The Arsenal Stadium Mystery

by Leonard Gribble

  Inside was a mauve liquid covering dark coils of hair thread. Peering down into the dish, Slade saw nothing save the coloured spirit and the dark hair coils. But when he shook the dish, moving the hair coils, and held the dish again to the light, he caught a momentary flash of tiny fires.

  He picked up a pair of tweezers from a glass-topped table, and prodded among the horsehair.

  “Found it?” queried Allison, unable to control the excitement in his voice.

  “I think so,” said Slade. “Yes—I have,” he added, putting down the dish and holding up the tweezers for Allison’s inspection.

  Held in the narrow jaws of the tweezers was a solitaire diamond ring. One claw was prised up.

  Allison took a deep breath.

  “So you were right, Inspector,” he murmured, and there was a sad note in his voice. “I was hoping you were wrong—utterly wrong.” He peered closer at the exhibit, then stood back. “What does it mean?” he asked, pointing to the ring. “Have you completed your case?”

  Slade put the ring on the table, replaced the dish of sterilized horsehair.

  “Not quite. I shall have some thinking to do between now and to-morrow, when the players arrive for training. With the inquest this morning, they missed a day.”

  “Yes, but what have you in mind?”

  Allison appeared suddenly anxious. There might be some hazard in the final catching of the murderer. And at the back of his mind was the rather pathetic figure of his friend Francis Kindilett.

  Slade produced a stout manilla envelope, dropped the ring in it, folded the envelope carefully, and wrapped it in his handkerchief. After he had safely stowed the package in his overcoat pocket he turned again to the Arsenal manager.

  “What have I in mind?” he repeated, an unusual abstraction in his manner. “Well, I don’t rightly know. I had an idea when the coroner—” He hesitated, shook his head as though to clear it. “I’ve got to make the murderer show his hand,” he said grimly, his manner again decisive.

  “You think the coroner’s intimation that the police were on to something will work?”

  “I’m hoping so. But I see now there’s got to be something else. If the murderer is less sure of himself to-night, because of what the coroner said, and because this place has been closed to him for a day, then advantage must be taken of the change. This man has been very sure of himself all along. He’s been clever.”

  “You know his… identity?”

  Allison’s eyes bored into the Yard man’s face.

  Slade nodded slowly.

  “I think so—now.”

  “You mean, after finding the ring, the case fits together, and—”

  Slade was shaking his head.

  “No, I think I made my mind up in your drawing-room, Mr Allison. If I’m right, if it works out the way I think it will, then I’ve to thank you for showing me the way to solve the case.”

  “Me?” Allison looked surprised. “But I don’t remember saying anything that would—”

  “It wasn’t so much what you said, as what you did,” smiled Slade, but his smile was tired. “Now, shall we call it a day, and sleep over what we’ve found?”

  XVII

  A Pair of Stained Hands

  Clinton was at the Yard before Slade the next morning. The sergeant greeted his superior with a glum, “I haven’t slept a wink. Your ’phone call last night kept me awake, puzzling over the whole darned case.”

  “And what did the puzzling produce?” asked Slade.

  “That’s the devil of it. Nothing,” Clinton grumbled. “Nothing that we haven’t already gone over and chopped up, and—”

  He eyed Slade thoughtfully.

  “You don’t think Morring did it now,” he said.

  “I didn’t think Morring guilty—”

  “I know,” Clinton interposed quickly. “What I mean is, now, with the ring, you don’t think it possible for him to have killed his partner.”

  It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

  “No, I don’t. Unless he was Mary Kindilett’s fiancé, and unless she returned the ring to him.”

  Clinton screwed up his face.

  “Even that doesn’t make a good case—now,” he said pointedly.

  “It makes a very poor case,” Slade agreed. “One can shoot it full of holes without taking aim. For instance, why did he become the partner of the man who stole his girl? Why wait four years? Because of what was happening between Doyce and the Laruce girl? Not a bit of it. Morring’s out now—clear.”

  Clinton continued to gloom.

  “That leaves us with—”

  He paused hopefully.

  Slade smiled. “I think I’m right, Clinton, but I may be wrong. If I’m not wrong I’ll get our man with all the evidence we want.”

  “After he’s been so smart?”

  “Curiosity plus self-preservation plus a strong measure of sentiment—that’s the potion we’re going to brew, Clinton. And it’s got to do the trick for us.”

  Slade got out of his seat, where he had been toying with some papers, and began pacing the office. He glanced at his watch.

  “We’ll let the others get to the Stadium first. I want the atmosphere neutral when we arrive.”

  Clinton sat watching him. It was only at very infrequent intervals that Slade showed any sign of nervous strain. But the signs were apparent now. Clinton, who alone knew, besides Slade himself, how long the other had spent on the case, the hours with little sleep, the constant accumulating of facts, the probing, the recasting, the preparation of reports, guessed that his superior was physically tired out. It was a strange spiritual strength that kept the man going.

  Clinton himself had his patch of garden to relax in—when he could get to it. Slade’s life was cast in a different mould. Success had brought its surest reward, more work. There was no relaxation for Slade except the annual holiday.

  “I don’t think you slept much yourself last night,” said the sergeant.

  Slade looked up.

  “Do I look it?”

  “No, but I can tell.”

  Slade nodded. “I didn’t turn in till past four. I was seeing how it all worked out on paper. When I tried to sleep I started thinking it all out again in the dark.”

  “It did work out?” asked Clinton, seizing on the one essential.

  Slade nodded. “Yes, one thing was missing.”

  “Only one?”

  “That I could see. A visit to a chemist’s. I’ve made the visit. Now everything’s ready.”

  Clinton didn’t pretend to understand. He was about to ask another question when the house ’phone rang. He picked up the receiver, listened.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, and put down the receiver.

  “The A.C. He’s in already, and wants to see you,” he told Slade.

  “I rather thought he would.” Slade paused at the door. “Be ready by the time I get back. We’ll go straight off to Highbury.”

  The A.C. nodded good-morning. His manner was brisk, and he came straight to the point.

  “Well, have you got your case straightened out now, Slade?”

  Slade knew his man. He didn’t say, “I think so.” He said, “Yes.”

  A glint came to the A.C.’s eyes.

  “Good. It’ll stand up without props?”

  “It will when I come back—with the prisoner.”

  “Morring?”

  Slade shook his head.

  “No, he’s out.”

  “Then you were right?”

  “I found the murder object last night. It’s at the laboratory now, being tested for aconitine. I thought it best to waste no time—”

  “Quite right.”

  “And there is a chance they can let me have a report before I actually make the arrest. I’d like that, if time al
lows.”

  “Why, any doubts?”

  “No, not doubts. But I like having everything positive, no loose ends—just in case.”

  The A.C. nodded over his desk. “I understand. Good. Now let’s hear some of it.”

  Slade spoke for a quarter of an hour. When he had finished the A.C. picked up a pencil and began revolving it between finger and thumb.

  “There’s an element of risk,” he muttered.

  “But if it comes off,” Slade pointed out, “we’ve got something as good as a confession. Perhaps the confession will follow.”

  A slow smile broke on the A.C.’s face. He dropped the pencil and stood up.

  “All right, take it in your own stride, Slade. And for all our sakes I hope you’re right. I won’t keep you any longer now.”

  Slade went back to his own office. Clinton was sitting in his coat and hat. Slade slipped into his outdoor clothes, and they left. They arrived at the Arsenal Stadium about half-past ten. The morning’s training and practice was well under way.

  Allison was awaiting the Yard men in his room.

  “All set?” he asked. The look of strain was still on his face.

  “Yes,” said Slade. “I saw Whittaker just now and had a word with him. There’s something I want him to do for me. You didn’t mind?”

  “Not at all, Inspector. Go right ahead, and do what you want to.”

  “Is Kindilett on the training-ground?”

  “Yes. Want him brought up?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll slip downstairs for a few minutes. Shan’t be long.”

  Slade went out. Allison pushed a box of cigarettes towards Clinton.

  “Smoke, sergeant?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Clinton didn’t feel like relaxing. He didn’t know what Slade was up to, but he did know, from long years of close working with his superior, that Slade had determined his course of action and he would go through with it.

  “Come prepared to make an arrest?” asked the Arsenal manager.

  “That’s the general idea,” said the sergeant.

  “Can’t say I like this waiting period,” Allison confessed. “The lull before the storm.”

  Clinton nodded.

  “Nor me.”

  Allison gave him a sharp glance, and his brows shot up.

  “But you know—who!” he said.

  Clinton leaned back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, and folded his arms.

  “You’d think it. Anybody’d think it,” he said, nodding his head. “But I don’t. The A.C. himself don’t know for sure, if I don’t miss a guess. The Inspector always runs his own cases. He always gets his man, too,” said Clinton, with full pride. “Anyway, I’ve never known him fall down on a case.”

  “That’s a great record,” said Allison, to whom this news afforded a sense of boding disaster. “You think the law of averages will work in this case, too, eh?”

  Clinton lifted his gaze.

  “If you mean do I think he’ll get the right man—yes, I haven’t any doubt. Nor much idea,” he added, on a note of morose frankness.

  “But surely you’ve seen all the evidence—I mean, sergeant, you have some idea.”

  Allison wasn’t idly probing the other man; his words were coloured by the unhappy state of his thoughts. He could visualize his friend Francis Kindilett arrested as a murderer, and he knew the far-reaching effect that conclusion of the case would have. Amateur sport throughout the country would receive a definite set-back. At the moment Kindilett was looked up to as a man who had persevered and produced something worth-while. A man who had shown what amateurs in sport could achieve.

  Were that man hanged as a murderer…

  “Sure, I had some idea.” Clinton’s words dragged the Arsenal manager back from the gloom of his own speculation. “To be frank, I thought it was Morring. Everything pointed to him. The Inspector said that made the case against him weak. It was too tight. It would have to crack somewhere.”

  “Did it?” asked Allison, as the other man paused.

  “Did it!” Clinton sounded disgusted. “How the hell can that ring have anything to do with Morring? Had he been engaged to Mary Kindilett we wouldn’t have had to wait four years.”

  “And you’ve no substitute for Morring?”

  Clinton’s eyes narrowed.

  “Officially—no. I’m sitting on the fence. I know it’s no good doing anything else. The Inspector’s got it doped out. He’ll provide the answer, and it’ll be the right one, I know that. But, speaking personally, I’ve an idea—yes, and I may not be so far out at that.”

  With dramatic instinct Clinton paused.

  “And that idea, sergeant?”

  Allison leaned forward, stubbed out his cigarette.

  Clinton unfolded his arms, rubbed his jaw,

  “Kindilett—the girl’s father. It’s only my personal theory, as it were, but that’s the only substitute I can find for Morring. The case fits him, and he fits the case.”

  “But the ring?” queried Allison.

  Clinton wrinkled his nose.

  “She left it at home, and he found it after her death. Kept it, and after Doyce joined the club—”

  He shrugged.

  “Kindilett says the ring just disappeared.”

  Clinton looked very straight at the Arsenal manager.

  “If you had killed a man, Mr Allison, and wanted to cover up your tracks, and a simple lie would seem the best way of covering them up—wouldn’t you tell that lie?”

  Allison acknowledged the shrewdness of the question by not answering it.

  Clinton, fearing that he might not be understood, was quick to add, “Of course, I didn’t mean you personally, Mr Allison. I was speaking in general, you understand.”

  “I understand,” said Allison heavily.

  He did, only too well. Clinton’s words had shown him the way official contemplation had possibly developed. And there was something about the sergeant’s manner—his easy gesture and detachment—that made Allison feel the words were not founded upon any loose or unsound construction.

  “You think there’s a chance that is Inspector Slade’s theory?”

  Again Clinton shrugged.

  “Might be. Again, it might not. I can’t tell. He is the only one that knows his own business, and he won’t tell till he’s ready.”

  As though the words were a cue for his reappearance, Slade opened the door and entered before Allison could say anything further.

  “That’s that,” he announced, without bothering to add an explanation.

  “And now?” asked Allison.

  “Now,” said Slade, “I think we’ll wait for half an hour or so.”

  Allison evinced surprise.

  “Just—wait? For half an hour?”

  “Yes. I think that’ll be long enough,” said Slade, with maddening placidity.

  There was a rap on the door. Whittaker appeared.

  “You’ve fixed that for me?” asked Slade.

  “Yes,” the trainer nodded. A twinkle of amusement was apparent in his bright eyes. “There was a bit of chaff from some of the boys, but the rumour’s going round.”

  “Fine. Thanks a lot,” said Slade.

  Whittaker glanced at Allison, who sat silent, and after a nod to Clinton went out and closed the door.

  “So you’ve started a rumour,” said Allison.

  “Of a sort,” Slade confessed. “First I got Whittaker to see that the players’ corridor is left deserted. He’s got all the players outside.”

  “Arsenal and Trojans?”

  “Yes, both. I also got him to spread the news that the treatment room is now opened for them—”

  “But the rumour?” said Allison.

  “I asked Whittaker to start a rumour among th
e players to the effect that the Yard are looking over the Stadium for a ring.”

  Clinton took a deep breath. Allison sat very still.

  “Then you expect to catch the—”

  The Arsenal manager hesitated.

  “I do,” said Slade.

  After that there was nothing else to say. The remainder of the half-hour dragged very slowly. When a quarter of an hour had passed Slade and Clinton went out into the ground, walked about in the sunshine for a few minutes. They were aware that the men in training kit eyed them with a new interest. Somehow a feeling of crisis was in the air.

  A strange, inexplicable restiveness was noticeable. As by mutual agreement, the players stopped serious training and mooched about in groups. Some went back to the dressing-rooms and sat on the seats, talking in subdued tones. Others went into the treatment room, stared round, touching nothing, and went away puzzled.

  The whole of the Stadium staff seemed affected by a presentiment of something about to happen. Miss Palmer, George Allison’s secretary, who usually wears a smile, looked grave as she told Slade he was wanted on the ’phone.

  As he supposed, it was the Yard. A report had been received from the laboratory. Aconitine had been proved on the prised claw of the solitaire diamond ring. Slade hung up, feeling that he couldn’t be wrong.

  He passed on the news to Clinton. The sergeant nodded.

  “Everything turning out as you thought,” he said.

  “We won’t count our chickens too soon, Clinton.”

  Clinton pulled a face.

  “You’re not afraid of finding one’s an ugly duckling, are you?”

  “I shall be afraid—mortally afraid,” Slade said gravely, “if I don’t find an ugly duckling.”

  Clinton could contain himself no longer.

  “But he won’t fall for it! You can’t expect him to. If he goes in there and searches the dish of horsehair, then he won’t be fool enough to leave his finger-prints all over the sides and lid.”

  He seemed anxious lest, for once, his chief had slipped.