The Crime Club

by Frank Froest

  She gurgled delightedly. ‘How clever of you. How on earth did you get to know that?’

  ‘It was plain enough for a child to see. The size of the tracks did not correspond to the length of the paces. That is where you make a mistake, Lady Malchester. You should have taken longer strides. It was quite clear that the trail had been faked for the purpose of a false scent. Then, again, you were altogether too interested when I was examining them. I had an idea then, and I got you to walk alongside the trail. The length of your stride corresponded exactly to that of the burglar.’

  ‘Wonderful!’ she ejaculated. ‘I didn’t expect to be run to earth so quickly and cleverly. But after all, Mr Menzies, though I don’t mind admitting to you that you’re right—because I shall deny this conversation later on, and you’ve got no corroboration—it will be difficult to bring anything against me merely because my stride happens to be the same length as that of a supposed burglar.’ She shook a white forefinger at him. ‘If you say a word against me there’s such a thing as an action for slander, you know.’

  ‘That is silly,’ he observed. ‘You must give me credit for a little common sense. For instance, this pipe.’ He held it up and tapped the stem lightly.

  He thought he had scored a point. For a moment the mocking light deserted the grey eyes.

  ‘I—I picked it up on the stairs this morning and pushed it in the drawer, intending to give it to one of the servants to find the owner.’

  ‘I can save you that trouble. It bears the initials W. C. The owner is Mr Walden Concord, a young gentleman whose official salary as a government clerk by no means covers his expenditure. He is a guest of Mr Holdron’s, I believe, and a friend of yours. He arrived about ten o’clock last night and was supposed to have retired shortly afterwards. As a matter of fact, he never went to bed at all.’

  The woman’s self-confidence was rapidly vanishing. ‘How do you know that?’ she demanded.

  He stuck his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat and beamed complacently. ‘There’s no Sherlock Holmes about that, Lady Malchester. I have been talking to the servants. One of them, the butler, tells me he happened to see a figure prowling about the grounds, and investigated. He got near enough to recognise Mr Concord, and, concluding that if any of his master’s guests chose to walk about late on a damp night it was no business of his, he was withdrawing when he saw a woman steal out of the house. He recognised her.’

  Her cheeks were scarlet. ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘Well!’ he drawled. ‘This morning Mr Concord sent his man out for his pipe, which he had, he said, left overnight in the summer-house where he had gone for a solitary breath of air.’

  There were great gaps in the structure Menzies had so elaborately reared on the facts he had gained, and no one was better aware of its weakness than himself. But he judged that Lady Malchester’s logical strength was breaking down, and he was determined to press his advantages.

  She slid down from the bureau and passed a hand in a weary gesture across her brow. Very pretty and very helpless she looked, and if Menzies had not held very rigid ideas of duty he might have felt compunctious.

  ‘That proves nothing,’ she declared faintly.

  ‘Mr Holdron will form his own opinion,’ he retorted. ‘It will probably be the same as mine by the time I have searched your room.’

  A flash of spirit seemed to return to her. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I’m going to,’ he returned doggedly, ‘with your permission or without it.’

  Something glinted in her hand, and with a swiftness of which his bulk gave no promise he sprang forward and wrenched away a small pistol. He stepped back and dropped it in his pocket. ‘This is mere foolishness,’ he said severely.

  Her slender form was shaking and her hands were in front of her face. ‘You—you—forced me to do it,’ she exclaimed brokenly. ‘I can’t stand exposure.’ Suddenly she was on the floor at his feet. ‘You can’t understand what it means. If I give back everything—everything—that’s all you want—all Mr Holdron wants. You needn’t tell him—’

  He raised her gently to her feet and pulled a chair under her. Her emotion seemed genuine enough, and although he was inclined to believe in it he was too wary to be deceived by a new feint.

  ‘I’m afraid I can make no promises. I am acting for Mr Holdron, and he is entitled to know everything I learn. I have no discretion in that way.’

  ‘But if I give up everything—’

  He shook his head. ‘You must do that in any event.’

  But he had pushed his advantage too far. The scarlet lips became doggedly pursed, and her bent figure straightened. ‘You can either ruin me by exposure to Mr Holdron or you can recover the papers. You will never find them unless I choose to tell you.’

  ‘We will see,’ he said grimly.

  He resumed his methodical search of the room as calmly as though she were not present. Yet he felt that it was hopeless. Even under the best conditions no man, however skilled, can hope to thoroughly search the smallest room when time is limited. It is largely a matter of luck if he finds an article, even if it has not been hidden. And Lady Malchester seemed very confident. Once, while he was rummaging the papers in the bureau, out of the tail of his eye he caught a glimpse of her in the mirror. He could have sworn she was smiling. Yet when he wheeled swiftly she was still sitting meekly, hands folded in her lap, with downcast eyes and despondent face. He closed the bureau with a snap that showed he was a little irritated, and thrust his hands into his trousers pockets.

  ‘Mr Menzies,’ she said tremulously.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If I return the money and the papers, will you give me one day’s grace before you tell Mr Holdron?’ Her voice was very low. ‘That can’t hurt you much. I could not stand—the—the disgrace if I were here. Give me a day to get away and I shall not mind so much. Surely a single day can’t be very important?’

  There were tears in her voice and in her big, childlike, grey eyes. He gnawed his moustache while he considered her appeal. It was not so unreasonable. He had scarcely hoped to clear up the affair so completely even in two days. If he refused he might get the documents before the next day or he might not get them at all. The compromise seemed the wisest policy.

  ‘That is outside my instructions,’ he said, ‘but I will do it.’

  The criss-cross of lines that marred her white forehead disappeared. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘Will you turn your head for a moment?’

  He obeyed. There was a rustle of garments and then a crackle of papers. It was obvious that the things had been concealed in her stocking. The hiding-place had all the merit of simplicity and accessibility. She held out the papers.

  ‘I am very much obliged, Lady Malchester,’ he said formally.

  Holdron paced impatiently to and fro across the library, and Menzies noticed that his fingers were twitching. He was quite clearly in a high state of nervous tension. His eyes dwelt malevolently on the detective as though he meditated wresting the secret from him by force.

  ‘When you’re satisfied with this melodramatic nonsense perhaps you will condescend to tell me what you mean,’ he snarled. ‘If this is a trick to enhance your fee it doesn’t go down with me.’

  ‘It is unusual,’ admitted Menzies. ‘But you’re a reasonable man, Mr Holdron, and you’ll see the difficulty of my position. I have got the papers and have solved the mystery, but I could have done neither if I had not passed my word that you should not receive my report till tomorrow.’

  The other came to an abrupt halt. ‘The papers, man! You have the papers? Give them to me.’ His hand fell on a bronzed elephant used as a paper weight.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Menzies with determination. ‘I will post them on from town tonight.’

  So unexpected was Holdron’s next movement that the detective was almost taken unawares. He saw the hand with the bronze elephant flicker upwards, and divined the other’s intention as the missile left his hand.
He sprawled sideways, chair and all, and so saved his face. But a numbing shock in the right shoulder told him that his assailant had not entirely missed. The next moment Holdron was upon him, fighting with a dynamic energy that more than made up for the difference in weight and muscle.

  In any ordinary encounter the city man would not have lasted a second against the burly detective, but Menzies was on the ground and still entangled with his chair. Moreover, his right arm was for the moment useless.

  It was all over in five seconds. Strong, lean hands twined about his throat. He jerked his elbow up into the other man’s stomach and heard a groan. Then his head was thrown violently backwards against one of the legs of the chair and a red mist swam before his eyes. Thereafter he lost consciousness.

  He awoke with a sharp tang of spirit in his throat, and at once all his senses were keenly alert. A bronzed face with a toothbrush moustache was near his own and Captain Lackett’s arm was supporting his head. He sat up abruptly and met the composed, smiling face of Lady Malchester. She was comfortably tucked up in a big arm-chair, her knees crossed and one foot rhythmically swaying.

  ‘You come to life like a Jack-in-the-box,’ observed Lackett, straightening himself. ‘How d’you feel? Here, let me give you a hand up.’

  ‘I’ll be all right in half a minute,’ said Menzies. His eyes lighted with inquiry on Lady Malchester. She was smiling whimsically at him as she had done when she had first come across him examining the footprints. He tried to resolve the problem, but his brain was clear enough to show him the impossibility. ‘Where is Holdron?’ he asked.

  ‘Sitting in a cell by now wondering whether he is going to be tried by court-martial or by the civil power,’ said Lackett.

  Menzies rubbed his eyebrows and took a long breath. A swift and appalling foreboding that he—sometime chief inspector of the C.I.D.—had been used as a tool by the unscrupulous intelligence officer flashed across his mind. The details were hazy, but he had no doubts of the main facts. There was evidence in the vibrant grey eyes of Lady Malchester, in the lurking smile under Lackett’s tooth-brush moustache.

  ‘That so?’ he remarked blandly. ‘Well, you had better luck than I did.’

  Lady Malchester giggled. ‘Stung!’ said Lackett.

  ‘The old war-horse smells the battle and won’t admit that he’s lame in the off foreleg. Now, Menzies, be a sport. Admit that you’ve been done down for once and we’ll admit you into the secret. You earned that, anyhow.’

  ‘I seem to have broken in on you somehow,’ said the detective. ‘I’ll own that I’m guessing. The secret service is on top this time. Now then. And I apologise to you, Lady Malchester. You stung me neatly. You’re a credit to the service, if you don’t mind me saying so. Still, if I’d been given a hint—’

  ‘Lady Malchester is not in the service,’ said Lackett. ‘She assisted me for—’

  ‘Love,’ interjected Menzies, and had his reward. A crimson tinge crept under the tan of Lackett’s countenance. Lady Malchester was unmoved.

  ‘If I had known what Captain Lackett has since told me,’ she said, ‘I might have taken you into my confidence. But I didn’t know you, and it was simpler to take no risks—the more especially as I took good care to see you did all you were wanted to.’

  ‘I seem to remember you on your knees begging me not to expose you.’

  ‘That was the transpontine touch,’ she smiled. ‘Do you know, I wouldn’t have had you go away without those papers for anything. I wanted you to think you forced them from me.’

  Menzies pushed his hands widely, palms outward. ‘Am I drunk or is the room only standing on its head? Things seem to be spinning round. All I know is that Holdron is a spy, and that you are the lady who was so naÏvely interested in detective work. I never associated you with Captain Lackett.’

  ‘These are the facts,’ said Lackett. ‘Holdron, of course, was a spy, or as good as a spy. His financial interests have been largely bound up in Germany, and it’s only lately that I ran on to his tracks. During the last few years he’s been making many friends in official circles—not the very biggest men, but people with access to confidential information—this man Concord, for instance.

  ‘There had been leakages which could only have come from someone inside, and once I was on the case it was easy to suspect Concord, who was spending a deal more than his small private income and smaller salary. I wanted to get at the man behind, so I waited before jumping on Concord. I had had him closely watched, and naturally there wasn’t a letter he mailed or received that didn’t come under my eye. The only correspondent he had who was at all doubtful was Holdron—but there was nothing to take hold of, you understand. Holdron was too clever for that. That was where Lady Malchester came in. She found mutual friends and got an introduction. She even managed—she has her own methods—to secure an invitation to this dinner-party, which, though we didn’t know it then, had been arranged for a definite purpose.

  ‘Mark the cunning of the man. Yesterday Concord was to take copies of certain cipher documents which showed a strategic plan to be put in execution next week. It was essential that they should be passed over to Holdron as quickly as possible, yet suspicion might have been aroused should it be observed that a Government clerk had been in definite communication with him, and they, of course, daren’t trust them to the post. But a house-party to which Concord had been invited long before—you get me?

  ‘Anyway, there we were—Lady Malchester watchng our friend Holdron, I keeping an eye on Concord. When Concord caught a train down here last night, I was behind him. You see, I didn’t want any accident to happen to him while he had those papers.’

  ‘You knew he had them, and yet—’

  Lackett leaned forward and emphasised his point with a forefinger. ‘Yes, it wasn’t quite so simple as merely getting them back. You see, it had been arranged that information—of a kind—should reach the enemy—I had duplicate documents which I wished to transfer for the genuine ones unbeknown to our young friend.’

  Menzies smacked his thigh. ‘That’s the point that’s been worrying me. Of course you want the scheme to be carried out so that you would know its workings. By gum, why didn’t I think of it!’ He was seriously annoyed with himself.

  ‘Because it was no more likely to occur to you than a million other hypotheses, I suppose. Anyway, I failed. Mr Man had a motor waiting for him at the station, and I hoofed it in to the village. I knew that Lady Malchester would pick up the end without any help from me, and I didn’t want to risk being seen fussing about the house.’

  Lady Malchester took up the story.

  ‘That was where I took the stage. My maid—you’re not the only one who knows the value of servants as agents for collecting information—had become rather friendly with the chauffeur here, and consequently I knew the exact time of Concord’s arrival, but in case of accidents I had the combination of the safe—Holdron keeps it on a slip of paper at the back of his watch, and I arranged that he should sleep soundly the night before last.’

  ‘You drugged him and entered his bedroom? Well, you’ve sure got a nerve.’

  There was a gleam of mischief in the childish face. ‘Something had to be done,’ she said, as though that settled the matter. ‘It was only just the tiniest little drop in his wine. So you see I was all ready for emergencies. I and my maid between us kept a close eye on Concord after he arrived, and when he went out into the grounds I followed. You rather jumped to conclusions about that, Mr Menzies.’

  ‘You didn’t disillusion me.’

  ‘That would scarcely have been policy,’ she smiled. ‘Anyway, I shadowed him—that’s the technical term, isn’t it?—to the summer-house, where Holdron was already waiting. I suppose the rendezvous had been arranged beforehand. I heard all I wanted to, and the papers passed over. Concord left his pipe and I was silly enough to pick it up. I got back to the house, unseen as far as I know, and found Holdron with his guests. Then I made an excuse, slipped into the library and ope
ned the safe, collared all the papers I could see, and walked out quite openly. At the worst the papers wouldn’t reach the enemy.’

  ‘She had no duplicates to replace them,’ explained Lackett. ‘I had not seen her then.’

  ‘No,’ said Lady Malchester. ‘Well, it was sometime after midnight that the car started out, and I heard from my maid there had been a robbery, and that Holdron had sent a car to London to fetch a well-known private detective. I didn’t learn your name till next day. It seemed a pity that you shouldn’t have a clue to work on, so at four this morning I borrowed a pair of boots—there were plenty outside the bedroom doors—and laid a trail. I must say you used it rather cleverly.

  ‘Naturally I surmised that Captain Lackett would not be far away from Concord. They had been accustomed to my taking a solitary walk before breakfast during the few days I have been here, and today was no exception. He, as a matter of fact, was looking for me, and we had a chat.’

  ‘I was rather chagrined,’ said Lackett. ‘Luck seemed to have been against us for, though it was important to recover the documents, we seemed to have lost all chance of following up the means that were to be used to get them away. Then it was that Lady Malchester thought of you—of allowing you to recover the false papers.’

  ‘I do think,’ grumbled Menzies, ‘that it would have been more simple to have taken me into your confidence.’

  ‘Now don’t be peevish, Mr Menzies,’ said Lady Malchester, with a little grimace. ‘You were a stranger to me. It was so much more convincing for you to run the criminal to earth yourself. If you had been at fault I was prepared to make the clues plainer—but you seemed to have picked up the right scent at once. It would have been harder to stage-manage with a duller man. You will remember that I never pledged you not to return the papers to Holdron at once, but only not to disclose the identity of the thief. I didn’t want him to have any suspicion that I was helping the secret service till he’d passed the bogus information on. He’d have known at once, of course, that I was in no need of money.’