Foster became serious. “I told you that there had been a burglary here, Mr. Eccles. I must now tell you that it was more than a burglary. There has been a murder.”
“Good God! Do you mean my uncle?”
“No, your uncle is upstairs. It was his servant.”
Richardson was watching the young man closely and saw him go white.
“Not poor old Helen? How awful!”
“Apparently the poor woman was shot by the man who got in at that window.”
“The burglar? My God! I hope you will catch him. If I can do anything to help…Have you any clue?”
“In the shrubbery outside we have found this pocket-book.”
“Let me look at it. Why, it’s mine: it’s the pocket-book that was pinched from me in the hotel at Portsmouth where I lunched!”
Richardson, watching him, felt that the most accomplished actor could never have produced the effect of blank astonishment in his face and manner.
“Yes,” he added in an excited tone; “it is mine. Look, here are my cards: here’s my uncle’s letter!” He fumbled in the pocket of the note-case. “The blighter who pinched this was careful to take every penny out of it.”
“How much money had you?”
“I cashed a cheque for twenty pounds before I left the ship, but I paid my mess-bill out of it. I suppose I had sixteen or seventeen pounds left and the blighter’s pinched it all.”
“Were there any Bank of England notes?”
“No, it was all in Treasury notes. But how did my pocket-book get here?”
“If we had the correct answer to that question,” remarked Foster dryly, “we should soon know who killed that poor woman. Now I should like to have a description of the man who said he was a detective.”
“Flaxton? Oh, he was an inch or two shorter than you and broader. He had a biggish nose and rather pale, shifty-looking blue eyes—you know the kind I mean—just narrow slits. He was clean-shaved except for a light-coloured clipped moustache. His hair was sandy.”
“How was he dressed?”
“In a suit of reach-me-downs of a rather flashy check pattern. He was wearing a rather shabby bowler hat with a flat brim.”
“Good. Well, now, Mr. Eccles, if you like to go upstairs you’ll find your uncle, and in twenty minutes or so your statement will be ready for your signature.”
Foster watched his retreating figure as he went upstairs two steps at a time. “Get on with that statement as quick as you can, Richardson; we’ve a lot before us. All this yarn about the Somerset County Constabulary will have to be checked. I’m going upstairs to see how Mr. MacDougal is taking this story of his.”
He found the two closeted in the library: the uncle broken under the strain of the double disaster; the nephew trying to put before him the less gloomy side of the family tragedy. “After all, Uncle Jim, it might have been worse. The blighter might have shot you instead of poor old Helen,” he was saying when Foster made his appearance. “Look here, inspector, you can help us. I’ve been telling my uncle that he must engage another servant at once. Can you tell us where there’s a good servants’ registry?”
“Not off-hand, Mr. Eccles, but if you telephone to the Hampstead Police Station and explain who you are, they’ll tell you. You can mention my name—Superintendent Foster—if you like.”
“You won’t leave me, Ronny,” said MacDougal.
“Not for long, but remember, I’ve got to get a lawyer to conduct my case when it comes on next week. I’m on bail. I know of a chap named Meredith—the brother of my shipmate who bailed me out. He gave me a chit to him. I’ll go and hunt him up this evening and listen to his words of wisdom. If you don’t mind I’ll go down and telephone for the address of that servants’ registry.”
“I’ve one question to ask you, Mr. MacDougal, while your nephew is out of the room,” said Foster. “Is he the kind of young man who runs into debt?
“Not more than other young men of his age, I think. I make him a small allowance over and above his naval pay, and it is very seldom that he comes to me for more. When he does I always give it to him.”
“Do you know whether he has any entanglements with young women?”
“Not that I have heard of. Why do you ask me that? Has he said anything to you about it?”
“Only because if he had it would account for the scrape he seemed to have got into in Portsmouth.”
Richardson knocked at the door and said that the statement was ready for signature. Foster accompanied him downstairs. Ronald Eccles was in the act of disconnecting the telephone, after having come to a satisfactory arrangement with the registry office. He went down with them to the kitchen where the statement was read over to him.
“Have you anything to add to it?” asked Foster.
“Not that I can think of. I’m ready to sign it.”
When the two police officers were in the street on their way to the Tube station, Foster asked Richardson what he thought of the statement.
“It sounded a bit thin, sir, but I think we shall find that it was correct.”
“You think so? If you’re right it means that we’re up against a gang. First the thief in the hotel who stole his pocket-book; then a car thief who posed as a detective; and then the man he arrested in the public-house. It means that they read the uncle’s letter in the pocket-book and came straight off here to steal the money and plant the pocket-book where Mr. Symington found it in order to throw suspicion on the nephew. Such things have happened, we know, but they are so rare that for me it is easier to believe that that young man was lying. Remember, he wouldn’t give me the name and address of the young woman he said he went to see. A man who has something to hide is generally unscrupulous about lying. We shall see what the Somerset police say about his statement.”
Chapter Four
THERE WERE two good reasons why Dick Meredith seldom used the lift to his flat on the fourth floor: he had a strong dislike for the pert, red-haired lift-boy, and in running upstairs there was always a sporting chance of meeting the girl who lived in the flat above him—in an eyrie to which the lift did not go. Artfully he had wormed her name out of the hall porter—Miss Patricia Carey—but that was all that the porter knew about her. He himself knew even less, for an occasional meeting on the stairs, when he stood aside to let the vision pass, can scarcely be counted as acquaintance.
Dick Meredith took his practice at the Bar seriously. He knew the story which Lord Chancellor Cairns used to tell about himself—how he owed his start to sticking to his chambers when every other barrister on his staircase had gone to Epsom on Derby Day, and the halting footsteps of a solicitor’s clerk sounded on the stairs; how, after trying door after door, they had stopped on his landing, and the knuckles of a solicitor’s clerk, carrying an urgent brief marked £5 5s., had summoned him to the door—a brief which was the foundation of his fortunes. No solicitor’s clerk had yet blundered into Dick Meredith’s chambers with a brief intended for another counsel, but he had appeared before a Judge in Chambers, shaking at the knees, and he went on circuit religiously and had had his modest share of dock briefs, even succeeding by a stroke of luck in getting a Yorkshire jury to find a persistent housebreaker “not guilty.”
On a memorable afternoon he was plodding up the fourth flight to his flat when he heard the rush of flying feet on the stairs above him. He drew aside to allow room for the headlong descent. It was the girl whose acquaintance he so ardently desired to make.
“Come quick!” she panted. “James is on the fire.” She tore upstairs with Dick at her heels.
“Is James your little brother?”
She did not hear the question. They had reached the top landing; a door stood open. “Quick!” she cried as she dashed in. “Oh, you’re safe, you brute!”
It was no way to speak even to a younger and very trying brother. Dick looked round the tiny sitting-room. A dull fire was burning in the grate; a yellow-fronted Amazon parrot was perched on the back of a chair; there was a st
rong smell of burnt feathers.
The girl was profuse in apology. “I’m so sorry to have brought you up all this way for nothing, but when I ran downstairs for help that brute James flew from his cage on to the fire and was sitting on it.”
“I’ve read somewhere that the cock parrot takes his turn at sitting on the eggs. He may be colour-blind. Those little lumps of coal are about the size of parrot’s eggs. Never mind, I’m grateful to James for the introduction. My name is Meredith. James speaks so indistinctly that I didn’t catch yours.”
“Mine is Patricia Carey, but I don’t want you to think that that horrid bird is mine: he belongs to the old gentleman I work for. I ought not to be calling him names. I owe him a month’s leave on full pay.”
“Absolutely,” remarked the parrot with sepulchral decision.
Dick Meredith started and looked round for the speaker. The girl laughed merrily.
“James gave you a start. ‘Absolutely’ is Mr. Vance’s favourite affirmative and James has caught it from him.”
“How did he get you a month’s leave on full pay?”
“The condition attached to my leave was that I should have to give a home to that bird while Mr. Vance was going round foreign prisons—they call him the ‘Second John Howard,’ you know—and he’s let me down on the very first day. Mr. Vance told me that if I let him sit on the top of his cage in the daytime he could be trusted to behave himself, and the first thing he did when I let him out just now was to fly straight on to the fire and sit on the coals as if he meant to hatch them.”
“Well, he had the sense to get off in time. You’re a stout fellow, James.”
The bird ruffled his neck and bowed his head to be stroked.
“He seems to have taken a fancy to you. He hates me.”
“Absolutely,” remarked James with marked distinctness.
“Does he talk much?” asked Dick, caressing him.
“He’s a good weather prophet. He’s much more reliable than the B.B.C. When it’s going to rain he goes down to the bottom of his cage and chatters gibberish. I suppose—” She hesitated.
“You were going to say?”
The girl laughed nervously. “Oh, nothing. I nearly made a silly suggestion—that as he’s taken to you so quickly—well—that you might like to have him in your flat for a few days.”
“I should love to, but it’s a big responsibility. Still—if you would look in from time to time to see that he’s all right—”
“Well—I was going down to my people in the country for a few days if I hadn’t been saddled with James—” She had the grace to blush at the audacity of her manoeuvre.
“I’ll take charge of him with pleasure if you’ll give me his diet chart. I suppose that it’s rather complicated.”
“Not at all. The greedy little brute eats anything. I was just going to give him buttered toast when he chose to go and sit on the fire.” She caught Dick’s eye roving to the tea-table. “You’ll have some tea, won’t you?”
During the next half-hour their acquaintance ripened. They found themselves talking as if they had known one another for years. Dick learned that she was the daughter of a country parson in Sussex, and that, having her own living to make, she had been trained as a secretary; that through the influence of one of her father’s friends she had been lucky enough to get a job as private secretary to the famous James Vance.
Observing the blank look in her visitor’s face she exclaimed in shocked surprise, “You’ve never heard of him?”
“Never.”
“But surely you’ve heard of Vance’s Rejuvenator, the patent medicine that you see advertised everywhere.”
“No, I never take patent medicines.”
“Nor do I, but evidently quite a lot of people do: otherwise Mr. Vance wouldn’t have made his millions. Surely you know those short stories in the magazines which are quite interesting until you are brought up quite suddenly by something like this—‘that’s why I took to Vance’s Rejuvenator.’”
“I never read magazines now that they’ve taken to the American trick of breaking off at the exciting point and telling you to hunt for the rest on page 937.”
“Yes, but I should have thought you would have heard of Mr. Vance’s activities in other directions. He’s a Manchester man, and his present craze is prison reform. As far as I can make out he would like to convert prisons into rest-houses run on the lines of Sunday schools.”
“I didn’t know that there were such people nowadays. How is he setting about it?”
“That’s the trouble. Providence has denied to Mr. Vance one gift—the gift of public speaking—and for the matter of that, the gift of writing grammatical English. I have to do that for him. The letters he dictates are simply awful, but luckily he never suspects that I’ve written all he wanted to say in half the length and in passable English.”
“You don’t do his public speaking for him?”
Patricia laughed merrily. “No, I haven’t got as far as that yet. He subsidizes young men to do it for him: he has a small army of them.”
“Do they believe in him?”
“They say they do; one or two of them certainly do—Mr. Ralph Lewis, for instance. You’ve heard of him?”
“I’ve seen his name in the papers, but I’m afraid I’ve never troubled to read his speeches. Don’t the Liberal papers call him ‘the coming man’?”
“I believe they’re right. I’ve heard him speak. He carries you right off your feet. You really ought to go and hear him.”
“Perhaps I will—some day.”
His indifference pricked her like a goad. “I suppose that when you go out in the evening you waste your time at some musical comedy, but I promise you that if once you hear Ralph Lewis he’ll carry you away as he did me.”
“I hate political speeches and the men who make them. What is the special point about this one?”
“Well, to begin with he’s very good-looking and he has a wonderful voice. I’ve seen his audience in tears, and the tears running down his own cheeks. One night there was a little knot of interrupters, and people were calling to the chairman to have them put out, but Mr. Lewis just raised his hand and turned his face to the part of the hall where they were. They told me afterwards that before he had finished they were crying too.”
“What does he say?”
“Oh, one can’t remember what he says. I suppose it’s the way he says it.”
“I’ll go and hear him if you’ll take me, but now you must be longing to do your packing. James and I will leave you to it. But you must give me your address in case he seems to be sickening for psittacosis.”
With her card in his pocket, Dick Meredith approached James, who allowed himself to be immured in his cage with the greatest amiability, and was carried down to the floor below.
As Dick was fumbling with his latch-key, the lift shot up to his floor-level: the gate clanged back and the figure of his pet aversion, red-haired Albert, who looked as if he had been poured into his suit of buttons, strutted out full of importance, with a letter and a visiting-card between finger and thumb. Dick set down the cage to receive them.
“Gentleman waiting downstairs to see you,” said Albert.
“Absolutely,” remarked the parrot, who seemed to have a warm feeling for the young of the human species.
While Dick was reading his letter Albert improved the occasion by whistling a lively air and ejaculating “Pretty Polly,” greeting each “Absolutely” with a scream of ribald laughter. “Going to take charge of Miss Carey’s parrot?” he asked.
“Bring the gentleman up,” said Dick, without deigning to reply to the question. The name on the card conveyed nothing to Dick, but the letter was addressed in the handwriting of his sailor brother, whose ship, as he knew, had just berthed in Portsmouth for a refit.
“DEAR DICK,” he wrote, “This is to introduce my shipmate Eccles, who’s been having words with the police. I told him that you were the man to save him from the gallows, o
r if that’s not in your line you would pass him on to the right bloke.
“Yours,
“BIM.”
Ronald Eccles used the lift and was at the door within three minutes. Having conceived all lawyers to be austere-looking persons who cultivated side-whiskers and bald heads, he seemed relieved to find in Dick a man of his own age to whom he could talk freely. After the usual greetings Dick opened the business.
“My brother tells me that you’ve had trouble with the police? A motoring offence, I suppose.”
“It’s worse than that. I’m on remand for stealing a car and assaulting a constable, and I want some-body to take up my case.”
Dick looked at him quizzically and decided in his own mind that he did not look the sort of man who would spend his first night ashore by painting the town red. “I think that you had better tell me the whole story before I can advise you what to do.”
He listened without interrupting his visitor except to interject a question here and there, and when Eccles came to the discovery by the police of his stolen pocket-book in the garden of his uncle’s house in London, and of the murder and the burglary, he began to show a quickened interest.
“Can you give me a description of the man who took you round the public-houses, pretending to be a detective?”
‘‘He was decently dressed and about the same height as I am. He wore a bowler hat, a bit worse for wear; he had a thin face and rather cunning little eyes.”
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