Benson’s face remained a blank. Only his pale uninteresting eyes appeared to glint a little.
“Me?”
“Yes, you!” rapped Craig. “Come on! We want to know all the story, you’re going to have to spill it sometime. Did your wife put you up to it, or was it your own smart invention?”
A spasm of movement passed across the other’s pallid face. There was a muscle working round his mouth. He said nothing but only gaped at Craig. He seemed incapable of speech.
Inspector Hooper moved forward quickly with an exclamation. He glowered at Craig:
“What’s on your mind?”
“His bright little alibi,” Craig told him brusquely, indicating Benson with a movement of his head. “Which, inspector Hooper, I am about to blow to bits.”
Craig turned to Benson smiling affably.
“And after all that trouble you took too, telling us how you had had such difficulties dialling Toll by torchlight to speak to your wife at Chorley Wood!”
“What are you talking about?” muttered Benson. He gave an impatient shrug. But his hands were shaking.
“It was very convincing,” Craig congratulated him. “Except that you can’t dial Toll from a public call-box!”
“Whassat?” spat out Inspector Hooper, his chin stuck forward.
“Try it sometime,” Craig chided him gently. “And see what you get.”
As he finished speaking, Benson made a sudden swift movement.
But Craig’s foot shot out and caught Benson neatly on the shin.
“Panic,” Craig murmured, glancing down at the sprawling breathless figure at his feet. “You should never panic, never try and run for it. Makes everything look so much worse. Now,” he added. “Had you merely said in the first place that you dialled ‘O’ for operator, you might have got away with it.”
THE THREATENING LETTER
The man next to Craig smacked his lips, put down his half-empty glass, and said across the bar counter:
“Single-’anded today, Boss?”
The landlord of the Rotunda Arms nodded. He wiped his moist brow with a tattooed, muscular forearm and smiled.
“Yes, it’s Eddie’s afternoon off. He’ll be back this evening, though.”
The other chuckled. He winked knowingly.
“Taking one of his blondes to the pictures, eh?”
“Shouldn’t wonder. A lad for the girls is Eddie.… Same again, Mr. Craig?”
Craig slid his glass over and glanced round the crowded bar.
Most of the customers were enjoying a quick one before hurrying across to the Rotunda Theatre where the matinée was due to start in a few minutes.
The landlord fixed Craig’s drink and answered further inquiries coming across the bar after the absent Eddie. It seemed the young barman, with his ready cockney wit, taste in startling tie-pins, and inevitable cigarette, was something of a favourite with the habitués of the little Shaftesbury Avenue pub.
Craig lit a cigarette, then glanced at his watch.
As the result of her phoning him that morning, he was due to look in presently on Sarah Lane.
He’d read about the anonymous threat to kidnap the blonde, pulchritudinous Sarah Lane before she’d phoned him. He’d put it down to a bright idea thought up by her over-enthusiastic, if not altogether original-minded press agent.
When she told him it wasn’t any publicity stunt, she’d had the letter all right, he’d told her maybe wasn’t it merely some harmless crank, with inhibitions the way cranks have, loosing off a little steam?
She’d said to him, her voice cool in his ear over the wire:
“You could be right, Mr. Craig. All the same, I’m taking it seriously. The idea of someone, cranky or not, trying any funny business has practically no allure for me. Come and see me during my matinée this afternoon.”
Craig still didn’t think it was the sort of business he wanted any part of. Actresses were not his favourite type of client—tricky to work for, he’d usually found them, un-business like and unreliable.
“Why don’t you get Scotland Yard in?”
“One thing I don’t want is police fussing around. I’m told you’re a good private detective, Mr. Craig, and I think you could settle this quietly without any trouble.”
Maybe this time it would be different, Craig thought. Besides, he hadn’t been entirely unsusceptible to the flattering intonation in her delightfully husky voice. Added to which, she was a star all right, and should be okay from the money angle, and he liked to eat.
He knocked back his drink and went out, the landlord calling after him: “So long, Mr. Craig,” for he was not entirely unknown in those parts.
A minute later he was leaning through the cubbyhole inside the Rotunda stage door. The doorkeeper looked up from the racing news and regarded him aggressively over his steel-rimmed spectacles.
“Well, if you’ve got an appointment with ’er, you’ve got an appointment with ’er,” he muttered.
“What’s on your mind, Fred?” Craig asked.
“Things is a bit ’umpty,” the other grumbled through his soup-strainer moustache. “Miss Lane’s only just come in, which means she’ll be late, and besides.…”
“This kidnapping threat?” Craig suggested.
The other snorted.
“It isn’t that. It’s—well—” He lowered his voice confidentially: “It’s her carrying on with Mr. Barry, and his wife in the show, too. Oh, Miss Lane don’t mean no ’arm, but with Mrs. Barry being the jealous kind.… Anyway, I’ll tell her you’re here.”
He lifted the internal telephone off its hook. After a few moments Fred replaced the receiver, shaking his head.
“’S funny,” he muttered. “She should be there.”
Grumbling, he shuffled off, beckoning Craig to follow him.
They went through double doors and across the back of the stage. The orchestra was tuning up, stagehands padded around in last-minute tidying-up before the curtain went up. They made their way through the gloom that was cut by blindingly glaring beams of light from the lamps round the stage.
As they reached the door on the opposite side of the stage, a large, distraught woman burst out on them.
“Police—! Quick, the police—”
“Wot’s up, Mrs. Abbott?” Fred demanded.
“Miss Lane—! Miss Lane, she’s unconscious! She’s been attacked—!” the woman gulped.
“Cripes!” observed Fred inelegantly and turned to Craig. “Looks like a job for you, Mr. Craig,” and hurried after Mrs. Abbott.
As they gained the dressing room, Craig noticed something glittering up at him just outside the door. He made a quick movement and slipped it into his pocket.
* * * *
It was the same evening. Place, the Rotunda Arms:
The man next to Craig set down his beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and turned from his evening paper carrying the story of the Rotunda robbery.
“Wot I says is,” he declared, “wot does she want with all that jewellery? Fair asking to ’ave