American Sherlocks Nick Rennison (best big ereader txt) 📖

moved toward the carriage entrance. It was useless to try to follow them. In fact it would have been fatal. Instead Clare decided to see her millionaire principal and discover what had happened during the afternoon.

‘Has Dr Grimm called up Jacot?’ she asked, as Osgood conducted her into his spacious library.

‘Yes, several times, I believe. First he told Jacot that I was willing to pay for the return of La Ginevra, but not fifty thousand, as you advised. Jacot agreed, I understand, to carry to them my offer of twenty-five thousand and Grimm is to hear from them tonight.’

‘I have just seen Jacot at the Ritz,’ remarked Clare casually, ‘talking with a woman whose name I believe is Giulia Ascoli. Later a Dr Vaccaro –’

‘Vaccaro?’ cried Osgood wheeling in his chair. ‘Why, he is an acquaintance of Dr Grimm. That complicates things exceedingly. Vaccaro – yes, he might have heard of La Ginevra. Where in heaven will this thing end? Vaccaro is a dreamer, a critic, one of the foremost art connoisseurs of Italy. I should never have thought he could be mixed up in such a thing.’

The door opened and the butler announced Dr Grimm. The curator appeared to be very much excited.

‘They have agreed at last to compromise on twenty-five thousand,’ he announced, coming directly to the point. ‘I have just had a message from Jacot.’

‘How and where is it to be paid?’

‘I am sworn not to tell, except that I am to be on a certain corner with the money at a certain time tonight and I am to hand it over to a person in a motor car who drives up and – no, no, I cannot tell more. I dare not. Miss Kendall might follow.’ He was trembling apprehensively. ‘They would take my life if you followed – no – no!’

‘What shall I do?’ asked Osgood in genuine solicitude.

‘I should advise paying,’ counselled Clare.

Osgood looked at her quickly. It was not for the purpose of surrender that he had retained her, and this was surrender. Clare said nothing. With a man Osgood would probably have disputed the policy. But even he, accustomed to dealing directly with affairs, saw that this was a case which called for finesse. Without further ado he opened a little spherical safe in the corner, took out and counted twenty-five crisp one thousand dollar bills and handed them to the curator.

‘You may depend on me, Mr Osgood,’ remarked Grimm, ‘to execute this as carefully as if it were my own mission.’

‘I do, doctor, and good luck to you,’ rejoined Osgood heartily, as if no suspicion had entered his mind.

‘I wonder,’ mused the millionaire, when the door closed, ‘whether Grimm and these people can be in league with each other? To tell you the truth, I think there is no Black Hand about this thing at all. I think it is blackmail. Or perhaps it is just a scheme to return the picture to Italy and double-cross me at the same time?’

Absorbed in studying an antique paper-weight which had once been an Indian crystal ball, Clare absently remarked, ‘I wish you would let me know at once the outcome of Dr Grimm’s expedition,’ rising to go. ‘I shall give them until tomorrow before we act in the open. If the picture is returned, then we shall get them without jeopardizing it. If not, we shall get them anyhow.’

‘Where did Jacot go?’ she telephoned Lawson from the nearest pay station.

‘To his office. I waited outside. Then he went home.’

‘I thought so. We may expect something soon, but had better not act until morning. Then I’ll call you. And thank you ever so much, Billy, for your trouble. Goodbye.’

Her telephone was tinkling insistently the next morning.

‘Hello – is this Miss Kendall?’ called Osgood in great agitation. ‘What do you think has happened? Dr Grimm has just been discovered dead in a doorway on the lower West Side and the money is gone.’

Clare nearly dropped the receiver at this tragic turn of events. ‘I hardly thought they would dare go as far as murder,’ she managed to reply. Her mind was working in flashes.

To her hasty inquiry Osgood answered that the body had been removed by the coroner to a nearby undertaking establishment. There was no word of reproach in his tone; but it was evident he felt bitterly that he himself had misjudged Grimm. Clare said nothing.

‘Within an hour, Mr Osgood,’ she concluded, ‘please be in your library.’

Hurriedly telephoning Dr Lawson, she asked him to meet her as soon as possible at the West Side undertaker’s. Then followed a short parley with the detective bureau at Headquarters, and she was speeding to investigate the tragic death of the unfortunate Dr Grimm.

Lawson was waiting when she arrived. Already he had seen the body. Long and intently he looked on the strangely contorted face of the curator. It had an indescribable look – half of passion, half of horror.

‘Not a mark,’ he commented, ‘except on the back of the neck, just a little scratch.’

‘What did it? Poison?’

‘Ricinus, I think, one of the most recent of poisons and one of the most powerful,’ was the reply. ‘A gram of it would kill a million guinea pigs, and it surpasses prussic acid and other commonly known drugs of the sort. They probably thought in this way to get away with the picture, the money and the witness.’

‘Then we must act quickly before another blow falls,’ decided Clare, leading the way to the cab in which she had come. ‘Jacot’s on Fifth Avenue.’

It was still early and Jacot was not there, but the clerks had just opened the place, and remembered them.

Without waiting Clare led the way to the office and before Lawson could help her had moved out the heavy cabinet and lifted up the curious mahogany box. It took scarcely a moment to detach the wires, slip the box in the grip which she had brought and direct the chauffeur to the Osgood house.

Jacot arrived a few