Dictator's Way (32 page)

“Police, ma'am,” Ulyett said before Madame Troya could speak. He waved her aside. “Mr. Troya, have you any objection to telling me where you have been this evening? “He has been here, all the time he has been here,” Madame Troya answered, not allowing Troya himself time to reply.

“Witnesses?” Ulyett asked.

“Without doubt,” retorted Madame Troya as though that were a question for which she was well prepared, and she rattled off a number of names till Ulyett stopped her.

“It would be better, I think,” he said, “if you would allow Mr. Troya to answer for himself.”

It was at this moment that Bobby stepped forward and very neatly and very firmly possessed himself of the fountain-pen protruding from Troya's breast pocket. Troya did not attempt to resist. He looked very surprised but that was all. Madame Troya hardly seemed to notice, though she looked round as Bobby murmured a polite preliminary accompaniment to his unexpected action:

“Oh, excuse me. May I? Thank you so much.” Evidently neither of them attached any importance to what he was doing. Madame Troya was busy gathering all her forces to express her anger and her indignation. As for Mr. Troya he was still very pale, and he put down untasted that glass of extremely fiery Chianti he had just poured out.

Madame Troya said impressively:

“I do not understand what reasons, what excuse you may have to offer for this extraordinary intrusion, for this unprecedented outrage on the privacy of Etrurian citizens. But I warn you I shall communicate instantly with our Embassy. Since the advent of the glorious Redeemer of Etruria your Foreign Office has been taught that Etrurians must be treated with respect, with deference. Or your Government will hear about it – your Government of a democracy that knows so well its own futility, its own feebleness before the iron will of the totalitarian states.”

“I know all about our Government,” retorted Ulyett, making indeed as rash, as heedless, as thoughtless a claim as ever yet man uttered. “What I want to know –”

He went on to question Troya closely. It appeared there was a wealth of evidence to prove his presence during the evening in the restaurant, dining-rooms, service-rooms, the kitchen even, though there while their masterpieces are being produced by the irritable and temperamental race of chefs, the wise proprietor or manager never ventures. None the less it began to be apparent also that there was a gap, an interval of nearly two hours, when Troya had retired to his office, with on the door that ‘Engaged' sign the intruders had noticed and ignored, though for any of the staff to disregard it would have meant for the culprit instant dismissal. Naturally, that did not apply to Madame Troya, who volunteered the information that she had been in and out of the office several times during those two hours and had always found Mr. Troya there, busy with his accounts and correspondence.

“Very satisfactory,” declared Ulyett. He went across to the window and opened it. It opened as he knew perfectly well, on a narrow, paved alley, used only for the removal of rubbish, that ran between this building and the next. Since Troya's office was on the ground level, to climb through the window into the alley and so proceed unnoticed to the street, would be perfectly easy. Ulyett closed the window and turned to the inmates of the room again. “Wife's evidence, though,” he remarked. “Quite all right, of course, but the courts always like a wife's evidence confirmed. Anyone who could do that?”

“Yes, certainly,” answered Madame Troya at once. “Major Cathay, the Military Attaché at the Etrurian Embassy. He came in to speak to my husband for a moment. I presume you will accept Major Cathay's word?”

“The word of a Military Attaché is always accepted,” answered Ulyett politely. “Can you tell me what time he was here?”

Madame Troya knew to a minute. She knew, she explained, because the Major's watch had stopped and he had asked her what the time was. It happened to be almost exactly, to the hour and minute, the time when Olive had received that whispered 'phone call from the dying Peter Albert at The Manor.

“Very satisfactory,” repeated Ulyett, who had anticipated that this interval of two hours covering the time when they knew the murder had been committed would be carefully provided for by a good sound alibi. “Of courses we shall have to ask Major Cathay to confirm.”

“Major Cathay will confirm everything we say,” Madame Troya told him with a kind of grim assurance in her voice, as much as to say Major Cathay would know better than to do anything else. Her voice changed suddenly, grew shrill. “What's that man doing?” she cried, pointing a finger at Bobby who was busy with a small gadget that looked a little like a scent spray, a camel-hair brush and the fountain-pen he had taken from Troya. He was not a finger-print expert but he knew the technique well enough, and the necessary articles for testing he had brought with him. “What's he doing? what?” she cried again.

“Only testing for finger-prints, ma'am,” Ulyett explained mildly.

In a panic she swung round on Troya.

“You wore gloves?” she cried, “gloves?”

“What gloves?” Ulyett asked. “What for?”

But Mrs. Troya had recovered her self-possession that for the moment had been badly shaken.

“It is bluff,” she said, “nothing but bluff – impudent bluff. You do not take us in. No.” She laughed, though not very steadily. “To-morrow our Etrurian Embassy shall hear of this and then we shall see. The Redeemer of his country does not permit his people to be insulted. To them he is ever as a loving father and you won't find any finger-prints –” She paused again as if something had just occurred to her, something she did not understand. “In any case,” she demanded, “why should not a man's own finger-prints be on his own fountain-pen?”

“Why not indeed, madame?” agreed Ulyett, “I'm sure that's what one would expect. Quite natural.”

“Then what is the meaning of this comedy?” she asked angrily.

“You see,” Ulyett explained, “we are not looking for Mr. Troya's finger-prints, which indeed one would expect to find, as you say, on his own pen, though not of course if he wore gloves for any special reason.”

“Never mind the gloves,” she snapped.

“A man named Peter Albert has been found murdered at a house called The Manor, belonging to a Mr. Judson,” Ulyett continued. “We have reason to believe that Mr. Albert was attacked while he was writing. There is ink on his fingers. As his own fountain-pen had been broken a day or two ago and he had not yet obtained a new one, he may have borrowed another from some other person if he had writing to do. It is therefore the finger-prints of Mr. Peter Albert, not those of Mr. Troya, we are looking for, and whose presence on Mr. Troya's pen may require explanation.”

Troya gave a low, strangled cry. Madame Troya swung round upon him.

“You fool,” she cried wildly, “did you lend him your pen?”

Troya tried to speak, his mouth opened but no sound came, he shrank back into his chair, it was as though in that one moment he had lessened to one half his previous size.

“You wore gloves,” said Ulyett softly, “but you forgot, I think, that Peter Albert wore none.”

There was silence for the space of perhaps three-quarters of a minute while no one moved or stirred. It was only broken when from a little distance sounded the voice of a newsboy. He was calling:

“Extra special. Rising in Etruria. Redeemer reported shot. Navy joins rebels.”

Clear and shrill in the quiet street sounded the voice of that Recording Angel of our times – the newsboy. Ulyett went to the door and opened it and called to a waiter.

“Get me a paper,” he said briefly. “Quick.”

He went back into the room. They all waited silently. Bobby was thinking of Peter Albert, as he had known him first, smiling and debonair; as he had known him on the yacht that had become in his hands almost like a living thing to see danger and avoid it; as he had seen him last, silent and still, life leaving him.

Troya was now sitting forward in his chair, hope and an enormous relief apparent in his expression. Madame Troya kept opening and shutting her mouth. Bobby was reminded of a fish suddenly flung from the water on to dry land. Ulyett was the only one who spoke. He said loudly and firmly:

“These foreigners.”

The waiter appeared, bringing in the paper. He eyed the little group curiously, but Ulyett motioned to him to go, and he retired. Ulyett unfolded the paper and ran his glance up and down the columns.

“All there,” he said. “He's been put on the spot all right – the Etrurian dictator, I mean. Stood him against a wall and that was that. General rejoicings – so there would have been if he had stood someone else against a wall and that had been that. London Embassy taken over, too, apparently.” Ulyett looked from one to the other of the Troyas. “Your pal – Major Cathay. He's gone over to the other side, taken possession of the Embassy, chucked the Redeemer lot outside, and says he is now the representative of the new Etrurian Government – the Government of the People's Party.”

“In that case,” said Madame Troya thoughtfully, “if he has gone over to the other side – then he will no longer tell lies for us.”

“No, he won't, will he?” agreed Ulyett. “How about telling us the truth now yourself?”

“I will,” declared Madame Troya with sudden emphasis. “Yes.” She pointed at Troya. “Yes,” she repeated, “he shot Mr. Albert. He was hired by the tyrant who dared to call himself a redeemer – a redeemer who shed the blood of others, not his own. The Tyrant,” she concluded at the top of her voice.

“Meaning the Redeemer?” asked Ulyett mildly.

“I,” said Madame Troya with great decision, “I call him the Tyrant as did the millions of my fellow-countrymen who groaned for so long under his abominable rule. He knew, the Tyrant, that Peter Albert was one of the most dangerous of his enemies. Well, he knew it, well he knew that from his yacht, the hero, Peter Albert, wirelessed orders, instructions, messages, organized in short that superb rising of the people of which we have the glorious news to-night. Well knew the Tyrant –”

“The Redeemer?” asked Ulyett as mildly as before.

“The Tyrant,” repeated Madame Troya, glaring at him, “hired that man” – an accusing finger designated the restaurant keeper, still sitting upright in his chair, evidently trying to adjust his mind to the news just received – “hired him to liquidate one whom he knew to be his most dangerous enemy and to-night the foul deed was done. Of course, for me,” said Madame Troya earnestly, “I knew nothing of it – nothing till he returned, when he at once threatened me with death if I dared say anything, if I did not back up his wicked stories. It was the window, you understand. He put the notice ‘Engaged' on the door and then he slipped out by the window and came back the same way. I was to confirm his lie about his having been here all the time, and so was Major Cathay. Oh, but he is clever, Major Cathay, we had no idea he was one of our enemies – I mean, one of our friends.”

“Bit confusing” agreed Ulyett, “to remember which side you're on – like our own Liberals, not sure whether they've turned Tory or are really Labour. Go on.”

“For months, I have been terrorized, living under the instant threat of death,” continued Madame Troya, “but now I will speak out, and to you, to the English police, so loyal, so magnificent, I trust for my protection.”

“Terrorized, were you, ma'am?” asked Ulyett, giving a somewhat doubtful glance at Troya, sitting upright, abstracted, and silent in his chair.

“Terrorized,” repeated Madame Troya with another glare that very plainly dared him to doubt it. “But do not think that under your British laws, because I am his wife, I cannot give the evidence against him that will enable you to hang him. We are not married. I am not his wife.”

“Not even my mistress,” sighed Troya. “Never once did she allow me near her – not even the slightest alleviation.”

“As if I would, a worm like him, a louse,” said the lady to whom now it would be incorrect to refer as Madame Troya. “For that matter, before I came I had to give my husband the most complete assurances. They were unnecessary – look at him and imagine if assurances were called for.” As she spoke she jerked a disdainful thumb at Troya. “But my husband insisted. Or he would never have consented.”

“Where is he? in England? can you give us his address?” Ulyett asked.

“Head porter at the Embassy,” was the prompt answer.

Ulyett nodded to Bobby to make a note of this fact and Bobby said:

“There's something in the newspaper account – oh, yes, here it is: ‘Head Porter taken to Hospital, thrown down Embassy steps by former Military Attaché'.”

“He did not change sides quickly enough,” said the lady with a sigh. “In politics, it is so necessary.”

Troya got to his feet and spoke with a certain dignity.

“It is true I shot Mr. Albert,” he said. “I did not wish to shoot him. Why should I? They told me he was a traitor. They told me he was working harm to our country, they told me he conspired against our Government, they told me he would bring about a war so that Etruria should be like Spain, butchered to make a German general's holiday. For that I should not have shot him. They reminded me they had made my restaurant famous and if I did not obey, they would unmake it again with tales of bad food and bad cooking till it was once more what it was before they talked up the ‘Twin Wolves' into being thought a kind of rival of the Ritz or the Savoy – easy enough when most people only know the difference between a fried-fish shop and a restaurant of class by the prices and the lights. They could have done it as easily as they said, and it was they, too, who sent this woman –here to spy upon the Etrurians in England – on the refugees to find out what they were doing, on the others to see that they did nothing.”