However his mind twisted and turned, it could not overcome a story like that. Jennifer was suffering from delusions. Perhaps, after all, he was doing the right thing in sending her away to a private sanatorium where they specialized in such things.
He was still sitting thinking when the phone bell rang, and he stretched out his hand to take the instrument from its place on the table beside the tray.
“Hallo,” he said, and was startled by the hollowness of his own voice.
“Hallo. Is that Sir Henry Fern?”
He recognized the soft voice instantly.
“Madame Julie?”
“Yes.” The woman’s voice was as clear as though she were in the room. “I phoned to ask you if Sir Ferdinand is still at your house. There is an urgent message for him here, and I thought I might catch him with you. ... Oh? He’s left some time, has he? Well, never mind. I only asked because after seeing him with Jennifer I thought that very likely you would know where they were.”
Sir Henry Fern’s eyes narrowed, and the hand that gripped the instrument trembled.
“What did you say, Madame? You saw Sir Ferdinand Shawle and my daughter together tonight? Where?”
“I only caught a glimpse of them for a moment.”
The woman at the other end of the wire seemed surprised.
“Only for a moment. I happened to be in the Adelphi a little after seven this evening, and I saw Jennifer and Sir Ferdinand come down the steps from Robin Grey’s house and climb into a taxicab. I assumed he would be still with you. Why, Sir Henry, what’s the matter?”
But although she moved the hook up and down she received no reply.
Sir Henry Fern sat staring at the instrument in front of him as though it had been a living thing. Mechanically he replaced the receiver and rose heavily to his feet.
The information had been dropped so casually that he could not feel that it was not genuine. Jennifer’s story had been borne out startlingly. The mystery was more insoluble than before.
If Jennifer had spoken the truth ... The bewildering idea came to him as something of a shock. If, after all, the child had spoken in good faith, then was it not himself who might be suffering from a delusion?
The world seemed to be revolving about him, and he sank down heavily into his chair.
A discreet tap upon the door, and old Williamson, obviously disturbed, came silently into the room.
“Inspector Whybrow and Inspector Mowbray are in the hall, sir,” he murmured. “I told them that Miss Jennifer was ill and you were not in the frame of mind to see anyone, but I’m afraid they insist.”
Sir Henry looked up dully. “The Scotland Yard men?” he said. “Oh, show them in, Williamson, show them in.”
The old butler hurried off, to return a moment or so later, followed by the two inspectors.
Sir Henry turned to meet them, and even in his weary and bewildered state was able to recognize that a subtle change had come over them since the morning.
Inspector Whybrow’s friendly, good-humoured smile had vanished, and there was a grim expression on his wide, good-tempered mouth.
Inspector Mowbray’s face was blank. No one could have told what he was thinking.
Neither man sat down, although Sir Henry indicated chairs.
Inspector Whybrow was watching the old man’s face carefully. He was quick to notice the signs of nervous strain round the eyes and the rigid set of the well-shaped mouth. In a long experience of human nature he had grown used to the signs of mental exhaustion, the traces of well-hidden despair. And all these were apparent in the old man who stood before him.
It was Inspector Mowbray who spoke first, clearing his throat and using the monotonous tone of the police officer on duty.
“Sir Henry Fern,” he said, “are you aware of any mishap at your office in Wych Street this evening?”
The old man’s eyelids flickered.
“Why, no,” he said. “I hope you haven’t come to report anything unpleasant to me, Inspector.”
“That all depends.” There was no good humour in the police officer’s tone. “I have your statement. I take it that you have heard nothing from your office this evening and that you know of nothing untoward which may have occurred there?”
“Really, Inspector, you’re very mysterious.”
“I’m sorry, sir. But I must do my duty. During the course of this evening we received a mysterious telephone call from your office, giving us certain information which we thought proper to regard as serious. We hurried down there to find that the office had been broken open.”
He paused significantly. Through Sir Henry’s bewildered mind there ran the memory of his daughter’s tortured voice pouring out the mad story he had been forced to consider the ravings of a disordered mind: “He told me that the police were here with Robin because a man had committed suicide in your office ...”
He could hear her voice now, pleading passionately to be believed. He clutched wildly at the hope held out to him. Perhaps, after all, he had misjudged her; perhaps, after all, she was the victim of some ghastly mistake for which there was some logical explanation.
The two astute criminal investigators watching him were able to follow the emotions, if not the thoughts, clearly depicted upon his face.
It was only his sudden hopefulness which baffled them.
He moved over to Whybrow and laid a hand upon his arm.
“You found something there?” he said. “Was it—was it a suicide?”
The two inspectors exchanged significant glances. Whybrow led the trembling old man back to his chair.
“I’m not at liberty to tell you yet what we found,” he said. “But I can assure you that the safe was not tampered with and that no actual harm has been done to the office itself.”
Whybrow poured a small glass of wine from the decanter and stood over the baronet until he had swallowed it. Then he stood back.
“Sir Henry Fern,” he said, “circumstances have arisen which make it unwise for us to discuss this matter any further at the moment. Meanwhile, I must warn you that the police require you to stay in London for the next few days. Any attempt to leave the city on your part will have the inevitable result. And now, if you will excuse us, good-night.”
This announcement, virtually a threat of arrest, made little impression upon Sir Henry Fern. He sat slumped forward in his chair, his eyes glazed, his mouth slack.
The two Scotland Yard men let themselves quietly out of the house. As they walked down the steps together, Inspector Whybrow whistled softly under his breath.
“Well,” he said, a faint expression of wonderment creeping into his tone, “well, what do you know about that?”
Inspector Mowbray nodded. “To be poetic,” he said grimly, “I think someone has put their foot on the first rung of the ladder which leads up to the scaffold. And the rest, my boy, is up to us.”
CHAPTER 15
Strange Passenger
“STILL unconscious.”
The words, murmured through the trap window of the driver’s cab, barely reached Robin where he lay on the top stretcher in the private ambulance.
After his first glimpse of Jennifer peering through the curtains of his own sitting room, he had relapsed again into his torpor. Now the voice at the other end of the van brought him to his senses once again, and the events of the preceding hours crowded once more into his mind.
His head was hurting, and there was an unnatural stiffness in his limbs. He knew himself to be incapable of any great exertion. An attempt to fight his way out must inevitably end in disaster.
He saw the broad shoulders of the pseudo nurse bending forward as he stooped to peer through the narrow window.
Robin was not fool enough to lose his head, in spite of his frantic anxiety to discover the reason for Jennifer’s terror. One thing comforted him, however, in spite of his wretchedness: Jennifer had come to him. Jennifer had visited his flat. In her terror, whatever had been its cause, she had turned instinctively
to him.
He knew now that it was not she who had torn his card in half. He knew now that the kiss she had given him was spontaneous and genuine, an indication of the state of her heart.
Putting the girl from his mind as well as he could, he reconsidered his own position. The lights in the top of the van had been dimmed, and he could just see a glimpse of hedges and trees through the window at his side. They were in the country, then.
How long he had been unconscious for the second time, he could not tell, and he had no way of guessing how far out of London he had been carried.
Once or twice the powerful headlights of other cars met them as they sped on. They did not seem ever to be overtaken, and he gathered that they were travelling at considerable speed.
After a while the hedges vanished, and he guessed that they were on one of the great arterial roads, for the other traffic became more frequent.
The nurse had now turned from the window and sat down on the small seat in the far corner of the vehicle. He could only see the top of the headdress from his position, and he dared not move.
And then quite suddenly the most uncanny sensation of his life was produced by a voice which came, harsh and unnatural, from somewhere just above his head.
“Ambulance Y03,” it said distinctly. “Stand by for Headquarters.”
Robin lay trembling lest his involuntary movement had given him away, but to his relief he discovered that the voice had produced almost as much surprise in the nurse.
The man in the incongruous uniform leapt to his feet and moved forward.
Robin heard the metallic sound of a switch being thrust home and guessed the truth. The van was equipped with wireless, and not far above his head was situated the loudspeaker from which the man in command could issue orders, probably from some office or private house in town.
The nurse lifted an instrument from the wall, and Robin heard his voice, gruff and very masculine.
“Ambulance Y03. Patient still unconscious. Seven miles from home.”
There was another click as he replaced the instrument, and then once again the mysterious harsh voice sounded from the loudspeaker.
“Search prisoner,” it said distinctly. “Notes concerning the names of law firms especially required. Staff at the house have full instructions concerning this man, but I advise you to use great caution. The prisoner is above the average in intelligence and strength. It is important that you should not underestimate him. Good-bye.”
Robin lay very still, his heart beating violently. The message was significant. But all the time he had been striving to recognize the voice which he knew must belong to probably the greatest enemy he had ever had in his life.
He was conscious of an odd sort of thrill as he realized it, but his excitement was coupled with despair, for the inhuman loudspeaker had robbed the voice of any distinctive quality by which he could have recognized it again.
Its message, however, woke him to a sense of the necessity for prompt action. Caithby Fisher, he knew, had no need to go to these remarkable lengths to obtain the information which he himself in his stupidity might have given him for the asking.
Therefore there were other forces at work, forces which had some particular interest in the firms of solicitors who might have been employed by Morton Blount.
In that brief instant after the mysterious and dramatic voice had died away, Robin’s keen brain reasoned swiftly.
Caithby Fisher had evidently not told him the true story. At all costs he must protect the scrap of information pencilled on the little square of paper in his waistcoat pocket.
But already the nurse was advancing towards him. Since he was armed with a revolver, Robin knew he was powerless. Already he saw himself parting with knowledge which must hinder the course of justice and put some important facts, he knew not what, into enemy hands.
This time it was fate who stepped in to give him the few moments’ respite he so badly needed.
Once again the loudspeaker spoke, this time in a new, official voice:
“Police car 7082 cruising in Winstree district. Look out for white ambulance. Reinforcements coming. Shadow ambulance. Crew believed to be armed.”
The nurse stopped in his tracks and turned excitedly to the little window in the driver’s cab. Robin heard him giving anxious instructions. He repeated the message which the wireless had picked up.
It puzzled Robin at first how they could possibly have heard a message broadcast on Scotland Yard’s own private wave length, but he recollected the little metallic click which had followed the broadcast of the first mysterious voice and realized that his captors, having received their own message, had tuned in to the private broadcast of the police.
The nurse’s excited conversation with the driver, however, gave him the time he needed.
Moving as gently as possible, he drew the tiny square of folded paper from his waistcoat pocket, screwed it into a ball, and forced it between the interstices of the tiny ventilator in the glass of the window beside him.
When his captor returned to him, he was lying as before, his eyes closed.
Robin was submitted to a rigorous search, and his respect for his enemies increased as he observed the efficiency of the man in nurse’s uniform. No police-trained searcher from Scotland Yard could have done the job more thoroughly. All his belongings were taken from his pockets and placed in neat piles upon the shelf on the opposite side of the vehicle.
He was thankful that natural prudence prevented him from carrying any important information in his pockets.
The nurse had barely finished the task set so mysteriously by the voice over the wireless, when the boy became aware that they were nearing their destination. There was a gentle soughing of brakes, the crunch of wheels upon a gravel drive, and the car came to a standstill.
Peering beneath his lashes, he caught a glimpse of a great wall silhouetted against a paler sky.
There was a sound of excited voices from outside. Someone flashed an electric torch, and he caught a glimpse of massive iron gates which looked as though they belonged to a fortress. Then strong hands seized the stretcher on which he lay, and he was lifted down none too tenderly to the floor of the vehicle.
There he rested for a moment while the man who had driven the car spoke rapidly to someone who had come from the house.
In that brief moment Robin turned his head.
Lying on the lower bunk, exactly on the same level as he was now himself, was something stiff, unnatural, and oddly terrifying which he recognized instantly.
It was a corpse, a corpse which must have lain nodding and grinning with every jolt of the wheels directly beneath him for the whole journey.
He only saw it for an instant, but it was enough.
The body which lay beside him in the ambulance was the corpse he had last seen lying face uppermost in Sir Henry Fern’s office in Wych Street, the corpse of Rex Bourbon, suicide or victim of a murderer’s bullet.
It seemed to Robin now that there could be no question which.
“Which is this? The prisoner or——”
The whisper reached Robin where he lay on the stretcher, the night air blowing upon his face. He had been lifted bodily out of the ambulance, and now found himself lying on the ground in the midst of a group of shadowy figures.
The speaker stopped abruptly after the last word, and the remainder of his question hung significantly.
“This is the prisoner.”
Robin recognized the second voice as belonging to the nurse who had accompanied him on the journey down. The first man was a newcomer, and he could only distinguish him by his huge bulk and ape-like arms.
The other was still in the car.
“What shall we do with it? The usual, I suppose?”
“I think so. We’ve had no instructions from Headquarters, but I should have it sent down to the furnace room.”
The enormous newcomer, who seemed to be some person in authority, stepped forward, and he and the nurse withdrew som
e yards from the main group, which seemed to have increased in size within the last few moments.
Although Robin strained his ears to catch the gist of their conversation, he found it impossible to hear much. Isolated words reached him from time to time, stray phrases which told him little. He caught the words “crowded” and “inconvenient” from the newcomer and heard the man in nurse’s clothes say irritably, “Anywhere’ll do. He’s still out. Give him a shot to keep him quiet if necessary. We’ve got the contents of his pockets. That’s all we want for the time being.”
Robin lay very still, and when a torch was flashed suddenly into his face he had the muscular control to remain still and lifeless.
“Bring him along,” said the huge man who had been speaking to the nurse. “Room K will do.”
Robin was dimly aware of a swaying and dangerous journey across a strip of grass, up steps, and finally into a faintly lit corridor which smelled convincingly of iodoform. Then he was thrust into a small room and the door closed firmly behind him.
As he lay listening, hardly daring to breathe, he heard two heavy bolts shoot home.
For some time he did not stir but contented himself with opening his eyes cautiously and peering around. He was in a small room, furnished as a bedroom, but which evidently had not been in use for some time. It smelt stuffy and ill ventilated. There was no window, and the only light shone through the glass transom at the top of the door from the passage without.
Carefully he climbed to his feet. His head was swimming, his limbs were stiff and cramped. Nevertheless he made a systematic tour of the tiny room.
At first it seemed to him that, apart from the door, which, besides being securely bolted, was too much in evidence to be easily negotiated, there was no other outlet from the room. But, as he was about to give up all hope, he discovered a small sliding hatch hidden behind a mirror on the dressing table. He found to his delight that it was unlocked.
Once he had removed the mirror, the hatch slipped back easily, and he found himself peering through a small grille into another and more brightly lighted apartment.
The Man of Dangerous Secrets Page 13