Frank Froest - The Rogues’ Syndicate - The Maelstrom

Her throat worked, and it was some moments before she resumed.

‘My brother had only recently returned to England, and he told me that his first step had been to find me. He wanted me to go back with him to Canada. “You’re my baby sister,” he said, “I have a right to look after you. There’s only you and I now.”

‘I can’t express how I felt. My quick anger against my father was less intense than his long-nursed hatred. We talked long. I refused his offer to go back to Canada, and told him that I would never take another penny from my father. He was against that. He argued that it was the least Mr Greye-Stratton could do for me. When he saw I was determined, he pointed out the possibility that I might be Mr Greye-Stratton’s heiress, and that to refuse the allowance might embitter him against me.’ She flamed for a moment into passion. ‘As if I wanted anything— anything from that man!

‘When he left me I scarcely knew what to do, what action to take. I resolved to do nothing. After all, when I was in a colder mood, I could see nothing that I could do. I could not or would not attempt a reconciliation with my father. I could not attempt the vindication of my mother. I renounced the allowance, and things went on as they were before, except that I had my brother.

‘He went back to Canada and the United States. Now and again I had letters from him. He had a hard struggle to make ends meet.

Hallett nodded mechanically. Something in her tone made him begin to see the brother in a less sympathetic light. He blurted out the question on the spur of the moment.

‘He bled—I mean, he wrote to you for money?’

She winced.

‘Yes; he wrote to me for money. A little more than a year ago he was in England again.’ Her words came more slowly. ‘He has stayed here ever since. He called on Mr Greye-Stratton, and something happend. What, I don’t know. I suppose there were recriminations, but my brother told me little but that he was now entirely without resources. Mr Greye-Stratton’—Hallett noted that she persisted in the formal mode of reference—‘had cut off all help from him. I don’t know if Mr Menzies has said anything to you about my brother?’

She flashed the question at him suddenly.

‘Not a word. This is the first I have heard of his existence.’

‘I ask because he questioned me closely about him. My brother is a hard man, Mr Hallett, and his outlook on life is different to that of the ordinary person. Circumstances have been against him. He was driven to find a living as best he could. I want you to remember that if he was desperate, he was driven to it. I helped as far as I could, but he had heavy expenses. He signed my father’s name to some cheques.’

‘He committed forgery?’

‘Yes. The cancelled cheques came into the hands of someone else who knew that he was my brother. He threatened to pass them on to Scotland Yard and give evidence against Dick unless I paid. Last night there was an appointment made at my flat. The price he needed was greater than I could pay. When he went, I followed him. I knew he had the cheques on him, and I hoped that I might find some way to get them from him. Just before I met you I had appealed to him again. He refused. He had the cheques in his hand. I snatched them, and when I ran into you I passed them to you on the impulse of the moment. That is all, Mr Hallett.’

‘But there is something more,’ he said; ‘something you have not said?’

She shook her head, her lips pressed tightly together.

‘I have said all I can—all I dare. You helped me, Mr Hallett, and I have told you more even than the detectives. It has been a relief’—she sighed—‘to tell anyone.’

Jimmie was silenced. Yet a score of questions trembled on his lips. Trained to see the weak points in a narration, he could not fail to realise that there were gaps in the story, gaps that needed filling before one could come to full judgment. She had passed no hint of the blackmailer, the man from whom she had the cheques. That he was closely linked with her in some manner he felt confident. And then speculation was lost in a rush of pity for the girl who had been so unwittingly dragged into a maelstrom from which he could see no way of escape.

That the man Errol was a scoundrel was certain, on her own showing. He glimpsed through her reticence the fresh tragedy that his advent had meant to her life. Vainly he tried to see for what purpose she was being used. Of course, Errol had been bleeding her, but there was something more. It came to him suddenly. She knew the murderer—she had said so. Here was a motive for Errol, a motive more powerful than revenge or passion. She would stand to gain a fortune by Greye-Stratton’s death, and Errol would expect to dabble his fingers in it.

Yet this was the man for whom she was playing with fire. He was not very clear about English legal methods, but he conceived that in trying to shield him she was laying herself open to suspicion. He had judged Menzies acutely. If Greye-Stratton’s fortune were to come to her, that detective would leave nothing undone to be absolutely sure that she had no hand in the crime. Points would arise, actions be revealed, that would look black against her by the very reason that she had carefully concealed them.

‘Miss Greye-Stratton,’ he said gravely, ‘—forgive me for what I am going to say. I believe it is a crime here to be an accessory after the fact. Do you realise that? Don’t you think it would be wiser, for your sake—for your brother’s sake—to be candid with the police? Believe me, all that you have told me is sure to be known sooner or later.’

Her face was irresolute.

‘You think they will find out? That it will be worse because I tried to conceal it?’

‘I do. If you will take my advice—my sincere advice—you will come with me to Menzies now. Understand me. I shall not betray a word of our conversation without your permission.’

She placed her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her cupped hands, staring across the room in reverie. Then her head sank and her shoulders heaved.

‘I dare not,’ she sobbed. ‘God help me, I dare not …’

NO effective detective organisation is dependent on one man. Co-operation is the essence of all successful detective work, exactly as it is in the carrying on of any great business. Scotland Yard will throw a score, a hundred, ten thousand men into an enterprise, if need be, and every one of them, from the supreme brain downwards, will have an understudy ready at any moment to pick up a duty abandoned from any cause. No individual is vital, though some may be valuable. Every fact, every definite conclusion arrived at, is on record. There is no stopping, no turning back to cover ground already traversed. The spade work of detection is as automatic as book-keeping.

That is why Weir Menzies found time to cover the case against the pickpockets he had captured the preceding evening and to return to headquarters to smoke a quiet pipe and consider things in general. He propped his feet on a desk, leaned back in his chair, and began serenely to go through the reports that had accumulated from every point where information, however remote, might have been gathered on the Greye-Stratton affair.

He liked to have the salient facts of an investigation clear-cut in his mind. That often saved time in an emergency, as well as being an aid to definite thinking. Presently he began to make his Greek notes with a stubby pencil on the back of an envelope. Some of them would have surprised Hallett had he chanced to see them.

‘Statement of P. Greye-Stratton clearly incomplete. Knows much more than she says. Certain that Errol has been for many months constant visitor at her flat in Palace Avenue. (Gould’s report—interview with maid at her flat.) Yet she denies that she has spoken to, or been in communication with, her brother for nearly a year. Lift attendant remembers man calling on her the evening of the murder. Left after short interview, and immediately after she went out, hatless, in a hurry.’