The Pointing Man Part 25

"It doesn't happen to be a very good hour. We never disturb Mr. Joicey in the afternoons."

"May I send in my card?" asked Coryndon.

"Certainly, if you wish to do so."

Coryndon took a pencil out of his pocket, and, scribbling on the corner of his card, enclosed it in an envelope, and waited in the dark hall, where electric fans flew round like huge bats, the smooth-mannered young man keeping him courteous company.

"Mr. Joicey rests at this time of day," he explained. "I hope you quite understand the difficulty."

"I quite understand," replied Coryndon, "but I think he will see me."

There was a pause. The young man did not wish to contradict him, but he felt that he knew the ways and hours of the Head of the Firm very much better than a mere stranger arriving on foot just as the Bank was due to close for the day. He wondered who Coryndon was, and what his very pressing business could possibly be, but even in his wildest flights of fancy, and, with the thermometer at 112, flights of fancy do not carry far, he never even dimly guessed at anything the least degree connected with the truth.

The Bearer came down the wide scenic stairway and said that his master would see Mr. Coryndon at once. The young man with the smooth manner faded off into dark shadows with an accentuation of impersonal civility, and Coryndon walked up the echoing staircase by the front of the hall, down a corridor, down another flight of stairs, and into the private suite of rooms sacred to the use of the head of the banking firm, and used only in part by the celibate Joicey.

Joicey was standing by a table, looking at Coryndon's card and twisting it between his fingers. He recognized his visitor when he glanced at him, and showed some surprise. The room was in twilight, as all the outside chicks were down, and there was a lingering faint perfume of something sweet and cloying in the air. Joicey looked sulky and irritated, and he motioned Coryndon to a chair without seating himself.

"Well," he said brusquely, "what's this about Rydal?" He pointed with a blunt finger to the card that he had thrown on to the table.

"That," said Coryndon, also indicating the card, "is merely a means towards an end. I have the good fortune to find you not only in your house, but able to receive me."

The colour mounted to Joicey's heavy face, and his temper rose with it.

"Then you mean to tell me--" He broke off and stared at Coryndon, and gave a rough laugh. "You're Hartley's globe-trotting acquaintance, aren't you? Well, Hartley happens to be a friend of mine, and it is just as well for you that he is. Tell me your business, and I will overlook your intrusion on his account."

Something inside Coryndon's brain tightened like a string of a violin tuned up to concert-pitch.

"In one respect you are wrong," he said amiably, and without the smallest show of heat. "I am, as you say, Hartley's friend, but I must disown any connection with globe-trotting, as you call it. I am in the Secret Service of the Indian Government."

"Oh, are you?" Joicey tore up the card and threw it into a basket beside the writing-table.

"It may interest you to know," went on Coryndon easily, "that my visit to you is not altogether prompted by idle curiosity." He smiled reflectively. "No, I feel sure that you will not call it that."

"Fire ahead, then," said Joicey, whose very evident resentment was by no means abated. "Ask your question, if it is a question."

"I am coming to that presently. Before I do I want you to understand, Mr. Joicey, that, like you, I am a servant of the public, and I am at present employed in gathering together evidence that throws any light upon the doings of three people on the night of July the twenty-ninth."

"Then you are wasting valuable time," said Joicey defiantly. "I was away from Mangadone on that night."

"I am quite aware that you told Hartley so."

Coryndon's voice was perfectly even and level, but hot anger flamed up in the bloodshot eyes of Craven Joicey.

"I put it to you that you made a mistake," went on Coryndon, "and that in the interests of justice you will now be able to tell me that you remember where you were and what you were doing on that night."

Joicey thrust his hands deep into his pockets, his heavy shoulders bent, and his face dogged.

"I am prepared to swear on oath that I was not in Mangadone on the night of July the twenty-ninth."

"Not in Mangadone, Mr. Joicey. Mangadone proper ends at the tram lines; the district beyond is known as Bhononie."

Coryndon could see that his shot told. There were yellow patches around Joicey's eyes, and a purple shadow pa.s.sed across his face, leaving it leaden.

"Unless I can complete my case by other means, you will be called as a witness to prove certain facts in connection with the disappearance of the boy Absalom on the night of July the twenty-ninth."

"Who is going to call me?"

The question was curt, and Joicey's defiance was still strong, but there was a certain huskiness in his voice that betrayed a very definite fear.

"Leh Shin, the Chinaman, will call you. His neck will be inside a noose, Mr. Joicey, and he will need your evidence to save his life."

"Leh Shin? That man would swear anything. His word is worthless against mine," said the Banker, raising his voice noisily. "If that is another specimen of Secret Service bluff, it won't do. Won't do, d'you hear?"

Coryndon tapped his fingers on the writing-table.

"I can't agree with you in your conclusion that it 'won't do.' Taken alone his statement may be worthless, but taken in connection with the fact that you are in the habit of visiting his opium den by the river, it would be difficult to persuade any judge that he was lying. I myself have seen you going in there and coming out."

He watched Joicey stare at him with blind rage; he watched him stagger and reach out groping hands for a chair, and he saw the huge defiance evaporate, leaving Joicey a trembling ma.s.s of nerves.

"It's a lie," he said, mumbling the words as though they were dry bread.

"It's a d.a.m.ned, infernal lie!"

A long silence followed upon his words, and Joicey mopped his face with his handkerchief, breathing hard through his nose, his hands shaking as though he was caught by an ague fit.

"I'm in a corner," he said at last; "you've got the whip-hand of me, Coryndon, but when I said I was not in Mangadone that night, I was speaking the truth."

"You were splitting a hair," suggested Coryndon.

Joicey drew his heavy eyebrows together in an angry frown.

"Let that question rest," he said, conquering his desire to break loose in a pa.s.sion of rage.

"You went down Paradise Street some time after sunset. Will you tell me exactly whom you saw on your way to the river house?"

Craven Joicey steadied his voice and thought carefully.

"I pa.s.sed Heath, the Parson, he was coming from the direction of the lower wharves, and was going towards Rydal's bungalow. I remember that, because Rydal was in, my mind at the time; I had heard that his wife was ill, probably dying, and just after I saw Absalom."

He paused for a moment and moistened his lips.

"Was he with anyone when you saw him?"

"No, he was alone, and he was carrying a parcel. Anyhow, that is all I can tell you about him that night."

Joicey looked up as though he considered that he had said enough.

"And from there you went to the opium den," said Coryndon relentlessly.