Death on a Pale Horse - By Donald Thomas Page 0,61

and locked it. Turning round to us, he put his finger to his lips and stood back against the wall level with the white screen. The inward opening of the door would hide him from the visitor’s immediate field of view. For a moment he waited, pressed against the wall, and listened. I doubted that Lestrade would have asked permission to draw a firearm. Did he even know how to use one? He had had no reason at all to think he would need its protection this morning. But if this was the return of Joshua Sellon’s killer, what a fool I had been to leave my Army issue “Webley Mark 1” revolver in a drawer of my Baker Street bedroom. A loaded six-shot with a hinged frame might prove extremely useful in a moment more.

It was a tense and distinctly unpleasant half-minute as a key rattled, the lock turned on the outside, the latch clicked back, and the hinges of the brown door creaked as it was pushed open. Then I exhaled and relaxed, for I had been holding my breath without intending to.

“Good morning,” said Sherlock Holmes in his most courteous tone. “Good morning, Mr. Dordona. We are a little early for our rendezvous, I fear.”

Samuel Dordona looked at the white screen round the desk and then his eyes jumped back to us. So far, he had not seen Lestrade, who was now concealed by the open door. The inspector was at the edge of the screen itself and had only to take a step behind it.

“Who let you in?” Mr. Dordona asked quietly.

Before Holmes could reply, I intervened. By drawing his gaze towards me, I hoped that he would not yet turn and see Lestrade.

“Mr. Dordona, there has been an accident. I fear that a man is dead. I have examined him. I believe his name and rank to be Captain Joshua Sellon and that he is a serving officer of the Provost Marshal’s Special Investigation Branch.”

All this hit him at once. As he stared at us, there came upon Samuel Dordona’s face a look of stark fright. How can one describe such a spasm adequately? The apprehension in those tense and narrow features, the look in those dark volatile eyes, transformed him from a man who had seemed merely odd to one who now appeared grotesque. I shall never forget his quick neurotic speech and movements. The sallow tan of his skin grew paler, the double peaks of his dark pomaded hair seemed to stand on end, almost like an illustration of terror from Varney the Vampire or any other “Penny Dreadful” comic. There was even the suggestion of a winged predator in the abrupt hunch of his shoulders.

During our exchanges, Lestrade had moved silently out of view beyond the screen.

“And you, Mr. Dordona,” Sherlock Holmes was inquiring courteously, “who let you in? Or should I say, who gave you the key to unlock this door?”

But Samuel Dordona glanced uneasily at the hospital screen and what must lie behind it. He ignored my friend as he muttered his own erratic questions.

“Is he still here? Is the body still here? How do you know it is he?”

“For the moment,” Holmes said courteously, “I should like my own inquiry answered, if you would be so good. Who gave you the key?”

“The key!” I thought Samuel Dordona’s voice might rise in a cry of anger, but it dropped away again. “Of course I have a key! These rooms are Overseas Mission premises! You know that already. What are you doing here?”

Holmes looked at him dispassionately.

“I know only, Mr. Dordona, that a man has been shot dead in these rooms this morning before our arrival. You or anyone else with a key to the apartment would have been able to come and go as you pleased. Does it not strike you that you will certainly be one of the first people to be suspected of the crime? It may even seem to the police that you have returned now to remove or to re-arrange some of the evidence of your guilt.”

Now, of course, Samuel Dordona could not take his eyes off the white screen that concealed the desk and the image in his mind of what lay behind it.

“Is he still here?”

“Joshua Sellon? Indeed he is, and in a moment we must trouble you to look very carefully at him.”

This promise turned his face a little paler still.

“What was he to you?” Holmes resumed. “Was he a colleague of yours?