章 25: strange phone call
"Not a spot," said Harper disgustedly. "There's millions of finger marks here, but they're all blanks. It looks to me as though Valmon Dain always worked in rubber gloves."
"Now that's dammed odd," said Delbury in a puzzled voice.
"Look! The dead man is wearing rubber gloves."
They gaze at the rubber shod hands and racked their brains to elucidate the new point of conjecture.
"What do you make of it, Mick?" he asked helplessly.
"Never saw such a case for red herrings in all my life," declared the Irishman helpfully. "Everything's right and everything's wrong-----and nothing's right at all, bedad."
Delbury wasn't listening to him. His eyes were fixed in a rigid stare at a point in the wall five feet above the chemical bench..
"Look----What's that?" he queried in a strained voice. "Up there in the wall---look."
Harper was about to jump up on the bench and investigate when a sharp command from Delbury stopped him.
"Don't go anywhere near there," he called. "It may be another one of Dain's cursed Bobby traps. Fetch in that chap Manders."
Manders came in again and Delbury tackled him.
"What's that recess affair up there in that wall?" he demanded.
The valet turned and looked.
"Blest if I know," he said in a puzzled voice. "It looks like a cupboard, doesn't it?".
"so you never noticed it before?"
"Never set eyes on it so far as I know. Well, fancy that now---all the years I've been in and out of this room I never knew but what that wall was solid."
Delbury himself got up on the bench, and with excusable caution, pulled open the door inch by inch. To his unqualified relief nothing happened.
He peeped in. The recess was empty. Except for the shining ends of a few straggling electric leads the cupboard was barren.
"H'M," he grunted. "Some more of his darned mystery." He scratched his head in perplexity. The whole thing was getting a bit beyond him.
"Tell you what Mick," he said, climbing down off the bench.
"I think it's time we started working on a new line. Get the car ready. Our next calm is Tansy the jeweller. We'll get a bunch of evidence there----or bust. This place is giving me the cold horrors. Harper, You'll stay on and take charge while I'm away. No information to anybody, mind. If any reporters come around----Shoot 'em! Don't allow the servants to talk to a soul till I get back." Detective Inspector Delbury turned and followed his second out to the waiting car.
Mercia Lyall opened her eyes to the glorious light of a fresh sunlit morning. The invigorating air of the Northern Heights was blowing merrily in at her casements, and a long bar of warm sunlight fell slanting across her pillow.
It was a beautiful morning, full of the vigour and sweet of life. a morning that was made keenly joyous by the sunny bright health of the wind and the sun.
And yet Mercia opened her eyes to a feeling if uneasiness. There was something sinister, something portentous, in the very feel of the wind, the laughing brightness of the sun.
She lay still; wide awake in a single moment. There was none that deliciously drowsy period of ineffable comfort and langour that comes between sleeping and waking.
Then a sound rang through the stillness---- a sound that startled her so badly that she was half out of the bed with her toes on the floor before she knew she had moved. It was the loud peal of the telephone bell, harsh and strident the silence if the morning. It rang again, continued insistent.
Mercia slipped into a pair of furry bedroom slippers, mattered the complexities of her kimono, and hurried down the stairs. The telephone pealed again, clarion-like in the hush of the morning.
The instrument was in her father's study, a room he used but seldom, preferring the softer luxury of the cushioned lounge or the deep chaired comfort of the smoking room.
She ran to it, her heart pumping uncomfortably as she snatched the receiver off. It was as though her subconscious self sensed even then the first faint whispering of tragedy.
"Yes; who is that?" she called.
"Is that Mr. Lyall-----Mr. Willard Lyall?" The query came in a half hesitation voice, a voice that was marked not so much by an absence of culture as by the definite presence of coarseness. It was uncouth, with a dry, throaty timbre running through it that made it unbelievably unpleasant.
"Yes, this is Mr. Lyall's house," she answered, a little startled at the quality of the voice that inquired for her father and yet in some strange way being prepared for the unusual.
"Mr. Lyall of Greydene Highgate?" asked the voice, anxious to make conviction doubly sure.
"Yes, yes; what is it? What do you want?"
"I want Mr. Lyall. You Ain't him----you are a woman; and I want Mr. Lyall himself."
"But u can take him a message. You surely don't expect Mr. Lyall to be up and about at this unearthly hour in the morning?"
"Lady, this is the fourth time I've been ringing Mr. Lyall up this morning. That's how much I expected him to be up and about!" There was something grimly serious about the sound of that answer. It was more like a warning than a reply.
"The fourth. But why? What is the matter? Who are you!"
"Never mind who I am. you fetch Mr. Lyall to the telephone. The him the gent from Notting Hill wants to talk to him----urgent!"
Mercia made a little gesture of impatience. "I'm quite sure Mr. Lyall will not come down yet," she said. "Furthermore, I am quite competent to convey a message from you to him. Either you must tell me what the matter is or you must ring him again after eight o'clock."
"Who are you lady?"
"I am his daughter."
"Grown up are you? I ain't be rude lady, but I mean are you old enough not to open your mouth when it ought to be kept shut?" The voice now was almost as anxious as Mercia herself.
"I don't in the least know what you are talking about, Mr. Gent from Notting Hill, but if it will easy your mind in any way I can assure you that I am quite safely into the twenties," Mercia answered. "By which you will infer that I am old enough, or at least sensible enough to be not the least bit touchy about my age, even to anonymous strangers."
"Well, look here, miss you seem to be a good sort. will you just tell me this, just to ease my mind like? What I want to know is, is Mr. Lyall at home?"
Mercia crinkled her forehead with a puzzled frown. "Of course he is at home," she said shortly. "I've already told you he isn't up yet."
"Ah, yes, miss. But I mean the other way about. I know he doesn't get up before a gentleman should, as a rule, but what I mean is, did he go to bed at all last night?"
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