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The Orange Yellow Diamond

J >> J. S. Fletcher >> The Orange Yellow Diamond




Mirandolet laughed, showing a set of very white teeth, and glared at
Ayscough with a suggestion of invitation to join in his amusement. He
clapped Melky on the shoulder as if he had said something diverting.

"Good hands, my young friend?" he exclaimed. "The very best in the world!
Past masters! Adepts. Poison you while they look at you!"

"Bit cunning and artful about it, mister?" suggested Melky.

"Beyond your conception, my friend," replied Mirandolet. "Unless I very
much mistake your physiognomy, you yourself come of an ancient race which
is not without cunning and artifice--but in such matters as you refer to,
you are children, compared to your Far East folk."

"Just so, mister--I believe you!" said Melky, solemnly. "And--which of
'em, now, do you consider the cleverest of the lot--them as you say you've
lived amongst, now? You mentioned three lots of 'em, you know--Indians,
Burmese, Chinese. Which would you consider the artfullest of them three--
if it came to a bit of real underhand work, now?"

"For the sort of thing you're thinking of, my friend," answered
Mirandolet, "you can't beat a Chinaman. Does that satisfy you?"

Melky rose and glanced at the detective before turning to the doctor.

"Mister," he said, "that's precisely what I should ha' said myself. Only--
I wanted to know what a big man like you thought. Now, I know! Much
obliged to you, mister. If there's ever anything I can do for you, doctor
--if you want a bit of real good stuff--jewellery, you know--at dead cost
price--"

Mirandolet laughed and clapping Melky's shoulder again, looked at
Ayscough.

"What's our young friend after?" he asked, good-humouredly. "What's his
game?"

"Hanged if I know, doctor!" said Ayscough, shaking his head. "He's got
some notion in his head. Are you satisfied, Mr. Rubinstein?"

Melky was making for the door.

"Ain't I just said so?" he answered. "You come along of me, Mr. Ayscough,
and let's be getting about our business. Now, look here!" he said, taking
the detective's arm when they had left the house. "We're going to take a
look at them Chinks. I've got it into my head that they've something to do
with this affair--and I'm going to see 'em, and to ask 'em a question or
two. And--you're coming with me!"

"I say, you know!" remarked Ayscough. "They're respectable gentlemen--even
if they are foreigners. Better be careful--we don't know anything against
'em."

"Never you fear!" said Melky. "I'll beat 'em all right. Ain't I got a good
excuse, Mr. Ayscough? Just to ask a civil question. Begging their pardons
for intrusion, but since the lamented death of Mr. Daniel Multenius, me
and Miss Zillah Wildrose has come into his bit of property, and does the
two gentlemen desire to continue their tenancy, and is there anything we
can do to make 'em comfortable--see? Oh, I'll talk to 'em all right!"

"What're you getting at, all the same?" asked the detective. "Give it a
title!"

Melky squeezed his companion's arm.

"I want to see 'em," he whispered. "That's one thing. And I want to find
out how that last cheque of theirs got into our back-parlour! Was it sent
by post--or was it delivered by hand? And if by hand--who delivered it?"

"You're a cute 'un, you are!" observed Ayscough. "You'd better join us."

"Thank you, Mr. Ayscough, but events has happened which'll keep me busy at
something else," said Melky, cheerfully. "Do you know that my good old
relative has divided everything between me and my cousin?--I'm a rich man,
now, Mr. Ayscough. S'elp me!--I don't know how rich I am. It'll take a bit
o' reckoning."

"Good luck to you!" exclaimed the detective heartily. "Glad to hear it!
Then I reckon you and your cousin'll be making a match of it--keeping the
money in the family, what?"

Melky laid his finger on the side of his nose.

"Then you think wrong!" he said. "There'll be marriages before long--for
both of us--but it'll not be as you suggest! There's Molteno Lodge, across
the road there--s'elp me, I've often seen that bit of a retreat from the
top of a 'bus, but I never knew it belonged to the poor old man!"

They had now come to the lower part of Maida Vale, where many detached
houses stand in walled-in gardens, isolated and detached from each other--
Melky pointed to one of the smaller ones--a stucco villa, whose white
walls shone in the November moonlight. Its garden, surrounded by high
walls, was somewhat larger than those of the neighbouring houses, and was
filled with elms rising to a considerable height and with tall bushes
growing beneath them.

"Nice, truly rural sort of spot," said Melky, as they crossed the road and
approached the gate in the wall. "And--once inside--uncommon private, no
doubt! What do you say, Mr. Ayscough?"

The detective was examining the gate. It was a curious sort of gate, set
between two stout pillars, and fashioned of wrought ironwork, the meshes
of which were closely intertwined. Ayscough peered through the upper part
and saw a trim lawn, a bit of statuary, a garden seat, and all the rest of
the appurtenances common to a London garden whose owners wish to remind
themselves of rusticity--also, he saw no signs of life in the house at the
end of the garden.

"There's no light in this house," he remarked, trying the gate. "Looks to
me as if everybody was out. Are you going to ring?"

Melky pointed along the front of the wall.

"There's a sort of alley going up there, between this house and the next,"
he said. "Come round--sure to be a tradesman's entrance--a side-door--up
there."

"Plenty of spikes and glass-bottle stuff on those walls, anyhow!" remarked
Ayscough, as they went round a narrow alley to the rear of the villa.
"Your grandfather evidently didn't intend anybody to get into these
premises very easily, Mr. Rubinstein. Six-foot walls and what you might
call regular fortifications on top of 'em! What are you going to do,
now?"

Melky had entered a recess in the side-wall and was examining a stout door
on which, plainly seen in the moonlight, were the words _Tradesman's
Entrance_. He turned the handle--and uttered an exclamation.

"Open!" he said. "Come on, Mr. Ayscough--we're a-going in! If there is
anybody at home, all right--if there ain't, well, still all right. I'm
going to have a look round."

The detective followed Melky into a paved yard at the back of the villa.
All was very still there--and the windows were dark.

"No lights, back or front," remarked Ayscough. "Can't be anybody in. And I
say--if either of those Chinese gents was to let himself in with his key
at the front gate and find us prowling about, it wouldn't look very well,
would it, now? Why not call again--in broad daylight?"

"Shucks!" said Melky. "Ain't I one o' the landlords of this desirable bit
o' property? And didn't we find that door open? Come round to the front."

He set off along a gravelled path which ran round the side of the house,
and ascended the steps to the porticoed front door. And there he rang the
bell--and he and his companion heard its loud ringing inside the house.
But no answer came--and the whole place seemed darker and stiller than
before.

"Of course there's nobody in!" muttered Ayscough. "Come on--let's get out
of it."

Melky made no answer. He walked down the steps, and across the lawn
beneath the iron-work gate in the street wall. A thick shrubbery of holly
and laurel bushes stood on his right--and as he passed it something darted
out--something alive and alert and sinuous--and went scudding away across
the lawn.

"Good Lord!" said Ayscough. "A rat! And as big as a rabbit!"

Melky paused, looked after the rat, and then at the place from which it
had emerged. And suddenly he stepped towards the shrubbery and drew aside
the thick cluster of laurel branches. Just as suddenly he started back on
the detective, and his face went white in the moonbeams.

"Mr. Ayscough!" he gasped. "S'elp me!--there's a dead man here! Look for
yourself!"



CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN


THE EMPTY HOUSE

Ayscough had manifested a certain restiveness and dislike to the
proceedings ever since his companion had induced him to enter the back
door of Molteno Lodge--these doings appeared to him informal and
irregular. But at Melky's sudden exclamation his professional instincts
were aroused, and he started forward, staring through the opening in the
bushes made by Melky's fingers.

"Good Lord!" he said. "You're right. One of the Chinamen!"

The full moon was high in a cloudless sky by that time, and its rays fell
full on a yellow face--and on a dark gash that showed itself in the yellow
neck below. Whoever this man was, he had been killed by a savage
knifethrust that had gone straight and unerringly through the jugular
vein. Ayscough pointed to a dark wide stain which showed on the earth at
the foot of the bushes.

"Stabbed!" he muttered. "Stabbed to death! And dragged in here--look at
that--and that!"

He turned, pointing to more stains on the gravelled path behind them--
stains which extended, at intervals, almost to the entrance door in the
outer wall. And then he drew a box of matches from his pocket, and
striking one, went closer and held the light down to the dead man's face.
Melky, edging closer to his elbow, looked, too.

"One of those Chinamen, without a doubt!" said Ayscough, as the match
flickered and died out. "Or, at any rate, a Chinaman. And--he's been dead
some days! Well!--this is a go!"

"What's to be done?" asked Melky. "It's murder!"

Ayscough looked around him. He was wondering how it was that a dead man
could lie in that garden, close to a busy thoroughfare, along which a
regular stream of traffic of all descriptions was constantly passing, for
several days, undetected. But a quick inspection of the surroundings
explained matters. The house itself filled up one end of the garden; the
other three sides were obscured from the adjacent houses and from the
street by high walls, high trees, thick bushes. The front gate was locked
or latched--no one had entered--no one, save the owner of the knife that
had dealt that blow, had known a murdered man lay there behind the
laurels. Only the rat, started by Melky's footsteps, had known.

"Stay here!" said Ayscough. "Well--inside the gate, then--don't come out--
I don't want to attract attention. There'll be a constable somewhere
about."

He walked down to the iron-work gate, Melky following close at his heels,
found and unfastened the patent latch, and slipped out into the road. In
two minutes he was back again with a policeman. He motioned the man inside
and once more fastened the door.

"As you know this beat," he said quietly, as if continuing a conversation
already begun, "you'll know the two Chinese gentlemen who have this
house?"

"Seen 'em--yes," replied the policeman. "Two quiet little fellows--seen
'em often--generally of an evening."

"Have you seen anything of them lately?" asked Ayscough.

"Well, now I come to think of it, no, I haven't," answered the policeman.
"Not for some days."

"Have you noticed that the house was shut up--that there were no lights in
the front windows?" enquired the detective.

"Why, as a matter of fact, Mr. Ayscough," said the policeman, "you never
do see any lights here--the windows are shuttered. I know that, because I
used to give a look round when the house was empty."

"Do you know what servants they kept--these two?" asked Ayscough.

"They kept none!" answered the policeman. "Seems to me--from what bit I
saw, you know--they used the house for little more than sleeping in. I've
seen 'em go out of a morning, with books and papers under their arms, and
come home at night--similar. But there's no servants there. Anything
wrong, Mr. Ayscough?"

Ayscough moved toward the bushes.

"There's this much wrong," he answered. "There's one of 'em lying dead
behind those laurels with a knife-thrust through his throat! And I should
say, from the look of things, that he's been lying there several days.
Look here!"

The policeman looked--and beyond a sharp exclamation, remained stolid. He
glanced at his companions, glanced round the garden--and suddenly pointed
to a dark patch on the ground.

"There's blood there!" he said. "Blood!"

"Blood!" exclaimed Ayscough. "There's blood all the way down this path!
The man's been stabbed as he came in at that door, and his body was then
dragged up the path and thrust in here. Now then!--off you go to the
station, and tell 'em what we've found. Get help--he'll have to be taken
to the mortuary. And you'll want men to keep a watch on this house--tell
the inspector all about it and say I'm here. And here--leave me that lamp
of yours."

The policeman took off his bull's eye lantern and handed it over. Ayscough
let him out of the door, and going back to Melky, beckoned him towards the
house.

"Let's see if there's any way of getting in here," he said. "My
conscience, Mr. Rubinstein!--you must have had some instinct about coming
here tonight! We've hit on something--but Lord bless me if I know what it
is!"

"Mr. Ayscough!" said Melky. "I hadn't a notion of aught like that--it's
give me a turn! But don't I know what it means, Mr. Ayscough--not half!
It's all of a piece with the rest of it! Murder, Mr. Ayscough--bloody
murder! All on account of that orange-yellow diamond we've heard of--at
last. Ah!--if I'd known there was that at the bottom of this affair, I'd
ha' been a bit sharper in coming to conclusions, I would so! Diamond worth
eighty thousand pounds--."

Ayscough, who had been busy at the front door of the house, suddenly
interrupted his companion's reflections.

"The door's open!" he exclaimed. "Open! Not even on the latch. Come on!"

Melky shrank back at the prospect of the unlighted hall. There was a
horror in the garden, in that bright moonlight--what might there not be in
that black, silent house?

"Well, turn that there bull's eye on!" he said. "I don't half fancy this
sort of exploration. We'd ought to have had revolvers, you know."

Ayscough turned on the light and advanced into the hall. There was nothing
there beyond what one would expect to see in the hall of a well-furnished
house, nor was there anything but good furniture, soft carpets, and old
pictures to look at in the first room into which he and Melky glanced. But
in the room behind there were evidences of recent occupation--a supper-
table was laid: there was food on it, a cold fowl, a tongue--one plate had
portions of both these viands laid on it, with a knife and fork crossed
above them; on another plate close by, a slice of bread lay, broken and
crumbled--all the evidences showed that supper had been laid for two, that
only one had sat down to it: that he had been interrupted at the very
beginning of his meal--a glass half-full of a light French wine stood near
the pushed-aside plate.

"Looks as if one of 'em had been having a meal, had had to leave it, and
had never come back to it," remarked Ayscough. "Him outside, no doubt.
Let's see the other rooms."

There was nothing to see beyond what they would have expected to see--
except that in one of the bedrooms, in a drawer pulled out from a
dressing-table and left open, lay a quantity of silver and copper, with
here and there a gold coin shining amongst it. Ayscough made a significant
motion of his head at the sight.

"Another proof of--hurry!" he said. "Somebody's cleared out of this place
about as quick as he could! Money left lying about--unfinished meal--door
open--all sure indications. Well, we've seen enough for the present. Our
people'll make a thorough search later. Come downstairs again."

Neither Ayscough nor Melky were greatly inclined for conversation or
speculation, and they waited in silence near the gate, both thinking of
the still figure lying behind the laurel bushes until the police came.
Then followed whispered consultations between Ayscough and the inspector,
and arrangements for the removal of the dead man to the mortuary and the
guardianship and thorough search of the house--and that done, Ayscough
beckoned Melky out into the road.

"Glad to be out of that--for this time, anyway!" he said, with an air of
relief. "There's too much atmosphere of murder and mystery--what they call
Oriental mystery--for me in there, Mr. Rubinstein! Now then, there's
something we can do, at once. Did I understand you to say these two were
medical students at University College?"

"So Mr. Penniket said," replied Melky. "S'elp me! I never heard of 'em
till this afternoon!"

"You're going to hear a fine lot about 'em before long, anyway!" remarked
Ayscough.

"Well--we'll just drive on to Gower Street--somebody'll know something
about 'em there, I reckon."

He walked forward until he came to the cab-rank at the foot of St. John's
Wood Road, where he bundled Melky into a taxi-cab, and bade the driver get
away to University College Hospital at his best pace. There was little
delay in carrying out that order, but it was not such an easy task on
arrival at their destination to find any one who could give Ayscough the
information he wanted. At last, after they had waited some time in a
reception room a young member of the house-staff came in and looked an
enquiry.

"What is it you want to know about these two Chinese students?" he asked a
little impatiently, with a glance at Ayscough's card. "Is anything wrong?"

"I want to know a good deal!" answered Ayscough. "If not just now, later.
You know the two men I mean--Chang Li and Chen Li--brothers, I take it?"

"I know them--they've been students here since about last Christmas,"
answered the young surgeon. "As a matter of fact they're not brothers--
though they're very much alike, and both have the same surname--if Li is a
surname. They're friends--not brothers, so they told us."

"When did you see them last?" asked Ayscough.

"Not for some days, now you mention it," replied the surgeon. "Several
days. I was remarking on that today--I missed them from a class."

"You say they're very much alike," remarked the detective. "I suppose you
can tell one from the other?"

"Of course! But--what is this? I see you're a detective sergeant. Are they
in any bother--trouble?"

"The fact of the case," answered Ayscough, "is just this--one of them's
lying dead at our mortuary, and I shall be much obliged if you'll step
into my cab outside and come and identify him. Listen--it's a case of
murder!"

Twenty minutes later, Ayscough, leading the young house-surgeon into a
grim and silent room, turned aside the sheet from a yellow face.

"Which one of 'em is it?" he asked.

The house-surgeon started as he saw the wound in the dead man's throat.

"This is Chen!" he answered.



CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


THE £500 BANK NOTE

Ayscough drew the sheet over the dead man's face and signed to his
companion to follow him outside, to a room where Melky Rubinstein, still
gravely meditating over the events of the evening, was awaiting their
reappearance.

"So that," said Ayscough, jerking his thumb in the direction of the
mortuary, "that's Chen Li! You're certain?"

"Chen Li! without a doubt!" answered the house-surgeon. "I know him well!"

"The younger of the two?" suggested Ayscough.

The house-surgeon shook his head.

"I can't say as to that," he answered. "It would be difficult to tell
which of two Chinese, of about the same age, was the older. But that's
Chen. He and the other, Chang Li, are very much alike, but Chen was a
somewhat smaller and shorter man."

"What do you know of them?" inquired Ayscough. "Can you say what's known
at your hospital?"

"Very little," replied the house-surgeon. "They entered, as students
there--we have several foreigners--about last Christmas--perhaps at the
New Year. All that I know of them is that they were like most Easterns--
very quiet, unassuming, inoffensive fellows, very assiduous in their
studies and duties, never giving any trouble, and very punctual in their
attendance."

"And, you say, they haven't been seen at the hospital for some days?"
continued Ayscough. "Now, can you tell me--it's important--since what
precise date they've been absent?"

The house-surgeon reflected for a moment--then he suddenly drew out a
small memorandum book from an inner pocket.

"Perhaps I can," he answered, turning the pages over. "Yes--both these men
should have been in attendance on me--a class of my own, you know--on the
20th, at 10.35. They didn't turn up. I've never seen them since--in fact,
I'm sure they've never been at the hospital since."

"The 20th?" observed Ayscough. He looked at Melky, who was paying great
attention to the conversation. "Now let's see--old Mr. Multenius met his
death on the afternoon of the 18th. Parslett was poisoned on the night of
the 19th. Um!"

"And Parslett was picked up about half-way between the Chink's house and
his own place, Mr. Ayscough--don't you forget that!" muttered Melky. "I'm
not forgetting--don't you make no error!"

"You don't know anything more that you could tell us about these two?"
asked the detective, nodding reassuringly at Melky and then turning to the
house-surgeon. "Any little thing?--you never know what helps."

"I can't!" said the house-surgeon, who was obviously greatly surprised by
what he had seen and heard. "These Easterns keep very much to themselves,
you know. I can't think of anything."

"Don't know anything of their associates--friends--acquaintances?"
suggested Ayscough. "I suppose they had some--amongst your students?"

"I never saw them in company with anybody--particularly--except a young
Japanese who was in some of their classes," replied the house-surgeon. "I
have seen them talking with him--in Gower Street."

"What's his name?" asked Ayscough, pulling out a note-book.

"Mr. Mori Yada," answered the house-surgeon promptly. "He lives in Gower
Street--I don't know the precise number of the house. Yes, that's the way
to spell his name. He's the only man I know who seemed to know these two."

"Have you seen him lately?" asked Ayscough.

"Oh, yes--regularly--today, in fact," said the house-surgeon.

He waited a moment in evident expectation of other questions; as the
detective asked none--"I gather," he remarked, "that Chang Li has
disappeared?"

"The house these two occupied is empty," replied Ayscough.

"I am going to suggest something," said the house-surgeon. "I know--from
personal observation--that there is a tea-shop in Tottenham Court Road--a
sort of quiet, privately-owned place--Pilmansey's--which these two used to
frequent. I don't know if that's of any use to you?"

"Any detail is of use, sir," answered Ayscough, making another note. "Now,
I'll tell this taxi-man to drive you back to the hospital. I shall call
there tomorrow morning, and I shall want to see this young Japanese
gentleman, too. I daresay you see that this is a case of murder--and
there's more behind it!"

"You suspect Chang Li?" suggested the house-surgeon as they went out to
the cab.

"Couldn't say that--yet," replied Ayscough, grimly. "For anything I know,
Chang Li may have been murdered, too. But I've a pretty good notion what
Chen Li was knifed for!"

When the house-surgeon had gone away, Ayscough turned to Melky.

"Come back to Molteno Lodge," he said. "They're searching it. Let's see if
they've found anything of importance."

The house which had been as lifeless and deserted when Melky and the
detective visited it earlier in the evening was full enough of energy and
animation when they went back. One policeman kept guard at the front gate;
another at the door of the yard; within the house itself, behind closed
doors and drawn shutters and curtains, every room was lighted and the
lynx-eyed men were turning the place upside down. One feature of the
search struck the newcomers immediately--the patch of ground whereon Melky
had found the dead man had been carefully roped off. Ayscough made a
significant motion of his hand towards it.

"Good!" he said, "that shows they've found footprints. That may be useful.
Let's hear what else they've found."

The man in charge of these operations was standing within the dining-room
when Ayscough and Melky walked in, and he at once beckoned them into the
room and closed the door.

"We've made two or three discoveries," he said, glancing at Ayscough. "To
start with, there were footprints of a rather unusual sort round these
bushes where the man was lying--so I've had it carefully fenced in around
there--we'll have a better look at 'em, in daylight. Very small prints,
you understand--more like a woman's than a man's."

Ayscough's sharp eyes turned to the hearth--there were two or three pairs
of slippers lying near the fender and he pointed to them.

"These Chinamen have very small feet, I believe," he said. "The footprints
are probably theirs. Well--what else?"

"This," answered the man in charge, producing a small parcel from the
side-pocket of his coat, and proceeding to divest it of a temporary
wrapping. "Perhaps Mr. Rubinstein will recognize it. We found it thrown
away in a fire-grate in one of the bedrooms upstairs--you see, it's half
burnt."

He produced a small, stoutly-made cardboard box, some three inches square,
the outer surface of which was covered with a thick, glossy-surfaced dark-
green paper, on which certain words were deeply impressed in gilt letters.
The box was considerably charred and only fragments of the lettering on
the lid remained intact--but it was not difficult to make out what the
full wording had been.

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