the turnover would have been--just about the part of the sheet a sleeper might have tucked up under his chin. The stain supported the idea that Hugh Radlett had been murderously assaulted while he was lying in bed--probably asleep.

But he could not have been killed in bed. If he had, whence came the traces of a deadly struggle in the room--the overturned furniture, the broken chair, the ugly smear of blood on the far wall? No, Radlett had been attacked in bed and wounded, but not killed at once. He had leaped from the bed, carrying the bedclothes with him, and probably overturning the bedside table and the lamp. He had grappled with his murderer. More blood had flowed, and somehow, in the swaying struggle, some had been smeared on the wall, possibly as the two men fought, possibly as Radlett fell against it in his last agony. The stain on the wall was about four feet from the ground, just beyond the overturned chair that was also broken.

The Inspector mentally reconstructed the scene. The murderer creeping on his victim as he lay asleep--the uplifted knife--the first murderous blow--the doomed man leaping up--the sharp struggle in the room--the final collapse of the victim--perhaps a finishing stroke from the murderer--and then--silence. He told Lord Ealing what he thought had taken place.

"Silence! But all this struggling must have made an infernal noise. Some one must have heard," suggested Lord Ealing.

True enough, thought the Inspector. The hard struggle could scarcely have been soundless. The furniture and the lamp must have made a clatter as they fell, and--surely Hugh Radlett must have cried out at least once, unless the murderer had him all the time firmly by the throat, which seemed hardly probable. Even if he had not been able to cry out, surely the other noises must have been loud enough to rouse the occupants of the adjoining rooms. The room below, for instance. There must have been a regular series of bumps on the ceiling. Very careful inquiries would have to be made. Some one must have heard. The time at which the crime had taken place could be established by this means.

The Inspector went to the outer door and sent his subordinate to make sure that no one left the hotel until they had been examined. Then he locked the door and turned back to his search of the room. The three open trunks against the wall--their ransacked contents lying on the floor--seemed to tell a plain enough story. The murderer had been looking for something. Having done his evil deed, he had feverishly ransacked his victim's luggage. In search of what? Something fairly small, or all this rummaging would not have been necessary. Clothes had been ripped up in search of it: the linings of the trunks had been slit. Jewels? Papers? Money? Probably it was of one or other of these that the murderer had been in quest. Had he found it?

At this moment the Inspector's eye fell again on the pile of neatly folded clothes lying on the chair which had escaped overturning in the general havoc. Clearly the clothes Hugh Radlett had been wearing the night before. But why were they untouched? Why had the murderer been at such pains to rip up everything else, only to leave this suit of clothes undisturbed?--Had he found what he wanted before he came to them, or had...? Blaikie turned to Lord Ealing.

"It's very curious, my lord, don't you think, this suit of clothes should have been left undisturbed? Everything else is in such a mess."

Lord Ealing thought a moment. "Perhaps the murderer folded them up himself," he said.

"Why? How do you mean, my lord?"

"He might have," said Lord Ealing. "Why do you suppose he carried the body away in the trunk--if he did?"

"Ah, that's not easy to say, my lord. I suppose he needed it for some purpose."

"It seems to me more likely, Inspector, that this Rosenbaum meant to remove all traces of the crime. He carried off the body, because he wanted to make it appear that Radlett had simply disappeared ... as he did once before, you remember."

"But all this mess ... all these traces of the crime."

"Oh, of course, if I'm right, he meant to remove those too. How will this fit, Inspector? Rosenbaum meant to carry off the body and get rid of it somewhere, removing all traces of the crime before he went. But, on account of the struggle, the whole affair took longer than he expected, and, by the time he had got the body packed up in the trunk, it was too late to carry out the rest of his plan. He had already folded up those clothes on the chair; but he had to leave the rest. Let's see. He was bound to be ready by seven o'clock, when the men came for his luggage, and he had not left time enough."

"Hm! That means he must have been running things pretty fine."

"But surely, Inspector, murderers do run things pretty fine. No one likes being left alone with his victim's corpse longer than he need be."

"You may be right, my lord. But why did he fold up the clothes? If he wanted to make out that Radlett had disappeared, wouldn't he have taken his clothes away with him?"

"Evening dress, my dear Inspector. A man would not go off in the morning in his evening clothes. The underclothes, I admit, are a difficulty."

"More probably, my lord, the clothes just were on the chair, and the murderer somehow overlooked them. Most murderers overlook something--fortunately for the police."

While they were conversing, Blaikie had gathered up the papers lying scattered on the floor, and carried them into the sitting-room for investigation later. He now went carefully through the clothes, and threw them back into the trunks. There was nothing remarkable about them. Some of the articles were marked "H.R."; others had no marks. Next he began picking up carefully with the aid of a cloth the scattered lumps of rock which had also come out of the trunks. Most of these the murderer had laid in little piles on the floor--a few had lain strewn among the clothes. Blaikie held one up with a puzzled look.

"Whatever these are," he said, "they ought to be fine stuff for finger prints, unless the fellow was wearing gloves."

"I can tell you at once what they are," said Lord Ealing. "They are mineral specimens of gold-bearing ore. Radlett was to have shown them to me this morning."

Blaikie dusted one of the lumps over with a fine powder--he had, of course, handled them only with a cloth--and blew the dust away. There was no trace of finger prints. Patiently he repeated the process with each lump in turn. He found no traces.

"Nothing there," he said. "The fellow wore gloves. It looks as if he knew his job."

A further minute examination of the room yielded nothing, for the few spent matches, the cigarette end, and the few bits of fluff and cotton, though Blaikie carefully collected them and put them away, were most unlikely to throw any light on the case. Nor was further search for finger prints on the various articles of furniture productive of any result.

"I'll take the sitting-room next," said the Inspector.

Lord Ealing's restlessness increased as Blaikie began to move swiftly about the room, pausing every minute or so to make a note in his book. His eyes kept turning back to the writing-table, and every time the Inspector went near it he made a little nervous movement. By-and-by he went and stood by it himself, still looking over the scattered heaps of papers as if he feared he might have missed that of which he was in search. But Blaikie was too absorbed in his own investigations to notice Lord Ealing's manner. As he searched and noted, he made his comments aloud, and drew Lord Ealing's attention to each point that seemed to him important. First of all, he went systematically over the floor, though, as he said, there had been too many people in the room already for very plain traces to be left.

On the thick pile of the sitting-room carpet, however, was still plainly visible the place where the missing trunk had stood. Near it the Inspector found traces that something heavy had been dragged along the floor. There were a few spots of blood on the carpet, directly in the line from the sitting-room to the trunk. "This confirms it," said the Inspector. "There's no doubt now he packed the body in the trunk and took it away."

"But why did he take it away? That is what I want to know. If he didn't mean to remove all trace of the crime, I can't see for the life of me why----"

"I think, my lord, you were probably quite right. He did mean to cover up the traces, but he misjudged the time."

"All this would have taken some hiding. That bloodstain on the sheet, and the other on the wall, for example. How would he have hidden them?"

The Inspector slapped his thigh with excitement. "I've got it, my lord. He meant to do the job so that it would leave no trace; but, when he had made all that mess, he had to give up the idea."

"Why didn't he give up the idea of taking the body away as well?"

"Um ... er ... to prevent it from being recognised as Mr. Radlett's perhaps."

"No, no, Inspector; if he was Radlett's secretary, he must have known that I knew who Mr. ... Restington was. It was certain I should tell the police."

"Of course, my lord, I can't say as to that. You haven't told me your story." The note of injury had come again into the Inspector's voice.

Meanwhile he was continuing his examination of the sitting-room. On a side-table stood a portable typewriter of German manufacture, a number of loose papers, and an attaché case. This was shut, but not locked. Opening it, Blaikie found that it had already been ransacked and its lining ripped up in the murderer's search. It had probably been shut, in order that the men coming in the morning to remove the luggage and lay breakfast might see no sign of disturbance. Blaikie left the papers over to examine at leisure.

On the writing-table stood a convenience provided by the hotel for its guests--a box in which letters could be posted for clearance by the staff. It was empty, but it occurred to Blaikie that it would be well worth while to inquire whether any letters had been taken from it on the previous night. The plain clothes man had by this time returned, and Blaikie sent him to fetch Thomas, who, as attendant on the suite, had the duty of clearing the box. Thomas came in a minute later.

"There was no letter in the box last night, m'lord, but there was one this morning. I am afraid I clean forgot it. I cleared it when I came in at seven, and meant to take it down with me to the main box in the hall. Then this dreadful affair put it right out of my head." Thomas put his hand in his pocket and produced the letter. Lord Ealing held out his hand to take it from him. But Blaikie at once claimed it, and he had perforce to pass it over to the Inspector. It bore a typewritten address: "W. Franklin, Esq., 77 Grays Inn Court, W.C. 1."

"Who's Mr. Franklin, I wonder?" asked the Inspector.

"Mr. Radlett's lawyer," said Lord Ealing. "I know him well. Shall I take the letter and give it to him?"

"No, my lord. I think it is my duty to open it," said Blaikie, cutting the envelope open with a pen-knife. Inside were two letters, both typewritten--one a brief covering note, the other addressed to Radlett himself. The covering note bore Radlett's autograph signature. It was typed on the hotel notepaper. It ran as follows:

"DEAR MR. FRANKLIN,--The enclosed, bearing on the matter I
discussed with you yesterday, is a copy of a letter I have just
received on returning to my hotel. I hasten to send it to you, and
will do my best to call to-morrow afternoon and discuss the matter
further.

"Yours sincerely,
"H. RADLETT."

"I suppose that is Mr. Radlett's signature all right?" asked the Inspector.

Lord Ealing assented. "Undoubtedly it is ... what is the enclosure?" he inquired.

The Inspector laid it on the table, and both men read it together. It bore no signature, and no address, and was typewritten, with a foreign-looking typewriter, on paper which the Inspector pronounced to be foreign.

"To HUGH RADLETT.

"Sir, we know who you are and we know that you have it with you.
We have followed you from Russia, and you cannot shake us off. If
you value your life, place it in an envelope and despatch it this
evening by your secretary to us. Your secretary is to go, at 11
o'clock to-night, to the station at Piccadilly Circus, and is to
descend the emergency stairs. Forty-five steps down he will stop
and whistle. We will whistle in answer some bars from the song of
the Volga Boatmen. He will give it to the man who whistles that
song. If you do this, you are free. If you do it not, beware. You
know us."

The Inspector read it slowly through. Then he gave a whistle. "And what was 'it,' and who are 'we,' I wonder?" asked Lord Ealing.

"'It' must be a paper or a jewel--the same the murderer was looking for. And 'we' are clearly Russians--probably Bolshevik conspirators," said the Inspector.

Lord Ealing seemed deep in thought. "Yes," he said, "I can imagine some people in Russia taking an interest in our friend's movements. But I can't see what it was they wanted to get hold of, though, of course, Radlett may easily have had something I know nothing about."

"Of course, my lord, as you have not told me the story, I have no idea what all this means," said the Inspector. "What puzzles me is how this fits in with his secretary--the man Rosenbaum--having done the murder. This makes it look more like the work of outsiders."

"Rosenbaum's a Russian, is he not?"

"Yes; but I mean this letter, coming from outside."

"How do you know it came from outside? May not Rosenbaum have written it himself? It orders Radlett to hand the document over to him. The whole story about Piccadilly may be purely a blind--on the evidence, I should say it probably is."

"I dare say you're quite right, my lord. You mean that Rosenbaum tried to get Radlett to give the thing up to him by means of this letter, and, when he wouldn't, murdered him and went off with it."

"Yes, something of that sort. Or he may not have meant to do murder, but only to search Radlett's room while he was asleep. Perhaps he drugged him. Then Radlett woke up, and he had to kill him in order to save himself."

"But, if that's so, why did he order the men the night before to help him with the trunk in the morning? He wouldn't have needed the trunk unless there had been a corpse."

"How do you know, Inspector? He may have meant to go off with a quite ordinary trunkful of clothes."

"I see, and when he had killed his man, that gave him an idea for getting rid of the body."

"Yes, but working out the truth is your business, not mine. When you have done here, I will come with you to Scotland Yard. My car is still outside."

The Inspector, however, had still the other bedroom to examine. He had only glanced round it before, and had come straight back into the sitting-room, closing the door behind him. He now approached the door again, and opened it.