The Grell Mystery Part 43

"A great deal, if it's true, as I know it to be. Now, Mr. Grell, you are not obliged to answer any questions unless you like--you know that--but I warn you that your failing to do so cannot prevent us arresting the guilty person. We know you are innocent--though whether you may be charged as an accessory after the fact or not is another question. What do you say?"

The prisoner had leaned his arm on the table. His fists were clenched until the finger-nails bit into the flesh.

"If you've made up your minds, so much the better for me," he said with a half laugh. "Who have you fixed your suspicions on?"

It was clear that he had doggedly set himself to avoid affording them any help. His chin was as fixed as that of Foyle himself. The strong wills of the two men had crossed. The superintendent felt all his fighting qualities rise. He was determined to break down the other's wall of imperturbability. He accepted Grell's silence as a challenge.

Thornton's gentle, cultured voice broke in. "We are only anxious to spare you as much as possible. You are a prominent man, and though you must be brought in, it will serve no purpose to increase what will create enough scandal."

"I fear you are wasting your time, gentlemen," said Grell, stretching himself wearily. "Won't it cut this short if I admit that I killed Goldenburg? I will sign a confession if it will please you."

The eyes of Thornton and Foyle met for a second. There was a meaning look in the superintendent's, as who should say, "I told you so." Then he took from his breast-pocket a piece of paper, which he unfolded as he smiled amiably at Grell.

"That is childlike. Your finger-prints prove it is false. Perhaps you will tell us what underlies this note that you sent to Lady Eileen Meredith the day you left London."

He read:

"We are both in imminent danger unless I can procure sufficient money to help me evade the search that is being made for me. If I am arrested, I fear ultimately exposure must come. If you have no other way of obtaining money, will you try to get an open cheque from your father? You could cash it yourself for notes and gold and bring it to me. For G.o.d's sake do what you can. I am desperate."

He read it swiftly, as though certain of the accuracy of the words. As a matter of fact, he was not. He had pieced together the broken words and phrases that he had taken from the burning paper in Eileen Meredith's room as well as he could. In filling up some of the gaps he might have been preposterously wrong.

"Where did you get that?" demanded Grell. "Eileen told me she had burnt it."

His words were an admission that the note was practically correct. Foyle placed it carefully back in his pocket, while Grell stared at the opal shade of the electric light.

"She did burn it," he answered. "I chanced to be able to retrieve the message. I feel certain that, however dire your necessity, you would not have written to her in that strain unless you had some strong reason.

Who did you mean when you said 'both in imminent danger'?"

"Ivan and myself, of course."

"Ivan was under arrest at that time. Nothing could avert the danger from him. And you say that you feared exposure if you were arrested. That, of course, meant that you would be unable to keep s.h.i.+elding the person you are s.h.i.+elding?"

A dangerous fury blazed in Grell's eyes--the fury of some splendid animal trapped and tormented yet unable to escape from its tormentors.

He glared savagely at the superintendent.

"I am s.h.i.+elding no one," he declared.

"You can, of course, make any answer you like. Suppose we go on to another point which perhaps you will have no objection to clearing up now. We have Harry Goldenburg's record. We know he had been blackmailing you, and we know that he was your brother. No; sit still. He was your brother, was he not?"

"My half-brother. How did you know that? How did you know he was blackmailing me?" Grell spoke tensely.

"Oh, simply enough. The likeness was one thing, and a hint I got from Ivan that he was a relative confirmed me in an opinion I had already formed by another fact--which I observed when I saw you at Dalehurst--that you had a similar walk. You will remember, I asked you if he was a relative, but you would not answer. The supposition that you were being blackmailed was borne out by inquiries made for us by Pinkerton's, which proved that Goldenburg had visited you several times and that he was always in funds after he left you, however low he might be before. I think it is a fair inference."

"Quite fair." Grell's face was a little drawn, but he spoke quietly.

"You are quite correct, Mr. Foyle. As you know so much, there can be little harm in enlightening you on that part of the story. I take it that you treat it as confidential."

"Unless it becomes necessary to use it for official purposes, as evidence or otherwise," said Thornton before the superintendent could reply. "We cannot give an absolute pledge."

CHAPTER LII

"Very well; I am content with that." The prisoner nursed his chin in his cupped hands and stared unseeingly at the distempered walls. "It began years ago, on a little farm in New Hamps.h.i.+re. That was my father's place. He died when I was six or seven, and my mother married again. The man was the father of Harry Goldenburg. I was eight years old when Harry was born. Four years later, my mother died, and when I was sixteen I ran away from home. You will know something of my career since then: the newspapers have repeated it often enough--office-boy, journalist, traveller, stockbroker, politician. I was still young when I became a fairly well-known man. In the meantime I had not seen nor heard anything of my brother except that he had left the village when my stepfather died.

"In Vienna some years ago I became intimate with Lola Rachael--the woman you know as the Princess Petrovska. She was a dancer then and had hosts of admirers among the young men about town. As a matter of plain fact, I believe she was employed by the Russian Government for its own purposes.

But of that I was never certain. Anyway she entangled me. And I believe she really had an affection for me. It was during that time that I was fool enough to write her letters--letters which she kept.

"Eventually I went back to the United States. I became a state senator and became involved in politics. One day I was in my hotel in Was.h.i.+ngton when I received a visit from my brother Harry Goldenburg. I was in a way glad to see him, although he was practically a stranger. He impressed me favourably--perhaps the fact that we were so alike physically had as much to do with it as his suave ways and gentle manners. Even at the time I believe he was suspected by the police of being an astute swindler. Of that, of course, I was ignorant. He told me a story of a mail order business he had established in Chicago which was doing great things, but which was hampered for lack of capital. Well, to cut the story short, I lent him five thousand dollars. A month later, he wrote to me for two thousand, and got it. A few weeks after that I read of a great fraud engineered in Central America and there was a three-column portrait in the paper of the man at the bottom of it--my brother. That opened my eyes. When next he came to me--he was audacious enough to do it within the year--I charged him with living by fraud. He laughed in my face and admitted it. When I threatened to call in the police, he merely shrugged his shoulders and asked what I thought of a flaming headline in the press:

'BROTHER OF SENATOR GRELL HELD FOR BIG FRAUDS.'

"I could see it all just as he painted it. My political career was very dear to me just then. Such a thing would have killed it. I knew if I exposed him he was capable of carrying out his threat. However, I told him to get out of the place before I threw him out of the window. He could see I was losing my temper and took a little pistol from his pocket--a Derringer.

"'I have a number of letters which you sent to a lady in Vienna,' he said. 'I know many newspapers which would offer me a good price for 'em.'

"I think it was perhaps fortunate for me that he held the pistol--or I might have done something I should afterwards have regretted. He flung a letter face upwards on the table. It was one of those I had written to Lola Rachael. If he had the rest of the correspondence--and he swore that he had--it would have been deadly in the hands of an unscrupulous political opponent. As you know, electioneering in the States is rather different from what it is here. I was fool enough to pay him money on his promise to suppress them. He would not sell them outright.

"That was the beginning. After that I never had a secure moment unless I was away on an exploring expedition. The moment I reappeared in civilisation my brother would seek me out. He was cunning enough to press me only to the verge of endurance. He could judge exactly how much I would stand. At last, however, I resolved not to yield another penny to his extortions. I cut loose from all my affairs in the United States and came to England. I thought I could fight him when I had reduced the stakes. I found after all that I had increased them, for I met Eileen--Lady Eileen Meredith."

He paused. Neither of his two hearers said anything. An injudicious remark might break the thread of his thoughts.

"When I became engaged to her," Grell resumed, "I knew that it would not be long before Goldenburg would see his chance. I set to work to find Lola, and discovered her as the Princess Petrovska. Then for the first time I learned that she had married Goldenburg--but she admitted that any affection she held for him had long since faded. They had parted a few weeks after the marriage--which they both seemed to regard somewhat cynically--and she had resumed her first husband's name. She admitted that she had helped him to blackmail me, but apparently she herself had handled little enough of the loot. She was vicious enough about it. I gave her a cheque and induced her to come to London. I had it in mind to stop this blackmail before I was married.

"As I expected, Goldenburg was not long in scenting profit. He descended on me ravenously. I told him that I would pay him ten thousand pounds if he would put all the letters he possessed in my hands but that I would not otherwise buy his silence. He could see that I was in earnest, and asked for time to consider. I gave him till the night before my wedding.

I said nothing of the Princess Petrovska. I knew that they would meet.

One cannot be too scrupulous in dealing with a scoundrel, and she had her instructions--to steal the letters from him if necessary, while pretending that she was only anxious to join forces with him in looting me.

"But all her efforts went for nothing. He recognised the value of her co-operation in the circ.u.mstances, but would give her no hint of the place where he had concealed the letters. Time drew on. You will know enough of her to recognise Lola as a clever, resolute woman. She made up her mind to accompany Goldenburg to his appointment with me as a last resort. It was to keep that appointment that I left Ralph Fairfield at the club the night before the wedding--the night of the murder."

He breathed heavily. Thornton picked up a piece of paper and crumbled it nervously between his lean hands. Foyle, eager and alert, was leaning forward, anxious not to miss a word. A great deal of what had been obscure was being cleared up. But so far nothing that Grell had said but could be interpreted as a motive--and a singularly strong one--which might in other circ.u.mstances weave a hangman's rope about his own neck.

"You did not want any one to know that you were absent from the club,"

remarked Foyle. "Why?"

"That was merely a matter of precaution. I wanted my interview with Goldenburg to be secret. I had given Goldenburg a note which would ensure his being shown to my study and I was purposely a bit late for the appointment. I wanted to give the Princess Petrovska all the opportunities possible. But when I reached there it was clear to me that she had failed. He had not brought the letters with him. I got rid of the woman, and Goldenburg and I quarreled. Then it was that I killed him."

"And what of the other woman?" asked the superintendent.

"What other woman?"

"The veiled woman who was shown up to you by Ivan."

"There was no other woman," said Grell, his lips tightening. "I have told you as much as I intend to."

"Just as you like. I believe you have told the truth up to a point, Mr.

Grell. It is fair to a.s.sume that a blackmailer of Goldenburg's calibre would have taken precautions lest you should fail to comply with his demands. Doesn't it appear a fair a.s.sumption that he might have taken steps to arrange the presence of the person most interested, next to yourself? He probably never mentioned that he had done so until it was too late for you to stop her. I mean Lady Eileen Meredith."