The Arthur Morrison Mystery

by Arthur Morrison

  By the time that Braddell had gathered his faculties he was alone in a converted scullery of the little clematis-covered police-station, with bars across the window and a locked door. But in five minutes more the door opened before him and revealed his friend Spencer, handcuffed as he had been and accompanied by the Unicorn landlord and the same constable, reinforced now by a flustered sergeant, with crumbs on his whiskers, relics of a rudely-disturbed meal. It took a full half-hour or vehement protest ere the sergeant was persuaded to seek confirmation of the prisoners’ bona fides in the search of the yawl; and it took a little longer still, and it needed telegrams, before the sergeant grew possessed of a suspicion that his subordinate had made the biggest blunder of a somewhat blundersome career. The official information as to the Moorgate Street bank robbery, too, could not, however stretched, be made wholly to agree with the appearance of the young men in custody; while the utter disappearance of the alleged Inspector Wilmerson lent a certain weight to one angry protest of Braddell.

  “If there’s a man wanted about here,” Braddell had repeated again and again, “it is that man in the overalls. Go and get his flannels out of the hollow tree half-way along to the bungalow; and, above all, go to the bungalow itself, man, and don’t waste more time. It may be the Moorgate Street robbery, or it may be something else; but, whatever it is, get there quick and find out!”

  The sergeant was something less of a fool than his man. He hedged and made apologies. Of course, if his man had been misled, it was only from an excess of zeal; and in any case the gentlemen would understand that he, the sergeant, must keep them in sight till the matter had been cleared up. Had they any objection to going with him and the constable as far as the bungalow they spoke of?

  “Objection? Certainly not! We want to go. Let’s get along at once. There’s an hour gone, and nobody can tell what you’ve missed. Come along at once. You’ve seen our letters and card-cases and the things in the yawl—you know we sha’n’t run away. Come along, and we’ll see it through with you.”

  A few minutes later the two friends, with the sergeant, his helmet in place and the crumbs gone from his whiskers, and the young constable, his hopes of promotion gone by the board, were hurrying across the meadows toward the bungalow that had seemed so peaceful and innocent a retreat when they had last seen it. They came in view of the place from the back, and they spread wide as they approached, the better to intercept any retreat. Not a sound came from the bungalow, and nobody was in sight. They drew nearer, passed the flower-beds, and emerged on the sloping lawn. There stood the small garden-table, with the glass jug still on it, the wicker chair overturned by its side. The white-painted door of the bungalow was open wide, and as they approached the porch something on that white-painted door caused Spencer, who was ahead, to stop and point, turning with wide eyes to the others. There, in the middle of the upper panel, was the print of a human hand—in blood!2

  CHAPTER IV

  by Horace Annesley Vachell

  Spencer exclaimed loudly: “I can swear that wasn’t there when he gave me the cigarettes.”

  Braddell laughed.

  “My dear fellow, the door was open. The hand is painted on it, excellently painted too, and recognizable from the river.”

  “Things seem quiet enough here,” growled the sergeant, as he entered the bungalow. Braddell glanced for a moment at the iced drink on the wicker table, the overturned chair, and a newspaper lying upon the grass. He picked up the newspaper and followed the others into the bungalow. Two rooms in perfect order met his eyes. Behind these was a cooking-shed containing a gasolene stove. Everything inside the bungalow and the shed indicated exquisite neatness and cleanliness, not merely the neatness of the bachelor accustomed to camping-out, but the meticulous daintiness which expresses subtly a woman’s love of her habitat.

  “Nothing here,” said the sergeant.

  “Nobody,” amended Braddell. “Did you expect to find somebody, sergeant?”

  “I thought it possible.”

  “Consider the facts. Hardly had my friend and I come to the conclusion that the tenant of this bungalow was seemingly the happiest and most contented of mortals, when we see him tearing across that field like a dervish.”

  “Genuinely frightened, too,” added Spencer.

  “He’d turned from a pretty shade of pink to the colour of skilly!”

  “Exactly. What could have frightened him so badly? He was not acting then, although he acted afterwards, and badly, too. His cock-and-bull story about heing a clerk and in love with a nameless woman was quite unconvincing. We left him sitting in front of an iced drink, which I notice to be untouched—odd that!—and reading this paper.”

  “Ah!” said the sergeant. “You mean, sir, that something he read in the paper must have scared him.”

  “I have found the item, I think,” said Braddell, as he handed the paper to the professional.

  Spencer said with pride:—

  “My friend, Mr. Braddell, is not altogether an amateur. He belongs to the Criminologists, a dining-club made up of men interested in crime. Several K.C.’s are members.”

  “There’s a Column about the Moorgate Street bank robbery,” said thc sergeant.

  “Which accounts for his mentioning it later. Look through the ‘Agony’ column, sergeant.”

  “I have it, sir.” He read aloud: “‘Red Hand. Your hiding-place is discovered. Bolt at once.’”

  “By Jove, he did!” exclaimed Spencer.

  “We are wasting our time here,” said the sergeant, irritably.

  “Not altogether,” replied Braddell. “May I suggest that you leave your man here to see if anybody comes, rather thirsty, to enjoy that drink?”

  “Remain here,” said the sergeant, addressing the constable.

  “Before we leave,” murmured Braddell, suavely, “I should like to open that trunk, which I perceive to be locked. No doubt, sergeant, it has not escaped your eye that there is neither shaving-brush nor shaving-soap on the washing-stand.”

  The sergeant coloured.

  “I don’t mention all I see,” he remarked, in an injured tone. He bent down and wrenched open the trunk. Spencer, peeping over his shoulder, whistled. The trunk was full of a woman’s clothing.

  “I thought there was a woman in this,” said the sergeant. “The sooner we lay hands on the man the better.”

  “A bungalow built for two,” murmured Braddell, absently.

  Leaving the constable in charge, the three men hastened back to the town, taking the tow-path as being the shortest way. At the first bend in the river Braddell halted and laughed.

  “We now know,” he affirmed, with conviction, “where the young gentleman really is.” He smiled genially at the sergeant and pointed down the long reach ahead.

  “Where?” asked the sergeant.

  “On board our yawl.”

  Spencer laughed also.

  “I don’t see the joke,” said the sergeant.

  “I don’t see the yawl,” added Spencer.

  “The yawl,” replied Braddell, “is running down the estuary on an ebb tide, and the joke is on—us.”

  “The beggar got us arrested so as to commandeer our boat,” said Spencer. “Clever chap, eh, sergeant?”

  “Tub like that can’t have gone far,” said the sergeant, hopefully. Obviously, the young gentleman was no ordinary criminal.

  “Tub yourself!” thought Spencer, with a scornful glance at the sergeant’s rotundities. Then he heard Braddell’s pleasant voice saying:—

  “I suggest, sergeant, that we examine the young gentleman’s flannels. They may be marked.”

  “He changed behind those willows,” said Spencer, “and stuffed the wet clothes into that old pollard.”

  A moment later Braddell was thrusting his hand into the hollow of the tree. He flung upon the grass the sodden fiannels and a b
undle of wet linen. With a smile he held up an unmistakable garment.

  “I am sure, sergeant, that this is no surprise for you. The young gentleman who was too modest to change before us is a young—lady!”3

  CHAPTER V.

  By Barry Pain.

  “This,” said the sergeant, frankly, “is getting a bit beyond me.”

  “What do you mean to do?” asked Spencer.

  “Get back to the station and get on the phone. I can have our men on the look-out for that yawl all the way along. By the time we get the yawl we get the young lady, don’t we, sir?”

  “I presume so,” said Spencer.

  “I don’t,” said Braddell. “Well, get on to the station, sergeant, and we’ll go back to the bungalow. What about your man there?”

  The sergeant caressed his whiskers thoughtfully. “Well,” he said, “we’re short-handed.”

  “Very well,” said Braddell. “We’ll send him back and remain there ourselves until this evening. Did you say that you meant to have a constable sleeping at the bungalow tonight?”

  “If I did not, it was in my mind.”

  “Good. You might engage bedrooms for us tonight at the Unicorn. It will be all on your way.”

  They went back to the bungalow and dimissed the constable, who was rapidly developing into a young man with a grievance. Spencer stretched himself at full length on the lawn. “And what do we do now?” he asked.

  “l`m going to feed the dicky-birds,” said Braddell.

  Spencer sat up. “Have you gone mad?” he said.

  “Wait and see, as they say in another place.”

  Braddell went laughing into the house and returned with a piece of bread in his hand. He picked up the glass jug.

  “Smell that,” he said to Spencer, “and tell me what you make of it.”

  Spencer smelt it diligently.

  “Cup of sorts, I suppose, and the young lady’s rather overdone the Kirschwasser. The thing reeks of it. I’ll just taste it and—”

  Braddell took the jug out of his hand.

  “Half a minute,” he said. He poured some of the contents of the jug on to the piece of bread and then broke it up and scattered it at the far end of the lawn.

  “Bet you the birds don’t touch it,” said Spencer. “They’ve plenty of better grub this weather.”

  “Oh, you can depend on the sparrows,” said Braddell.

  And presently a couple of sparrows fluttered down on to the lawn and tackled the crumbs vigorouslyn. In a few seconds they rolled over dead.

  “Great Scot!” said Spencer. “And that was the stuff the young lady wanted me to drink!”

  “Quite so,” said Braddell. “Prussic acid smells very much like Kirschwasser. The addition of the borage and ice was quite a happy thought. I don`t think our friend is a very moral young lady, but I`m absolutely convinced she’s a very clever young lady.”

  “Well, now, Braddell,” said Spencer, “what do you make of it so far?”

  “I can only see what is perfectly obvious. She was in hiding—from whom I do not know. She wanted her hiding-place to be easily distinguished by someone coming up the water. For whom she was waiting I do not know. There you have it. There was some person from whom she wished to hide, and there was some person by whom she wished to be found—hence the red hand painted on the door. But there is a further complication that I have not yet reached. When we saw her running across the meadow she was mad with terror. There is no doubt about it. Why? And what was it she took out from that box of cigarettes she had given us? The game of hide-and-seek is obvious, but there must be a second complication. It is quite possible, by the way, that when she offered you that drink she mistook you for somebody else.”

  “But what’s the key to the second complication?”

  “Can’t say. But this is the key to the bureau in the drawing-room. At any rate, it fits it. Quite a common lock. I tried it when I went in for the bread. Come and investigate.”

  “I say,” said Spencer, “what business have we got with her bureau?”

  “Hang it all,” said Braddell. “What business has she got with our boat?”

  Braddell went on, as they walked back into the house together, “By the way, she did not fling herself into the water because she was terrified nor because she wished to commit suicide. People who want to drown themselves don’t do it where there are two lusty young men waiting to fish them out again. She wanted to be fished out. You can bet on that, at any rate. I wish I had her lightning rapidity in plan and execution. I should be a great man, Spencer.”4

  CHAPTER VI

  by Charles Garvice

  With not unreasonable nervousness Braddell unlocked the bureau, Spencer looking over his shoulder with feverish curiosity. The thing unlocked quite easily. Braddell threw up the lid, and Spencer exclaimed with amazement, for, quite, uncovered, were a number of bags such as are used by banks for gold. There could be no doubt about the contents, for one of the bags was open, revealing a mass of sovereigns. Beside the bags was a quantity of bank-notes, and tucked away in the corner was an old stable cap, with one end of a crèpe mask still attached to it.

  The two men fell back and stared at each other.

  “Great heavens!” gasped Spencer. “There must be thousands of pounds there! We’ve come upon the loot of a gang of thieves.”

  He looked round the neatly-furnished room, through the door at the beautiful and peaceful scene. The whole place in its loveliness and serenity was absolutely incongruous with so mean and sordid a crime as bank-cribbing.

  “It’s—it’s a mystery!” exclaimed Spencer, dropping on to a chair and wiping his brow.

  “Nothing of the kind,” said Braddell, quietly. “It’s all perfectly plain and simple. Some of the gang, two of them, perhaps—the clever young lady and a man, probably—have been using this bungalow as a kind of screen and blind. No doubt they’ve been living here for months, leading the kind of simple life which would mislead anyone. For who would suspect a young girl—and her husband, probably—dawdling through existence in such circumstances as these, of being concerned in a conspiracy to rob a bank? And, still more, who would think of searching for the stolen money in such a place as this? It was a very pretty plant, and I can’t for the life of me understand why it failed. One would have thought it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have got the loot away by boat. I think I could have done it.”

  “Something must have disturbed them,” said Spencer. “Something evidently did upset her, for she was mad with terror when we saw her tearing down the lawn. What was it?”

  “Something she saw, something she heard,” said Braddell. “It may have been the red hand on the door. It may have been a warning signal, the imitated note of a bird, a faint cooee, which we didn’t notice, but which she heard immediately after we had gone.”

  “What’s to be done?” asked Spencer, staring at the precious contents of the bureau.

  “I’ll go and fetch the police to take this stuff away. You stay here and mount guard over it,” said Braddell.

  “No; I’ll go,” said Spencer, a little paler than he had been before, “and you mount guard. No; you sha’n’t run any risk, old man. We’ll both go. No one is likely to interfere with this stuff for the short time we shall be absent. To be quite frank, I couldn’t leave you alone here. This place, the whole thing, is getting on my nerves.”

  Braddell re-locked the bureau, and they set out at a sharp trot for the station.

  “What I can’t understand,” said Spencer, “is that poisoned cup. Whom was it meant for, and why did she offer it to us? No object in killing a couple of chaps she’d never seen before.”

  “I don’t know,” said Braddell, musingly. “If she’d done for both of us it would have been easy to have pushed us overboard, seized the yawl, and escaped.”

  “Ingenious,
but a trifle risky,” commented Spencer, with a shake of the head. “One may go in for bank-cribbing, but draw the line at murder. Here we are. They seem in a state of excitement. I’ll bet they’ll lose their heads altogether when we show them what we’ve found.”

  The sergeant stared when Braddell curtly requested him to accompany them back to the bungalow and to bring a small sack; but Braddell refused any explanation, and the sergeant and a constable—the latter with the sack over his arm—returned with the two young men to the bungalow. With a gesture that was instinctively dramatic Braddell unlocked the bureau, threw up the lid, and, with his eyes fixed on the sergeant, said:—

  “Put it in the sack.”

  “Put what, sir?” demanded the sergeant, staring amazedly.

  Braddell turned his eyes swiftly to the open bureau and saw that it was empty. He was too thunderstruck to utter a word, and it was Spencer who gasped out:—

  “That thing was full of notes and gold when we left a quarter of an hour ago.”

  The sergeant looked from Braddell to Spencer with a surprise which gradually gave place to a mixture of suspicion and pity.

  “There’s nothing there now, sir,” he said, as he swept his hand round the inside of the bureau. “It’s quite empty; not even a scrap of paper or a—hairpin. Sure you saw it, sir?”

  “Sure!” exclaimed Spencer, indignantly. “Do you think we’ve taken leave of our senses?”

  “Well, sir, you’ve ’ad an upsetting time,” responded the sergeant, apologetically.

  “Someone has been here,” said Braddell, suddenly; “someone strong enough to carry off the money. They can’t have gone far; there must be some traces.”

  He sprang to the door and, bending down, examined the gravel path; but it had been closely rolled and neatly swept, and there were no traces of footsteps. But a little farther on he found, on the edge of the grass, the impress of a man’s shoe, a boating shoe which had been recently whitened, for there was a speck or two of pipe-clay on the edge of the footprint.