Nude in Mink - Sax Rohmer (fun books to read for adults txt) 📗

Chapter Fifteen 1

A SCOTLAND YARD car pulled up immediately opposite the house which displayed an Embassy flag. That constable whom Donovan had noted, not so long before, directing an American airman, stepped to the door. Inspector Ives sprang out.

“You are positive, Thompson, that no one has left?”

“No one, Chief Inspector. The woman—a very elegant person, and Mr. Donovan, got out of the car. It was the Embassy Rolls. The chauffeur drove away. Denby followed. The woman opened the door with a key and she and Mr. Donovan went in.”

“Good. Stay out of sight, Doctor, while I try the bell.”

White-haired, bespectacled, Maitland lay back in a corner of the car.

Ives crossed to the house and rang the bell.

There was no response.

An ornamental knocker attracted his attention, and he banged this vigorously—then rang the bell again.

Nothing happening, he gave it up, and returned to the car. Maitland leaned out.

“Waste no time, Ives!” he snapped—“and don’t call me ‘doctor’! You have your authority. Get a man to smash that lower window, and we can be in before a crowd gathers.”

Ives turned to Thomson as another, plain clothes man, got out.

“Smash the window, Thomson, and open the catch.”

“Very good, sir.”

Thomson, wearing the expression of a mischievous schoolboy, extracted the heavy crank from its place, crossed over and shattered a large pane of plate glass. He knocked dangerous fragments away before inserting his arm and forcing the catch.

This proceeding quite naturally assembled an excited audience.

“There’s a crowd gathering,” said Maitland, alighting. “Sooner we are in, the better.”

He ran across as Thomson climbed in at the window.

“Open the front door!”

Thomson nodded, and disappeared. A few moments later he reappeared at the street door.

“Come on, Ives.”

Maitland and Ives entered close together. Two more police had come up, and Ives paused to give them instructions.

“Move on any loiterers—and grab anybody who tries to come out.”

Thomson, the driver and the other man, who had ridden beside him, entered the house behind the inspector. The last man in closed the door. They found themselves in the stripped lobby from which a bleak marble staircase led to floors above.

“You two,” rapped Ives, “search the upper rooms. Thomson stay with me.”

The pair ran up and the echo of their footsteps might soon be heard as they crossed uncarpeted floors of empty rooms. Meanwhile, Maitland had entered the apartment dominated by an Adam mantelpiece. He noted the smashed window and the mahogany desk, its lamp green-shaded. But a glance was enough to convince him that no one was there.

Nor was there another door. Nevertheless, he detected something.

There was a faint, pleasant, but quite unmistakable perfume—a perfume he must always associate, to the end of his days, with Sumuru…

He turned to Ives, who was staring about him critically.

“Do you notice a faint perfume?”

Ives nodded.

“No one uses that perfume—or no one I have ever met—but one woman—”

“Sumuru?”

“Sumuru! She has been in this room—and recently!”

“Funny you should remember it. It’s hardly perceptible.”

“I can smell it,” said Thomson. “But is it very faint.”

“Sumuru,” Maitland assured him, “is an artist in all things. She doesn’t reek of scent. But this elusive something—I have no idea what it is—might be described as her signature. She has been in here.”

“Come on!” Ives shouted. “Spread out. All the downstairs rooms …”

They went to work methodically.

“This place has been stripped,” Thomson said.

“They got everything out while we were held up by red tape,” Maitland replied bitterly. “Red tape is strangling civilisation …”

And now, searchers began to shout from floor to floor.

“Nobody up here, sir!”

“Nothing in the basement…”

“House is empty…”

Maitland stood in the lobby, leaning wearily against the newel post at the foot of the marble stair.

“Of course the house is empty. God knows what’s become of poor Donovan. I shall never forgive myself.” He turned haggard eyes in Ives’s direction. “We may hunt for ever, Ives. We are hunting a phantom …”

2

Donovan knew nothing of all this.

At about the same time that Maitland expressed that gloomy opinion, Donovan found himself standing in a narrow recess from which he had an excellent view of part of George Street. He had submitted to the old-fashioned routine of being blindfolded with his own pocket handkerchief and led to this spot. The handkerchief had been removed, from behind, and he had honourably kept his eyes closed whilst he counted ten.

He looked over his shoulder quickly.

What he saw was a commonplace wooden gate, badly in need of a coat of paint, which evidently communicated with back premises, and was used by tradesmen delivering goods. It was locked, or bolted. No one seemed to have noted his sudden appearance. He set out, walking more or less at random.

He had said good-bye to Claudette… had it meant good-bye for ever? He had found love, and now, it seemed, he was putting love behind him.

What to do next he had no idea. Should he call up Inspector Ives and give him the news that he had been inside the suspected house? He was under no obligation to remain silent on this point. But, if he did so, what would happen? The house would be raided…

Donovan was certain as if Sumuru had told him, that this possibility had been foreseen. Neither Sumuru nor Claudette would be found there.

To return to work was quite out of the question. His brain was seething with confused ideas, sweet memories, futile regrets. And all the time Donovan was walking on through London’s busy streets without having the slightest notion where he was going.

Vaguely, he remembered, later, passing his own door, pausing, and then staring back over his shoulder, possessed by a sudden conviction that he was followed. Except for a policeman strolling in his direction, there was no one of a suspicious character in sight.

He went on past the expanse of Berkeley Square, and again forgot his surroundings …

How could he get in touch with Maitland? Where was he, and when would he return? If he were to retain sanity, certainly he must discuss the situation with somebody.

One thing, slowly, was becoming clear. He must not go to the official police. To do so would mean disaster, for himself and for Claudette.

Donovan was heading, at this time, across Hyde Park, roughly in the direction of Lancaster Gate. He pulled up to light a cigarette. A constable appeared walking over the grass, not far behind him. That resolution, newly formed, not to take the police into his confidence, subconsciously impelled a change of route.

He set out again, bearing off left—and twenty yards on, saw another constable coming along a path which crossed the one he was following.

Although Donovan was no great distance from Hyde Park Police Station, it occurred to him, all the same, that he had never before seen so many police in the park. This reflection soon passed from his mind, however, and he became occupied again with confusing thoughts regarding his future procedure.

It was the apparition of a third constable, almost at his elbow, which brought his to his senses. Quite obviously, this man intended to stop him!

Donovan glanced to the left, and then behind. Directly in front of him, now, was the police station. And he saw that he was surrounded! One man was immediately on his heels, another closing in on his left, and a third standing beside him.

It was the third man who spoke.

“Mr. Mark Donovan?”

“I am Mark Donovan. Yes.”

“I must ask you to step into the station, Mr. Donovan, to answer a few questions.”

The truth became inescapable. He had been arrested!

3

This state of affairs was due to the prompt action of Detective-sergeant Thomson. This officer was disguised, temporarily, as a constable—a favourite trick of Ives’s, who maintained that whilst almost any other loiterer might be suspected of being a detective, nobody ever suspected a constable.

Thomson, coming out of the ex-Embassy during that futile search, had received a report which led his steps to an establishment just around the corner—the shop of a fashionable modiste, trading as Rubaix.

He saw Mark Donovan, with whose appearance he was acquainted, walking rapidly away—and he noted that Donovan’s manner was markedly distrait.

All had strict orders to keep the American journalist under observation, but not to let him suspect this, and Thomson took immediate steps to insure that he be shadowed. This done, he reported back to Inspector Ives.

“Thank God!” said Maitland.

“He may have been got at!” growled Ives. “Shepherd him into the first police station he comes near to and let me know when he’s in … Do you agree, Doctor?”

Maitland nodded.

“Yes—and I should be glad if you would agree not to call me ‘doctor’!”

“Sorry! Clumsy of me… What is this about a dress shop, Thomson?”

It appeared that the car in which Mark Donovan and the woman had driven up, had been taken around the corner and pulled in before Maison Rubaix. This car had been trailed for some time and was rarely out of observation. It belonged to Madame Druse, wife of the departed