MURDER BY LEGACY

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 14, 17 January 1931, Page 12 (Supplement)

MURDER BY LEGACY

By W. A. SWEENEY.

CHAPTER I. Tarlton's Sinister Discovery. Carl Rayrier paused in the act of dressing as the knock came on his door in the Hotel Fongate in Paris. "What is it?" he cried. "Your friend wishes to see you at once, sir."

" Very good. Ask him to wait a moment."

It was very early in the morning in the Hotel Fongate. Carl'Rayner and Dick Tarlton had arrived some days previously in the French capital to spend a day or two dear to the heart of bachelors in that city. Carl Rayner was hurrying with his dressing when, suddenly, another knock came to his door. "All right. Please tell him I'm coming," he called. " Carl! " Rayner stepped forward and unlocked his door at his friend's voicc. At the sight of Tarfton's expression he said, "'What's the matter?" Dick Tarlton sank into a chair and stared up at his friend with a chalky white face. "What on earth's tho matter?" demanded Carl, again, standing in the middle of the room with a collar in one hand and a tie in the other. " Are vou ill, Dick?" "There's a dead man in my room." "Good God! What do vou mean?"

" What I say, man. There's a dead man in my room." " What man ? " " God knows. 1 never saw him in my life before."

Carl Rayner eat down in a chair opposite Tarlton. "But how—l don't understand," he said feebly. " How does he come to be there? " # "I know as much about that as you do. And'worse than that—he's in'my bed. I woke up to find him lying dead and fully dressed on my bed." "Good heavens! Have you told the hotel people?" " Yes, just before I came in here for you." "Let's go to your room, then," said Rayner. He put 011 his collar and tie rapidly as he spoke, and the two men stepped along the corridor. There was a crowd of waiters and chambermaids clustering about the door, while the manager and other chiefs of the establishment were inside. " This is an extraordinary and ghastly business," said Rayner, in the hushed, horrified tones which indicate the presence of a thing, still and terrible in its death, because that death should not have been. " Who is this man ? " , "He was living in the hotel," said the manager. " You arc right —it is a horrible business. This man's name was Steiner. He was an American on his way to London." The dead man was dressed in evening clothes, and, apart from the extreme waxen pallor of his face and hands, he might have been lying asleep across the bed. There was 110 sign of how he had

met his death, and Rayner concluded

mentally; like most of the onlookers, that he had died of heart failure. He turned to Dick Tarlton.

"You don't remember ever having seen him before, Dick ? "

" Never in my existence."

" I have sent for the police, of course, messieurs," "said the manager, turning to them both. " They will be here directly."

•" Quite right," said Dick. " I may tell you I know absolutely nothing of how this man comcs to be here."

He had hardly finished speaking when there was a murmur at the door — "Hero's the doctor." The waiters and chambermaids made way as the doctor entered, commanding somebody, immediately, to open the windows. He bent down to the body, felt the pulse, put liis head down to the heart, and then, rather unnecessarily, pronounced the man to be dead.

"sWe shall now try and find out what he died of," he said, like a professor addressing students. " But that, I fear, may mean —ah! "

He bent forward again, suddenly. His eyes were glued on a small blopil stain behind the ear which had escaped everybody's notice till that moment. Slowly he turned the 1 dead man over, the body rolling over stiffly like a cumbersome tree-trunk. The doctor's eyes narrowed as he tapped under the ear with a delicate forefinger. He turned the head round a little and.seemed to be examining the face and throat again. Then lie straightened himself, but With his eyes fixed on the still figure on the bed. "This man nas been murdered." he t said.

"But how, mon Dieu?" demanded the manager. There were whispers and exclamations of horror from the group at the door. .

"Look," said the doctor. The manager [and the two Englishmen leaned forward and saw something which made them draw in their breath. The base of the dead man's brain had been pierced with a pin which was still there, and this pin had touched and penetrated the top of the spinal column, or so it seemed to Dick Tarlton and Carl Rayner.

"But—but," stammered the manager, "this is a tie-pin."

It was, obviously, from the ruby gleaming against the white neck of the dead man, a tie-pin, and as Dick Tarl-

ton saw it he started.

"It's my tie-pin," he said, simply. "It 4 is your tie-pin, monsieur?" asked the doctor, turning to him. "Perhaps, then," he continued, coldly, "you can explain how it comes to be there?" "But I can't," cried Tarlton. "I know nothing about it." "But still," said the hotel manager, "you admit it is your pin. This man has been found dead —murdered during the night —in your room and murdered with vour tie-pin and you know nothing of it!"

"t tell you," cried Tarlton, "I know nothing whatever about this thing or about how my pin comes to be there." "You must bo a sound sleeper, then," said tho doctor. "However, I leave you to explain that to tho Commissaire of Police, who, 1 nee, has arrived."

Accompanied l>y two dotcdives, tlio Commissaire, a tall, tiovortvlooking, moustnched,man, cntorod tlio room, lie walked over and looked down at tlio figure on the bed. Immi'diatoly hit* ovo caught sight of tlio ruby of' tlio phi. I thought this was a etiso of suihlon death, lie said, looking up (|iiiciklv at everybody standing row ml, "hut.' it,'« murder, surely!" The two dctooUvos, who had drawn close, nodded carelessly

At tills point the doctor made Iris statement. He launched into many dc* tails, finishing up by certifying that the man had not died a natural hut had perished by the hand which had inserted the tie-pin near the base of the brain. Then followed details explaining why the wound could not have been self-inflicted, and regarding the ownership of the pin, the occupant of the room, the,circumstances 'in which the crime was discovered—tho doctor and the manager collaborating in this, and the doctor, coldly 1 , scientifically, and—it seemed—deliberately damning Tarlton as the assassin.

The Commissaire turned to the Englishman and said, "I fear, monsieur, I shall have to ask you some questions."

Dick Tarlton knew he was as good as arrested.

CHAPTER 11. Of a Mysterious Legacy. Before proceeding further, certain facts regarding the two friends, Dick Tarlton and Carl- Rayner, had better be set dowu briefly. Tarlton was a goodlooking young man who was an only child. His father, Charles Tarlton, of horse-breeding fame, had, on-dying, left his_ son enough money to live on for the rest of his life without working like the majority of his fellow men. Old Tarlton had made his fortune among the mountains of Texas years before, he returned to England to marry the frail girl who lived only long enough to gfive him an heir.

As for Rayner, lie was tho son of a Midland steel ' manufacturer, and as he had a private and reputedly large fortune from an aunt, he, also, lived a daily life which contained in its routine few more strenuous activities than tennis, occasional shooting, walking to his club, walking from his club to somebody else's club, wearing his muscles out signing cheques and exhausting his brain tissue selecting the right card at a game of bridge or poker—such, I roughly, was his daily round, his common task, something attempted, something do»e to earn a night's repose. They were both very popular young men, however, though Tarlton possessed (some people said) underneath his general insouciance and lazy attitude of life, a ccrtain little hardness in his make up—the natural inheritance from a father who had made a fortune among the mountains of Texas—which rather suggested, it was said, that he might be counted upon to look after himself and his own interests if occasion arose. Though neither of thein toiled, nor did they spin, both were generally regarded as good sportsmen. And they were great friends. One foggy morning in London, Carl Rayner was sitting in his flat in Jermyn Street thinking gloomily of his friends and acquaintances basking in sunshine in places like Cannes, far away on the shores of the blue Mediterranean, when Dick Tarlton was announced.

"I've just come from Egypt," said Tarlton, blowing out fog as he shook hands with the other.

"Good Lord! Why did you come from it? Don't tell me you became homesick for the sight of a dear old London fog," said ' Carl, sneezing bitterly. "Anyway, you should be cured now if that was the case. I'm afraid to look out of the window. They sing songs about dear old London fogs in music halls, they tell me, and the audiences sit and weep bitterly with homesickness—but the music halls are in places like Cairo and Cannes and the island of Majorca, and the exiles soon get over their misery by having a cooling drink on a terrace. But I'm glad to see you, old man. What did bring you home at this time of the year?"

"You," saicl Tarlton. "Me?" Carl sat up, interested. "Yes, you. I want you to oome to America with me."

"But it's rotten weather there, too," Carl laughed. "Seriously, though, what's the idea?"

"Well, I've got to go to America and I want you to come with me. I've come into a legacy, it seems, or rather I haven't come into it exactly, yet. But I mean to. I've got it and I haven't, if you eee what I mean."

"It sounds something like that old one about the blind fiddler—only not so easy. How did it go again?— The blind fiddler's father was my brother's son, what's the other fellow. Or something like that. What do you mean, exactly, by saying you have come into a legacy and yet you haven't, and what has America got to do \rith it?"

"Listen. I have teen discovered as the missing heir to an inheritance. It seems that I've had some relatives in that country of whose affairs I must say I knew nothing—or practically nothing. I remember hearing something of a grand-uncle who settled out there, but, as he never had anything to do with my father's branch of the family, I know about as much about him as you do. Anyway, my dear Carl, his last direct descendant died, it appears, some years ago, and I am now the rightful heir. It has taken years for them to j find me, and now—"

"Now, I suppose, you're as rich as Croesus. But why do you say you haven't got the inheritance, whatever it is? If you're the heir to the old man's money and they've found you —"

"Wait a moment. First of all, the old man, as you call him, has not left any .money, and I don't know if the thing is worth the trip to the States or not yet."

•"It's the most mysterious and bewildering legacy I've ever lieard of," said Rayner wearily. "Doesn't anybody tell you what lie's left or what it is and all about it instead of sending you these crossword puzzles?" g "lie has left concessions on certain land in the State of Nevada. These concessions may be of untold value, or, of course, tliev may not. The point is .1 have to go and make my claim personally." "You can't writc'and 101 l somebody to take thorn over for you and so forth, and llnd out nil about them?" "1 cannot. It is one of the State's laws, or something. Moreover, I've only got a certain length of timo to claim my property otherwise my rights expire. T have boon searched for I don't know how many years, and there Is a time limit for those things, and that time limit's up in exactly three weeks. To-day Is the I

twenty-sixth of February. If I'm not on the spot by tho of next month—good-bye to my concessions."

"But how do you know these concessions in Nevada are worth even the trip, my dear Dick?"

"Well, my esteemed relative seems to have thought so, and from what I've heard of that branch of the family they were pretty hard in the head. He was, I suppose, some sort of a cousin—the last of the line out there who died, I mean— and although he left no money, I understand that these concessions which he obtained were regarded by him as holding breath-taking possibilities—may be worth millions."

"Phew!"

"Whether he intended to work the land for gold, silver or diamonds, or oil, or what, I don't know. Mysterious, isn't it?"

"Damned mysterious but exceedingly appetising.' So you'll have to leave right away?" • ■

"Well, ir' you come with me I propose that we leave to-morrovi' or the day after for Paris, spend a little time there and then leave from Cherbourg on the tenth of March. That will leave us in Nevada with a day or two to spare. There's a ship leaving Cherbourg on the tenth and, anyway, if I'm at this place in Nevada by the mid-day on the 21st all's well. Will you come? *It will be interesting to find out if I'm a multimillionaire in oil, or some such thing, and the trip will be'amusing, anyhow." Carl Rayner seemed to consider a moment. . "I'm afraid it can't be done, Dick, old man," he said, at length. "I'd like to very much, but there are certain reasons why I can't rush off just now to the wilds of America." Other important engagements?" Rayner nodded. "I'm afraid net." _ "All right then, Carl," said Tarlton, rising, "I should have been glad of your company, but I suppose it can't be helped. I've got to go now. Come and have dinner with me to-night at the Cecil. Meet me there about seven and we'll have time for a cocktail or two before we don the nosebags. But think it over and see if you can't wash out those engagements of yours. Telephone

me if you change your mind for I'm going to get the tickets this afternoon. Cheerio! for the moment. I must go t<£ the bank!"

Tarlton descended into Jermyn Street and, after, hesitating a little to see if there were any signs of a taxi crawling out of the fog, strolled slowly off in the direction of Piccadilly.

It was thanks to the density of the fog that he did not notice two cars standing together a little way off on the other side of the road. One of these cars moved off slowly in his wake after a word from the occupant of the other, while from the other stepped a tall man, muffled up to the throat in a heavy and expensive-looking overcoat with a fur collar and wearing a silk hat. He murmured a word to the chauffeur and then walked across the road and up the steps of the block of flats which Tarlton had just left. He rang Carl Rayner's bell and sent in his card.

When Rayner saw the name on the card which his man brought in he frowned in some perplexity.

"What the deuce can this bird want with me?" he murmured. "All right, Walker. Show him in."

The visitor entered and Walker closed the door on the two men.

It was about half an hour later when Walker was summoned to let the stranger out, after which Carl Rayner sat a long time smoking cigarettes thoughtfully. Finally, he rose and stood looking out of the window on to the street below, mufiled and ghostlylooking now in the fog. Then, after glancing at his watch, he went to the telephone in the corner of the room and asked for a number.

"Is Mr. Tarlton in ?" he demanded of the person at the other end. "Just come in, has he? . . . That you, Dick?

Yes. Look here, I've decided to come with you after all. I'll cancel those engagements. This damned weather is too much for me. Yes? . . .

Righto . . . What? . . . All right then. . . . Yes, you may need someone to look after you, anyway, among those mountain brigands of the wilds of Nevada, you know. . Till this evening, then. Bye-bye!"

He lit another cigarette and sat looking at the card left by his recent visitor, turning it over and over in his hand. Then he scribbled the address in a notebook and prepared to go out.

Tarlton and Rayner left for Paris the next day and a few mornings later they were standing faced with the mysterious tragedy which has already been related, standing in the hotel Fongate looking down on the body of a man who had been murdered with Dick Tarlton's tiepin, in Dick Tarlton's room, and he was under arrest for the murder.

And the ship which was to bear him to America Avas due to sail the next day. If he did not sail by it he might say good-bye to a fortune which, by now, had come to loom in his imagina--fcion like the wondrous island of Monte Cristo. (To be continued Saturday next.)