When presently Smith, Gallaho and I set out in the police car for Greystones, we had succeeded in learning a little more about the mysterious Mrs Milton. A police inspector and the police surgeon we had left behind at Great Oaks; but as Nayland Smith said, what expert opinion had failed to learn in regard to the death of General Quinto local talent could not hope to find out.
Mrs Milton, Dr. Jasper had told us before he finally collapsed (for the ordeal through which he had passed had entirely sapped his nervous energy), was a chance acquaintance. The doctor, during one of his rare constitutionals in the neighbouring lanes, had found her beside a broken-down car and had succeeded in restarting the engine. Quite obviously he had been attracted. They had exchanged cards and he had invited her to lunch and to look over his laboratory.
His description of Mrs Milton tallied exactly with that of the woman who had visited General Quinto on the night before his murder!
My excitement as we sped towards Greystones grew ever greater. With my own eyes I was about to see this harbinger of death employed by Dr. Fu-Manchu, finally to convince myself that she was not Ardatha. But indeed little doubt on this point remained.
“Unless I am greatly mistaken,” said Nayland Smith, “you are going to meet for the first time, Kerrigan, an example of a dead woman moving among the living, influencing, fascinating them. I won’t tell you, Inspector Gallaho”—he turned to the Scotland Yard officer—“whom I suspect this woman to be. But she is someone you have met before.”
“Now that I know Doctor Fu-Manchu is concerned in this case,” the inspector growled in his husky voice, “nothing would surprise me.”
We passed along the main street of a village in which all the houses and cottages were in darkness and pulled up before one over which, dimly, I could see a tablet which indicated that this was the local police headquarters. As we stepped out:
“Strange,” murmured Nayland Smith; looking about him—“there’s no car here and only one light upstairs.”
“I don’t like this,” said Gallaho savagely, marching up the path and pressing a bell beside the door.
There was some delay which we all suffered badly. Then a window opened above and I saw a woman looking out. “What do you want?” she called: it was a meek voice.
“I want Constable Isles,” said Gallaho violently. “This is Detective Inspector Gallaho of Scotland Yard. I spoke to the constable twenty minutes ago, and now I’m here to see him.”
“Oh!” said the owner of the meek voice, “I’ll come down.”
A minute later she opened the door. I saw that she wore a dressing gown and looked much disturbed.
“Where’s the woman,” snapped Nayland Smith, “whom the constable was detaining?”
“What!”
“Yes. I suppose he must have been satisfied to have let her go. My husband has had a very hard day, and he’s fast asleep in the parlour. I didn’t like to disturb him.”
“What is the meaning of this?”
Nayland Smith spoke as angrily as he ever spoke to a woman. Accompanied by the hastily attired Mrs Isles, we stood in a little sitting room. A heavily built man who wore a tweed suit was lying on a couch, apparently plunged in deep sleep. Chief Detective Inspector Gallaho chewed ominously and glared at the woman.
“I think it’s just that he’s overtired, sir,” she said. She was a plump, dark-eyed, hesitant sort of a creature, and our invasion seemed to have terrified her. “He has had a very heavy day.”
“That is not the point,” said Smith rapidly. “Inspector Gallaho here sent out a description of a car seen by an A.A. man near a call box on the London Road. All officers, on or off duty, were notified to look out for it and to stop it if sighted. Your husband telephoned to Great Oaks twenty minutes ago saying that he had intercepted this car and that the driver, a woman, was here in his custody. Where is she? What has occurred?”
“I don’t really know, sir. He was just going to bed when the phone rang, and then he got up, dressed, and went out. I heard a car stop outside, and then I heard him bring someone in. When the car drove away again and he didn’t come up I went to look for him and found him asleep here. When he’s like that I never disturb him, because he’s a bad sleeper.”
“He’s drugged,” snapped Smith irritably.
“Oh no!” the woman whispered. Drugged he was, for it took us nearly ten minutes to revive him. When ultimately Constable Isles sat up and stared about I thought that I had rarely seen a more bewildered man. Smith had been sniffing suspiciously and had examined the stubs of two cigarettes in an ash tray.
“Hello, Constable,” he said, “what’s the meaning of this? Asleep on duty, I’m afraid.”
Constable Isles sat up, then stood up, clenched his fists and stared at all of us like a man demented.
“I don’t know what’s happened,” he muttered thickly. “I don’t know!”
He looked again from face to face.
“I’m Chief Detective Inspector Gallaho. Perhaps you know what’s happened now! You reported to me less than half an hour ago. Where’s the car? Where’s the prisoner?”
The wretched man steadied himself, outstretched hand against a wall.
“By God, sir!” he said, and made a visible attempt to pull himself together. “A terrible thing has happened to me!”
“You mean a terrible thing is going to happen to you,” growled Gallaho.
“Leave this to me.” Nayland Smith rested his hand on Isles’s shoulder and gently forced him down on to the couch again. “Don’t bother about it too much. I think I know what occurred, and it has occurred to others before. When the general order came you dressed and went out to watch the road. Is that so?”
“Yes sir.”
“You saw what looked like the car described, coming along this way. You stopped it. How did you stop it?”
“I stood in the road and signalled to the driver to pull up.”
“I see. Describe the driver.”
“A woman, sir, young—” The speaker clutched his head. Obviously he was in a state of mental confusion. “A very dark young woman; she was angry at first and glared at me as though she was in half a mind to drive on.”
“Do you remember her eyes?”
“I’m not likely to forget them, sir—they were bright green. She almost frightened me. But I told her I was a police officer and that there was a query about her car. She took it quietly after that, left the car at the gate out there and came in. That was when I telephoned to the number I had been given and reported that I had found the wanted car.”
“What happened after that?”
“Well sir, I could see she was a foreigner, good looking in her way, though”—glancing at his buxom wife—“a bit on the thin side from my point of view. And she was so nice and seemed so anxious not to want to wake the missus, that I felt half sorry for her.”
“What did she say to you? What did she talk about?”
“To tell you the truth, sir,” he stared pathetically at Nayland Smith, “I can’t really remember. But while we were waiting she asked me to have a cigarette.”
“Did you do so?”
“Yes. I lighted it and one for her at the same time, and we went on talking. The reason I remember her eyes, is because that’s the last thing I do remember—” He swallowed noisily. “Although there was nothing, I give you my word, there was nothing to give me the tip in time, I know now that that cigarette was drugged. I hope, sir”—turning to Gallaho—“that I haven’t failed in my duty.”
“Forget it,” snapped Nayland Smith. “Men far senior to you have failed in the same way where this particular woman has been concerned.”