The Hangman

by Gerald Verner

  THE HANGMAN

  Gerald Verner

  © Gerald Verner 1934

  © Chris Verner 2014

  Gerald Verner has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1934 by Wright & Brown Ltd.

  This edition published in 2019 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  to

  vi with love

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One – the surrey murderer

  Chapter Two – the thing on the lamp-post

  Chapter Three – the second victim

  Chapter Four – terror!

  Chapter Five – shadgold pays a call

  Chapter Six – a conference

  Chapter Seven – lunch for two

  Chapter Eight – two who feared

  Chapter Nine – the nail

  Chapter Ten – “monkey” george

  Chapter Eleven – the third crime

  Chapter Twelve – tar

  Chapter Thirteen – the third finger

  Chapter Fourteen – colonel hastings makes up his mind

  Chapter Fifteen – the hangman?

  Chapter Sixteen – the key

  Chapter Seventeen – the arrest

  Chapter Eighteen – for the defence

  Chapter Nineteen – white has an idea

  Chapter Twenty – the compact

  Chapter Twenty-One – a new angle

  Chapter Twenty-Two – the knife in the dark

  Chapter Twenty-Three – a near thing

  Chapter Twenty-Four – missing!

  Chapter Twenty-Five – the hangman!

  Chapter Twenty-Six – escape!

  Chapter Twenty-Seven – peril!

  Chapter Twenty-Eight – nothing to chance

  Chapter Twenty-Nine – through the night

  Chapter Thirty – tragedy!

  Chapter Thirty-One – dawn!

  Chapter Thirty-Two – odds and ends

  Chapter One – the surrey murderer

  Most people have heard of that big rambling red-brick building nestling among the Berkshire hills, which is called Widemoore Asylum, and which houses those unfortunate people who have been classified by law as the criminally insane. Looked at casually from the road, it has the appearance of a country residence owned by some wealthy family, rather than a Government Institution. Its lawns are trim and well kept; its flower beds blaze with colour, and its hedges are symmetrical and closely clipped. Only the steel bars that can be seen guarding some of the windows betray its real purpose; the segregation from the rest of the world of those unfortunate creatures who due to some kink of the brain have violently taken human life. For the majority of the people incarcerated within those pleasant walls have been convicted of murder, and found by a merciful jury “guilty but insane.”

  On a warm morning in late February, when the trees were beginning to show signs of awakening from their winter sleep and donning their summer finery, Colonel Hastings, the governor of this establishment, sat behind his big desk in the large airy room which served him for an office, and from which he controlled the lives of those committed to his care, and stared out of the window across the broad expanse of lawn that lay within his view. His face, florid and inclined to fatness, wore a worried expression, and his large capable hands played nervously with a pen, rolling it gently up and down the blotting-pad, while his lips beneath his grey closely-cropped moustache, pursed themselves into a silent whistle. His whole appearance betrayed doubt and a certain vague uneasiness. For some minutes he sat staring fixedly out upon the green of the grass plot, and then with a sudden shrug of his broad shoulders, he leaned back in his padded chair, reached towards a box of cigarettes, took one and lit it. He inhaled the smoke deeply, expelling it in a slow stream from between his still pursed lips, and shook his head. There came a tap at the door, and without looking round, Hastings grunted an invitation to enter. A dark, pleasant-looking man came in, and approached the desk, carrying a handful of papers. His round eyes twinkled through the thick lens of the horn-rimmed glasses he wore perched on the bridge of his rather large nose.

  “If you will sign these, sir,” he said, laying the papers on the blotting-pad, “everything will be in order.”

  The governor picked up his pen without a word and brought the nib towards the line which awaited his signature. With it almost touching the paper he paused.

  “I don’t like it, Thompson,” he muttered uneasily. “I don’t like it at all.”

  His secretary raised his eyebrows slightly.

  “You cannot alter the law, sir,” he replied, “however much you may disagree with it. The whole thing has been approved by the Home Secretary and there it is.”

  “Nevertheless it’s a tremendous responsibility,” said Colonel Hastings. “Think, Thompson, we are letting this man loose on the world, a man who has already taken two lives, a man who has been proved to possess a homicidal kink.”

  “It’s not your responsibility, sir,” argued Thompson, “all the necessary formalities have been complied with. Smedley has been examined by four specialists, and they have all reported him completely sane. The mania from which he suffered has been cured.”

  “How can they be sure of that?” demanded Hastings vehemently. “How can they tell he won’t break out again? They can’t! The first that anyone will know of it is when the unfortunate victim is found.”

  Thompson shrugged his shoulders.

  “I quite agree with you, sir,” he said. “But as I remarked before, the law is the law and you can’t go against it. This man, who is undoubtedly a murderer, was not responsible for his actions. He was insane but he has now become sane, and therefore according to the law he can no longer be detained.”

  The governor sighed.

  “Oh well, I suppose it’s no business of mine,” he muttered, and scrawled his signature at the foot of the three documents that lay before him. “When is he going?”

  “To-morrow morning,” answered Thompson, gathering up the papers. “His relations are sending for him.”

  “‘The Surrey Murderer,’ the newspapers called him,” said Hastings musingly. “He hanged his wife and little daughter. Twenty-years ago, that was, and now we’re letting him out to hang some more people.”

  “Aren’t you being rather pessimistic, sir?” said the secretary, smiling.

  “Maybe I am, Thompson, maybe I am,” replied the governor, rising to his feet. “But I don’t believe in letting these people go. Once a lunatic always a lunatic is my motto. However, as you say, it’s not my responsibility, thank God.”

  It worried him all the same for the rest of the day, and a greater part of the night, for he slept badly. At twelve o’clock on the following morning, a big saloon car arrived, and into it, after certain formalities had been complied with, stepped Harold Smedley, accompanied by the brother who had come to take him away.

  Colonel Hastings watched the car as it disappeared round a bend in the broad drive, and returned to his duties a silent and thoughtful man.

  “Are you still worrying about Smedley, sir?” asked Thompson during the afternoon, noticing his employer’s obvious preoccupation.

  “To be perfectly candid, I am,” confessed the colonel. “I’ve got a premonition that we haven’t heard the last of him. I think we’ve done a very foolish thing, and—well I don’t mind admitting that I’m afraid.”

  It was not until a year later that his fears were realized.

  Chapter Two – the thing on the lamp-post

  It is a remarkable fact that the enmity which exists between the various residential districts surrounding London proper should amount almost to racial hatred. But it is so. The inhabitants of Golders Green regard the reside
nts of Tooting with a scornful eye, the elect of Chelsea speak about the denizens of Balham with curled lips as though they were an unnecessary evil. Mayfair shrugs its thin shoulders when Brixton is mentioned and murmurs: “My dear, too frightfully suburban.” And Bloomsbury looks on everyone that lives outside its own small circle with rank suspicion. But by far the worst cases of this district snobbery are to be found in the people who live in the innumerable “Garden Cities” which have recently sprung up with all the rapid growth of unchecked weeds in a neglected garden. These people carry the matter into the realms of a fine art. Their particular corner of the world is the only place where any decent-minded person could possibly live. People who inhabit other neighbourhoods exist but do not live. They merely make the best of a bad job and are to be pitied. Nowhere was this extraordinary attitude of mind more noticeable than among the residents of Hill Green. This, according to the advertisements, “most desirable residential district,” is within twenty minutes of London. To those who possess cars, this is probably true, but otherwise the statement is—to say the least of it—exaggerated. It is a fact that trains run frequently from the station at Hill Green to Waterloo, and vice versa, and that if they made a non-stop run, they would probably do the journey in twenty minutes. Unfortunately they do not make a non-stop run. There is a signal-box outside Hill Green Station, containing a malicious signalman whose one apparent joy in life is to stop the train after it has left Hill Green, and keep it impatiently waiting, for at least ten minutes before he reluctantly allows it to continue its journey. Such, however, is the loyalty of the residents that they invariably refer to the excellence of the train service at Hill Green, and contrast it, to their detriment, with the train services from other districts.

  Mr. Percy Stott was enlarging upon this to his friend, Mr. Julian Rusk, as the seven-twenty train entered the straight run that ended at the flower-decked platform of Hill Green. He began it by extracting his watch, a large and important affair, from his waistcoat pocket, and peered at it through his rimless pince-nez, with great concentration.

  “You see, Julian,” he remarked impressively.

  “Twenty-seven and a half minutes since we left Waterloo, and we’re just on there. Pretty good, eh?”

  “I thought you said it only took twenty minutes,” answered Mr. Rusk, a short, stout and jovial little man who was head cashier in the firm which Mr. Stott graced in the capacity of under-manager.

  “So it does, usually,” said Mr. Stott. “I have done the journey in fifteen. We should have done it in twenty to-night, if we hadn’t had that signal against us.”

  He did not add that the signal was against them five nights out of six, or that the occasion, a memorable one, when the journey had been accomplished in fifteen minutes, was the opening of the new line when everything had been done to facilitate speed.

  The train slid along the platform, and screeched to a standstill. The doors began to swing open, and discharge the fortunate passengers who lived in this ante-room to Heaven, including Mr. Stott and Mr. Rusk.

  “Notice the difference in the air, Julian?” asked Mr. Stott with pride as though the air at Hill Green was his special monopoly. “Keen and fresh. None of your London smoke here.”

  Mr. Rusk grunted and wiped away a large smut which had attached itself to the bridge of his nose. They joined the throng of people streaming along the platform towards the exit gate. Mr. Stott showed his season, and Mr. Rusk gave up his ticket to the sleepy-eyed official who was there for that purpose, and they turned and crossed the iron bridge over the line. They emerged from the entrance to the station into the cold frosty air of the night.

  “I live about ten minutes’ walk from here,” said Mr. Stott, as he turned to the left, and set off briskly along the road. “Up on Milton’s Rise. Wonderful view from the back windows, old man. You won’t be able to see it to-night, but you’ll see it in the morning. Right across the golf course.”

  Mr. Rusk grunted again, his breath issuing from his mouth in little gushes of steamy vapour, as his fat legs strove to keep pace with the longer strides of his friend.

  “If you ever think of moving, you ought to come and live at Hill Green,” continued Mr. Stott. “Just suit Mrs. Rusk. I’ve never felt so well in my life before. Since I came here I’ve put on nearly a stone.”

  This was not a very good recommendation so far as Mr. Rusk was concerned, since he spent a large proportion of his leisure in trying to remove several stones. But so full of enthusiasm was Mr. Stott over the advantages of Hill Green that this never occurred to him.

  “Nice lot of people live here, too,” he went on as they began to ascend a rather steep hill. “Mostly professional men and their families. Select, you know what I mean? Not the sort of place where you find every Tom, Dick or Harry.”

  “How long have you been here now?” asked Mr. Rusk, a trifle breathlessly.

  “Getting on for eleven months,” answered his friend. “I’m buying the house, you know, through the Hill Green Estate Trust. Very reasonable terms, too, they gave me. In another forty years it’ll be my own property. If you ever think of coming here, you couldn’t do anything better than go to them. There’s a house on the Rise that would just suit you.”

  Mr. Rusk muttered something about having several years of his lease still to run, and ventured to inquire, feeling rather cold, how much farther they had to go.

  “Only a step now,” said Mr. Stott cheerily. “I rather enjoy the walk to and from the station. It does you good, you know. Blows the cobwebs away in the morning, and gets some of the city smoke out of your lungs at night!”

  They reached the top of the hill, and turned right into a short straight road, on one side of which were finished houses, and on the other heaps of slates, and bricks and half-reared walls.

  “We turn to the left at the end of this road,” said Mr. Stott, “cross Oak Apple Lane and then we’re home.”

  “Um!” said Mr. Rusk, wondering what his friend’s definition of a step was.

  “The Rise starts on the other side of the lane,” explained Mr. Stott. “So we shan’t be long, and Mrs. Stott will have something hot all ready for us.”

  “Um!” said Mr. Rusk, again with greater emphasis.

  “It’s a bit dark here, as you can see,” his friend went on; “they haven’t got the street lamps up yet, but the Rise is different. That’s all finished. That’s why I chose my house there. These new houses”—he waved his hand towards the partially-constructed side of the road—“are nearly all damp, you know. Dangerous to take one of them until they’ve had time to air, as you might say.”

  Mr. Rusk, whose soul was longing for a fire and a hot meal, vaguely agreed with him.

  They reached the end of the street, and came to the suddenly rural Oak Apple Lane, bordered by clumps of trees and mist-swathed fields. Crossing it they entered a narrow footpath between high hedges, and came out at the foot of a long, straight stretch of road that sloped sharply upwards.

  “This,” said Mr. Stott, proudly, “is Milton’s Rise.”

  “Very nice too,” said Mr. Rusk, though whether he was referring to the beauties of Milton’s Rise, or merely to the fact that they had got there at last, was known only to himself.

  They began to breast the steep slope.

  “You see,” said Mr. Stott, pointing ahead, “this part is well lighted.”

  Mr. Rusk looked at the two lamp-posts set at two hundred yards from each other, and offered no comment.

  They continued to ascend the incline.

  “My little place,” began Mr. Stott, “is right at the top. You can——”

  “What is that?” Mr. Rusk’s voice was suddenly shrill and unnatural and his extended arm shook a little.

  “What is what?” said his friend, who was rather short sighted.

  “That?” quavered Mr. Rusk. “God Almighty! It’s a man!”

  It was a man, or rather it had once been a man. Now it was nothing but a limp and unpleasant object that dangled hi
deously from the arm of the first lamp-post.

  Mr. Stott clutched his companion’s wrist and stared.

  “It is a man!” he breathed hoarsely. “A dead man!”

  “Ought—oughtn’t we to do something?” muttered Mr. Rusk. “He may—he may not be quite dead.”

  Mr. Stott made unintelligible sounds in his throat, and together they advanced, covering the few yards that separated them from the lamp-post and its ghastly burden. The man’s feet were barely six inches from the pavement, and the head fallen on to the shoulder showed the congested face. Mr. Stott, suppressing a shiver, looked up.

  “I’m afraid he is dead,” he whispered. “We’d—we’d better inform the police.

  “There’s something here,” interrupted Mr. Rusk sharply, “look!”

  He pointed to a patch of white that showed up with gleaming distinctness against the Thing’s dark clothes. Mr. Stott bent forward and peered at it.

  It was a small square card, and it had been pinned to the coat. On it, printed in capital letters, were the words:

  “With the Compliments of

  The Hangman.”

  Chapter Three – the second victim

  Major Payton looked across his desk at Inspector Lightfoot, read nothing in that individual’s stolid face, and looked down at his blotting-pad. Presently he cleared his throat and shifted uneasily in his chair.

  “Well?” he grunted at last.

  “Well, sir?” said the inspector questioningly.

  “What are we going to do?” asked the chief constable irritably.

  “We are doing everything that’s possible, sir,” was the reply. “We are inquiring into the past life of the dead man in the hope of finding a motive for the crime.”

  The other stopped with a gesture.

  “I know. I know all that,” he said impatiently, “but I doubt if it’ll do any good. I knew Wallington very well, poor fellow. In fact, as I have told you he was a relation of mine, a cousin. I don’t think you’ll find anything out about him that’ll help you.”