Nude in Mink, Sax Rohmer [free children's ebooks pdf TXT] 📗

Spanish type, her heavily marked eyebrows tending to overpower her features. She wore black.

Maitland bowed, as Granville withdrew.

“I am exceedingly sorry to disturb you, Lady Carradale— and you, sir. But I was under the impression that you had another guest—”

“You were mistaken, Dr. Maitland.” Lady Carradale had a high, rather harsh voice. “A friend of yours, you thought?”

“Well—hardly a friend! My business was official.”

“Indeed! You don’t look like a policeman.”

“No. Beards are unusual in the police, Lady Carradale. I can only ask you to forgive me for this unwarranted intrusion.”

“But not at all, Doctor. It is a pleasure. Will you and your friend honour us with your company?”

“Many thanks. My friend—Mr. Donovan—and I are most appreciative—”

The houselights went up.

All those on their way out, stopped, and turned!—as the tableau curtains were drawn apart, and Granville stepped on to the stage. The gallery became silent.

“Ladies and gentlemen—”

“Forgive me again, Lady Carradale … I must go. Good night, and thank you.”

Maitland and Donovan hurried from the box. As the door closed:

“Through to the stage!” said Maitland. “We have been tricked, Donovan! She slipped out! There was someone else in that box! We must look up the history of Lady Carradale… through here!”

On the stage, a nervous hush prevailed. Granville’s voice could be heard, explaining to the audience that, owing to the sudden and inexplicable illness of Ian Forrester, the part of Hamlet during the rest of the play would be taken by Mr. Douglas Merrick. In these unhappy circumstances, he was sure, etc….

“But where can be possibly have gone?” a woman’s voice whispered agitatedly.

And, quietly as possible, stage hands changed the set.

“Is that you, Ives?” Maitland asked suddenly.

Ives elbowed his way through a group and joined Maitland and Donovan.

“It’s me right enough. Come outside, where we can talk.”

“What news?”

As they stepped out into a narrow passage inside the stage door, Ives replied:

“He’s got the news!”

Ives pointed to a man in his shirt sleeves seated in the doorkeeper’s box—a stout, red-faced man who had a glass of whisky beside him and who appeared to be the only person in the building unaffected by the night’s happenings.

“Doorkeeper—what do you know about all this?” Maitland demanded.

The doorkeeper leaned through his little window.

“All there is to know, I reckon,” he replied. “Just before the curtain comes down, a chauffeur bloke hands me a note—or rather, two notes. One for me, and one for Mr. Forrester. He says the one in a envelope must be handed to Mr. Forrester the moment he comes off. See? Well, I gets hold of his dresser and tells him to stand by on the side—”

“Describe the chauffeur,” snapped Maitland.

“Big chap. Very hairy.”

“Go on!”

“I’ve just got back here, and I can tell the curtain’s down, and I’m putting on my hat to nip along to the corner, when Mr. Forrester, dressed like he come off, runs past me and out into the street!”

He paused on this dramatic line.

“Well—go on!”

“There ain’t no more to go on to. I can see there’s a woman in the case, and I don’t think a lot about it. I puts my hat on and goes along to the corner—”

“But why the hell didn’t you report this before?” Ives growled.

“I’ve told you, Inspector. When I come back—and I’m not gone more’n three minutes—how am I to know Mr. Forrester ain’t in the theatre? Nobody tells me—not till you tell me.”

“My God!” Maitland muttered, and grasped Donovan’s arm—_”She_ has got him! Why didn’t I realise his danger in time? Why didn’t I foresee this!… Under our very eyes, Donovan! Under our very eyes …”

3

Night was giving place to morning when a man wearing a grey chauffeur’s uniform entered, with almost silent tread, a charmingly feminine little boudoir, furnished in satinwood upholstered in violet, and stood before a long, narrow couch upon which Our Lady reclined.

She wore a loose rest-gown. A tray, with coffee and biscuits, stood beside it. She no more than glanced at the man. He stood, powerful fists clenched, head bowed.

“I am here, My Lady.”

“So I observe, Philo. To report—failure?”

“No, My Lady. Success.”

She sat up; and her remarkable eyes opened widely, so that their beauty became fearful.

“Then you have done well, Philo.” She lay back again, laughing gently. “From my box I saw the note handed to him in the wings as he left the stage. I knew that, so far, all went smoothly … Sister Jean?”

“Has been prepared for her journey, My Lady.”

“He got into the car without—urging?”

“The moment he saw the little Jean lying back on the cushions, Madonna. I closed the door and drove off.”

“How did he behave?”

“Like a madman, My Lady. But he could open neither of the doors. She was unconscious. On the Heath—at the spot selected—I unlocked the door, and he leapt out and attacked me. In his fury he almost overpowered me. But I tripped him—and silenced him. I gave the injection near the top of the spine, as Ariosto had shown me… He did not awaken again “

“And you left him standing, as I ordered?”

“As you ordered, My Lady.”

My Lady laughed again, softly, and extended her hand.

Philo bent and kissed the delicate fingers.

4

The next person to set eyes upon Ian Forrester was a man called Thorndale.

Thorndale was a gardener, one of whose duties was to tend the heating furnace of a house overlooking Reigate Heath. This necessitated his leaving home before six o’clock in the morning and walking from the town across a part of the Heath and golf-course. From a mound dominated by a giant fir he usually obtained his first glimpse of his employer’s chimneys, visible from that point above the crowns of encircling trees.

This was a misty, cold morning. In fact, the mist was so dense in patches as to deserve the name of fog.

One such patch occurred in the dip immediately below the mound supporting the King fir, and here, grumbling to himself, Thorndale paused to try to re-light his pipe, which had gone out largely because of lack of tobacco.

However, an artist in coaxing a cinder into a flame, he contrived to get his pipe going again, and resumed his slow tramp, both hands thrust into his topcoat pockets. He climbed up the path to the mound, and to some extent, out of the mist. As he passed the great mast of the tree, he paused for a moment, staring.

Someone appeared to be standing there—a man in black.

“Good morning, sir,” called Thorndale. “Bit foggy like.’

He went on his way—but received no reply.

This simply led him to suppose that the stranger who stood by the big tree was a surly fellow… then, led him to wonder.

Had there been someone there? Or had he imagined it?

He turned back.

Reclimbing the mound from the other side, he obtained a clear view of the figure. He had not been mistaken. There was a man there right enough. But…

Thorn dale’s pipe fell on to the turf.

A moment later he was running, headlong, even his precious old pipe forgotten, in the direction of a garage fronting the Heath at which as he passed he had seen men at work…

“What are you talking about, mate? What’s the panic?”

An older man, and a daft looking boy, joined the mechanic to whom Thorndale had tried to tell his strange news.

“I’m talking about a ghost!” said Thorndale, breathless, but defiant. “There’s a man up there”—he made vague gestures in the direction of the mist wantoning over the Heath—“standing under a tree… He’s all in black—with a dagger in his belt—Jewels on his hands … A ghost, I tell you!”

The two men and the boy exchanged glances.

“Barmy,” said the boy.

The mechanic aimed a blow at him—which the daft boy ducked.

“No harm done if we go and see.”

“‘That’s all I’m asking!”

“I’m staying here,” the older man announced, with a suspicious look at Thorndale.

And so a procession of three inquirers set out for the big fir tree.

Within ten paces of it, the mechanic pulled up.

“Blimey!” he remarked.

“What did I tell you?”

It was the daft boy who approached the pallid statue of Hamlet—who touched it—who fell back, shrieking—who ran like a hunted, wild thing across the Heath, directionless, without purpose.

“He’s turned to stone!” he shrieked as he ran. “He’s turned to stone …” So was found the body of Ian Forrester.