The Silk Stocking Murders Read Online Free Page A

mind if I smoke?” he asked, gaining a few seconds. He had to take a swift decision. Should he or should he not take this fluffy little creature into his confidence? Would she be a help or a hindrance? Was she a complete little fool who had had a single sensible moment, or was her apparent empty-headedness a pose adopted for the benefit of the other sex? Most of the men with whom she would come in contact, Roger was painfully aware, do prefer their women to be empty-headed. He compromised; he would take her just so far as he could into his own confidence without betraying that of others.
    “I mean,” he said carefully, as he filled his pipe, “that so far as I’ve been able to gather, Miss Ransome was
not
the sort of girl to commit suicide——”
    “That she wasn’t!” interjected Miss Carruthers, almost violently.
    “——and that as she did so, she was driven into it by forces which, to say the least, must have been overwhelming. And I mean to make it my business to find out what those forces were.”
    “Oh! Oh, yes. You mean——?”
    “For the moment,” said Roger firmly, “nothing more than that.”
    They looked at each other for a moment in silence. Then Miss Carruthers said an unexpected thing.
    “You belong to
The Courier?
” she asked, in a hesitating voice. “You’re doing this for them? You’re going to publish everything you find out, whether—whether Uny would have liked it or not?”
    Roger found himself liking her more and more. “No!” he said frankly. “I am connected with
The Courier,
but I’m not on it. I’m going to do this off my own bat, and I give you my word that nothing shall be published at all that doesn’t reflect to the credit of Miss Ransome—and perhaps not even then. You mean, of course, that you wouldn’t help me, except on those terms?”
    Miss Carruthers nodded. “I’ve got a duty to Uny, and I’m not going to have any mud slung at her, whether she deserves it or not. But if you’ll promise that, I’ll help you, all I can. Because believe me, Mr. Sheringham,” added Miss Carruthers passionately, “if there’s some damned skunk of a man at the bottom of this (as I’ve thought more than once there might be), I’d give everything I’ve got in the world to see him served as he served poor old Uny.”
    “That’s all right, then,” Roger said easily. The worst of the theatre, he reflected, is that it does make its participants so dramatic; and drama in private life is worse than immorality. “We’ll shake hands on that bargain.”
    “Look here,” said Miss Carruthers, doffing her emotional robe as swiftly as she had donned it, “look here, I tell you what. You wait here and smoke while I make us a cup of tea, and then we’ll talk as much as you like. And I have got one or two things to tell you,” she added darkly, “that you might like to hear.”
    Roger agreed with alacrity. He had often noticed that there is nothing like tea to loosen a woman’s tongue; not even alcohol.
    In a surprisingly short time for so helpless-looking a person, Miss Carruthers returned with the tea-tray, which Roger took from her at the door. They settled down, Miss Carruthers poured out, and Roger at last felt that the time was ripe to embark on the series of questions which he had really come to ask.
    Miss Carruthers answered readily enough, leaning back in her chair with a cigarette between lips which even now must occasionally pout. Indeed, she answered too readily. Nevertheless, from the mass of her verbiage Roger was able to pick a few new facts.
    In the main her replies bore out the brief account of her evidence at the inquest, though at very much greater length, and Miss Carruthers dwelt upon her theory that her friend was “a cut above the rest of us, as you might say. A real lady, instead of only a perfect one.” To Roger’s carefully worded queries as to any indication of Unity Ransome’s real identity, Miss Carruthers was at first vague. Then she