“Certainly I do; I don’t know what right you have to ask me that.”
“Then I will ask you something else; do you drive a car?”
Before there was time for a reply, Poole heard the door of the room close—the door on to the landing. He turned quickly and saw standing just inside the room a well-built, soldierly-looking man—the man whom he had seen on Friday evening leaving this building in company with the girl whom Inez Fratten had declared to be “Daphne.”
“Good afternoon, Inspector; my name is Wraile,” he said. “Blagge told me you were here. Miss Saverel is rather embarrassed by your question about the Fulham Road; you see, you’ve stumbled on a secret that we were trying to keep—Miss Saverel is my wife.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Hotel “Antwerp”
“You see how it is, Inspector,” continued Wraile; “when I first came here as manager I was very hard up indeed. We had got married just after the War, when everyone thought they were millionaires and a golden age was just beginning. You know how all that dream crashed; we were driven down into two rooms on a top floor back—pretty desperate. Then I got this job and saw a chance of getting Miriam one too—she had been a typist and secretary in a small business before we married. There was a secretary here—an elderly and incompetent female whom I couldn’t stand; I sacked her and put Miriam in her place—but I didn’t dare say she was my wife—it would have looked too like a plant. I gave out that she had been recommended to me by a friend and as she soon showed herself absolutely efficient no questions were asked. Obviously she couldn’t give her real address—mine—so she gave the address of an old nurse who keeps a boarding-house in Bloomsbury Lane and who forwards any letters there may be and is generally tactful. There’s been nothing criminal about it—but it was a secret that we could hardly let out—having gone so far—and she naturally was embarrassed by your questions.”
Poole wondered just how many of those questions Captain Wraile had heard. He realized now that he had not heard the door of the Board Room open but only close—perhaps deliberately closed to catch his attention just when he had asked that question about the car. He wondered, too, whether that manœuvring of Miss Saverel’s had been less to get her back to the light than to get his to the door. Could she have known that Wraile was coming in?
While Wraile had been talking the detective had been thinking and had come to the decision not to press his question about the car; it looked very much as if the Wrailes were on the alert now and if too much alarmed—that question about the car had perhaps been too clear an indication of the extent of his knowledge—might bolt before his case was ready. He could almost certainly find out about the car by having Wraile watched.
“I quite understand, sir,” he said. “I’m sorry to have upset Mrs. Wraile—I admit that her answers about the address made me rather suspicious—I happened to know that she lived in Fulham Road but that the address she gave here was a Bloomsbury one. I had to have an explanation—I’m very glad you happened to come in and give it.”
Poole thought he saw a lessening of tension in Captain Wraile’s face; the latter took out a cigarette-case, offered one to Poole, which was declined, and took one himself. His first exhalation of a lung-full of smoke certainly seemed to indicate relief.