One Way Out. John Russell Fearn
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you dismissed me from your organisation because of certain irregularities in my behaviour—”
“I dismissed you because you didn’t know how to conduct yourself!” Dale snapped. “I had no quarrel with your capabilities as a secretary, but I had with your misplaced romanticism, Several times—let’s face it—you made love to me, and even though I did not reciprocate your behaviour became the talk of the staff. I had to stop it, and I did.... I am a respectable married man with three grown-up children. I have a position that dare not be tarnished by the least hint of scandal. I love my wife, and I have no time for your sort— Clear?”
“You never mince words, do you, Mr. Dale?”
“Never!” He stared at her tired face, his mouth set like a steel trap.
“In fact,” she went on, “you’re something of a paragon among men—or at least you like to think of yourself in that light. You can hire and fire as you please, and nobody dare do a thing about it. Except one person, that is.... Me.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m going to tell you something, Mr. Dale....” Janice Elton sat back, and relaxed a little, her handbag beside her. “I admit all you’ve said is true—that I did try to find some sentimental streaks in your ox-hide makeup, and I think I’d have succeeded too if you hadn’t have put your wife and business first. That’s as may be, and it’s forgotten now. You fired me a fortnight ago, and I haven’t got another job yet.”
“That’s no concern of mine. I’ll give you a business reference anytime, and say nothing of your—amorous qualifications.”
“I haven’t taken another job, or even tried for one, because I’ve been ill. I only started getting around again the day before yesterday.”
“So?”
“I have been told that I have leukaemia, and at the very most I haven’t much more than a year to live.”
Dale stared at the floor and cleared his throat roughly. Then he glanced at the girl.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Elton, believe me. No matter what our own personal differences I am genuinely sorry, and that’s the truth.”
“I’m sure it is. You know, I got to thinking after an edict like that. Well, who wouldn’t? I reckoned up and found that I have enough to last me financially as long as I need it—twelve months, that is. But....”
“Yes?” Dale prompted, as the girl hesitated.
“I didn’t like the way you treated me, Mr. Dale.”
Dale laughed shortly. “We don’t have to go into all that again, do we? I told you why I rid myself of you, and—”
“Yes, but no woman—not my type, anyway—likes to be brushed off as of no account, and dismissed into the bargain. Since I haven’t got longer than a year I could easily shorten it and leave you something to remember me by...something that I think will knock you from that high perch you’re sitting on.”
Dale stared in surprise. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s simple. I tried to make you have me as I am—alive—and as far as I knew at that time good for a long life. Since that didn’t work out you can still be made to have me...dead.”
Dale was silent, wondering what was coming next. He watched the girl as she opened her handbag deliberately and took from it a small cardboard container. Discarding the container she produced a small bottle of blue glass with a red label affixed. A vague notion of what she intended doing leapt into Dale’s mind.
The train lurched as it swung round a bend. The beating of the wheels over the rail joints became a staccato confusion as points were negotiated. Out in the corridor Martin Lee was tipped towards the window. He gazed out into the smother of steam and smoke with the lights of a station streaking through the pall— Then he looked at his watch. The five minutes stipulated by his employer had expired, but as yet neither Dale nor Janice Elton had come out of the closed compartment.
Lee began to move. In a matter of fifteen minutes the train would be in Glasgow and he and his boss had one or two details yet to clear up. He reached the compartment, which had always been within his vision anyway, and looked at the closed door. Then he looked at the windows. Blinds were drawn over each one, including the one that had formerly been up.
For a moment Lee listened at the door. As far as he could tell above the creaking and roaring of the train there was no sound of voices. Queer. Finally he knocked lightly and called:
“Mr. Dale, are you there? It’s Lee.”
A brief pause, then with a snap of the lock the door slid back and Dale was standing there, a most extraordinary expression on his bulldog face and a purple bottle in his hand.
“What—” Lee began, but he got no further as Dale bundled him into the compartment and closed the door quickly.
“What’s wrong, sir?” Lee demanded, then his gaze moved to Janice Elton. She was in a corner of the compartment, her shoulders wedged into the upholstery and her head lolling forward. It sagged curiously with the motion of the train.
Lee shot a glance at Dale’s troubled face. “What’s the matter with her, sir? Is she asleep, or drugged, or—what?”
“She’s dead! That’s why I drew the blind. I didn’t want anybody to see in.”
“Dead!” Lee gave a start. “You mean she—”
“I mean she committed suicide before I had time to realise what she was up to. See this—” Dale held out the blue bottle. “This is what she took—strychnine. She emptied the bottle before I had a chance to stop her, There were brief convulsions and then....” Silence.
“But—but why? And in your reserved compartment!” Lee looked up in bewilderment. “You pulled the communication cord, I suppose?”
“Not yet,” Dale sat down heavily in the corner. “I did think of it but everything happened so fast. Anyway, what’s the use? She’s dead. No chance to remedy anything. It only happened a moment or two before you knocked. I haven’t had a chance to even think straight.”
Lee reached towards the communication cord, then he hesitated and apparently changed his mind. Moving to the girl he satisfied himself by taking her wrist and feeling at the motionless pulse. There wasn’t any doubt about it....
“It was deliberate,” Dale said, recovering himself and looking at the bottle in his hand.
“Deliberate?” Lee repeated, and the financier looked at him.
“That’s what I said. She told me she’d only a year to live in any case, and to get her own back on me for past injustices—entirely imaginary, I might add—she deliberately killed herself here, intending no doubt to leave me to explain things.”
“Which, of course, you will?” Lee straightened up slowly from beside the girl, his mind aware of certain possibilities.
“Of course I will, you idiot! Pull that cord—we’d better get the guard.”
Lee said slowly, “Do you think that we ought to be that hasty, Mr. Dale? You’re always level-headed in a crisis, and this time there definitely is one. For one thing, you’ve got that bottle in your hand with the strychnine label on it. Where’s the guarantee that Miss Elton took the stuff herself?”
“You don’t think I forced it down her throat, do you? I was compelled to snatch the bottle away from her—just as anybody would have done.”
“Yes, I know, but the police might think differently.” Lee sat down slowly beside the financier, his eyes on the dead girl. She was still rocking like an abandoned rag doll under the motion of the train.
“Look,” Dale said, “this is a deliberate frame-up to get me in a mess—and the quickest way out is to tell the truth.”