The Case of the
TWO PEARL NECKLACES


BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Case of the Musing Diary
Tragedy at Beechcroft
The Paper-Chase Mystery
The Cautley Mystery
The Tall House Myslery
The Westwood Mystery
Death of John Tait
The Upfold Farm Mystery
The Wedding Chest Mystery


A. E. FIELDING
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The Case of the
TWO PEARL NECKLACES
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H. C. KINSEY & COMPANY, INC.
New York
1936


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Copyright. 19)6, by
KINSEY & COMPANY, INC.
Printed in the U. S. A.



Contents
CHAPTER I
A Wedding is Announced
chapter ii
Violet Finch Wears Some Fine Pearls
at a Dance
chapter hi
Pearls can be at once Very Useful
and Very Dangerous
chapter iv
A Marriage Takes Place
chapter v
A Private Investigator is Called In
chapter VI
Arthur Walsh gets a Very Curious
Message, and Scotland Yard is
Summoned to a Murder Case
chapter VII
Chief Inspector Pointer Gets to Work
chapter viii
A Key-Ring is Missed
chapter IX
Pointer Finds the Missing Keys
5


CHAPTER I
A WEDDING IS ANNOUNCED
Arthur Walsh hurried up the steps of Friars
Halt, across the big hall and along a passage to his
father's study. The footman looked after him in
surprise. He had never seen Mr. Arthur in a hurry
before. Then he saw him pause before a bowl of
flowers as though enchanted by their beauty; and
neither had he ever seen him do that before. Arthur
stood so long staring at the delphinium spires that
the footman had perforce to leave him entranced.
But Arthur was not spellbound. Once he cast a
glance at the study door that suggested an inex-
perienced lion tamer about to enter the cage of his
fiercest animal, and by no means liking the prospect.
He was twenty-eight years old, fairly tall, and
had a face that began well in a good forehead, but
ended in a weak chin. Finally, after one more
prolonged stare at the flowers, he opened the door
beside him and went on in. Colonel Walsh sat
looking into the fire, an open letter in his hand.
He had a long thin face with a tightly compressed
mouth and steadfast grey eyes. Taken together,
eyes and mouth gave him a curiously daunting
air. Not to Colonel Walsh did people turn to ask
the way. Not of him would children inquire the
7


8
THE CASE OF THE
time. He had never to suffer from the club bore.
One glance from him, and straggler, child or bore
passed on.
"Gerald is dead," Colonel Walsh said, turning to
face his son. His voice was deep and powerful.
For a second Arthur looked as though he could
not place his brother Gerald. "When did it hap-
pen ?" he asked after a second. "Poor old Gerald!
Where was it?"
"In Smyrna. Circus performance. The roof
crashed in, and Gerald was among the dead. His
passport gave his name, and Raeburn—who's
consul there—identified the body."
Colonel Walsh spoke abruptly. Looking into
Arthur's face, it came to him with a sudden and
quite unexpected wrench that Gerald, the brilliant
though unreliable, was dead, and that Arthur, the
dull one, alone remained to him. For he had but
the two sons.
"It seems only yesterday that he walked through
that door laughing and swinging his cap," Arthur
said, drawing a deep breath.
A spasm crossed his father's face.
"He lied to me," he said evenly, but with a
suggestion in his low tone of answering some
accusation. "Lied! He knew that is the one
thing I won't stand, yet he did it. You owned up.
He lied!" He drew a difficult breath as he added:
"Gerald was given to lying."
Arthur nodded. Gerald was. As a rule he had
done it well, but on the occasion in question his


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 9
father had had inside knowledge, and so Gerald
had been turned adrift with his clothes and a
hundred pounds in money. That had been nearly
three years ago. And now Gerald was dead . . .!
Arthur looked almost curiously at his father. The
Colonel had clearly had a painful shock. One
wouldn't have thought he would have cared!
"I came in to tell you something, Pater," Arthur
said abruptly. "I'm afraid it's rather an inoppor-
tune moment. . . ."
Colonel Walsh straightened up, looking inquiringly
at him, his formidable, narrow face as hawk-like
as usual. "Well?"
His son looked at him with something harder
in his eye than one might have expected.
"I'm going to be married."
"And who is the lady?" Colonel Walsh leant
forward sharply. One would say that he guessed
the name, or believed that he did.
"You've never met her, I think. Her name is
Violet Finch."
His father's face became blank. Colonel Walsh
had felt certain that now that Ann Lovelace was
back in England, and unmarried, Arthur would try
his luck once again—and this time with success.
He had assumed that this would be the announce-
ment. But a Violet Finch . . .?
"And her people arc?" inquired Colonel Walsh.
"Nothing much," Arthur gave a little depre-
catory smile. "Her father was a barrister. He's
dead. Her mother "He hesitated.


10
THE CASE OF THE
"She's not the Mrs. Finch surely?" the Colonel
interposed.
"I really can't possibly say whom you mean by
that," was the acid retort. "Violet's mother is a
lady who, left quite penniless, started some night-
clubs which for a time succeeded very well. And
therefore made her a lot of money—and enemies."
Colonel Walsh was grimly silent. So it was the
Mrs. Finch! His mouth was tighter lipped than
usual. So tight that at a glance it looked as though
he had only one hp.
"You'll like Violet, Pater. She's as straight as
—as you are yourself. Outspoken—forthright—not
at all a woman of the world; but she has a vitality
that I envy!" Arthur hurried on.
"That's to the good," the Colonel commented
"Well, Arthur, I won't pretend that I would not
have been pleased if it had been some one your
aunt and I know, whose people we know; but
any one you love will receive the welcome due to
my son's wife. When is the wedding to be?"
"Next month. I don't want a long engagement,
and Violet isn't very happy at home. She's not in
the least a cabaret girl, sir. You don't need to be
afraid of that."
"How did you come to meet her? " Colonel Walsh
asked.
"At one of the Little Owls." Those were Mrs.
Finch's famous night-clubs. "She looked such a
country girl, such a fish out of water, that I won-
dered to see her there. ... I don't say I wasn't


12
THE CASE OF THE
Colonel Walsh made a gesture. "I appreciate
the way you've kept nothing back about your
future wife. If only Gerald had realised that I'll
overlook anything but deception, he would probably
be here alive to-day—not killed in an Asia Minor
circus."
Arthur nodded. He said nothing. Gerald had
been "Gerald." Handsome, debonair, careless of
money, and of whether what he said tallied with
facts or not. The end had been inevitable, as he
had often warned Gerald that it must be.
When he was alone, the Colonel sat on. his sad
thoughts with Gerald rather than with Arthur.
His sister, Lady Monkhouse, found him still there,
staring into the fire, his pipe practically out. She
had not yet learnt Arthur's news. Arthur had
always been her favourite, but she heard of his
engagement with almost comic fury.
"Arthur! Arthur! to be caught by the daughter
of that dreadful woman!" She was inconsolable.
"Oh, I saw her once; great big, bouncing, noisy
bold-eyed creature! If only Ann Lovelace had
taken him, when he was head over ears in love
with her."
"In those days there was Gerald," Colonel Walsh
said in a level voice. "Arthur was the younger
son—then."
Lady Monkhouse was shocked. Truths often had
that effect on her.
"Ann would have been a wonderful wife for
Arthur," she went on, "and he adored her. . . ."


14 THE CASE OF THE
mistaken. He would not like to think her young
life hurt beneath his roof. . . .
Arthur finally stalked away in a fine temper,
leaving his aunt looking rather ill-at-ease. She had
spoken very hastily . . . she had said some things
anent Violet Vinch. and the family of Finch that
might well have been put differently; and some
that were best not put at all.
"I had no idea you knew so much about night-
clubs," her brother remarked dryly.
Colonel Walsh had the masculine idea that family
plain speaking was his own prerogative, that as
long as he did not swear at things no one else
should do so. He never could understand why a
king of Israel needed to get a prophet to curse the
people for him. . . . That always seemed to him
one of the few things a man should do for himself,
if done at all.
"Oh, I've been to the Little Owls. A couple of
years back every one went. That Finch woman
made a sinful amount of money out of it. Simply
incredible profits! Thousands there every night.
. . . They gambled for enormous stakes upstairs
in her private flat, it was whispered. Now I hear
that the place is running down as speedily as it
shot up. And to think that Arthur—of all young
men! I thought he, at least, was sensible!"
Walsh winced. She was referring obliquely to
Gerald, and somehow—just now—it hurt.
"Look here, Kitty," Lady Monkhouse wound
up. "You're going to town for a week—to get


l6 THE CASE OF THE
making love, and even committing murders with
such energy and dash. She shot a glance at Ronald
Mills beside her; it had been his idea that in lieu
of another dance they should watch the Show
for a while. He caught her eye and followed her
back into the ballroom.
"What do you think of them, Miss Walsh?
Good, eh?"
Ronald Mills always spoke in a loud voice as
though any one, near or far, must be interested in
bis opinions, his questions, his lightest utterance.
He was a long, thin man with a long, thin face,
long, thin hps, long, thin teeth, and a very cynical
smile. Well turned out, he always slouched,
whether walking or sitting, and whenever possible
had a cigarette dangling from his lip.
In age he looked around thirty, but an extremely
ripe thirty. His voice was unexpectedly big and
booming.
She did not reply. What did she think of them?
"You seen them, Walsh?" Mills called to her
cousin, as the latter passed them with his fiancee.
They stopped at the question and came towards
Kitty. Arthur's blue eyes were twinkling like a
mischievous schoolboy's below the sandy eyebrows
that seemed to begin indefinitely nowhere and end
vaguely nowhere—like his chin.
"Yes, funny show. Clever, and all that. . . ."
"Did you like them ?" Mills asked carelessly.
"I dunno. What did you think of them, Vi?"
"Lousy," came the instant answer, as Miss


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 17
Finch surveyed herself complacently over Arthur's
shoulder in a wall-mirror. Afterwards, Kitty thought
that the two ropes of pearls around Violet's throat
should have been rubies, like drops of blood, so
singular and so sinister a part did they play in
the tragedy that followed. Violet Finch was hand-
some, in a heavy way. She had a masterful eye, but
she was looking her flamboyant best to-night.
"I didn't care much for them, either," echoed
Arthur. And Mills laughed.
Mrs. Finch came up. She had married a man
called Gray, a year ago, but she remained Mrs.
Finch to every one but the registrar. She was a
little woman with deep-set eyes that were far too
bright and unwinking. She was very plain, and
used no make-up. Her dress was expensive enough,
but carelessly put on. Her hands were restless,
always fingering things on herself or on anything
near her. She looked as though possessed of bound-
less determination and driving power.
"I thought them positively frightening," she
said, joining in the talk, "actually sinister. I
shouldn't like to be jerked about by a string, would
you, Artie?" She laughed at her own words, and
Mrs. Finch-Gray was more than plain, she was
an ugly woman when she laughed. Her sharp
chin poked forward, -her mouth looked loose and
frog-like.
Kitty was claimed for the dance and moved away.
Arthur shook his head vaguely. "Depends," he
said cautiously.


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 19
and your marionettes! If it had been any one but
Arthur he might have turned nasty!"
"And that's the thanks I get, is it ?" Mrs. Finch
demanded in a fierce whisper, as she thrust her face
almost into her daughter's.
"I suppose you think you could have brought it
off by yourself! It would be just like your conceit!
No, no, my fine lady! It's your mother who's put
you where you are, and don't you forget it!"
"You don't!" came from Violet, "and a nice
fat sum of money you managed to borrow on the
strength of my engagement to a rich man. Don't
you suppose I know that?"
"And why not?" whispered her mother again.
Then she fell silent, a tired look coming over her
face. "And not a penny of it that I can stick to
—yet," she went on. "These damned debts!
They're enough to break down a horse. Debts
everywhere, and you spending money like water.
Who's to pay for that new car of yours?"
"Oh, I dunno," Violet said indifferently. "What
about your new Daimler?"
"I only 'bought' that for this dance!" Mrs.
Finch spoke meaningly and both women laughed
outright. "I don't want dear Artie to smell a rat,
and know just how deeply in the soup we really
are, or would be, but for my having handled him
just the way I did. The Daimler will be taken
back to-morrow. It's all arranged. But I want a
private word with you, Vi." Taking a key from
her jewelled bag, she led her daughter into an empty


20
THE CASE OF THE
card-room which she unlocked, and closed the door,
standing against it.
"That sapphire pendant business was silly," she
said then. "Luckily I made you find it before
things got serious." Her words were light, but her
eyes glittered. "By God!" She spoke with a
sudden outflaming of fury. "If you think I've
climbed up almost into safety to let you wreck me
on its threshold, you don't know me even yet, my
girl!" Her face was a daunting revelation of
what she might be capable. Violet Finch stared at
it in real fear. Then the face changed. Her mother
hung up the curtains again, as it were, and spoke
smoothly. "That aunt of his would be only too
glad to ferret out anything against you."
"She can't !" Violet said, chin in air.
"No, I've seen to that," her mother retorted.
"But you would have made a fool of yourself over
Ronald Mills, if I hadn't stopped you."
"That's past," Violet said sullenly, picking up
a paper from the table beside her.
"To go back, now, to the pendant," Mrs. Finch
continued. "If I ever catch you trying games of
that kind again before you're safely married to
Arthur, you'll be sorry for yourself!" Again that
look of latent ferocity swept up for a second,
glowed like a red danger signal, and then dropped
out of sight.
"Oh, all right!" Violet said sullenly. And then
in a tone of intense surprise: "But what's my
name doing here, on this paper?"


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 21
Mrs. Finch would have snatched it from her,
but in physical strength Violet was her mother's
superior.
"Why, it's something to do with my death!"
She stared blankly at the paper in her hands.
"Oh, that!" Mrs. Finch said casually. "You
knew, months ago, that I was going to sell the
Reversion to the thousand your father left you
a life interest in, which I bought from you last
year. Well, I'm selling it to Gray." She and Violet
always referred to her present husband by his sur-
name. "For I must scrape every possible farthing
together just now. What are you fussing about?"
"I'm not fussing—I'm asking." Violet laid the
paper down again as she spoke. "What a funny
thing to be doing to-night!"
"My affairs come up for hearing in the Bank-
ruptcy Court to-morrow," her mother replied with
really amazing indifference. "And I want to get
rid of all I can to Gray first." She did not add
that that was precisely why she had married again.
Violet knew as much. So did Henry Gray.
"Well, it's not likely to do Gray much good,"
Violet laughed. After all, she was too well satisfied
to-night to be vexed for long. "I feel as though
I should live for another century." And before
going back to the ballroom she paused to adjust the
pearls afresh.
"They're to be mine," her mother said with a
covetous look at their lustre.
"No, they're to be heirlooms, Arthur says.


22
THE CASE OF THE
That's why he doesn't give them outright to me,"
Violet grumbled.
"I'll have a talk with him about them. 'Heir-
looms,' indeed!" Mrs. Finch snorted.
"You'll find out that there's a stone wall in
Arthur that you can't always climb over, mother.
Even I can't," warned Violet as she opened the
door again and returned to the dancing.
Over and over she fingered the superb pearls
around her throat. She lifted her dark head still
more proudly, and she had an arrogant carriage
at all times. There were plenty of young women
in the room, many of them prettier, most of them
better born. But it was she, Violet Finch, who
had captured the rich prize, Arthur Walsh.
Take Ann Lovelace, for instance, floating by at
that minute in one of the newest dances. She
made you feel as though your smartest clothes came
from Woolworth's, yet she hadn't been able to get
Arthur away, though she had tried hard enough.
Ann raised her eyes as she was passing, and
paused a moment. They were light grey eyes, very
clear and tranquil.
"How well you're looking to-night, Violet," she
said kindly. "Of course, those exquisite pearls
are a joy in themselves, but it isn't only the
pearls, is it?" she murmured with a smile of
comprehension.
Ann had a heart-shaped face, beautifully featured,
and framed in light golden hair. She was a niece of
the Duchess of Axminster—a favourite niece, it


24 THE CASE OF THE
across at Ann's lovely figure in its dress of silver
and jade.
"I do," Kitty said frankly. "She never gives
herself away; and I hate people who never give
themselves away!" She made a little face at him
as she changed the subject. "I suppose there's
no chance of Aunt Caroline altering her mind and
turning up?" she queried as she caught sight of
her aunt's intimate friend coming towards them.
Colonel Walsh shook his head. His sister had
refused to come. The Colonel regretted the engage-
ment, too. But he was no tyrant, though he had
cut his eldest son off with a shilling—or, to be
strictly accurate, with a hundred pounds.
"Your aunt fears that Arthur's making a sad
mistake. So does Ambrose. So do I. But Arthur's
been frank and straightforward about the whole
thing, so I don't intend to interfere."
Colonel Walsh and Kitty were close confidantes.
"What's the mother like?" he asked now,
glancing that way. "Looks like a respectable
elderly governess. But what's she really like?"
"I detested her when I spent those three days
with her, you know—when the flat had to have a
new system of lighting put in."
The Colonel nodded.
"Do you mean she was offensive?" He bristled.
"Oh, dear, no! On the contrary. She was
awfully pleasant to me. But I don't think I've ever
disliked any one quite so much without any
reason."


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 25
"Except Ann!" he chaffed back.
"Ann!" she said under her breath. "Violet
Finch mayn't be all you would like Arthur's wife
to be," she continued softly, "but she's ever so
much better than Ann Lovelace. Ann's selfish.
She has a horrid temper. You remember that we
were at Bedington together, she and I. Oh, yes,
she was 'Head Girl' in her last year. But none
the less there were plenty of others who felt just
as I did. Ann always intended to be ' Head Girl,'
and so, of course, she pulled it off."
"I think your aunt hopes she will still draw
Arthur away from Violet Finch."
"Not a chance!" Kitty said at once.
"Arthur adores Violet. Absolutely!" There was
a something in her young voice that made her
uncle look away. It sounded like very far-off,
very repressed pain.
"Anyway, those pearls that Ann helped her
choose look superb ones," the Colonel said hurriedly.
"On loan to-night, I take it, as they're to be his
wedding present?"
"Yes, they're lent to her till then. She asked
Ann to help her choose them." Kitty did not add
that the two strings of pearls in question had been
a staggering extravagance, even for so rich a lover
as was Arthur Walsh.
Lady Norton came up to them just then. She
was the close friend of her aunt whom Kitty had
noticed a few moments before.
The Colonel soon went back to the card tables


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 27
"And do you also like her mother ?" demanded
Lady Norton sarcastically.
Kitty was silent.
"I wonder what Ann's mother, Lady Rosemary,
would say about her," Lady Norton went on
meditatively—and meaningly. "She was, you
know, the cause of Ann's step-brother shooting
himself. Those night-clubs of hers were sinks of
iniquity. I wanted to go to one, out of curiosity.
But we were stationed at Malta while they were
the rage. And now, of course, they've gone out
completely. I hear that Mrs. Finch won't have a
bean left when they're finally wound up." Lady
Norton added with relish.
Kitty fidgeted silently. She did not care to be
connected even distantly with Mrs. Finch. And,
as another partner came up to release her, she
took good care to keep away from her aunt's friends
for the rest of the evening.


28
THE CASE OF THE
CHAPTER III
PEARLS CAN BE AT ONCE VERY USEFUL
AND VERY DANGEROUS
On the following evening Violet was playing bridge
at Colonel Walsh's house in Grosvenor Square. He
was presenting the house to Arthur as a wedding
gift, together with a separate fund for its main-
tenance. Violet was very much to the fore on this
occasion. A trifle self-assertive, and more than a
trifle dictatorial.
But Arthur looked delighted to be allowed to
breathe the same air as his divinity. He played
badly. Violet, as always, played extremely well,
and won quite a nice little sum from Ann Lovelace
and her partner.
Ann handed over a couple of notes with a smile.
"Nothing can resist you to-night, Violet. You
ought to be at Grayham's," she said a little later,
when Violet happened to be alone with her, making
up in the cloakroom. Ann stretched out a lovely
hand and laid a caressing finger-tip for a second
on one of the pearls as they swung towards her at *
some movement of their wearer's.
"Where's that?" Violet asked.
"He's a man from South Africa. He has a flat
close by, and lets a few friends who, like himself,


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
29
only enjoy high pJay, drop in for it whenever they
feel inclined. Care to have a look in there? We'll
slip away for half an hour."
They got their wraps, and sped quietly down-
stairs.
A word to her chauffeur, and Ann's car drew up
at a house of flats in Park Lane. "Grayham," was
murmured to the night porter on duty, and they
were shown to a lift. Upstairs, on the top floor,
their guide rang a certain bell and then disappeared.
The door was opened by a footman who evidently
recognised Ann, for he led them down a short,
broad corridor and opened a door at the end. The
two stepped into a large, closely-curtained room
in which chemin de fer and baccarat were in full
swing.
There were no introductions. A tall, alert-faced
man, rather of the army type, just glanced up,
bowed to Ann, and went on dealing. No one else
looked up at all.
Ann steered Violet to a small table in a bay
window presided over by a very tall, very broad-
shouldered, very muscular-looking servant.
"You take as many cardboard counters as you
like," she explained lightly. "The man stamps
your name on each, for they're as good as notes,
and any which you don't use you yourself tear up.
It's only the ones you hand over that count as
actual money. Those of this colour represent each
five pounds; those, ten; those, fifty; those, one
hundred. One-pound tokens? Oh, those lilac-


30
THE CASE OF THE
coloured? But, of course, they're very seldom
used here."
Violet helped herself well. She was feeling rich
to-night. She would be married this time next
week, and Arthur had had very generous settle-
ments drawn up. She would be a very wealthy
woman in a few days now. And, although Arthur's
solicitors had stipulated in the settlements that he
would not be responsible for any debts incurred
by her before their marriage, Violet could smile
at the stipulation. He was her abject slave, and he
would remain so, she knew.
She glanced at the clock. It was just past mid-
night as she seated herself at the baccarat table.
At first her luck was in. But it deserted her pre-
sently. By that time it was three o'clock in the
morning, and Ann and she must return. Violet,
however, found this easier said than done. Mr.
Grayham and a couple of " friends" of his, at least,
he called them so, moved incessantly to and fro,
entering in their note-books how much each depart-
ing visitor owed, or was owed. Paying or receiving,
accordingly, as swiftly as bank clerks. Mr. Grayham
now came over to Violet, to whom he was intro-
duced by Ann. Smiling genially, he said how much
he regretted that Miss Finch's first visit had resulted
in "a deficit. Just a little matter of only four
hundred and seventy-five pounds, however.
"A—a cheque "Violet said hastily—ab-
ruptly. "I'll draw you a cheque for it."
"Delighted," murmured her host. "In this side-


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
31
room." He held open its door and the three stepped
in. Shutting the door behind him, he motioned
the two young women to a writing-table and com-
fortable arm-chairs.
"I'll leave you while you draw it," he murmured.
Then he added as in afterthought, "By the way,
I hope you don't mind, but as this is your guest's
first visit, Miss Lovelace, will you write me a line
as sponsor for the cheque? You know our few
rules."
"Certainly," Ann replied carelessly, and Mr.
Grayham left them.
Ann adjusted the pale pastel flowers that formed
one of her shoulder straps, and with which her
cloak of silver cloth seemed lined. Violet drew a
deep breath as she picked up a pen.
"Of course, I can't guarantee your cheque
without any security for it," Ann said smilingly.
"But if you're in a tight hole for the moment I'll
lend you the money with pleasure."
"Oh, will you?" Violet's tone was effusively
grateful.
"Certainly. On the shorter of your two pearl
necklaces so gorgeously displayed around your
pretty throat. As I helped you choose it, I don't
need to have it valued first. Just over a thousand
pounds Arthur paid for it, I know. You're a lucky
girl, Violet. Well, would you like me to give Gray-
ham my cheque instead of drawing one yourself?"
"Oh, thanks ever so!" Violet unfastened the
string of lovely pearls in question and stood playing


32
THE CASE OF THE
with it, running the pearls fondly through her
well-manicured rather thick fingers, while Ann,
picking up a pen, drew her cheque for the four
hundred and seventy-five pounds. But, as Violet
handed the pearls to her, Ann asked her to sit
down again for a moment more.
"You must give me a line, you know, to say
that the pearls are one of the two strings I saw
bought, the 'Queen Charlotte's pearls,' as they
were called by the jeweller; and a further line to
say that they are your own property, that you
have a perfect right to raise a loan on them, and
that you will redeem them within a month after
your marriage to Arthur, at latest."
"But surely all that's quite unnecessary between
friends, as we are," Violet exclaimed, with a confi-
dent smile.
"Absolutely necessary," was the cool and quite
definite reply. "To me, at least."
Violet met Ann's firm look and capitulated,
though with an inward curse. She wrote the words
dictated, signed the paper, handed it and the
pearls to Ann, and received in return the cheque;
then they stepped back into the other room. Mr.
Grayham seemed to have eyes in the back of his
head. He left one of his friends to continue paying
out notes, and was at their side in a moment.
Violet handed him Ann's cheque.
"Miss Finch will settle with me," Ann said lightly.
Grayham gave her a receipt, and saw them to
the door, all smiles and pleasant speeches.


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 33
At eleven next morning, Arthur was told that
Miss Lovelace and Miss Walsh had called and would
like to see him.
The drawing-room in Grosvenor Square looked
very pleasant that sunny morning, but it was un-
mistakably the drawing-room of a bachelor—or a
widower. Arthur's mother had died at his birth.
"Kitty, what's the matter?" Arthur began,
before he was well into the room.
Kitty shook her head. She looked uneasy.
"Don't ask me. This is Ann's show. She routed
me out this morning and said I must come along.
That it was a family matter—a ' Walsh ' matter."
Ann Lovelace—dressed in cool-looking muslin
and a large, shady black hat—hesitated a moment
perceptibly. Her long gloves, matching her bag
and shoes, were black, and she stood smoothing
them along her slender arms before she spoke.
"It's a very serious matter, I fear," she said at
length, hesitantly. "And I hate to speak of it,
Arthur. Believe me, I do, indeed, but I can't help
myself. It's concerned with Violet Finch."
"Then she ought to be present," Kitty broke
in hotly.
Ann silenced her with a look—calm, but authorita-
tive. "Not at all! On the contrary, we must first
decide what is best to be done for all sakes. She
borrowed close on five hundred pounds from me
last night. Oh "in reply to a quick forward
step on Arthur's part. "It's not the money that
troubles me! But she asked me to lend it to her


34 THE CASE OF THE
on the security of one of those pearl necklaces you
had given her. One of the 'Queen Charlotte's'
necklaces. I agreed, and suggested the smaller
one." She paused.
"Well ?" snapped Arthur. His face had flushed
deeply. Even the whites of his eyes were suffused.
Kitty was speechless. What was coming? If
she knew Ann—and she did—it would be some-
thing very clever—and very unpleasant for Violet
Finch. For that Ann Lovelace was no friend of
Arthur's fiancee, Kitty was convinced.
With great deliberation Ann undid her black
shopping bag with its chased silver mount to let
her slender, coral-nailed fingers extract a string
of pearls and a sheet of note-paper. "Here is what
she wrote, assuring me that these pearls are her
own property, and that she has therefore a perfect
right to raise a loan on them. Well, by merest
chance, as it happens, I heard this morning that
the pearls are not at all Violet's as yet. That they
are only to become her own on her wedding day;
and that even then they are to be family heirlooms.
Which means, of course, that she had absolutely
no right whatever to pledge them to me for the
requested loan."
"I will make that pledge good," Arthur declared
instantly and stiffly; and Kitty could have clapped
him on the shoulder for the championship, for his
deep and loyal anger at the aspersion against
Violet.
"Yes, I don't doubt that you would," Ann said


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 35
gently. "But I don't see how we're going to get
around a startling difficulty in the way. These
pearls aren't real. This is a necklace of imitation
pearls."
"Nonsense !" Arthur exclaimed rudely, furiously,
while Kitty caught her breath in, aghast.
Violet had certainly had no shadow of right to
allege—as she had in that paper; it lay on the
table and Kitty was reading it—that she owned
the pearls; but that was as nothing to this dreadful
rider. In a few days the pearls given to Violet
provisionally were to be truly her own, as Arthur's
wedding gift, although to be held as an heirloom.
But if there were any reality in Ann's
accusation!
"You're talking nonsense, and spiteful non-
sense!" Arthur went on still more roughly. "Of
course these are the pearls I bought as part of
my wedding gift."
He reached out to seize them, but in a twinkling
Ann had slipped the string over her head and down
inside her frock. She had on an ostrich-feather boa,
and it covered the clasp.
"It's a He!" Arthur exclaimed with clenching
teeth, looking as though he could have struck
Violet's accuser.
"Arthur!" Ann said quietly, "I think you're
growing a bit Finchy yourself. J don't tell lies,
nor cheat, nor steal. For that so-called ' loan ' was
stolen from me. I've asked Violet to meet me
here without fail; and, as I hear some car driving


36 THE CASE OF THE
up in a great hurry, it's probably hers. Oh, I
haven't any wish to take her character away behind
her back!" she finished with an open sneer. "I
tried to get the Colonel here, too; but he couldn't
come."
The rage in Arthur's face again did Kitty good
to see. But its occasion was tragic. If Ann's charge
had any foundation . . . ! Could it possibly have
any? Ann was a serpent. . . . Guile was her
positive genius. . . .
Quick and not overlight feet could now be heard
coming up the stairs, and Violet was shown in.
Was it that Kitty's eye was distorted by the pre-
vious scene? Or did Violet usually dress with
greater care? Look less—well, yes, less common?
"What's it all about ?" Violet demanded, as she
entered, her colour mounting and then paling
sickeningly as she saw Ann Lovelace. Kitty did
not like that whitening face.
"Miss Finch, you got me to lend you close on
five hundred pounds on a sham security," Ann said
clearly and haughtily. "These aren't pearls at all.
They're wax beads."
Kitty gave a sort of cry at this, and snatched in
her turn at the string around Ann's neck which
the wearer was touching scornfully.
"You liar! Or you've changed them!" Violet
said hoarsely. And, as she heard her, a great relief
came to Kitty. Of course! Ann had dug a pit,
and was now about to fall into it herself. Kitty
had never before known Ann to go anything like


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
37
as far as this. But, given sufficient motive—and
cover—there was nothing sinister of which she
believed her incapable.
"Ah!" came from Arthur. And his tone of
relief told Kitty how similarly he had been feeling.
"Ah, I might have thought of that!"
"Instead of believing her lies against me!"
stormed Violet.
"I didn't believe them, darling," he said swiftly.
"But neither did I dream of such an explanation."
"Not being an absolute fool, you didn't," Ann
interrupted, for hate was rising above dignified
coolness. "How could I have had pearls copied
which were not in my possession? If you weigh
this string and the real one—if you even lay them
side by side—you'll find them apparently identical.
I've been to Rinks' this morning with that string,
and they looked up their books."
Here Violet grew abusive, shrilling out her
version of the affair. On Ann's insistence she had
handed her the real pearls last night and regretted
it bitterly enough at the time. She clutched Arthur's
arm and assured him that she would never, never,
never touch a gambling card again. She shrieked
at Ann's perfidy in having taken her to a private
gambling place for her own ends.
Kitty had never admired Arthur so much as
now. It was both pain and pleasure to see how his
hand covered Violet's, how he held her close, how
he soothed and tried to quiet her hysterical rage.
And in the end Ann was beaten. Kitty had


38 THE CASE OF THE
never hoped for this. But Arthur refused to listen
to her, and as Ann, forgetting other things for the
moment, leant far forward to assure Arthur that
he was making the mistake of his life in not believing
her, the beads swung free from her hands, and in a
second, with a swiftness and a force that delighted
Kitty, though it startled her, Violet had grabbed
them, tugged the string in two, though it was
strongly knotted between each pearl, and thrust
them into the little silk handbag that she clutched
tightly under her arm.
For a second Kitty thought Ann would actually
spring at the other girl. But her self-control held.
Instead, she gave Violet a look of such real and
utter contempt that Kitty's faith wavered, gave
Arthur its mate, and then, head high, would have
left the room had not Arthur placed himself with
his back to the door to prevent it.
"No, you can't leave like that, Ann," he said,
and spoke in measured tones. "Not until you
fully realise that if one word of these false accusa-
tions of yours get about I shall bring an action for
libel—or rather my wife will."
Ann looked about her for the paper that had
lain on the table. It, too, was gone—into Arthur
Walsh's pocket!
"You have no proofs!" His flaming eyes
burnt out of his deeply-flushed face as he spoke.
He was in a rage of which Kitty had never thought
him capable.
"Here is my cheque for your loan. I insist on


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
39
your taking it. Violet regrets the whole transaction
deeply. That, instead of coming to me, she borrowed
from you. But your tale about her having got the
loan from you on imitation pearls "His teeth
clicked together audibly. The muscles on his
cheeks bulged for a second. Again Kitty felt that
the natural man would have liked to hit out at
Ann, standing quite composedly, though very
white, before him.
For a second they stood face to face, then she
made a gesture with her hand, motioning him to
step out of her way. But he held his ground.
"I must have your promise, Ann, to keep absolute
silence about this whole scene and affair," he per-
sisted. "You thought you could disgrace Violet.
You planned it all with devilish cleverness. But
it won't work. I believe she speaks the truth,
and I don't believe that you do, about the whole
miserable matter."
"Yet you carefully pocket the paper she signed?"
Ann's voice was contemptuous.
He nodded.
"And she broke and pocketed the string of
alleged pearls!"
For a second Ann's self-control shook again,
but she said no more, only stood a moment
with head bent. Then she raised it to add
quietly:
"I thought you were making a dreadful mistake.
But it seems that it was / who made one. I see
now that you and Miss Finch are well matched.


40 THE CASE OF THE
As for your cheque repaying me, I accept it. I
have no intention whatever—though she had—of
making your fiancee a present of my loan." Her
tone was steel. Then she stopped herself and with
a final gesture of utter scorn for both, passed
through the door which he now held open for her
departure.
"Darling!" Violet flung her arms around
Arthur's neck. "My own darling! That hateful
creature! What awful lies! Oh, take me away,
where I shall never meet her again I"
"My own Violet!" Arthur said tenderly. "I'll
take you home at once. Forget the whole spiteful
fiasco! But what about you, Kit? Will you
come, too?"
Kitty, however, promptly said she needed a
walk. And she did. A silent, almost forgotten
spectator of the drama, she felt her brain spinning
as she recalled it. What would her uncle do?
Would he try to stop the marriage by cutting off
Arthur's hugely increased marriage allowance and
revoking his gift of the capital involved? As well
as that of the Town house? Kitty wondered sadly
if a struggle were coming between the Colonel and
this his second and only surviving son? For
Arthur would not give Violet up—of that Kitty
now felt sure. But what would her uncle's attitude
be? He was a broad-minded man, with but one
detestation—personal deceit, and especially of a
lie to him. That had cost him Gerald. Was it now
—through Violet Finch—to cost him Arthur? For


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 41
Violet had set it down in black and white that the
pledged pearls were her actual property. . . .
Kitty thought that Violet might have considered
that a very trifling inaccuracy; but to her uncle
there was no such thing as a "trifling" untruth.
And, apart from that, even for Violet Finch it
was surely no mere inaccuracy to say that wax
imitations were real pearls, and to borrow a con-
siderable sum of money on them. . . . Kitty felt
that she must get some clear idea of what had
really happened. She could not discuss it with her
uncle. Arthur might, but Kitty carried no guns
that could cope with her uncle's. Then she be-
thought herself of Ambrose Walsh, her cousin and
Arthur's.
Ambrose Walsh was a priest. He was only a
little older than Arthur himself, but brilliant, even
as a boy. You never could deceive Ambrose in the
old days; and he was hardly likely to have grown
less clear-sighted with the years. He was home,
from a leper station, on sick leave, which he was
using to write a book. His few books were by way
of being literary landmarks.
Kitty had always liked Ambrose. Fearless,
honest, by character he might have been Colonel
Walsh's son instead of his nephew. She would try
for an interview with him in private. She had
better telephone first and find out if he could
see her. For Father Walsh was an important
person. The lay brother who answered the telephone
asked her name. He told her that Father Walsh


42 THE CASE OF THE
was engaged for the moment and had an appoint-
ment for the next hour, but if Miss Walsh could
come then . . . ? Kitty could and would. She felt
chilled at the thought of even the hour's delay,
and half regretted the impulse that had made her
ring her cousin up. But, having done so, she must
keep the appointment.
CHAPTER IV
A MARRIAGE TAKES PLACE
Kitty was before her time at the Priest's House in
Islington. She was shown into a very bare little
waiting-room. Three doors opened out of it. One
was Ambrose Walsh's sitting-room, and she heard
voices in conversation within it. Kitty stiffened,
for one voice was Ann's. Well, she might have
known it. Ambrose had been Ann's confessor for
a few months. Ann would be sure to want to get
her story in first. Very likely she was even enlisting
Ambrose's help to give the Colonel her version of
what had happened. What had happened? Kitty
asked herself again. Who had been lying . . .?
Something about Ann's exit had been very telling.
. . . And, though it seemed incredible that Violet
should have done such a thing, yet how had the
pearls been imitated?
But against those doubts rose her old well-founded


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
43
distrust of Ann Lovelace. Ann of the quiet voice
and effective manner, the cool calm eyes, the subtle
brain. Kitty had felt quite certain that Ann meant
to get triumphantly between Arthur and Violet
Finch, that she had secretly tried hard to do this
during the week they had all spent together at the
Walsh's place in the country.
For when Arthur wrote that he was bringing his
fiancee down for a week's visit, his aunt had promptly
asked Ann to come down, too. Ann, with whom
Arthur had been so madly in love, in the days
when Gerald was still at home. Handsome, careless,
undependable Gerald. The days when Arthur,
though well off, was still only the younger son.
There was no entail in the family. The Colonel
could leave his really big fortune as he liked, but
it was natural to expect that the elder would get
the lion's share. Also, Ann, at that time, was all
out to marry Lord Wilverstone. But there, too,
she failed. Lord Wilverstone married an old love
of his, despite Ann's cleverest counter-diplomacy.
Kitty happened to know, however, that Ann had
nearly succeeded there.
Again her thoughts returned, now, to her present
problem, as she distantly heard the sound of Ann
Lovelace's quiet but "carrying" voice, speaking
evidently with what, for Ann, amounted to vehe-
mence. Nor were the sounds misleading. For,
inside, Father Ambrose and Ann were facing each
other dynamically at the two ends of his mantelshelf.
The Reverend Ambrose Walsh was solidly built,


44
THE CASE OF THE
physically, and something about his face, with its
strongly-marked features, suggested a character
also firmly built. Pale of face, with a beak of a
nose, a flexible, long upper lip and firm jaw—his
brilliant and keenly-penetrating eyes were fastened
searchingly on his visitor's.
"It's a bad, sad business," he said regretfully
when she stepped speaking. His own voice had
irrepressible warm undertones. It suggested sub-
dued but strong passions underneath. Just as his
face did. "A very bad, very sad business," he
repeated, half to himself. "But if it breaks his
engagement to such a character it may prove a
blessing to him yet."
"It won't break it!" Ann said decisively.
"Nothing can do that. It's as if she had Arthur
under a witch's spell."
"I wonder what his father, my uncle, will say,"
murmured Ambrose Walsh reflectively.
"Oh, Arthur will swear to him by all his gods
that Violet's an innocent dove, that it's I, not she,
that is the guilty one."
A very penetrating glance flashed for a second
from Father Ambrose's eyes, but Ann's were
fastened on her gloves, as she wrinkled and smoothed
their gauntlets. "He once trusted and liked me,"
she continued composedly; "but Violet Finch
holds him, as I said, just as though he were under
some spell. He can't seem to see or hear the
truth, where she's concerned. You met her, I
remember, one afternoon down at Friar's Halt.


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 47
authority—" stand aside! Have nothing to do
with the woman or the affair of her pearls. It is
just possible that Providence may be going to
take a hand—to save Arthur from damnation."
"Marriage with Violet Finch doesn't mean
damnation—necessarily," she protested indignantly.
"I wish, of course, that she were one of us. But
she may come to be—given time and fair play."
Ambrose looked very much the priest. His face
stiffened, his look grew inscrutable. He was clearly
not taken with the notion of a converted Violet.
There was a short silence. Kitty felt done. She
had come for nothing. Ambrose had no light to
shed on this matter. Or if he had, he was keeping it
for his own use. But she stood to her guns.
"Ambrose, Ann, of course, has told you her
version"
"I think she's told me the truth," he said de-
liberately, dispassionately. "I questioned her
closely."
"I don't think she has!" Kitty blazed out.
"Not by a long, long lot! Ann Lovelace would do
anything to get her knife into Violet, to get Arthur
from her—for herself!"
Her cousin, Ambrose, seemed, on this, to have
grown very chilling, very distant, as he looked
down at her with eyes veiled and inscrutable.
"At least, whatever may be her faults, she is a
lady and a religious woman at heart," he answered
sternly.
"Oh, stuff, Ambrose !" Kitty said hotly, throwing


48
THE CASE OF THE
off the awe of the priest. "That's her cloak. She's
just a "But she stopped herself. For the
Reverend Ambrose Walsh did not seem to hear her.
She recognised clearly that his mind was definitely
closed to any further discussion of Violet's case.
"Evidently you're on Ann's side," she concluded
coldly.
And at that Father Ambrose gave a fleeting
smile as he said calmly, " I'm on her side, certainly,
if she can rightly prevent Arthur's disastrous
marriage to Miss Finch."
Kitty rose to leave. Coldly asking, as she glanced
at his writing-table overflowing with papers and
books: "What is your coming book about?"
"The Church Militant," he said in a ringing tone.
"There's far too much talk of converts slithering
from the Anglican Church into ours as though there
were small difference between them. I want the
gates, on the contrary, to be barred and locked,
except to those who show the right credentials for
admission. I want there to be an end to marriages
between ourselves and heretics—no matter though
we do get their children, who are not worth the
having, as a rule.
"I would rather "He stopped himself. To
Ambrose Walsh the sheep and the goats were
born to be separated. And only he himself knew
what a blow it had been to him to learn that
his cousin Arthur was going to marry outside his
Church, even apart from other considerations.
There had been a time when he had seen a great


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 49
deal of Arthur . . . when he had cherished strong
hopes of getting him, too, to enter a Religious Life,
either as a Priest or as a Brother. But in these
last years Arthur had drawn away more and more
from Ambrose, had left his letters unanswered, had
refused to be in when he called. ... To any one
who knew Ambrose Walsh at all, Arthur could
have done nothing better calculated to make his
cousin more firmly determined on getting his own
way—even had there been no religious dynamic
involved.
In silence he opened the door now for Kitty's
departure; and she felt herself still in pinafores,
morally, as she said good-bye to him. She went
down at once to Friar's Halt, and saw, as she
stepped into Colonel Walsh's study, that he knew.
He looked as though he had had a great shock.
"You've seen Ann," she said without hesitation.
He nodded. "She met me going to my club."
He paused as Arthur came hurrying into the house
and the room. He had driven Violet home, and
had had a hard task to convince her that to him
she was beyond suspicion, far above reproach.
But he had succeeded in doing so. Now, as soon
as he saw his father's face, he, too, knew that the
Colonel had been met by Ann and her story.
His own face hardened; his back straightened;
his jaw set.
"I'd like you to stay, Kitty," was his greeting,
"as Violet's friend. Thank God, you're not pre-
judiced against her!"


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 51
only have been made from the original; and then
only by an expert craftsman. He also further
affirmed that the imitation Ann showed him was
an exact duplicate of the original pearl necklace
in weight and colour. For Ann had made him go
into the matter very thoroughly indeed before
coming to you, Arthur.
"Now, my boy, I'm inexpressibly sorry for your
terrible shock; but I can't see that there's any
possibility that Ann is not telling the absolute truth
about it. She says you have taken possession of
the paper written by Violet herself "At this
point Colonel Walsh caught sight of aghast Kitty,
and insisted on her leaving them. He had quite
forgotten her presence. And this was no question of
attitude to one or the other girl. It was a question
of actual facts; and the Colonel uncompromisingly
held that he and his only son must sift these to
the bottom together.
Kitty glanced back at her cousin. He looked
like a man bracing himself for a bitter struggle,
but firmly determined not to yield an inch of
ground. And something in her leapt to meet this
new Arthur, while her heart seemed a stricken
thing.
As the door closed behind her, there was a
second's silence, then Arthur said: "I have just
given Violet those pearls outright, sir, though they
will still be my wedding present to her. So she has
a perfect right to raise money on them in such a
position as she found herself in last night; a posi-


52 THE CASE OF THE
tion, too, into which she had been jockeyed by
Ann. Violet had no other way of paying her gaming
debt there and then. And, seeing that clearly, she
took it. Ann had grossly deceived her as to the
value of the discs with which they were playing.
She had told her that they represented shillings,
whereas they were pounds. Violet's no practised
gambler, sir."
"Even though her mother had long kept what
were essentially gambling hells?" the Colonel
asked gently, for he was desperately sorry for his
unhappy son.
"Just because of that, sir," Arthur said soberly.
"I didn't conceal from you that, had I known
beforehand whose daughter she was, I wouldn't
have avoided her. But as it was . . . and is . . .
she's the only woman in the world for me. She's
quite incapable of the charge against her." He
stopped. Arthur was never given to long speeches.
His father's eyes were unrelenting, although his
voice had real compunction in its tones.
"Sorry, my dear boy; but after what has come
indubitably to light there can be no going on with
the wedding. Surely you must see that, too?"
"I surely do not, sir!" Arthur's tones were no
less firm than his father's. "It's a vile plot, Ann
Lovelace's plot against Violet. I won't let her, or
any one, come between me and the girl I love!
Violet's as true as steel. Honest, loyal, honourable.
Without a crooked fibre in her."
"She lied deliberately when she pledged those


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 53
pearls as her own property," the Colonel said in a
grim voice. "No, no "—as Arthur made a violent
movement. "That's not all by a long way. But it
is a thing to which you can't shut your eyes. Ann
didn't write that I.O.U. Miss Finch wrote it herself,
alleging both that she owned the pearls and that
the string which she was handing over to Ann as
security for the loan was one of the two that Ann
had helped her choose and seen taken. The value
of which Ann could therefore take on trust. And I
cannot see any loophole where Miss Finch wasn't
lying about that last, too."
Arthur kept silent with an effort; but he looked
furious and obstinate.
"You know," the Colonel went on, " what I feel
about a lie. It's not prejudice. It's not attaching
an exaggerated importance to something that really
means very little. All civilisation, all intercourse,
all business, is built up on the belief that you can
rely on a deliberate assertion. Why, Religion itself
depends on that! I cut your brother Gerald off
as I did because he was a deliberate liar; in other
words, a moral leper. Do you mean to tell me that
you intend to choose such a leper for your wife?
For the mother of your children?"
"I maintain that it is Ann who is the 'moral
leper ' here," Arthur said hotly. "I deny absolutely
that Violet was lying when she scribbled down those
words about being the owner of the pearls. I had
told her yesterday that they would be hers—ab-
solutely—on her wedding day. As for the effective


54 THE CASE OF THE
use that Ann made of an imitation necklace on
which to base her accusations against Violet, I
intend to have that curiously plausible production
drastically investigated, you may rest assured,
Pater! And you may also rest assured that my
wife's honour will be irrefutably vindicated,"
Arthur's voice rang out. And like Kitty, his
father rated him the higher for his unshakable and
impassioned championship of the girl he loved. Yet
Colonel Walsh was no less convinced that his son
was the victim of a sheer infatuation.
"Love is often blind," he said gravely.
"I'm not blind!" Arthur exclaimed hotly.
"Ann Lovelace hasn't succeeded in pulling her
unscrupulously clever wool over my eyes, as she
has, apparently, over yours, sir."
The Colonel took it quietly. He was too sorry
for his son, too certain that he would yet know
the bitterness of awaking, to be angry.
"How do you mean to prove your case?" he
asked, "since you intend to do so?"
"I mean to hand the whole thing over to a
first-class private investigator," was the firm reply.
"That's sensible!" The Colonel looked, and
was relieved. But he was sorrier still for Arthur.
"I think you'd better let me see about that," he
said a little awkwardly.
Arthur's eyes flashed. "You can call in your
own man, too, sir, if you like. But I claim the
right to be first in the field. There's only one
thing I do insist on. No steps must be taken openly


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 55
for at least a fortnight. Vi and I believe that this
is the only way to give my detective a chance to get
at the root and branches of the matter. I'm keen
to have Victor Sewell take charge of the investi-
gation for me, and his secretary has told me, over
the phone, that Sewell won't be back in town for
another ten days. So everything must be at a
standstill until then."
"Victor Sewell?" the colonel asked. "Never
heard of him. Who is he?"
"He's studied for the Bar, but he's private
means and likes problems. Just now he's clearing
up a very private and difficult matter at Oxford
in which two college men are concerned," Arthur
replied. "That's in strict confidence, you know.
He's a member of White's. Incidentally, he's a son
of the former Commissioner of New Scotland Yard."
"Of that Sewell? Clever chap, the old general.
Well, if you think he can serve you in this sad
affair "The colonel looked very pityingly at
Arthur standing there before him all fire and
eagerness.
"He'll clear Vi, sir," the younger man spoke with
a certainty in his voice and face that made the
father's heart ache for him. "He'll find out the
truth. But till then, Vi's to have fair treatment
from everybody. I'll put the fear of God into Ann
if she starts letting her tongue run away with her."
"Ann's tongue doesn't run loosely," the colonel
said dryly to that; "but I think I may possibly
be able to persuade her to an active truce. What


56
THE CASE OF THE
about the insurance, though? Are you notifying
them that the smaller string seems lost?"
"Not just yet," Arthur said. "Both strings were
insured up to the hilt, of course. But Vi thinks that,
if Ann does not suspect us of setting investigations
and detectives at work, her clever wits will devise
some way to plausibly return the real pearls.
"Vi's a marvel, sir !" his son ejaculated. "Most
girls, under such an abominable charge, would be
wanting Ann Lovelace's blood. Yet Vi actually
believes that Ann may have somehow been ' had'
too! I think she suspects her mother's partner,
Mills, of having had some hand in the exchange.
But I, myself, don't agree there. I used to know
Mills rather well, at one time. It was he who intro-
duced me to the Little Owls. They were top-hole
in those days—I can't think Mills would have a
hand in such an injury to Violet. I used to be no
end of jealous of him at first. I thought Vi liked
him best. However ... no open move to be made
until Sewell takes the reins, to drive the whole
thing straight to the truth."
Colonel Walsh responded hopefully outwardly,
but with a sickening certainty that Arthur was
riding for a terrible fall. He went up to Town to
see Ann, though, and found her not so easy to deal
with as he had hoped. In the end, however, he got
her promise to keep the whole affair absolutely to
herself at present. But he left her more than ever
persuaded that she was sincere and had really been
duped by Violet Finch. Nevertheless, it seemed to


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 57
him odd that Ann—familiar with valuable pearls—
should not have instantly detected the "feel'.' of
imitation pearls when they were handed over to her.
This was on Wednesday. And on the following
Saturday the colonel received a terrible blow. It
was a letter from Arthur delivered by hand. In this
his son stated that he had been married to Violet
Finch that morning at the Kingsway registry office;
and that they were on a flying " honeymoonette"
in the Engadine. They would be " back home on
Tuesday next."
The Colonel sat very still. At first he felt as
though he had heard that Arthur had flung himself
over a precipice. Then common sense came to his
aid. After all, marriages nowadays were anything
but permanent. . . . And even did this one prove
so, he must hope for the best. There must be
something sweet in Violet to account for Arthur's
indomitable devotion. And with sweetness allied to
spirit no wife could be a misfortune.
Kitty was away from home and he was glad that
she, too, would be gone until Tuesday. In reality
she was back on Monday; and the colonel told him-
self thankfully that he must have been mistaken in
thinking that she had secretly given her heart to
Arthur. For when she learnt the news Kitty took
Arthur's part against his aunt; who could not
forgive him " his mad marriage to Violet Finch!"
"You should cut him off! You did Gerald for
far less!" Lady Monkhouse said furiously to her
brother.


58 THE CASE OF THE
Colonel Walsh winced, but he replied quietly:
"Arthur has a perfect right to follow the dictates
of his heart. He did not deceive me. I may agree
that he is a besotted, if not hoodwinked, young fool;
but that's no reason for attempting to make him see
things as we do. Arthur is deeply in love with
Violet, my dear. I only hope he may prove to be
right about her, may be able to stay in love with
her always. As to my Deed of Gift on his marriage,
it was executed a week ago; and so comes into
operation at once."
His sister snorted, but the colonel continued
calmly: "He writes that they are going to stay in
Mrs. Finch's house in Ennismore Gardens, when
they get back, until the house in Grosvenor Square
can be redecorated"
"It didn't need any redecorating," snapped his
sister; "but I don't doubt that Finch woman
needs the money. He'll pay her for the use of hers."
The colonel said no more. He was lunching with
Ambrose and feared that he must listen to similar
sentiments about the marriage. But his nephew
offered no comment beyond the significant priestly
aphorism that "God's ways are not our ways.
Neither are the devil's, unless we serve him."


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
59
CHAPTER V
A PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR IS CALLED IN
The wedding had been a very quiet one, even for
a registry office. Mrs. Finch, who had been away
with Mills superintending the sale of one of her
Maidenhead clubs, came up for it—after she had
ascertained from her solicitors that the settlements
had been duly signed. Besides which preliminary
she had seen to it that both bridegroom and bride
executed each a will. Arthur's bequeathing to
Violet everything of which he should die possessed
or entitled to; and Violet's bequeathing similarly
everything to her mother, Mrs. Finch-Gray.
Only when these matters were all to her
satisfaction did "Mrs. Finch" instruct Ronald
Mills—who had motored her up to town—to fetch
from their car her wedding present to her new-
made son-in-law. As she presented it, she said
apologetically:
"You insisted on such an unexpectedly sudden
marriage, my dear Arthur, that I was only able to
lay my hands on what I hope may prove useful."
Adding sardonically, as she could not ignore his
blank look at the small picnic hamper for two which
she held out smilingly to him: "The wine is good
and I made the sandwiches myself."


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 6l
and the silver sheen of the Thames, looked as though
she were nerving herself to face trouble.
Arthur noticed it and pressed her hand. "Don't
worry, darling," he said in her ear, making an
excuse of getting up to look down at something
below them. "Sewell has keen brains. He'll dig
out the truth."
But Violet swallowed something in her throat as
she returned his caress.
On calling, Arthur was shown at once into Victor
Sewell's professional office. A spacious but some-
what bare-looking room, with a pair of comfortable
arm-chairs, a knee-hole writing-table, and very little
else—that could be seen. For its microphones and
wall cameras were well concealed. But these latter
were not wanted now. Sewell knew and liked
Arthur Walsh. Apart from that, he was glad to be
called in by him, for Colonel Walsh's circle of
friends included all the most influential names in
the British world of big finance.
Sewell himself was quite well off, but he had a
liking for investigation and was determined to make
it a successful business. He called himself a " Clear-
ing Agent" because he would only take defensive
cases. Cases, that is, where he was engaged to clear
the good name of some aspersed person.
In physique he rather suggested an intelligent
monkey. He had a small dark face with a low fore-
head, crossed by innumerable deep lines. When
thinking he would raise his eyebrows, wrinkling his
forehead like a concertina, and gaze pensively at
s


62
THE CASE OF THE
you from deep-set melancholy brown eyes. In his
movements, too, he was quick and darting, as if
mentally so. But his manner had remarkable
charm. He would listen in absolute silence to any
story; and yet, through his silence, by the eloquence
of his eye he could, when he wished, encourage and
calm. Nothing seemed to shock or even to surprise
him.
Sewell was, as Arthur Walsh had informed his
father, the son of a former Commissioner of New
Scotland Yard; but he did not mean to rise by
standing on his father's shoulders. Yet, should the
Yard's help be needed in his investigations, he
could rely on its doing all that it could to assist
him. Sewell was not yet six-and-twenty, but looked
much older; a point which he rightly regarded as
an asset.
"Help yourself, my dear fellow," he said cordially
to his visitor, pushing towards him a tray of choice
cigars and cigarettes. And—confining his initial
story to a bare relation of Ann Lovelace's charges
and assertions about the affair to himself and to his
father—Arthur paused there for Sewell's comments
or questions. The first being: "The pearls are
worth, intrinsically?"
To which his client replied by explaining in detail
that on entering the famous jeweller's shop he had
stated that he was looking for a handsome wedding
present for his fiancee, and had been shown two
necklace-strings of pearls, which had been the late
Queen Charlotte's favourite wear. He had taken


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 63
them both, paying five thousand pounds for the
two; the smaller one, now in question, was priced
around one thousand. His fiancee told him that she
herself had insured them up to the hilt; the
insurance to run from the date of their wedding.
"So she could prosecute, if need be?"
"Yes, but she says she won't," Arthur replied.
"Women have queer reasonings, whether or not
they are always intuitions. And I'm half inclined
to share her suspicion that her mother's partner,
Mills, is somehow at the bottom of the mystery.
Though he was by way of being rather a friend of
mine at one time. Ronald Mills—clever chap!
Know him?"
"Just to speak to. A queer fish," Sewell said.
"Nothing actually known against him, yet more
than a little rumoured privately. But, of course,
the devil of it is . . ." He hesitated; his brows
working in embarrassed cogitation.
"You mean Mrs. Finch ?" Arthur said at once.
"That he's a sort of partner of hers? Or was.
I believe they're winding up the Little Owls. But
I'm not going to let that stand in the way of clearing
my wife from any suspicion of doing a shady act.
When you know her, Sewell, you'll realise how
simply impossible it is to think of her as deceiving
any one. But Miss Lovelace doesn't really know
her at all. Hasn't discovered her true character.
My cousin, Kitty Walsh—you know her, I think?"
"Rather!" Sewell said warmly.
"Well, she's on Violet's side. She knows her


66
THE CASE OF THE
Violet laughed outright. "But of course! I was
at home, Mr. Sewell. In my mother's house."
"I forgot," he murmured mendaciously, and then
asked the names of any guests in the house at the
time.
Mills had been one, it appeared, but had left the
second day after the purchase of the pearls. Quite
long enough, Sewell and Arthur both thought, to
get possession of the pearls and, supposing him to
know a skilful craftsman, to have him make a copy
of it.
"He had his man with him, I suppose ?" Sewell
asked.
"No. Ronald had had to let him go. He's badly
hit by this crash, you know. He's even given up
his service suite and taken a flat over one of Mr.
Gray's garages. And for Ronald that means horrid
discomfort!" Violet's lip curled scornfully. She
had evidently small sympathy, if any liking, for
Ronald Mills.
"I have heard a whisper?" Sewell said
discreetly.
"Shouted sub rosa," Violet laughed. "Mrs.
Yerkes? Ronald hopes to announce his engagement
any day now. She's got no end of money."
A little more desultory talk wound up the luncheon
party for Sewell and he took his leave, frankly keen
to "get to work." This, he proposed to himself,
should be on Ronald Mills's footsteps, whom he
quite expected to find qualifying for the criminal's
place contrived for the then Miss Finch; if her


68
THE CASE OF THE
"Prepared to complete what?" Mrs. Finch
asked, after a rather tepid kiss on both sides.
"Oh, just a little deal," Violet said quickly,
"over a short-term leasehold. But I had no idea
you were coming back to-day. How nice!"
"I'm off again at once," her mother responded,
going to a cabinet by the window and unlocking it
with a tiny key which she took from her purse.
"I need some papers I left here," she explained as
she put a bunch in her bag.
"Why didn't you send that lazy hound, Ronald?"
Violet asked in an indifferent tone, but with a
watchful eye. How much had her mother over-
heard? You never could tell—with her.
"Oh, he's got wind of some party Mrs. Yerkes is
throwing, and is running round trying to get invited.
Well, 'bye till Friday, Vi." And Mrs. Finch ran
down the front steps and jumped into a luxurious-
looking car.


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
69
CHAPTER VI
ARTHUR WALSH GETS A VERY CURIOUS MESSAGE, AND
SCOTLAND YARD IS SUMMONED TO A MURDER CASE
It was at five o'clock that Mrs. Finch's parlourmaid,
when passing Violet's door, caught the click of a
key being turned in a lock inside the room, and
then of a drawer pulled open. That would be Violet's
big wardrobe trunk, she decided. Violet would never
open the room door when that trunk was unlocked,
she had noticed, so, with a malicious grin on her
pert face, the maid tapped on it.
"Would you like any tea, madam ?" she asked
through it solicitously. As on other occasions, there
was no reply except the turning-on of water into the
fitted basin. This was Violet's well-known little
trick when she wanted to pretend that she had not
heard the knocking. The maid did not venture to
knock again. Had Mrs. Arthur Walsh wanted tea
she would have ordered it. And with an amused
smile at the vexation that she was sure that
she had caused, Gwendolyn went on down to the
servants' hall.
Some ten minutes later the front-door bell rang.
Answering it, she found Ronald Mills on the door-
step. He had a latch-key and generally used it;
but he had forgotten it, he explained.
"Is Mrs. Walsh in, Gwennie?" he asked. "If


70
THE CASE OF THE
so, I'd like to welcome her home from her honey-
moon."
"Yes, sir. She's up in her bedroom." The maid
tripped upstairs to deliver the message, but came
down again in a minute to say that Miss Violet,
or rather Mrs. Walsh, must have just gone out.
"She was in, I know, not ten minutes ago," she
added.
"Nuisance!" Mills said. "The fact is, Gwen,
my dear, I wanted to get a hint for my belated
wedding present. What do you think Mrs. Walsh
would like best?"
Gwendolyn meditated. "Every lady likes a nice
bit of jewellery," she hazarded finally.
He shook his head. "I want to get something
that she and Mr. Walsh can both use."
"What about* something for the table?" she
suggested. "Cut glass. You can never have too
much cut glass. Much more genteel than silver, to
my mind."
Mills said that he would look up Walsh himself
and see if he could get his ideas on the subject.
"He might be at their house now being done up
in Grosvenor Square," the parlourmaid suggested.
"Just by chance, like. Or at one of his clubs."
"I'll try the house first. Might just catch them
both there. Good idea, Gwennie!" And going
farther into the hall, Mills promptly lifted down
the telephone.
Walsh answered, and Mills asked if he might
come along for a word or two.


72 THE CASE OF THE
nice little piece that I found quite by chance." He
held up the cup.
Mills was enthusiastic, but he did not take it in
his hands. "I sometimes drop things," he explained
with a half laugh. "But I don't think that it's
Kang He, all the same. ..."
Arthur did and they argued the pros and cons
stubbornly. Each stuck to his own contention.
Arthur had a book in the library that would settle
the dispute, and he went down to the ground floor
to fetch it. He found it and the passage he wanted
and was just about to take the book up to Mills
when the telephone rang shrilly. Mills also heard it
and saw one instrument on the mantel beside him
—not yet again hidden in its ornamental shell.
It was evidently an extension of the one below
in the library.
Mills lifted it off very quietly. He heard Arthur
Walsh's voice saying: "This is No. 300 Grosvenor
Square. Who's speaking?"
For a second there was no reply. Arthur thought
he had been cut off, and was just about to replace
the receiver when he heard a voice say urgently:
"You are to gome at vunce to Stanley Mews. Mrs.
Valsh says so. She has left the doors of the house
and the flat unlocked. The segond-floor flat. She
is there. Gome to her at vunce!" There was a
click as of a receiver hung up.
Arthur stood waiting a moment, but nothing
more came. "You've cut me off !" he said sharply
in a tone of protesting and absolute bewilderment.


74
THE CASE OF THE
home." Arthur hung up, and was turning away
when the door opened and a servant entered to say
that Miss Catherine Walsh was below in her car and
would like a word with Mr. Walsh.
"I'm here myself," said a cordial voice behind the
servant. "May I come in? The sun's too hot to
exist in the street. Oh, Mr. Mills! How do you
do?" Kitty appended frigidly. How excited the
two men looked. Had they been quarrelling? She
knew now that any critical touch on Violet would
infallibly rouse Arthur to fury.
"Where's Vi, Arthur?" she asked her cousin.
"I have a conciliatory message for her from Aunt
Caroline that must be delivered at once. For aunt
asks Vi to join her in her box at Covent Garden
to-night. She's waiting impatiently for Vi's answer,
and you know Aunt Caroline. Her invitation to be
delivered ' instantly if not sooner.'" Kitty sighed.
Dear Aunt Caroline was certainly fussy.
"Walsh has just had what purported to be an
S.O.S. from Violet," Mills interrupted. "If so, she's
now at my flat in an obscure but conveniently cheap
place called Stanley Mews. It's over a garage owned
by Mr. Gray. Well, Walsh, you'd better be off to
my said humble digs, and find out whether the
phone was a hoax or not."
"But what was the message?" Kitty asked.
"Oh, it was some idiot's idea of an exquisitely
good hoax," Arthur said scornfully. "And the
better to camouflage his identity he assumed a
comical German accent; telling me that 'Mrs.


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 75
Valsh ' wanted me to come to her at Mills's flat ' at
vunce,' before he prevented me from giving him
my idea of a joke by hanging up, so that I couldn't
ask another question."
"Vi might have got some one to telephone because
she has had an accident," Kitty said uneasily, " as
apparently Mrs. Finch was not with her to do it."
"Good God, what an awful thought!" Arthur
jumped up from the chair into which he had flung
himself. "I must get there instantly! Don't you
come, Kitty," as she moved to go with him. "It's
a hoax, I feel sure—one of Eastcastle's choicest. But
still, your notion—Hurry, Mills, if you're coming as
guide. That'll do me a good turn, as I don't know
the place. My car's round the corner."
He kept his finger on the bell and ordered the
man to bring his car round at once. "You cut
along back to Aunt Caroline," he said kindly to his
cousin; but Kitty utterly refused to be left behind
for any minutes of doubt, and they all bundled into
Arthur's waiting car. He stepped on the accelerator
almost at once, too, with a pressure that belied his
assurances to Kitty, and verbally to himself, that
the phone-call could be nothing but a hoax.
"Yes, Chief Inspector Pointer speaking," said a
calm voice at Scotland Yard in response to an
agitated one coming through the telephone beside
him. Seated at his office table though the speaker
was, it could be seen that he was at least six feet
in height, with a bronzed clean-shaven face that


76 THE CASE OF THE
conveyed assurances of high intelligence and
authority. The eyes were deep grey under finely
drawn brows, dark brown like the lashes. The chin
square, the hps looked equally capable of stern
reserve or geniality. And when he presently moved
and rose, his lean frame did so with the lithe
unhurried swiftness of a powerful athlete at the
acme of fitness. An unexpectedly young man, too,
was this Chief Inspector Pointer; still, for all his
professional renown, well under middle age. Unmis-
takably, even at a glance, a man of brains and
formidable qualifications as a crime detective.
He listened intently, and then said quietly but
with sharp conciseness: "Been dead some hours,
you think. Of course you'll lock the door and guard
it well from any intrusion whatsoever, or by any
one, any one whomsoever until I get there. How
about the window or windows? They look to the
front, you say, and another constable is watching
them and the entrance to the house. Good!"
Pointer hung up the phone, quickly but neatly
tidied his papers, weighted them, rolled down the
self-locking top of his writing-table, and went with
long light steps down to a plain but notably efficient
dark-green car standing ready for him in the inner
courtyard of Scotland Yard.
The call had a quite special interest for him
because the young woman reported murdered in a
little flat in Stanley Mews was said to be the
daughter of the notorious Mrs. Finch of the Little
Owls night-clubs, about which such constant com-


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 77
plaints used to reach the police. There might be
no connection, but it was odd that it should be
her daughter . . . and that the owner of the flat
where the body had been found was the stepfather
of the dead woman.
The garage was run by a manager, a man called
Cook, who bore a very good reputation indeed. As
did Mr. Gray, for that matter. The manager was an
ex-Service man who had risen to be a captain in the
War but who sensibly called himself plain " Mister"
nowadays. Cook was on the look-out for the Yard
car. He stepped forward to the kerb at once and
greeted Pointer warmly.
"Why on my premises, Mr. Pointer ?" he asked
plaintively. "Why not her own home? Or one of
those gay and giddy clubs her mother used to run?
The entrance is round the corner for the upper
floors."
"Do they belong to your place too?" Pointer
asked.
Cook nodded. "Three floors let to three gents.
Luckily two are out at the moment. There's enough
of a mob in there as it is. Girl's young husband,
raving mad. Girl's best friend fainting in the corner;
and it is a nasty sight, even for you, Chief Inspector.
Tenant of the flat doing the splits all round to get
the police—me—you—and all the world—here."
A second car had followed Pointer's and now
drew up. Several men slipped out and waited.
Cook, the garage manager, showed the way round
the corner to a side door, out of sight from the


78 THE CASE OF THE
garage itself, which was used by the occupiers of
the upper floors.
On the doorstep stood Arthur Walsh, looking
distraught.
"That's her husband," Cook whispered. "It's his
wife that's murdered, and I thought we should need
a strait-jacket."
Beside him was Ronald Mills. He, too, was
white and shaken-looking. Pointer saw him turn
and say something to a young girl dimly visible in
the lobby behind him; for the front door was
ajar.
Pointer was introduced by Cook, and Walsh said
thickly: "Get the man who did it, superintendent,
and you'll have a friend in me all my life!"
Mills said nothing except: "Shall I go up with
you? They're my rooms. Unfortunately!"
"Can this young lady go home? It's been an
awful shock for her," Cook asked Pointer in an
aside. "It's a Miss Walsh—a cousin of his"
He nodded towards Arthur.
Pointer looked down into Kitty's face, as white
as her organdie frock. The frock was as spotless as
the snow-white elbow gloves. Not the frock for a
murder, and not—by a long way—the face for a
murderess either. Traits never seen in the face of
a criminal were there: candour and sweetness and
horrified pity. Violence of deed or word would be
impossible to this young girl; though she now
looked shattered by poignantly deep sympathy.
"I'll see her as soon as it's possible," Pointer


TWO PEARL NECKLACES. 79
assented gently. "Perhaps there's a room she can
wait in?"
"There's my own room by the door, if you'll
excuse its disorder," Cook said, opening it.
Kitty thanked them both with white lips and sat
down by a table. There were two other doors in
the passage. A back one leading into the garage,
another one leading down the stairs to the kitchen
offices.
"What are you delaying for?" Arthur Walsh
demanded harshly, his face working. "She's up
there! Murdered / My Violet! . . ."
"Shall I come up again?" Mills asked.
Pointer nodded, asked the manager to stop with
Miss Walsh, and followed Mills up the stairs, Arthur
hard on his heels. Four of the men from the Yard,
who had come in the second car, followed them in
a compact group.
The constable standing guard outside the locked
door upstairs was sent down to help Cook keep a
kindly but vigilant eye on Miss Walsh's shocked
state.
Before stepping in through the front door of the
flat, Pointer glanced up and down the narrow stairs.
Its door was out of sight from the door above, or
the door below. The linoleum that covered the
landing looked neat and clean; no marks to suggest
a crime appeared on it. The door into the flat was
varnished and it, too, showed no marks on it. It
opened directly into the sitting-room; a fairly
large and quite comfortable room. This was the


8o
THE CASE OF THE
front room. The back room opening out of it had
been divided into a small bedroom and a tiny
bathroom. These made up the whole of the floor—
and the flat.
In the front room before the fireplace lay the
dead body of a young woman, apparently a lady.
She was lying in the oddly shortened, crumpled-up
way in which a body falls when it drops where it
had been standing. The whole top of the head was a
horrible sight. At least three terrific blows had been
struck on it; any one of which must have caused
instant death. On the mantel, almost over her head,
was a modernist figure made from a flexible strip of
steel with a steel head fastened to one end. The
steel feet at the other end had been cast solidly in
one with a thick square base of the same metal.
Lifting it up with his gloves on, Pointer saw the red
outline of the base on the marble. The green felt
gummed to the base was a welter of blood.
One of his men tested it for fingerprints. It
showed none. Then Pointer grasped it by the head
and found what a terrible weapon it then became.
The four metal corners of the inch-thick heavy steel
base became so many steel axes. The flexible strip
gave a powerful spring to the whole. A mere child
could kill with it. But the child, Pointer reflected,
would have had to know its fell weight. For it
looked light, almost fragile.
Meantime Arthur Walsh had pushed roughly past
Pointer and fallen unrestrainably down on his
knees beneath the body. "Vi! Vi, my darling !" he


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 8l
agonisedly implored it, and would have turned the
face up had not Pointer raised him, instead, to his
feet.
"You'll only hinder us that way, sir," he said
kindly but warningly. "Tell me in as few words as
possible how this happened."
"But I haven't an idea," Arthur exclaimed with
staring wild eyes. "In God's name tell me,
inspector! What—has—happened?" he asked in
choking tones of blank horror.
Pointer suggested that the distraught husband
should go downstairs and wait for him there. Arthur
Walsh stared at him, stared at the dreadful body
of his young wife, and stumbled out of the room,
Mills beside him.
On the hearth-rug just in front of the body were
some torn-up scraps of paper. Pointer turned to his
photographer: "I want a close-up of those papers
too," he ordered, although as far as could be seen
there was no writing on any of the bits.
While this was being done, Pointer stepped out
on the landing and looked interrogatively at the
constable, who saluted again and said rapidly:
"I was on my regular beat just round the corner
from here, sir, at a quarter to six, all but, when the
gentleman who's in the room behind you came
rushing round the corner; and after him Mr. Cook,
that I know quite well. The first one caught hold
of my arm and gasped ' Murder!' And then Mr.
Cook ran up and told me that a young lady had
been brutally killed in one of the little flats over


82
THE CASE OF THE
his garage. I turned to the entrance, and there was
the gentleman who's just now stumbled down the
stairs, and a young lady with him. They were
beckoning madly to me from the top step. I looked
at my watch and noted that it was just a quarter to
six as I entered the front door, and followed the
gentleman and the young lady who had been
beckoning to me, and had waited for me on the top
step. I found the body in there, quite dead and
fairly cool to the touch. I didn't disturb it in any
way, sir, of course; only touched the back of one
of her hands. Then I blew my whistle gently, and
when P.C. 2479 got here a minute later I sent him
out to watch the house and immediately phoned to
you, sir. A moment after that P.C. 9641 hurried
up and I stationed him to watch the back of the
premises."


84
THE CASE OF THE
presumably he could cover the ground without her
help.
"You saw no one about, and heard no other
sound in the flat ?" he asked gently.
Kitty had not; and she was helped into a
summoned taxi and driven back at once to her own
people.
Then Pointer heard again, from its semi-dazed
recipient himself, the bewildering phoned summons
that finally—Arthur explained briefly—brought him
incredulously to where the awful reality awaited him
instead of the grotesque hoax he had intended to
"properly pay off." And Pointer got him to write
out for him the message exactly as it had sounded
with its foreign pronunciation. As nearly as he
could now time it, Arthur said, he had heard the
last, suddenly cut-off word just before five-
thirty.
Pointer let him off from further torture—as his
questions visibly inflicted it—as soon as his duty
could permit.
Cook, the garage manager, confirmed events.
Mills had called him up on the house phone and he
had found everything as already recited, and the
murdered girl's half-crazed young husband fondling
her shockingly struck-down form with wild caresses
and appeals to his murdered wife to speak to him,
look at him. It was an awful scene. The time, then,
nearly quarter to six. He and Mills had forcibly
dragged him away; telling Walsh he "must not
move or touch" her before the police could see


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 85
everything. At least Cook had; and Mills, on his
urging, had helped him. "Besides," he added, " the
barest glance made it only too sure that there was,
could be, no spark of life in the poor thing."
Asking the husband to come in again, Pointer
got from him a spate of distracted details. "Who
phoned to me from here? Chief inspector, I shall
go quite out of my mind unless you can tell me that.
It's what I'd give my life to know! Was it the
murderer I heard? Did he want to get at me by
killing her? Was that why he told me I was
wanted? Or did she need me, and had she really
asked the speaker to give me that message . . . what
I mean "Walsh thrust out a hand that shook.
"What I mean is, was some foreigner there? And
had she really asked for that message to be sent
me at once, and did the fool bungle it? Or was he
by some means prevented from sending it until it
was too late? The voice sounded as though he
were in a frightful rush. I thought at the time, too
—but, like the besotted fool that I was, thought it
part of the hoax—that the speaker didn't want to
be overheard, yet wanted to be very sure that I got
the message all right."
Pointer's cool but not unkindly eyes took stock of
the emotion-swept face before him. Yes, the young
man was making strenuous efforts to be precise, he
thought; was seeking to put into words the feelings
roused by that strange, and under the circumstances,
dreadful appeal; made apparently on behalf of his
murdered young wife. And made in vain.


86
THE CASE OF THE
"Would it have saved her, do you think, if I had
gone immediately—got here at once?" Arthur
asked in agonised tones.
Pointer could not say. He was sorry for the
terrible tension in those questions.
"Had you ever heard the voice before, do you
think ?" he asked.
"Never, so far as I know. And yet, somehow,
there's a beastly feeling that I ought to have,"
Arthur muttered thickly.
"Just what do you mean ?" Pointer asked witb
interest.
Walsh made a sort of swimming motion with his
out-thrown hands. "I don't know," he said wearily.
"It's just that. Just a vague impression that I
really ought to know that voice. But I can't express
it. It's just a feeling . . . and I wasn't conscious
even of that until you asked me."
"And you, Mr. Mills?" Pointer turned now to
the man who, with a very wooden face, stood a
little behind the other. "What time did you leave
your flat?"
"I left here on Friday last. I've been staying
down at Maidenhead with Mrs. Finch—that's Mrs.
Walsh's mother—I'm her partner more or less,
unfortunately, in those Little Owls clubs of hers
that have gone bust. She needed some papers she
had left in her house in Ennismore Gardens. I
rushed up for them and got to her house about
quarter-past five. The parlourmaid thought Mrs.
Walsh was in. Said she had just heard her in her


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 87
bedroom. But she must have just gone out, the
maid came back to tell me."
"If Mrs. Walsh was seen at a quarter-past five
by the parlourmaid, it's very important," Pointer
said slowly.
"A bit after the quarter-past possibly," Mills said
on thinking back. "But I didn't really notice the
time. I had intended, besides getting the papers,
to find out what she would like as a belated wedding
present. I thought she might be at Grosvenor
Square. Or, if not, that Walsh might be there; so
I phoned there, found that he was, and went round.
And while I was talking to him Walsh received that
mysterious message over his house phone.
"Miss Kitty Walsh also happened in just then,
for a word with Mrs. Walsh, and we all three came
along together. We found the door unlocked as the
message had said—and found Mrs. Walsh dead! As
the message had certainly not said. Look here,
chief inspector, they've told me over the phone
that Mrs. Finch has left the solicitor's office at
Maidenhead; but even so I think I can find her.
I know where she's likely to go and where not. . . .
Have you any objections if I rush off for her in
my car?"
In reply to further questions Mills said he had
given up his clubs for economy's sake; but he would
go to the Westmorland Hotel for the time being,
supposing he could get a room there. Anyhow he
would ring up and let Pointer know where he could
be found, since his flat was in the hands of the police.


88
THE CASE OF THE
"Thank you, sir.. But now before you go, will
you take a very careful look over your flat and let
me know if anything is missing, so far as you can
detect; or if anything has had its position shifted
since you noticed it last. Or if anything has been
added? I want you carefully to observe these
points; but without touching things at all."
Pointer walked through the rooms with Mills,
who said in a moment that the little steel figure
had been standing in the centre of the mantel as
usual, when he last saw it. It did not belong to him.
It was in the flat when he took it furnished. A few
things of his own had been added; but, as he said,
not that horribly used steel article.
Mills was allowed to drive off after that. Pointer
noticed that he took a curt farewell of Walsh, who
apparently did not hear it as he stood staring
straight before him with a set rigid look on his
face.
The doctor had not yet arrived, so Pointer had
Cook also go over the flat with him, to see if any-
thing was noticeably altered in it. Cook could not
be certain, as he did not go much into the rooms.
But as far as he could say, the only striking difference
was "in respect of the ornamental steel figure,
which had played so dreadful a part in the tragedy."
For he had himself placed it on the very middle of
the mantelshelf. And when he had chanced to be
in the sitting-room of the flat for a moment on
Thursday last he had seen it still where he had put
it. The figure was all steel; and Mr. Gray, who


90 THE CASE OF THE
last case he just pops up to see what is wanted, and
we go over the accounts afterwards."
Cook was needed in the garage at this moment;
and the doctor now came in. He had been delayed by
a street accident. At sight of the horribly battered
head he frowned as he bent over it. "Hatred here,
surely," he ejaculated. "The first blow killed her.
The two others were sheer fury, or nerves." His
eye followed Pointer's to the steel object that had
done it.
"May I lift the thing?" he asked.
Pointer assented. He said that it had been
thoroughly tested for fingerprints, but none had
been anywhere on it.
Gloves on, Doctor Ward-Bentley lifted the figure,
held it by the head and whipped it through the air,
looking meaningly at Pointer and then at the green
baize on the bottom of its stand.
"That's the weapon, eh? And a more deadly
little springboard I never handled. One tap "—he
gestured to the crushed-in head of the victim.
"Given this, those successive blows may have been
sheer ignorance. I mean that the murderer may
have had no conception of the result that would
follow one blow, and so have struck those savagely
unnecessary blows to make sure that she could
never speak."
He agreed with the chief inspector that the dead
young woman had been standing—probably smoking
a cigarette since one lay just beyond her hand—
and had been struck down from the side. In other


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
91
words, some one had come up beside her, snatched
up the steel figure on the mantel, and suddenly
brought it down with full force on her head. The
murderer had either been taller than the young
woman, or she had been bending slightly down for
something. As to when she had been killed, the
doctor could only say that it was at least an hour
ago and he would not be surprised to learn that it
was two hours ago, now. But not more, he thought.
There was a knock on the door.
"Gentleman asks to see you, sir "the con-
stable began, "and begs for a word with Chief
Inspector Pointer if he will forgive the intrusion at
Mr. Walsh's request." The said gentleman being
one Sewell, by name: "Victor Sewell, to be quite
explicit," said a pleasant voice over the constable's
shoulder before the owner of the voice came forward
to meet Pointer's outstretched hand in a cordial
clasp.
For Pointer knew the young man quite well, and
had no little esteem for both his personal and his
professional character; more particularly since his
brilliantly successful clearing of a great name from
undeserved calumny.
"Walsh is outside," the caller said in a low tone.
"Mayn't he come in? I think it might be a boon
to him if he thought that he was helping you on to
the murderer's trail. He only married the poor girl
a week ago." Pointer had no objection whatever.
The other way round. It had been only for Walsh's
own sake that—for the moment—he had left him


0.2 THE CASE OF THE
on one side as much as possible. Sewell explained
how he himself had been professionally brought into
the case ; how, immediately the police had been sum-
moned, Walsh had got Cook to phone for Sewell also.
On being shown the murdered young wife of his
friend, the Private Investigator was profoundly
shocked. For, as he told Pointer, she had been his
charming hostess at lunch only a couple of hours
before. His sympathy was, therefore, deeper even
than Pointer's when, on being allowed in again,
Arthur chokingly asked to be left alone with his
dead bride until the stretcher-bearers came to take
her away.
But Violet Walsh's remains belonged now to the
investigations of Scotland Yard. And her unhappy
husband had to be told that a constable must remain
in the room. With this necessary proviso, however,
Arthur was left alone with his dead until the
stretcher arrived. And meantime Sewell went into
fuller details of the mysteriously exchanged pearl
necklace, repeating to Pointer all that poor Violet
had herself dilated on at luncheon.
"She told you she always wore the longer
string?" Pointer said. "She hasn't it on here.
She is wearing no necklace, as you see."
"Might she have dropped the string into her
handbag?" queried Sewell.
"She seems to have no handbag, or what adver-
tisements call a 'pochette,' along with her. That
looks as though she had come in a car where she
might have left it. Her shoes suggest a car, too.


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
93
It's a very dusty day and they are quite fresh-
looking. She has apparently not worn gloves, either.
But I haven't had a thorough search made yet."
At this moment the bearers arrived with the
stretcher and Violet Walsh's body was borne away.
Simultaneously with the closing of the house door
behind it Arthur seemed—with a shuddering deep
breath—to resolutely shut the door of his will upon
his private emotions, as he turned to Sewell, saying:
"For God's sake, give me some active work to do,
if it's only fetching and carrying on the trail of her
murderer! There must be some link between those
exchanged pearls and her death!"
He made a sweeping gesture and wheeled to face
the chief inspector. Their eyes met, and Pointer
wondered if the same suspicion that was coursing
among others in his own brain had suddenly entered
Walsh's, as the latter exclaimed: "Our talk at
luncheon must have made Vi think of something—
recall something—connected with these rooms. She
came here to discover something! Who was here?
Who let her in? Who phoned that message to me?
I've a ghastly notion, chief inspector, that it was
the very man that killed her! But if so why ?—
why . . .?"
He dropped heavily into a chair and covered his
wild eyes with his hands. After a moment's silence
Pointer asked him if Mrs. Walsh usually carried a
purse or handkerchief bag. "Always," was Arthur's
instant reply. "She never went out of the house
without it. Why do you ask?"


94 THE CASE OF THE
"Because," Pointer answered, "no such article
has yet been found in the room. If she had one
with her it has either been removed or very
effectively hidden up to now."
He had already had the bloodstained hearth-rug
taken away. The papers that had been lying
around Violet's body had also been collected by
one of his men and now lay on the table as they
had been photographed. They were all blank, but
Pointer, too, only handled them with rubber
gloves on.
Walsh shook his head when asked if he had seen
any papers like them. Staying as they were in Mrs.
Finch's house until their own could be redecorated
—he never called Violet's mother anything but
"Mrs. Finch "—he could not say. But he stared
at the blank white fragments in perplexity.
Pointer soon after discovered the missing little
handbag—stuffed far down at the back of the seat
of an upholstered arm-chair. So far down, thrust
so deeply, that it might easily have failed altogether
to be found.
"Vi never did that!" Arthur exclaimed sharply,
as he saw the inspector dig it out.
Sewell and Pointer were not so sure—as a glance
which the former shot at the impassive Scotland
Yard man said. Mrs. Walsh might have felt herself
in danger . . . might have hidden there some
valuable clue. . . . Sewell's heart beat faster at
the thought.
Pointer carefully emptied the little bag on to a


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
95
sheet of paper and Sewell jotted down the items.
A gold vanity case with powder "compact"—
rouge, lipstick, and eyebrow pencil—in it. A purse
with some change in it and a couple of pound
notes ... a handkerchief. That was all.
Arthur stared at it with straining eyes. "Her
bag . . .! We bought it together . . .! It's a
nightmare."
"Look here, Walsh," Sewell urged insistently.
"Go down to your house in the country. You
can't help—really. And it's only tearing your heart
afresh for nothing. We'll ring you up—or I'll dash
down there—the first moment you can be of any
use. What do you say, chief inspector?"
"I think it a good idea. Is Colonel Walsh in the
country?"
"He's up in Town," Arthur said indifferently.
"At his Club?" Pointer pressed. "We would
like to spare you from having to break the news,"
he explained in compassionate tones.
"Probably," was all Arthur knew as to that
last question.
Pointer just glanced at Sewell, who went to the
telephone in the lobby—to try the In and Out
for Colonel Walsh.
"I won't detain you but a moment longer, Mr.
Walsh," Pointer added, " but I must ask you about
Mrs. Walsh's plans for the afternoon."
Arthur said that she had spoken at lunch of an
afternoon with her dressmaker. She intended to
fit herself out completely: country frocks, town


96 THE CASE OF THE
afternoon frocks, evening things. She meant to be
thorough, she had said, so as to be quite free
afterwards. He gave the name of the House in
question. Pointer knew it as an establishment
where a woman could easily while away a whole
day, let alone an afternoon. Arthur said that she
had intended to drop in at Grosvenor Square as
soon as she got free, as they were doing up the
large drawing-room and some of the bedrooms,
and she particularly wanted to see the effect of-
the tints that she had chosen. He himself had
driven his wife to Bruton Street, and then gone on
to Grosvenor Square. That would have been about
three o'clock, he thought. He had had a good
many letters to answer, and sat writing and glancing
through estimates for new wine vaults until Mills
was shown in at a little before half-past five. Mills
said he would wait for Mrs. Walsh if he wasn't in
the way. "We talked about "Arthur said
vaguely.
"About ?" Pointer questioned as to the
subject.
For a moment Arthur could not remember, then
it came to him:
"Some china I had in a cabinet. I looked up a
book on Chinese Ceramics to prove a point, and
was reading it when the telephone rang. I felt sure
it was from my wife, glanced at the clock, and
picked up the instrument." He repeated that to
the best of his belief the time had been just before
the half-hour. Mills, he thought, had been with


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
97
him only three or four minutes then. He went
again over his certainty that it was Lord East-
castle's idea of a joke, the arrival of his cousin,
and her startling suggestion that the message
might have been genuine, their drive to the Mews
—and Here he stopped dead.
Pointer thanked him, endorsed the suggestion
that he go down to their place in the country, and
with Sewell's help finally got him into his car.
One of Pointer's men got in beside Arthur and took
the wheel—for he was obviously in no state to
drive even a perambulator, they all agreed.
But he would, of course, be " shadowed " every-
where and unremittingly until Scotland Yard's
problem—who murdered Violet Walsh ?—should
be effectively solved. Nothing and no one could
prevent that. The kindly probabilities were, how-
ever, that Arthur himself would remain unconscious
of any "shadow" other than that of his own
obsessing concern.
"By the way, Mr. Walsh," Pointer paused in
shutting the door of the car to add, "can you
remember if by chance Mr. Mills had his gloves on
if he handled anything from your Chinese cabinet
when you and he were discussing its contents.
We have to list all fingerprints connected in any
way with the case, you know; and if Mr. Mills
left his on a piece of china it would save us troubling
him for another print."
"I seem to recall that he kept his left glove
on. But I don't remember if he handled any
■


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
99
CHAPTER VIII
A KEY-RING IS MISSED
Pointer picked up his hat and, after a word with
the sergeant whom he left in charge, made a move
towards his own car.
"Where to?" Sewell asked. "I'm Mary's little
lamb, you know."
"I must try for the whereabouts of the necklace.
Did you notice the absence from the murdered
woman's handbag of an item that one would have
quite expected to find in it?"
Sewell shook his head. "No, I missed nothing—
and so evidently I missed something important.
What was it?"'
"Her keys," Pointer replied. "Yet the very
valuable larger pearl necklace isn't on her, nor with
her. The keys may have been taken out when her
handbag was forced down out of sight and almost
out of touch in that chair."
"I don't see why you're so sure -that she herself
didn't thrust it there," Sewell said. At least some
half-dozen good reasons why Mrs. Walsh might
well have done so were in his own mind.
"There are a few small drops of dried blood on
one side of the bag," Pointer said, " as though it had
been lying not far from her when she was struck
down. The drops had dried where they lighted,


100 THE CASE OF THE
which suggests that either the murderer overlooked
their evidence or trusted that it would not be
discovered, or hoped to regain the bag when he
could safely destroy it."
Sewell drew a long breath. He had never worked on
a capital charge before. In a sense he was not doing
so here. For his sole province was the clearing of
Violet Walsh's reputation from the charge of her
having criminally raised money on a necklace
which she knew to be fraudulent.
"You know," Sewell said as he lighted a fresh
cigarette, "going by faces, I should expect young
Mrs. Walsh to have always locked her jewels up
with extreme care."
Pointer cocked an inquiring eye at him as he,
too, lit up.
"I lunched with her—them—you know. And—
well, I should expect her to look sharply after her
possessions. It was indicated in her face. Her
mouth, for instance"
"Looked locked-up, too?" Pointer suggested
with a twinkle.
Sewell nodded. "It did !' Secretive,' I tabulated
her. But with such high spirits and 'go' that I
could quite see how a rather cold fish like Walsh
would be seized by the—the "He groped for
the right word to exactly express his meaning.
"Gulf Stream?" Pointer tentatively supplied.
And Sewell nodded his thanks for its fitness.
"Of her temperament," he went on. "The
zest of her honeymoon was vivid in Walsh's gay


102
THE CASE OF THE
Now, there is a Mrs. Walsh who is a connection of
mine by marriage. . . ." He looked inquiringly at
Pointer.
"Mrs. Arthur Walsh is the lady's name, sir,"
Pointer said. And Father Ambrose was tensely
silent for a full minute before he said quietly,
"That is the name of my family connection. Is
her husband here by any chance?"
Pointer explained a little, a very restricted little,
of the tragedy. Ambrose listened with the close
attention to be expected, while his pallor grew still
more noticeable.
"Did you know the murdered lady well—may I
ask, sir?" Pointer asked.
"I met her once. Before her marriage," was the
reply. "Have you any theory, chief inspector, as
to the motive for the crime? Or is it out of order
to ask that question yet, if at all?"
Pointer looked at the speaker attentively. He
appreciated the force of the personality confronting
him. But besides that—as he looked into the dark
resolute eyes on a level with his own, and he himself
was well over six feet—he was conscious of a curious
sensation as though a thick wall of ice or crystal
were between himself and the priest. Something
that neither he nor any man could pass through,
except by the will of the other.
"May I ask exactly where you were visiting,
sir, when you saw the crowd?" he asked instead
of replying.
"Around the corner here is another garage, on


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 103
the opposite side of the street. Over it are some
tenements. I was in a room of which the window
looks into a courtyard. So that I had no idea of
this crowd—until I found it blocking my path."
"You know Mr. Sewell perhaps, sir?" Pointer
turned towards his companion as he asked.
The priest's eyes seemed to grow hooded as he
slowly said that he did, apologising formally for
not having previously noticed Sewell, with whom
he shook hands.
"Do you also know about the matter that Walsh
has asked me to clear up?" Sewell asked.
"Yes," Ambrose said rather curtly. "Arthur
told me that he was getting you to help him solve
a mystery. Which would now appear to be en-
tangled in a darker mystery," he murmured in a
voice that suggested that his thoughts were else-
where. "Strange . . .!"
"What is?" Sewell prodded.
"Strange that I should happen to be just across
the road."
It is said that love cannot be hidden. And
Pointer would have supplemented that axiom
by another certitude, namely, that knowledge is
equally bound to betray itself. And that the priest
had some private knowledge pertinent to the
murder of Violet Walsh, he felt certain. Of the
extent or importance of that very deliberately
unavowed knowledge, Pointer could as yet form
no opinion. But he felt convinced that to Father
Walsh himself it bulked weightily. Which made


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 105
fear of the rot spreading. I noticed, and so of
course you had, chief inspector"—Sewell gave
Pointer a friendly smile—" that he didn't refer to
the murder as a 'terrible' or even a 'tragic'
affair. And I can only wonder if he sees in it some-
thing grotesquely like 'divine providence.' He
fairly raved against the marriage, Arthur Walsh told
me, when going into the pearl mystery with me."
"How did he learn of the trouble about the
pearls?" Pointer asked.
"Oh, the Walshes are good Catholics. So, too,
is Ann Lovelace. Probably they all go to him
to confession, when he's available."
"Could he tell us about knowing of it, if he had
learnt of it only in that way?" Pointer asked,
though he knew the answer.
"No, evidently Miss Lovelace or Arthur Walsh
went to him about it as to a friend. Anyway,
Arthur Walsh told me that his cousin, Father
Ambrose Walsh, knew and was fanatically against
the marriage. The Walshes are rather big fish with
us. Their money, and the fact that they were
pre-reformation Catholics. ... A totally different
set, socially, from that of Violet Finch."
"Her father was a barrister, though, wasn't
he ?" Pointer asked. He knew all about the Finches
from the Yard's information; but he might get
some fresh news from Sewell's angle.
"Yes. Dublin. Mrs. Finch is a doctor's daughter.
They were bitterly poor, she says, when her first
husband died, leaving her with about seven hundred


106 THE CASE OF THE
pounds in all and a baby girl, Violet Finch, to
provide for. Mrs. Finch put most of the money
into the management of a Social Club, to which
she went herself. According to her—and I fancy
her boasting is founded on fact—she doubled its
membership in a month and trebled it in a quarter.
She then sold her share for twice what she had
put in, and started a night-club herself in a London
cellar. It became the first of her gold mines,
those Little Owls"
"About which the Yard had daily complaints,"
Pointer interrupted with a grim smile. "But we
know of no reason why they have quite faded
out of late."
"Just fashion!" Sewell said sagely. "Got too
popular to be popular any longer. Her prices,
too, were fantastic. It was only while it was ' the
thing' to be seen there that she could get them.
Yet once she put them down, the end was in sight.
Personally, I'm glad of it. If half the things I've
heard about her and her clubs are true, they've
ruined many a young fool between them. The
gambling that went on there was incredible."
"How was it, may I ask, that you never hap-
pened to meet her daughter, Mrs. Walsh, until at
to-day's lunch?"
"Her mother, it seems, wouldn't allow Miss
Violet Finch to go to the Clubs. At least not until
the fateful night when she and Walsh met. He
told me that it was a case of love at first sight.
And real love, too, it must have been, or he wouldn't


TWO PEARL NECKLACES lOJ
have married into that lot. Though I have an
idea that he didn't learn just who she was until
they were mutually infatuated. I suppose she took
after her father. Miss Kitty Walsh, I know, liked
her. And that's a very good recommendation
indeed to my thinking."
"Did Mrs. Walsh strike you as straightforward?"
Pointer asked next.
"Rather! No finesse, and not much tact,
probably. But I should think she'd be outspoken
to a fault. 'Steel-true, blade straight, The great
artificer Made my mate '—that sort. Poor Walsh!
I wonder what the enigma of those changed pearls
will prove to be. You know, chief inspector—
Walsh's idea that his wife was hot on the right
track strikes me as quite possible. She was dis-
tinctly the kind that—if she had come on something
or thought of something vital—would have gone
straight to have it out, face to face!"
There was a pause. Sewell's monkey brow
worked furiously. "I suppose you know all about
that chap Mills ?" he burst out finally.
"No," Pointer replied promptly. "Not neces-
sarily 'all,' but a good deal. He's not yet been
found doing anything"
"Apprehensible," finished Sewell with a grin.
"Precisely," Pointer agreed. "You always did
get the right word, I remember."
"And you the right man! I'm jolly glad of a
chance to work with you. I may have my own
theories as we go along, but I won't expound them


108 THE CASE OF THE
until the end of this case. Then I'll own up hand-
somely. And it isn't as if you needed any help
from me. Nor, for that matter, do you ever parade
what you're after till you've pretty well got your
hand on it—my dear Pointer. But—to return to
our mutton—Mills is a Cambridge man, with some
quite decent family connections—for whatever
these details may seem worth, though I expect
they're all already in your bag."
Nothing more was said at the moment until
Sewell, as usual, said it by asking: "What do
you think oddest in what we've been told, so far,
in this most extraordinary case, chief inspector?"
"That telephone message to the husband,"
Pointer unhesitatingly answered. And Sewell nodded
his complete agreement before—as usual—expanding
the problem with perhaps its most salient mystery:
"What could have been its motive? Personally,
I can't account for it by any conceivable reason
for it."
"It's just possible that it was from some one
who wanted to make quite sure that Mr. Walsh
would not be in his mother-in-law's house at a
given hour," Pointer said. "There are many
other possibilities, of course, but that suggests
itself as the simplest explanation. Which was why
I looked for her keys at once."
"And they're missing!" Sewell's forehead began
to corrugate portentously. And when Pointer
added, "Yes, it's possible that the murderer then
hurried after the much-more-valuable string of


TWO PEARL NECKLACES IO9
pearls, if he found to his disappointment that his
victim did not have it on," Sewell said with em-
phasis, "Five thousand pounds, at least, in ques-
tion! And Walsh was told, when he bought the
two, that this string alone might easily fetch
another thousand."
"Then why didn't the vendor wait for such an
occasion? Who sold them? Do you know?"
Pointer asked.
"The two necklaces belonged to old Lady Loud-
water. Oddly enough I chanced to hear, some
months ago, that she wanted to realise on them.
They once belonged to Queen Charlotte of Mexico
and Lady Loudwater believed they brought their
owner bad luck. She rather suspected that that
was why they had been sold to her originally. If
so, they have assuredly lived up to their reputation!"
There followed another ruminating silence before
Pointer asked:
"Do you know Miss Lovelace?"
Sewell had often met her. "It was thought at
one time that she was going to marry Lord Wilver-
stone—or, rather, that he would break off his engage-
ment to another girl and marry Ann Lovelace.
But he married t'other girl after all; so probably
there was nothing in the chatter. At that time
Walsh, I know, was completely bowled over by
her. But she never even spared him an encouraging
glance. So that, too, evidently, melted away.
Certainly he was head over ears in love with his
wife, as I can testify, both from what he said to


no
THE CASE OF THE
me when asking me to clear up the mystery of the
false pearls and from my own observations at
lunch to-day."
"Did she seem to you equally in love with
him?" Pointer asked.
"Equally? No!" Sewell replied. "His evident
adoration would have been hard to equal. But in
love all the same. I mean that I think she was
much more of the femme maitresse than he was of
the homme maitre. Dear me!" he grinned, "I'm
not as a rule addicted to French chestnuts; but
one must borrow such phrases, at times, to get
one's exact meaning defined without too much
verbiage."


112 THE CASE OF THE
who had waved adieu to him from that very door
was lying in a mortuary waiting for the dissection
that must come.
"Have you any idea where her bedroom would
be?" Pointer had asked on the way there. And
Sewell had remembered her speaking of the noise
of some adjacent flats that were being built, but
the noise of which, "fortunately," they did not
hear, because their bedroom was "at the back
—overlooking the gardens."
The muffled sound of a wireless in the basement
reached them from below, and the two hurriedly
but very quietly slipped upstairs and found the
desired room almost at once. It was a big room,
over-sumptuously furnished with rose-satin frills
decorating dressing-table, bedspreads, and windows.
The furniture was old and good, and yet it looked
over ornate. Three large wardrobe-trunks stood on
the carpet. They were marked "V. W." Two
smaller ones, marked " A. W." stood in the adjoining
dressing-room.
Pointer shut and locked the doors of both rooms,
and then walked slowly through them, eyeing the
furniture and pulling on a pair of rubber gloves
after handing another pair to Sewell. He lifted
one or two things up from table or narrow mantel.
But the wanted keys were not under them. Pre-
sently, however, his inspection reached the dressing-
table with swinging mirror above it and little
drawers at its sides. These latter were all locked,
but one which had not been shut in as tightly


114 THE CASE OF THE
fingerprints well and he felt sure that he knew
these. At the Yard, moreover, were experts who
would read them as easily as other people read
ordinary print. With which reinforcing thought
Pointer again opened the drawer, and once more
studied the keys closely without touching them in
the first instance.
He thought they had been tossed in by some one
in desperate haste. And he very much doubted
whether Violet Walsh would have ever flung them
on top of those pretty furbelows which seemed
to have been laid in with care; and which,
as he finally lifted out the comparatively heavy
bunch of keys, showed too many signs of
crushing to be worn again without first being re-
dressed.
The keys themselves, when examined, told but
little. Passing to the three wardrobe-trunks, he
unlocked each in turn, and glanced through its
contents. All were packed to overflowing, and
very neatly and efficiently packed, too. Violet
Walsh had been used to packing for herself. Finally
he bent over a flat cabin trunk that had been
shoved under one of the beds. A bed in the corner,
which Pointer fancied—rightly, from the tapestry
panels around it—had been Violet's before her
marriage. When he unlocked this trunk and looked
inside it he glanced round at Sewell, who was at
his side in an instant.
"Something's been removed from this tray.
Look I" He showed where, among a closely-stocked


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 115
welter of jumpers, there was an empty space which
exposed the bottom of the tray for nearly a quarter
of its entire length.
"Seems to indicate that a box had occupied that
empty space," Pointer said. "Such a box might
have been a shallow, locked dispatch box that would
guard papers or trinkets. Say"
"A pearl necklace," Sewell interpolated with
conviction as Pointer continued to study the tray,
lifted it, glanced at the closely-packed lower part
—untouched, he thought—before he re-locked this
cabin trunk and shoved it back where he had
found it.
The edge of the pink satin frilling around the
bedspread was torn in one place. Pointer thought
it had caught in the lock of the trunk and been
violently pulled free.
"It certainly looks to me," said Sewell, "as
though the larger pearl necklace was at the bottom
of the murder—and of the telephone message
summoning Walsh to the Mews so as to leave his
wife's rooms free for the murderous brute to ransack
in security for her jewels."
"You think her murderer wouldn't have seen
that she wasn't wearing the pearls?" Pointer
asked sceptically. "They certainly stand for at
least one possible motive; and, so far, the only
plausible one yet found. But why was she at the
Mews at all? How did she get in? With her
mother's key—Mr. Mills suggests. But, even so,
that explains nothing as to her presence there at


Il6 THE CASE OF THE
all—even apart from her murder. Why was she
there?"
"Oh, it must have been connected with the lost
or fraudulently exchanged string!" Sewell said.
"She didn't look one to run after false gods. And
it would surely have been a bit early for that,
anyhow, the first week of her honeymoon!"
"Why wouldn't you have thought her the kind
to have a love affair—with any one but her husband,
I suppose you mean." Even without the curious
affair of the pearls, Mrs. Walsh's character was
highly important. Sewell considered. He was as
keen as Pointer himself at "sensing" character.
He even liked to consider himself unusually psychic.
But the difficulty was how to put " feelings" into
words without giving them the lie. "Well—she
seemed to lack romantic tendencies. ... In a way,
she lacked charm," he said finally. "One didn't
notice it at first, you know, because she was so
gay and breezy and even bluff. But, now you ask
me, I don't think she was a lover by nature."
Sewell was interested in his own words. Like a
man seeing a cloudy mixture settle to a different
colour sediment, he regarded this decanted
summary of Violet Walsh as something quite
different from his vague general notions of bright
eyes, red lips and gleaming teeth.
"Not much heart?" Pointer said. "Even her
dead face suggests something of that sort. It's
handsome—but, for her age, hard—very hard in
what must have been its natural cast."


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 117
"Yes, perhaps she was inwardly hard. I told
you Walsh adored her, rather than she him. You
felt with him that she was the only thing in the
world that mattered. Whereas "—Sewell saw the
sediment clearing a little—" I fancy money and
position and, above all, power, might appeal more
to her. But look here, chief inspector, your questions
are rather rummy. . . . I've noticed it before.
They make you think of people differently. . . . Or,
rather, they make you realise that you really thought
of people differently from what you thought you did."
"It's the Scotland Yard touch," chaffed Pointer.
"They teach us to strip off the glamour"
"Ah!" Sewell put up a brown, bony hand
impressively. "That's it! Just what she lacked. As
I read Arthur Walsh's bride, she was without any
touch of glamour. . . . But to go back to the
question of motive for her murder—I don't see
that the murderer mightn't have thought she was
wearing that valuable string under her dress.
Women often do, I've understood, when going
about in ordinary street things."
"Sounds a bit hasty," Pointer said dryly, "to
murder on an off-chance. And murderers, in my
experience, are devilish careful, as a rule, not to
put their necks into the noose for nothing. This
one, too, had only to use his eyes. For his victim
is wearing a collarless, V-necked dress. And—unless
it was a fact and her maid was in collusion with
him—he'd not expect to find the pearls around
her waist."


Il8 THE CASE OF THE
"But what else than that string of splendid
pearls that Walsh wants traced, while I'm clearing
his wife's name about the other, could have been
the motive for her murder?" Sewell exclaimed.
Pointer nodded in sympathy as he crossed to the
window, where stood a little table with some letters
and note-paper on it. An engagement-book lay
at one side and Pointer looked up its last date.
There was one entry for this same day. "4 o'clock,"
was scrawled in pencil, as though noted hastily.
"Nothing else?" queried Sewell, peering over
Pointer's arm. "Four o'clock she was alive. Five
she was alive. It's what happened between five
and five-thirty that's the riddle! Look here," he
cried, "say it was she herself who took some box
out from that cabin trunk under her bed, at 'four
o'clock.' The interview takes place then. She tears
back here for her hidden pearls at five. ..."
"And didn't replace her keys in her handbag
—but flung them into that drawer?" Again
Pointer was clearly sceptical. He plainly could not
see the owner of that bunch of keys leaving them
behind her, carelessly tossed into a frail little
drawer for safe custody.


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
119
CHAPTER X
THE FINGERPRINTS SEEM TO LINK UP THE
KEYS WITH A CERTAIN PERSON
The two slipped, still unheard, downstairs and
outside. Drawing the front door noiselessly shut,
Pointer pressed the bell. He had to ring three
times. But at last a parlourmaid opened it, mur-
mured promptly that none of the family was in,
and was about to close the door again when Pointer
stopped her with an authoritative gesture.
"There's been an accident to Mrs. Walsh," he
said. "I want to ask you a few questions."
"Lor', sir!" said the maid in shocked tones,
but addressing Sewell as a gentleman who had
lunched at the house a few hours before. "Lor',
sir! Not a serious accident, I hope." As she spoke,
the parlourmaid showed them in.
"Very serious. Fatal, I'm sorry to say. Mrs.
Walsh is dead," was the reply. "How can we get
into touch with her mother, Mrs. Finch-Gray?"
"Dead!" The maid turned shocked eyes on
Sewell again. "Why you yourself, sir, lunched here
with the mistress and master to-day! And she
was in her bedroom around five! How did it
happen, sir?"
"Head injury," was the reply. "She was killed
outright."


120 THE CASE OF THE
"Oh, those cars !" the maid ejaculated. "What's
the use of Belisha Beacons! Just inviting a body
to step out and be run over! And Miss Vi always
was in a hurry . . . always in a rush," she babbled
on, too excited to pause. "I felt it in my bones
that she'd be run over some day. And what Mr.
Walsh will do, I can't think! Only married a few
days, and fair doting on her! Oh, sir, it's dreadful!
Her poor mother, too!"
"Yes, where can we find her mother?" Pointer
asked sharply.
"She's not back in Town yet," the parlourmaid
replied, shaking her head. "She's not expected
back till dinner next Friday. Might I ask where
the accident happened, sir?"
"In a place called Stanley Mews. Do you know
it?" Pointer questioned.
"Mr. Gray owns some property there, I know.
Was Mrs. Walsh there in her car?" But, not pro-
posing to satisfy her avid curiosity:
"Were Mr. and Mrs. Walsh dining at home
to-night?" Pointer asked instead of replying.
"No, sir. They were to dine with some friends
of theirs."
"Who is Mrs. Walsh's personal maid ?" was the
next question. Upon which he was told that Mrs.
Walsh was looking for one, but had not yet been
satisfied. For the time being the parlourmaid
valetted Mr. Walsh, and the housemaid looked
after Mrs. Walsh.
The housemaid was fetched, was duly horrified at


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
121
the "accident," and duly indignant at motor-
cars.
"And when did you say Mrs. Walsh left the
house this afternoon?" Pointer interpolated.
"About five, sir," was the positive answer, with
a voluble account of " Mr. Mills' call " when " Mrs.
Walsh had just gone out."
"You saw her go out ?" Pointer asked casually,
and was told that Gwendolyn herself had not.
But when she heard her stirring around in her
bedroom—as the maid had chanced to hear in
passing it—she, Gwendolyn, had knocked and, on
the door remaining shut when asked, through it,
what the knock was for, had herself asked through
it if Mrs. Walsh would like tea. On which she was
similarly assured through the closed door, "No,
thanks," in Mrs. Walsh's well-known voice.
Pointer's only comment was to ask where Mrs.
Walsh kept her keys. The instant reply being,
"She always carries them in her little handbag,
just as Mrs. Finch always does."
"Her keys should be locked up, or handed to
Mr. Walsh now," Pointer said. "Suppose you
come up and see if you can't find them in her
bedroom. Her handbag has been opened and there
are no keys in it."
The two maids stared at one another. Both
said that they had never known Miss Vi not to
take her keys with her, and Gwendolyn led the way
upstairs with the look of one who performs a
requested act with no hope of success.


122 THE CASE OF THE
"Just glance through the drawers for them,"
Pointer directed; and, reiterating that Mrs. Walsh
never went out without them, the maid pulled at a
drawer at one side of the dressing-table. "She
always locks everything, sir," the maid insisted.
"She only left this drawer unlocked for me to put
in it something that was coming from the shop.
This one "She opened it—and gave a cry.
"But—these can't be Mrs. Walsh's!" the house-
maid exclaimed, picking up the little bunch of keys
that Pointer had replaced. "They can't be! Is this
a joke, sir ?" she asked suddenly and suspiciously.
"A joke? Why?" Sewell broke in to ask in
his turn.
'' Well, sir—seeing that I put those frills in there
not half an hour ago myself and no keys were
there then—of course it seems like some joke to
find them on top of those very frills!"
"Look here," Pointer decided to explain, "I
think you ought to know—both of you—that Mrs.
Walsh's death is being investigated by the police.
To clear up exactly how it happened. I am a
detective inspector from New Scotland Yard—Mr.
Sewell here will vouch for that—and I want you
to tell me all that you can about her things."
Still, as was intended, the two maids only thought
of Mrs. Walsh's death as happening in a car accident.
They were too startled and shocked by the news
itself to wonder at the questions they were asked.
"These came from Dickins and Jones this after-
noon, sir," the housemaid who had acted as Mrs.


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
123
Walsh's temporary maid explained. "Mrs. Walsh
ordered them yesterday, and she told me that
when they came I was to be sure and lay the frills
carefully in this drawer, which she had left unlocked
for them, so as not to let them get mussed at all.
And to think of finding her keys—and they certainly
do look like hers—right on top of them! But who
in the world could have put them there, sir?"
She eyed the two men searchingly. "For nobody's
been in the house since I laid the frills in that
drawer—except, of course, Mr. Mills when he
called. And he went out again at once when he
was told that Mrs. Walsh was not in."
"At what time, exactly, did you put them in
the drawer and close it?" Pointer asked, taking
out his note-book to show the importance of question
and answer.
"Dickens and Jones delivered them close on
half-past four, sir, and they were laid neatly in
the drawer almost at once." It appeared that the
housemaid had been quick about it, and knew just
when she finished her task, because she wanted to
slip out for a word with the young postman who
collected letters at that time from the pillar-box
nearby, and he couldn't wait long.
On her side, the parlourmaid had heard Mrs.
Walsh back again in her bedroom just about
5 o'clock—when she, Gwendolyn, happened to be
passing it. She was quite certain of that, for she
knew "Miss Vi's" voice well, as also "her ways
of stirring around in her room." She couldn't be


124 THE CASE OF THE
mistaken about either thing. She had turned the
tap on full in her fitted basin, too, which was her
regular signal when she didn't want to bother to
open her door. "Besides," she said triumphantly
as to her certainty, "it couldn't have been any one
else speaking." As for the time when Mr. Mills
rang the front-door bell, the parlourmaid could be
equally certain about that. For cook had just
tuned-in for the North Ireland news from the
B.B.C. at quarter-past five. So Mrs. Walsh must
have come back for something and gone out again
just before that. But none of the servants had
noticed it, either time. Mr. Walsh had given the
servants' hall a new and splendid wireless set, and
they were "all crazy to listen to it."
Then Pointer had a few words to say as to how
fresh and charming the bedroom looked; and was
told about its having been newly decorated for the
bridal pair's use of it until their own house could
be done over for them. And, in reply to another
word of praise, learnt that all the old pieces had been
French polished just the day before their arrival.
Oh, yes, including the dressing-table, of course.
The two men hurried out, making a great show
of haste, so that they need not say more about the
"accident." Outside in the car they jotted down
the time-table thus obtained.
"About five o'clock she was heard in her room.
By five-fifteen she was gone. Just before half-past
five the telephone message reached her husband
asking him to go at once to Stanley Mews. The


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
125
three got there," noted Pointer, " just past the half-
hour, and found Mrs. Walsh murdered. We were
notified a couple of minutes before quarter to six.
The doctor saw the body at practically six o'clock,
and, as the day is warm, puts the hour of death
as around five at the very latest; although, if that
time should be challenged he would be prepared
to extend it backwards to four o'clock; but not
. to advance it. It looks, therefore, as though she
must have been killed very soon after leaving her
mother's house, as she was heard in her room at
five . . . and it took us just eight minutes from
door to door. I was careful, though, not to drive
very fast, and we had the lights against us once
so the journey could have been made in a lucky
five minutes."
"It looks as though she had been killed at once
on entering, or rather on returning to the flat in the
Mews," Sewell said, jotting down this time-table.
"But that four o'clock appointment . . .! Mr.
Walsh evidently can't help us about that, and I
must get to work sharply on his commission," he
added as he slipped his note-book into his pocket.
"And those pearls . . .! I must certainly have
a word with Miss Lovelace first of all, and hear her
version of the affair."
"Meanwhile," Pointer said, "the Yard will
probably establish whose fingerprints are on the
drawer where the keys were found. As also how
long Mrs. Walsh was at her dressmaker's in Bruton
Street."


126
THE CASE OF THE
They parted with an agreement to dine together
and talk ove/ the affair from any fresh angle ob-
tained in the interval.
On calling, Sewell learned that Miss Lovelace was
in; and, on being given the message he pencilled
on his card, she saw him at once.
She made a charming vision, too, in something
all ice-blue frills and a big pale rose bow of ribbon.
Her face, exquisitely made up, her coral-tinted
cheeks showed no pallor, but the pupils of her large
eyes were enormously dilated. So it seemed that
even Miss Lovelace could feel an emotional shock.
Sewell had fancied her haughtily impervious to any.
She had heard the dreadful news, she said, about
half an hour ago from her maid, who had heard it
from one of the maids with whom she was great
friends at Friars Halt. And much to his surprise,
Sewell found Ann Lovelace quite different from
what he had expected. She spoke gently and sym-
pathetically of Arthur Walsh's murdered bride,
deploring her own previous thoughts about her in
connection with the imitation pearls which the
then Violet Finch had insisted on leaving with her
as security for the sum which Ann had advanced
for the other's gambling debt at the night-club
the two had visited out of curiosity.
And in return for what Sewell was touched by as
Ann's candour, he explained how he had come to
call on her for just such details as Arthur Walsh's
private investigator. "For I have no connection
with the police, I hope you know, Miss Lovelace—


128
THE CASE OF THE
arrived there to find Arthur closeted with the
Colonel. Kitty saw her car arrive, but withdrew
to her own rooms. Not that Ann asked for her,
but seated herself in the library which opened out
of the Colonel's den. And for once both girls had
one and the same anxiety: What was going on in
Colonel Walsh's study?
How was Arthur telling his dreadful news?
How was his father taking it? Lady Monkhouse,
Ann knew, was away, staying with friends.
In actuality the Colonel listened in horrified
silence, aghast at Arthur's broken, stammered
account of what had been found in Stanley Mews.
"Terrible! An incredibly dreadful affair!" he
said finally in choking nightmare sensations.
"To think that Ann thought Violet knew about
those pearls being false! She went to the Mews
because she had learnt something," Arthur wound
up. "Something linking the place with the stolen
and imitated pearls—for that shorter string is
missing. We haven't been able to find it anywhere."
His eyes on his knees, the Colonel made no com-
ment. He did not see the affair in that light at
all; and his absolute silence plainly said as much.
At which Arthur, his head held very stiff and very
high, took his wordless departure, encountering
Ann Lovelace outside, as she had meant that he
should. But a very different Ann from their last
meeting.
He made as if to pass her, but she caught his
elbow, appealing with trembling lips:


130 THE CASE OF THE
for you, too, Walsh. I'll get on to the chief inspector
and put it to him."
After a little delay Pointer got the message, and
promptly asked Walsh to join in; and since Sewell
wanted to continue his special investigation of the
double mystery of the two pearl necklaces, Pointer
invited both men to dine with him at his rooms,
Sewell, meanwhile, to post Walsh as to just how
far the investigation had yet gone.
"Now about that 'four o'clock ' date jotted down
in your wife's note-book, Walsh," Sewell said,
"have you no idea what it stood for? Where she
was going besides to her dressmaker?"
Arthur made a hopeless negative gesture with
his cigarette. "She only told me that she had a
lot of fittings to get through, and then spoke of
being ' occupied' till past five. I lumped the two
together, and thought she had meant that she
would be at the dressmaker's until five. But, on
thinking back, I remember her making two sen-
tences of it, or rather of them. I'm dead sure she
was hot on the track of that cursed string that
started all this awful business. She was terribly
upset by Ann's incredible suspicions about herself.
And naturally, if she thought she had a chance of
catching the thief, she would have gone for him
bald-headed! Vi was just that sort."
Something in his voice made Sewell ask point-
blank, "Have you any suspicions yourself?"
Arthur's eyes met his full on. "I know! But
I've no proof. He came to me red-handed, Sewell!"


132
THE CASE OF THE
Arthur rose as he spoke. "I haven't been to con-
fession for ages. He's always reminding me of my
remissness. I'll go now; and afterwards, in the
glow of welcoming back the prodigal son, he'll be
bound to open up and aid me under these awful
circumstances. Till to-night, then, Sewell! I may
learn something really important from him."
Arthur hurried away on his errand, but when
Sewell met him on the steps of the house in Bays-
water, where the chief inspector had his comfortable
rooms, it was to see a very disappointed expression.
"He's in a Retreat!" Arthur exclaimed bitterly.
"I couldn't even send a message in. And it's to
last four days!"
"Annoying !" Sewell said sympathetically. "But
would he admit it, if he knew anything that would
help in the inquiry? Supposing, of course, that it
was anything he had learnt by accident in the
ordinary way. ..."
"If it would help Violet, he'd let himself be
drawn and quartered rather than speak," Arthur
said fiercely. "And it is wanted to help her name
at least. The only help we can give her now."
His face worked convulsively and, turning round,
he pressed the bell violently.
Pointer welcomed them, repeating that he
would be very glad indeed of Arthur's assistance.
They had learnt from the shop in question—if one
could call anything so quiet and handsomely
appointed a "shop "—that Mrs. Walsh had left
it at quarter to four, and had seemed anxious not


136 THE CASE OF THE
on—Arthur's own agent, whose job it was to solve
the mystery of the false pearls and the disappearance
of the real ones.
The telephone bell rang.
"Mills speaking." He had just found Mrs.
Finch at Henley and had broken the news of the
tragedy to her. She was terribly shocked and
shaken. He, Mills, thought that she ought to have
at least a night's rest and quiet. But Mrs. Finch
insisted on seeing the officer in charge of the case
at once. They were therefore driving back at once
to Ennismore Gardens. Would the chief inspector
manage to meet them there? Mills added that he
had been asked by Mrs. Finch to stay there, as
he was, of course, giving up his rooms in the Mews
at once.


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
137
CHAPTER XI
a mother's grief does not appear to be
overwhelming
Mrs. Finch showed few outward marks of grief,
to the chief inspector's apparently casual glance,
when he followed Arthur Walsh and Sewell into
the drawing-room at Ennismore Gardens. She
looked surprised to see Pointer with them, but
without expressing it otherwise.
She turned to Arthur with both hands out-
stretched. "I don't know how to say what I feel!
Grief for poor Violet, and horror at the way of
her death!"
He held her hands for a moment before gently
seating her again, as he said brokenly, "I don't
think any of us can express what we feel about it,
except by doing all we can to help Scotland Yard
to see to it that her murderer doesn't escape justice.
Sewell, here, is helping, too—in his own expert
way."
Mrs. Finch seemed puzzled at this, but she asked
no question; and Sewell had been told by Arthur,
on their way to Ennismore Gardens, that she pre-
sumably knew nothing about the loss of any pearls,
which had made Sewell give him a somewhat
astonished glance but, like Mrs. Finch now, he had
asked no questions.


140 THE CASE OF THE
"But that's the shorter string," she said when
the latter had finished about the imitation necklace.
"I won't stop to say how astounded I am at what
you tell me. Arthur, you didn't breathe a word
of all this to me! That was most considerate of
you. But just like you, dear boy! And what
about the longer string—the much more valuable
necklace? Where is it 7"
"It was not on Mrs. Walsh when she was found
—dead," Pointer said.
"Well, of course, it must be traced! And the
other one, too!" said Mrs. Finch firmly. "They
were about all that the poor child had to leave, and
it would grieve her terribly if she could know that
her mother didn't even get that much!"
"Had Mrs. Walsh any known enemies ?" Pointer
asked. It was a stereotyped question; but he had
never found one more initially useful in suggesting
the trail or trails of those private enmities that
surround so many a murder.
Mrs. Finch turned to her son-in-law. "Well,
Arthur, what about it?" she asked him with an
enigmatic smile. "You would know about that
better than any one else could, wouldn't you?"
"Not necessarily," Arthur answered grimly,
"until this mystery about the pearls is cleared up."
"Well, there you are, then! Who accused poor
Violet of having known that the pearls were false
just in order to stop the marriage? A most atro-
cious lie! But who particularly wanted to stop
your marriage?"


142 THE CASE OF THE
for me—for they're mine now—you'll discover
who was my poor child's mortal enemy."
At this Pointer asked her explicitly, "Am I to
understand you to affirm, madam, that your daugh-
ter, Mrs. Walsh, had no property to leave, apart from
her pearl necklaces?"
"Nothing else, except a very small bank balance,
so far as I know," was the decided reply. "My
husband, Mr. Finch, left me practically penniless.
I contrived to make a small fortune, however, but
lost it all by misled investments. As for my clubs
—I'm much afraid there's nothing left of them but
enormous debts. But I really can tell you nothing
more. Mr. Mills, as he is obliged to, now, is putting
up at my house."
They knew this last fact already, as also that
Mills was reported " not in." And the chief inspector
requested "Mrs. Finch" to accompany Inspector
Watts to the Yard, and there put in writing her
claims to the said pearls, explaining that he himself
must be elsewhere for the next hour or so.
Arthur, accordingly, said good-bye to her and
left the house, with Sewell and Pointer. He drew
a deep breath as the door closed behind them.
"There's something about that woman," he began,
then stopped. "My murdered wife seems to have
infected me with some of her own sensations," he
muttered. "She was secretly terrified of her
mother." He turned to Pointer and they got into
the latter's car. '' It's a terrible thing to say, but
I can't set her aside from this dreadful affair—at


144 THE CASE OF THE
about them, nor just who had originally put the
idea into his head that the two strings would make
a superb wedding gift to his bride. And Pointer let
the query rest at this tragedy-obscured, vague
remembrance of that detail.
Instead, he turned to the question of the larger
and much more valuable string. "Mrs. Finch seemed
to think, just now, that it might be in your safe.
Is it there? I noticed that you let her suppose
that you would turn it over to her after the reading
of Mrs. Walsh's last Will and Testament."
"Of course it's in Violet's jewel box, in her
mother's house," Arthur said. "That was why I
did not argue with her about it."
On which Pointer glanced at his watch as he said,
"Mrs. Finch promised to go to my rooms at once,
so if you'll turn round, Mr. Walsh, we might see if
the longer string is there now."
"You don't share Walsh's suspicion that Mrs.
Finch may know something about the missing
string, do you, chief inspector?" Sewell asked in
a whispered aside as Arthur's attention was mo-
mentarily concentrated on passing between two
drays.
"She's a most difficult woman to read—or
surprise," Pointer replied. "But I think she
has a distinct theory as to the identity of the
murderer. A theory which she has not passed on
to us. It was in existence before she heard about
the loss of the pearls—and it does not centre on
Miss Lovelace, I feel quite sure."


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
M5
CHAPTER XII
AN ADVERTISEMENT IS FOUND IN DUPLICATE
Back at the house the three men learned that Mrs.
Finch had summoned a taxi and driven to the
Yard; police watch being maintained as to Mills's
movements.
Arthur opened the door with his latch-key and
Pointer and Sewell followed him into the house.
Some tampering with the seals over the lock of the
bedroom was evident to the chief inspector; but
as they were intact he said nothing. And as soon
as they were in the room Arthur opened the trunks
with Violet's keys.
In the larger wardrobe trunk was her jewel-box.
He unlocked that too, and with a sigh lifted out
some really beautiful jewellery which had been
partly wedding presents and partly gifts bought
by him for his young bride on their honeymoon.
Then he came to an oval flat leather box that had
her initials in gilt on its lid. The pearls were in this,
he said, and pressed the button. Inside lay a
beautiful string of pearls; creamy white, with just
the suspicion of a rosy gleam in their exquisite
colour. "Yes, this is the larger string. So it's only
the smaller that's missing," Arthur said as he
lifted it out carefully.


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
147
"A marvellously deceptive imitation of the well-
remembered and, of course, accurately recorded
larger string of the two ' historically unique' pair
sold to Mr. Walsh, here. This amazingly perfect
copy is from Paris. The patent is the successful
invention of a man named d'Erlanger, instances of
whose genius in that line I have seen before; but
none so astonishingly good. It is an expensive
process; entirely mechanical; the copied pearls
being turned out exact in weight, and very closely
approximate in tint and even in apparent substance."
"How much would such an imitation as this one
cost ?" Pointer asked.
"At the present rate of exchange I could get it
done, in the trade, for say—sixty pounds."
Walsh now held out the smaller string which
Violet Finch had taken from Ann Lovelace. He
had got her on the honeymoon to give them to
him. Hung beside the other, even to his eyes, they
showed as from one process.
Receiving a similar pronouncement, and Pointer
having expressed his official thanks, a very silent
and variously ruminating trio returned to the house,
where a careful and thorough search of all the
murdered bride's things failed to discover the other
missing string.
Pointer requested Mr. Walsh to unlock the cabin
trunk under the bed, and that also was searched.
He called Arthur's attention to the space free in
the otherwise stuffed tray. A metal despatch box?
he queried. But Arthur said that he had never


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 149
Sewell, however, tried to comfort those impas-
sioned and vain regrets by again recurring to the
alternative possibility that whoever sent that
telephone message did it to keep the husband away
from Mrs. Walsh's bedroom in Ennismore Gardens
while it was ransacked for the larger string of
pearls.
"It was at twenty-five past five," Arthur said
more calmly and thoughtfully. "Yes, of course,
that's a less torturing possibility. For—but for
Mills—I might have come back . . . But then! But
for Mills ..." He stood staring down at the trunk
fixedly when a tap on the locked room door startled
him. "Mr. Walsh wanted on the telephone "; at
which he slipped out of the room.
It was Ann Lovelace telephoning. She had been
told that Arthur had gone with the chief inspector
and Mr. Sewell to Ennismore Gardens; and she was
"irrepressibly keen to learn " whether they had yet
found the longer string of pearls, or had got on the
track of the imitated shorter one, she said.
Arthur suggested that she should come herself
to Ennismore Gardens, as he did not care to tele-
phone the latest piece of news, which was " decidedly
and most amazingly unexpected."
Whereupon Ann eagerly replied that she would
be there in five minutes. She did it in less, and con-
vulsively held Arthur's hand clasped tightly in
both of hers as he told her of the finding of what
he had of course supposed to be the longer string;
of the chief inspector's doubts of its genuineness


150 THE CASE OF THE
and their consequent immediate visit to the
jewellers; the manager of whom had pronounced
it false.
"Imitation!" she gasped. "Then both were
imitation? Incredible!"
Arthur's fullest reply was his invitation to Ann
to " come upstairs and see it." He brought her in
with him and Pointer acquiescently showed her the
string. Expressing her amazement, she repeated
that of course Violet had been deceived as any one
might well be! . . . " But where are the real
pearls?" she looked about her inquiringly. And,
as no one answered, she continued with fresh sug-
gestions. "I wonder if any well-known purchaser
was buying pearls just then ? . . . They might have
been bought quite innocently, I should think.
Though I was rather thinking of the East. . . .
There they adore pearls, don't they ? . . . But may
I have a hunt, too? It seems so absolutely
impossible that they are not here somewhere."
As she spoke Ann opened the little drawers.
Pointer and Sewell frankly watched this proceeding.
Miss Lovelace seemed arrested by some scraps of
printed paper. Not one came her way that she did
not carefully glance through, however crumpled.
Letters or papers with handwriting on it were also
examined, but the chief inspector had an idea that
she wanted to see if she could find something definite
in print which had been kept by Violet Walsh and
stuffed away in some inconspicuous place.
Pointer had with him the handbag which had


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 153
"What did you find?" Arthur asked eagerly,
and Pointer permitted himself to look interested.
So did Sewell.
"Oh, it's only an advertisement that Violet seems
to have cut out and forgotten," Ann said vaguely.
"I found it in this side pocket of her handbag. It's
an offer to buy any specially good pearls or sapphires.
. . . She had such splendid examples of both, that
such an advertised offer would catch Violet's eye, of
course. But she wouldn't cut it out for that. Yet
she did cut it out. I wonder if she thought her
stolen string of pearls had been sold to the
advertiser!"
Arthur looked puzzled and disappointed by her
"big cry and little wool." He handed the cutting
back to her almost irritably. "I don't see that
that's any help! It's much too far-fetched. Why
should Vi connect that with her less valuable string
of pearls? For she didn't know the bigger and
much finer string was missing, or I should have
been told of it at once."
"Of course you would have been !" Ann agreed
heartily. "I thought of that too, Arthur, after my
first hasty hope that it might be a really helpful
clue. But on reflection there's this to be thought
of: Violet kept the advertisement. Why?"
Arthur, however, shook his head with a gesture
that had a hint of fresh impatience in it, but Ann
continued:
"For some good reason, you may be sure!" She
spoke with certainty. "Kept it here in her handbag


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 155
me at all; but if I have chanced on anything that
will clear her name from my mistaken charge against
her, oh, I shall be relieved and thankful, Arthur!"
she exclaimed remorsefully, turning to him with
shining eyes, at the sympathy of which he looked
deeply touched.
"Here are some of Mrs. Walsh's letters that
should be glanced through," Pointer interrupted.
He himself had already done so. "Mr. Walsh,
would you take them into one of the downstairs
rooms and just run over them? And perhaps Miss
Lovelace would help you with them," he added
suggestively.
Ann repeated that she would be glad to
help; and the door was closed behind the
two.
Pointer locked it and produced on the instant,
from under his arm, a charming flat lizard-skin
pocket. It was Ann Lovelace's. He had picked it
up from a chair where it had accidentally fallen,
and trusted to the circumstance that, with her
hands over-full of papers and envelopes, she would
not miss it at once.
He went through it with dexterous quickness.
There were no bloodstains on it, or on anything in
it. But in a closed central division, separately
fastened with its own little catch, was the same
cutting as the one which he had found in the dead
woman's handbag. Replacing this cutting in every
way exactly as and where he had found it, Pointer
laid the bag downagain where it had been dropped,


156 THE CASE OF THE
unlocked the door of the room and continued his
searching inspection of everything in the room.
A few minutes later Ann and Arthur came back
with the examined papers of Mrs. Walsh, none of
which, Arthur assured Pointer, could have any
bearing on the case. And Ann, after a startled
expression on catching sight of her own handbag,
seized it hurriedly and went off with Arthur to find
out the date of the newspaper cutting, promising to
telephone it at once to the other two.
Sewell broke the pregnant silence that followed
this departure by murmuring with a frown:
"So Miss Lovelace had a similar cutting! I only
hope the date ..." He left the sentence unfinished,
substituting: "I wish I felt as certain of Mrs.
Walsh's good faith as Miss Lovelace is."
"' Is '? Or professes to be?" queried Pointer
dryly.
"She did purr a bit, didn't she?" Sewell said
disconsolately. "I'm not so sure about her own
good faith as I was. What with one thing and
another, I shouldn't be surprised if Miss Lovelace
had herself contrived, for some reason of her own,
to slip the tell-tale scrap into the handbag carried
by Mrs. Walsh—or Miss Finch—for it might have
been done before the wedding." Sewell's brow con-
tortions were an index to his perplexed cogitations
as he added: "Chief inspector, do you suspect
some such spiteful trap to eventually snare Walsh's
fiancee—or bride? Or do you believe the latter
was responsible for it?"


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 157
Pointer, however, refused to be drawn into any
more explicit pronouncement, at this stage of an
extremely complicated investigation, than his tersely
non-committal reply: "Either might be so."
CHAPTER XIII
EVIDENCE ACCUMULATES
Sewell's professional interests were at issue as
well as his disinterested concern for his friend.
The latter maintained that the cutting only proved
what he had claimed from the first: that his wife
had come on something which had linked the fraud-
ulent necklace directly with Mills's flat, if not with
Mills himself. But Sewell now had disturbing doubts,
which must be settled, pro or con, so that, while he
half-wished that he had not accepted the commission,
the other half of his mentality knew that he did not
want to relinquish the intriguing problem unsolved.
If the living Violet had been what her adoring
husband thought her, what she had as convincingly
appeared to be, at that luncheon, then that cutting
should help him to establish it. It might, he
thought, lead either to Mills or to some one con-
nected with her mother's circle. For it had been
while Violet was again living under her mother's
roof that she had gone on some suspicion to the
Mews, and been murdered in consequence.


l6o THE CASE OF THE
a little package had come for Mr. Mills from his
laundry, about three in the afternoon. The man
who brought it said it was a handkerchief that had
been left out of Mr. Mills's things sent home at the
end of last week."
"Around three." Sewell was pale with excite-
ment. "If that's so . . . Then how did the paper—
you think it was that wrapping-paper, of course-
but how did it come to have Mills's fingerprints on
it? He says he didn't go over to his flat at all
yesterday until he went there with Miss Kitty and
Arthur Walsh at half-past five."
"Exactly!" Pointer replied. "That's the ques-
tion, and an important one. Inspector Watts has
one of the pieces of paper with him—to match it
at the laundry, if possible. I rang them up on the
telephone this morning and asked particulars of the
handkerchief sent."
Sewell did not quite see why; but he said nothing.
"The manageress told me that it was of bright
blue silk, with large white spots on it."
"Mills did have one of that description thrust
up his cuff yesterday, when we saw him at his flat!"
Sewell threw out his hand with quite a dramatic
gesture. "But that would mean ?"—his face was
all puckers. "How could you prove it was the
same handkerchief?"
"Quite possibly he won't be carrying it to-day,"
Pointer said. "At least one would expect him to
use only subdued colours just now. And if
it can be got hold of, among his things, and the


TWO PEARL NECKLACES l6l
laundry can recognise it positively as the one they
sent home to him yesterday in the early afternoon
by special delivery, Mr. Mills would need to exercise
all his ingenuity to explain it away."
"If it can be got hold of! But how can it be
done?" Sewell persisted.
"Say a man, claiming to be from the laundry,
calls and asks one of the maids in Ennismore
Gardens not to get him into trouble, but to let him
have it back, for it wasn't Mr. Mills's, but belonged
to another customer. He adds that he's bringing
back the right blue and white one instead. Say the
maid, touched by his good looks and his pleading,
gives him back from Mr. Mills's room the one sent
to Mr. Mills's flat yesterday. Say the laundry
identify it? . . ."
"If the laundry identify that handkerchief—as
they will—you'll have him!" Sewell exclaimed.
"But his alibi? It was confirmed by the mother
of the murdered woman! Are you going to question
her about that, Chief Inspector?"
"Mrs. Finch is too ill to see any one this morn-
ing," Pointer replied with a very unsympathetic
look at his companion. "It happens to fit in well
with some of her commercial difficulties—not to be
able to reply to questions for some days—so I don't
think she'll recover in a hurry."
"But surely, to catch her daughter's murderer!"
the other expostulated. "Are you going to arrest
Mills, or question him first ?" he asked.
"Question him, assuredly. But at this juncture


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 163
"And the handkerchief will prove that it was in
the flat early yesterday afternoon," Sewell said.
"I wonder though . . . Mrs. Walsh was here at five.
Could she have torn that paper into bits? Did it
also serve to wrap up the pearls? Frankly, Pointer,
I'm at sea! Absolutely at sea!"
Pointer made no comment.
"The date when that advertisement was inserted,"
Sewell continued after another gloomy interval,
"may get us one step forward."
"A big one at that," Pointer agreed, "though
not necessarily in the direction you desire, my dear
fellow," was his unspoken reflection before Sewell
resumed:
"And what about Mills's gloves?"
"Mr. Mills's outfit in that respect would seem to
have consisted of two pairs only. Both pairs quite
uninteresting," said the chief inspector.
"But did one glove look crumpled? As though
it had been forced into an inner waistcoat pocket?"
Sewell asked with intense interest.
"You expect too much. The fault of youth!"
was the smiling response. "Both pairs looked
smooth, and very little used."
"Humph!" was Sewell's discontented ejacula-
tion. "But, by the way, where was Colonel Walsh
yesterday afternoon?"
"I dropped in late last night at Friars Halt, as
I happened to be in the neighbourhood." Pointer
threw in this last explanatory clause quite casually.
It was, however, received with a derisive grin.
s


164 THE CASE OF THE
"He spent yesterday afternoon, he says, looking
through a very well-known bulb importer's stock.
From half-past three to well past five."
"Anyway, I don't see Colonel Walsh battering-in
the head of even an unwelcome daughter-in-law,"
Sewell called over his shoulder as he hurried off.
At the Yard Pointer was informed that Mr. Mills
was back and quite at his service if the chief
inspector would like a talk with him. Upon which
Pointer phoned asking Mills to make the immediate
interview in his official room. And when his visitor
was shown in it was with a very haggard countenance
that he seated himself.
Pointer wasted no time in skirmishing. He asked
him point-blank how he accounted for the fact that
his fingerprints were found on a drawer of Mrs.
Walsh's dressing-table.
Mills stared, and said he couldn't explain it at
all, except that on the day before her return he had
noticed that one of the drawers stuck out, and had
thrust it home when Mrs. Finch showed him the
room ready for the young couple. Obviously, he
said, Violet had used the knob when opening and
shutting it. As for the french-polishing—well,
evidently the polisher had scamped his work. It
was a possible explanation and it was made with
apparent carelessness. Yet it might be the last talk
the chief inspector could have with him without
having to preface it by the warning which sounds
so simple, aud which means so much,—the warning


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 165
which a police officer is bound to give if he thinks
the answers to his questions may mean an immediate
arrest, that anything the questioned man or woman
says will be taken down, and may be used in
evidence.
Half an hour later Pointer learnt that the hand-
kerchief had been definitely identified by Mills's
laundry as the one sent by hand yesterday after-
noon. The vanman had left it on his way to his
own home, about half-past three; for he had driven
away from the laundry at three and got home at
four. And the Mews was almost exactly half-way
by road between the two places.
So now there was definite evidence that Mills had
been in his flat before four o'clock yesterday after-
noon; and Mrs. Finch must be aware that she was
giving him a false alibi unless her partner had
misled her in some clever way. Pointer's mind,
however, set that question aside for the moment
to concentrate on other details of Mills's dossier.
Sewell meanwhile had contrived an interview
with Miss Kitty Walsh, in which he told her of Miss
Lovelace's change of heart towards Mrs. Walsh's
implication in the false string of pearls.
"Change of heart!" Kitty shook her head like
a mettlesome little filly. "Change of plan, more
like, since she discovered that Arthur won't tolerate
the least aspersion on Violet's good faith. I think
Ann hopes to take her place as his consoling wife
yet." Kitty spoke with careful lightness. "But
she hates Violet, if possible more poisonously than


i66
THE CASE OF THE
ever. Don't make any mistake about that! For if
you keep that fact before you, and read everything
she says or does by its illumination, you may read
Ann Lovelace correctly. Otherwise you, too, will
be her dupe."
"You're a pretty good hater yourself, Miss
Walsh," Sewell said with a grin. "That means a
forthright nature."
"It means that I can't stand scheming. I'm
a Walsh, too, remember!"
"Umph! I wish I could be as confident as to
my own professional course towards my client," he
said gravely. "I wish I felt sure that Walsh's
fiancee and bride was all that he "Sewell
checked himself; his monkey's brow knotting itself
up over conflicting responsibilities.
"I believe you're yourself falling into Ann Love-
lace's net!" Kitty expostulated. "Oh, don't let
her twist you round her finger, as she does Arthur,.
with her sham remorse and devotion to Violet's
good name; her pretended belief, now, that Violet
was honest in pledging those pearls. Which simply
means that she feels she can afford to talk generously
because she has all the strings in her hand, to pull
them the way she is after."
"You don't do my supposed intelligence justice,"
Sewell said smilingly. "We found something this
morning (I don't feel at liberty to speak out about
it), and I myself have a strong suspicion that Miss
Lovelace may have somehow arranged for us to
find it."


l68 THE CASE OF THE
measurements concerning a carpet, while Sewell
bobbed up and down on his chair like a cork dancing
on waves.
"It's about the newspaper cutting," Pointer was
beginning, when he was again interrupted by a
telephone calling for the chief inspector.
"The cutting in Mrs. Walsh's handbag is to the
fore," he said. "The first message to me, just now,
was phoned from the Yard. The second was from
Mr. Walsh and Miss Lovelace. Both bring the
same authentic information; and I fear you will
not be pleased by it.
"We learn that the advertisement was originally
posted to not only the Daily Wire, from which the
cutting was taken, as you know, but to all the
other big London dailies severally; in each case
with a prepayment enclosed for its insertion daily
for a week, and giving a box number for replies
to it."
"And the date when it was posted?" Sewell
asked feverishly.
"Nearly a week before Miss Finch, as she was
then, got Miss Lovelace to advance the money for
her gambling debt, giving her alleged pearls as
security for the loan," Pointer said gravely.
"So my murdered client could well have seen
it!" Sewell said with a face no less significantly
grave than was the chief inspector's.
"Mr. Walsh's message was more than a trifle
incoherent," Pointer continued. "He says he
realises what the facts must suggest; but begs


170
THE CASE OF THE
"Disguised," Sewell said.
The chief inspector nodded vaguely.
"Surely—don't you think ?" Sewell persisted.
"Oh, yes." But Pointer added nothing to the
monosyllable. They then discussed the plans for
the afternoon. Pointer wanted to go carefully over
the events of yesterday with Kitty Walsh, in case
she had noticed anything more than she had
mentioned, and arranged with her to see her down
at Friars Halt later in the afternoon. Meanwhile he
intended to break the news to Mrs. Finch that the
pearls on which she was counting were all imitation,
and that the real ones were missing.
Sewell said that he knew the manager of the bank
which Mills used, and he would try to see if he could
glean from him a few friendly (as distinct from
official) facts about the latter.
"And what about Colonel Walsh's alibi?" he
asked as he was rising. "You know he made a
selection of some of the newer daffodils, and then
asked to be left alone in the shed where the
commoner sorts of lily bulbs are kept."
"He often does that, it seems," responded
Pointer. "Lets himself out by one of the doors
used by the staff, and sends in his order when he
has had time to think it over well and take counsel
with his head gardener. That happened yesterday,
it appears. He was alone from about four o'clock
on. No one knows when he left. He himself says
'close on five '; and that he ' sat a while in the
park afterwards.'"


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 171
"No alibi at all then," summed up Sewell. "It's
lucky for him that the Colonel is really beyond
suspicion." With which presumptive certificate
Sewell sprinted for his car.
CHAPTER XIV
AN ALIBI GOES WEST
Pointer phoned to Mrs. Finch, explaining that he
had news about the pearls which she ought to be
told immediately. As he hoped, he was asked to
come at once to Ennismore Gardens.
She was sitting before a writing-table Uttered
with papers. She looked a very cool, level-headed
business woman, not at all a bereaved mother.
Seating himself beside her, Pointer told her about
the real pearls being, at present, untraceable; about
the imitations substituted in their stead; about the
report of the jeweller from whom they had been
purchased; about the advertisement that had been
cut from the Daily Wire; about the fingerprints of
Mills on Violet Walsh's bedroom drawer, and also
on the shredded-up scraps of paper found at her
feet. "Torn up and strewn there after she was
murdered," he said frankly. "Some of them are
lying on spots of blood, yet none have bloodstains
on them."
His aim was to move forward at least one step,


172
THE CASE OF THE
by clearing away the alibi for Mills. An alibi which
he showed Mrs. Finch was quite impossible. But
she needed no showing. Her face changed as she
heard about the pearls being missing, about the
will being torn up. But when he came to the
account of Mills's fingerprints it turned into the
really dreadful face that Mrs. Finch could show
when infuriated. And for a while she sat grasping
the writing-table and swearing under her breath.
Then she looked up at him with flint-like eyes.
"So that was his game, was it! And he's got
the pearls?"
The formal warning, quite familiar to Mrs. Finch,
as to the penalty of an evidential accessory, even if
only after the act, could not stem the spate of her
mingled cupidity, jealousy and desperate disap-
pointment.
But she took a deep breath, and a deep drink of
whisky-and-soda from a side table, before demanding
point-blank:
"Just what do all these discoveries amount to in
Scotland Yard terms, inspector?" To say chief
inspector was beyond her impolite desire to strike.
"So far, seeing only a fraction of the whole as
yet," Pointer began tentatively, with undisturbed
official sang-froid, " it looks though Mr. Mills might
have inserted that advertisement as"
"Wait a moment I" she interrupted, rapidly
turning over some of her papers. "That jeweller
said that the imitations were made in Paris; and
two days after Arthur bought the two necklaces as


174 THE CASE OF THE
"But last evening Mills contrived to meet me on
my way to town, and almost sobbed—I was too
dazed by the news to do so, even if I were of the
cry-baby sort!—as he blurted out, without the
least consideration for my feelings, as her mother,
that Violet had been found by some one in his flat
at the Mews, murdered! He said that she must
have taken my key and let herself in, or have been
let in by some one she had arranged to meet there.
And because I thought the dreadful affair awfully
hard luck on Mills, as tenant of the flat, while he
declared the whole thing—why she had gone there
and whom she had met there and why she was
murdered—a nightmare mystery to him, as it was
to me—and because, too, I own that I didn't want
my business partner to get into any such trouble
innocently (as I believed, fool and dupe that I was !)
just at this juncture in our commercial affairs, I
confess that I promised to secure him from it by
giving him a sound alibi."
She was obliged to pause for breath after rattling
all this off at a rate that would have prevented any
word of intervention from the chief inspector, had
he been disposed to say any, as he was not. But
the pause was so far from being for self-control that
she screamed:
"And he was there all the time! Gone to meet
her there! Played the part of the rajah's con-
fidential secretary, probably. Violet always was a
mug! And of course she had the pearls for him
with her! And because she saw through his dis-


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 175
guise, though he is a very clever actor, and recog-
nised Mills himself, he killed her. And he's got both
those strings of splendid pearls that belong to me
now!"
In the silence that momentarily followed, Pointer's
first reflection was that Mrs. Finch at any rate
made no doubt but that her daughter had raised
a loan on the imitation string knowing it to be
false, since she had taken the real ones to sell to
the advertised purchaser. But he had his own
reasons for breaking the silence by saying that
"Mr. Walsh believes and Miss Lovelace says she
now agrees with him that Miss Finch never suspected
that the string she pledged was an imitation one.
Mr. Walsh is confident that his wife must have gone
to the Mews because she was on the track of the
missing string."
"And the newspaper cutting in her bag ?" asked
Mrs. Finch with recovered coolness, lighting a
cigarette and blowing the smoke indifferently in
the chief inspector's face.
"Put there by some one else—after she was
killed."
Mrs. Finch seemed to consider this possibility.
Then she shook her mop of coarse, grey-streaked
hair. "Can't see it," she said briefly. "No. Violet
and Mills were in the sale of the pearls together.
I'll tell you how the thing was worked." She pushed
her papers away and cocked one thin knee over the
other. "Violet wanted money. She jumped at the
chance of selling the pearls and chancing Arthur's


178 THE CASE OF THE
certain that she had heard Mrs. Walsh move and
speak, in her own bedroom, at five o'clock!
Pointer put his doubt to Mrs. Finch. She instantly
asked him to touch the bell twice; on which her
parlourmaid appeared.
"Look here, Gwendolyn," her mistress said, " I
want to get something quite clear about which this
officer and I don't agree. He says that Mrs. Walsh
didn't leave here yesterday afternoon until after
five o'clock. Now isn't that impossible?"
"No, madam, she didn't leave before that," the
maid said earnestly. "Five struck just as I heard
Mrs. Walsh in her room. I was coming down then
for my own tea, from my room. And I tapped on
her door to ask if she would like tea. Mrs. Walsh
called through the door, 'No, thanks,' and turned
on the water, like Miss Vi always used to do when
she didn't want to be disturbed, you know, madam."
"Yes, I remember," Mrs. Finch said, frowning
thoughtfully. "Well then, Gwendolyn, we'll let that
pass. But it was quite half-past five before Mr.
Mills turned up, and asked for Mrs. Walsh. That
was so, wasn't it?"
"No, madam, it wasn't!" Gwendolyn answered
firmly. " It was just quarter-past the hour. We were
waiting in the servants' hall for the news from North
Ireland. Cook always insists on that. Every day
we have to tune-in for North Ireland or there's
trouble. Sickening! Mabel and I wanted the B.B.C.
Dance Orchestra, which is something like! And
just as cook says 'There! That's it!' meaning


l8o THE CASE OF THE
door to Mrs. Walsh about her tea. It must have
been earlier."
But Gwendolyn was not to be shaken on that point.
She stuck both obstinately and consistently to her
positive statement; and on her own showing it
would have been at the time she said, when she
was passing down by the bedroom door of the
Walshs. And the housemaid was summoned and
bore this out again, as she had before.
On which Pointer took her in hand:
"It's a question of exact times; and it's a very
important point," he said in his pleasant quiet way.
"I'm sure, Mrs. Finch, that Gwendolyn wants to help
us, but I'm wondering if she might not have fancied
she heard Mrs. Walsh speaking; if she might not
have heard just that reply so often before, called
through the door, that yesterday Gwendolyn perhaps
took it for granted that she heard them again."
Mrs. Finch took out her cigarette and looked at
him.
"Well, sir," the housemaid interpolated, with
an apologetic smile for it," that's possible, Gwennie
often does think she's been called, when she hasn't
been, I mean, if it's about the time for it. She's
always saying the postman's knocked (that elderly
postman who comes of an evening always knocks ")
—this last in an aside to Mrs. Finch, who paid no
attention to it—" when she's waiting for a letter.
And I know she's said before now that she heard
you come in, madam, and then we've heard you
come in later on. Gwennie certainly does think


TWO PEARL NECKLACES l8l
she hears what it's about time for her to hear. I
mean"
She hesitated lamely, and Pointer turned to
Gwendolyn herself. He suggested that the voice she
had heard speaking through the door was some one
imitating Mrs. Walsh's voice. Didn't it sound
muffled ?—the two words rather blurred? In
answer, and looking very excited, Gwendolyn
exclaimed:
"Oh, yes, sir \ it was like that!" The voice she
had heard had had just Miss Violet's—Mrs. Walsh's
—way of saying things through the door, " over her
shoulder-like, without stopping what she was
doing." But Gwendolyn admitted that the words she
had heard had sounded indistinctly. And, alter a
few further attempts to explain more clearly what
she had already made quite clear, the girl was
dismissed.
"Sharp of you, chief inspector (but you look as
sharp as they make 'em ") Mrs. Finch said when
the maids had closed the door, "to spot the
probability that it wasn't Violet at all in her
bedroom when Gwen thought she heard her. Not
Violet, but Mills, eh?" Mrs. Finch said coolly.
And Pointer's repulsion was deepened by her
unfeeling way of discussing the investigations into
the murder of her own daughter. Whatever Violet
Finch had been or done . . . could not be wondered
at in a child shaped and trained by such a mother.
But having learned what he needed to know,


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 183
Mrs. Walsh, or Miss Finch as she was then, wasn't
up to the neck in the pearls fraud," Pointer said
slowly. "But then, it wasn't likely from the first,
according to Miss Lovelace's story, as Miss Finch
herself endorsed it in writing. And nothing's yet
decisively certain, or proved beyond question. I'm
now going to see Mr. Walsh. One of us two—you,
for choice—had better tell him what we've learned.
And, by the Way, how did you get on with the bank
manager! Was he as helpful as you hoped?"
"He was. What he told me fits in with what you,
I fancy, think (and incidentally, what Mrs. Finch
thinks, she says) about Mills's purchase outright of
the smaller string of pearls." It appeared, Sewell
continued, that Mills's bank manager, who had been
glad when he closed his account, had said that Mills
had had about three thousand pounds in his current
account; and had drawn it all out on the day before
the Receiving Order against Mrs. Finch was issued,
taking it in hundred-pound notes.
"Which he probably changed at various money-
changers within the hour, and then changed back
again. It would be worth the loss since it would
obliterate the trail," Pointer said. "We shall try
to trace the notes, of course, but it won't be possible
beyond the first change, I fear."
"And now he's probably got in hand pearls
valued around three thousand pounds as well,"
Sewell said musingly. "Just double what he
took out of the bank. Well, well! I'm sorry for
Arthur Walsh when he learns what we have got to


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 185
CHAPTER XV
MARKS OF GILDING ARE FOUND
ON A CLOTH
There was a fresh arrangement between the two
that Pointer would join Sewell at Friars Halt
about an hour later.
Sewell was shown into Colonel Walsh's study,
where he found the Colonel pacing the hearth.
Usually the most courteous of men, he gave Sewell
the briefest of welcomes before, coming to a stop
in face of his visitor and looking at him fixedly,
he said, " Arthur went to you as to a sort of diviner,
seer, and so on, didn't he? Well, what do you
divine or see, eh?"
"Nothing of the former, sir, and thick fog as
to the latter," Sewell replied frankly.
The Colonel snorted, his head held high, his restless
gaze roaming the gardens through the windows.
"' Fog,' eh? J find it clear enough! That unfor-
tunate son of mine, Sewell, married a thorough
wrong 'un; and in my humble opinion he's well
out of it, bad as was the way of his unexpected
and madly-resented release. That duping of Ann
Lovelace's kind heart—well, could anything be
more dastardly?"
Sewell held his own head no less high, however,


190
THE CASE OF THE
Kitty. Personally, I incline to the idea that some
one induced Violet to bank the thousand pounds in
her own name, as a great favour, and gave some
quite plausible reason for the request, and for the
absolute secrecy she wanted, or he wanted, kept
about the favour. And if Violet promised that,
Sewell, nothing and no one could have got a word of
its betrayal out of her. She was as straight as . . ."
"As your father declares Miss Lovelace is,"
Sewell finished rather maliciously.
"As Ann is," Arthur said heartily. "She's a
brick, too, Sewell! I never thought Ann Lovelace
could be so true a friend as she's shown herself to
me, these days. And as she is now remorsefully
showing herself to my wife's memory. She was
completely bowled over when I confided to her
what was in the letter from Violet's bank. For she
had characteristically insisted on sharing the bad
news in it—as she had seen that it must be to
account for its effect on me."
"Umph-umph," murmured Sewell with more
significance than sympathy. "Quite! "Quite!"
"But, like me," Arthur exulted, " Ann saw what
must be the true explanation at once. It takes a
good woman to do justice to a good woman's
character."
"Miss Kitty Walsh also has shown herself a
staunch friend," responded Sewell.
"She has, indeed," was the instant rejoinder.
"But, then, Kitty "Arthur paused. "She's
an angel, is Kitty," he resumed. "While, of course,


TWO PEARL NECKLACES I95
"Then how in the world did you know that there
had been a tablecloth on it at all?" Kitty asked
him in a tone of absolute awe at such second sight.
But Pointer only looked mysteriously wise; and
Arthur broke in again.
The absorbing interest for him lay in the fact,
not in the detective certainty or lucky guess, of
the chief inspector, and his voice was shrill as he
exclaimed:
"Then in that brief moment of my going to
telephone to the police "—the telephone was in the
hall, they all knew—" Mills must have switched
away the cloth, replacing the tray carefully on
the table, and stuffed it heaven knows where!
Inside his coat, possibly, though it was by no means
a mere pocket-handkerchief."
"There is such a table-square as you describe,
sir, in a drawer of the kitchen dresser in the base-
ment," Pointer said slowly.
"But what on earth could be Mills' reason?"
Arthur asked, as though of the Heaven above him.
"One explanation might be that there was
some mark or stain on it that Mr. Mills didn't want
noticed. . . ." And the chief inspector fell silent,
his eyes on his shoe-tips.
"When is he to be arrested?" Arthur asked
thickly.
"He has been requested to come to my rooms
at the Yard in two hours' time from now. And if
he cannot or does not give a satisfactory explanation


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 197
friendly exasperation: "Well? What of it?"
Only to be countered with the question:
"What became of all that water?" With the
quizzical rider: "It's my particular business, you
know, to see that nothing gets lost in a case."
Sewell laughed. "You mean that the top of the
little table wasn't noticeably wet, only a few
minutes later?"
"I mean, on the contrary," Pointer said signi-
ficantly, "that—having put down some papers on
it, when entering a note on one of them—I had
especially seen to it that the table top was perfectly
dry. And as the most impassioned tidiness would
not have stopped to dry it at such a time, it is
obvious that the water must have been absorbed
by a tablecloth of some sort which was no longer
there, had been evidently taken away so scrupul-
ously as to replace the ash-tray without it."
"Bloodstained, somehow, of course," Sewell said
sapiently, but without his usual shrewd judgment.
"And the Yard's men wouldn't have noted and
listed that?" Pointer commented sceptically.
Adding what aroused the other's detective interest
afresh: "Nor would bloodstains on it have
mattered unless actual fingerprints."
Sewell felt himself swimming in deep waters and
a little out of his depth with this man's wide-
sweeping intelligence, until Pointer continued:
"Since there was so much blood about in the
room, spots on the little tablecloth wouldn't have


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 201
little tablecloth in his flat if he had chanced to
unluckily transfer it by taking hold of the cloth,
for any reason, with a feverishly-hot pressure. It
could be just that!"
The chief inspector drove his now speechlessly-
admiring professional disciple hurriedly to the
Mews, where both men had the delight of finding the
decisive evidence almost uncannily testifying to
Pointer's genius for detective reasoning. For the
little tablecloth which Arthur had accurately
remembered was still guarded in the locked kitchen
drawer at the Mews, and on it was a conspicuously
incongruous but quite immovable splotch of the
same fresh gilding as was on the radiator in what
had been the bedroom of Violet Walsh.
"And now," Pointer said quietly to Sewell,
carefully enclosing his trophy in a sealed, labelled
and duly witnessed large envelope, "we reach the
vital core of this evidence: namely, how and why
Mr. Mills got that identical gilding on his hand.
To me it seems obvious that, in his frightful haste,
he must have let something fall behind that re-gilt
radiator, the tackiness of which his excitement did
not let him notice while his hand frantically sought
the dropped object behind or under it."


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 203
done. The little 22-carat gold circle was then
closely examined. But there was no inscription in
it, no date.
"Mrs. Walsh is the only woman connected with
the case, so far, whose finger it would fit," Pointer
felt sure. "Her wedding-ring is at the Yard." He
tagged this one securely, and the mechanic had
carried a message from Pointer to another of the
Yard's men.
"Could she have been married before? To Mills,
do you think, chief inspector?" Sewell gasped.
"And was Mrs. Finch right—that mad jealousy as
well as the pearls was the motive? Or was it just
a week-end ring ?" he debated alternatively.
"I don't believe that Mr. Mills would have tried
to get it out again if it had been only that last,"
Pointer replied. "He was in great danger of being
found here, or seen coming out of this room. Under
the circumstances, I don't think he would have
hunted for it at all unless it had been, or seemed
to be, of vital importance to him.
"This ring suggests that the cabin-trunk under
the bed may have contained "Pointer's voice
fell away into the silence of profound thought; but
Sewell made an imploring gesture, and he re-
sponded: "I think it might have been a wedding-
certificate that took Mr. Mills here—quite apart
from any question of the pearls," he finished.
"And I am sending a reliable man to search the
registers for a possible previous marriage of Violet
Finch's."


212
THE CASE OF THE
Pointer quietly explained all the amazing facts
about Violet Finch's secret marriage to Mr. Mills.
The Colonel did not hide his heartfelt joy at the
authentic news that he and his were free from any
legal connection with "the detestable Finches,"
alive or dead, before going upstairs for a private
word with Arthur. Pointer waited, in case Mr.
Walsh should want to see him again.
But the Colonel came back alone. He did not
tell the chief inspector that his son lay actually
sobbing on his bed. Contenting himself with the
message that the latter felt quite unable to continue
so painful an interview at the moment. Adding:
"But at any rate he's cured. The savants are quite
right who say that 'love is a disease.' Love like
that my unhappy son lavished on that creature
certainly was more an infatuation than normal
falling in love. He's all broken up by it. And no
wonder! Even my niece, Kitty, will find it, I fear,
a great shock. She really liked her!"
"Miss Lovelace, too, seemed quite won over,
sir, to the same attitude," Pointer replied.
On which Colonel Walsh shrugged his shoulders
with a slight smile, as he observed judicially: "I
think that was perhaps carrying noblesse oblige
rather too far. Ann, I imagine, was so afraid of
being not only unsympathetic to my son, but
unjust to his idol, that she was swept over to the
warmth of a partisan. But in her heart she never
lost, I think, the same innate aversion to the daughter
of the notorious 'Mrs. Finch' that I openly felt.


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 213
And which Arthur must feel now, chief inspector.
For no one can now, surely, do more than shudder-
ingly pity the tragic opening-up of the secret
history of the murderer's victim. I suppose it
was some jealous quarrel with her and her actual
husband?
"Or was it more likely for the pearls? My son
maintains that she must have bribed Mills to keep
silent with one of the strings. I suppose that's
quite possible. Anyway, it's a most creditable and
clever piece of work on your part, chief inspector,"
the army man said warmly, "to have unearthed
the truth and arrested the murderer within four-
and-twenty hours of the murder. A brilliant
achievement!"
"Mr. Mills isn't under arrest, sir," Pointer
corrected. "And unless we can get more incon-
testable evidence of guilt, the Public Prosecutor
would not sanction such an extreme step."
"You mean that he may still slip out of
your net?" The Colonel, who was not a vindictive
man, looked rather relieved as he acknowledged:
"I can never really approve, in my own mind,
chief inspector, of any man swinging for an
utterly worthless woman's removal," he owned
confidentially.
Pointer did not care to argue this extremely
dangerous public question, although his own con-
victions, based on long professional experience
were that an unhung murderer will murder
again to satisfy his own particular passion of the


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 215
"Professionally speaking, no," Sewell answered
flatly. "But I confess I should like to know what
follows, Walsh. For instance, I keenly want to
understand that strange telephone message to
you," he said.
"So do It" came emphatically from Arthur;
and Colonel Walsh echoed him.
They all three looked inquiringly at Pointer,
who had picked up a book and was standing turning
its pages. He laid it down. "It's by Superintendent
Hatherly," he said apologetically. "Quite a text-
book on the ruses used by some of the cleverer
criminals. But about that telephone message, Mr.
Walsh. The Reverend Father Walsh is still out of
laymen's reach at all events, in his religious Retreat.
Yet the call just mentioned has been definitely
traced to him. Otherwise, of course, Mr. Mills
would seem the most likely sender."
"Ambrose never sent it," Arthur said decisively.
"There's some error in that identification. The
man or woman who did send it—must have been
an accomplice. Mills was upstairs in the drawing-
room; and as yet there's only one telephone in the
Grosvenor Square house. So that lets Mills out"
"He was in the drawing-room?" Pointer asked
with surprised emphasis. "Mr. Mills said that he
was in the library; and when I repeated that state-
ment to you, Mr. Walsh, you did not correct it."
"I suppose I was thinking of something else.
God knows I had horrors enough to occupy my


2l6
THE CASE OF THE
mind!" Arthur replied with savage brusqueness.
"At least, they seemed like horrors to me at the
time. But what iota of difference to Scotland Yard
can it make to know in which particular room he
was? He was in the house, and so where he
couldn't have used the telephone. Surely the only
detail of importance."
The Colonel cocked his eye inquiringly at the
chief inspector, who was looking at Arthur as
though he were decidedly interested by what he
had just learnt.
"It might make all the difference in the world,
Mr. Walsh," Pointer observed. "There's a telephone
extension in the drawing-room at Grosvenor Square,
but none in the library, if I'm right?"
"Quite right. But, again, chief inspector, what
difference does that make?"
"Did the Exchange ask you what number you
wanted?"
"Yes, but not until I had been given that
message."
Pointer's eyes went to the corner.
"Yes, that's a telephone," Colonel Walsh said,
keenly on the alert. "And here, just as in the
Grosvenor Square house, there are extensions to the
drawing-rooms upstairs, and to the bedrooms above
that again."
"Then I'll show you gentlemen how that message
could have been sent."
Pointer stepped to the corner. In a trice the
Colonel showed him the instrument. Pointer lifted


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 217
it and called up the Yard, to which he sent a code
message. Then he put down the receiver.
"Now, if I may, I'll go upstairs to the extension
in the drawing-room. And I want you, Mr. Walsh,
to answer the phone when it rings. It will be a
call from the Yard, yet you'll hear the same message
that you heard once before, the one that has puzzled
us, only this time it'll be repeated in my voice.
For, unlike Mr. Mills, I shall not try and disguise
it by a foreign accent."
Pointer was shown upstairs. A moment later
the telephone rang. Arthur answered it in record
time. And he heard, to his amazement, the voice
of the chief inspector speaking, and giving word
for word the message which had so startled him
before. And as then it was followed by the voice
of the Exchange asking what number he wanted.
Arthur was too puzzled to reply.
"Hang up," came again in Pointer's voice, and
Arthur did so.
Another moment and Pointer was back in the
room.
"How's it done ?" Arthur asked in sheer stupe-
faction.
"If the telephone rings," Pointer explained,
"and some one in the room where there is an
extension takes off the receiver at the same instant
as you do down here, then, should you by any
chance be disconnected at the Exchange, and if
that some one speaks through at once, his words
would reach you as though it were spoken by the


2l8 THE CASE OF THE
person who had rung up. I fancy Mr. Ambrose
Walsh was disconnected before he spoke one word.
That would be sheer chance, of course, and Mr.
Mills snatched at the chance to get his message
through to you, speaking as I did, into the extension
in the drawing-room."
"Bravo, chief inspector! Well played indeed!"
came admiringly from Colonel Walsh.
"So that is the explanation of the message that
suggested that another man was, or had been, in
Mills' flat!" Sewell thought that Mills had been
very quick witted. "But why summon Walsh to
find her dead?" He decided to refer to Violet as
"she," and "her." He gazed speculatively at
Pointer. "You thought it might be some one
who wanted to be sure that they would be able to
search the Ennismore Gardens house undisturbed
by Walsh. But if it was Mills who sent the
message, he had already gone over the bedroom at
five."
"The murderer rarely wants to be the one to
find the body," Pointer said, " unless there is some
very special necessity for him to take something
away, or alter something. Mr. Mills would have to
return to his flat in the ordinary way; and he
very much wanted, I think, that some one else
besides himself should make the discovery that
must be made."
"He did his damndest not to go back with Miss
Kitty Walsh and me," Arthur said. "I had to
insist on his doing so. I thought it some practical


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 219
joke, you see, and didn't relish taking it alone.
Luckily I spoilt that part of his plan."
Sewell looked regretfully at his watch. He had
to be off. He had agreed to a very urgent interview
in the country at the house of a former client, and
he must not be late.
"I shall be back in Town to-morrow," he said
in undisguised hope of indulgence. "Of course,
I'm now out of all this professionally; but I'm all
in, as far as being a most tremendously interested
onlooker is concerned."
The telephone bell rang. The call was for Pointer.
Mills requested an immediate interview with the
chief inspector.
"There!" Sewell paused for a moment to
exclaim. "Confession! The whereabouts of the
two necklaces! And I on my way to Devizes!
Hard luck!" With which successively-more-regret-
ful ejaculations he had, perforce, to hurry off.


TWO PEARL NECKLACES
221
Chief Inspector?" Colonel Walsh asked with an
excitement almost as irrepressible as was his eagerly
listening son's look of eager interest.
"Well, sir, don't you think it would suggest itself
to you as an exceptionally secure hiding-place if
you had such booty to stow away safe from police
suspicion?" Pointer replied. "Belongs to a man
so far uninvolved in the case; and heretofore not
even discovered to be his. Mr. Mills either has or
can easily get a duplicate key to it. He may have
his own secret cache there, unguessed by either Mr.
Gray or Mrs. Finch herself; most conveniently
accessible for a sudden flight abroad, if need be. At
all events I think this so possible that I should be
very glad if Mr. Walsh, at least," Pointer said
cheerfully, "would run down there with me
to-morrow morning, to identify and claim the
pearls if we find them."
Arthur no less cheerfully replied that he would
most willingly be at Scotland Yard's service for
such a promising possibility, and Pointer got into
his car, saying that the exact time at which he
would call for Mr. Walsh would be arranged over
the phone, with mutual discreetness, after he had
heard what Mr. Mills, on being formally cautioned
of its risk, had to say to him.
That gentleman was looking far from jaunty, or
even well, when he was brought into the chief
inspector's official room. As all that he wanted to
say was, however, an attempt to build up an alibi
for yesterday after five o'clock, Pointer informed


222
THE CASE OF THE
him that it was now practically certain that it had
not been Mrs. Walsh who had acted and spoken
through the bedroom door in that character, at
Ennismore Gardens. And when to this he added the
discovery of Mills's still-binding marriage to Violet
Finch, and of his, Pointer's, conviction that it was
Mills who had sent the mysterious telephone message
to Arthur Walsh, his hearer seemed like a man who
had been dealt a terrible blow over the heart. After
a long silence he finally begged for a few more
minutes to think out his wisest course. Pointer
gave him ten, while he busied himself with official
documents in his bureau. Then Mills faced him
again, ashen-hued to his very lips also, as he gasped:
"Look here, chief inspector, there's only one
man who possibly can save me yet! And that's
you! I solemnly swear to you that I didn't kill
poor Vi. I know nothing about"
Pointer stopped him. "Mr. Mills, truth may
save you. But be very sure that lies, however
clever, will not."
On that, Mills sat with his head buried in his
hands for a full five minutes. Then he lifted it to
say hoarsely: "I don't suppose, really, that any-
thing I can say will be of any use, now! I've been
a damned fool. And it's the fools who get caught
in this world. But I'll tell you everything, truthfully.
"First about my marriage. It stands for abso-
lutely nothing in my wife's murder. Nothing what-
ever! She and I had a sort of mad pash on each
other. The clubs were bringing in the shekels faster


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 223
than even she and I could spend them, and we
weren't bad in that line! Mrs. Finch—I'll leave her
out, but she's a bloody dangerous woman, chief
inspector. Neither Vi nor I wanted her down on
us so we got married on the quiet. Then, within a
month, came the slump in the Owls. Slump in our
funds. And we got on each other's nerves at once.
"Violet was as much a bully as her mother, I can
tell you; without the old woman's brains or guts.
It came to this—that I loathed her and she me. So
we agreed to call the marriage off, and parted. No
tears, I can assure you, on either side. I was lucky
to be quit of her so easily, I thought. There is an
American woman I'm keen on marrying. She's my
type. We were born for each other. She going
to "he gulped, and suddenly stared, his eyes
glassy as he stammered: "I suppose—you think—
that's a motive!" He could hardly get his lips to
say the words. Panic shook him for a second.
"God! It's not! It's not!" His teeth began to
chatter. Pointer sat silent; and Mills presently
resumed: "Mrs. Finch will try to make you think it
was! Mrs. Finch has been writing sheaves to me about
'the pearls.' The woman actually swears that I've
got them! She's out for my blood, chief inspector."
"Suppose you tell me about what really hap-
pened, Mr. Mills," Pointer said quietly. "What
really happened, though," he emphasised meaningly.
"Nothing happened!" came violently from
Mills. "Nothing! I came back to town earlier
than I expected yesterday and"


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 227
certificate before her things would be searched by
the police. I didn't believe she had destroyed it, for
I knew that she always kept everything of that sort,
all her papers, foolishly. I had never written her
any love letters; but she had that certificate, I was
certain, and I must get it. I knew the old cabin
trunk where she would be almost sure to keep it.
Got it, and was just throwing her keys into a
drawer when a tap came on the door of the room!
The blasted parlourmaid wanted to know 'would
Mrs. Walsh like any tea ?'" Mills gave a honk of
hysterical laughter. "A neat whisky was what I
badly needed, but I remembered Vi's habit when
she was in her bedroom and didn't want to have
to hear anything bothersome. So, like her, I turned
the tap on, and let the water splash; and under
cover of its sound I answered with a light falsetto,
'No, thanks,' through the closed door.
"Though mind, you, chief inspector "—Mills sat
forward in his chair, his voice growing stronger—
"I wasn't afraid. I wasn't conscious of danger. I
hadn't been, even when I found her murdered in
my flat—fool that I was! I only wanted to get
hold of that certificate so that Mrs. Yerkes would
never learn of my marriage. Really, I couldn't
have been quite all there! Incidentally, there'll be
found her first wedding-ring behind the freshly-
gilded radiator in her room. It was just like Vi to
keep it! Possibly she hadn't quite lost the glamour
it had for us both, once. It fell out of the envelope
and rolled under the pipes. I clawed after it but


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 229
left on the mantel. I felt sure Vi had been found
and I took down the receiver to listen-in. I heard
Walsh say—to me, as it were—' Yes; Walsh
speaking. Who is it ?'—getting no answer to his
question. On that I had a brain-wave, as I thought,
and made up a continuation for the first speaker in
the message you know. I imitated the voice of a
Mr. Silberrad with whom Mrs. Finch and I had just
been having a talk at Maidenhead. He has a
German accent that you could lean on. I was bent
on getting Walsh to go to my flat without me. Then,
to my consternation, I found when he came upstairs
that Walsh was sure it was a clumsy hoax! I
hadn't said the right thing, evidently; or not in
the right way. You see, I hadn't had a moment to
think out a plausible message. And then Kitty
Walsh came in, also asking for Vi. And that saved
my scheme. But Walsh insisted on dragging me
along to see that he was right about the 'hoax.'
The rest you know."
"How about the taking away of the little red
and blue tablecloth? Why did you do that, Mr.
Mills?" Pointer asked dryly.
Mills was still a moment before he said: "I was
feeling very rocky, chief inspector, by the time we
reached my flat, and I clutched at even a small table
to steady myself. I had pulled my glove off as I
came in, for I wanted to act just as usual. To my
horror, I saw that left a conspicuous patch of gilding
on the little table's cloth. I must have got it on my
hand—they were both sweating—when I was hunt-


230
THE CASE OF THE
ing for the ring that had jumped behind the freshly-
gilt radiator. I had tried desperately to get it back,
as you can imagine. And when I saw that damning
stain I had, of course, to get the cloth away. There
again I hadn't time to think clearly, even if you
could call any of those half-crazy impulses ' thinking'
at all. I just automatically snatched the cloth off,
crammed it up my sleeve, ran down into the kitchen,
and—once again like an absolutely demented fool
—stuffed the tell-tale thing in among a lot of soiled
table-napkins in a dresser drawer."
Mills swore that he had had no intention of pre-
venting the real time of Violet's murder becoming
known, either when he had let the parlourmaid
think she was alive in her bedroom or when he had
faked that telephone message. He insisted that he
had acted throughout on the spur of each terrible
moment. He declared solemnly that he had no
faintest knowledge of what had become of the real
pearls, let alone had had any share in any sale of
them if they had been sold. That he had no alibi
covering the time when the "rajah secretary"
was at one or other of the two hotels was his sheer
bad luck.
"Then who do you think is the murderer?"
Pointer queried.
Mills had risen and was standing facing him.
He leaned impressively towards him as he almost
whispered: "Mrs. Finch! Vi disliked her and
feared her. While her mother disliked and despised


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 233
evidently. It looked the sort of place that he would
expect Mr. Gray to have. "Cheap and nasty,"
Sewell said, wrinkling up his nose at the thickly-
loaded varnish glittering on tables and sideboard.
There was a drawing-room opening out of this
dining-room, with its own gimcrack chairs and sofa;
and a smoking-room on the other side of the hall.
A nice room this last. Gray had kept it simple.
The drugget was plain; so were the furnishings,
even to a big velvet pouffe by the curb. It had a
big tallboy with all its drawers locked, he found
on trying them, facing the fireplace. There were
built-in cupboards, too. Suddenly a click caught his
ear. On the instant he stood rigid, his own torch out.
Another faint click. He had heard that same sound
only a few minutes ago, made by himself. . . . Some
one was evidently at work on the hasp of the kitchen
window. Who? Was Mills at liberty? Was it the
police? Or a house-breaker? But he mustn't wait
to know which. He softly opened one of the cup-
boards and to his delight found it empty, with its
one shelf some six feet up from the floor, and quietly
slipped into it. If it was only some chance thief he
might not stop to search unpromising-looking,
because keyless, cupboards. "Kismet!"
Unfortunately the door, which he had softly
drawn to after him, shut off all view of the room and
he dared not leave it ajar. His luminous watch dial
told him that it was now close on one o'clock. He
heard movements from the man or woman—but the
mode of entry seemed to negative the latter—now


234
THE CASE OF THE
only too close to himself. He heard quick steps come
into the room and after a second the switching on of
the electric light. And a moment later the door of the
cupboard next to him was opened. He knew now that
it could only be a matter of seconds before he was
discovered with consequences abjectly humiliating
at the best, and perhaps something much deadlier
at the worst. His tense apprehension grew so un-
bearable as almost to make him plunge out to meet
whatever might be the consequence. But just as
the cupboard door beside him was firmly closed, a
creak came clearly from the kitchen. The second
comer heard it too, for after one second's utter still-
ness, Sewell heard him tiptoeing back across the
room, the light was noiselessly switched off, and then
came the sound of the door being opened with the
utmost caution. He ventured to open his cupboard
door very gingerly. He was just in time to see the
room door being closed very quietly behind whoever
it was that had been in the room with him.
Sewell on the instant was out of his cupboard and
into the one that had already been thoroughly
searched. He had barely drawn its door close again,
when once more the room door opened, this time
with confidence, once more the light was switched
on, once more the steps came towards the two cup-
boards. The same steps. Sewell hoped that whoever
it was it was not one of those absent-minded people
who forget what they did last. He did not want
him to search the first cupboard again. He need not
have worried. In another second the second cup-
"Y


238 THE CASE OF THE
Finch woman, and her damned Clubs ! She'll never
tell you; Mills may; but he's afraid of her. I want
it put on record. I want it broadcast. Take this
down quickly! instantly!" His nerve was so
shattered that Arthur Walsh really looked now like
a dying man.
"She blackmailed me, like lots of other victims,
as soon as she cleverly found out that I had given
my word of honour to my father that I had no
other debts than those he had already settled. He
is insane about gamesters who play for stakes they
can't settle. Give me some brandy! I'm going!
I shan't live to tell you the whole story after all!"
Panic-stricken with his own certainty, Arthur
tremblingly swallowed the water one of the men
held to his lips.
Pointer held up a hand. "Mrs. Finch gave you
back your I O U's on your wedding day, in that
so-called packet of sandwiches, didn't she, Mr.
Walsh? I thought so," he said, as Arthur's head
made a sign of assent. "You had beforehand
determined to get rid of her daughter as soon after
the wedding as possible? You bought your supposed
wife those valuable pearls as a wedding present, and
then inserted the advertisement about them,
ostensibly from a rajah's secretary. It was you
who, as Mr. Elwes Morris, did actually buy the
smaller string before the wedding, and after it, as
Mr. Elwes Morris, you arranged to buy the larger
string from her in Mr. Mills's fiat. Instead of which
you murdered her with the steel ornament standing


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 241
you for the moment, to get the best legal help for
you that can be procured. That done, if I'm per-
mitted to, I'll see you as often as you ask for me."
But Father Walsh only saw Arthur once again.
For his cousin steadily refused to see him until the
end, when he asked for him. And it was Ambrose
who accompanied him prayerfully on Arthur Walsh's
last earthly walk.
"Father Walsh knew?" Sewell questioned with
incredulity even stronger than his amazement, as
Arthur was driven off between two of Pointer's men.
Sewell longed to divert his own mind from the
shock of Arthur's arrest. "And just now, when you
saved me from following Violet, where were you?
Have you got the fabled cloak of invisibility, by
any chance, chief inspector? I heard the door
locked by the man in the room whose revolver he
shoved into my face. I can swear that you didn't
share my cupboard. Where the devil, then, were
you, to play the Yard's deus ex machina so decisively
for me as well as for Walsh?"
"You know the tallboy whose drawers you
hurriedly tried to open?" Pointer answered gravely
as well as succinctly, for the preceding scene
and forced departure of Arthur for the gallows,
unless some miracle of special pleading could inter-
vene to cheat justice, was as tragically before his
mind as overshadowing Sewell's, who now turned
sharply to examine the piece of furniture in
question on Pointer's significant answer. He


242 THE CASE OF THE
exclaimed with fresh incredulity, however, as he
saw, from the tallboy's moved-out profile, that it
was a complete sham. It had no drawers. It had
no back, but had been held firmly to the wall
by two air cups. Its hollow interior provided for
the perfect concealment of the expectant chief
inspector and two of his men, for which purpose it
had been expertly prepared at the Yard. Pointer
first assuring himself both of the intense activities
of the others at a distance and of the fact that
Arthur was paying his first visit to the bungalow
and had no acquaintance with its furniture, therefore.
As he was due at the Yard, he had the place
locked and guarded, and—arranging to meet Sewell
later—drove there speedily. The A.C. sent for him
almost immediately. Pointer had already handed
in his report, setting Mills instantly at liberty. He
was told only that facts had come to light which
proved his entire innocence of the criminal charges
in the case. Arthur's defence exerted itself sub-
sequently to implicate Mills with Mrs. Finch's
blackmail, and with the murder of Violet. But the
finding of jury and judge quashed the attempt.
On Pointer's entry now, the assistant commis-
sioner laid a slip of paper before him. There had
been an accident in Park Lane. An elderly gentle-
man hurrying forward had been run down by a car
and killed outright. From the letters in his pocket
the man had been identified as Colonel Walsh.
"I had just spoken to him over the phone,"
Major Pelham went on, "and asked him to come


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 243
here to see me as soon as possible. He believed that
we had now completed our case against Mills, and
I am afraid that he was so engrossed with that idea
that he forgot to keep a careful enough look-out
when hurrying here."
"What a blessing—for him," Pointer said fer-
vently. Pity for the father's terrible ordeal had
weighed on the chief inspector all morning, and
Major Pelham fully sympathised with his relief.
Over lunch—to which the A.C. and the chief
inspector had been invited by Sewell, his rooms
securing privacy and confidential talk without fear
of the ubiquitous press broadcasting it prematurely
—Sewell metaphorically cornered his revered
exemplar in the difficult art of detection, with the
query: "Chief inspector, did you suspect Walsh
from the first?"
"Practically, yes," was the reply. "Because, on
weighing up the probabilities in the case of each
more or less suspect individual involved by the cir-
cumstances of the fraudulent pearls and the murder
of the owner of the originals, Mr. Walsh afforded,
to my mind, the most likely criminal."
"But! He seemed to crave to lavish everything
on Violet Finch, as we all supposed her, because he
adored her with all his heart. How could you tell
that all that was an amazing piece of acting? How
could you see any motive for it?"
"I did neither, as anything like a conviction,
though. All that I did know positively," Pointer
protested with his characteristic refusal to play the


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 245
coldly calculating business-first-last-and-all-the-time
emotionally passionless type, rather than one liable
to either panic or frenzy."
"And Walsh?" Sewell drew a deep breath. He
had been all out in his estimate of Arthur Walsh.
"At any rate she hadn't been killed on his
premises, was my first thought. Then there was
the knowledge of Mrs. Finch and the tales about
her victims, to suggest what the whole investigation
steadily strengthened; namely, blackmail. While
the underlying motive to get free from a wife he
hated, a marriage into which he had been black-
mailed, leaped to the mind's eye, as a possibility,
from the first sight, especially when I learnt about
his disinherited brother Gerald . . . and Colonel
Walsh's abhorrence of a lie. And all his income
seemed to come from the allowance his father made
him, and the salary paid him in his father's office.
Let him fall out with his father, and he would be
a very poor man. I learned, though later, that when
he had sent in his papers and gone into business—
his father's business—he had given the latter his
word of honour not to gamble any more."
"Now how did you learn that ?" Sewell wanted
to know.
"His late colonel let it drop, when I managed to
meet him and, apparently casually, have a word
about Arthur Walsh. It was at the end of a great
many other words about quite another case. But
to go back; all the preliminary information fitted
the idea of the murderer being Walsh himself."


246 THE CASE OF THE
"You know, Pointer," Major Pelham said with
a faint smile, " I rather wondered why you seemed
to give so little time to making sure whether it was
the young woman herself who was heard at five
o'clock. It didn't really matter, did it?"
"Not fundamentally, sir. It only concerned Mr.
Mills's alibi, but I had to give a lot of time to him,
for fear of rousing Walsh's suspicions. Walsh him-
self, of course, had no alibi whatever from three
o'clock on."
"Ah, his devotion to the young wife whom he
had married in spite of all his family could say,
made any idea of an alibi in his case ridiculous,"
scoffed Pelham.
"His apparent devotion to his wife!" Sewell
murmured in horror.
"Ah, that meant nothing one way or the other!
What people say means nothing! But if he was
being blackmailed into the marriage, could I find
out when any I O U's could have been returned to
him? It would be after the wedding, and they
seemed to have left practically at once for the air
liner. Then I learnt of the wedding present of Mrs.
Finch's. An ideal way of returning letters, or
, I O U's. He had left the basket behind, I found
out, but had taken the packet of so-called sand-
wiches on with him."
"Yes, but the pearls!" said Sewell. "The
pearls which he himself had bought!"
"And which, if he himself had got hold of them,
were still in his possession," Pointer countered.


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 249
"He had been once," Sewell was impressed by
the insight of the tall man now smoking a pipe
beside him. "But she tried for higher game,
especially as in those days there was Gerald, his
elder brother and his father's favourite. So all
Walsh's fury with her when she came to him about
the imitation pearls, and her loan on them, was
acting!"
"Quite the contrary! No man sweats over a
very dangerous plot, a life and death plot, and likes
to see it blown sky-high. Arthur Walsh's shield was
to be his devotion to his young wife. He had to
marry her to get back the I O U's of his from Mrs.
Finch, and be free—to get rid of Violet, and try
again for Miss Lovelace. Yet here was Miss Love-
lace telling him something which threatened to
make that marriage quite impossible. Walsh met
it in the only possible way. Refusing to listen.
Refusing to reason."
"He's a clever hound," Pelham pronounced.
"He is," Pointer agreed, "and in nothing so
much so as in not trying to throw any doubt on its
having been Violet whom the maid heard in Ennis-
more Gardens at five o'clock. Yet he made one very
bad slip. He spoke of his wife having stumbled on
some one when she went to the flat at four, and
having been at once killed."
"Well? Only a trifling slip, I should call it,"
Pelham thought.
"I should have suspected him from that alone,
sir," Pointer said truthfully. "No husband, new to


TWO PEARL NECKLACES 251
"Just so. A father who had disinherited one son,
his favourite, because he had lied to him, and a
woman who ran night-clubs which were known to
be hot-beds of blackmail, a marriage against all
reason to that woman's daughter, and the murder
of the bride very shortly afterwards."
"And all that love and devotion was only a
smoke-screen. I wonder what his real thoughts
were, when he went off the deep end, on hearing
about her previous marriage?" Sewell was too
interested to keep his cigarette alight.
"He wasn't acting then," Pointer said soberly.
"First came blind rage. No man likes to think that
he need not have murdered. That all the terrible
deed, all the awful preparation of mind and affairs
beforehand was quite unnecessary, that if he had
found out about her marriage to Mills after Mrs.
Finch had handed him back his I O U's, he would
have been free and not a murderer!"
"But he laughed! His father spoke to me of
yells of sheer hysteria."
"When he thought of Mrs. Finch!" Pointer, too,
gave a laugh, though but a short one. "He knew
how she would feel. She had given back his I O U's
for nothing. I told you she struck me as feeling
sold when she heard of the real marriage."
"Her daughter not married to the wealthy Arthur
after all!" continued Sewell with gusto. "A son-
. in-law whom, of course, she intended to milk when-
ever necessary. A son-in-law who was as good as
an overdraft at her bank from the first."
f