Diabolic Candelabra

by E. R. Punshon

  “Yes, rather, jolly valuable,” declared Sir Alfred. “Fetch a big figure any day. Curiosity value added to Cellini workmanship. American millionaires would tumble over themselves to buy.”

  “In spite of the legend that when they are lighted, murder follows?” Bobby asked.

  “Oh, they would call it a tradition and be willing to pay double,” Dick put in. “They’ve not been found yet, though, and most likely uncle’s right and they were melted down long ago. Mr Hart thinks the description in the inventories would be good enough proof of ownership though, if they did turn up.”

  “Oh, undoubtedly,” agreed the lawyer.

  “But you don’t think the El Grecos could be identified and proof of ownership produced?” Bobby remarked thoughtfully.

  “Doubtful,” said Mr Hart. “Very doubtful. One could try.”

  “We don’t know much about them,” Dick pointed out. “We’ve no idea of subject or title or anything. Apparently no one thought much of them or thought them worth entering in the inventories.”

  “Didn’t this man who called to see you and said his name was Smith show you what he said were reproductions—prints?”

  “The idea was to show the style,” Sir Alfred explained. “An El Greco is pretty distinctive. No one else ever turned out stuff quite like his. I think the Smith man meant to ask if we knew of anything of the sort.”

  “Is it known when the candelabra disappeared?”

  “All we can say is that they were missed when the fresh inventory was drawn up on my father’s succession—that was in 1897. No reference to them can be traced for a good many years before that. There is one note saying they had been placed in the bank for safe keeping, but there is no receipt, no date, and no entry in the bank records. The last dated reference is the one Dick found there.”

  He nodded as he spoke to the still open History of European Art with the pencilled note at the end of the chapter on the art of Spain.

  “The inspector seems very interested in candlesticks,” observed Hart with his usual scarcely concealed sneer.

  “It seems to link up with something else I came across,” Bobby explained. He added formally: “Naturally, if candlesticks or pictures are found, or any information concerning them comes to our knowledge, you will be informed.” He went on: “Is there any reason to think that the Miss Floyd who very kindly gave me and my wife some tea on Sunday is descended from the Floyd who was vicar here and kept the diary you showed me, or from the other Miss Floyd you mentioned?”

  “It’s not an uncommon name about here,” Sir Alfred said. “I should think it’s very likely there’s some connection. The parson had a dozen children or thereabouts. They all had in those days.”

  “There is certainly a resemblance between the young lady and the portrait I saw,” Bobby remarked.

  “I must have another look at it,” Dick said. “I expect it’s the same family. The Miss Floyd who didn’t marry my great-uncle died very soon after her marriage and left no children. I do know that. I suppose there may be some relationship.”

  Bobby got to his feet.

  “Thank you very much for all you’ve told me,” he said. “I think it may be a great help. I think I must visit Mrs Crayfoot again and see if she can tell me anything more. May I say that, grateful as I am, I should be more grateful still if you had told me—more.”

  “Eh?” said Sir Alfred, straightening himself abruptly. “Oh, well, clever, aren’t you?” he asked moodily. “Well, we shan’t, you know.”

  “What do you mean—more?” Dick asked.

  “In my opinion,” declared Montague Hart, his eyeglasses more minatory than ever, “the inspector should explain his meaning fully.”

  CHAPTER XX

  BURGLARY

  BY NOW IT had grown late, but all the same Bobby decided to drive straight back to Tombes. It would be as well, he thought, to try to secure at once a further talk with Mrs Crayfoot. He drove slowly, for the night was dark and the ‘blackout’ strictly enforced. Even the lights of passing vehicles were barely visible. He stopped, too, to ring up Olive, to tell her he would be late home, whereon a small and distant voice asked wearily if he were ever anything else. So Bobby said he was sorry but there it was. In reply to a further inquiry he answered with some indignation that of course he had had something to eat—or at least was just upon the very exact point of so doing. One thing he never forgot, he said, was his dinner; to which the reply was a sniff so eloquent of such contempt for such a claim that he hurriedly hung up and departed. Thus reminded, however, he did delay so far as to spare time to get himself some bread and cheese and a glass of beer, all the nourishment a small wayside inn he came to could provide.

  The pause for this refreshment gave him, too, a chance to think over more carefully his recent talk at the Abbey, and more and more strongly grew the conviction in his mind that while uncle and nephew had seemed almost unnecessarily communicative in the long story they had told him of those unlucky lovers of half a century ago, yet that this communicativeness had had behind it a cause and purpose they had kept concealed. Certainly, it was natural enough that police help should be wished for in the recovery of things of such value as the lost paintings and the Cellini candelabra. All the same, Bobby felt very certain that there was some other fact of extreme, perhaps of vital, significance, whereof they had not thought fit to inform him.

  What this might be, however, he found it hard to imagine. Was it possible, he asked himself, that they knew or suspected what had happened to Crayfoot? Or again, had Dick Rawdon’s visit to the hut in the forest no other purpose than to attempt to identify the hermit as the one-time footman? And was it his first visit?

  He finished his meal and resumed his journey; only soon to discover that as before he had been lost in a maze of speculation, so now he was lost, and quite as thoroughly, in another sense, since he had no idea where he had got to. After a time, however, a passer-by put him on the right path and presently he was able to draw up before the gate of the narrow drive leading to the Crayfoot residence. He decided to leave his car in the road, since that narrow and curving drive would not be easy to negotiate in the darkness of a ‘blackout’, and as he was in the act of pushing open the gate to enter the drive he heard a stealthy, rustling movement in the hedge close by. It had a furtive sound, a warning and suspicious sound, this stealthy rustling. Bobby turned abruptly. Only just in time, for a voice called:

  “Take that, you red-headed swine.”

  At the same instant something heavy—a stone or half a brick perhaps—thrown with force, passed so close it grazed his shoulder. He made a dash forward in a swift pursuit, not likely in that darkness to have much success. He heard someone running away. He ran, too. The sound of running feet that he was following, ceased. Either his assailant was standing still, trusting to the mantle of the night that covered him as with a cloak of invisibility, or else perhaps he had dodged into one of the gardens of these neighbouring houses where the soft earth of flowerbeds or lawns deadened his footsteps.

  Bobby gave up the chase after he had nearly knocked all the breath out of his body by colliding with a post it had been impossible to see. A case of mistaken identity, he supposed, since, while he hoped he was not a swine, he knew for a fact that he was not red-headed. He went back to his car, found his electric torch, and by its aid discovered presently an ugly-looking half-brick lying near the entrance to the Crayfoot drive. A very ugly-looking object indeed, Bobby thought, as he weighed it reflectively in his hand, and he was exceedingly glad that he had not in fact ‘taken it’. The thing was capable of killing had it struck aright. He tossed it aside. There was no hope of finding fingerprint markings—‘dabs’—on that rough and broken surface. It came back to him that the epithet ‘red-headed’ had been used, a fact of which, until now, in the excitement of the chase and the assault, he had not fully grasped the significance. But now he reminded himself that the stranger, the first stranger, the one who had made inquiries for chocolates at Walter
s’s, who had run off with Mary Floyd’s bottle of flavouring, who had lunched with Dr Maskell at the Rawdon Arms, had been described as having red hair.

  Was he, then, this unknown, this elusive and vanishing figure, coming back into the story? Was he, as it were, yet another path in the maze, a path like the others leading back apparently and yet that somehow, somewhere, sometime, must join with that other which led to the secret centre of it all? Again, who was it who so much disliked this unknown as to lie in wait for him in the dark with murderous intent? And for what reasons?

  “Chocolates? Crayfoot? Chocolates?” Bobby muttered to himself. “We had the lost El Greco motive up at the Abbey and now have we got back to the chocolate motive?”

  He shook his head, gave up the puzzle for the time, and went on towards the house, occasionally flashing his torch on the ground to show him his way. He knocked and rang; and as the echo of knock and ring died away, a clamour broke out within the house, a shouting, a sound of heavy trampling, of blows exchanged. There followed, loud in the still night, a pistol shot. Bobby flung himself against the door, but it was strong and securely locked. He flashed his torch on the windows near and saw they were secured by shutters, put on, no doubt, because of the ‘blackout’ regulations. The sounds within continued. They came, Bobby thought, from the back of the house, and when he ran round the corner of the building, he saw, coming from behind it somewhere, a ray of light, surprising and startling and conspicuous in the dark night whose complete supremacy, in these days of savage war, must not be challenged or broken. Even now a voice in the distance was shouting:

  “What’s that light doing? What’s that light?”

  With the ray from the rear of the house as a guide, with the light of his torch on the ground to show him the path, Bobby raced round the house. There, behind it, from the disturbed curtains over one of the windows of a room on the ground floor, light shone out. Bobby ran towards it. Two more pistol shots rang out. Bobby made a leap at the window and balanced himself on the sill. A heavy, well-directed blow, sent him off again. He fell backwards, alighting fortunately on soft earth but for an instant dazed by the fall. He began to get again to his feet. People were running towards him, shouting to each other. One of them made a grab at him and caught him by the arm. He said sharply:

  “Let go. I’m a police officer.”

  “He’s not in uniform,” someone called suspiciously, and the man who had hold of Bobby’s arm tightened a grip he had begun to loosen.

  Bobby had no time to waste in argument. He tripped his captor up very neatly, deposited him in the same flower-bed with which he himself had recently become acquainted, made another dive for the window, paused to shout from the sill:

  “Go round to the front some of you, see no one gets away.”

  The voice of authority had its effect. One or two of the newcomers obeyed. The man Bobby had tripped up, less amenable than the others or angered by his fall, shouted:

  “See that chap doesn’t, anyhow,” and began to follow Bobby through the window.

  Within, the room was in extreme disorder. Broken furniture, smashed and scattered bric-à-brac, was everywhere. The struggle that had taken place there had been sufficiently destructive in its effects. Only the pictures hanging on the walls seemed undisturbed, though one had its glass smashed. It had been pierced by a bullet. Bobby noticed, too, in the one quick glance he threw around, that the portrait which bore so marked a resemblance to the Mary Floyd of Coop’s Cottage was hanging askew, as though some one had recently taken it down to examine it more closely and then had replaced it in a hurry and awkwardly. Before the fireplace a man lay supine, and Bobby gasped with amazement when he saw who it was. He was bleeding from a wound in his side and from a head injury. Bobby knelt to look more carefully at his injuries. To the man who had scrambled in after him, Bobby said:

  “I saw a ’phone in the hall. Ring up the police first and then a doctor. Dr Maskell. Hurry. Hurry, I tell you.”

  “Yes, but—” began the other, apparently still doubtful and suspicious, perhaps still ruffled by his fall whereof face and clothing bore some evidence.

  “Do what I tell you,” Bobby roared, with an accent of such mingled authority and anger that this time he was quickly obeyed. He shouted after the other’s disappearing figure: “Tell the police Inspector Owen is here. Tell Dr Maskell it’s urgent.”

  More people appeared on the scene. Bobby was doing his best to stop the injured man’s wound from bleeding. The head injury seemed less serious. Some one offered brandy and was hurt and indignant when Bobby refused to allow it to be poured down the unconscious man’s throat.

  “No need to choke him as well,” he said.

  The man who had been sent to ’phone came back into the room and stood looking doubtfully at Bobby. It seemed he was still not quite satisfied.

  “You are Inspector Owen?” he asked. “Well, the police will be here as quick as they can get.”

  He said this with a slightly warning manner, apparently suggesting that if Bobby were not what he claimed to be, then his pretensions would soon be unmasked. Bobby looked up at him. He was a fattish man with a round bullet head and a wide mouth. He had an ‘A.R.P.’ badge in his button-hole. A taller man, older, wearing a short beard, pushed forward.

  “What’s going on here?” he demanded. “What’s all this?”

  “Some of you search the house,” Bobby said. “You won’t find anyone but you had better make sure. The fellow who did this was probably off and away the second he had knocked me off the window-sill. Does anyone know where Mrs Crayfoot is?”

  “She’s gone to spend the night with a friend,” the man with the beard said. “My name’s Mulholland. I live next door. She told me. Is that a burglar?” he asked, looking mistrustfully at the prostrate man by whom Bobby was still kneeling.

  To the man who had been ’phoning, who wore the ‘A.R.P.’ badge, Bobby said:

  “Are you a neighbour, too?”

  “Next street,” the other answered. “I’m an air raid warden. I was going my round as usual. I saw that light.” He went over and adjusted the curtain which was still allowing light to escape. “My name’s Weston,” he said.

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby said, and knew the name was familiar, and then remembered it was that of the husband of the lady who first mentioned Mary Floyd’s chocolates to Olive and had said, too, that her husband thought that the recipe for their preparation might be of value. “Oh, yes,” he repeated, and wondered if now Weston also came into the story.

  “Who is it?” Mulholland asked again, peering closely at the prostrate man. “He looks like—he doesn’t look like a burglar.”

  “I don’t think he is,” Bobby answered. “He is Sir Alfred Rawdon, of Barsley Abbey.”

  CHAPTER XXI

  NOCTURNAL VISIT

  THERE WAS MUCH routine work to be done. The house had to be carefully examined and the fact was soon made clear that it had been hurriedly but effectively searched. Mrs Crayfoot had to be sent for. She arrived in a highly nervous and excited condition but was able to say that there was nothing missing. A sleepy fingerprint expert appeared and began a task that was long, tedious, and unsuccessful. Dr Maskell came, shook his head over Sir Alfred’s condition, and superintended his removal to the local cottage hospital, where, Maskell thought, an immediate operation would be necessary.

  It was long past midnight before Bobby, the routine work well under way, was able to depart. Even then it was not home that he went but to the bungalow, not far from his factory, where Dick Rawdon lived alone, the wife of one of the factory employees coming in each day to do the necessary cooking and cleaning. It was not without some difficulty that Bobby found the place and then he had to knock and knock again before at last a window opened and a voice inquired with some adjectival emphasis who he was and what he wanted.

  Bobby, who had his reasons for wishing to give his news in person rather than through the local police, explained briefly. Dick, startled out of his slee
piness, admitted Bobby then and listened in apparent complete surprise and bewilderment to his story.

  “What on earth,” Dick asked, “was uncle doing there and who in thunder could possibly want to attack him like that? You don’t mean the wound’s dangerous, do you?”

  “Dangerous, yes,” Bobby answered. “Dr Maskell wouldn’t say more than that. The head wound isn’t so bad, but he was shot in the side as well. Dr Maskell wouldn’t give any opinion. He seemed to think it was impossible to say how it would turn out. He said he could tell better after the bullet had been extracted. Can you tell me what your uncle’s movements were after I left?”

  “No. I left almost immediately.”

  “You didn’t stay for dinner?”

  “No. I said I left immediately.”

  “Dinner must have been ready,” Bobby commented. “Was there any reason why you should hurry away? Didn’t Sir Alfred suggest your staying?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t think he did,” Dick answered. “Hart said he must be going. I think he said something about some appointment and I said I would give him a lift. I knew dinner would be waiting for me here and I can’t say I care for night driving in blackout conditions.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Bobby remarked, “it was much lighter after about eleven when the moon had risen than it was before—pitch black it was earlier on. You and Mr Hart left together immediately after I did. Where did you leave him?”

  “I put him down at the Besly tram terminus. I knew he could get a tram there.”

  “Then you drove on here? And had dinner? There was some one to cook it, I suppose? You would be a bit late and I daresay she would notice what time you got here?”

  Dick scowled. He was beginning to look a little uneasy, a little wary, under this examination. He said:

  “If you mean you don’t believe me—”

  “Oh, not at all,” Bobby interposed. “Only it’s an elementary police duty to check every statement as far as possible. The most honest, best-intentioned witnesses often make the most unreliable statements. Gives us entirely wrong ideas unless we can check up on them. Probably your cook is sure of the time you arrived. Cooks waiting to serve dinner often keep an eye on the clock—a very close eye, in fact. I speak,” said Bobby feelingly, “as a married man.”