THE CIGARETTE CASE
From Chelsea, Austin Starr went direct to Rivercourt Mansions, a quadrangular block of flats, standing back from the high road and fronting a square of grass and trees.
He dismissed his cab at the entrance to the square, which he noted was nearly opposite to the post office where Lady Rawson had been done to death a few hours before. He stood for a minute, regardless of the drizzling rain, staring across the thoroughfare, almost deserted on this dreary night. He imagined the illfated woman crossing it, with the assassin dogging her footsteps. Who was that assassin, and what was his motive? He was already certain in his own mind that the taxi-driver was as innocent of the crime as he was himself, although he had undoubtedly been close at hand at the time. And why had Lady Rawson visited Cacciola at his flat, and failing to find him there tried to ring him up at the Winstons’? He meant to discover that right now, if possible, feeling instinctively that here was the clue to the mystery. He guessed that Snell was already in possession of that clue, and had racked his brains in conjecture concerning it as he drove hither. But, though he had been with Snell all the afternoon, that astute individual had maintained silence concerning the stolen dispatches. He did not intend Starr or any other reporter to know of them at present. There were cases when he was glad to avail himself of the assistance of the Press, but this was not one of them. Already, thanks to a lucky accident—lucky from his point of view—he was in possession of evidence which he considered of the utmost importance, and on which he was building up a certain theory, which so far appeared to have very few flaws in it.
A tram came clanking along the road and Austin Starr turned away along the side-walk, glancing up at the Mansions. Most of the windows were dark, but there were lights here and there. One shone cheerily from a window high up in the block he wanted. As he reached the entrance the lights in the hall and on the staircase went out, and in the sudden darkness he collided with a man in the doorway who accosted him with facetious apology.
“Sorry, Mr. ‘Catch-’old-o’-you.’ If I’d seen you coming I’d have waited till you got up. Half a minute, and I’ll switch on again.”
He suited the action to the word, and Austin saw he was the porter, a small, spare man with a sharp-featured, whimsical face.
“It’s all right,” Starr assured him, “I’m going up to Mr. Cacciola’s. The top flat, isn’t it? I guess he’s home, for there’s a light in the window.”
“I don’t think he is, sir, he’s mostly later than this; but old Julia will be sitting up for him. Are you Mr. Roger Carling, by any chance, sir?”
Austin Starr was considerably startled, though he made no sign beyond a penetrating glance at his interrogator, and answered quietly:
“No, but I’m his intimate friend. What made you take me for him?”
“Beg pardon, sir, I’m sure. I don’t know the gentleman, but I saw the name on the cigarette case he dropped outside Mr. ‘Catch-’old-o’-you’s’ door this morning. I always call the old gentleman that—nearest I can get to his name—and he don’t mind a bit, not he! Julia’s got the case all right—she’s Mr. ‘Catch-’old-o’-you’s’ house-keeper; Italian same as him, and a good old sort. I thought perhaps you were Mr. Carling come after it.”
Austin saw and interpreted aright a slight and significant crook of the little man’s fingers and produced a coin.
“So you found the case?” he remarked pleasantly. “Mr. Carling will be glad to know it. I guess he hadn’t a notion where he dropped it. He’s left town to-day—on his honeymoon.”
“Thank you, sir, though I’m sure I didn’t expect anything,” responded the little man, promptly pocketing the tip. “Gone on his honeymoon, has he? Why, he’s never the gentleman that was married at St. Paul’s to-day—the wedding that poor lady was on her way to when she was murdered? They didn’t give his name in the paper, I saw. Terrible thing, isn’t it, sir? And will you believe me, I never heard a word about it till nigh on teatime! It must have ’appened just after I went to my dinner: I was a bit late to-day; had to take a parcel up to No. 20—that’s when I found the cigarette case; and if only I’d been about I might ’ave seen it all. And to think of young Charlie Sadler doing such an awful thing. He must ’ave gone clean off his nut!”
“You know him?” asked Starr quickly, thankful that the garrulous little man had strayed from the subject of Roger Carling’s presence so near the scene of the tragedy, though at the moment he was unable to analyse his thought sufficiently to know why he should feel thankful.
“Know Charlie Sadler? Why, I’ve known him ever since he was a little nipper so high. Lives with his mother—a decent old soul—down in Milsom Cottages, and he’s courting little Jessie Jackson over at the post office, on the sly, for her aunt, Mrs. Cave, don’t think him good enough for her; and it seems she’s right after all. But whoever would ’ave thought of ’im going and doing a murder like that?”
“We don’t know yet that he did it,” said Starr.
“Well, of course it’ll ’ave to be proved against him; but if he didn’t, then who did? That’s the question. And he was there right enough. Slipped in by the side door to see Jessie while her aunt was safe in the shop, and when the girl was called down he must ’ave seen the lady and been taken with one of these ’ere sudden temptations; and then when he found what he’d done he ’ooked it, and smashed up the cab and himself in his ’urry. There it is in a nutshell, sir!” Withers concluded triumphantly. Evidently he had been gossiping pretty freely during the evening, but as evidently he as yet knew nothing of Lady Rawson’s visit to Cacciola’s flat—if, indeed, she had been there—and attached no significance to Roger Carling’s visit. How should he?
“Perhaps you’re right,” Starr conceded. “We’ll all have just to ‘wait and see’ anyhow. Well, I’ll go up——”
“I’m sure Mr. ‘Catch-’old-o’-you’s’ not in yet, sir; but I’ll give him any message for you in the morning,” suggested Withers officiously.
“No, thanks, I’ll leave it with Julia if necessary. Good night.”
“Good night, sir, and thank you. I’ll keep the lights on till you’ve got to the top.”
Starr thanked him again and went upstairs—eight flights of them—outwardly composed, inwardly more perturbed than he had ever been in his life before. His mind was in a dark tumult of suspicion and perplexity, which would have been increased if he could have known the news George Winston had just learnt from Dover—that Roger and Grace were not at the “Lord Warden.”
“It’s impossible! He can’t have had anything to do with it!” he told himself impatiently, refusing even to formulate the suspicion that had arisen in his mind. Yet the suspicion was there.
The lights below went out as he pressed the bell button at No. 19, but an instant later one flashed up within the hall of the flat and he heard a soft shuffle of slippered feet. But the door was not opened to him. The letter slit moved and through the aperture a woman’s voice demanded, in good enough English, though with a strong foreign accent:
“Who is zere?”
He responded with a counter-question:
“Is Mr. Cacciola at home?”
“He is not. He vill perhaps not return to-night. Who are you?”
“I reckon you won’t know my name. You’re Julia, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am Giulia. Vat ees it?”
“Open the door, there’s a good soul, and I’ll tell you. I can’t shout it through. It’s important.”
“I do not know you,” she protested nervously after a pause. “You are from the police again?”
So, as he guessed, Snell had already been here. He wondered that the loquacious porter had not seen him and scented the errand.
“Yes,” he lied boldly. “So you’d better open the door right now. You’ve nothing to fear from me, and I shan’t keep you many minutes.”
She muttered something that he could not catch, but a chain clanked, and a moment later she opened the door a few inches and peered out—a short, plump old woman, whose comely brown face and lustrous black eyes wore a strained, anxious expression, that relaxed a little as she eyed her visitor.
His appearance seemed to reassure her, for she drew back and motioned him to enter the little square hall.
He smiled at her, and there were few women, young or old, who could resist Austin Starr’s smile. He had what some folk term “a way with him,” all the more effective since it was exerted unconsciously.
“It’s real good of you, signora, to admit me at this unholy hour, and I’ll not keep you any time,” he began diplomatically. “First, I want that cigarette case that Mr. Roger Carling lost on your lobby this morning. The porter says he gave it to you.”
“The leetle case? But I have it not! I gave it to the officer of police—he who came to-day, saying he was of the police, though he wore no uniform; he was like yourself, signor,” she stammered.
Starr’s heart sank. The moment he had heard of that cigarette case he determined to get possession of it, and if possible prevent any knowledge of it reaching the police, though again he did not attempt to analyse his motive.
“I have done wrong in giving it him?” Giulia continued uneasily.
“Not a bit of it, signora—that’s all right,” Starr answered, with a cheerfulness he was very far from feeling. “I haven’t seen Mr. Snell since or he’d have told me you had it. I guess you’ve told him about everything else too, but I’ll have to trouble you to tell me also. The maestro left home as usual to go to his class at Blackheath. What time did he go out?”
“At a leetle after nine, signor.”
“You’re sure he was going to Blackheath?”
“Ah, yes, signor. Vere else would he go?”
“When did Lady Rawson come?”
“In a ver’ leetle time after the maestro go. He could scarce have reach the stazione.”
“So early! Then she knew he would not be back. Why did she return?”
Giulia hesitated.
“I do not comprehend,” she muttered.
“When did she go away?”
“I do not remember.”
“Come, that’s nonsense, signora. You must know; try to think. She was here after one o’clock, we know that; in fact, she went straight from here to the post office where she was murdered.”
Giulia stood speechless, plucking nervously at her white apron, and as he saw her embarrassment an idea flashed to his mind.
“Great Scot! She was here the whole morning: she came in and waited. That’s so?”
She nodded a reluctant assent.
“She was here when Mr. Carling called just after one. Did he ask for her?”
Again Giulia nodded.
“Did he see her?”
She shook her head.
“She did not vish it. I said she vas not here. It vas a lie, and I do not like lies; but she vould have it so; and he go away. She look from the vindow, and vatch till he pass the corner, and then she go away also.”
Starr stood musing for a space, and, master of his emotions though he was, Giulia’s keen old eyes detected a certain expression of relief on his face.
He was inwardly reproaching himself also for part at least of the suspicion that had assailed him the instant he learnt that Carling had been there. He thought he knew Roger Carling as thoroughly as one man can know another, believed him to be the soul of honour and rectitude. But he also knew that in every human being there are depths that none other can plumb; and, remembering the circumstances, the thought had occurred involuntarily that some shameful secret might be the cause and explanation of the mysterious tragedy.
It was such an obvious solution. Lady Rawson, young, beautiful, extraordinarily attractive, married to a man almost old enough to be her grandfather and meeting every day one of her own age, handsome and debonair as was Carling. Dangerous conditions enough, human nature being what it is! And Carling would not be the first man to be fascinated and entangled by an unscrupulous woman, even while he loved another woman—as Roger loved Grace—with all the strength of his better nature.
But that idea might be dismissed, so far as Carling was concerned as a principal in the matter anyhow. Lady Rawson had not come here to meet him, had not expected or wished to see him when he followed her there.
Yet if Lady Rawson did not come here to meet Carling, whom did she come to see—whom did she wait for all those hours? Not old Cacciola, certainly, for she learnt at once that he was out for the day. He turned to Giulia and put the question point blank.
“Who was here this morning with you and Lady Rawson?”
“No one; nevare any person at all!” she cried emphatically.
“But you expected someone; that was why Lady Rawson waited.”
She shook her head, but her eyes did not meet his, and her hands were trembling as she still fidgeted with her apron.
“Zere vas no one, zere nevare has been no one; I have told all, signor.”
He found it was useless to question her further, and decided that he would not wait on the chance of learning anything from Cacciola. He gathered that the old man seldom returned till long after midnight.
Groping his way down the dark staircase, he reached the high road just in time to board a tram going eastwards, which set him down at the terminus within a few hundred yards from the hospital to which Sadler had been taken. He might as well call and inquire as to the man’s condition. If there was anything to report there was still time to telephone to the office.
A minute later he pushed back the swing-door and entered the lobby of the hospital, to find himself face to face with Snell.