Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  “Well, when they are safely in Pullin’s room Roofe hears the front door shut and bolted, with all its squeaks and thumps, and decides that it won’t be safe to go out that way after he has committed his crime. The men sit and talk, and Pullin drinks. Roofe doesn’t. You will remember the bottle on the table, with only one glass. Roofe produces and writes a cheque for the £2000, and Pullin hands back the I0U, which Roofe burns. That would be the lower of the two charred pieces of paper, which we have there with the other, but can’t read.

  “Then the crime takes place. Perhaps Pullin drinks a little too much. At any rate Roofe gets behind him, uses the sharp seaman’s knife he has brought for the purpose, and straightway the skipper is dead at his feet. Then Roofe gets back the cheque and burns that. After that he ransacks the whole room. He fears there may be some documentary evidence, which, being examined, may throw some light on the Egret affair. Then he sets about his escape. To make the thing look like a murder for ordinary plunder, and at the same time account for the upset room, he takes away all the dead man’s valuables tied in that shawl. He sees the hook — just the thing he wants — and of course the sheets are an obvious substitute for a rope. He takes away the door-key, to make it seem likely that somebody inside the house had been the criminal, and then he simply goes away through the window, as I have already explained. At 5.45 there would be a train to Chadwell Heath, and that would land him home early enough to enable him to regain his bedroom unobserved. After that he wisely maintains the pretence of illness for a day or two.

  “I guessed that the things carried off would be in that ditch, for very simple reasons. I looked about the house, and the ditch seemed the only available hiding-place near. More, it was on the way to the station, the direction Roof e would naturally take. He would seize the very first opportunity of getting rid of his burden, for every possible reason. It was a nuisance to carry; he could not account for it if he were asked; and the further he carried it before getting rid of it the more distinct the clue to the direction he had taken, supposing it ever were found. The behaviour of some of the people in the house might have been suspicious, if I hadn’t had so strong a clue in my hand, leading in another direction. Foster probably pawned all his clothes, and put those bricks in his boxes to conceal the fact, so that Mrs. Beckle might not turn him away. He owed her so much that at last he hadn’t the face to go and eat her breakfast when he had no money to pay for it. He went out early, met friends, got ‘stood’ drinks and came back drunk. Probably he had been kind to the girl Taffs at some time or another, so that when she found he was suspected she refused to give any information.”

  “Yes,” the inspector said, “it certainly seems to fit together. There’s a future before you, Mr. Hewitt. But now I must go to Chadwell Heath. Are you coming?”

  At Chadwell Heath it was found that a first-class return ticket to Stratford had been taken just before the 10.54 train left on the last night Abel Pullin was seen alive, and that the return half had been given up by a passenger who arrived by the first train soon after six in the morning The porter who took the ticket remembered the circumstance, because first-class tickets were rare at that time in the morning, but he did not recognise the passenger, who was muffled up.

  “But I think there’s enough for an arrest without a warrant, at any rate,” Truscott said. “I am off to Scarby Lodge. Can’t afford to waste any more time.”

  Scarby Lodge was a rather pretentious house. It was arranged that Truscott should wait aside till Hewitt had sent in a message asking to see Mr. Roofe on a matter of urgent business, and that then both should follow the servant to his room. This was done, and as the parlour maid was knocking at the bedroom door she was astonished to find Hewitt and the police inspector behind her. Truscott at once pushed open the door and the two walked in.

  It was a large room, and at the end a man sat in his dressing-gown near a table on which stood several medicine bottles. He frowned as Truscott and Hewitt entered, but betrayed no sign of emotion, carelessly taking one of the small bottles from the table. “What do you want here?” he said.

  “Sorry to be so unceremonious,” Truscott said, “but I am a police officer, and it is my duty to arrest you on a serious charge of murder on the person of —— Stop, sir! Let me see that!”

  But it was too late. Before Truscott could reach him Roofe had swallowed the contents of the small bottle and, swaying once, dropped to the floor as though shot.

  Hewitt stooped over the man. “Dead,” he said, “dead as Abel Pullin. It is prussic acid. He had arranged for instant action if by any chance the game went against him.”

  But Inspector Truscott was troubled. “This is a nice thing,” he said, “to have a prisoner commit suicide in front of my eyes. But you can testify that I hadn’t time to get near him, can’t you? Indeed he wasn’t a prisoner at the time, for I hadn’t arrested him, in fact.”

  THE CASE OF THE “FLITTERBAT LANCERS”

  It was late on a summer evening, two or three years back, that I drowsed in my armchair over a particularly solid and ponderous volume of essays on social economy. I was doing a good deal of reviewing at the time, and I remember that this particular volume had a property of such exceeding toughness that I had already made three successive attacks on it, on as many successive evenings, each attack having been defeated in the end by sleep. The weather was hot, my chair was very comfortable, and the book had somewhere about its strings of polysyllables an essence as of laudanum. Still something had been done on each evening, and now on the fourth I strenuously endeavoured to finish the book. I was just beginning to feel that the words before me were sliding about and losing their meanings, when a sudden crash and a jingle of broken glass behind me woke me with a start, and I threw the book down. A pane of glass in my window was smashed, and I hurried across and threw up the sash to see, if I could, whence the damage had come.

  The building in which my chambers (and Martin Hewitt’s office) were situated was accessible — or rather visible, for there was no entrance — from the rear. There was, in fact, a small courtyard, reached by a passage from the street behind, and into this courtyard, my sitting-room window looked.

  “Hullo, there!” I shouted. But there came no reply. Nor could I distinguish anybody in the courtyard. Some men had been at work during the day on a drainpipe, and I reflected that probably their litter had provided the stone with which my window had been smashed. As I looked, however, two men came hurrying from the passage into the court, and going straight into the deep shadow of one corner, presently appeared again in a less obscure part, hauling forth a third man, who must have already been there in hiding. The third man struggled fiercely, but without avail, and was dragged across toward the passage leading to the street beyond. But the most remarkable feature of the whole thing was the silence of all three men. No cry, no exclamation, escaped any of them. In perfect silence the two hauled the third across the courtyard, and in perfect silence he swung and struggled to resist and escape. The matter astonished me not a little, and the men were entering the passage before I found voice to shout at them. But they took no notice, and disappeared. Soon after I heard cab wheels in the street beyond, and had no doubt that the two men had carried off their prisoner.

  I turned back into my room a little perplexed. It seemed probable that the man who had been borne off had broken my window. But why? I looked about on the floor, and presently found the missile. It was, as I had expected, a piece of broken concrete, but it was wrapped up in a worn piece of paper, which had partly opened out as it lay on my carpet, thus indicating that it had just been crumpled round the stone.

  I disengaged the paper and spread it out. Then I saw it to be a rather hastily written piece of manuscript music, whereof I append a reduced facsimile:

  This gave me no help. I turned the paper this way and that, but could make nothing of it. There was not a mark on it that I could discover, except the music and the scrawled title, “Flitterbat Lancers,” at the top.

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sp; The paper was old, dirty, and cracked. What did it all mean? One might conceive of a person in certain circumstances sending a message — possibly an appeal for help — through a friend’s window, wrapped round a stone, but this seemed to be nothing of that sort.

  Once more I picked up the paper, and with an idea to hear what the Flitterbat Lancers sounded like, I turned to my little pianette and strummed over the notes, making my own time and changing it as seemed likely. But I could by no means extract from the notes anything resembling an air. I half thought of trying Martin Hewitt’s office door, in case he might still be there and offer a guess at the meaning of my smashed window and the scrap of paper, when Hewitt himself came in. He had stayed late to examine a bundle of papers in connection with a case just placed in his hands, and now, having finished, came to find if I were disposed for an evening stroll before turning in. I handed him the paper and the piece of concrete, observing, “There’s a little job for you, Hewitt, instead of the stroll.” And I told him the complete history of my smashed window.

  Hewitt listened attentively, and examined both the paper and the fragment of paving. “You say these people made absolutely no sound whatever?” he asked.

  “None but that of scuffling, and even that they seemed to do quietly.”

  “Could you see whether or not the two men gagged the other, or placed their hands over his mouth?”

  “No, they certainly didn’t do that. It was dark, of course, but not so dark as to prevent my seeing generally what they were doing.”

  Hewitt stood for half a minute in thought, and then said, “There’s something in this, Brett — what, I can’t guess at the moment, but something deep, I fancy. Are you sure you won’t come out now?”

  I told Hewitt that I was sure, and that I should stick to my work.

  “Very well,” he said; “then perhaps you will lend me these articles?” holding up the paper and the stone.

  “Delighted,” I said. “If you get no more melody out of the clinker than I did out of the paper, you won’t have a musical evening. Goodnight!”

  Hewitt went away with the puzzle in his hand, and I turned once more to my social economy, and, thanks to the gentleman who smashed my window, conquered.

  At this time my only regular daily work was on an evening paper so that I left home at a quarter to eight on the morning following the adventure of my broken window, in order, as usual, to be at the office at eight; consequently it was not until lunchtime that I had an opportunity of seeing Hewitt. I went to my own rooms first, however, and on the landing by my door I found the housekeeper in conversation with a shortish, sun-browned man, whose accent at once convinced me that he hailed from across the Atlantic. He had called, it appeared, three or four times during the morning to see me, getting more impatient each time. As he did not seem even to know my name, the housekeeper had not considered it expedient to give him any information about me, and he was growing irascible under the treatment. When I at last appeared, however, he left her and approached me eagerly.

  “See here, sir,” he said, “I’ve been stumpin’ these here durn stairs o’ yours half through the mornin’. I’m anxious to apologize, and fix up some damage.”

  He had followed me into my sitting-room, and was now standing with his back to the fireplace, a dripping umbrella in one hand, and the forefinger of the other held up boulder-high and pointing, in the manner of a pistol, to my window, which, by the way, had been mended during the morning, in accordance with my instructions to the housekeeper.

  “Sir,” he continued, “last night I took the extreme liberty of smashin’ your winder.”

  “Oh,” I said, “that was you, was it?”

  “It was, sir — me. For that I hev come humbly to apologize. I trust the draft has not discommoded you, sir. I regret the accident, and I wish to pay for the fixin’ up and the general inconvenience.” He placed a sovereign on the table. “I ‘low you’ll call that square now, sir, and fix things friendly and comfortable as between gentlemen, an’ no ill will. Shake.”

  And he formally extended his hand.

  I took it at once. “Certainly,” I said. “As a matter of fact, you haven’t inconvenienced me at all; indeed, there were some circumstances about the affair that rather interested me.” And I pushed the sovereign toward him.

  “Say now,” he said, looking a trifle disappointed at my unwillingness to accept his money, “didn’t I startle your nerves?”

  “Not a bit,” I answered, laughing. “In fact, you did me a service by preventing me going to sleep just when I shouldn’t; so we’ll say no more of that.”

  “Well — there was one other little thing,” he pursued, looking at me rather sharply as he pocketed the sovereign. “There was a bit o’ paper round that pebble that came in here. Didn’t happen to notice that, did you?”

  “Yes, I did. It was an old piece of manuscript music.”

  “That was it — exactly. Might you happen to have it handy now?”

  “Well,” I said, “as a matter of fact a friend of mine has it now. I tried playing it over once or twice, as a matter of curiosity, but I couldn’t make anything of it, and so I handed it to him.”

  “Ah!” said my visitor, watching me narrowly, “that’s a puzzler, that Flitterbat Lancers — a real puzzler. It whips ‘em all. Ha, ha’.” He laughed suddenly — a laugh that seemed a little artificial. “There’s music fellers as ‘lows to set right down and play off anything right away that can’t make anything of the Flitterbat Lancers. That was two of ‘em that was monkeyin’ with me last night. They never could make anythin’ of it at all, and I was tantalizing them with it all along till they got real mad, and reckoned to get it out o’ my pocket and learn it at home. Ha, ha! So I got away for a bit, and just rolled it round a stone and heaved it through your winder before they could come up, your winder being the nearest one with a light in it. Ha, ha! I’ll be considerable obliged you’ll get it from your friend right now. Is he stayin’ hereabout?”

  The story was so ridiculously lame that I determined to confront my visitor with Hewitt, and observe the result. If he had succeeded in making any sense of the Flitterbat Lancers, the scene might be amusing. So I answered at once, “Yes; his office is on the floor below; he will probably be in at about this time. Come down with me.”

  We went down, and found Hewitt in his outer office. “This gentleman,” I told him with a solemn intonation, “has come to ask for his piece of manuscript music, the Flitterbat Lancers. He is particularly proud of it, because nobody who tries to play it can make any sort of tune out of it, and it was entirely because two dear friends of his were anxious to drag it out of his pocket and practice it over on the quiet that he flung it through my windowpane last night, wrapped round a piece of concrete.”

  The stranger glanced sharply at me, and I could see that my manner and tone rather disconcerted him. Burt Hewitt came forward at once. “Oh, yes,” he said “just so — quite a natural sort of thing. As a matter of fact, I quite expected you. Your umbrella’s wet — do you mind putting it in the stand? Thank you. Come into my private office.”

  We entered the inner room, and Hewitt, turning to the stranger, went on: “Yes, that is a very extraordinary piece of music, that Flitterbat Lancers. I have been having a little bit of practice with it myself, though I’m really nothing of a musician. I don’t wonder you are anxious to keep it to yourself. Sit down.”

  The stranger, with a distrustful look at Hewitt, complied. At this moment, Hewitt’s clerk, Kerrett, entered from the outer office with a slip of paper. Hewitt glanced at it, and crumpled it in his hand. “I am engaged just now,” was his remark, and Kerrett vanished.

  “And now,” Hewitt said, as he sat down and suddenly turned to the stranger with an intent gaze, “and now, Mr Hoker, we’ll talk of this music.”

  The stranger started and frowned. “You’ve the advantage of me, sir,” he said; “you seem to know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

  Hewitt smiled pleasantl
y. “My name,” he said, “is Hewitt, Martin Hewitt, and it is my business to know a great many things. For instance, I know that you are Mr Reuben B. Hoker, of Robertsville, Ohio.”

  The visitor pushed his chair back, and stared. “Well — that gits me,” he said. “You’re a pretty smart chap, Mr Hewitt. I’ve heard your name before, of course. And — and so you’ve been a-studyin’ the Flitterbat Lancers, have you?” This with a keen glance at Hewitt’s face. “Well, s’pose you have. What’s your idea?”

  “Why,” answered Hewitt, still keeping his steadfast gaze on Hoker’s eyes, “I think it’s pretty late in the century to be fishing about for the Wedlake jewels.”