The Attic Murder

by S. Fowler Wright

  Augusta confirmed that she had been used, during a voyage to the Far East, to infatuate a youth of more money than brains, while he was relieved at the card-table of that which, it was considered, might be in much better hands.

  “But,” she said, “I didn’t mind when I knew. He was only a soppy fool.”

  They had given her a hundred pounds, which had been wealth to her at the time, and she had remained in their company with an understanding, unspoken but no less clearly agreed, that she was available for similar use when the next occasion should come.

  Francis, remembering his own experience, saw that her rôle had not changed, nor her efficiency failed, though she might not have the same innocency of allure which had made her an invaluable acquisition to the gang ten years before.

  He saw that, indirectly, but as certainly as the invitation had been given to her, it was being extended to him.

  It was a temptation which he could resist without difficulty, and even to feign acceptance would have seemed dangerous with Mr. Banks silently listening.

  Considering that, and the fact that Augusta Garten had asked to be arrested so that she could betray her associates, he was explicit in making it clear that he sought no more than his own vindication, and had no desire for further experience of the precarious profits of crime.

  He did not expect that the Colonel would volunteer to assist him on such conditions. But he was indifferent on that point, thinking that the pseudo-military gentleman was unconsciously doing all that his necessity required, as he talked, and Mr. Banks silently listened.

  But Colonel Driver seemed willing even to contemplate giving him the help he needed.

  “We mustn’t let you go back to quod,” he said genially. “We’ll have to get you a witness that the old fossils will hear. The question is who’s going to be the goat. Well, you must leave that to me.”

  Understanding that it was His Majesty’s Judges of the Court of Appeal to whom the Colonel alluded in that disrespectful manner, Francis felt that he was being met better than he had had reason to hope. He even began to doubt whether he were not acting with rather contemptible treachery in leading Colonel Driver to expose himself to the doubtless retentive memory of the silent Banks. But he reflected reasonably that he had been no party to the introduction of the enquiry agent to the inner councils of Augusta’s associates. The dinner certainly had not been arranged by him.

  Having come to that point of understanding and promise, the Colonel led the conversation in other ways, and Mr. Banks, whose silence had allowed him to consume an excellent meal, rose, as one who had completed the purpose for which he came.

  He said to Colonel Driver: “You’ll know what to do tonight,” to which he received a cheerfully affirmative reply. He said good night casually to Augusta, and politely to Francis, whom he continued to address as Mr. Vaughan.

  Francis noticed that no one had addressed Mr. Banks by name, and was sufficiently cautious to avoid it himself. He was not outwardly disguised, which is a clumsy expedient at the best, but who knew what separate personality he might not have assumed, to enable him to gain the confidence of these wary and unscrupulous criminals?

  Francis thought that Augusta Garten became paler after he left, that she had more difficulty in maintaining an outward calmness or gaiety than she had shown previously. He felt in better spirits himself. Even if the Colonel were no better than a false friend, even if Augusta Garten, and perhaps he himself, were in peril, the nature of which he could only vaguely guess, he supposed that Mr. Banks would not leave them unwatched. Probably—almost certainly—Augusta was unaware of the identity or real character of the man who had left the room.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  When Mr. Banks left, Francis had also begun to think of leaving. He had got all for which he had hoped, it might even be said twice over, if Colonel Driver’s half-promise should prove to be of genuine worth. For there would be the testimony of Mr. Banks, surely sufficient in itself, even should the Colonel fail to produce the “goat” whose evidence might be difficult to frame in a convincing manner without self-implication, or betrayal of members of the gang other than Tony Welch who had not yet fallen into the hands of a hostile law.

  Yet he hesitated, being delayed by memory of his promise to Inspector Combridge that he would endeavour to obtain information concerning the Rabone murder, which he had as yet made no effort to fulfil; and by a faint hope that the Colonel might offer to leave before him, and so give the opportunity he sought to ask Augusta for the name of the street which still eluded his memory.

  But as he watched for an opportunity of leading the conversation toward the Vincent Street tragedy, he had a sudden instinctive fear of what the consequence to himself might be, if there should come even a doubt into Colonel Driver’s mind of the reason for which he asked. The end of William Rabone was unpleasantly suggestive of the payment which traitors earned.

  And from that thought there came, by natural sequence, a recollection of the hurried warning that Augusta Garten had given before the two men had entered the room. He was to believe nothing that was said—nothing, even by herself. And how evident, how real had been the fear that she had expressed! How drastic the course which she had proposed for her own security!

  Something of his satisfaction in Colonel Driver’s attitude, something of the sense of security which he had derived from the presence of Mr. Banks, left him with this memory, and it was with a resolution that he would not longer delay his going that he returned his wandering attention to the conversation which the Colonel was sustaining, with the suavity that his actual rather than his expressed profession required.

  He was talking now of an exploit of aviation which had been the subject of headlines in the afternoon papers. Did Mr. Vaughan take an interest in such matters? Had he perhaps some knowledge of flying himself? There were so many of the younger generation who were drawn to the adventure of the air, who might even hold pilots’ certificates unguessed by any but their most intimate friends.

  Francis agreed that there were, but admitted that he was not one. Even as a passenger, he had never flown. He had a dread of crashing. It was not so much the danger of death as an abstract fear, as that of death by burning, if a plane should fall in flames, as so many did. He had a special horror of fire as an agent of violent death.

  Colonel Driver said politely that there were many such. “There’s Augusta here,” he went on, “who’s got better nerves than most women or men either, but we couldn’t get her to fly from Berlin, even though she knew she ran a bigger risk of five years in a German jail every minute that she delayed.”

  “It wasn’t really that,” Augusta said, rather as one who was making conversation than as having any real interest in the subject, “I thought it was running more risk, all trying to get off together like that. It seemed like walking into a trap, where we’d be easy to catch.... I saw I was wrong afterwards, when you all got through safely, and I’d still got to wriggle out.”

  The Colonel received this explanation with a polite incredulity. He said he recalled the terror she had expressed at the time, but he understood her reluctance to admit to so extreme a fear of that which many women of weaker nerves could accept without tremors.

  Augusta made no reply, letting the subject drop, and Francis, seeing that the Colonel showed no disposition to leave, said that he must be going.

  Colonel Driver looked up at that. He said: “So we will. We will all go.... Here is something that I should like you to see.”

  He pulled out an automatic, which he laid on the table before him, but with his hand still upon it.

  “You are familiar with modern firearms? Not particularly? Then you may not know that this is an automatic pistol, and this is a silencer which is fixed upon it. Its use would be that, if I should shoot you both, there would be no noise that would penetrate through that rather solid door. I could walk out, and be far away before any suspicion would be aroused.”

  Francis heard the menace in t
he quiet voice. He realized that the Colonel had a cruel enjoyment in the fear that his words must cause, that it would be with a keener joy that he would turn the deadly weapon upon them, and see their bodies wilt and fall as the continuous stream of bullets poured from no more than the table’s breadth.

  He had an instant’s thought of wonder that the deadly crisis, as he recognized it to be, did not disturb his mind from what seemed an unnatural coolness, a clarity that made a leisured minute of that instant of time. He was on the point of resolving to push the table, by a sudden motion, toward the Colonel, trusting to upset him and his chair with a violence which might separate the pistol from his hand, or enable it to be seized before he could recover himself for its use, but was deterred by the sound of Miss Garten’s voice, controlled to a more casual level than was consistent with the evidence of her bloodless face.

  “Of course you could, but for the fact that people don’t shoot each other for no reason at all.”

  “No?” the Colonel answered harshly. “But the greatest reason of all is a rather different matter.”

  “Which you know quite well,” she answered boldly, “you haven’t got.... As well,” she added, “as I know that you won’t be fool enough to do what you’d like to frighten us into thinking you will.”

  He looked at her with a cruel smile as he answered: “And if you’re so sure, perhaps you’ll tell me why.”

  “Because, if you’d meant to do it at all, you’d have done it without talking.”

  His manner altered as he replied: “You’re right, Augusta, as you mostly are. I’ve always said you’re no fool. Though I don’t say what I should be if I were to trust you again. But I’ll tell you both that I shan’t injure a hair of your heads if you have the sense to come quietly with me to where we can talk these matters over better than we can here.”

  “Yes,” she answered for both, “we’ll do that,” and Francis saw that, for the moment, they had passed the crisis of life and death, and his knee relaxed from its pressure upon the table, and his eyes from their unwinking watch of Colonel Driver’s hand.

  The next moment, as though his demonstration of power should be sufficient without further effort, the Colonel rose easily. He dropped the pistol back into the side-pocket from which it came, and walked over to the bell, which he pressed, with the remark: “It’s the rule here that a waiter doesn’t come to these rooms after nine p.m. unless he’s sure that he’s wanted to show his face. The women, like—don’t they, Augusta?—to know that they’re sure of that.”

  His back was turned for the instant that he was pressing the bell, and the eyes of his captives met in a question to which Francis thought that Augusta answered with a warning of caution, as though she would not have him hasten an event in which time might lessen the peril in which they stood.

  The Colonel came back to the table. He sat down, as with a recovered urbanity. He asked, as the waiter entered: “Do you mind telling me how you found your way here tonight?— It’s the bill, Alphonso, I want. We’re just going now.”

  Francis remembered the warning that Augusta had given, which had prepared his mind for the needed lie.

  “I saw Miss Garten as I was coming up Deal Street. I’ve been looking for her ever since Friday. I thought if she couldn’t help me herself, she’d tell me which of you I ought to ask. So when I saw her come here I followed her in.”

  “Which way was she coming when you saw her? Up the street or down?”

  “She was crossing over.”

  The Colonel accepted this. Francis thought he half-believed. It suggested a possibility that Augusta might succeed in asserting her own innocence, with his help, even though his own danger might not be less. And then there was the fact that Mr. Banks knew how he had left them, and might guess something of the peril in which they were. Probably it was best to go slowly, to wait events. But, of course, if a chance should come—

  The bill was paid now, and the waiter gone. The Colonel rose. He said to Augusta: “We’ll go now. I’ve got Morton’s car here. We’ll go there, and talk it over with him.”

  Francis could not remember who Morton was, but he thought the girl looked relieved, as though there were hope in the suggestion. It made him more disposed to go quietly with them, and yet, he wondered, how could Colonel Driver secure that they would not leave him when they were once clear of the restaurant doors? Would he try to shoot them both in the street? If he set any value on his own life, it did not seem a likely thing to attempt.

  They went down the narrow stairs, the Colonel leading the way, and came into the restaurant. It was nearly empty now, the diners having left, and the after-theatre crowd not begun to arrive, but the two men whom Francis had noticed when he came in were still seated by the door.

  They rose at the Colonel’s appearance, and came up the room. Seeing that they were doing this, he turned, and led the way out at a side-door which opened to a narrow passage, leading to one of those cul-de-sacs which are numerous among the side streets between Park Lane and Charing Cross Road.

  The Colonel went first, followed by Augusta and Francis, the two men close at his rear. The cul-de-sac, so far as the ill-lit darkness showed, was empty except for the waiting car.

  Colonel Driver said nothing to the chauffeur, who must have had his orders before. He said to Augusta: “You’d better go in the front.”

  Francis found himself beside the Colonel on the rear seat.

  The two men turned away. The car was soon running smoothly and swiftly westward along the Bayswater Road.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “The question now is whether William Rabone were engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the bank, as I am much inclined to believe, and was murdered by associates whom he was proposing to betray for his own security, or whether he were a faithful servant to us, and lost his life through his zeal in tracing the authors of the frauds from which we were suffering.

  “It is a question to which I am resolved that the answer shall be discovered, and, to secure this end, I am prepared to offer a reward of two thousand pounds for information which will lead to the conviction of the criminal.”

  “You think,” Mr. Jellipot said doubtfully, when Sir Reginald had made this announcement, “that, if you discover the murderer, you will learn the motive of the crime?”

  They were in Sir Reginald’s office, where he had also invited Mr. Banks and Inspector Combridge to meet him at noon on the day following Peter Entwistle’s release, to take counsel together.

  The time was now 12:15, for Inspector Combridge, who was usually a punctual man, had been ten minutes late, and Sir Reginald had deferred this announcement till he arrived.

  “Yes,” Sir Reginald replied, “I think when we know that, we shall soon know enough to get at the rest.”

  Mr. Banks, a man of few words, nodded his agreement with this opinion.

  Inspector Combridge might have said the same, but he had something else on his mind.

  “Two thousand pounds is a big sum. It ought to make someone squeal. But I’m sorry to say that’s just the amount you may have to lose in another way, though I hope I’m wrong.”

  He had no need to be more explicit before Sir Reginald had guessed his meaning, and repudiated the suggestion which it conveyed.

  “You mean Hammerton’s jumped his bail? You won’t make me believe that. If I couldn’t tell when a man’s crooked, or when he’s straight, I shouldn’t be sitting here now. What makes you think that?”

  Inspector Combridge was in a chastened mood. A Chief Inspector who has developed a habit of arresting innocent men cannot reasonably object to being charged with deficient judgement of criminal character. It did not occur to him to retort that, if Sir Reginald Crowe were so excellent a judge of the probity of others, it was strange that he should have failed to detect the authors of the frauds from which his bank had suffered so severely and over such a prolonged period, or that he should still have the character of William Rabone in doubt. He only said: “I’m not sayin
g he’s jumped his bail. But he’s disappeared, and that comes to the same thing, if we can’t give an explanation to please the court in about ten days from now.

  “You’ll say it’s my fault, for he asked me to let him go somewhere last night without being watched, and I was fool enough to agree.

  “He said I could trust him to report at ten-thirty this morning, if he were still alive, and he hoped to have got some information which I should be glad to have.

  “When I’d waited till 11:30, and he hadn’t come, I began to think he’d bolted, and to wonder whether he weren’t the murderer after all, and had bluffed us with a tale that Miss Weston agreed to support—if you think it out, you’ll see how everything fits in. Whatever had happened, I thought I’d better not break my appointment here, but I wanted to learn as much as I could first, so I drove round to the address he’d given us, and found that he hadn’t been in since yesterday morning, which looks bad.

  “But there was a letter addressed to him on the hall-table, which I took the liberty of opening. It appears to have been posted in the West Central District yesterday morning, and delivered during the afternoon. There isn’t much of it, but you may think it suggests an explanation of a different kind.”

  As he spoke, he pulled out a mauve envelope, from which he abstracted a single sheet of paper of the same colour. In a large, bold, probably feminine handwriting, hastily scrawled, were the two words: “Don’t come.”

  “It looks to me,” Sir Reginald said, “like a case of foul play.”

  “That’s what I’m inclined to think. As a matter of fact, I warned him of the risk he ran, but he said he didn’t care, having so much at stake. I thought at the time that he was straight, and meant what he said. I don’t say he wasn’t now. But you can take this letter two ways. It might be a warning, or it might be no more than a change of plan.”

  “Beyond the postmark, it gives you no clue?”