“It is against the rules,” the doctor regretted. “There will be another opportunity. We are waiting now for the coffin.”
“What better opportunity could there be?” Roger protested. “Monsieur does not understand, perhaps,” he added, turning to the official. “Lord Erskine was an intimate friend of mine, not an ordinary acquaintance. We were at school and college together. I know some of his people. I shall be compelled to report this terrible circumstance to them. At least, they will wish to know that I paid my last respects—”
“After the coffin has arrived, if you please,” the functionary pleaded. “You are the only stranger who is permitted inside this room. It is not for the public—even for the friends of the unfortunates who are brought here.”
“Major Thornton is here,” Roger protested.
“Major Thornton has special privileges. He has been attached to your Foreign Office and he is a member of your English police,” the functionary reminded him. “We must ask you now, please, to leave.”
“I think you had better come along,” Thornton advised.
Roger was a little bewildered but he gave in. A man in livery let them out by a private door. They walked across the Place into the bar of the Hôtel de Paris and found two easy-chairs in a quiet corner. Neither of them thought of ordering drinks.
“Why the mischief wouldn’t they let me have one last look at poor Pips?” Roger demanded.
“I can’t tell, Sloane,” Thornton replied. “This place is festering with rules and regulations. One is hemmed in on every side. I suppose that’s why these things occur.”
“Tell me more about it,” Roger begged. “Did Erskine have a big win?”
“Yes, he did—a big win for him. He won about two hundred and thirty thousand early yesterday evening. Naturally he had one or two drinks and was chatty about it. It happened to be a very quiet evening over here and most of our lot, as you know, were over at Cannes and there were scarcely a dozen people in the bar when Erskine began to pull out his twenty thousand franc jetons. He went home, as I happen to know, quite early, because I invited him up to the Carlton and he said that he had a head. When he woke up this morning, the letter was with his newspapers and the rest of his correspondence.”
“Have the police got it?” Roger asked.
“As a matter of fact, they have not,” Thornton confided, thrusting his hand into his pocket. “Erskine was perfectly certain that some one was trying to get a rise out of him and left the letter with me after we had had a drink together at twelve o’clock this morning. He knew that the study of handwriting was rather in my line and he wanted me to compare it with the handwriting of any of our crowd I knew about. I think he rather suspected you. There it is.”
The letter was written on the Hôtel de Paris notepaper and the envelope was addressed in plain printed characters.
LORD ERSKINE,
344 HÔTEL DE PARIS.
The contents were brief and very much to the point.
Dear Lord Erskine,
It seems hard to demand our tax on winnings so insignificant, but the fact of it is that some of your friends whom you amuse every night with your drolleries are getting rather a nuisance to us. We do not like amateur investigators. We may therefore have to remove ourselves to another sphere of activity and we are obliged to clean up pretty closely. Two hundred and thirty thousand francs is not much of a win so we will only ask you for one hundred and eighty thousand.
Get in your car to-morrow afternoon and precisely at five take a drink at the Savoy Hotel, La Turbie. When you leave there, take the short cut to Monte Carlo and slow up a little at the third bend. You will meet some one there who will relieve you of the notes.
Above all, let me beg of you not to repeat the unfortunate and ludicrous mistake of your countryman, Lord Bradley. I can promise you that the notes will be searched with a magnifying glass before they are put into circulation and there will be the equivalent of a gun in your ribs until they are passed O.K.
Do not be late. We are punctual people.
“Try to keep the letter,” Roger enjoined, as he handed it back. “I fancy we may be able to work upon it better than the people out here.”
“I don’t intend to give it back at all, if I can help it,” Thornton replied. “I don’t see why I should. It was given into my keeping by Erskine himself.”
The barman paused apologetically before their chairs. They gave him an order. It was past eight o’clock and Roger was due to dine in the hotel with his aunt at nine.
“Now, for heaven’s sake, tell me about the shooting,” Roger begged his companion. “How was it possible for Erskine to have been shot by an invisible person? I thought the Casino was always so full later in the afternoons.”
“It’s all very difficult,” Thornton acknowledged gloomily. “Of course, not one of us was anywhere near the place. Who would have thought of Erskine, after having made a big win at the Sporting Club, going into the ‘kitchen’ and playing from five o’clock on an afternoon like this?”
“I can’t understand it,” Roger admitted. “He always played tennis if he was not at Mont Agel. Don’t you remember how he always used to say—never gamble when the sun shines?”
“He was told,” Thornton reflected, “to drive in his car slowly down the road from La Turbie at six o’clock this afternoon and to have the hundred and eighty thousand francs with him. We know he didn’t mean to obey, but why should he choose to abandon all his usual practices, visit the Casino and gamble in the ‘kitchen’?”
“Go on and tell me about the shooting,” Roger begged a little abruptly. “Speculations are interesting but I want to hear the facts. Was there no onlooker at all who saw anything of it?”
“Erskine apparently,” Thornton explained, “was seated with his back to the wall, in the farthest of the suite of rooms outside the ordinary ‘kitchen,’ but still belonging to it, so far as regards prices and cartes. That particular room is rather cut off from the place and it would appear that no one, except people actually at the table or standing watching, was in a position to see anything. All that one has been able to gather from one of the chefs is that there was a sound like the ‘plop’ of a boy’s toy gun with a cork in the end and Erskine, who was seated next to the croupier, was seen to lean forward. Immediately afterwards he collapsed. The police have not found any one at the table, seated or standing up, who saw or heard anything of a person with a weapon in his hand. The only witness of any consequence at all is the chef, who was close to Erskine, who declares that he felt something that was like a flash of hot air close to his cheek. The rest of the affair was just as wonderful as usual. They tell me that in less than thirty seconds poor Erskine’s place was occupied by some one else, there was no sign of his body and the croupier was spinning the ball!”
“Was the table full?”
“There were only three vacant seats.”
Roger swallowed the cocktail which the barman had just brought.
“Thornton,” he demanded, “does it seem possible to you that a man seated at a roulette table in full view of a staff of at least six croupiers and chefs, with a dozen people seated at the table, could produce a revolver and shoot another man without being observed?”
Thornton shook his head.
“The same thing has been done before and will be again,” he said. “Don’t make the mistake, Sloane, of imagining that a man has to bring out his gun and brandish it before he shoots. I even know one or two of our English gunmen who can shoot through their sleeves or through their trousers with one hand, whilst doing anything you please with the other. Erskine might easily have been shot by a man behind with one hand in his pocket and the other placing a stake.”