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The Yellow Streak

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"A great privilege, sir," he said staidly. "I have followed your work...."

But the other did not let him finish.

"Shot through the heart ... instantaneous death ... severe haemorrhage ...
the pistol is there ... in his hand. A man with everything he wanted
in the world ... I can't understand it. 'Pon my soul, I can't!"

The Inspector, who had been kneeling by the corpse, motioned with his
head to the village doctor. Dr. Redstone went to him and began a cursory
examination of the body. The Inspector rose.

"I understand from the butler, gentlemen," he said, "that it was Miss
Trevert, a lady staying in the house, who heard the shot fired. I should
like to see her, please. And you, sir, are you a relation of ..."

Greve, thus addressed, hastily replied.

"Only a friend, Inspector. I am staying in the house. I am a barrister.
Perhaps I may be able to assist you ..."

Humphries shot a slow, shrewd glance at him from beneath his shaggy
blond eyebrows.

"Thank you, sir, much obliged, I'm sure. Now"--he thrust a hand into his
tunic and produced a large leather-bound notebook--"do you know anything
as would throw a light on this business?"

Greve shook his head.

"He seemed perfectly cheerful at lunch. He left the dining-room directly
after he had taken his coffee."

"Where did he go?"

"He came here to work. He told us at lunch that he was going to shut
himself up in the library for the whole afternoon as he had a lot of
work to get through."

The Inspector made a note or two in his book. Then he paused
thoughtfully tapping the end of his pencil against his teeth.

"It was Miss Trevert, you say, who found the body?"

"No," Greve replied. "Her brother, Sir Horace Trevert. It was Miss
Trevert who heard the shot fired."

"The door was locked, I think?"

"On the inside. But here is Sir Horace Trevert. He will tell you how he
got through the window and discovered the body."

Horace Trevert gave a brief account of his entry into the library. Again
the Inspector scribbled in his notebook.

"One or two more questions, gentlemen, please," he said, "and then I
should wish to see Miss Trevert. Firstly, who saw Mr. Hartley Parrish
last: and at what time?"

Horace Trevert looked at Greve.

"It would be when he left us after lunch, wouldn't it?" he said.

"Certainly, certainly," Dr. Romain broke in. "He left us all together in
the dining-room, you, Horace and Robin and Lady Margaret and Mary ...
Miss Trevert and her mother, you know," he added by way of explanation
to the Inspector.

"And he went straight to the library?"

"Straight away, Mr. Humphries, sir," broke in Bude. "Mr. Parrish crossed
me in the hall and gave me particular instructions that he was not to be
disturbed."

"That was at what time?"

"About two-thirty, sir."

"Then you were the last person to see him before ..."

"Why, no ... that is, unless ..."

The butler hesitated, casting a quick glance round his audience.

"What do you mean?" rapped out the Inspector, looking up from his
notebook. "Did anybody else see Mr. Parrish in spite of his orders?"

Bude was silent. He was looking at Greve.

"Come on," said Humphries sternly. "You heard my question? What makes
you think anybody else had access to Mr. Parrish before the shot was
heard?"

Bude made a little resigned gesture of the hands.

"Well, sir, I thought ... I made sure that Mr. Greve ..."

There was a moment's tense silence.

"Well?" snapped Humphries.

"I was going to say I made certain that Mr. Greve was going to Mr.
Parrish in the library to tell him tea was ready. Mr. Greve passed me in
the hall and went down the library corridor just after I had served the
tea."

All eyes turned to Robin.

"It's perfectly true," he said. "I went out into the gardens for a
mouthful of fresh air just before tea. I left the house by the side door
off the corridor here. I didn't go to the library, though. It is an
understood thing in this house that no one ever disturbs Mr. Parrish
when he ..."

He broke off sharply.

"My God, Mary," he cried, "you mustn't come in here!"

All turned round at his loud exclamation. Mary Trevert stood in the
doorway. Dr. Romain darted forward.

"My dear," he said soothingly, "you mustn't be here ..."

Passively she let him lead her into the corridor. The Inspector
continued his examination.

"At what time did you come along this corridor, sir?" he asked Robin.

"It was not long after the tea gong went," answered Robin, "about ten
minutes past five, I should say ..."

"And you heard nothing?"

Robin shook his head.

"Absolutely nothing," he replied. "The corridor was perfectly quiet. I
stepped out into the grounds, went for a turn round the house, but it
was raining, so I came in almost at once."

"At what time was that?"

"When I came in ... oh, about two or three minutes later, say about a
quarter past five."

Humphries turned to Horace Trevert.

"What time was it when Miss Trevert heard the shot?"

Horace puckered up his brow.

"Well," he said, "I don't quite know. We were having tea. It wasn't much
after five--I should say about a quarter past."

"Then the shot that Miss Trevert heard would have been fired just about
the time that you, sir," he turned to Robin, "were coming in from your
stroll."

"Somewhere about that time, I should say!" Robin answered rather
thoughtfully.

"Did you hear it?" queried the Inspector.

"No," said Robin.

"But surely you must have been at or near the side door at the time as
you were coming in ..."

"I came in by the front door," said Robin, "on the other side of the
house ..."

Very carefully the Inspector closed his notebook, thrust the pencil back
in its place along the back, fastened the elastic about the book, and
turned to Horace Trevert.

"And now, sir, if I might speak to Miss Trevert alone for a minute ..."

"I say, though," expostulated Horace, "my sister's awfully upset, you
know. Is it absolutely necessary?"

"Aye, sir, it is!" said the Inspector. "But there's no need for me to
see her in here. Perhaps in some other room ..."

"The drawing-room is next to this," the butler put in; "they'd be nice
and quiet in there, Sir Horace."

The Inspector acquiesced. Dr. Redstone drew him aside for a whispered
colloquy.

The Inspector came back to Robin and Horace.

"The doctor would like to have the body taken upstairs to Mr. Parrish's
room," he said. "He wishes to make a more detailed examination if Dr.
Romain would help him. If one of you gentlemen could give orders about
this ... I have two officers outside who would lend a hand. And this
room must then be shut and locked. Sergeant Harris!" he called.

"Sir!"

A stout sergeant appeared at the library door.

"As soon as the body has been removed, you will lock the room and bring
the key to me. And you will return here and see that no one attempts to
get into the room. Understand?"

"Yessir!"

"Inspector!"

Robin Greve called Inspector Humphries as the latter was preparing to
follow Bude to the drawing-room.

"Mr. Parrish seems to have written a note for Miss Trevert," he said,
pointing at the desk. "And in that envelope you will find Mr. Parrish's
will. I discovered it there on the desk just before you arrived!"

Again the Inspector shot one of his swift glances at the young man. He
went over to the desk, shook the document and letter from their
envelope, glanced at them, and replaced them.

"I don't rightly know that this concerns me, gentlemen," he said slowly.
"I think I'll just take charge of it. And I'll give Miss Trevert her
letter."

Taking the two envelopes, he tramped heavily out of the room.

Then in a little while Bude and Jay and two bucolic-looking policemen
came to the library to move the body of the master of Harkings. Robin
stood by and watched the little procession pass slowly with silent feet
across the soft pile carpet and out into the corridor. But his thoughts
were not with Parrish. He was haunted by the look which Mary Trevert had
given him as she had stood for an instant at the library door, a look of
fear, of suspicion. And it made his heart ache.




CHAPTER VI


THE LETTER

The great drawing-room of Harkings was ablaze with light. The cluster of
lights in the heavy crystal chandelier and the green-shaded electric
lamps in their gilt sconces on the plain white-panelled walls coldly lit
up the formal, little-used room with its gilt furniture, painted piano,
and huge marble fireplace.

This glittering Louis Seize environment seemed altogether too much for
the homely Inspector. Whilst waiting for Mary Trevert to come to him, he
tried several attitudes in turn. The empty hearth frightened him away
from the mantelpiece, the fragile appearance of a gilt settee decided
him against risking his sixteen stone weight on its silken cushions, and
the vastness of the room overawed him when he took up his position in
the centre of the Aubusson carpet. Finally he selected an ornate chair,
rather more solid-looking than the rest, which he drew up to a small
table on the far side of the room. There he sat down, his large red
hands spread out upon his knees in an attitude of singular
embarrassment.

But Mary Trevert set him quickly at his ease when presently she came to
him. She was pale, but quite self-possessed. Indeed, the effort she had
made to regain her self-control was so marked that it would have
scarcely escaped the attention of the Inspector, even if he had not had
a brief vision of her as she had stood for that instant at the library
door, pale, distraught, and trembling. He was astonished to find her
cool, collected, almost business-like in the way she sat down, motioned
him to his seat, and expressed her readiness to tell him all she knew.

The phrases he had been laboriously preparing--"This has been a bad
shock for you, ma'am"; "You will forgive me, I'm sure, ma'am, for
calling upon you at a moment such as this"--died away on his lips as
Mary Trevert said:

"Ask me any questions you wish, Inspector. I will tell you everything I
can."

"That's very good of you, ma'am, I'm sure," answered the Inspector,
unstrapping his notebook, "and I'll try and not detain you long. Now,
then, tell me what you know of this sad affair ..."

Mary Trevert plucked an instant nervously at her little cambric
handerchief in her lap. Then she said:

"I went to the library from the billiard-room ..."

"A moment," interposed the Inspector. "What time was that?"

"A little after five. The tea gong had gone some time. I was going to
the library to tell Mr. Parrish that tea was ready ..."

Mr. Humphries made a note. He nodded to show he was listening.

"I crossed the hall and went down the library corridor. I knocked on the
library door. There was no reply. Then I heard a shot and a sort of
thud."

Despite her effort to remain calm, the girl's voice shook a little. She
made a little helpless gesture of her hands. A diamond ring she was
wearing on her finger caught the light and blazed for an instant.

"Then I got frightened. I ran back along the corridor to the lounge
where the others were and told them."

"When you knocked at the door, you say there was no reply. I suppose,
now, you tried the handle first."

"Oh, yes ..."

"Then Mr. Parrish would have heard the two sounds? The turning of the
handle and then the knocking on the door? That's so, isn't it?"

"Yes, I suppose so ..."

"Yet you say there was no reply?"

"No. None at all."

The Inspector jotted a word or two in his notebook as it lay open flat
upon the table.

"The shot, then, was fired immediately after you had knocked? Not while
you were knocking?"

"No. I knocked and waited, expecting Mr. Parrish to answer. Instead of
him answering, there came this shot ..."

"I see. And after the shot was fired there was a crash?"

"A sort of thud--like something heavy falling down."

"And you heard no groan or cry?"

The girl knit her brows for a moment.

"I ... I ... was frightened by the shot. I ... I ... don't seem able to
remember what happened afterwards. Let me think ... let me think ..."

"There, there," said the Inspector paternally, "don't upset yourself
like this. Just try and think what happened after you heard the shot
fired ..."

Mary Trevert shuddered, one slim white hand pressed against her cheek.

"I do remember now," she said, "there _was_ a cry. It was more like a
sharp exclamation ..."

"And then you heard this crash?"

"Yes ..."

The girl had somewhat regained her self-possession. She dabbed her eyes
with her handkerchief quickly as though ashamed of her weakness.

"Now," said Humphries, clearing his throat, as though to indicate that
the conversation had changed, "you and Lady Margaret Trevert knew Mr.
Parrish pretty well, I believe, Miss Trevert. Have you any idea why he
should have done this thing?"

Mary Trevert shook her dark head rather wearily.

"It is inconceivable to me ... to all of us," she answered.

"Do you happen to know whether Mr. Parrish had any business worries?"

"He always had a great deal of business on hand and he has had a great
deal to do lately over some big deal."

"What was it, do you know?"

"He was raising fresh capital for Hornaway's--that is the big
engineering firm he controls ..."

"Do you know if he was pleased with the way things were shaping?"

"Oh, yes. He told me last night that everything would be finished this
week. He seemed quite satisfied."

The Inspector paused to make a note.

Then he thrust a hand into the side-pocket of his tunic and produced
Hartley Parrish's letter.

"This," he said, eyeing the girl as he handed her the letter, "may throw
some light on the affair!"

Open-eyed, a little surprised, she took the plain white envelope from
his hand and gazed an instant without speaking, on the bold sprawling
address--

_"Miss Mary Trevert."_

"Open it, please," said the Inspector gently.

The girl tore open the envelope. Humphries saw her eyes fill, watched
the emotion grip her and shake her in her self-control so that she could
not speak when, her reading done, she gave him back the letter.

Without asking her permission, he took the sheet of fine, expensive
paper with its neat engraved heading and postal directions, and read
Hartley Parrish's last message.

My dear [it ran], I signed my will at Bardy's office
yesterday, and he sent it back to me to-day. Just
this line to let you know you are properly provided
for should anything happen to me. I wanted to fix
things so that you and Lady Margaret would not
have to worry any more. I just had to _write_.
I guess you understand why.

H.

There was a long and impressive silence while the Inspector
deliberately read the note. Then he looked interrogatively at the girl.

"We were engaged, Inspector," she said. "We were to have been married
very soon."

A deep flush crept slowly over Mr. Humphries's florid face and spread
into the roots of his tawny fair hair.

"But what does he mean by 'having to write'?" he asked.

The girl replied hastily, her eyes on the ground.

"Mr. Parrish was under the impression that ... that ... without his
money I should not have cared for him. That is what he means ..."

"You knew he had provided for you in his will?"

"He told me several times that he intended to leave me everything. You
see, he has no relatives!"

"I see!" said the Inspector in a reflective voice.

"Had he any enemies, do you know? Anybody who would drive him to a thing
like this?"

The girl shook her head vehemently.

"No!"

The monosyllable came out emphatically. Again the Inspector darted one
of his quick, shrewd glances at the girl. She met his scrutiny with her
habitual serene and candid gaze. The Inspector dropped his eyes and
scribbled in his book.

"Was his health good?"

"He smoked far too much," the girl said, "and it made him rather nervy.
But otherwise he never had a day's illness in his life."

Humphries ran his eye over the notes he had made.

"There is just one more question I should like to ask you, Miss
Trevert," he said, "rather a personal question."

Mary Trevert's hands twisted the cambric handkerchief into a little ball
and slowly unwound it again. But her face remained quite calm.

"About your engagement to Mr. Parrish ... when did it take place?"

"Some days ago. It has not yet been announced."

The Inspector coughed.

"I was only wondering whether, perhaps, Mr. Parrish was not quite ...
whether he was, maybe, a little disturbed in his mind about the
engagement ..."

The girl hesitated. Then she said firmly:

"Mr. Parrish was perfectly happy about it. He was looking forward to our
being married in the spring."

Mr. Humphries shut his notebook with a snap and rose to his feet.

"Thank you very much, ma'am," he said with a little formal bow. "If you
will excuse me now. I have the doctor to see again and there's the
Coroner to be warned ..."

He bowed again and tramped towards the door with a tread that made the
chandelier tinkle melodiously.

The door closed behind him and his heavy footsteps died away along the
corridor. Mary Trevert had risen to her feet calm and impassive. But
when he had gone, her bosom began to heave and a spasm of pain shot
across her face. Again the tears welled up in her eyes, brimmed over and
stole down her cheeks.

"If I only _knew!_" she sobbed, "if I only _knew!_"




CHAPTER VII


VOICES IN THE LIBRARY

The swift tragedy of the winter afternoon had convulsed the
well-organized repose of Hartley Parrish's household. Nowhere had his
master grasp of detail been seen to better advantage than in the
management of his country home. Overwhelmed with work though he
constantly was, accustomed to carry his business and often part of his
business staff to Harkings with him for the week-ends, there was never
the least confusion about the house. The methodical calm of Harkings was
that of a convent.

Hartley Parrish was wont to say that he paid his butler and housekeeper
well to save himself from worry. It was rather to ensure his orders
being punctiliously and promptly carried out. His was the mind behind
the method which ensured that meals were punctually served and trains at
Stevenish Station never missed.

But it was into a house in turmoil that Mary Trevert stepped when she
left the drawing-room and passed along the corridor to go to her room.
Doors slammed and there was the heavy thud of footsteps on the floor
above. The glass door leading into the gardens was open, as Mary passed
it, swinging in the gusts of cold rain. In the gardens without there was
a confused murmur of voices and the flash of lanterns.

In the hall a knot of servants were gossiping in frightened whispers
with a couple of large, rather bovine country constables who,
bareheaded, without their helmets, which they held under their arms,
looked curiously undressed.

The whispers died away as Mary crossed the hall. All eyes followed her
with interest as she went. It was as though an echo of her talk with the
Inspector had by some occult means already spread through the little
household. Through the half-open green baize door leading to the
servants' quarters some unseen person was bawling down the telephone in
a heated controversy with the exchange about a long-distance call to
London. And but an hour since, the girl reflected sadly, as she mounted
the oaken staircase, the house had been wrapt in its wonted evening
silence in response to that firm and dominating personality who had
passed out in the gloom of the winter twilight.

When, about six months before, Mary and her mother had begun to be
regular visitors at Harkings, Hartley Parrish had insisted on giving
Mary a boudoir to herself. This, in response to a chance remark of
Mary's in admiration of a Chinese room she had seen at a friend's house,
Parrish had had decorated in the Chinese style with black walls and
black-and-gold lacquer furniture. The room had been transformed from a
rather prosaic morning-room with old oak and chintz in the space of
three days as a surprise for Mary. She remembered now how Parrish had
left her to make the discovery of the change for herself. She loved
colour and line, and the contrast between this quaint and delightful
room with her rather shabby bedroom in her mother's small house in
Brompton had made this surprise one of the most delightful she had ever
experienced.

She rang the bell and sat down listlessly in a charmingly lacquered
Louis Seize armchair in front of the log-fire blazing brightly in the
fireplace. She was conscious that a great disaster had overtaken her,
but only dimly conscious. For more poignantly than this dull sense of
tragedy she was aware of a great aching at her heart, and her thoughts,
after hovering over the events of the afternoon, settled down upon her
talk that afternoon ... already how far off it seemed ... with Robin
Greve in the library,

Robin had always been her hero. She could see him now in the glow of the
fire as he had been when in the holidays he had come and snatched her
away from a home already drab and difficult for a matinée and an orgy of
cream cakes at Gunter's afterwards. He was then a long, slim, handsome
boy of irrepressible spirits and impulsive generosity which usually left
him, after the first few days of his holidays, in a state of lamentable
impecuniosity. All their lives, it seemed to her, they had been friends,
but with no stronger feeling between them until Robin, having joined the
Army on the outbreak of war, had come to say good-bye on being ordered
to France.

But by that time money troubles at home with which, as it seemed to her,
she had been surrounded all her life, had grown so pressing that, apart
from Lady Margaret's reiterated counsels, she herself had come to
recognize that a suitable marriage was the only way out of their
ever-increasing embarrassment.

She and Robin, she recalled with a feeling of relief, had never
discussed the matter. He, too, had understood and had sailed for France
without seeking to take advantage of the circumstance.

Outside in the black night a car throbbed. Footsteps crunched the gravel
beneath her window. The sounds brought her back to the present with a
sudden pang. She began to think of Hartley Parrish. All her life she
had been so very poor that, until she had met this big, vigorous,
intensely vital man, she had never known what a lavish command of money
meant. Hartley Parrish did things in a big way. If he wanted a thing he
bought it, as he had bought Bude, as he had bought a car he had seen
standing outside a Pall Mall club and admired. He had rooted the owner
out, bade him name his price, and had paid it, there and then, by
cheque, and driven Mary off to a lawn tennis tournament at Queen's,
hugely delighted by her bewilderment.

She did not love him. She could never have learnt to love him. There was
a gleeful zest in his enjoyment of his money, an ostentatious parade of
his riches which repelled her. And there was a look in his face, those
narrow eyes, that hard mouth, which revealed to her womanly intuition a
ruthlessness which she guessed he kept for his business. But she liked
him, especially his reverent and chivalrous devotion to her, and the
thought that his dominating and vital personality was extinguished for
ever made her conscious of a great void in her life.

And now she was rich. Hartley Parrish's idea of "proper provision" for
her, she knew, meant wealth for her beyond anything she had ever
dreamed. The perpetual debasing struggle with poverty which she and her
mother had carried on for years was a thing of the past. Money meant
freedom, freedom to live ... and to love.

She stretched her hands out to the blaze. Was she free to love? What had
driven Hartley Parrish to suicide? Or who? She went over in her mind her
interview with Robin Greve in the billiard-room. He had spoken of other
women in connection with Hartley Parrish. Had he used that knowledge to
threaten his rival? What had Robin done after he had left her that
afternoon with his final taunt?

She felt the blood rise to her cheeks as she thought of it. Mary Trevert
had all the pride of her ancient race. The recollection of that taunt
galled her. Her loyalty to the man from whom she had received nothing
but chivalry, whose fortune was to banish a hideous nightmare from her
life, rose up in arms. What had Robin done? She must know the truth ...

A tap came at the door. Bude appeared.

"I think you rang, Miss," he said in his quiet, deep voice. "I was with
the Inspector, Miss, and I couldn't come before. Was there anything?..."

The girl turned in her chair.

"Come in and shut the door, Bude," she said. "I want to speak to you."

The butler obeyed and came over to where she sat. He seemed ill at ease
and rather apprehensive.

"Bude," said the girl, "I want you to tell me why you were certain that
Mr. Greve was going to Mr. Parrish in the library when he passed you in
the hall this afternoon!"

The butler smoothed his hands down his trousers in embarrassment.

"I thought he ... Mr. Greve ... would be sure to be going to fetch Mr.
Parrish in to tea, Miss ..." he replied, eyeing the girl anxiously.

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