“I am almost inclined to make a restricted confession to you, Mr.
Carver. I don’t think I should never have dreamt of doing so if I had
ever met you.”
“Restricted confessions are irritating things,” said Carver, “so I
don’t think I should confess if I were you, Miss Ardfern, especially as
I know what the restricted confession is all about.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“You know,” she said.
He nodded.
“You would tell me,” he said, “that you were in the habit of going to
Trasmere’s house every night, to leave your jewels with him, though
that wasn’t the object of your visit. You went there,” he said slowly
and not looking at her, “to act as his secretary. All the letters that
were sent away by Jesse Trasmere were typewritten by you on a portable
machine, the make of the machine is a Cortona, its number is 29754,
it has one key-cap missing, and the letter ‘r’ is a little out of
alignment.”
He enjoyed her consternation for a second and then went on:
“Perhaps you weren’t going to tell me that you and Yeh Ling, the
proprietor of the Golden Roof, paid a visit to Mayfield the night I
nearly caught you? No, I see that you weren’t. So we’ll restrict the
confession to your peculiar occupation.”
Tab was speechless.
Ursula Ardfern the old man’s secretary! One of the most successful
actresses in London acting as amanuensis to that crabbed misanthrope;
it was unbelievable. Yet a glance at the girl’s face told him that
Carver had only spoken the truth.
“How do you know?” she gasped.
Carver smiled again.
“We have very clever people in the police,” he said drily. “You would
never imagine it to read the newspapers. Clever old sixty-nine inch
brains, eh, Tab?”
“I never said that you had a sixty-nine inch brain,” avowed Tab stoutly.
“But--” interrupted the girl, and her voice was agitated, “do you
know--do you know anything else? Why we went that night?”
“You went to show Yeh Ling where the old man kept some of his secret
documents, in the fake brick in the fireplace. You went hoping that
in that box there were some papers which related to you and you were
disappointed. The only thing I am in doubt about is this--was Yeh Ling
disappointed too?”
She shook her head.
“I wondered,” mused Carver. “Of course, I guessed that it was in the
little lacquer box, and guessed also that the little lacquer box had a
false bottom. Am I right?”
She shook her head again.
“No--Yeh Ling thought it was there; the document he sought was in the
brick-box.”
“You have the key of Mayfield,” said Carver. “I think you had better
give it to me. Otherwise, you may be getting into serious trouble.”
She went out of the room without a word, came back and handed him the
small yale key, which he glanced at and dropped into his pocket.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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