Free The Bradmoor Murder by Melville Davisson Post Page A

what had occurred; couldn’t have known any of the facts connected with the disappearance of the Rajah, except that you had brought to him the abandoned uniform. That was all Leouenheim had to go on.’
    â€œShe stopped again. One would have said she was only interested in the smoke rings.
    â€œ ‘You know all that, Mahadol. You had Leouenheim watched. He had not gone out of the residence on that night; no one had visited him; there were no sources of information available to the man. He knew absolutelynothing, could have known nothing, except, as I have said, that you brought to him the abandoned uniform—and only the coat of that. How could he know that the Rajah was dead?
    â€œ ‘You tried to find out how he knew, and his answer was that the evidences in his possession were conclusive, and that he would make a report to the English resident in Gujrat.
    â€œ ‘That was enough for you, Mahadol!
    â€œ ‘That night Leouenheim disappeared, “followed the Rajah,” you said.’
    â€œThe woman laughed.
    â€œ ‘That was one time you told the truth—precisely the truth, Mahadol! Leouenheim did follow the Rajah!’
    â€œShe must have looked like a harpy there before him on the floor, with her big bony face—an abominable creature that had winged out of the pit; her voice like a loathsome caress.
    â€œ ‘But clever as you were, Mahadol, you were not so clever as I. I knew the report had been written before Leouenheim went to see you, and I got possession of it while he was in audience with you. He had written it out,put it into an envelope, and addressed it to the Resident—and I have it.’
    â€œThe big creature moved his thick neck as though he felt fingers on it. He tried to hold his composure, but his hands on the arm of the chair jerked. He was like one laid hold of in the dark by an invisible, deadly, illusive assailant. I suppose the woman’s soft, loathsome voice behind the vulture face was the worst thing. She had the friendly manner of an ox butcher who has his knife in his sleeve.
    â€œ ‘Don’t be disturbed about it, Mahadol!’ she said. ‘I’ll turn the report over to you. But I want one hundred thousand pounds sterling.… Think about the thing for a moment. For one hundred thousand pounds sterling you can be the Rajah of Gujrat.’
    â€œThen she got up softly and went behind the curtain. She wanted her words, as I have said, to sink in to the bone.
    â€œThe heavy curtains cut off the room like a wall across it. Lady Gault was in the dark here, above was the sky sown over with stars, below the hotel gardens, and beyond the white yacht on a sea of amethyst. She knew whatwas going to happen. The successful termination of her last adventure was before her. What she had said to Mahadol was no lie. Life was only possible for her in the soft Mediterranean sea, without it she was under a sentence of death. She had no fear of what would happen in the room behind … the trapped prince would divide the loot. And she had that immense uplift of the spirit that attends a sense of victory.
    â€œOne can imagine how Mahadol thought about it.
    â€œWhat had the cursed German written? He knew Leouenheim, a professor from Bonn, a little wizened creature who went about with a lens and a measure of acid—direct, accurate and always right! When he said, ‘The Rajah is dead!’ he knew.
    â€œBut how could he know? Even a professor from Bonn was not clairvoyant. He had seen only the Rajah’s coat, and it had been cleaned. How could this miserable German tell by a coat that its owner was dead?
    â€œAnd the man’s mind, like a beast penned in a trap, kept turning backwards on itself.
    â€œHe had taken no chance on Leouenheim.If the German knew the Rajah was dead, he knew too much. The Rajah had deserted to the Sikhs in the purpose of a German war plot. It was not for Leouenheim to break down that