Read Online The Riddle of Sphinx Island by R. T. Raichev - Free Book Online

silly Murder Game, which, for your aunt’s sake, we’ll have to pretend to enjoy!’
    ‘My aunt would be terribly disappointed if we didn’t go … Oh there’s a taxi.’ Payne held up his rolled umbrella. ‘Eight people on Sphinx Island,’ he went on after they got in. ‘There will be ten, when we go.’
    ‘ If we go,’ said Antonia.
    ‘Ten people on an island, one of whom is quite cranky and has murder on the mind.’
    ‘I very much hope it won’t be that scenario.’
    ‘The cast of dramatis personae promises to be an interesting bunch … Who do we imagine will kill whom and why?’ Payne asked.
    ‘I don’t know and I don’t care, though for some reason I see Mrs Garrison-Gore as the victim … While working out the details of the Murder Game, she does research and discovers something discreditable about one of her fellow guests.’
    ‘Ah. The Mystery of the Murdered Muckraker. Excellent … Which fellow guest?’
    ‘It’s got to be the rich American as he is the one character who is immediately associated with high stakes. Oswald Ramskritt has a skeleton in his cupboard … Behind every great fortune there is a crime …’
    ‘Who said that? Donald Trump? The Duke of Kent?’
    ‘Balzac, actually.’
    ‘Let’s decide on the crime …  Bone in mixed byre that goes with corruption.’
    ‘You sound like the Riddler now.’
    ‘Perhaps I am the Riddler,’ said Payne. ‘Perhaps this is all my doing.’
    ‘How many letters?’ Antonia asked.
    ‘Seven . ’
    ‘Seven? Rib, I believe, is anagram of “byre”, sort of. Am I on the right track?’
    ‘You are.’
    ‘Oh it’s easy. Bribery – bribery and corruption?’
    ‘Bribery and corruption it is. Ramskritt was once in jail. He has bribed some person in a high place in return for having his criminal record destroyed. Or records. He may have more than one. An extremely likely contingency since he is an American. He may have been involved in organised crime. Ramskritt’s reason for killing Mrs Garrison-Gore will be to prevent her from blurting out his guilty secret.’

9
PSYCHO
    That evening, after they had packed their bags and were sitting down to a light supper of roast duck, peas and new potatoes, Payne said, ‘What if this whole thing is not a product of Mrs Garrison-Gore’s diabolically illogical imagination? What if Sybil’s story of a would-be murderer on her island is bona fide after all? What if N. Nygmer does exist?’
    ‘Then we’ll need to proceed with the utmost caution and infinite circumspection,’ Antonia said. ‘And I will take that hat with me, if you insist.’
    ‘Sybil assured us no one else knew about her suspicions, yet the very next day we receive us a letter signed “N. Nygmer”, confirming that there is going to be a murder on Sphinx Island. N. Nygmer says he is expecting us.’ Payne paused. ‘How did N. Nygmer know we were going to arrive at the island on 17 th April, Friday?’
    ‘N. Nygmer overheard the conversation between Sybil and your aunt?’
    ‘ Yes . Which means the killer is aware that Sybil knows his secret, also that she has been to consult us about it … The killer is terribly eager to cross swords with us, hence the personal missive and the promise of riddles … You see what the implications for old Sybil are, don’t you?’
    ‘Of course I do. As the only person who knows the Riddler’s identity, Sybil de Coverley may be in mortal danger.’
    ‘I hope we don’t arrive too late,’ Major Payne said.

    It was Lady Grylls who told Sybil de Coverley what had happened in her absence.
    John had entered the library carrying his gun and looking most peculiar indeed and he fired two shots at Oswald Ramskritt. The first bullet had hit the portrait above the fireplace which showed a seventeenth-century de Coverley, a portly gentleman in a powdered wig. The second bullet had whizzed past Oswald Ramskritt’s temple and hit one of the library shelves, embedding itself in a 1914