Frank Froest - The Grell Mystery

She had curtly rejected her father’s suggestion that she should see a doctor. Nor would she leave London to try and forget amid fresh surroundings.

‘Here I will stay until Bob’s murderer is punished,’ she had said, and her white teeth had come together viciously.

A night and a day had passed since her interview with Heldon Foyle. Reflection had not convinced her that his cold reason was right. She had made up her mind that Fairfield was the murderer. Nothing could shake her from that conviction. Scotland Yard, she thought, was afraid of him because he was a man of position. The square-faced superintendent who had spoken so smoothly was probably trying to shield him. But she knew. She was certain. Suppose she told all she knew? Her slim hands clenched till the nails cut her flesh, as she determined that he should pay the price of his crime. There was another justice than the law. If the law failed her—

A medical man or a student of psychology might have found an analysis of her feelings interesting. She had reached the border-line of monomania, yet he would have been a daring man who would have called her absolutely insane. Except to Foyle she had said nothing of the feeling that obsessed her.

With cool deliberation she unlocked a drawer of her escritoire and picked out a dainty little ivory-butted revolver with polished barrel. It was very small—almost a toy. She broke it apart and pushed five cartridges into the chambers. With a furtive glance over her shoulder she placed it in her bosom, and then hastily returned to her chair by the fire and picked up a book. Her eyes skimmed the lines of type mechanically. She read nothing, although she turned the pages.

Presently she flung the book aside and, without ringing for a maid, dressed in an unobtrusive walking costume of deep black. She selected a heavy fur muff and transferred the pistol to its interior. Her fingers closed tightly over the butt. On her way to the door she was stopped by an apologetic footman.

‘There’s a lot of persons from the newspapers waiting out in the streets, Lady Eileen,’ he said.

‘Indeed!’ Her voice was cold and hard.

‘They might annoy you. They stop everyone who goes in or out.’

She answered shortly and stepped out through the door he held open. There was a quick stir among the reporters, and two of them hastily detached themselves and confronted her, hats in hand. She forced a smile.

‘It’s no use, gentlemen,’ she said. ‘I will not be interviewed.’ She looked very dainty and pathetic as she spread out her hands in a helpless little gesture. ‘Can I not appeal to your chivalry? You are besieging a house of mourning. And, please—please, I know what is in your minds—do not follow me.’

She had struck the right note. There was no attempt to break her down. With apologies the men withdrew. After all, they were gentlemen whose intrusion on a private grief was personally repugnant to them.

The girl reached Scotland Yard while Heldon Foyle was still in talk with Green. Her name at once procured her admission to him. She took no heed of the chair he offered, but remained standing, her serious grey eyes searching his face. He observed the high colour on her cheeks, and almost intuitively guessed that she was labouring under some impulse.

‘Please do sit down,’ he pleaded. ‘You want to know how the case is progressing. I think we shall have some news for you by tomorrow. I hope it will be good.’

‘You are about to make an arrest?’

The words came from her like a pistol-shot. A light shot into her eyes.

The detective shook his head. He had seen the look in her face once before on the face of a woman. That was at Las Palmas, in a dancing-hall, when a Portuguese girl had knifed a fickle lover with a dagger drawn from her stocking. Lady Eileen was scarce likely to carry a dagger in her stocking, but—his gaze lingered for a second on the muff, which she had not put aside. It was queer that she should not withdraw her hands.

‘I don’t say that. It depends on circumstances,’ he said gently.

Her face clouded. ‘I will swear that the man Fairfield killed him,’ she cried passionately. ‘You will let him get away—you and your red tape.’

He came and stood by her.

‘Listen to me, Lady Eileen,’ he said earnestly. ‘Sir Ralph Fairfield did not kill Mr Grell. Of that I have proof. Will you not trust us and wait a little? You are doing Sir Ralph a great injustice by your suspicions.’

She laughed wildly, and flung herself away from him.

‘You talk to me as though I were a schoolgirl,’ she retorted. ‘You can’t throw dust in my eyes, Mr Foyle. He has bought you. You are going to let him go. I know! I know! But he shall not escape.’

The superintendent stroked his chin placidly. As if by accident he had placed himself between her and the door. He had already made up his mind what to do, but the situation demanded delicate handling.

‘You will regret this when you are calmer,’ he said mildly.

He was uncertain in his mind whether to tell the distraught girl that her lover was not dead—that the murdered man was a rogue whom probably she had not seen or heard of in her life. He balanced the arguments mentally pro and con, and decided that at all hazards he would preserve his secret for the present. She took a step towards the door. She had drawn herself up haughtily.

‘Let me pass, please,’ she demanded.

He did not move. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked. Her eyes met his steadily.

‘I am going to Sir Ralph Fairfield—to wring a confession from him, if you must know,’ she said. ‘Let me pass, please.’

‘I will let you pass after you have given me the pistol you are carrying in your muff,’ he retorted, holding out his hand.

Then the tigress broke loose in the delicately brought-up, gently nurtured girl. She withdrew her right hand from her muff and Foyle struck quickly at her wrist. The pistol clattered to the floor and the man closed with her. It needed all his tremendous physical strength to lift her bodily by the waist and place her, screaming and striking wildly at his face with her clenched fists, in a chair. He held her there with one hand and lifted one of the half-dozen speaking-tubes behind his desk with the other.

In ten minutes Lady Eileen Meredith, in charge of a doctor and a motherly-looking matron hastily summoned from the adjoining police station in Cannon Row, was being taken back to her home in a state of semi-stupor. Foyle picked up the dainty little revolver from the floor and, jerking the cartridges out, placed it on the mantelpiece.

‘You can never tell what a woman will do,’ he said to himself. ‘All the same, I think I have saved Ralph Fairfield’s life today.’

HELDON FOYLE was more deeply chagrined than he would have cared to admit by the disappearance of Waverley. It was not only that one of the most experienced men of the Criminal Investigation Department had fallen into a trap and so placed his colleagues in difficulties. The very audacity of the coup showed that the department was matched against no ordinary opponents. There is a limit even to the daring of the greatest professional criminals. If there were professionals acting in this business, reflected the superintendent, the idea was none of theirs. Besides, no professional would have written the letter threatening the Yard. That was no bluff—the finger-prints proved that. To hold a Scotland Yard man as a hostage was a game only to be played by those who had much at stake.

Only one man shared Heldon Foyle’s confidence. That was Sir Hilary Thornton. To the Assistant Commissioner he talked freely.

‘It’s an ugly job for us, sir, there’s no disguising that. Naturally, they count on us keeping our mouths shut about Waverley. It’s lucky he’s not a married man. If the story of the way he was bagged becomes public property we shall be a laughing-stock, even if we get him out of his trouble. And if we don’t, the scandal will be something worse.’