Stars For The Toff

“Who was right and what was she right about?” demanded Rollison.

“Madam Melinska was right,” stated Lady Hurst flatly.

“Glory,” said Rollison in his most winsome voice, “you’re a darling, and the most generous and kindhearted darlings sometimes get taken for a ride. How much have you lost?”

“One thousand pounds,” answered Lady Hurst.

“You’ll survive,” Rollison said drily, “and why—”

“Be quiet, Richard!”

“Yes, Aunt.”

“And listen to me. I was not swindled. I am not a senile old woman who throws her money away on confidence tricksters. I have managed my financial affairs in my own way all my life and I have made a better job of it than you.”

“Yes, Aunt,” said Rollison again, now genuinely meek; certainly his speculations on the Stock Exchange, some years ago, had cost him dear.

“Madam Melinska,” began Lady Hurst, “is—” She paused, then went on with great vehemence— “is absolutely honest and trustworthy. She warned me that if I invested this thousand pounds I would probably be accused of criminal folly. I have been. She also told me that she would be accused of fraud. She has been. She told me that a tall, dark, handsome stranger—”

Rollison made a choking sound.

“—stranger, that is, to her,” his aunt careered on, “would become interested in the charges before I made any attempt to enlist his help. She said that he would be a relation of mine—”

“But Aunt—”

“—and my only quarrel is with her use of the word “handsome,” continued Lady Hurst. “She meant, clearly, that you would take notice of these absurd charges very quickly. You have. She also said that, with your help, the money I had lost would be repaid to me, not once but three times over, but that this would not happen straight away and I must be prepared to wait.”

“Wait!” echoed Rollison hollowly. “My dear Aunt, you certainly must be prepared to wait. And wait a very long time. Surely you don’t believe you’ll ever see a penny of that money again?”

“I certainly do believe it,” said Lady Hurst sharply. “Everything else Madam Melinska said has come true. She told me you’d take an unsolicited interest in the case, and you have.”

Rollison sighed.

“But, Aunt, she could easily have known I’ve a reputation for poking my nose into other people’s business. And once she knew you had a nephew with my kind of reputation—”

He paused, hearing his aunt breathe heavily into the receiver, and steeled himself against whatever blast she was preparing. With great deliberation and in her deepest voice, she responded:

“Richard, you are both a cynic and a sceptic. I shall now prove that you are quite wrong about her, and that she does have some strange gift of seeing facts of which she can have no personal knowledge. Go to your Trophy Wall, and count the number of trophies on it.”

Rollison said faintly: “Yes, but—but why?”

“Go and count them!” his aunt thundered.

“I counted the trophies last night,” Rollison told her defensively. “Jolly and I were in a nostalgic mood.”

“Then you found, according to Madam Melinska, that there were forty-nine, and that today you are to begin your fiftieth investigation.” After a pause the old woman went on with a touch of anxiety in her voice: “Isn’t that true, Richard? This will be your fiftieth case?”

“Glory be,” said Richard Rollison sonorously, “that is exactly right. Fifty it is.”

“But how could she know?” whispered Jolly, from the door.

CHAPTER TWO

Madam Melinska

“Jolly,” said Rollison. “Sir?” said Jolly.

“When did this woman come here and count the trophies?”

“Never, sir, to my knowledge.”

“Whom have you told?”

“No one, sir.”

“Are you quite certain?” asked Rollison. “You might have just mentioned it to someone in passing—”

“Impossible, sir,” said Jolly. “How can it be impossible?”

“Until last night I thought there were forty-six trophies. I had made an error in my card index record several years ago.”

Rollison caught his breath before saying, almost unbelievingly:

“So nobody could have known that the score was forty-nine.”