He knew Dr Marford slightly, and favoured him with a cold nod; resented his being in the case at all, for the penny doctor was one of the poor relations of the profession, not the kind of man one would call into a consultation, supposing Dr Rudd called in anybody.
He made a careful examination of the still figure.
‘Dead, of course,’ he said.
He gave the impression that, had he arrived a little earlier, the tragedy might have been averted.
‘There is a knife wound,’ began Marford, ‘which penetrated—’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Dr Rudd impatiently. ‘Of course. Naturally.’
He looked at Mr Mason.
‘Dead,’ he said. ‘I will make an examination. Obviously a knife wound. Death was probably instantaneous.’
He looked at Marford.
‘Were you here when it happened?’
‘Soon after,’ said Marford; ‘a minute after—probably less than that.’
‘Ah, then,’ said Dr Rudd, his hands in his pockets, his legs apart, ‘you’ll be able to tell us something—’
Mason intervened. He was a bald man, with a humorous eye and a deep, unctuous voice.
‘Yes, yes, we’ll see all about that, doctor.’
He showed no resentment at this attempt to usurp his function; was almost jovial in the face of an impertinence which was not an unusual experience when Dr Rudd was in a case.
‘We’ll see all about that. Doctor—’
‘Marford.’
‘Doctor Marford, you were here when the murder was committed or soon after: you’ll be able to tell us something, I’m sure. But now naturally you’re a little upset.’
Marford smiled and shook his head. ‘There’s nothing I can tell you, Mr Mason, except that I saw the man fall.’
‘I’m detaining this man, sir.’ It was Hartford, stiffly saluting, more important than a Chief Commissioner on his first case.
Mason bent down over the body and let the powerful rays of his hand-lamp pry into ugly places.
‘Where is the knife?’ he asked. ‘We want to look after that.’
‘There is no knife,’ said Elk, with gloomy satisfaction.
‘Excuse me, sir.’ P.C. Hartford, unrebuffed, stood regimentally stiff: accuser, prosecutor and expositor all in one. ‘I’ve got a man here detained in custody.’
Mason became aware of his humble subordinate, took him in from the rose on the crest of his helmet to the toes of his large, polished boots.
‘He should be at the police station,’ he said gently.
It was Elk who explained.
‘I kept the man here, sir, till you arrived.’
Mr Mason put his little finger in his ear and twiddled it impatiently.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘It’s a pleasure to know that everything is being done in strict accordance with the rules of procedure. You seem to have a nice bunch of highly intelligent police officers in your division, Inspector.’
He addressed Divisional Inspector Bray, who accompanied him; but Bray had no sense of humour, and was entirely oblivious of sarcasm.
‘They’re a pretty useful lot,’ he said complacently.
Mr Mason looked at the body at his feet, and thence to the man held between the two policemen, and back to the body again.
‘No knife…You might search the body, will you, Elk? Help him, will you, Shale? Thank you.’
He peered round at the crowd, and there were a few who, desiring at the moment to escape his scrutiny, melted quietly into the darkness.
At any rate he had seemed oblivious of the presence of Dr Marford, who was silent in an atmosphere charged with hostility to penny doctors. Suddenly Elk lugged something from beneath the body.
‘Here you are, sir.’
It was a knife-sheath, and at the moment was not pleasant to handle. Mr Mason found an old envelope in his pocket and took it carefully.
‘Is the knife there?’
‘No.’
Bray had joined the search party and was emphatic on the point. They had moved the body slightly.
‘No knife.’ Mason looked up at the high wall. ‘It might have been thrown over there,’ he mused.
‘Excuse me, sir.’ Constable Hartford froze to attention.
‘Wait,’ said Mason. ‘Now tell me, doctor, what did you see?’
He addressed Marford, who, brought suddenly into the ambit of publicity, stammered and was ill at ease.
‘I came out of my surgery’—he pointed awkwardly—‘that place with the red light. I—er—heard two men fighting—I thought I heard a little altercation before then—and I went in and got my hat and mackintosh—’
‘So you’d have a better view of the fight, eh, doctor?’ Mason smiled blandly.
Marford could return the smile now.
‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘Fights are not a novelty in this particular neighbourhood. I was going out to see a case—a maternity case. When I came out I heard the commotion. The policeman was arresting a man when I came over—’
‘Wait,’ said Mason sharply. ‘You saw two men fighting—could you distinguish them?’
‘Not plainly,’ Marford shook his head, ‘although they were opposite my surgery.’
‘Very handy for them,’ said Mason. ‘Was one of them this man?’
Marford could not swear. He was rather inclined to think it was. He was certain one of them was in evening dress.
‘You don’t know him?’
Marford shook his head again.
‘I should think he’s a stranger in this neighbourhood; I’ve never seen him here before. When I saw him lying on the ground I thought that it was a resumption of the fight I had witnessed.’
Mr Mason whistled softly, fixing his eyes just under the doctor’s chin. Marford thought his collar was awry and put up his hand, but that was a practice of Mr Mason, who was sometimes called ‘Sympathetic Mason’.
‘Hartford.’ He beckoned the constable forward. ‘What did you see?’
P.C. Hartford saluted.
‘Sir,’ said the constable punctiliously, ‘I had seen the deceased—’
A look of weariness passed across the face of Mr Mason. He was not sympathetic with loquacious constables.
‘Yes, yes, my boy, but you’re not in court now, you know. You needn’t call him “the deceased”. I don’t mind what you call him. You saw him before he fell?’
P.C. Hartford saluted again.
‘Yes, sir, I saw him. He stopped me when I was passing and asked me if I’d met a man he’d had an argument with. I said “No”.’
‘Did he describe the man?’
‘No, sir,’ said Hartford.
‘He said nothing else?’
Hartford thought for a long time, and then repeated, as best he could remember, all that the white-faced man had said.
‘You didn’t meet his assailant—I mean, you weren’t dreaming about the beer you were going to have for supper?’
P.C. Hartford was prepared with an indignant repudiation, but swallowed it.
‘No, sir. A few minutes later, when I came back this way, I saw him lying under the lamp, and I saw another man walking away and I stopped him. Then I saw the doctor coming across. By this time I’d arrested Lamborn, who tried to run away.’
‘Oh, no!’ said Mason, pained.
Mr Lamborn grew voluble. He was running for a doctor, he protested.
‘The man was on the ground before you touched him: is that what you’re suggesting?’ asked Mason.
The prisoner not only suggested but swore to this fact. He had a witness, a woman who carried a can in her hand. She might have preferred to remain anonymous, but that natural sense of justice which is the possession of poor and innocent people overcame her modesty. She was haled forward into the clear circle. She was a respectable woman. She had seen the man fall, had been a witness of Lamborn going across to him. If she had any private views as to the motive for his attentions she wisely restrained them.
Mason looke
d at her thoughtfully.
‘What is in that can?’ he asked.
There was a lid to the can. All her inclinations were against satisfying his curiosity, but she had a respect for the law and told the truth.
‘Beer.’
Mason seemed oblivious of the dead man behind him, of the thief in custody, and of the very existence of secret murderers who stalked their prey on the highway.
‘Beer—that’s funny.’ A clock chimed half-past ten. ‘Why are you carrying beer about the street at half-past ten, Mrs—’
Her name was Albert. She had no explanation for the beer, except, she explained tremulously, that she was taking it home. There was a sympathetic murmur in the crowd. An anonymous revolutionary said ‘Leave the woman alone!’ There are always voices that offer the same advice to policemen in all parts of the world in similar circumstances.
P.C. Hartford was desperate. He had something to say—something vital, a solution which would sweep aside all the cobwebs of mystery which surrounded the pitiful heap lying under the electric light standard and yielding very little to the busy men who were searching it.
‘I wanted to say, sir, that I saw this man throwing something over the wall.’
Mason looked at the wall, as though he expected it to give confirmation of this statement.
‘Lamborn, you mean?’ He glanced keenly at the thief and jerked his head significantly. ‘Take him away,’ he said; ‘I’ll see him at the station.’
Mr Lamborn went between two policemen, hurling back sanguinary defiance. There is something of a terrier in the habitual crook: he stands up to punishment most gallantly.
‘I’ll see you at the station, too, ma’am,’ said Mason.
Mrs Albert nearly dropped her can in her agitation. She was a married woman with four children, and had never entered a police station in her life.
‘It’s never too late to learn,’ said Mason sympathetically.
Another ambulance came, one of the baser kind, hand-pushed, and then a police car, with photographers, cheerful fingerprint experts and men of the Identification Bureau. Wilful murder lost its romance and passed into its business stage.
‘Just plain murder,’ said Mason to his subordinates as he moved towards his car. ‘One or two queer features about it, though.’
And then through the crowd came a woman. He thought she was a girl, but in the cruel light of the arc lamp saw that she had left girlhood a long way behind her. She was white-faced, wide-eyed, a ghost of a woman; her trembling lips parted, for the moment inarticulate. She stared from one to the other. Dr Marford, from the shadows, watched her curiously; knew her for Lorna Weston, a lady of uncertain profession.
‘Is it—he?’
Her voice, starting as a croak, ended in a wail.
‘Who are you?’ Mason stood squarely before her.
‘I’m—I live around here.’ She spoke spasmodically; every sentence seemed an effort. ‘He came to see me tonight, and I warned him…of the danger. You see, I—I know my husband. He’s a devil! I somehow know it.’
‘Your husband killed this man, eh?’
She tried to push past him, but he held her back with some difficulty, for fear had given this frail body the strength of a man.
‘Steady, steady, my girl. It may not be your friend at all. What’s his name?’
‘Donald—’ She checked herself. ‘May I see him?…I’ll tell you.’
But Mr Mason must proceed methodically, in the way of his kind, consolidating the foundations of fact.
‘This is what you say, that this man came to visit you tonight, and you warned him against your husband. Now, is your husband living in this area?’
She looked at him blankly. He realised that her mind was not upon his questions and repeated it.
‘Yes,’ she said. There was a certain defiance in her voice.
‘Where does your husband live? What’s his name?’
She was moving from side to side, and stooped once to look under his arm at the still thing on the ground.
‘Let me see him,’ she pleaded. ‘I shan’t faint…it may not be he. I’m sure it’s not he. Let me see him!’ Her voice was a whine now.
Mr Mason nodded to Elk, and Elk took her by the arm and led her to where the man lay, half in and half out of the circle of light. She looked down, speechless; opened her lips but could say nothing. And then:
‘Donald…he did it! The swine! The murderer!’
She stopped speaking. Elk felt her sagging away from him and caught her round the waist. The Tidal Basin crowd watched the drama. It was well worth the loss of a night’s sleep.
Mason looked round, caught Marford’s eye and beckoned him forward.
‘Do you mind taking this woman to the station? I think it’s only a faint.’
Dr Marford protested wearily. He and a policeman carried the woman to a closed police car and they drove off. Outside a chemist’s shop at the end of Basin Street, Marford stopped the car and sent the constable to ring the night bell; but the restorative he secured did not bring the woman back to consciousness. She was still silent when he got her to the station.
Mr Mason, waiting for the return of the car, delivered himself of certain observations.
‘There’s murder plain and murder coloured,’ he said to the patient Inspector Bray. ‘This is murder plain. No music, no fireworks, no lady’s boudoir, nothing sexy. A man stabbed to death under three pairs of eyes and nobody saw the murderer. No knife, no motive, no clue, no name of the dear departed.’
‘The woman,’ began Bray, ‘talked about a devil—’
‘Let’s keep religion out of it,’ said Mason wearily. ‘Who was the man that threw the knife, and how did he get it back again? That’s the mystery that’s beating me.’
CHAPTER VII
QUIGLEY, crime man of the Post-Courier and arch-inventor of devils, telephoned through to his newspaper:
‘The devil of Tidal Basin is again abroad. This slinking and sinister shadow passed unseen through deserted Endley Street and left a dead man sprawling upon the sidewalk, stabbed to the heart. Whence he came, whither he went, none knows. Under the eyes of three independent witnesses, including Mrs Albert, the wife of the night watchman at the Eastern Trading Company, Dr Warley’ (names were Quigley’s weak point), ‘a highly respected medical practitioner, and Police-Constable Hartford, an innocent pedestrian was seen to stagger and fall. When the horrified spectators reached his side they were dumbfounded to see that he was stabbed. The identity of the murdered man has not yet been established. Who was this stranger in evening dress, wandering in the purlieus of Tidal Basin? What ruthless hand destroyed him, and in what mysterious manner did the unseen murderer make his escape? These are the questions which Central Detective Mason has to solve. Mason, one of the Big Five, was fortunately in the neighbourhood, and immediately took charge of the case. A man has been detained, but is he the devil of Tidal Basin?’
(‘Cut out all that devil stuff,’ said the night editor as he handed the copy to a sub. ‘It’s been overworked.’)
Elk came to the police station and into the inspector’s room, where Mason was sitting, ten minutes after his chief arrived. He laid two articles on the table before the great man.
‘That night watchman takes a lot of waking. By the way, he’s the husband of Mrs Albert—’
‘The woman with the beer?’
Elk nodded.
‘I found these in the yard—obviously Lamborn threw them over when he saw the policeman.’
He enumerated his finds.
‘Notebook and watch; glass broken, watch stopped at ten p.m. Swiss made, and has the name of a Melbourne jeweller on the face.’
Mason examined the watch.
‘Careful,’ warned Elk. ‘There’s a smudgy thumb-print on the back.’
Mason shifted his chair a little, and invited Elk by a gesture to draw another up to his side.
‘What else?’ he asked.
Elk took from an inside pocket a quant
ity of loose paper money and put it on the table. The pocket-case, which also contained a memorandum book, he opened, and extracted two new banknotes, each for a hundred pounds. On their backs was the stamp of the Maida Vale branch of the Midland Bank; it was a round rubber stamp, and in the centre was a date line.
‘Issued yesterday.’
‘If he’d got an account there—’ began Elk.
Mason shook his head.
‘He hadn’t. You don’t draw hundred-pound notes out of your own account and carry them about with you. You draw them out because you want to send them away. You couldn’t change a hundred-pound note in London without running the risk of being arrested. No, these notes were drawn from somebody else’s account and given to him. Which means that he hasn’t a banking account of his own or they’d have been paid in. Therefore he’s not in trade, or he’d have a banking account.’
Elk sniffed.
‘Sounds like the well-known Shylock Holmes to me,’ he said.
He was a contemporary of Mason’s who had missed promotion, and his sarcasms were licensed.
‘What else?’ asked Mason.
‘Visiting-cards—any number of them.’
Elk took them out and laid them on the table. Mason examined them carefully. There were addresses in Birmingham and Leicester and London, but a large proportion of them were the visiting cards of people who had a permanent address in South Africa.
‘All the same colour,’ he said. ‘They’ve all been collected within a couple of months. That means he’s been a sea voyage lately—it’s extraordinary how people give away their cards to perfect strangers when they’re taking an ocean trip.’
He looked at the backs of one or two of them; there were pencilled notes. One said: ‘£10,000 a year’; another: ‘Made a lot of money in Namaqualand Diamonds; staying Ritz, London.’
Mason smiled.
‘I’ll give you two guesses as to what his trade is.’
He picked up a third card; this time the inscription on the back was in ink: ‘Cheque stopped; Adam & Sills.’
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