Kate Plus 10 · Chapter 6 (1/2)

VI

Kate Came to the Flat

At 9:40 on the night of the 15th instant I was present at Sebo’s Club. The room was full of diners and amongst them was Mr. Reginald Boltover and a girl giving the name of Miss Vera Flemming, who was in reality Kate Westhanger. At 9:52 an Italian named Emil Tolmini, employed as a waiter at Sebo’s Club, attempted to stab Kate Westhanger but was prevented and taken into custody. In the course of the struggle in which he was disarmed he sustained a slight scalp wound and permission was given for him to be taken to the kitchen to have the wound dressed. I regret to state that he succeeded in making his escape. He is a convict on license (record No. P.C.A./C.C.C. 85943). He is an old associate of the Crime Street gang and was obviously attempting to avenge himself upon the girl for some injury, real or imaginary, which he had suffered.

I made no attempt to warn Mr. Boltover as to the character of his companion, but subsequently calling at his flat in Piccadilly on the pretence that I wished to get information about the attempted murder, I discovered that he had been introduced to the girl at a theatre where she was posing as a chorus girl. She had evidently laid a deep plan to meet him, for what reason it is not clear. He is a very wealthy man and it may be necessary at a later stage to warn him, but at present I have taken upon myself the responsibility of refraining from that act.

Michael Pretherston ended off the report with his neat signature, folded it and inserted it into an official envelope which he addressed to his chief. By good fortune he met that brilliant man coming into Scotland House as Michael was going out.

“I think you did right,” said T. B., after he had heard the story; “I wonder what her game is? I have a good mind to detail a man to take the whole case up.”

“Let me do it,” said Michael, eagerly.

T. B. Smith pursed his lips.

“You are rather a big man for a job like that, Michael,” he said, “it may turn out to be nothing more than a common or garden chorus girl’s romance.”

“Kate isn’t the chorus girl type,” said Michael, “if it is big enough for her to be in it, it is quite big enough for me.”

The chief thought for a moment.

“Very well then,” he said at length, “you can take on the job. Do it by yourself if you possibly can, I haven’t any men to spare. But keep in touch with me. Blowing a whistle won’t be of any service to you if these people mean business and get after you.”

He hesitated again.

“Confound Kate!” he said. “I suppose you have circulated a description of the ice-cream merchant?”

All Latin criminals came under this generic description with T. B.

Michael nodded.

“Well, good luck,” said the chief, “but be careful!”

When the young man had gone T. B. beckoned to an officer who was passing.

“You’re the very man, Barr,” he said; “pick up Mr. Pretherston and don’t lose him⁠—you may choose your own opposite number.”

The sergeant saluted and hurried out after his charge.

Michael went back to his rooms with a light heart. It was the kind of job that he liked better than any other. He had not told the chief all his suspicions. Kate’s game was a big one. High-flyer as she was, she was out for a height record⁠—that he realised. There was some association between her month with Lord Flanborough and the careful cultivation of Reggie Boltover’s acquaintance. When he came to think of it she must have met Boltover while she was still with Flanborough. He had taken it for granted that the girl was a resident secretary but possibly he had arrived at this conclusion in error. So it proved next morning when he called Lord Flanborough’s house on the telephone and had a private conversation with the butler. The young lady, during the time she had been at Felton House, had left every afternoon at four o’clock.

A little talk with the stage manager at the theatre showed that the girl had never attended any of the morning rehearsals and had missed one of the matinées. Michael saw this part of the scheme plainly enough. Kate, through her spies, had discovered that Boltover had an acquaintance who had a friend at the theatre. She had come to the stage with no other object than making a friend of the girl who all unwittingly was the instrument by which she was to meet Reggie.

The detective knew that this was no chance acquaintance. He followed the manoeuvres of Kate through all their devious paths. He took the opportunity in the afternoon to call upon Reggie at his office which was something between a board room and a boudoir.

Reggie’s theoretical interests were multifarious. He was the nominal head of a dozen different corporations which his industrious father had created for his profit. In practice he knew very little about any of them and nothing about some.

“I hope your lady was not alarmed,” said Michael, with spurious anxiety.

“Oh, no, the lady was not alarmed; oh, no,” said Reggie, shaking his head violently. “Oh, dear no. She was not alarmed. Of course, it would have been different if she had been alone, but being with me, naturally she⁠—er she⁠—er was not alone.”

“Naturally,” agreed Michael.

“No, she was not alarmed,” said Mr. Boltover, “in fact, she was very cool, remarkably cool. I have never seen anybody so cool.”

“I hope when you see her again,” said Michael, “you will tell her I asked.”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Boltover heartily; “certainly I shall tell her you asked.” And he added after a moment, “When I meet her again.”

“She seemed, if you will forgive the impertinence, so interested in everything,” encouraged Michael.

“You are quite right,” said Reggie eagerly, “you are perfectly right. That just describes her. She is interested in everything.”

“It is nice to meet people who are interested in one’s business,” Michael went on artlessly. “I never mind people being interested in my business, do you?”

“Oh, dear no,” replied Mr. Boltover in alarm, as though the very thought that anybody should be discouraged from an interest in his affairs, caused him acute mental unhappiness; “oh, dear no. Certainly not. Not at all.”

“Of course,” smiled Michael, “she could not very well understand all the complexities of your business, Mr. Boltover⁠—it is such an enormous one.”

“Well,” hesitated the other, “I don’t know. I am not so sure. She is a very intelligent young lady. I was talking to her about my business when this dreadful affair happened and she was so calm that she just went on talking about it, don’t you know. My business, I mean. I thought it was a most remarkable instance of coolness. I was telling one of our directors today about it, and he thought it was a remarkable instance of coolness. Yes, even when I was taking her home she told me a lot about herself and⁠—things. Her grandfather is a very wealthy man, a financier. I didn’t know that.”

Michael might have said that he too was unaware of the fact, but he knew just the moment when a tactless interpolation might dry up the fount of Mr. Boltover’s eloquence.

“Very intelligent lady indeed,” wandered Mr. Boltover, “oh, yes, I was talking about her grandfather⁠—he is a very rich man. She thought that he might be able to take one of our properties off our hands. I was awfully surprised. Naturally, I did not think she had any money being in the chorus and all that⁠—I hope I haven’t been indiscreet?” he asked anxiously. “You possibly did not know that she was on the stage.”

“Oh, yes, I did,” said Michael with a smile; “you have betrayed nothing, Mr. Boltover.”

“I am awfully glad,” replied the other, relieved; “what was I saying, about her grandfather, yes. I think I might sell him that property. I hate parting with properties⁠—we have refused quite a number of good offers⁠—sheer sentiment, don’t you know?”

“But perhaps this is not a paying property.”

“Oh, no, not at all,” said Mr. Boltover; “by no manner of means whatever. Still we don’t like parting with them. Of course, I talk a lot of rot about people wanting to buy the works and I always tell that great joke about a lunatic⁠—ha, ha⁠—but really it isn’t true. No, not really true, oh, no.”

Michael had never heard the great joke about the lunatic. What he was anxious to hear were details of Kate’s projected purchase but in this he was foiled. There was precious little of the business man about Mr. Reggie Boltover but one lesson he had learnt, and learnt thoroughly, and that was the art of silence. His revered father was wont to say, “If you never open your mouth, Reggie, nobody will know what an ass you are,” and in business, at any rate, Reggie most religiously lived up to this injunction.

What was the girl’s object?

Michael was puzzled. Strangely enough the obvious never occurred to him, or if it did he dismissed it without a second consideration. He did not look upon Kate as the type that would find any amusement, whatever the profit might be, in the inveigling of a young fool to the altar. Kate wanted the excitement, not the money. That was her history. He had first met her when he was in the Special Department and it had been over a little matter of a King’s messenger’s despatch bag which on a cross-channel journey had mysteriously disappeared, though it was practically handcuffed to the owner’s wrist, that he had first become acquainted with the girl. He was interested in her, but only mildly so, because, at the time, he arrived at a somewhat hasty judgment. It was later, when the strongroom of the Muranic was forced and twenty-five packets of diamonds vanished in mid-ocean and when he had been in charge of the investigations which had resulted in the imprisonment of Colonel Westhanger, that he had first formed a true estimate of the girl’s character⁠—an estimate which he had had cause to modify, but never to change.

Michael lived in a big block of flats near Baker Street, where he maintained a somewhat elaborate establishment for an inspector of police. He had, however, a private income of his own which he had inherited from his maternal grandmother and as he was a man of simple tastes and very few extravagant needs, he was able to live very comfortably indeed. He reached his home a little before eight o’clock and was astonished as he came through the lobby of the flat to meet Beston, his manservant, clad in fine raiment and going forth.

“Hello, Beston, where are you off to?” he asked in surprise.

The man touched his hat cheerfully.

“I am going to the theatre, sir, and thank you very much for the tickets,” he said. “Cook went ten minutes ago and I stayed behind to tidy things up.”

“Oh, cook went ten minutes ago, did she?” said Michael. “That’s good. When did the tickets arrive?”

“About an hour ago, sir, by a district messenger. It was very kind of you to wire to us that you were sending them.”

Michael laughed softly.

“Your surprise at my consideration hurts me, Beston,” he said. “I always do things like that. By the way, did they spell your name correctly in the telegram?”

“I think so, sir,” said the man in surprise, fumbled in his pocket and produced the orange slip.

“I am sending you two tickets for the theatre tonight. May not be home until tomorrow. Pretherston.”

Thus read the wire, which had been handed in at the Strand Office.

Beston sensed some difficulty.

“I hope it’s all right, sir,” he asked anxiously.

“Quite all right,” replied Michael with a cheerful nod. “Don’t wait for me now, I shall not be in very long.”

He mounted the carpeted stairs, opened the door of his flat and closed it carefully behind him. He went straight to his study, pulled down the blinds and drew the thick curtains across the windows, then he turned on the light, took up the telephone and gave a Treasury number.

“Is that Sergeant Pears?” he asked. “Is there a telegram waiting at the Yard for me?”

“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant’s voice.

Michael winked at the wall.

“Do you mind opening and reading it?”

There was a little pause and then the sergeant repeated into the receiver:

“To Inspector Michael Pretherston, Scotland House. Come up by the earliest train. Am staying at Adelphi. T. B.”

“Handed in at Manchester, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant, “at three-fifteen.”

“Is the chief in Manchester?”

“Yes, sir; he went by the morning train.”

“Excellent,” said Michael, “thank you very much, sergeant.”

He hung up the receiver.

This was Kate’s work⁠—the beautiful detail of it, the knowledge she possessed of T. B. Smith’s movement. She had probably sent a man up on the same train with the chief and had given him the telegram in advance, with exact instructions as to the minute it was to be handed in. Yes, it was Kate. Yet (he became uncomfortable at the thought) it was not like her to leave things to chance. How came she to miss him at the Yard? He returned to the telephone and again called up his assistant.

“What time did the telegram arrive?” he asked.

The sergeant’s voice was apologetic.

“I am very sorry, sir, I am afraid it arrived while you were here, this afternoon. It was given to a messenger to take in to you and in some extraordinary way the constable forgot it. I have reprimanded him.”

“That’s all right,” said Michael, relieved.

His relief, curiously founded, he might have found it difficult to explain. It was the relief which the matador feels when he sees the bull, which steps so proudly into the ring, will put up a good fight. It was the relief of the huntsman when a strong fox breaks from covert. He wanted Kate and that extraordinary organization, which he had set himself to conquer, to be at its best that his victory might be the more satisfactory.

He looked at his watch. It was five minutes past eight. He knew that his visitor would give the servants an hour and he must employ that hour profitably. He began to write rapidly on a pad of scribbling paper, tearing off the sheets as fast as he had filled them. He had been working for an hour when he heard a bell tinkle. Someone was at the front door. He switched out the light, walked into the passage (he had already removed his shoes) and listened. Whoever was coming had sent an agent in advance to discover whether the flat was empty. Again the bell rang. Michael made no sign. It rang a third and last time. The detective made his way stealthily to the window and slipped behind the curtains. He had left his study door open, so that he could hear every sound. He had ten minutes to wait before the faint click of the lock told him that the door had been opened. He knew that the visitor would come to the study last, and he proved to be right. Three minutes passed⁠—as near as he could judge⁠—before he caught the flash of a lamp which was directed cautiously to the curtained window. The light passed slowly along the floor until it reached the skirting, travelled round until it found the lower edge of the drawn curtain. Through the slit he had cut in the heavy velvet hangings Michael witnessed the search. Presently the light went out after focusing itself upon the electric switch. There was a click and the room was illuminated.

The girl who stood by the desk was soberly dressed and was apparently in no hurry. She pulled her gloves off slowly, whilst she allowed her eyes to rove over the littered table. Half a dozen sheets of writing attracted her attention and when her gloves were removed she picked the papers up, pulled the big writing chair to the table and sat down to read. She read the notes through carefully and once she smiled. When she had finished she put them down, leaned back in the chair and looked around the room, then,

“Come out, Mike,” she said.

Michael stepped forth without embarrassment.

“I was nearly deceived,” she said, “with your precious account of the happening at Sebo’s and then I realized that this could not have been written more than five minutes before. You forgot to blot the last sheet and the ink is still damp.”

She rubbed her fingers over to prove the fact.

“Why aren’t you in Manchester?” she asked.