INVITATION TO MURDER

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 261, 4 November 1933, Page 13 (Supplement)

INVITATION TO MURDER

~«♦ ♦ By J. R. WILMOT ♦'

CHAPTER Vl.—(Continued). .When he had gone Pamela turned to her father. "You're not still worrying about that silly old letter ?" she asked. "Of course not! Why, I've hardly given the -wretched thing a thought all day."

"I'm eo glaa, daddy, hut I couldn't help thinking it was so unlike you to drive about at night all by yourself." Vance smiled up at her and patted her hand affectionately.

"I do wish yu wouldn't worry so much about me," he said simply. "I'm quite all right." Delisle returned, bland and smiling. "So sorry that people should be 'phoning around to find me like this, but I've been expecting a call all the _ evening, and I gave your number just in. case I didn't happen to be at home." "My dear boy, don't worry about that. I know what it's like to be hunted about on the telephone," laughed Vance.

"Well, I'm afraid I'll have to be pushing off," announced the young man. "See you to-morrow, Pamela, I hope," he smiled, as he hell out his hand. "I'll be out for my gallop at the usual time, I expect," she told him. "Good-night, sir, and—thank you." Delisle grasped Vance's hand and held it for a moment and the two men's eyes met. "Good-night," responded Vance. "And thank you for looking after Pamela." Pamela lay in her bed thinking. She -ras not yet certaiu in her own mind that her father had been speaking the truth when he had told her that he had given no further thought to the matter of the mysterious letter. There was something about him to-night that was not altogether natural. She knew his every mood in'imately. If he thought he could deceive her he did not know her as well as he pretended to do. All that talk about admiring the beauties of nocturnal nature! She almost laughed into the darkness about her as the recollection of his explanation came to her. Her father had never been a man to grow lyrical about sunsets and mountains and the moonlight on the heather. That wasn't his nature. He was more practical, and any affection in his make-up had always been reserved for herself. Thinking of these things she fell asleep. In his room John Vance did not go immediately to bed. He had work to do—work of considerable importance. He must get rid of that thing that lay in the bottom of the wardrobe. So far he had borne the strain remarkably well; but he felt that he had done so at the expense of his bottled-up emotions. Now the strain was beginning to tell. He had asked Birtles to leave him the decanter and a glass on a tray beside his bed on the excuse that he felt he had a "cold coming on." It was many minutes before he could steel himself +o unlock the door of the wardrobe and bring out that bundle of damnably incriminating evidence. Where could he hide it? Where could he hide it where it would never be found? Slowly he unwrapped the dark-stained handkerchief from the dagger. There it lay in the folds. He did not touch it. Just looked at it with a feeling of reverence. There was nothing revolting about it. He seemed to be able to divorce its sinister significance from his love for it. For he did love it— loved all his collection jf old weapons which he bad acquired from odd corners of the globe over a long period of years. As he looked at it a thought came into his mind that made him wonder why it had been absent for so long. How was it this sma'l dagger from his collection had got into the hands of Martin Stone's assassin? How was it he had never missed it from its accustomed place in the long oaken rack where all the others reposed? i This was a problem that might exercise his imagination and perhaps his investigations in the future. But not just yet, he warned himself. No, not just yet. With a gesture of helplessness he looked around the room for a hiding place. At other moments he felt that a dozen likely places would have occurred to him. Where did people hide tilings they desperately wanted to get rid of —people in novels. He had never been a particularly great reader. Never much time for that in a busy, moneymaking life, but he recalled to mind that he had once read of someone hiding money under a loose board in the floor and relaying the carpet on top of it. Vance turned back the Persian carpet and gazed thoughtfully at the black floorboards. Age had warped some of them slightly. He pressed them with his trembling fingers. They were all very secure. . Dejectedly he replaced the carpet into position and looked once again around the room. Then his eyes lingered on the little bureau standing in the corner. It was years since he had used that bureau. Years ago, when he had been more actively engaged in business, he had sometimes awakened in the middle of the night remembering some important business and, lest he should forget by morning, he had been in the habit of throwing on his dressing gown and making a note of it at the bureau. On the top of the bureau stood a desk calendar—one of those stoutly-built wooden affairs with the day of the week, the day of the month and the name of the months all operated by little rollers whose knobs projected on each side for the purpose of winding. Sudenly he remembered that the back of the calendar was in the form of a slide running in narrow grooves, so that adjustments could be made in the event of any of the rollers sticking. Mentally he measured the height of the calendar. It wa3 about nine inches high. The length of the straight-bladed dagger on the floor at his feet was not more than eight inches overall. Crossing to the closed bureau, he lifted down the calendar and slid out the back panel. The aperture revealed a cavity of just sufficient depth, he calculated, to contain the weapon and the handkerchief.

Tremblingly, he replaced the corners of the square of linen across the dagger without touching it with his naked fingers. Then he wrapped it more tightly in its blood-soaked shroud and placed it within the cavity. Having done so he twirled the roller-knobs at the side and found that they were unobstructed. Finally he replaced the slide and stood the calendar back again on the bureau. John Vance heaved a sigh of relief and began to prepare for bed. Next morning Pamela was awakened by the maid knocking on the panel of her door with her tea.

The maid entered, and, as was her custom, placed the silver tray on the table beside the bed and a folded copy

of that morning's newspaper beside it. Then she crossed the room and drew back the curtains. "Thank you, Marie," smiled Pamela, sleepily. "Any thrilling news this morning?" "Why, yes, miss. There s been another murder in London—gentleman stabbed to death in his office chair. Horrible I think it is." A sudden spasm of fear clutched at the girl's heart. She felt the blood drain to her face. "Thank you, Marie," she repeated, mechanically. "I don't think I ehall read about that." ...... .. But no sooner had the girl left the room than Pamela snatched the newspaper from the table and opened it. A black ominous headline told her of the death of a well-known stockbroker. Ihe print became blurred as she read of the murder of Mr. Martin Stone while seated at his desk in his office the night before. For a moment she felt stunned. The man her father had been instructed to murder had been murdered. Throwing on her dressing-gown she raced across to her father's room and flung open the door. He was «till asleep. She°shook him wildly by the shoulder "Daddy! Daddy!" she cried, chokingly. "Martin Stone has been murdered—d'you hear?" . . . murdered!

CHAPTEE Vn. Inspector Burke. Chief Inspector Curtis Burke sat at his desk at Scotland Yard humming the refrain from a popular dance time. To the uninitiated it might have appeared as if Mr. Burke was in a somewhat happy, care-free frame ot mind. On the contrary, he was m the throes of a particularly nasty little PI The musical ©bligato was entirely extraneous to the problem, and in this respect he most nearly resembled his late chief, Superintendent Whatmoth, whose repertoire of humming tunes was considered the most comprehensive in the force but who was always known to be Hearing tho solution of his difficulties when the depressing tempo of "The Dead March" was heard issuing from between his loosely-held lips. Curtis Burke was not old like Whatmoth. At thirty he had achieved considerable success in his chosen profession, which consisted in turning his hand to anything in the lino of crime from the delinquencies of night club queens to tho activities of the banditry of Soho. Ho had come to Scotland Yard via Cambridge, where he had been considered a "ood student in a rather more general than in any specialised department. From the uniformed branch he had quickly graduated to the indoor staff, and now he was a chief inspector, a title which he had well earned as a result of his proficiency in most of the branches of crime detection to which he brought a brain sharpened by analytical study. In appearance he was spare ana athletic—the holder of the mile record on the track. His hair was dark and inclined to be wavy; the envy of two sisters who lived in Warwickshire and whose hair, it will be gathered, needed tho frequent ministration of the expert in that branch of beauty's art. His eyes were blue, a relic probably from his remote Irish ancestry who were reputed to have had quite a reputation for restlessness somewhere in Donegal. Mr. Burke—which was how the majority of his colleagues addressed him — had not been to bed all that night, and it was now nine o'clock in the.morning. He had, in fact, been paying considerable attention to the affair in Smith Street, where a certain Martin Stone, stockbroker, had been discovered by an office cleaner dead in his chair at his desk. Further scrutiny on the part of Constable Travis, who had been summoned to the building in order to reassure Mrs. Ellen Withers, the cleaner in question, that the evidence of her own eyes was perfectly reliable, had elicited the fact that the man had been stabbed between the shoulder blades at the back of the heart and also that the weapon was nowhere in the room.

Burke—which was the name by which his superiors nearly always addressed him—had been set a pretty problem; as pretty a problem, in fact, as it was possible for the most academic among the mystery novelists to invent, Hero was a man dead in his office chair with not the smallest clue, as yet, to the identity of the murderer or the reason for the sudden dispatch of an apparently respectable and highly-thought-of stockbroker to those regions which, despite investigation, are as yet unchrvted. Almost as soon as the crime had been discovered, Burke had been summoned and had taken automatic charge of the case. Constable Travis had contributed his statement; likewise had Mrs. Ellen Withers, the office cleaner, who, at.ten minutes past seven had switched on the light in Stone's private office and had "discovered" the crime. The routine work had followed quickly. Dr. Northop, the divisional surgeon, had made his examination and report; the photographers had exposed a number of plates; the finger-print men had been assiduously busy for an hour working inch by inch around the room and finally the body had been removed. Burke until now had paid little attention to this side of the case. That was not his job. It was his task to find the person who had struck Martin Stone down. To this end he had made a number of notes on a sheet of foolscap; he had taken immediate charge of the unemptied wastepaper basket in the kneehole of the man's desk; he had sealed the safe and likewise the drawers of the desk and the filing cabinet. Constable Travis could not for the life of him understand the inspector's object in this routine considering that he had been detailed to remain on duty inside the office until relieved next morning. But Burke believed in thoroughness. He didn't want anything removed —however inadvertentlv —from that office until he had submitted everything to a thorough examination.

Another report on the desk in front of him was from Sergeant Pace, who, armed with a list of the names and addresses of Martin Stone's office staff, had visited each and all of them in their respective homes and taken statements from them. The staffs of other offices on the same floor had been equally surprised to receive a nocturnal visit from another Scotland Yard officer, who_ demanded answers to a number of questions. It was the first cast of the net.

The second cast was more difficult, but it was now in progress. It consisted in tracing every caller to the offices of Martin Stone not only on the day of the crime, but on several days immediately preceding. Then would come the equally difficult "task of checking up on Martin

Stone's own activities during the week and later a much more detailed tunnelling into his past life. This much Burke had already learned. Martin Stone was a bachelor. His age was 50. He had been in business in the city for 15 years. Before coming to London he had been in Manchester and 20 years ago it was said that he had been in America and was not altogether unknown in Mexico.

All these details Burke had pencilled on his sheet of foolscap. On a separate sheet he had his own diagram of the office; the position of the desk and also a sketch of the body. Then came a list of the contents of the dead man's pockets. His wallet had contained 10 pounds in Treasury notes; a pocket case, a number of letters of a private nature and seven business cards. The loose J change in the hip pocket amounted to six | shillings and flvepence halfpenny. , Martin Stone lived in Crouch End in a small detached house. He had a housekeeper, Mrs. Simms/' who lived on the j premises with her eon, John, who was a i porter at Covent Garden. Burke had just returned to the Yard from interviewing Mrs. Simms. She had been able to tell j him very little. Mr. Stone was a quiet, i unobtrusive man. He had left home yesterday morning at his usual hour, which was nine-thirty. She had expected him home, as usual at seven-thirty for his dinner, but at five o'clock he had telephoned to say that he might be a little later—eight o'clock to eight-thirty. He had not told her the reason for his delay, but Mrs. Simms had assumed that it was due to business affairs. Burke had left the house with the strict injunction that she must admit no one until she heard from him again. On the surface, the crime appeared meaningless and motiveless, but Burke had no intention of deluding himself._ Had there been a motive "sticking out," as he phrased it, he would have been all the more suspicious. _ Doctor Northop has given it as his opinion that the weapon used in the crime had been a bladed one—either a knife or a short dagger. The doctor had gone to consider-1 able lengths to explain to ths inspector , tho difference in the appearance of wounds caused through the use of differ- | ent types of instruments. Burke had lis- j tened courteously but without interest. All he cared about was that he had to look for a weapon answering ( to the medical man's vague, yet precise description—a task 'more difficult than looking for the proverbial needle. Burke looked at the clock and saw that it was nine-fifteen. Then he remembered that he had neither breakfasted nor shaved, and as there was not the time to go to his home for either purpose, he put on his hat and coat and went out. Three-quarters of an hour later he was back in his room. Sergeant Pace was waiting for him, and with the officer was a small, narrow-chested whippet of a man named Eodgers who said he was Martin Stone's chief clerk. "Sit down, Mr. Eodgers," invited Burke, easily, "I want you to answer a few questions. There's no need for you to be nervous even-if this is the first time you've been taken to Scotland Yard. I can tell you confidentially that you are not under suspicion." Mr. Eodgers smiled and blinked at Burke from behind a pair of hornrimmed spectacles. "What is it you want to know? he asked, in a thin, half-apologetic voice. "Well," Burke began, "you can tell us what sort of business you dealt in." "Quite a general business. In these days a stockbroker can't afford to pick and choose. Any kind of share business at all. I can show you the books if you like, sir." "That will come later, Mr. Eodgers. What I mean is was the business 'on the square' as they call it, or was it well, Mr. Eodgers, you know what i'm'driving at, I'm sure." Burke's smile was disarming, and in the case of a man such as Mr. Eodgers was, It was essential that it should have been. Mr. Eodgers hesitated, but it was only for a moment. He was wise enough to realise that it would do him little good to prevaricate in this building. "Well, sir," he began, "I suppose there can be few firms such as ours possessing an unblemished reputation. Mr. Stone was a business man. He was not in the habit of turning down business just because it was a matter of conscience. I can recall one or two deals that were not, strictly speaking, what you might say quite above board. Is that what you wish to know, sir?" "Partly," said Burke, "but I'm an inquisitive fellow, Mr. Eodgers. You've whetted my appetite. Do you think you. could remember any details of those oblique transactions?" Mr. Eodgers appeared thoughtful for a moment.

"There was a scheme about three years ago relating to oil in Mexico. I didn't like it, sir. I was presumptions enough to tell Mr. Stone I didn't like it either, and if I remember correctly he told me he thought I must be growing old." "By which he meant that old men sometimes regain their consciences," interjected the detective. "I understand, Mr. Eodgers. More than that; I sympathise with you." Mr. Eodgers expanded somewhat under the subtle blandishment.

"Of course, sir, I'm not saying that the scheme might not have turned up trumps, because' Mr. Stone knew the Mexican market remarkably well. I believe he'd once been out there—many years before he opened up in London." "And how did the venture progress?" "It didn't, sir. Thousands of people lost a tidy sum." "How much would that be?" "Altogether about twenty thousand pounds." "Was the company floated in London ?" —Burke was growing interested "No, sir. In New York. Mr. Stone was the London broker and worked the prospectus on the stock market here." Burke looked thoughtful and added a few more lines to his notes. "I may want to see you again about this, Mr. Eodgers," he smiled, rising from his chair and holding out his hand. 'Good morning! I take it we can find you at your home address?" "For the present, sir, you certainly can," replied Mr. Eodgers, ruefully. (To be continued Saturday next.)