The Man of Dangerous Secrets

by Maxwell March

  “I climbed up there that night and peered through. There’s an iron staircase leading up to the escape at the back of the house. We might use it again.”

  “We must be careful, Robin.” It was Mowbray who spoke. “I know how you feel, but we’re up against desperate men. He may put up a fight, and as he’s under cover and we’re not, the advantage will be with him. I want you to stop outside the gate at which Madame Julie here met you when you brought the girl out before. Then we can advance through the bushes.”

  Fuming at the delay, and with a secret feeling of dread at his heart, Robin did as he was told.

  They pulled up outside the little postern gate and sat waiting for some moments. There was no sign from the gaunt house. It might have been empty, so lonely and silent it stood.

  The occupants of the police car trooped slowly through the gate under cover of the protecting bushes.

  A second car followed them, containing a sergeant and three plain-clothes detectives, and now each man in the little army took up his position with silent efficiency.

  If the Dealer was hidden in this sinister fortress he would not escape with his life.

  Madame Julie was forced to remain in the background. The police would not permit her to take any unnecessary risks, and it was Robin who led the way through the shrubbery.

  He turned and spoke to Mowbray over his shoulder.

  “I’m going out into the open. Once we can get into the porch we’re safe from gunfire from the windows.”

  As he spoke he darted out onto the gravel and sprinted across the drive to the porch, but there was no splatter of bullets from the house. The place remained silent and gloomy as a tomb.

  Mowbray and Whybrow with the sergeant came up into the porch just as Robin was putting his shoulder to the door.

  “Steady, my boy, steady! We don’t want to run into a trap.”

  Old Whybrow spoke warningly, but Robin was past caution.

  The sergeant leant his weight to the door, and presently the great wooden panel burst open and with a clatter the men charged into the deserted, stone-flagged hall.

  In the silence which followed as they stood listening, the damp unfriendliness of the great building seemed to rise up to meet them.

  And then, just when a sense of frustration was descending slowly but surely upon the group, the unexpected happened.

  A scream, shrill and terrifying, echoed from the floor above, and the next moment there was a patter of feet upon the wooden staircase as Jennifer herself, her golden hair dishevelled, her grey eyes wide and frightened, came flying down to meet them.

  She caught a glimpse of Robin and threw herself sobbing into his arms.

  “Oh, you’ve come! You’ve come! Oh, thank God you’ve come in time!”

  As they crowded about her, eager for the information they most desired, she suddenly pulled herself together.

  “You must hurry,” she said. “You must hurry, or he’ll get away. I suppose he heard you coming and that’s why he left me. There!”

  Her last word was occasioned by the second startling sound which had shattered the silence surrounding the gloomy building.

  From somewhere outside had come the crack of a revolver shot, and the next moment there was the roar of a car engine and a scream of brakes as it swerved out of the drive.

  They rushed to the door just in time to see one of the plain-clothes men reeling from a wound in his side, and to catch the tail of a car as it turned down the road.

  It was Robin who spoke the general thought.

  “They’ll stop him, of course. He won’t get by those traps. And yet—no—good heavens! He’s taking the old coast road!”

  He turned to Whybrow.

  “He’s staged a getaway. Come on, this is our chance!”

  He flung himself through the shrubbery and leapt into the car. The inspector scrambled onto the footboard as the boy let in the clutch, and the car bounded forward in pursuit of the fugitive.

  As they swung onto the uneven surface of the old coast road they caught a glimpse of their man. He was bending over the wheel of an open sporting car.

  Robin strained his eyes, but it was impossible to recognize that crouching figure. True, there was something vaguely familiar about him, and as they gradually gained upon him Robin realized that the person who had leapt into mind at a first glimpse was none other than the inspector who sat even now at his side.

  It was evident that Whybrow had noticed the resemblance also, for Robin caught the old man’s muttered exclamation of mingled bewilderment and anger.

  The police car was going all out. The surface was abominable, and Robin knew that any false move must send him and his companion into the muddy slime below which stretched out for the half-mile or so left by the tide.

  The mists had thickened, it seemed, and the salt tang in the air keyed up the senses of the two men in the car, adding to the agonizing thrill and anxiety of the chase.

  “There’s the pier.” The inspector’s voice was low. “Does the road run past it, I wonder?”

  Robin took his eyes off the track long enough to glance out to where the dark structure of an elementary pier loomed out of the mist. The thing was little more than a skeleton of rotten planks, but as they raced towards it they suddenly caught sight of something at its far end which forced an exclamation from old Whybrow’s lips.

  “My God,” he said, “a yacht!”

  A little boat, full steam up, lay in the deep water at the far end of the derelict pier.

  Now the whole purpose of the man ahead became apparent. This, then, was his objective.

  The inspector gripped his gun.

  “I wanted to take him alive,” he said. “He won’t dare to run the car on that crazy spider’s web. We’ll get him when he pulls up.”

  But the inspector was wrong. The car ahead slowed down, it is true, but as the driver turned and caught sight of them bearing down upon him, he seemed to change his mind, for he turned his car onto the rotting structure of the pier and drove on.

  In that instant they caught a glimpse of him. Although his face was not recognizable at that distance, his clothes and bearing were typical of Whybrow himself, and the old man caught his breath.

  “It’s like a nightmare,” he said. “Like a nightmare.”

  Robin did not answer. He gained the end of the pier and pulled up. The rotten timbers were creaking and the supports rocking beneath the weight of the sports car, which was forced to go slowly to prevent the uneven planking from shooting it over the slippery edge.

  Suddenly the car ahead stopped. Two revolver shots struck the bonnet of the police car, and then all was silent.

  The inspector caught Robin’s arm.

  “Look,” he said. “The planks have given way completely there. There’s a gap. He’ll have to come back, or climb on foot. Sit still. Don’t expose yourself. I rather fancy we’re in luck. Anyway, I’m going to take the risk.”

  And before Robin could stop him he sprang out of the car and stood exposed upon the rickety planking of the pier. But although he was an easy mark, no shot came from the man ahead.

  “I thought so. His gun’s empty. Come on, Robin.”

  It was a perilous journey over the rotting timbers. Some distance ahead of them the man in the sports car had also dismounted, and as they caught a clear view of him Robin’s heart leapt. In his hand he carried an iron-bound box.

  “Don’t fire,” the inspector panted. “I want this bird alive if I can get him.”

  They raced on. The figure was scaling the slippery joists which alone connected the two ends of the pier. Beneath him the tide was slowly creeping in over the grey, sinister mud.

  And then it happened. In attempting to glance over his shoulder, the man ahead of them missed his footing, staggered, and clutched the side in an effort to save himself.

  But the weight of the box he carried was the deciding factor. It slipped from his grasp, and in snatching at it he missed his hold and fell through the ape
rture into the shallow water below.

  Robin and the inspector dashed forward.

  “We’ve got him!”

  The inspector was jubilant.

  But as they came up with the gap in the planking and peered through, a sense of bewilderment passed over them.

  Of the strange fugitive and his precious burden there was no sign whatsoever; only the water lapping gently some fourteen feet below.

  The inspector looked about him wildly.

  “But this is absurd,” he said. “The water’s only about eighteen inches deep there at the outside. Why, Robin, what’s the matter?”

  The boy, white and shaken, pointed to something showing just beneath the surface of the grey water, something dark, something terrible, a human head.

  “Quickmud.”

  Robin spoke the words through frozen lips.

  “This coast is full of it. For six feet down, in patches of about eight feet square, the mud’s like a quicksand. I was nearly caught in it once when I was a child. That fellow dropped straight through into liquid mud up to his neck and the water’s done the rest. He’s been drowning slowly as surely as if he were held under, and we can’t get near him.”

  The inspector stepped back. His stern old face was grey.

  “He deserved a horrible death,” he said. “But I hadn’t reckoned on that for him.”

  It was more than half an hour later when the combined efforts of the local detectives and the Scotland Yard men, with the aid of ropes and a couple of cars for hauling purposes, dragged the terrible suffocated thing out of the ooze and laid it upon the planks.

  The yacht had made off immediately after the tragedy, and already all ports had been furnished with a description of her.

  Robin and the two inspectors stood on the pier, bending over the slime-covered figure which lay at their feet. The Scotland Yard sergeant knelt beside the body and carefully wiped the face.

  There, beneath the grey sky of a late afternoon, lay revealed the white, expressionless countenance of a man who might have been a recognized genius had he chosen to exploit his gift in any other way. The eyes were closed, but Robin thought of their colourless depths and shuddered.

  The fairish hair was limp and matted, and the countenance was smooth and untroubled, as that of a child.

  Mowbray turned to Whybrow.

  “Nelson Ash,” he said. “Well, I’m damned!”

  CHAPTER 30

  After the Storm

  “ROBIN, Inspector Whybrow says we shall never recover the box. If it’s true, I’m terribly glad. You’re sure no one can ever get hold of it again?”

  Jennifer stood in the room where she had experienced that fateful interview with her father only a few days before and looked up at Robin as she spoke, her young face earnest, her voice anxious.

  “If the police can’t get that box, no one can. It’s buried heaven knows how many feet deep in slime. No, Jennifer, that’s gone for ever.”

  Robin put his arm round the girl as he spoke and held her very close to him.

  She leant back, her head against his shoulder, her face raised to his.

  “I’ve seen Daddy. The whole thing’s been a most terrible shock and strain for him, but he’s going to be all right. He told me he simply had to get up last night and come down to find me. Apparently he broke in here and shouted for me until that dreadful little doctor had him locked up in one of the bedrooms, where the police found him this morning. Oh, Robin, if you hadn’t got here in time, that man would still be alive to torment us. Even now I can’t realize it’s over.”

  Robin kissed her lips.

  “Don’t think about it, darling,” he said. “Thank God I’ve got you safe.”

  They were interrupted by the arrival of Inspector Whybrow. The old man put his head round the door, a tremendous grin of satisfaction spreading across his face from ear to ear.

  “Robin, I want a word with you,” he said. “Here’s your father, Miss Fern. I expect you’ve a great deal to say to one another.”

  He stepped aside as he spoke, and Sir Henry Fern came into the room. The old man was not very steady. His recent experiences had left their mark upon him, but there was a new expression in his eyes, and his face lit up as he caught sight of the girl.

  “Jenny, my dear,” he said and held out his arms to her.

  Jennifer flung herself across the room towards him, and Robin left them together.

  Outside in the corridor Whybrow took Robin’s arm.

  “Sir Ferdinand is downstairs,” he said. “We’ve got a formal deposition out of him, but I thought you might like to hear the unofficial chat, as it were. He’s taken it very well. Poor devil! He thought that if we couldn’t get hold of the box there’d be no evidence against him. The discovery that we know about the Camden Gun Scandal came as a bit of a shock.

  “He’s a queer sort of bird,” he went on thoughtfully. “He was in on all that terrorization affair down here, don’t you see, but it doesn’t seem to have struck him quite what an infamous business it was. It’ll be the trial of the century. He deserves his stretch. And he’ll get it!”

  Robin accompanied the inspector downstairs to the little room which Dr. Crupiner had used as a private office.

  Sir Ferdinand Shawle sat at a table, a plain-clothes man on either side of him. Inspector Mowbray, whose stern official expression could not quite hide the jubilation he felt, sat opposite him.

  Whybrow and Robin took up their positions on the hearthrug, and the informal conversation, a procedure which Inspector Whybrow was reputed to have brought to a fine art, continued.

  Sir Ferdinand was speaking, his lean, grey face expressionless as ever, and for the first time in his life Robin felt something akin to admiration for the man. At least he was a stoic.

  “I realized from the beginning of this year that we were up against some question of disguise,” he said. “You must remember,” he added grimly, “that neither I nor my colleagues were in any way partners of the Dealer. He was a blackmailer—we, his victims.”

  For a moment the angry spirit of the man showed in his eyes, and two spots of colour appeared on his cheekbones. He recovered himself instantly, however.

  “I never guessed, of course,” he went on, “that we were up against such a master, and it amuses me when I remember that I went to the trouble of interviewing several make-up experts in the hope of getting a line upon him. It never occurred to me, you see, that the man was a facial mimic rather than an artist with greasepaint.

  “I got these experts to visit me at night. I thought the Dealer had no idea what I was doing. If he had, of course, he probably laughed at the puniness of my imagination.”

  He stopped speaking, and the other men in the little room remained silent. It was a feature of Inspector Whybrow’s “conversations” that the prisoner usually did most of the talking.

  Sir Ferdinand appeared to be lost in his own thoughts, but suddenly he glanced up, a light of bewilderment in his eyes.

  “Of course,” he said, “you’re wrong. You’re wrong. He’s eluded you. He’s won, after all. It couldn’t have been Nelson Ash. It comes back to me now. I knew there was something at the back of my mind which was warning me to take this story cautiously. How do you account for the letter?”

  Whybrow bent forward, and his voice had a soothing effect upon the excited man.

  “Suppose you tell us about it,” he suggested gently.

  “Of course I will. It happened in my own office only two or three days ago.”

  He plunged into the story of the telephone call from the Dealer which Ash had received in the banker’s office, and of the mysterious letter thrust under the door.

  The inspector listened patiently to the end. Then he sighed.

  “Sir Ferdinand,” he said, “if that had happened to me or to Inspector Mowbray here, our search would have been at an end from that moment. That’s an old trick, and very easily worked. If you remember, all the voice on the telephone—which you took to be the D
ealer’s—actually said to you was to inquire if Ash was present. All the rest of the story Ash told you himself.”

  “But the letter?” the banker demanded.

  The inspector’s voice was very kindly.

  “My dear sir,” he said, “when Ash’s confederate phoned—a confederate, mind you, who knew nothing save that he was required to call up his employer at your address—you answered the phone. While your back was turned, how easy for our friend to drop the specially prepared letter just inside the door and to slide it halfway through the crack with his foot. Not very difficult, was it?”

  Sir Ferdinand sank back.

  “I see,” he said dully, “I see. My God! If I had him here I’d force the life out of him with my own hands!”

  The flare of this sudden outburst died swiftly out of his eyes.

  Mowbray shrugged his shoulders.

  “You couldn’t have made his death any more unpleasant than it was, Sir Ferdinand,” he said dryly.

  When the banker was led away, Robin and the two inspectors stood for a moment looking down into the fire. Mowbray was frankly jubilant.

  “Well, that’s that,” he said. “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it. An astounding case, a fascinating case, and one, I think,” he added with justifiable pride, “that reflects well upon us all.”

  Robin sighed. “Thank God it’s over. I think I’ll go and join Jennifer now if you don’t mind. Somehow,” he added with a tired smile, “I’m not happy if she’s out of my sight for a moment.”

  As the door closed behind him Mowbray frowned.

  “I don’t see now why Ash took such an infernal risk in kidnapping the girl again if he didn’t mean to kill her,” he said.

  Whybrow looked at him curiously.

  “It may not have occurred to you, Bill,” he said, “that Miss Fern is a peculiarly attractive young lady. It may well have been that our friend the Dealer was not altogether unsusceptible.”

  Mowbray raised his eyebrows. “Very likely,” he said. “I never thought of that.”

  Voices on the lawn without attracted their attention and, crossing over to the window, they stood looking down upon the scene outside.