Two Against Scotland Yard: A Mr. Pinkerton Mystery

by Zenith Brown

  “Well, it’s plain that somebody gave them all a mild drug, or a heavy sedative, sir. That’s why neither of them heard the shot. It was a small calibre revolver, too.”

  The Commissioner thought a moment.

  “Who was in the house that evening, Bull? I mean, did they have guests?”

  “At dinner? I’ll see.”

  Bull reached for the telephone. “Mrs. Royce and Michael Royce were there at dinner. I’ll see if there was anyone else.”

  “Hello! Mrs. Colton? Inspector Bull speaking. What guests did you have in the house last night, please? Thank you.”

  He turned back to Debenham with a frown on his forehead. “Well?”

  “She says Field and the Royces were there for dinner, and Steiner dropped in for coffee afterwards.”

  The Commissioner smiled with genuine enjoyment.

  “That’s a big help, Bull,” he observed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Then there are these, sir,” Bull said. He took a little chamois bag out of his pocket. “They’re a few of the Royce diamonds. They were on Peskett’s table. There’s nothing very valuable here; wouldn’t come to £50.”

  “It’s a plant?”

  “It’s a plant, sir. We’re supposed to think he’s put the rest of them away somewhere.”

  Debenham took the little assortment of old-fashioned diamond-set trinkets in his hand. He shook his head.

  “There’s more to it than that, Bull,” he said slowly. “I don’t understand this.”

  Bull looked curiously at him.

  “Don’t you think, sir, that we’re dealing with somebody who knows jewels? That stuffs trash compared with stones that used to be worth £ 35,000.”

  The Commissioner shook his head again.

  “I know what you mean, Bull. But I don’t think so. I don’t like the idea of these things being left on the man’s table. Whoever has done this knows that we wouldn’t be fooled by the plant idea. This is tricky, Bull. This looks to me more like a bit of plain bravado; a studied insult to us.”

  He looked up seriously at Bull’s placid face.

  “Maybe you’re right, sir. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get on with it. There’s a lot to do right away.”

  The Commissioner handed him back the diamonds.

  “Right you are. Think about those things, Bull. I have the impression that there was no real purpose in leaving them there, except as a gesture of contempt. Now who would have done such a thing, Bull? Your friend Doaks, for instance? Well, good luck to you.”

  He smiled as the big young man closed the door behind him.

  “You don’t know what a pleasure it is,” he told Lord Barn-ham at the Junior Carlton Club at lunch, “to have a man who doesn’t pretend to be brilliant, who plods along and then brings off a grand coup as if it had just happened in the natural course of things. He’s the only man I’ve got who hasn’t a pet theory. Oliphant with his Reds every time a window is broken in Bond-street, Painter and his chemico-bio-logico-mechanico-Master-Mind, Dryden and his American racketeers, and the rest of them. Well, Bull’s not one of the Big Five yet, but he’s going to be in a few years.”

  Quite unconscious that the Commissioner found him amusing, Bull went back to his room to get his hat and overcoat. A young man was waiting for him; in his hand he had an old grey felt hat.

  “Hello, Richards. What’s that?”

  “Turned in by P. C. 876, sir.”

  Bull took the hat and looked inside the rim.

  “Good man!” he said. “Where’d he get it?”

  “On the top of those steps that go down into the water at Trie-lane. Just below Upper Thames-street.”

  “It was Gates’s, all right. ‘J. B. G.’ Trig-lane; that’s near Blackfriars-bridge?”

  “Yes, six.”

  “Good. This ought to help.”

  “And there’s a telegram. Came up while I was waiting.”

  Bull picked it up and tore off the envelope. It was from Brussels, and had been received at 10.20 that morning.

  “Think it unwise,” Bull read, “to stay in London. Please advise Hôtel Angleterre when jewels turn up.”

  It was signed “Albert Steiner.”

  Bull read it twice, folded it up without a word and put it in his pocket book.

  Downstairs the desk man signalled to him as he was going out. “Call for you, Inspector.”

  Bull took the telephone and listened to his message without a word. When he had hung up he said to the desk man, “They’ve found the motorcycle of the Colnbrook affair, or a motorcycle, in a woman’s garage in Cranford. She’s been away two months. It hasn’t any licence plates and the serial number’s been marked out. When they get it here ask Myers to see if he can identify it.”

  He went out and hailed a taxi on the Embankment.

  “Trig-lane,” he said. “Off Upper Thames-street. I’m in a hurry.”

  Inspector Bull walked down Upper Thames-street. The air was filled with the strong smell of fish. Bull passed St. Andrew’s, no longer in use now that no one lived along the river. He turned into the narrow alley known as Trig-lane, and walked down it. At the other end was a constable who saluted him.

  “Good morning,” Bull said. “You found the hat?”

  “Right here it was, sir.”

  P. C. 876 indicated the spot. Bull looked curiously about him. On either side of the narrow lane the walls of buildings rose sheer; at the river end a flight of steps the width of the lane went down into the water.

  Bull looked at them.

  “A man who didn’t know where he was could get a surprise going down those steps,” he remarked.

  “He could, sir, and that’s a fact.”

  “The hat was here?”

  “Yes, sir. It was all crumpled up, like somebody had stepped on it.” Bull nodded.

  “How did you happen to come down here?”

  “Well, you always come down here, sir. It’s a bad place. I always said something ought to be done about it. There’s not a soul about these parts at night, sir, and no lights at all. I always say it’s a wonder more people don’t go down them steps.”

  Bull agreed.

  “Who’d you relieve last night?”

  “Porter, sir. I asked when I come on if he’d heard anything. There was talk at the station about picking up a man under the bridge. But he hadn’t. A parcel of the fishmongers got in a fight down the street, and he had his hands full down there.”

  “The hat was crumpled?”

  “That’s right, sir. Mind you don’t go over.”

  Bull got up from his knees. There was probably not much question about what had happened. There were new scratches on the top step. Bull thought it was not hard to figure out.

  He found a telephone in a warehouse in Upper Thames-street and after some trouble heard the sleepy voice of P. C. Porter. Porter lived in the basement of a house in Robin Hood-court; in ten minutes he was dressed and waiting for Inspector Bull at the door of St. Andrew’s.

  “Sorry to get you out,” Bull said. “But a man was murdered last night at the bottom of Trig-lane. You didn’t report any disturbance?”

  “Disturbance enough on Thames-street, there was, sir. They were crazy drunk, the lot of them. I’d of turned in a riot call if they’d been one more.”

  “What time was that?”

  “That was at eleven, sir. Three of ’em got in an argument with some of the barge men about a rat—who’s rat it was, that was what they was fighting about. They’d all had more’n a drop. It was rightfully the barge people’s rat, to my mind, if they wanted it. But no. There was that rat.”

  Constable Porter pointed graphically to an imaginary rat on St. Andrew’s porch, and Bull listened patiently, knowing that constables must tell their story in their own way.

  “And there was the fishmongers. One of them had a stick and was for thrashing the rat. The bargemen says, That’s our rat.’ One of them gets a pole. His pole was bigger than the fishmonger�
�s stick. Then one of the bargemen says the others was spoiling their rat, he’d stink of fish. Well, then the rat went down there. Then they was all sore and they started to fight.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I let ’em fight until a few of ’em was hurt bad enough so I could manage the rest,” said Porter. “Then I took all of ’em up for disturbing the peace.”

  “That was around eleven.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where were you between twelve and three?”

  “Walking up and down. Clemson and me go from the bridge to Cannon-street. But he was off, because he took sick of a sudden and I sent him back to the station. Nothing ever happens along here except like last night, but that’s all in fun. The only other people ever down here are regulars. Are you sure that person wasn’t done in somewheres else?”

  Bull shook his head.

  “He was murdered with a heavy blow on the head, and it was done at the bottom of the lane.”

  Constable Porter looked his lack of understanding.

  “I don’t see how it happened, sir.”

  “You said nobody but regulars were down here. What do you mean?”

  “Why, there’s an old woman that sleeps here, in the doorway over yonder. She hangs about the fishmongers. Lizzie, they call her. Harmless, she is. She gets a bunch of violets and carries ’em about in the daytime. Then there’s Joe. He sleeps at the bottom of Broken-wharf. Maggie sleeps in a door-step across from the fish-and-chips shop in Dean-street out of Robin Hood-court where I live. She’s around here a good bit in the evening with Lizzie. People give ’em mussels and oysters and a bit of fish now and again.”

  Bull nodded.

  “Where could I find Lizzie, do you think?”

  “Couldn’t say, sir—not till night-time. She’ll be here then sure as you’re born.”

  “All right, Constable,” Bull said. “I’ll be here at midnight. Keep an eye on Trig-lane for me, will you?”

  Bull went back to Blackfriars and up to Fleet-street.

  “Hello, Bull,” he heard as he passed the entrance to the Evening Telescope. It was Walters.

  “I met Debenham, Bull, and he said you’ve got Gates.”

  “Yes,” Bull said. “Got him dead.”

  “Too bad. What about a story?”

  “Come with me tonight and you might get one. I’m checking up on the Gates business. But it’s got to be quiet for a while.”

  “Right you are. What about a spot of dinner?”

  Bull grinned.

  “Make it about eleven? I’ve got a full day.”

  “All right. Make it eleven, at the Ship. Cheerio.”

  Bull started to take a taxi and changed his mind. He went along Fleet-street to Chancery-lane, up to Holborn, across and up the little lane into Jockey’s-fields and rang the bell on Mr. Field’s front door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The appearance of another motorcycle had relieved the tension about Doaks to some extent; but Bull thought that he had still left a good deal to explain, and it was impossible for Bull to leave a trail until he was perfectly convinced he had come to the end of it. And he was now fully aware that he had the vaguely uneasy feeling that the two murders, of Peskett and Gates, were not necessarily done by the same hand that had shot down the St. Giles-street jeweller in cold blood.

  The feeling had been struggling in his subconscious mind since the moment he saw the dead body of the chauffeur lying in front of the window in the upper room of the garage. It was different in some way. What Debenham had said was true. The murder of Peskett was not done with as fine free a hand as marked the death of Colton, nor yet with the subtle desperation of the blow struck in Trig-lane.

  The more Bull thought of it the more convinced he became that he was right. The thing was gradually taking form, rounding itself out before him. And it may be said in Bull’s favor that he was not very happy about it. In fact he was distinctly horrified.

  The man—and he was convinced that there was a man—who chose the spot on the Colnbrook Road to hold up and shoot George Colton—was the man who chose the bottom of Trig-lane to strike the blow that felled Gates. The handwriting—as it were—of the two was the same. Calm, brutal, ruthless, decided. So was the murder of Peskett. Here was the difference: whoever had done the first two had not tried to involve anyone else. They were not crafty, except in their perfect simplicity; they were not devilish. The murder of Oliver Peskett was carefully planned, and the planning included the laying of false trails, the implication of other people. That murder was as devious as the others were simple. The two were unscrupulous but keen and level-headed; the one was scheming, cruel, vindictive. And the jewels on Peskett’s table. Bull pondered over the Commissioner’s words. Was that a sardonic contemptuous gesture? It was in keeping.

  Bull knew—or thought he knew—that a man had done two of these crimes, a woman the other. They were as clearly finger-printed as if an ungloved hand dipped in blood had gripped the ivory painted edge of Agatha Colton’s powder table.

  All this had gone through his head between the time he rang the doorbell and Doaks’s opening the door. Bull did not miss the glint of sickening fear that flashed across his pasty face.

  “I want to see Mr. Field,” Bull said.

  “Yes, sir. He’s been trying to call you on the phone all morning.”

  Bull followed upstairs. He was shown into a long room overlooking the gardens of Gray’s Inn. He sat down in a deep lounge chair by the fire. It was the sort of a room that he always thought of when he heard the word “chambers,” although he knew very well that few chambers were like it. Three walls were book-lined in mellow calf with tooled backs. Here and there a bright modern red or chrome yellow accented the soft browns of the past. A few French and German paper books bobbed up indiscreetly here and there. A deep pile Oriental carpet and Jacobean furniture added to the quiet restful dignity of the room. Bull forgot he was in a Georgian house. It was as old and restful as eternity to him just then. The wintry sun filtered through long, deep, russet velvet hangings at the windows. Bull closed his eyes. He suddenly realized that he was dog-tired and starving—and as nervous as a cat, he realised, when Mr. Field’s voice behind him startled him.

  “Good morning, Inspector. I’m glad you’ve come. Sit down. Agatha Colton telephoned me about Peskett.”

  “Yes?” Bull said. “It’s a bad business. I want to talk to you about that, and about the whole affair, as a matter of fact.”

  “Good. Look here, you look dog-tired. Let me get you a whiskey and soda, or would you rather have some coffee and biscuits?”

  “Thanks. I’ll have the coffee.”

  Field stepped out of the room. He returned in a moment and sat down on the other side of the hearth.

  “I’m not sure what the coffee will be like,” he said with a smile. “Doaks looks as if he’d seen bis mother’s ghost.”

  “He’s one of the things I want to talk about,” Bull said, leaning forward. “What do you know about him?”

  Field looked at him in mild surprise.

  “About Doaks?” he asked. When Bull nodded he laughed quietly.

  “What does it matter, Inspector?” he said. “Poor fellow!”

  Bull for a moment thought Field was speaking of him.

  “Doaks was in the war—gathered off the streets of London like thousands of other men, thrown into a life that was hard enough for the best, and then thrown out again, dazed, bewildered, nothing to do, nowhere to go. Their holes had been filled up with more just like them. They gradually got to crawling again. Doaks was typical. His father lived in Slough, his wife died and he married again, a London coster-monger’s daughter. She couldn’t stick it and ran away, back to her father’s barrow. Brought her baby along with her. Doaks learned to cook somewhere, and I ran across him in the dock at Old Bailey. I got him off. He’s been with me three years. He’s no better and no worse than he has to be. I watch him carefully.”

  “Ever had any trouble
with him, Mr. Field?”

  “None. He steals my wine and spirits at times. You expect a certain amount of that. He has careless streaks. He’s shiftless at times.” Mr. Field grinned deprecatingly. “So am I, at times. Doaks has more reason on his side.”

  Bull was becoming aware that he liked Field.

  “Look here,” he said, “what about last night. When did Doaks get in?”

  “Soon after ten. I was reading in here. He came in to see if I wanted anything. I was tired; I’ve been holding a very exacting brief. He brought me some biscuits and went to bed. I turned in about 11.30. He brought my tea at 8.00 this morning.”

  Doaks came into the room carrying a silver coffee service and set it down on the low table at Inspector Bull’s elbow. He poured a cup of fragrant coffee.

  “Cream, sir?”

  Bull nodded.

  “Sugar, sir?”

  “Two.”

  “That’s all, thanks, Doaks.”

  The valet went out of the room and closed the door noiselessly behind him.

  Bull sipped his coffee gratefully for a moment. Then he set his cup down on the heavy carpet. Noiselessly he rose and went to the door. Field, looking on in amazement, could not believe that he saw the enormous man move so swiftly and silently. It was incredible. He looked at Bull with increasing interest. Up to now he had regarded him as a clumsy, stolid, amiable person who had some reputation for reasons unknown. He wondered now if there were not some persons underestimating Bull.

  Bull opened the door suddenly. Mr. Doaks was busily cleaning the woodwork across the narrow hail. He turned with a palpable start.

  “Something, sir?” he said.

  “Nothing,” Bull replied. “You’re through there, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bull closed the door and came back to his place. Field watched him with a quiet smile.

  “You didn’t hear him go out during the night?”

  “No, I didn’t, Inspector. Oh, there was one thing. I woke up about half past four and saw a light under the door of my room. It was in the dining room.”

  “Didn’t you leave it on when you went to bed?”