“NO. 5339”
“Thank goodness for some peace and quietness at last! What a day it has been, with everything going wrong from beginning to end; and then this awful affair about poor Lady Rawson coming on the top of all the other happenings. I shall hate the very thought of a wedding in future!”
Winnie Winston shivered and spread her hands to the cheerful blaze in the cosy drawing-room of the flat in Chelsea which she shared with her brother George, who sprawled luxuriously in the easy chair opposite her, while between them was Austin Starr, also very much at his ease. He had found time to come round to apologize for his absence at the wedding, and to discuss the startling and mysterious tragedy of Lady Rawson’s death. There were very few days when he did not manage to see or converse with Winnie Winston, even if their intercourse was limited to a few sentences hurriedly exchanged over the telephone. He loved her; from the first moment that he met her he had decided that she was the one woman in the world for him. But he would not ask her to marry, or even to become engaged to him, until he had an assured position to offer her. Meanwhile, though he secretly hoped that she loved him, he could not be certain of that, for her attitude towards him was one of frank camaraderie that reminded him of his own countrywomen. In many ways she was much more like an American than an English girl.
“Don’t say that, Miss Winnie. I guess the next wedding will be all right,” he responded cheerfully.
“This one wasn’t,” she declared. “I’m not a bit superstitious—not as a rule—but really I’ve never known such a succession of misfortunes. First, the fog, and then Roger being so late, and the Rawsons not turning up. Mrs. Armitage was so sniffy about that; and of course she never imagined what the reason was. Who could imagine anything so horrible? And everything seemed so forlorn after Roger and Grace had gone; it always does somehow, but it was worse than usual to-day. Some of the people were staying—Mrs. Armitage had arranged a theatre party for us all to-night—I wonder if they’ve gone. I expect so! And she made me sing—you know how fussy she is—and I broke down utterly. Awfully silly of me, I know, but really I couldn’t help it. I can’t think what ‘the maestro’ would say if he knew it! So I came away: I simply felt I couldn’t stay in the house another minute; and there wasn’t a cab to be had, so I had to walk to the train; and the rain came on and ruined my new frock, which I meant to wear to-morrow—I’m singing at Æolian Hall in the afternoon.”
“Never mind, wear that one you’ve got on now. You look just lovely in it!” counselled Austin, regarding her with tender admiration.
“That’s just like a man!” she laughed, glancing down at her gown; but the laugh had an uncertain ring, with a suggestion of tears in it. “Why, this is ever such an old thing that I only wear at home. But it’s not the frock really that I mind. I—I can’t help thinking about the horror of it all; poor Lady Rawson being murdered like that, so near to the church, too; she must have been actually on her way to the wedding!”
“I don’t think she was,” said Austin reflectively, remembering how the murdered woman had been attired when he saw and identified her. “It’s a big mystery that will take a lot of unravelling.”
“But they’ve got the chap already,” interposed George Winston, reaching for a late edition of an evening paper that he had just thrown aside—“that taxicab driver. It’s as clear as daylight so far. He must have seen Lady Rawson’s bag, thought she had something valuable in it, followed and stabbed her, and then made off through the back door, bag and all.”
“Queer sort of impulse to seize a highly respectable ex-service man,” remarked Starr dryly. “And what was in the bag anyhow, for the contents haven’t been found up to now.”
“You don’t believe he did it?”
Before he could answer, the hall door-bell sounded imperatively, and Winnie started nervously.
“Now, who can that be at this hour!”
An elderly maidservant entered, Martha Stenning, who had grown grey in the Winstons’ service.
“It’s the same gentleman that called before, Mr. George, and asked to see you or Miss Winnie. He says you wouldn’t know his name, but his business is important.”
“All right, I’ll come, Martha,” said George, rising and following her from the room.
“I wonder who it is?” Winnie exclaimed anxiously. “Martha says someone has been ringing up on the telephone several times while we were out, and asking all sorts of questions about——”
They both looked round as George re-entered, followed by Snell, the detective, at sight of whom Starr rose, exclaiming:
“Why, it’s you, Mr. Snell! Anything fresh?”
“Not much at present, and I didn’t expect to see you here, Mr. Starr. Miss Winston? I must ask you to excuse my intrusion.”
“This is Mr. Snell of Scotland Yard, Winnie,” George explained hurriedly. “He says Lady Rawson rang up our number—5339—just before she was murdered. They’ve got it down in the post office book, and she must have been speaking at the very moment——”
“Lady Rawson! Our number!” gasped Winnie, in utter surprise and perplexity.
“Did you expect to receive a message from her, Miss Winston?” Snell inquired.
“I? Certainly not; why, I’ve never spoken to her in my life, though I expected to meet her to-day at my friend’s wedding. You don’t know her either, do you, George?” she added, turning to her brother.
“I’ve been to her receptions once or twice, but I’ve never exchanged a dozen words with her,” George asserted truthfully. “And I can’t imagine why she should have rung us up. I doubt if she even knew that my sister and I were to be at the wedding to-day or that we’re old friends of Carling and Miss Armitage—Mrs. Carling I mean, of course.”
“Yet Mr. Carling has been on intimate terms—like a member of the family—with Sir Robert and Lady Rawson,” Snell remarked.
“With Sir Robert,” Winston corrected. “Lady Rawson was always quite kind, I believe; and I know she asked Miss Armitage to her house once or twice; but she never showed any real interest in either of them—no personal friendship, don’t you know! At least so I’ve gathered from Carling,” he added, wondering the while what the detective was driving at.
“Then you think it unlikely that, assuming that she wished to speak to Mr. Carling on the telephone, she would expect to find him here?”
“I’m quite sure she wouldn’t,” said George, and Winnie, nodding a confirmatory assent, added:
“Besides, she wouldn’t expect him to be anywhere just then except at the church or on his way there. Not if the time is given rightly in the paper. It said she went into the office about half-past one.”
“Just so,” Snell agreed, and after a brief pause looked up with a query that at the moment sounded startlingly irrelevant.
“Do you know Signor Cacciola, Miss Winston?”
She stared in astonishment, scarcely grasping the question, especially as he mispronounced the name.
“He’s a music master or something of the sort; lives at Rivercourt Mansions West,” Snell added.
“Signor Cacciola? Why, of course I know him; he’s my singing master—‘the maestro’ we always call him,” she answered, knitting her pretty brows in bewilderment, while Austin Starr, watching Snell, screwed his lips in the form of whistling, and listened intently for what might follow.
“He comes here often?”
“Yes. At least he does when he is coaching me for a special concert or anything like that. He has been here every morning this week except to-day.”
“You did not expect him to-day?”
“No. I was going to the wedding; and besides, he has an engagement every Thursday—at Blackheath, I think.”
“You know him well? Have you known him long?”
“For several years—ever since he came to London. He is a dear old man.”
“An Italian?”
“Yes, though he has not been in Italy for many years.”
“He took a keen interest in Russian affairs,” Snell asserted.
“Did he? I’m sure I don’t know. He certainly never talked about such things to me.”
“Did he ever speak to you of Lady Rawson?”
“Never!”
It was impossible to doubt Winnie’s emphatic negative.
Again he shifted his point, or appeared to do so.
“Then you can’t give me any reason why Lady Rawson should have rung you up to-day?”
“None at all, unless she gave a wrong number and it happened by chance to be ours.”
“That’s just what I think,” exclaimed George.
“It might have been so,” Snell assented. “I’ve known a good many coincidences as queer. Well, I’m very sorry to have troubled you so late, Miss Winston, and I must thank you for answering me so clearly. Some folks beat about the bush and are scared out of their senses at the very sight of a detective—when they know him as such,” he added, with a smile. “But we’re bound to get whatever information we can, even at the risk of worrying people who really haven’t anything to do with the case. And now I’ll take myself off.”
“Have a whisky-and-soda first,” urged George Winston hospitably. “Of course we know you have to look up every point, and if we’d guessed the reason why we’ve been rung up so often to-day we should have been expecting you—or someone else on the same errand.”
Snell declined the proffered refreshment, but accepted a cigarette, and lingered for a minute or two, chatting in a casual manner on the subject that was uppermost in all their minds.
George questioned him about the suspected man, Sadler, the taxicab driver.
“He’s doing all right; not as much hurt as was thought at first, and he’ll probably be able to attend the opening of the inquest to-morrow. But we haven’t been able to interrogate him yet; in fact he doesn’t know he’s under arrest.”
“Do you believe he did it?” demanded George.
“I never form an opinion on slight evidence,” Snell replied guardedly. “Good night, Miss Winston, good night, sir. Many thanks. Are you coming with me, Mr. Starr?”
Starr shook his head.
“I guess I shan’t get anything out of you if I do, Mr. Snell.”
Snell smiled enigmatically.
“Yet I’ve given you a lot just now, Mr. Starr, though I doubt if you’ll be able to make much of it in time for to-morrow’s ‘Courier.’”
“What did he mean by that?” whispered Winnie, as her brother accompanied the unexpected guest to the door.
“I’ll tell you to-morrow. I’m going to follow it up, right now, as he surmises. There are no flies on Mr. Snell! Good night, Miss Winnie.”
In a minute or so George returned to the room.
“My hat! This is queer experience, isn’t it, Win? I say, let’s try and get on to the ‘Lord Warden’ and speak to Roger. He’ll be awfully anxious to know about everything; there’s a lot in the late editions too that he won’t be able to see down there to-night.”
“Oh, you can’t ring him up at this hour,” Winnie protested, glancing at the clock. “Besides, it would frighten Grace if she knew. You said Roger was going to keep it from her.”
“I’m going to ring him up,” George insisted. “It’s not really late—not for Roger anyhow. It’s only just on eleven.”
Winnie let him have his way, not choosing to urge the various reasons against it that occurred at once to her quick feminine mind, but escaped her brother’s obtuse one.
In a surprisingly short time for a “call” the telephone bell tinkled its summons, and George went out into the little hall to answer it.
The colloquy was very brief, and as George hurriedly re-entered she looked up with a whimsical “I told you so” expression on her pretty face, which fled as she saw his agitated aspect.
“I say, Win, they’re not there!”
“Not there!” she ejaculated, starting up.
“Haven’t been there at all. They must be crossing by the night boat after all; such a beastly night too—half a gale and raining cats and dogs. It’s worse there than it is here. I asked.”
“Crossing to-night! And Grace is the worst sailor imaginable. What on earth possessed Roger to take her?”
“He must be mad—mad as a hatter!” cried George, but the same thought and explanation occurred to him as to Winnie, and their eyes met in a glance of mutual horror and consternation.