by Lynn Brock
‘I can’t stick it, Wick,’ she said flatly. ‘You … you’ve done me a bad turn.’
Challoner came rushing up the stairs, alarmed to incoherence.
‘Great Scott—what …?’
He put his arm about Mrs Barrington and drew her into a bedroom and shut the door. Almost immediately, however, he reopened the door to say, ‘For God’s sake, Gore, keep your mouth shut about this,’ and slammed the door again. Gore stared at it indignantly for a moment or two, transferred his gaze to an untidy abrasion in the plaster of the wall beside it where the heavy bullet had passed in obliquely, and then went downstairs and out of the house. But he remembered to take the cardboard box with him, and also to leave the latchkey behind.
CHAPTER XVII
MR FRENSHAM’S next appearance in the affair took place on that afternoon, about six o’clock, in unexpected proximity to the Riverside.
At that hour Gore, leaving the hotel by the back entrance on his way to the club, came to an abrupt halt in the darkness of the grounds at sight of a small, burly figure which stood by the gates, tapping its bowlegs with a cane.
He stood stock still, debating with himself the significance of this extremely curious coincidence, the most obvious explanation of which was that his own movements were now under surveillance. But this conjecture was quickly abandoned. Frensham’s attitude of impatient waiting changed to one of expectant attention. Then he raised his hat and moved to meet a young woman who came into sight quickly from behind the angle of the building beside the gates.
‘Am I late?’ the young woman inquired airily, as they shook hands. ‘Of course I went and dropped the only pair of gloves I have in the world into the water-jug. I had to dry them.’
‘The only pair?’ said Frensham, with gallant scepticism. ‘You’re not going to kid me that such an attractive young lady as you can’t coax her best boy into doing better for her than that, eh?’
Miss Rodney’s rejoinder—for it was her voice unmistakably that had greeted Frensham—was sprightly if inaudible, for the pair moved off together along Selkirk Place laughing. To say that the discovery of this incipient flirtation—for that was the impression which Gore had derived from their meeting—surprised him, would be, perhaps, an overstatement of his feelings with regard to it. But it did appear to him so curious that, before he went on his way to the club, he continued to stand for some little time where he had halted, endeavouring to piece together such disjointed fragments of information concerning Miss Rodney as he possessed.
His thoughts were destined to distract themselves to Miss Rodney again very shortly.
As he sat at breakfast next morning, Percival entered to deliver a note just left by Dr Melhuish’s man.
Gore, having glanced at the note, which was an invitation to dine with Melhuish that evening failing any prior engagement, nodded and seated himself to write a brief acceptance.
‘Heard about Miss Rodney, sir?’ inquired Percival after a moment.
Gore paused, pen in hand, to look round over his shoulder.
‘Miss Rodney? No. What?’
‘Done a bunk, sir. Hopped it during the night. Took her trunk and all with her, and never said a word to no one. The guv’nor didn’t half carry on when he heard about it. ’Spect he thought she’d cleared off with some of his cash till he’d checked over the till.’
‘During the night?’
‘Yes, sir. It must have been pretty well on in the night, too, when she went. ’Cause neither of the other two young ladies that sleep out there heard her going. Though you’d say she’d have made a row fetching her trunk down the stairs, wouldn’t you, sir? If you ask me, sir, it’s a mystery.’
But Colonel Gore was too preoccupied to offer any comment, and had resumed his chilled bacon and eggs with austerity.
It may be of interest to record here in his own words Gore’s impressions as to that nocturnal flitting of Miss Rodney’s, as he set them forth in that connected narrative of the affair upon which his temporary attack of detective fever had induced him to embark.
‘I thought it odd, of course,’ he says, ‘that the girl should have gone away in that way, at that hour, without warning to the manager, and without (so I had gathered from Percival) leaving behind any indication as to where she had gone. Since she had taken her trunk with her, it seemed that some man must have assisted her to get it away. I conjectured almost at once that Frensham had had something to do with her leaving so mysteriously and giving up such a good job. It seemed possible that Frensham knew of her relations with Barrington and had been threatening exposure in the attempt to extort money from her. That might have frightened her into clearing out, in the hope of shaking Frensham off. If she had made up her mind to do that, she would probably have arranged with one of the hotel porters to remove her trunk for her. The night-porter, for instance, could have managed that part of it for her without the least difficulty—rung up for a taxi to come to the back entrance or somewhere near it, and carried the trunk to it.
‘I didn’t think, then, that there was anything more in her leaving in that fashion. I didn’t feel sure that there was even as much. I had given up the idea that she knew anything more about Barrington’s death than anyone else in the hotel did, and I didn’t for a moment connect her leaving with it. I knew she was a flighty, feather-brained little piece of goods, and it seemed just as likely as not that she had gone away with one of her admirers. I knew that she had plenty of them. Though there appeared to be no reason, in that case, why she should have selected such an ungodly hour as she seemed to have done.
‘It also occurred to me as possible that she had suddenly discovered that she was about to have a child, and had cleared out in a sudden funk on that account. But, on the whole, I had a feeling that Frensham was at the bottom of it. Certainly that morning I was ready to believe anything about Frensham.’
CHAPTER XVIII
A LITTLE after noon on that Saturday Gore paid a visit to the Excelsior Hotel. His idea being to discover, if possible, something of Mr Frensham’s ways and company, he had gone to considerable pains to transform his appearance, with, he considered, a success beyond fair risk of detection. He had shaved off his moustache. He had purchased in Oldgate, second-hand, a complete outfit of unmistakable seediness—suit, hat, boots, and neck-cloth. A beard and moustache from Barrington’s cardboard box had been bleached to a dingy-gray by a chemist in St Paul’s Road. These latter adjuncts—assisted by an ancient pair of spectacles, were assumed in a taxi—very much to the driver’s surprise—and induced their wearer to face the shrewd eyes of the Excelsior’s proprietress without serious misgivings.
Under the disguise of Mr Thomas Barker, he engaged a room for the night, paying for it in advance. Inquiry, which he endeavoured to tinge with anxiety, elicited the information that no one of the name of Metcalfe had been to the hotel that day in quest of him. Having requested that he might be informed of Mr Metcalfe’s arrival at once, he partook of the Excelsior’s midday dinner and adjourned subsequently to the bar in the company of a ship’s steward with whom he had struck up acquaintance during his meal.
The ship’s steward, it became clear, was a regular habitué of the place in the intervals between his weekly journeys to and fro across the Irish Channel. And his intimacy with the proprietress, who presided in person over her bar during its midday séance, provided Gore at any rate with a piece of information which otherwise might have been difficult of unobtrusive acquisition by a stranger to the establishment.
Mr Frensham was still the guest of the Excelsior.
‘Full up, missus?’ the steward inquired as he absorbed his Bass.
‘Wish I was, Mr Thring,’ replied the proprietress. ‘No. I’ve only three stopping at present. And one of them is leaving this afternoon.’ She smiled towards Gore. ‘Your friend’ll be bird alone, ’cept for Mr Frensham.’
‘How’s he?’ asked the steward, emptying his glass. ‘Still smiling? Been tipping any more winners?’
‘He tipped himself one y
esterday, by what he says. He told us last night he had a tenner on Step-Out.’
The steward whistled appreciatively.
‘Sixteen to one,’ he murmured enviously. ‘Wish it was me. Never mind. I got a real good thing for next week.’
His conversation with the proprietress became hushed and mysterious. Gore, concluding from the fact that Frensham had not appeared at dinner-time that he was not then in the hotel, strayed out into the dreary little square in front and seated himself on a bench commanding a view of the Excelsior’s front door. The early afternoon was still sunny. A horde of urchins were engaged in an ear-splitting but wholehearted football match near at hand. And with the aid of a pipe the first hour of his vigil passed quickly enough.
The second hour, however, dragged noticeably; the third was frank boredom. The football match and the sun had alike disappeared and a chilly mist had settled over the deserted little enclosure which, save for occasional passengers along the path which crossed it diagonally, Gore now had entirely to himself. Already lights were beginning to flicker out palely in the surrounding houses when Frensham at last came into view, hurrying towards the hotel along the west side of the square from the direction of Old Cut Road. Gore waited for five minutes or so, and then rose from his seat with the intention of making a tour of the square in the dusk to warm himself. His bird had returned to the nest; but it might be hours before it emerged from it again—if it did emerge from it again that day. It seemed to him easier to keep watch from without than within—though the job promised to be a chilly one—at all events until later in the evening when the bar reopened. One could take an occasional saunter round the square without losing sight of the Excelsior’s door and without attracting attention.
But, as he rose from his seat and stretched himself, he saw Frensham come out again and stand before the door, slapping his leg with his cane, and looking about him. After some moments he began to promenade to and fro before the hotel, gradually extending his range, sometimes looking at his watch, sometimes pausing to gaze expectantly along that side of the square by which he had just returned. And it was during one of these pauses, which became more and more prolonged as time went on, that Gore became aware that he was not the only person for whom Frensham’s movements possessed an interest just then.
Some forty or fifty yards from the Excelsior the line of squalid little houses along the south side of Purley Square was broken by a low archway and a passage, leading—as he had noticed earlier in the course of his vigil—to some still more humble cottages clustered about a narrow interior court. In the archway a man was loitering, his head protruding cautiously or as cautiously withdrawing itself as Frensham’s strolling figure receded from or approached his lurking-place. Gore watched him discreetly for some little time, thinking it possible that the fellow was an associate of Frensham’s and that he himself had been under observation on his seat. His prolonged occupation of it might well have attracted attention, it occurred to him, if Frensham and his friends kept a look-out for suspiciously behaving strangers hanging about in the neighbourhood of the Excelsior. He decided to move off slowly along the narrow diagonal path and to take up a fresh position by the gate at its farther end.
There he waited for nearly half an hour. Frensham had ceased to parade to and fro now, and, having dodged in and out of the hotel for some time, had disappeared into it permanently. A sharp frost had set in with the falling of darkness, and Gore had begun to regret seriously that his purchases in Oldgate that morning had not included an overcoat.
But he stuck to his post doggedly, and for that virtue was rewarded, in the middle of a sneeze, with dramatic abruptness and unexpectedness. A tall figure came striding out of the darkness on the footpath at the other side of the street—a figure which he hardly needed the illumination of a street-lamp to recognise—that of Cecil Arndale. A curious thrill of exultation consoled him for his long, cold wait. Something doing at last … Frensham and Arndale together. Were his elaborate preparations to make anything of that chance? Would the two talk in the hotel or out of doors—perhaps down by those timber-stacks? What a bit of luck if they selected the timber-stacks—
Arndale, however, had hardly entered the door of the hotel when he came out again, accompanied by Frensham, and a few moments later the pair passed Gore at a rapid pace on the opposite side of the street, going towards Old Cut Road. Gore’s first impulse was to follow at once a little way in the rear. But, recalling the watcher whom he had detected lurking in the archway, he lingered until, as he had expected, a sturdily-built figure came cautiously into sight round the angle of the square by the Excelsior, and then, at a quickened pace, advanced towards him along the railings of the square. As he went by, the man glanced quickly and curiously towards the loiterer by the gate, and revealed to Gore’s surprise the stolid, square-chinned countenance of his some-time ally, Stevens.
It was impossible to tell whether he was following the couple in front with Frensham’s knowledge and by Frensham’s instructions, or for some purpose of his own. Gore was inclined to take the former view of his behaviour. But in either case, since the man had proved himself absolutely untrustworthy, the prudent thing, obviously, was to allow him to go on his business, whatever it might be, and follow at a safe distance behind him. Gore had no doubt that Frensham and Arndale were making for Old Cut Road, the principal exit from the network of small streets and lanes and alleys between Spring Road and the river. Arndale’s tall figure, conspicuous in a light-coloured raincoat, could easily be picked up again, even if he and his companion were allowed to get some little distance in advance. He allowed Stevens a reasonable law of a hundred yards or so, and then moved off in pursuit.
Instead, however, of proceeding straight forward towards Spring Road, Arndale and Frensham turned down a lane half-way along Old Cut Road, and Stevens, after a little cautious reconnoitring, followed their example. All three were out of sight now, and Gore quickened his pace until he reached the mouth of the lane—an evil-smelling, cobbled little passage between two rows of white-washed cottages, unlighted, and blocked at the end nearer to him by a collection of coal-drays, ranged in file with upreared shafts for the night. Nothing was to be seen of Stevens or of Arndale and Frensham. He hurried along the lane, came to a cross-lane, hesitated, hurried on, came to a second cross-lane, turned left-hand up it in the hope that it would lead him to Spring Road and view of his quarry, came to a halt at the entrance to a brick-yard, turned back—trotting now, and pursued by the humour of a knot of young larrikins—trotted up the first cross-lane, turned a corner so abruptly that a mongrel terrier was moved to assault him viciously, and, followed by the infuriated animal with determination, emerged, after some further intricate and obscure wanderings, into the brightly lighted hubbub and bustle of Spring Road’s Saturday evening. He gazed to right and he gazed to left. But the annoying truth was only too clear. His quarry had vanished. He had made a mess of it once more.
Well … he must only make a fresh start tomorrow, that was all—earlier in the day, before Frensham got moving in the morning. He went back to the Excelsior to retain his room for the coming week, and to inform them there that he would not sleep at the hotel that night, as the date of the arrival of his friend, Mr Metcalfe, was now uncertain. He would call, probably, early next morning, he said.
It was ten minutes to six when the taxi in which he had removed the detachable portions of his disguise set him down in University Road. His engagement to dine with Melhuish was for eight o’clock. For the sake of exercise, and because no other way of filling in the intervening time suggested itself, he decided to walk by University Road and its continuation, Blackbrothers Road, to Blackbrothers Hill, and return from there to Linwood across the Downs. It would take him, he estimated, something over an hour, walking at a sharp pace. He would reach the Riverside in plenty of time to change at leisure and get to Melhuish’s by eight.
Discovering, when he reached the top of Blackbrothers Hill and came out upon the breezy expanse o
f the open Downs, that it was then only twenty minutes past six, he turned his face north-west instead of south-east, and walked across the grass to the farther end of Mersham Down. The wide stretch of level turf, broken here and there by little clumps of timber or of thorn-bush, was deserted at that hour of the winter’s afternoon, and he met no one save an occasional early couple strolling arm-in-arm and engrossed in their own affairs. He turned back, reached the lights at the top of Blackbrothers Hill again at twenty minutes to seven, and, leaving the paths once more, struck off across the grass towards the distant lights of Linwood.
He joined one of the main roads intersecting the Downs at a point close to the top of the sharp, curving descent known as Fountain Hill, which led down to the lower level of the Promenade. Descending the hill, he passed, at one of the most dangerous cross-roads in England, the fountain which gave it its name, and, faring straight forward, entered the stately avenue of the Promenade.
A couple of Pekinese, snarling and yapping, ran across the path just in front of his feet when he had left the fountain some fifty or sixty yards behind him, and, at the sound of the voice which recalled them, he turned his head towards the direction from which it had come, believing that he had recognised it for Miss Heathman’s. Her house was, he knew, almost directly opposite the point which he had then reached, across the road—one of the score of rather pretentious detached residences which bordered one side of the Promenade and represented the high-water mark of Linwood’s exclusiveness. He knew, too, that Miss Heathman possessed a number of Pekinese—things which he detested. And no doubt these two facts strengthened his supposition that the voice which had called petulantly after the straying animals was hers. In the darkness, however, he could only make out the voice’s owner vaguely as a blurred feminine figure standing on the grass, some little way from the path, beside a masculine one. He was not in the least interested in Miss Heathman just then, and concluded that, as was the habit twice a day of every second woman in Linwood, she was exercising her dogs, and went on his way. It was ten minutes past seven when he reached the Riverside.