“I haven’t said so,” Bobby answered quietly; and Mr Stone lost all his flamboyance, seemed to shrink visibly as he sat there, showed plainly the terror that possessed him, though whether that terror was born of conscious guilt or of innocence suddenly aware of peril, Bobby felt he could as yet form no idea.
Mr Stone began to stammer protests. Why should he do such a thing? Violence was not in his line. He had never even seen the hermit. Bobby cut short the flow of words.
“Motive is secondary to fact,” he said sententiously, having often noticed that the sententious is also the impressive.
“Oh, well,” said Mr Stone moodily.
A constable came in with a message. Bobby read it and said he would be disengaged in a moment and would the caller please wait. To Mr Stone, he said:
“I won’t keep you any longer. If you do happen to think of anything likely to help, let us know at once.”
“You can depend on me,” said Mr Stone earnestly, much relieved at being thus dismissed. “Anything, Inspector, anything. Weston—he’s your man. That’s my tip. Good day, Inspector.”
“Good day, Mr Stone,” Bobby said; and as he went out Mr Stone murmured mechanically:
“Sammy to you.”
CHAPTER XXXVI
SMITH, FINN AND FINCH
FOR A MOMENT or two Bobby sat in thoughtful mood. Was there anything significant, he wondered, in this tale of the missing man seen apparently for the last time by living eyes making his way up and round by the old quarry path to the higher ground Bobby himself, and Olive with him, had followed on the occasion of their Sunday holiday picnic in the forest?
Stone had not at first told all he knew. Even now, had he told everything or were there other facts that he was keeping back?
Rousing himself from these thoughts, Bobby touched the bell on his desk. Ushered in by the constable on duty, there appeared a tall, dark, youngish man, a long, prominent nose his most noticeable feature. He was smartly, a little too smartly, dressed, and Bobby had no difficulty in recognizing him. Bobby wondered if recognition were mutual, but the other gave no sign. Bobby said:
“Oh, very good of you to come along. I expect you know what it’s about. There’s just a possibility you might be able to help us. Lindley Finn is the name, I think. You’ve given it as Smith recently, though, haven’t you? And wasn’t it Louis Finch before that?”
The newcomer showed no surprise but looked very sulky.
“A man’s got a right to change his name, hasn’t he?” he retorted. “I put an advert in the papers all proper and according to law, on solicitor’s advice. If it’s about this murder in the papers you’ve dragged me here, there’s nothing I know about it. Nothing to do with me. Don’t think it was me did it, do you?”
He spoke with evident uneasiness, but that, Bobby felt, was not unnatural in the circumstances.
“So far as that goes,” Bobby explained, “I always like to collect facts before I start thinking. Had you any special reason for passing under the name of Smith?”
“No crime in that, is there?” demanded the other truculently.
“Oh, no,” Bobby agreed. “Let me see. You carry on a small picture-framer’s business in London, don’t you? Not very prosperous. Debts. So on. Things bad all round just at present, I know. Lots of people hit by the war. Besides your picture-framing business, you’ve done a good many jobs of one sort or another for the big West End dealers—helping prepare catalogues, introducing likely customers, keeping an eye on sales in case anything good was likely to come up, getting commissions to bid, all that sort of thing. ‘Runner’ is the term they use in the trade, isn’t it? One or two of the West End men have been a bit sticky recently about giving you jobs. Prejudiced. You were questioned a year or two ago at Scotland Yard over a burglary in Bond Street at an art dealer’s. Some pictures were stolen and a night-watchman rather badly knocked about. Hit over the head and left unconscious. He got better but it was a near thing. Murder if he had died. You remember? It was after that you changed your name to Lindley Finn.”
“Had to,” Mr Finn declared. “Once the busies been on you, you’re a marked man. But it didn’t take them long to see there was nothing they could fix on me. They tried hard enough. A washout. That’s busies all over. What do they care so long as they get someone sent up?”
Without replying to this, Bobby went on:
“I’m told you were at a big sale once when a dealer spotted a Van Cuyp no one else noticed. Bought it for a guinea or two and sold it for four figures. Bit of good luck for him and bad luck for you that you hadn’t spotted it yourself.”
“You seem to know it all,” growled Finn. “I suppose,” he complained sarcastically, “you know what I had for breakfast this day last year?”
“Well, hardly that,” Bobby answered, “but we do make a few inquiries. You see, you are quite well known. The moment we began asking questions of art dealers, we got a perfect flood of information. Libellous, some of it, most likely. That doesn’t matter. Nothing to do with us, nothing to do with the present inquiry. That little story about the Van Cuyp does rather suggest, though, that you might be specially keen on looking out for a similar windfall if any hint of one came your way. Something of the sort brought you up here, didn’t it?”
“If you must know,” Finn answered with a great appearance of candour, “I’m up here for Victors, the big Bond Street dealers. They had a tip the Rawdon collection was likely to come on the market, and they wanted me to check up on any chance of their getting their offer in first. That’s why I gave my name as Smith. If other dealers heard Lindley Finn was hanging round Barsley Abbey, they might rumble something was on. So Smith it had to be for the duration—the duration of the job.”
“I see,” said Bobby.
He asked himself how best to continue. All this had been only preliminary skirmishing. He had shown Finn that a good deal was known about him and he hoped that would suggest to him that the knowledge of the police was even more complete. Such a belief might tend to make him cautious in denial, readier to tell what he did know. And that, Bobby felt, was possibly a good deal. He decided on a more direct attack. He said:
“What were you doing near the hermit’s hut that Sunday afternoon I saw you there?”
“I thought that was you, I thought that was coming up,” Finn grumbled. “No harm anyway. I had heard a lot about the old bloke and I thought I would like to have a look. Wasn’t a sign of him anywhere.”
“What made you clear out in such a hurry when you saw us?”
“Didn’t want a lot of questions, that’s all.”
“Sure that was all?” Bobby asked. “I can’t see why that should make you run in such a hurry. Almost as if you were—afraid.”
Mr Finn was beginning to perspire gently.
“I wasn’t. What for? I mean, why should I? Victors’ instructions were to keep as quiet as I could, keep away from strangers, they said. Confidential job, that’s all.”
“Even too much,” Bobby retorted, “because my information is you have been talking rather freely in pubs and other places. I remember an attaché case you had with you came open and what looked very much like an El Greco print fell out. Never mind that just now, though. You were washing your hands in a pool of the stream when we saw you, weren’t you?”
“No. Yes. Well, why not? I got some dirt on them, that’s all.”
“What sort of dirt?” Bobby asked gently.
“Just dirt. Dirt. I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t you?” Bobby asked. “Not far away a hatchet was found. Among some bushes. As if it had been thrown there. We think it had belonged to the hermit. One he used for chopping firewood. I sent it to Wakefield for examination. You know about Wakefield? Place where they identify fingerprints and all that sort of thing. You know. Microscopes. Infra red photographs. The whole bag of tricks.”
“My dabs aren’t on record,” retorted Finn quickly. “At least, they didn’t ought to be. It’s a dirty trick if
they are. I let the busies take them over that Bond Street affair, just to show it wasn’t mine they found and they promised me faithful to destroy them. They let me see them doing it. Do you mean they switched them? Of all the dirty tricks—”
Mr Finn was on his feet now, gesticulating, flushed, boiling with that righteous indignation none feel more quickly, more genuinely, more deeply, than do those who are themselves among the unrighteous. Bobby motioned to him to sit down.
“I didn’t say anything of the kind,” he told him. “I’m not going to tell you what Wakefield reported, whether they did or did not find dabs. You’ll probably know about that later on. But if you were promised your dabs would be destroyed, destroyed they were. Scotland Yard wouldn’t switch them. That’s certain. Besides, you must know dabs are perfectly easy to get. I daresay you’ve touched something or another since you came into this building we could develop dabs from if we wanted to. I don’t say we have. I merely remind you that I saw you near the hermit’s hut, that you ran the moment you saw someone approaching, that the hermit’s hatchet was found not far off as if it had been thrown away in a panic, that when I saw you you were washing your hands.”
“Well, why not, why shouldn’t a bloke wash his hands?”
“There was blood on the hatchet,” Bobby said. “You may as well know Wakefield does say that. And blood is sticky stuff though it can be washed off—most easily in cold running water.”
“You can’t fix anything on me,” Finn muttered, now very pale. “I never touched the old man, I never saw him. You can’t prove anything because there isn’t anything I did.”
“We’ll leave that for the time,” Bobby said. “And I wish you would believe we don’t want to fix anything on anybody who isn’t guilty. If a man is innocent all he has to do is to tell the truth. We test it, and if it hangs together—because that’s how truth is tested: truth hangs together and lies don’t—well, that ends it. I take it you didn’t want to see the hermit, merely out of curiosity. It was about the lost El Greco paintings. Do you mind telling me how you came to hear about them?”
“No secret,” Finn answered, looking now a trifle relieved but still plainly both subdued and uncomfortable. “Everyone knew. It’s in all the reference books. The Kensington Universal lists all known El Grecos. It says two paintings by him are thought to have been in the Rawdon collection at Barsley Abbey but if so they have been lost sight of.”
“Does it give any details?”
“It says one may have been the ‘Enthronement of a Bishop in Seville Cathedral’, which is said to have vanished from the cathedral when some of the vergers or beadles or whatever you call them were making a bit on the side. Only a guess though. Nothing known about the other.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Bobby explained. “I meant about how they came to be lost sight of.”
“There’s nothing about that,” Finn answered. “There wouldn’t be. Not the Universal line.”
“What I want to get at,” Bobby explained, “is why it’s all come up again now. The Universal’s not a new publication. If everyone has always known the paintings were missing, why this sudden interest in them?”
Finn did not reply at once. He was evidently thinking hard. Bobby watched him closely. He had recovered to some degree from his earlier panic when Bobby had spoken of his presence near the hut and of the discovery of the hatchet, but his customary self-possession remained shaken. Bobby could almost hear him asking himself how much was really known, how safe it would be to lie, whether it might not be wiser to tell the truth for once. Not much doubt, Bobby felt, that he would have lied without hesitation had he not been so shaken by that previous questioning. He gave Bobby a quick, sudden, searching glance, and then looked away again. Bobby waited. He knew by much experience that it was wiser to make no attempt to press or hurry those under questioning. If they were willing to be helpful they would do their best anyhow. The others, under pressure, would be apt to take refuge in silence or blank denial, whereas, left to themselves, they were equally apt to feel a necessity to talk. Now it evidently occurred to Finn that he was arousing suspicion by so long a hesitation. He said:
“I’m trying to remember.”
“Oh, yes,” said Bobby encouragingly, making it, so to say, common ground that this was an admirable effort and one sure soon to give results.
“Oh, well,” Finn declared, coming to a decision at last and putting on a great air of candour, “it wasn’t that exactly, either. I was never one to give another bloke away. I’m no nark. I’ve never been a cop’s contact man. I don’t know what your game is.”
“My game,” Bobby said simply, sudden sternness in his voice, “is to try to bring to justice the murderer of an inoffensive old man.”
CHAPTER XXXVII
MR FINN EXPLAINS
THAT SUDDEN HARD note in Bobby’s voice broke through Finn’s defences, seemed, as it were, to remind him how grave the question was they were discussing, to remind him, too, that his own position was not without its dangers.
“Look here,” he said abruptly and rather hurriedly, “I’ll tell you the whole thing. I mean about that hatchet. When I got there the old bloke’s hut was all smashed up. I thought either he had been mad drunk or there had been a fight. I didn’t know which. I had a look round and I saw the hatchet. It was lying near the door. Like a fool, I picked it up. I didn’t rumble at first. Just thought it was paint or something. I picked some of it off with my thumb nail. All at once I rumbled. Blood it was. Gave me a shock. I flung the thing away as far as I could. Then I thought what a fool trick that was with my dabs on it most likely. I tried to find it again. I hadn’t noticed where I chucked it and I couldn’t see it anywhere. Put the wind up me. I started to wash my hands to get the stuff off and then you turned up and that put the wind up me more than ever. I didn’t like the idea of being seen hanging round if anything was wrong and I didn’t stop to think. I just cleared. That’s gospel truth.”
He paused, watching Bobby anxiously to see if he were believed. Of belief or disbelief Bobby gave no sign. He had indeed not yet formed an opinion. The tale was plausible, but Finn was certainly both a plausible and a ready liar. This time he might or might not be telling the truth. Nothing to show, one way or the other. Bobby said:
“What were you doing there, at the hut I mean? And you haven’t told me yet what started you off making these inquiries?”
“I was never one to get another bloke into trouble,” Finn repeated and went on: “If you must know, it was something told me by a bloke called Stone, Sammy Stone.”
Bobby did his best not to show his interest. For now at last he thought had come together those two threads in the investigation which hitherto had seemed so far separate that they could not be connected—the clue of the new flavouring, the clue of the lost El Greco paintings.
“How does Stone come into it?” Bobby asked.
“He’s the sort of wide-awake bloke who doesn’t miss much,” Finn explained with a touch of admiration in his voice, giving what was probably the highest praise he knew. “He was taking over a picture-framer’s business in town two or three years back and he heard of me as knowing as much of the trade as any man—which I do—and he got me to check up on what the stock was worth. I gave him a good honest estimate. No reason not to. Afterwards I heard he had worked the business up and sold it for a good figure and then it flopped. Puffed it up more than it could stand, he had. Very smart work. After a time he turned up again at my shop. He knew I had treated him honest, given him a worth-while opinion, that’s the way to get a connection, get a good name. See?”
“Pity to have to change it when you’ve got it,” murmured Bobby, just to let Mr Finn know his observations were not necessarily going to be taken at face value, and the thrust was acknowledged by a scowl, half resentful, half admitting that the attempt to make a good impression had failed. “What did Stone want that time?” Bobby added.
“It was this way,” Finn continued, quite willing to tell a
tale that displayed his own cleverness. “Stone picked up somewhere what he thought was a Rembrandt—a Rembrandt, mind you. He took it to Christie’s and they had a good laugh, told him the frame might be worth its weight in—firewood. So he trotted it along to me for confirmation. I told him that was right. Rubbish it was, same as they told him. But I kept on looking at it, telling him all the time it was just rubbish and then I offered him a fiver for it.”
“Why, if it wasn’t worth anything?” Bobby asked, in spite of all his experience puzzled to see where the swindle came in.
“Well,” Finn explained, grinning broadly, “if you offer a man a fiver for something you’ve just told him isn’t worth anything, he begins to wonder. If Stone had said ‘Done’ I should have wriggled out somehow. Not much chance of that. He started asking questions instead, and so I let out at last I thought there was an off-chance that though the top painting was no good, there might be something good underneath. I told him of a case when a top painting had been removed and there was a genuine Raphael underneath, and how there was a Raphael in the National Gallery might bring anything up to half a million if it was put on the market now. It has happened you know. Over-painting, I mean. I never came across a case, but I’ve heard of them. Some fool of an amateur, hard up for canvas, overpaints good stuff. You tell your bloke a tale or two like that and when you’ve got him receptive you offer to clean the top off to see, for as much as you think you can sting him for. Sammy’s smart, so I only let him in for half a guinea.”
“Clear profit though, I suppose,” Bobby remarked.
“Well, I spent twenty minutes and a spot of turpentine just to show,” Finn answered unblushingly. “Sammy was a bit let down but he didn’t rumble, and I had rubbed it in good and hard how it was all a gamble. Anyhow, after that he took me for an expert. Which I am,” added Finn simply.
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