The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation

"Ah!" said the chief, with another smile. "I scarcely think Miss Slade would contract such an important engagement at this moment, she has evidently much else to think about. But now let us see Miss Slade's apartment, if you please, and I shall be obliged to you, ma'am, if you will accompany us."

Not only did the manageress accompany them, but the manager also, who just then arrived and was filled with proper horror to hear that such things were happening. But, being a man, he knew that it is every citizen's duty to assist the police, and he accepted his fate cheerfully, and bade his wife give the gentlemen every help that lay in her power. After which both conducted the two visitors to Miss Slade's room, and became fascinated in acting as spectators.

Miss Slade's apartment was precisely that of any other young lady of refined taste. It was a good-sized, roomy apartment, half bedroom, half sitting-room, and it was bright and gay with books and pictures, and evidences of literary and artistic fancies and leanings. And Chettle, taking a first comprehensive look round, went straight to the mantelpiece and pointed out a certain neatly framed photograph to his superior.

"That's it, sir," he said in a low voice. "That's what the other was taken from. You know, sir—Mr. James A. Mr. Marshall A. said she said she was going to have it framed. Odd, ain't it, sir?—if she really is implicated."

The chief agreed with his man. It was certainly a very odd thing that Miss Slade, alias Mrs. Marlow, if she really had any concern with the murder of James Allerdyke, should put his photograph in a fairly expensive silver frame, and hang it where she could look at it every day. But, as Chettle sagely remarked, you never can tell, and you never can account, and you never know, and meanwhile there was the urgent business on hand.

The business on hand came to nothing. Manager and manageress watched with interested amazement while the two searchers went through everything in that room with a thoroughness and rapidity produced by long practice. They were astounded at the deftness with which the heavy-looking Mr. Chettle explored drawers and trunks, and the military-looking chief peered into wardrobes and cupboards and examined desks and tables. But they were not so much astonished as the two detectives themselves were. For in all that room—always excepting the photograph of James Allerdyke—there was not a single object, a scrap of paper, anything whatever, which connected the Miss Slade of the Pompadour with the Mrs. Marlow of Fullaway's or bore reference to the matter in hand. The searchers finally retired utterly baffled.

"Drawn blank," murmured the chief good-humouredly. He turned to the lookers-on. "I suppose you have nothing of Miss Slade's?" he said. "Nothing confined to your care, eh?"

The manageress glanced at her husband, with whom she had kept up a whispered conversation. The manager nodded.

"Better tell them," he said. "No good keeping anything back."

"Ah!" said the chief. "You have something?"

"A small parcel," admitted the manageress, "which she gave me a few days ago to lock up in our safe. She said it contained something valuable, and she hadn't anything to lock it up in. It's in the safe now."

"I'm afraid we must see it," said the chief.

At the foot of the stairs the hall-porter accosted the party and looked at the chief narrowly.

"Name of Chettle, sir?" he asked. "You're wanted at our telephone—urgent."

The chief motioned to Chettle, who went off with the hall-porter; he himself followed the manageress into her office. She unlocked a safe, rummaged amongst its contents, and handed him a small square parcel, done up in brown paper and sealed with black wax. Before he could open it, Chettle returned, serious and puzzled, and whispered to him. Then, with the shortest of leave-takings, the two officers hurried away from the Pompadour, the chief carrying the little parcel tightly grasped in his right hand.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE HYDE PARK TEA-HOUSE

Once outside the Pompadour Hotel the chief and his subordinate hurried at a great pace towards the Lancaster Gate entrance to Kensington Gardens. And when they had crossed Bayswater Road the superior pulled himself up, took a breath, and looked around him.

"No sign of them yet, Chettle," he observed. "Did he say at once?"

"Said they'd be on their way in two minutes, sir," answered Chettle. "And it wouldn't take them many minutes to run up here."

"I wonder what it's all about?" mused the chief. "Some new development since we left the Yard, of course. Well—I think we may probably find something in this parcel, Chettle, that will surprise us as much as any new development can possibly do. It strikes me—"

"Here they are, sir!" interrupted Chettle. He had lingered on the kerb, looking towards the rise of the road going towards the Marble Arch, and his quick eyes had spotted a closed taxi-cab which came out of the Marlborough Gate at full speed and turned down in their direction. "Blindway and two others," he announced. "Seems to be in force, sir, anyhow!"

The taxi-cab pulled up at the little gate leading into Kensington Gardens by the pumping-station, and Blindway, followed by two other men, hurriedly descended and joined his superior.

"Well, what is it?" demanded the chief. "Something new? And about this affair?"

Blindway made a gesture suggesting that they should enter the Gardens; once within he drew the chief aside, leaving his companions with Chettle.

"About half an hour ago," he said, "a telephone message came on from the City police. They said they'd received some queerish information about this affair, but only particularly about the death of that man down at the hotel in the Docks. Their information ran to this—that the actual murderer has an appointment with some of his associates this afternoon at that tea-house in Hyde Park, and that if the City police would send some plain-clothes men up there he'll be pointed out. So the City lot want us to join them, and I was sent along to meet you here, sir—I've brought those two men and of course there's Chettle. We're all to go along to this tea-house, not in a body, naturally, but to sort of drop in, and to wait events. Of course, sir, that last murder occurred in the City, and so the City police want to come in at it, and—"

"No further details?" asked the chief, obviously puzzled. "Nothing as to who's going to point out the murderer, and so on?"

"Nothing!" replied Blindway. "At least, nothing reported to us. All we've got to do is to be there, on the spot, and to keep our eyes open for the critical moment."

"And what time is the critical moment to be?" asked the chief, a little superciliously. "It all seems remarkably vague, Blindway—why couldn't they give us more news?"

"Don't know, sir—they seemed purposely vague," replied the detective. "However, the time fixed is two o'clock. To be there about two—that was the request—at least four of us."

The chief turned and summoned the other three men.

"You'd better break up," he said. "Two of you approach the place from one way—two from another. It's now a quarter-past one—you've plenty of time. Stroll across the park to this spot—I'll join you by two o'clock. I believe you can get light refreshments at this tea-house; get yourselves something, so as to look like mere loungers—but keep your eyes open."

"Do you want me, sir?" asked Chettle, eyeing the parcel with evident desire to know what mystery it concealed.

"No—you go with Blindway," answered the chief. "He'll tell you what's happened. I must join Mr. Allerdyke and Mr. Appleyard—then we'll come over to you. Don't take any notice of us."

The four detectives went off into Hyde Park, and there separated in couples; the chief turned and went along the straight path which runs parallel with Bayswater Road just within the shrubberies of Kensington Gardens. Presently he caught sight of Allerdyke and Appleyard, who occupied two chairs under a shady hawthorn tree, and he laid hold of another, dragged it to them, and sat down. Each looked a silent inquiry, and the chief, with a smile, held up the parcel.

"Chettle and I," he said, "have, in the presence of the manager and manageress of the Pompadour, made a thorough examination of the room and the belongings of the young lady who resides there under the name of Miss Slade. There is not a jot or tittle of anything there to show that she is also Mrs. Marlow—except one thing. That, Mr. Allerdyke, is the all-important photograph of your cousin James, which is hanging, in a neat silver frame, over her mantelpiece. What do you think of that, gentlemen?"

"Odd!" said Appleyard, after a moment's reflective silence.

"Very queer!" said Allerdyke frowning. "Very queer, indeed—considering."

"Queer and odd!" assented the chief. "As to considering—well, I don't quite know what it is that we are considering. If Miss Slade, alias Mrs. Marlow, is a member of the gang—if there is one—which killed and robbed James Allerdyke, it's a decidedly odd and queer thing that she should frame the victim's portrait and hang it where she'll see it last thing at night and first thing in the morning. Most extraordinary! And it's made me think a good deal. I believe you once said, Mr. Allerdyke, that your cousin was a bit of a ladies' man?"

"Bit that way inclined, was James," replied Allerdyke laconically. "Yes—he fancied the ladies a bit, no doubt. In quite a proper way, you know—liked their society, and so on."

"Just so!" assented the chief. "Well, I wonder if he and Miss Slade, alias Mrs. Marlow, knew each other at all—outside business? But it's not much use to speculate on that just now—we've more urgent matters to attend to. And first—this!"

He had put a copy of a morning newspaper round the small brown paper parcel, and now took it off and showed the parcel itself to the two wondering men. One of them at any rate uttered a sharp exclamation.

"Brown paper, sealed with black wax!" said Allerdyke, remembering what Chettle had told him. "Good Lord—what—"

"I don't suppose this is the original brown paper, nor these the original dabs of black wax," remarked the chief as he produced a pocket pen-knife. "But this parcel, gentlemen, was recently confided by Miss Slade to the care of the manageress of the Pompadour, to be put in the hotel safe—from which it was produced to me twenty minutes ago. And—I am now going to see what it contains."

The others sat in absorbed silence while the chief delicately removed the wrappings of the mysterious parcel. A sheet of brown paper, a sheet of cartridge paper beneath it—and within these very ordinary envelopings an old cigar-box, loosely tied about with a bit of knotted string.

"Now for it!" said the chief. "The box contains—"

He raised the lid as the other two leaned nearer. A stray ray of sunlight, filtering through the swaying boughs of the hawthorn, shot down on the box as the chief lifted a wad of soft paper and revealed a glittering mass of pearls and diamonds.

"The Princess Nastirsevitch's jewels!" said the chief softly. "That's just what I expected ever since the manageress gave me this parcel. This, of course, is the parcel which your cousin sent that night from Hull, Mr. Allerdyke. It fell into Mrs. Marlow's hands—alias Miss Slade—and here it is! That's all right."

The other two men stared at the contents of the cigar-box, then at the chief, then at each other. A deep silence had fallen—it was some minutes before Allerdyke broke it.

"All wrong, I should say!" he muttered. "However, if those are the things—I only say if, mind—I suppose we're a step nearer to something else. But—what?"