Katerina Turns Detective.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 200, 24 August 1937, Page 17

Katerina Turns Detective.

SHORT STORY

By SIR MAX PEMBERTON.

(Concluded.)

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTER. I should speak and the other looking at me as though he meant to burn me alive on the spot." "What kind of a room was it jon were in?" "Oh, a great big horrid place that might have been a chapel and might have been an infirmary. There were two or three daubs on the walls and seven or eight busts which should have been out of the pantomime. But it was the furnace that interested me. It glowed and glowed, just like fire and the pot was hissing on the top of it. I knew in a minute that the gold was boiling inside it ... and, of course, it said 'coiners' as loudly as it could speak—" "What did the men say?" "They said a lot. But it was the horrible man, who was so handsome, he did most of the talking." "'Why do you spy on my house? , he asked. I was standing no nonsense and I didn't care a string of sham pearls for him. 'Because you are making bad money to pay your income tax and somebody ought to know about it,' I said.

In the opening chapter Katerina charming, clever and inconsequent, tells her frieml Detective-Inspector Mollet how she discovered a tall aud fascinating foreigner performing some suspicious mysteries in a cottage in a wood. She had passed that way in her car by night, and saw the Place illumined. by the names from a turnace. The foreigner came out, practieaUy accused her of spying, and slammed the door. Next day she saw him again, almost by accident. Read on.

"Yes, I call it an accident. I had to drive past the cottage every time I came back from golf, and I often used to drive very slowly to see if I could discover anything—for, of course, if I had discovered anything I should have had to tell the police for that would have been a duty to society, wouldn't it?"

The inspector coughed. "Go on," he said, dryly. "Well, I passed the cottage quite a lot of times and usually nothing was happening— not even the dog. Once I thought I saw that gorgeous man standing at a window looking at something through a microscope—one of the coins he had made, I suppose; but as I couldn't go in and ask him, I took his face prints " "Face prints?" "Yes, I made a note of the shape of his chin and his nose and everything about him, so that if he were put into chains afterwards I should be quite sure

"He looked very serious at that. But he was nothing to the others; and, really, for the moment, I thought that one of them was going to kill me.

of identifying him. That was just three nights before the dreadful thing happened. I could never forget the date of a thing like that, could I—?" "Oh, what thing—the man or the face or what? And what date was it, anyway 1" "Well, now, this is July ... so that means Maying or Juning anyway. I should prefer May myself . . . it's a romantic month, and you can't get married in it. Think what a lot of lives May has saved. Shall we say it was some date in May?" "Am I to understand that upon this night of June or May or December or January, you entered the den oJ thieves?" "Not entered. I was pulled in. The man's arm was like a vice and there were pistols all over the place. Oh, if you could have seen me. And all I had done was to go on tip-toe across his beastly little lawn and put my nose against his dirty window." "House on fire again, I suppose?" "Yes, absolutely fireworks ... a beautiful red light that was most becoming except for the pistols. I saw it directly I entered the wood by Christmas Common and I knew in a moment that he must be a criminal and that the police were after him. Tliding in this wood—how clever,' I said, and I stopped my car a good way off and crept up on tip-toe just as I am telling you." "And then they pulled you into the house . . . quite without ceremony, eh?" "I should think they did. I nearly fell over a bust of Mussolini and hurt ray leg horribly on the sword of Marcus Aurelius or Christopher Columbus or somebody out of the picture books. But I didn's'care. I knew I was right, for the pot was boiling on the fire all right and the money they were coining was just all over the place." "You saw it yourself . . . you can swear to-that?" "Swear —I should think I could. My oaths would empty a court. And they were such beasts . . . three of them, two talking in a language no Christian

Imagine! My body might have been found next day in a sack . . . and you looking for it at the bottom of the Thames. They didn't kill me, however, and just in the nick of time, I thought of the missing word. 'Of course,' I remarked, as carelessly as I could, 'of course, the police know about this.' " "And what did they say when you mentioned the police?" "Oh, they had no manners at all, and the brute of a man, the good-looking one, just called me a liar." * " 'You came here to spy on your own account,' he said savagely, 'you would take money for betraying us and the police would get none of it. Very well, you have come among criminals and a criminal you shall become. Here and now, you shall be made a forger; and if ever afterwards, you dare to spy upon me or my house, you shall go to prison and remain there many years. , "It was awful, wasn't it? Even you, inspector, would have been frightened, now, wouldn't you? There were the villainous-looking men—all except the good-looking one—and one of them had taken from the wall a frightful pistol that must have been at least a yard long. I thought I was as good as dead ■ but, of course, I didn't say so; and when they poured some of the boilin* silver into a mould and told me to press a kind of handle thing and to press it hard, I was just like the Sleeping Beauty in the trance and didn't know a bit of what I was doing." "Obviously, you didn't. They let you go after that, I suppose?"

"Not immediately. I was shown the coin and the fine man cut my initials on it. You see, he knew my name, the beast; though how he had got hold of it I shall never find out. There,' he said, 'there is the .little keepsake you are leaving us. Now you will sign thie paper and that will terminate our pleasant interview.' Of course, I eigned it. If he had told me to dance on #he table I believe I should have done Hit."

••Did you read the paper before you signed it?" J

"No; he read it to me. It just said that I, Katerina Laner, had made that florin, and it gave the date. My hand trembled while I signed it, and when he told me to go I ran back to the car like a frightened hare, and I do believe I fainted. A criminal—l was that, wasn't I? And here and now on this golden beach you could arrest me if you liked. Say it's true, inspector, for you know it is." Inspector Mollet emiled a meditative smile. "You never thought of telling the police, I suppose?" he asked. The question embarrassed Katerina . . . and embarrassment was an emotion from which she rarely suffered. "Well, you see—it seemed a shame to send that splendid man to prison . . . and, after all, I had been spying, hadn't "You certainly had and are going to do so again. To-night we will go to Le Touquet and you shall point out the man to me—if he is still there. We can decide afterwards whether he goes to prison or asks us to dinner. Anyway, he will be pleased to see an old friend again, I'm sure."

For a coiner and forger, it must be admitted that the Chevalier Levenstein permitted himself to be early discovered. Katerina saw him ten minutes after they entered the casina at Lβ Touquet . . . when play was at its height and even beautiful women were forgetting the art of making themselves beautiful. "Over there," she whispered to the wholly interested Inspector Mollet "standing by the Greek at the big table." "The dark, handsome one?" "Ah, he ought to be. Did you ever hear of the Rumanian sculptor, Rudolph Levenstein 1" "Why, of course I did. He's the sort of Einstein fellow who modelled Relativity' in a bath with big hands and sea gulls on her head, isn't he?" "You mean Epstein, but we will let it go at that. Yes, that's the man. He's lately been modelling new coinages for somo of the Balkan States, and as he is very fond of England, he does a lot of work here. But you will understand that its rather a secret sort of job and he doesn't carry it on in Regent Street." e "Oh, of course not," murmured Katerina . . . just as though she were saying "a fine night after the rain," but she blushed to the roots of her pretty hair nevertheless, and when the 'handsome man" recognised her and crossed the room ea-rerlv to speak to her, she positively trembled. "Ah," he said, "my adorable apprentice ... I had not hoped for this." Inspector Mollet, however, discreetly disappeared. "She'll be in his arms in ten minutes," he reflected sagely.