The Grell Mystery. Frank Froest
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learn from me,’ he said quickly. ‘I suppose you’ve seen Lady Eileen Meredith.’
‘No.’ The lie was prompt, but the superintendent salved his conscience with the thought that it was a necessary one. ‘I don’t know that she can tell us anything of value.’
An expression of relief flitted over the face of Grell’s friend. After all, it was something to have the worst postponed. A man may face swift danger with debonair courage, may be undaunted by perils or emergencies of sport, of travel, of everyday life. But few innocent men can believe that a net is slowly closing round them which will end in the obloquy of the Central Criminal Court, or in a shameful death, without feeling something of the terror of the hunted. ‘The terror of the law’ is very real in such cases. Fairfield was no coward, but his nerves had begun to go under the strain of the suspense. It would have been different had he been able to do anything—to find relief in action. But he had to remain passively impotent.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I expect you’re very busy, Mr Foyle. I don’t want to keep you.’
The detective received the snub with an amiable smile. ‘I won’t force my company on you, Sir Ralph. If you will just dictate to me a description of the string of pearls that Grell showed you, I will go. Can you let me have a pen and some paper?’
Ungraciously enough Fairfield flung open a small inlaid writing-desk, and Foyle took down the description as though he really needed it. As he finished he held out the pen to Fairfield.
‘Will you sign that, please? No, here.’
Their hands were almost touching. Foyle half rose and stumbled clumsily, clutching the other’s wrist to save himself. The baronet’s hand and fingers were pressed down heavily on the still wet writing. The detective recovered his balance and apologised profusely, at the same time picking up the sheet of paper.
‘I don’t know how I came to do that. I am very sorry. It’s smudged the paper a bit, but that won’t matter. It’s still readable. Good-bye, Sir Ralph.’
So admirably had the accident been contrived that even Fairfield never suspected that it was anything but genuine. In a public telephone-box, a few hundred yards away, Heldon Foyle was examining the half-sheet of notepaper side by side with the photograph of the finger-prints on the dagger. A telephone-box is admirably constructed for the private examination of documents if one’s back is towards the door and one is bent over the directory. Line by line Foyle traced ‘laterals,’ ‘lakes,’ and ‘accidentals,’ calling to his aid a magnifying glass from his waistcoat pocket.
When he emerged he was rubbing his chin vigorously. The prints were totally different. Sir Ralph Fairfield was not the murderer of the man so astoundingly like Robert Grell.
THE evidence of the finger-prints was entirely negative. Though Foyle believed that Fairfield was innocent, he never permitted himself to be swayed by his opinions into neglecting a possibility. It was still possible that the baronet might have been concerned in the crime even though they were someone else’s prints on the dagger. At any rate Fairfield was suppressing something. It could do no harm to continue the watch that had been set upon him. So Foyle left Green and his companion to continue their unobtrusive vigil.
To justify his stay in the box—for he was artist enough to do things thoroughly even though it might be unnecessary—he lifted the receiver and put a call through to Scotland Yard.
‘This is Foyle speaking,’ he said when at last he had got the man he asked for. ‘Is there anything fresh for me?’
‘Nothing important, sir, except that Blake has found a curiosity dealer who says that the knife is one that must have come from South America. It is, he says, an unusual sort of Mexican dagger.’
‘Oh. Is the man who says that to be relied on? He isn’t just guessing? We can do all the guessing we want ourselves.’
‘No, sir, we think he’s all right. It’s Marfield—one of the biggest men in the trade. By the way, sir, there’s a lot of newspaper men been asking for you since you left. They want to know about Goldenburg.’
‘So do I,’ retorted the other. ‘You’d better be strictly truthful with ’em, Mainland. Tell ’em you know no more than is on the reward bill. They won’t believe you, anyway. You can say I’ve gone home to bed, and that there will be nothing more doing this evening. Good-bye.’
‘A Mexican dagger,’ he muttered to himself as he left the telephone-box. ‘Now, if I were a story-book detective I should assume that the murderer was either a South American or had travelled in South America. It looked the kind of thing a woman might carry in her garter. And a veiled woman called on him that night’—he made a wry face. ‘Foyle, my lad, you’re assuming things. That way madness lies. The dagger might have been bought anywhere as a curiosity, and the veiled woman may have been a purely innocent caller.’
His meditations had brought him to a great restaurant off the Strand. He passed through the swing doors into the lavishly gilded dining-room, and selected a table somewhere near the centre. With the air of a man taking his ease after a strenuous day in the City, he ordered his dinner carefully, seeking the waiter’s advice now and again. Then his eye roved carelessly over the throng of diners while he waited for his orders to be fulfilled. The apparently casual scrutiny lasted rather less than a minute. Then he shifted his seat so that he could see without effort the table where two men lingered over their liqueurs. A moment later one of the men noted the solitary figure of the detective.
He emptied his glass without haste and signalled to the waiter. Before that functionary had made out the bill Foyle had strolled over to the table, his face beaming, his hand outstretched.
‘How are you, Eden?’ he cried effusively. ‘Who’d have thought of seeing you here! Business good? Still picking flowers?’
An expression of annoyance crossed the face of the slighter built of the two men, yet he shook hands readily.
‘Why, it’s Mr Foyle!’ he exclaimed heartily. ‘How are you? We were just going. Let me introduce Mr Maxwell.’
They called him the Garden of Eden at Scotland Yard—probably because the unwary might have thought him full of innocence. His smooth, bronzed boyish face showed ingenuousness and candour in every line. A glittering diamond pin adorned his necktie, a massive gold chain spanned his waistcoat, a gold ring with a single great ruby was on his finger. That was the only ostentation about him, and his quiet, well-cut clothes were in good taste.
Foyle acknowledged the introduction.
‘From the colonies, I suppose, Mr Maxwell? I suppose Eden has told you he’s just come over.’ Eden surveyed the detective with wide-open, innocent blue eyes in which there dwelt hurt reproach. ‘I hate to separate you, but I’ve got important business with him. Perhaps you’ll meet another time.’
‘Yes, you’ll excuse me now, old man,’ chimed in Eden blandly. ‘Call for me at the Palatial at eleven tomorrow, and we’ll make a day of it.’
Maxwell had no sooner accepted his dismissal than Foyle led the other over to his table. Eden walked with the manner of one uncertain what was about to happen.
‘It is all right, Mr Foyle,’ he protested eagerly. ‘It is all right. I haven’t touched him for a sou.’
Foyle began on the soup placidly.
‘You’re a joker, Jimmy,’ he smiled. ‘Don’t get uneasy. I’m not going to carry you inside. Only you’ll have to leave the Palatial tonight, Jimmy—tonight, do you understand? And if Maxwell turns up with a complaint against you there’ll be pretty bad trouble. You’ll be put out of temptation for good and all. There’s such a thing as preventive detention in this country now, you know.’
The Garden of Eden looked pained.
‘Truth,