AT CACCIOLA’S
Snell greeted Austin with a smile and a significant cock of his left eyebrow.
“You haven’t lost any time, Mr. Starr. But there’s nothing fresh here. Sadler’s just the same, and the doctor says it will be impossible for him to attend the inquest to-morrow, so we shall ask for a week’s adjournment. And he won’t be allowed to be ‘interviewed’ by anyone,” he added pointedly.
“I guessed that, of course. I only meant to inquire how he was. I take it he’s practically under arrest?”
“Not at all. Under surveillance perhaps, which is a very different matter. And the less said about that or anything else the better for the present, Mr. Starr. No ‘stunts’ in this case, please. Well, did you find Cacciola at home? Or old Julia amiable?”
“How did you know I’d been there?”
“Guessed it, knowing you. That’s meant as a compliment.”
“Cacciola hadn’t returned. I know him fairly well, having seen him a good few times at Miss Winston’s. And Giulia was civil enough, though she seemed a bit scared. She told me some yarn about a cigarette case she had found.”
As they spoke in guarded tones, they had reissued from the hospital and now stood on the steps, where the lamp-light fell full on Snell’s face. Starr’s keen eyes were fixed on it, but it revealed nothing.
“A cigarette case? Whose was it?” asked Snell.
“Don’t you know? You’ve got it, haven’t you?”
Starr strove to speak in a casual tone, but it was difficult to control his voice. Of all the many sensational cases he had come across this was the first that had touched him personally, and the horrible fear that Roger Carling might in some way be mixed up in it, and that Snell knew it, was still strong upon him.
“Are you trying to cross-examine me?” asked the detective dryly.
Possibly for the first time in his life under such circumstances Austin lost his self-possession.
“See here, Snell, what’s the use of fencing?” he asked hotly. “You’ve got that case right enough. It’s Rog——”
“Stop!” interrupted Snell imperatively, though without raising his voice. “I’ve mentioned no name. Take my advice, Mr. Starr, and don’t you mention one either. I’ve told you already that the less said the better, and if you can’t take the hint—well, that’s your affair.”
Austin bit his lip, inwardly cursing himself for his indiscretion. If he had held his tongue about his knowledge of Roger Carling’s movements he might, sooner or later, have got some hint of what was in the detective’s mind. Now, in all probability he would get no further information at all.
“Sorry,” he muttered somewhat ungraciously. “You’re right, of course. But——”
“But there’s nothing to add to your story to-night. Take my word for it,” said Snell, with restored good humour. “Which way are you going? Tube? I’m for the tram. What a beastly night! I shan’t be sorry to get indoors.”
“Nor I,” Austin confessed with a shiver.
Almost in silence they walked side by side through the chill drizzle to the station, and there parted, Snell crossing to the tram terminus.
But he was not yet bound for home, as he had allowed and wished Starr to infer. Tireless and relentless as a sleuth-hound, he believed he was already fairly on the track of Lady Rawson’s murderer, but there were certain preliminary points he wished to clear up, and till he succeeded in that there would be no rest for him.
The tram was crowded with returning theatre-goers, most of whom were discussing the grim crime and the reports in the late editions of the evening papers. None guessed how intimately the wiry little man in the drenched Burberry, meekly strap-hanging among them, was concerned with it, and quite a number alighted from the tram when he did, opposite the post office, and lingered in the rain staring at the house of tragedy, now dark and silent as a grave, with a solitary policeman standing guard, and in a subdued, monotonous voice requesting the whispering crowd to “Pass along, please.”
Snell did not even glance at the house or the sentinel, but disappeared into the darkness of the square nearly opposite, three sides of which were occupied by the tall blocks of flats known as “Rivercourt Mansions,” fronted by shrubberies, and with more shrubs and trees in the centre: a pleasant place enough in daylight, but gloomy and mysterious on this miserable wet midnight. Treading as lightly as a cat in his “silent-soled” shoes, Snell walked swiftly to the end of the square, and paused, to be joined immediately by a man in a dark mackintosh, who emerged from the shadow of the shrubs.
“Anything to report, Evans?” Snell asked softly.
“He hasn’t returned yet, sir. Mr. Starr went in and stayed a good few minutes, just after ten-thirty.”
“I know. Did he see you?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. Anything else?”
“A good many have come and gone—people living in the block; but none that I could spot as on this business.”
Together they withdrew into deeper gloom again, and in dead silence waited and watched. Not for long.
Another tram clanked westward, halted, went on, and a minute later footsteps approached—heavy, weary, dragging footsteps; and the figures of two men passed into the radius of light from the street lamp nearest the watchers.
“That’s the Signor—the fat one,” Snell’s subordinate whispered. “The other’s the Russian.”
“Come on,” said Snell, and silently they followed the two men, overtaking them as Cacciola was inserting a latchkey into the outer door of the block where he lived.
He turned with a start as Snell courteously accosted him.
“Signor Cacciola? I have been waiting your return, and must have a few words with you to-night concerning the late Lady Rawson. If you will look at my card you will know who I am and that my business is urgent.”
As he spoke he switched on his electric torch, handed the card to Cacciola, and watched the old man’s face as he read it—a plump, olive-complexioned, usually jolly face that now looked drawn and grief-stricken.
“By all means; enter, signor,” said Cacciola with grave dignity. “I—we—will give you all the assistance possible. You are not alone?” he added, narrowing his dark eyes in an endeavour to pierce the gloom beyond the circle of light.
“No. But perhaps you will permit my man to wait in your hall for me,” returned Snell blandly.
He did not anticipate danger, but anything might happen in that top flat, and, though he was courageous enough he never took unnecessary risks.
“But certainly. Lead the way, Boris. Will you continue the light, Signor? The stairs are very dark—and long.”
With hushed footsteps, and no sound beyond Cacciola’s heavy breathing, they stole in procession up the staircase, Evans bringing up the rear just behind Snell.
As they reached the top landing the door of Cacciola’s flat opened, and Giulia appeared on the threshold, a dark figure against the lighted hall, began to speak volubly in Italian, and then, seeing her master’s companions, and recognizing Snell, stopped short and retreated a pace or two, glancing nervously from one to the other.
“It’s all right, ma’am. No cause for alarm,” said Snell reassuringly. “I’ve been here before to-day, sir, in your absence, as I expect she was trying to tell you. Let her tell her story now, it will help us. And in English, please, as I don’t understand your language.”
“She shall do so. Come with us, Giulia. Take off your wet coats, my friends.”
Cacciola led the way into a large, comfortable room where a gas fire glowed cosily—a musician’s room, with the place of honour occupied by a magnificent grand piano.
The Russian, who had not spoken a word, and moved like a man in a dream, allowed Cacciola to remove his dripping overcoat and push him into an easy chair. He was a delicate-looking, handsome-featured young man, who seemed, and was, dazed with grief and horror.
Rapidly, but quite coherently, Giulia poured out her story in broken English, frequently lapsing into Italian, to be as frequently, though gently, checked by her master. Much of it was already known to Snell, but there were one or two fresh and illuminative points.
“La Donna Paula,” the name by which the old woman designated Lady Rawson, had come quite early, soon after the maestro’s departure, demanding to see Signor Boris, who was away, Giulia did not know where. Then she telephoned to Blackheath, in the hope of speaking to the maestro, and learnt he was not expected there to-day, and presently she tried to telephone again, but lo! the instrument would not serve—it was out of order!
(“So that’s why she went to the call office,” Snell mentally commented, having already noticed the telephone on a table beside the piano.)
Donna Paula appeared very impatient, also agitated, and when the bell rang bade Giulia deny that she was or had been there, if one should ask for her, and, of a verity, the young signor who came did so, and ask oh, very many questions.
“Did he tell you his name?” interposed Snell.
“But no, signor. Yet I learnt it later, for soon after Donna Paula had gone, the portaire ring and give me a little silver case he find, with a name on it that I forget, for then the signor there come, and I give him the case, and he have it now, and he tell me Donna Paula have been murdered, and I know not what to do or to say, but I wait and wait for you or Signor Boris, and no one come till late, so late, when yet another signor arrive, and say he also is of the police and ask for the little silver case, and I tell him I have it not. That is the truth—you have the case still, signor?”
She whirled round towards Snell, who spoke soothingly.
“Yes, yes, that’s all right, signora. Nobody’s blaming you for anything, and you’ve told your story admirably. Thank you very much. And now, sir, if you please, we’ll have our chat.”
“Go, my good Giulia,” said Cacciola, “and be not so distressed, though, indeed, we are all cut to the heart. Now, signor?”
“I want you to tell everything you know about Lady Rawson—you and this gentleman, who, I think, were on terms of intimate friendship with the unfortunate lady.”
It was no chance shot. Hours ago he had searched Lady Rawson’s rooms, and in her boudoir, hidden in the secret drawer of a costly antique writing-table, had found a big packet of letters, some of quite recent date, written in Russian. They were all signed merely with the initial “B,” and those which he had got translated at once gave him a fair inkling of the relations between the writer and the dead woman. The translation of the others would be in his hands to-morrow morning.
If the Russian heard and understood the words he made no sign. He sat huddled in the chair where Cacciola had placed him, with one hand over his eyes. He might have been asleep for any movement that he made.
“It is but very little I can tell,” said Cacciola. “It is true that she came here from time to time—not to see me, to see her cousin, my dear pupil Boris Melikoff here, who has been in the North since three days, and returned to-night only, to hear of this deed of horror. It has overwhelmed him, as you see. He is utterly exhausted. One moment——”
Rising, he opened a corner cupboard, brought out a decanter half filled with wine, and some glasses, placed them on a table at Snell’s elbow, and filled one glass.
“This may revive him, and I think we all need it. I pray you help yourself and your friend, signor.
“It is good wine, I give you my word,” he added with a courteous gesture.
Crossing to Melikoff, he touched him, speaking caressingly as one would speak to a sick child.
“Rouse yourself, caro, and drink. It is I, maestro, who implore you. The signor is here to learn the truth, and you must aid him.”
Melikoff obeyed, and, after an instant’s hesitation, Snell accepted Cacciola’s invitation, poured out a glass of wine for himself and passed one to Evans with an affirmative nod.
The old man was right. It was jolly good wine, and jolly well they all needed it!
“That is better, eh?” said Cacciola, emptying and setting down his own glass, and looking with anxious affection at Boris, who sat upright and turned his brilliant, haggard eyes on Snell.
“You want to know—what?” he asked in perfect English, and in a low, singularly musical voice, tense with repressed emotion.
“Everything you can tell me concerning Lady Rawson, whom the Signor here says was your cousin. Is that so?”
“That is so. But I can tell you nothing more.”
“Come, come, Mr. Melikoff. That won’t do!” Snell retorted, more sternly than he had yet spoken. “I am in possession of many of your recent letters to her, and am aware of their contents. Do you understand me?”
“No,” said Melikoff curtly.
“Then I must try to make you.”
“You think I murdered her!” cried the Russian, with more vehemence than a moment before he had seemed capable of. “I, who would have given my life, my soul, to save her!”
“Nothing of the kind. I might have done so if I hadn’t happened to know that your friend here spoke the truth when he said you were away—miles away from here—at the time. But it’s my duty to discover who did murder the unfortunate lady, and if you don’t choose to give me any information you can that may assist me, here and now, you’ll only have it wrung from you later in cross-examination. So please yourself!”
“He is right—you must tell him all you know, my son,” interposed Cacciola. “I myself know so little,” he added plaintively to Snell. “They have always kept me—how do you call it?—in the dark, these two unhappy ones.”
“Well, while Mr. Melikoff makes up his mind as to whether he’s going to say anything or nothing to-night, Signor Cacciola, perhaps you’ll explain just what your association with them both was, and why her ladyship came here, more or less disguised, so often?”
The old man flung out his hands with a deprecating gesture.
“I know so little,” he repeated distressfully. “At least of Milady Rawson—Donna Paula as we call her. I love him—Boris—as if he were my son. I learn to know him first, oh, many years since, in Russia, when he was a little boy, with the voice of an angel. Though quite untrain, Signor, he sing like the birds of the air! And I say to him then, and to his mother, the countess, ‘He shall come to me in good time, and I make him the greatest singer in the whole world.’ And at last he came——”
“When?”
“But two years since, signor; and the good saints guided him to me, for he did not mean to come. He had escaped with the bare life from his unhappy country, having fought in the Great War, and then against the Red Terror, till all was lost—all, all swept away. He was at the gate of death when I find him and bring him home here so joyfully, and Giulia and I nurse him back to health, and I begin to train him, or I try, for the voice is there, signor, beautiful as ever, but the desire to sing—alas!”
He shrugged his shoulders, and again threw up his hands with an expressive gesture.
“He doesn’t want to go in for singing now?” asked Snell, with a swift glance at the Russian, who had relapsed into his former attitude. Yet the detective believed he was listening to the colloquy.
“That is so, Signor. It is my great grief. I tell him it is wrong to waste the gift of God; I tell him music is a great and a jealous mistress that demands all devotion—that the singer should have no country, no other love, no other mistress than his art!”
“H’m! And where does Lady Rawson come in?” asked Snell dryly, mindful of those letters.
Cacciola hesitated and glanced uneasily at Melikoff. Hitherto his manner had been engagingly frank; now it changed, became guarded, even furtive.
“It is so—so difficult,” he said slowly. “They are cousins—yes. They had not met for years; he thought she had perished, like so many—so many, until he found she was here in England, married to the great Sir Rawson.”
“When did he find that out? Before or after he came to you?”
“After—many weeks after he recover. I was glad—and sorry: glad that one whom he loved still lived, sorry——”
“Go on, sir—sorry because?”
“It is so difficult,” Cacciola murmured, with another appealing glance at Boris.
“Did Sir Robert know of their connection?”
Cacciola shook his head.
“Did he ever go to see her in her own house?”
Again the mute negative.
“So they used to meet here, in your flat, in secret?”
“It was not my wish,” Cacciola muttered, his distress increasing under interrogation.
“And they were engaged in some Russian plot. Were there any others in it? Who made this their meeting place?”
“I do not——”
Cacciola’s faltering denial was cut short, for Melikoff sprang to his feet and confronted Snell, who also rose.
“Enough!” cried the Russian. “The maestro is right—he does not know! And there was—there is—no plot as you call it, save that she and I, like many others of our race, were always waiting and watching, and hoping for some means of serving our unhappy country. Also, we loved each other—yes! But I swear to you it was love without one taint of dishonour to her, to me, to that old man, her husband!”
Was he speaking the truth in this respect? Snell, with his wide knowledge of poor human nature, and mentally comparing this handsome, passionate, emotional youth with Sir Robert—old, formal, pompous!—greatly doubted it.
But the point did not interest him except as it might afford some clue to the mystery. It was not his job to make inquisition into anyone’s morals.
“Did you expect Lady Rawson to visit you to-day?” he asked.
“No. How could I? It is two weeks—more—since I have even seen her. I had to go to Birmingham——”
“On my affairs—there is no secret about that,” interposed Cacciola, but neither heeded him.
“I did not send word to her of my journey—you know that, if you have—her—letters, as you say,” Boris continued. “I do not know why she came to-day—to meet her death!”
“She came to give or show you some important and secret papers which she stole from her husband’s safe this morning,” said Snell bluntly.
“So? I know nothing of that.”
“But someone knew. Those papers were in her hand-bag, which was snatched from her by the person who followed and stabbed her, and has since been found empty. Now, do you know of anyone whatsoever, man or woman, who would be likely to know or guess that she had those papers in her possession?”
“Of our people? None! Was she not one of us—the most trusted, the most beloved? Not one of us would have harmed a hair of her head! Wait—let me think. They were her husband’s papers——”
For some seconds he stood knitting his dark brows, then, very slowly:
“There is one man. Her husband’s secretary——”
“Do you know him?”
“I have never seen him, but his name is Car—Carling!”
“Were they enemies?”
“No, not openly; but she feared him. She thought he—watched her. Mon Dieu! The man who came here to-day, as Giulia said, and asked for her. That was the man! I will find him! I will kill him!”
His haggard young face was terrible to see in the frenzy of hatred that distorted it; his slender hands moved convulsively as though he already felt his fingers clutching Roger Carling’s throat. Cacciola seized one arm, Snell the other, and he collapsed under their grasp, and fell into the chair, sobbing like a woman or like a man who has been shot.
“It is too much for him!” cried Cacciola. “Boris, Boris. Courage, my child!”
“Poor chap!” said Snell. “I won’t worry him any more, nor you either to-night, sir. And I must ask you to keep silence for the present. You’ll be worried by a horde of inquirers—journalists especially—for the next few days, but you tell your old Julia to lock the door. Don’t you see anyone, and take care he doesn’t.”
“You may trust us, signor,” said the old man.
“Then, good night, sir. Come on, Evans.”