He waited, almost hopefully, it seemed.
“I hardly think there’s anything,” Burton said. “But madamoiselle will be grateful, I’m sure. And I’m grateful. But murder is murder. And as you suggest, it looks bad for Miss Blaine. However, I’ve just discovered since I arrived that my old friend, Monsieur Ouchy, formerly of the Paris Prefecture, has been appointed Commissioner here in Monte Carlo. He might give us some good advice, if we can manage to connect with him personally.”
“Then you know Monsieur Ouchy, Monsieur?”
“Yes.” Burton cut the syllable short. Then, with a murmured apology, he turned and went out of the room in search of the telephone. Peret glanced at the corpse, lifted one of his many-ringed hands to cover his eyes, and sank down in a chair to wait.
Half an hour later Patricia Blaine was quiet. Her eyes showed no traces of recent tears. Black Burton had telephoned the police and then had listened, without commenting, to the full story. During its recital Peret had sat smoking incessantly but without moving or putting in even a word. When it was over Burton said:
“And Kitterley. Rowland Kitterley, your fiancé. Do you have any idea where he might be just about now?”
Patricia looked afraid. “I know he is due here. At any moment. Perhaps even he’s arrived. He was motoring south; the last I heard was a wire, this afternoon, from Lyons, en route. But he—”
She stopped abruptly. Burton and the others knew what it was that held her thoughts. He knew Rowland Kitterley himself, casually. Kitterley had acquired a nickname; and millionaire sportsman and playboy that he was, it fitted him. It was adapted to his Christian name: “Rowdy” Kitterley. It stuck with him, followed him into every capital of the world and just now it had taken on for the first time a menacing significance.
The girl seemed to sense the gambler’s thoughts. She burst forth with:
“But Rowdy wouldn’t possibly have known, at least I fail to see how he could have, that I was — accepting the escort of this man! How could he? He’s been in London; he just left my father in Paris. You’re thinking that he might have heard, might’ve become angry and—” She broke off on a choked sob and ended ineffectively: “No! It wouldn’t be his way!”
Peret looked skeptical. But, “It will all depend,” Burton said, “on his alibi for all this evening. If he’s really motoring here, that gives him quite a range, I’d say.”
Voices came. Two. Burton went to the door and they heard him speak. In a moment he returned to the room shepherding the two visitors. He introduced them.
Monsieur Ouchy, Commissioner of Police at the gambling capital, was a short, stubby man with pink cheeks and bland blue eyes that were somehow shrewd withal. He looked, and was, a gourmand. His paunch was prodigious and his grayish-white mustaches were magnificent. With him was a man from his department.
When Ouchy had heard the story, he turned on the gambler.
“Naturally we know of you, Monsieur Burton. I speak of the police in general; you and I are — how you say in English? — old comrades.” He tried to laugh a little; then he became very grave. “Mais, we must understand that this is tres serieux.” He bent his mild but penetrating blue gaze upon the heiress and the gaze was steady when he said: “You are certain, madamoiselle, that you cannot be of help further?”
“I know nothing but what I have told you, monsieur,” the girl responded in a small, dead voice.
“Was the gentleman perhaps in love with you?”
Burton frowned, waited. But Patricia was a thoroughbred. “I think he was,” she said at last. Calmly! “At least, in his own fashion he was. But I had to impress upon him tonight that I am affianced. My finance is on his way here right now.”
“Your fiancé?” Ouchy leaned forward. This was an angle that a French police official found more comprehensible, of a sudden. “His name?”
She told him. Ouchy raised heavy eyebrows. “And where might he be at this moment, madamoiselle?”
She made a helpless gesture. “Somewhere between here and Lyons,” she replied. “That is all I know.”
“And he drives, it is suggested, a powerful car?”
Her eyes looked frightened. “A Mercedes,” she said. And then she added quickly, “You’ll doubtless discover this anyway, eventually — I’ve heard the French police are thorough — so I might just as well tell you now. Rowdy had a specially built Mercedes engine installed by the manufacturers themselves. His car is possibly as speedy as any motor in France!”
There fell a pall of silence. Peret stirred. Ouchy sat back and placed his fingertips together.
“Doubtless we can investigate Monsieur Kitterley’s movements without trouble,” was his comment. But they all understood.
A sound came from the blackness outside. A hail. Burton looked up. Footsteps approached, sounding over the gravelly walk from the top of the steps, then clumped across the narrow veranda. The voice called:
“Hi, Pat! Welcome-home celebration at this hour?”
They all looked up to gaze at the newcomer. Patricia Blaine’s pallor had swept back again. Her eyes were wide, staring.
“Rowdy!” she breathed.
At sight of them all there Rowland Kitterley stopped short in the doorway. He had, his attitude seemed to denote, expected a late party, perhaps. But never a grave gathering like this. Tragedy hung heavy in the air, inescapable.
Kitterley was tall and good-looking in a careless, debonair way. His smile was a delight. His brown hair was wavy and tossed back as though with impatience. His tweed suit was unpressed with almost a studious negligence, and yet it showed its fine tailoring; it was, like its owner, careless. His tie was twisted slightly askew. His gray eyes, young and reckless, were direct and arrogant. He stopped still in the doorway.
“Is this, by any chance, a funeral?” he murmured.
Patricia’s breath caught in her throat. It was Ouchy who responded almost gaily:
“Pas encore! Not yet, monsieur. Perhaps tomorrow. And this would be Monsieur Kitterley?”
Kitterley looked bewildered. “Yes, but—”
Ouchy said abruptly, “Monsieur is perhaps failing to understand. And if he is totally in ignorance then his lack of comprehension is only natural. If he is! Monsieur Kitterley, there is a man in the next chamber — we have placed him there until the medical men arrive — who has tonight been murdered. Murdered — here! It might be most satisfactory to all of us if monsieur could explain where he was an hour or two previous.”
“Why, I’ve been driving here. Left early enough to get in sooner, but I had a breakdown.”
Kitterley parted his lips, closed them, then moistened them again to breathe: “Who was murdered?” And he stared helplessly at Patricia. She did not answer him, only sat there looking appealingly up at him out of her lovely, haunted eyes.
Burton interposed. The gambler said easily: “The body’s in the next room, Kitterley. If you feel up to it you’d better have a look at it. Then we can talk to more purpose.”
There might have been a protest but Burton was waiting for none. Taking Kitterley by the arm he steered him out of the crowded library. In the room where low lighting burned in one corner, away from the face of the dead man, he came to a halt as Kitterley stopped short. Burton’s calm voice said: