Ambrotox and Limping Dick

  CHAPTER VII.

  PERFUME.

  Search of house and grounds was fruitless.

  Before half-past eleven the rainstorm was over, and a bright moonlighted the brothers and the men-servants to the discovery of justnothing at all.

  Except to give an order, or make a suggestion, neither Bellamy spokeuntil they stood alone together in the hall.

  They looked at each other like men who from dreams of hell have waked tofind it.

  Then the elder groaned, beside himself.

  "The poor girl!" he said. "To think of her ill-used--murdered, perhaps!"

  The younger man cut him short with a glance, which even through hisagony pierced Randal as if the livid lightning of a god had beenlaunched at the ineptitude of human compassion.

  "Cut it out," said Dick. "That's a car coming. The father. Take himright back to town in it. You've got the pull. You can make thepolitical coves get Scotland Yard and the police of the world working,before you'd get the county bobbies into their trousers."

  The car drew up in front of the house.

  "How shall I tell him?" said Randal.

  "I shall," answered Dick. "You get into tweeds--jump." And he went tomeet Caldegard at the door.

  "Good God!" said the old man, when he saw the young one's face. "What'shappened?"

  "I'll tell you," said Dick. "Is that a good car?"

  Caldegard knew how to obey. "It's Broadfoot's--Rolls-Royce, sixcylinder," he replied promptly.

  "Tell the man he must take you back to town."

  When the order was given, the lover, in curt and terrible phrases, toldthe father what had happened. And Caldegard's face, as he listenedwithout a word, was a tragedy which Dick Bellamy, heeding it not at allfor the moment, remembered all his life.

  "Set every dog in the world on the men who've stolen Ambrotox," he saidin conclusion, "and you'll find Amaryllis. A trace of one is a track ofthe other; news of either is news of both. Leave the local work to me."

  Caldegard looked into the strange face, and almost flinched from theterrible eyes.

  "I'll do all you say," he replied simply.

  Then Randal came, pulling on his coat. His brother made him swallowwhisky and water, forced the elder man to do the same, and before theyleft, demanded money of Randal.

  "There's a hundred and twenty pounds in notes, in the small right-handdrawer in the safe," he replied, "--unless they got that too."

  "No," said Dick. "They were hustled. Let her rip," he said to thedriver, and went back into the house.

  Trembling with excitement and keeping back genuine tears for Amaryllis,a guest to serve whom had been pleasure, the parlour-maid fetched himcold meat, bread and beer. When he had changed his clothes, he atehastily in the hall, swallowing doggedly what he could not taste.

  "Twenty-five minutes--they'll be in town. Another fifteen and thewires'll be humming," he calculated. "Twenty more--the local police willbe here, and rub out every trace. Is there a trace, a mark--a print--asmell, even? I've got an hour."

  He sent all the servants to bed, except Randal's chauffeur, whom hesummoned to the hall.

  "My car's fit to travel, Martin," he said. "Shove in as many tins ofpetrol as she'll hold. I may want her to-night. Run her out into thedrive, put on an overcoat and sit inside till I come."

  Then he went to the study, lit all the candles and another lamp, openedthe safe with the duplicate key, and found, as he had expected, themoney in its drawer.

  "Mostly one-pound notes," he muttered, as he locked the safe.

  Turning to leave it, he stood suddenly stock-still, head up and sniffingthe air, puzzled by an intangible association of sense and memory.

  Failing to fix it, he left the alcove, and went to the writing-table,choosing the chair she had sat in, when she could not, or would not,give reason for her tears. And now he gave a flash of thought wherebefore he had refrained even from speculation. Could it have been theforgotten letter that had made her weep? Yet there had been no troublein her face while she read it, and it seemed certain that thehandwriting was unfamiliar.

  While he mused his eyes were fixed on the alcove at the end of the room.The light of the candle he had left there outlined sharply the edges ofthe two curtains which hung from the rod crossing the recess. At theceiling their edges met, but, at a height of some two and a half feetfrom the floor, their folds were looped back to the wall in a styleformally old-fashioned. And now, even before his mind became concerned,his eye was irritated by a lack of symmetry in the draping; for thedrooping fold of the right-hand curtain was out of shape. Again, histhought ran, if thieves playing for so great a stake as Ambrotox hadfound a woman in their way, their best card was prompt murder. If theycould abduct in silence, they could have killed silently. And this madeclear to him the soundness of what had been hitherto a merelyinstinctive conviction; since they had not left her body dead, they hadtaken it away alive--and with no intent to kill elsewhere. For, ifmurder were to be done, the dead was safest of all behind them in theplace of the theft.

  Then again--while the distorted loop of the curtain haunted hissubconscious mind, so that with imaginary fingers he was adjusting itscurves, even while his mind pulled and twisted the elements of hisproblem--then, again, he thought, this thief--had he shrunk from murder,or merely from _this_ murder?

  "If I could know that!"

  And before he was well aware of what he did, he was in the opening ofthe alcove, handling that awkward fold--and again he drew breath, deepand slow through the nose; again the vague memory--again the elusiveassociation. Was the scent--sweet as well as musty--was it in thecurtain? But as he stooped, he saw what made him forget that vagueodour: a crumpled bunch of the soft linen had been squeezed together,and was not yet recovered from the strain of some violent compression.Gently stretching the stuff, and bringing it closer to the light, hefound the almost regular marks, above and below, as of some serrated,semi-trenchant tool which had been closed upon the doubled piece ofcloth.

  "Teeth, by God!" said Dick. "Tried to gag her with it--shoved a bag ofit in with his fingers, gets 'em out, and stoppers the lot with hishand. Before she faints, she bites--here and there she's gone cleanthrough the stuff."

  Indecision gone, he took the smaller lamp in his hand, and made a tourof the room.

  At an angle to the fireplace was a broad-seated, high-backed oakensettee, covered with cushions. The back almost hid the hearth from thefrench-window. The silk pillow nearest the alcove still kept the impressof a head.

  "When they came in," he reasoned, "the back of that thing hid her. She'dlain down to rest, and stop that sobbing before she came back to me.Fell asleep--women'll do that, happy or wretched, before they know wherethey are. They reached the safe, and that arm at the end would hide evenher hair. While they're messing round with the safe, she wakes and peepsat 'em--was it cold feet or sand kept her from yelling? What next?"

  He was back at the alcove now, on hands and knees, the lamp set on theground, searching the thick pile of the carpet for signs of the strugglethere must have been. And again the smell--near the right hand curtainwhere the wool of the carpet was rubbed.

  Roses--attar of roses! Where had he heard of attar of roses combinedwith--with what? And again the two wires would not touch--but they werethrowing a spark across the gap.

  Yes, it was Caldegard--Caldegard had said something--something of a foulman and a rotten stink. It was some story he'd been telling that firstnight at dinner.

  Then a glitter in the carpet. Half-hidden--trodden in amongst theroughened wool, he found it--a morsel of bright steel--the needle of ahypodermic syringe. Who had spoken lately of a morphinomaniac thatcarried his syringe always with him?

  Why, Caldegard, Caldegard!

  "Melhuish?--Melford?--Meldrum?--Melcher?-_Melchard!_ By God, the swinethat stank!"

  And he remembered how he had upset the silver candlestick, setting fireto the shades, to cover the girl's discomfort, and the smile she hadpaid him with. Then it was this particular mu
rder from which the thiefhad shrunk.

  Melchard, the chemist, had guessed at the direction of Caldegard'sresearch. Discharged at a moment when his hope of mastering a valuablesecret was at its height, he had found means to track Caldegard'smovements, and even, it seemed, to discover the hiding-place of theperfected drug and its formula.

  "Agent--or, p'r'aps, a leading member of the Dope Gang Caldegard hintedat. He lays his plans to grab the stuff and the formula. Just as he getshis fingers on it, up pops the only being on earth he'd give a damnabout knifing. Twenty years' clink if he leaves her to talk. Takes herwith him--hell's blight on him! Wouldn't have been dosing himself on agame like this. Used the syringe on her."

  To find Melchard was to find Amaryllis. The first thing to do,therefore, was to find Melchard's address, and the first man to ask wasCaldegard. If Caldegard could not give it to him, it meant a long huntwith the police. Anyway, he must begin with Caldegard.

  He crossed to the telephone, lifted the receiver, and, hearing notinkle, blew into the transmitter with the receiver at his ear. Hearingnothing, he hung it up with a curse.

  Sitting at Randal's desk, he wrote rapidly the following note:

  "Got the money. Enclose key. Melchard's the man we want. Get his address. 'Phone cut outside. Wire me address P.D.Q.--DICK."

  Through the window he went to his car in the drive.

  "Martin," he said, "get out Sir Randal's car and take this note to him.Go to New Scotland Yard. They'll tell you where he is. Drive like hell."

  He went back into the house, ran upstairs, lit a candle in his room,stuffed one pocket with handkerchiefs, and into another dropped a tin oftobacco and an electric torch.

  Why hadn't he brought a gun? Oh, well, it only meant five minutes at hisflat in Great Windmill Street.

  As he came down the passage, his eyes, obeying a new habit which seemedalready old, lingered a moment on Amaryllis' door. But it was notsentiment which checked his feet.

  "There might be something," he muttered, and, without hesitation,entered the room.

  An oppression of silence weighed upon him painfully as he felt for hismatch-box. When the candle showed it, the pretty room was a cruel jest.

  His examination was made with business-like care. On the dressing-tablewas nothing but the pretty things which served her toilet; but on thewriting-table in the window lay a pile of letters. The topmost herecognised at once for that which she had read in his presence afterdinner.

  As he pulled the stiff sheet from the envelope, he was aware once moreof the odour which he had smelt first in the alcove of the study.

  He spread the letter open. It was signed "Alban Melchard."

  It was written on good paper, stamped with the address, and read asfollows:

  "Rue de la Harpe, 31, "Paris, "_June_ 18_th_.

  "MY DEAR MISS CALDEGARD,

  "I fear that you will be surprised at my venturing to write to you, considering the distressing circumstances under which we parted. Although the small request I have to make of you is of some importance to me, I should not have the presumption to make it, if it were not that it gives me the opportunity to assure you that the passage of time has made a wiser man of me--and a grateful one, for the delicate forbearance with which you taught me my place.

  "I have recently met with good fortune in my profession, and am settling down as a man of business in the neighbourhood of Millsborough, with considerable prospect of success.

  "In the happy days when it was my privilege to pick up unconsidered scraps of your father's scientific wisdom, I kept, jotted down in a notebook, many items for future use. Until recently I have had no occasion to refer to these notes, which I now find are essential to the success of my most promising scheme. I must have left the memoranda behind me with some other things, when I departed so suddenly last September.

  "If you can have this notebook found for me, I will ask that it may be posted to me at The Myrtles, Grove End, near Millsborough, as I shall only be in Paris for three days longer.

  "I heard, quite by chance from a friend, that Professor Caldegard was staying with Sir Randal Bellamy in Hertfordshire, so I have ventured to use his address.

  "Thanking you gratefully in anticipation,

  "I remain, "My dear Miss Caldegard, "Yours very sincerely, "ALBAN MELCHARD."

  "H'm, in Paris, is he? No more in Paris than I am. Wrote this in case heshould be suspected, but didn't count on having to cart the girl along.False addresses wouldn't help him. These two are straight goods. Clevermove, if it hadn't been for the girl. Your alibi'll hang you, AlbanMelchard. That fixes Millsborough."

  Savagely he cranked up his engine and jumped into the driving-seat. Thecar rushed forward.

  When St. Albans was behind him the confusion of excitement began tosettle, and his thoughts presented themselves clear as those of adispassionate spectator. For him, in all this tangle, there was onething, and one thing only, that mattered; to be in time. He did not fearmurder; but the very reason of her security from death was the cause ofa fear so horrible, that he knew inaction would have been torture pastendurance.