by Frank Froest
‘I’d take it easy if I were you,’ he warned icily. ‘I’m not that kind of private inquiry agent. If you want to rush me into something blindfold, I’ve got to be careful. I’m not dirtying my fingers. And remember, Mr Man, I’m not a junior clerk in your city offices.’
The other abruptly twisted round his padded chair, and his harsh, astonished gaze met the level eyes of the detective.
Suddenly he gave a short laugh. ‘You’re right, Mr Menzies. I apologise. I forgot you were in a way my guest. I am rather worried over this business and it’s got on my nerves,’
The detective nodded imperturbably. ‘I only want to be treated right,’ he went on mildly. ‘You’ve dragged me fifty miles down here by motor-car leaving me to name my own fee, so that whatever you’ve got on is pretty urgent. I know now that your safe’—he jerked his head to a big steel vault built into the wall—‘was opened between ten and midnight by someone who had evidently got the combination. I know that some papers have been taken, and you say it’s not necessary that I should know what they are. Now you suppose burglary, because there are footprints leading from beneath this window to and from the stables, where there was a ladder. I don’t say you’re not right, but if you don’t give me a hint of what was taken, how can I guess at any motive?’
Holdron stroked one eyebrow with a penholder. ‘There’s the footprints,’ he suggested. ‘There’s a start.’
A flicker of irritability passed across the detective’s face. ‘I don’t keep a pocket-register of footprints,’ he retorted. ‘You’ve a dozen guests in your house-party and a score of servants in the house besides outsiders. Do you want me to collect all their boots? Give me a reason why someone should want those papers, and I’ll be that much nearer to saying who it was.’
He was getting annoyed at the way the point was continually parried. He knew nothing about Alfred Holdron save that he had some kind of financial and export business in the City, and was apparently a wealthy man, to judge by the style in which he was entertaining at his country house. But even wealthy City men have skeletons in cupboards, and Menzies was wary. Private inquiry agents have more than once been engaged to find out exactly what their employers have arranged they should find out.
‘How did you know that I suspect someone in the house?’ demanded Holdron.
‘Since the combination was used you could hardly avoid it,’ said Menzies dryly. ‘Perhaps it would be as well if we went into the question of these papers.’
His client let his gaze wander thoughtfully through the broad windows on to the trim grounds. He had completely dropped his arrogant, curt air.
‘No outsider knew I had those documents,’ he said at last, ‘and to the ordinary person they would be a meaningless string of letters and figures. They were in cipher, and I had intended to decode them this morning.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘They were of supreme importance in certain business negotiations in which I am concerned.’
He rose and paced the room uneasily, his feet making no sound on the thick carpet.
‘There was a number of bank-notes in that safe laying with the papers. That must have been the real object of the theft. As you say, there was obvious collusion.’
‘Let’s be clear about this, then,’ said Menzies speaking with precision. ‘I can’t act in leading-strings. You must give me a free hand.’
‘Certainly. So long as you point out the thief to me and keep your mouth shut I don’t care how you do it.’
Weir Menzies wore a frown when he emerged from the library. Somehow he distrusted Holdron, and yet beyond his first lack of candour about the contents of the missing ciphers there was no tangible reason why he should do so. That suspicion that he was being used as a tool for a crooked purpose would persist at the back of his mind. Yet, after all, if he were to refuse lucrative commissions on instinctive prejudice he might as well give up his profession.
For the time being Holdron was his employer and he had to earn his pay. He resolutely bent his thoughts on the definite problem. All that Holdron could tell, or would tell, about his guests or servants had been reduced to a few Greek notes on the back of an envelope. It was a long-standing habit with Menzies to make his notes in Greek. In case of loss, the odds were against the finder being able to understand them.
He had refused Holdron’s company while he inspected the footprints and he stood for a while looking thoughtfully down on the flower border in which the first two or three were embedded—heavy, obviously men’s tracks showing as distinctly in the soft earth as though picked out in plaster of Paris. Slowly he followed their course round to the stables—a matter of twenty yards—and then again he came to a halt, tilting his bowler hat and scratching his head with the brim.
Then a slow grin overspread his face. He knelt and took some measurements, and was entering them on his inevitable envelope when he became conscious of an onlooker.
A woman—she might fairly have been described as a girl—was watching him with frank curiosity. He saw a slim grey figure with smiling, ingenuous eyes and a glory of fair hair. He raised his hat, and he caught a flash of white teeth.
‘You are the detective from London, are you not?’ she said. ‘Mr Holdron told me you had arrived. I am Lady Malchester. Have I caught you in the act of detecting something? Have you’—she breathed the words with an expression of mock awe—‘got a clue?’
Now Weir Menzies was a business man and he liked his business taken seriously. Not that he had no sense of humour. He could stand ridicule as a part of the game, but he was thin-skinned with outsiders. He bowed stiffly.
‘I am pleased if my antics afford you any entertainment, madam,’ he said with frigidity.
Her big grey eyes opened widely in hurt astonishment, like those of a child who has been sternly checked in an innocent amusement. Then the sunshine flashed into her face again.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said. ‘It was silly of me to question you, wasn’t it?—only, you see, I’m so frightfully fascinated. I’ve read a lot about detectives, but I’ve never seen one at work before. Mr Holdron was telling us at breakfast that he had sent for a man with a most tremendous reputation and I guessed it was you directly I saw you looking at those footprints. You are Mr Weir Menzies, aren’t you?’
He had stood moodily with downcast gaze while she spoke, as though constrained only by politeness to listen to irrevelant chatter. Now he looked up and laughed.
‘That’s me,’ he agreed. ‘It’s rather a disillusionment, eh? I not in disguise, and I’m afraid I don’t carry either a microscope or a revolver. In fact, Lady Malchester, practically the only tool I carry around with me is plain horse sense.’
An idea had come to him that this ingenuous young lady was not quite so verdant as she seemed. He knew that Holdron had told his guests that the safe had been robbed—there had been no particular reason for keeping the disappearance of the bank-notes secret—and that he had sent for Menzies. He had mentioned Lady Malchester’s name to the detective in describing his guests—a society beauty, a young widow of a baronet with plenty of money, who spent a good deal of her time looking for new amusements.
‘Not even handcuffs?’ she said wistfully.
He shook his head. ‘Not even handcuffs. They’d be a frightful nuisance.’
‘But the footprints,’ she persisted. ‘Don’t tell me the footprints aren’t a clue. You’ll destroy my faith in fiction for ever and ever if you say that.’
His face was solemn. ‘I’ll let you into a secret,’ he said portentously. ‘They are a clue. Men’s boots, size 9, according to the tracks. You’ll observe that the quality of the earth round this side of the house is different to anywhere else in the grounds. I have taken a sample of it, and I bribed the man who cleans the boots to scrape the mud off all the size 9’s and put each sample in separate envelopes. Later, I shall send them all to an analyst to find the thief. I have already decided that he weighs 190 lb., and has black hair which he parts on the left. He has six buttons to his vest, and he is fond of lager.
’
‘I believe you’re making fun of me,’ she said doubtfully.
‘I wouldn’t dare,’ he declared. ‘Now, if you really would like to do me a favour, Lady Malchester, I want to measure how far it is from this ladder to that flower bed. Thank you so much.’
He tied a knot in the string at a point which indicated the distance and, coiling it, placed it in his pocket. ‘I have to go in to the village now,’ he added. ‘I shall no doubt have the privilege of seeing you at lunch—if I can manage to get back in time.’
She murmured an assent, and he strode away. Lady Malchester remained for a little while watching his retreating figure, and her grey eyes were more hard and less childlike.
‘He’s not altogether a fool,’ she murmured. Then with a philosophic shake of the head: ‘A fool would be less easy to manipulate than a fairly clever man—and less fun.’
There is a newspaper motto, much more closely observed in detective circles than in journalistic life—always verify your facts. Truth is a necessity for the detective, a handicap for the journalist. The foundations of a successful inquiry need more than a brilliant flash of inspiration or deduction. Though Weir Menzies believed he had got a glimmering of the truth, he was too old a hand to expect it to immediately unravel itself. It was probable that a good deal of heavy inquiry work would have to be done before he became clear about the case.
Certain crimes, as all criminologists know, fall into grooves. It is comparatively easy to eliminate those who, either through lack of motive or lack of opportunity, could not have committed them. One can usually ignore a millionaire when investigating a case of pocket picking. An East End loafer would not be capable of a skilled forgery. Most classes of crime show in themselves a particular group among whom to look for the perpetrator.
Here, however, Weir Menzies, on the facts as he knew them, had no very definite arena of search. Holdron’s theory, that the robber had only accidentally taken the cipher documents, might be perfectly sound. In that case most members of the house-party were probably above suspicion. On the other hand—and Menzies felt that it was strongly possible—the bank-notes might have been taken merely as a blind. There are varying standards of honesty, and if the papers dealt with some big projected financial coup, the thief might just as likely be a peer of impeccable reputation as a professional burglar.
At a tiny village post-office, Menzies wrote a comprehensive wire to his partner in London. There was plenty of material in it to test the singularly complete organisation of their office, for it included a list of every one of Holdron’s guests, with a request that as much detailed information as possible might be gathered about each one. It might have seemed superfluous that the detective laid some stress upon the name of his own employer.
As he emerged from the post-office a bronzed little man with a tooth-brush moustache and square shoulders met him in the doorway. He came to an abrupt halt.
‘What the blazes are you doing in a hole like this, Mr Menzies?’
Menzies grinned as he shook hands. ‘I’m a freelance now, Captain Lackett. Able to pick and choose my jobs a little. If it comes to that, you are about the last man I should have expected to find here.’
‘Meaning I’m to mind my own business,’ grinned Lackett. ‘I’m doing a bit of fishing—got a bit run down, you know, so I thought I’d take a holiday.’
‘Queer time to take a holiday, isn’t it? War and all that, you know.’
It was Lackett’s turn to grin. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Look me up if you’re staying in the neighbourhood. I’m at the Dolphin.’
‘I certainly will if I get a chance. So long for now.’
The detective strode out in the roadway with new food for thought. The presence of one of the keenest brains in the Intelligence Service in an obscure Hampshire village, while the greatest war in history was being waged, might be accounted for by a passion for fishing, but on the whole Menzies thought not. He wondered if it had anything to do with Holdron’s case, whether the deal this client had mentioned had anything to do with the war. It was a possibility not to be lost sight of.
He reached the house half an hour before lunch and the butler found in him a congenial spirit. Menzies had a faculty for friendliness when he cared to exert it, and he pressed into service an utterly fictitious relative who was bailiff to an earl. Many pumps work on the reciprocal principle. You must pour water down them first. Menzies made no attempt to conceal his identity, and poured a number of reminiscences confidentially into appreciative ears. In return he received a tolerable amount of gossip and scandal concerning Holdron and his friends—for an upper servant knows many things gathered from valets, maids, and keepers. The butler had no conception that he was being made a victim of Menzies’s painless method of extracting information.
‘There’s the first lunch bell, Mr Menzies.’ The butler felt himself justified in the subtle avoidance of ‘sir’. Hadn’t the detective practically admitted that they were on the same social level! ‘I suppose you’ll be lunching upstairs?’
‘I suppose so,’ agreed Menzies. ‘Just one moment, though, Mr Wringley. I don’t want to worry Mr Holdron about this. I want to know exactly where every one slept last night. Can you draw a rough plan for me, marking each room with the name of the occupant?’
Wringley agreed, and five minutes later Menzies, with the plan in his waistcoat pocket, was walking sedately upstairs. He met Holdron on the landing.
‘Any luck?’ demanded his client.
He shook his head. ‘I can’t tell yet. I may be closer up tonight. By the way, I may be a little late for lunch or I may not come down at all. I hope you won’t mind?’
‘Not at all,’ snapped Holdron, and with a curt nod resumed his descent.
Lady Malchester gave a gasp that resolved itself into a stifled cry, and her hand went to her heart. Menzies gave her credit for being genuinely startled—almost as startled as he was. He had just taken a pipe from one of the drawers of her dressing-table—a common, straight-stemmed, silver-mounted briar pipe, and so quiet had been her entry that her cry was the first indication he had received of her presence.
He looked up quietly. So far from being disconcerted was he, that one might have imagined him engaged in a most commonplace act instead of being caught red-handed ransacking a lady’s room.
‘You—you blackguard!’ she said tensely.
‘Quite so,’ he agreed mildly. ‘I should come in and close the door if I were you. One cannot tell who may pass.’
She pulled the door savagely open and stood defiantly with fists clenched, a dainty figure of wrath. ‘I hope they will,’ she flamed. ‘You will perhaps be able to explain what you are doing here.’
Impulsively she crossed the room, sweeping disdainfully by him, and laid one hand on the bell. He wheeled to continue to face her, and smiled benevolently.
‘You will find that bell act ever so much better if you press the push instead of the moulding,’ he commented dryly.
For an instant he thought she was going to strike him. Then she dropped her hand, and her face lost its passion. Her whole attitude changed.
Re-crossing the room she slowly closed the door and answered his smile. ‘Really, Mr Menzies, it is difficult to lose one’s temper with you. I ought really to call the servants and have you thrown out, and I can’t tell why I don’t, except that I’m curious. I may do it yet. Meanwhile, you might gratify my curiosity a little. I suppose I am what you would call a suspected person?’
He liked this attitude of hers somewhat less than that of lofty indignation. He prepared himself for more subtle tactics on her part than a crude bluff of anger. He toyed mechanically with the pipe.
‘Undoubtedly,’ he said bluntly.
There was an open bureau to which he had already directed his attention. She stood with her back to it, placed both hands upon its surface, and swung lightly to a seat, her satin-shod feet dangling. Laughing lightly she picked a scented cigarette from a box at her side, applied a light,
and tried unsuccessfully to blow a smoke ring.
‘So I’m a burglar, Mr Menzies—a sort of Lady Raffles.’ Her gay eyes met his austere ruddy face in mocking challenge. ‘Do you know I’m frightfully interested. What is the right thing to do? You must have had such a lot of experience in these cases. Do I go on my knees and beg you to spare me, or do you snap the handcuffs swiftly upon my wrists and hale me forthwith to the deepest dungeon of the village police station? Or does the village police station keep a dungeon? Perhaps the constable there uses a woodshed. I hope it isn’t damp.’
Her badinage embarrassed him more palpably than her unexpected entrance had done. She was something beyond his experience, and she was giving proof of a consummate nerve whether she was innocent or guilty. He had few doubts in his own mind upon the question. She must have suspected a possible search of her room or she would not have returned so unexpectedly ten minutes after lunch had commenced. Nor would she have so calmly acquiesced in his presence there had she no sense of guilt.
‘I shall put the facts before Mr Holdron,’ he said stiffly. ‘It will be for him to decide what steps to take.’
She laughed again. ‘It will be a horrible scandal in high life, won’t it? Only, of course’—she perched her head on one side like a bird—‘you are quite certain about me. Do you know, in every detective novel I have ever read the hero—that’s you—explains the steps by which he exposed the villain—that’s me. I’d love to hear how you penetrated my subtle machinations.’
He frowned at her. After all, she was not a professional criminal. As a churchwarden and one of the pillars of a suburban constitutional club, Weir Menzies was a staunch believer that the upper classes were the salt of the nation. It pained him, it revolted his sense of womanliness, that she should meet the situation with flippancy. That was almost worse than being a thief. The scent of her cigarette irritated him.
‘If you want to know,’ he said grudgingly, ‘it can’t do any harm, as the rest of the facts are bound to come out. I know that you laid that trail of footsteps—you probably wore men’s boots over your own.’