Free Hand in Glove by Ngaio Marsh Page B

Can you cope?”
    He took her hand and sat on the arm of her chair. “What goes on?” he asked. He was normally a white-faced young man — this characteristic at the moment was particularly noticeable.
    “To be perfectly honest,” Moppett began, “I haven’t a clue. But it appears that we’re meant to know where poor old P.P. puts his museum pieces.”
    “Mr. Period’s cigarette case has disappeared,” Mr. Cartell said, addressing Leonard exclusively. “You and Miss Ralston were the last persons known to handle it. You may care to make a statement as to what you did with it.”
    Leonard said: “
Disappeared
! By Jove, that’s too bad, isn’t it?” His pale fingers closed tightly over Moppett’s. “Of
course
we must help, if we can. Yes, now — Yes. I do remember. I left it on the window ledge in the dining-room. You remember, sweetie, don’t you?”
    “Perfectly.”
    “Was the window open or shut?”
    “Oh,” Leonard said easily, “open. Yes. Open.”
    “Did you open it, Mr. Leiss?”
    “Me? What would I do that for? It
was
open.”
    “It was shut,” Mr. Cartell said, “during luncheon.”
    “Then I suppose the butler-chap — what’s-’is-name — must have opened it.”
    “No.”
    “That,” Leonard remarked, smiling, “is what
he
says.”
    “It is what I say.”
    “Then I’m afraid I don’t much fancy the way you say it.” Leonard produced a silver case from his pocket, offered it to Moppett, helped himself, and with great deliberation lit both cigarettes. He snapped the case shut, smiled at Mr. Cartell and returned it to his pocket. He inhaled deeply, breathed out the vapour and fanned it with his hand. He wore an emerald ring on his signet finger. “How about the sewer men in the lane?” he asked. “Anything in that?”
    “They could not open the window from outside.”
    “Perhaps it was opened for them.”
    Mr. Cartell stood up. “Mr. Leiss,” he said, “I consider myself responsible to Mr. Period for any visitors who, however unwelcome, come to his house under my aegis. Unless his case is returned within the next twelve hours, I shall call in the police.”
    “You’re quite an expert at that, aren’t you?” Leonard remarked. He looked at the tip of his cigarette. “One other thing,” he said. “I resent the way you’re handling this, Mr. Cartell, and I know exactly what I can do about it.”
    Mr. Cartell observed him with a sort of astonished disgust. He addressed himself to Moppett. “There’s no point,” he said, “in pursuing this conversation.”
    A door banged, footsteps were heard in the hall together with an outbreak of yapping and long-drawn-out whines. A loud, uninhibited voice shouted: “Geddown!
Geddown
, you brute.” There followed a canine yelp and a renewed outbreak of yapping.
    “
Quiet
, Li. Quiet, sweetie. Who the hell let this blasted mongrel in!
Trudi
!”
    “I have changed my mind,” Mr. Cartell said. “I shall speak to my sister.”
    He went out and found her, clasping a frenzied Pekingese to her bosom, kicking Pixie and shouting at her Austrian house-parlourmaid.
    “My God, Boysie,” she said when she saw her brother, “are you dotty, bringing that thing in here? Take it out. Take it
out
!”
    The Pekingese turned in her arms and bit her thumb.
    Mr. Cartell said, with dignity: “Come along, old girl, you’re not wanted.” He withdrew Pixie to the garden, tied her to the gatepost, and returned to the hall, where he found his sister stanching her wound. The Pekingese had been removed.
    “I am sorry, Constance. I apologize. Had I imagined—”
    “Oh, come off it,” Miss Cartell rejoined. “You’re hopeless with animals. Let’s leave it at that. If you want to see me, come in here while I get some stuff on my thumb.”
    He followed her into her “den”: a small room, crowded with photographs that she had long ago ceased to look at, with the possible exception of those that recorded the progress of Moppett from infancy to