“Very good, sir. I will clean your small Colt revolver at once.”
Hugh Drummond paused in the act of lighting his pipe, and a grin spread slowly over his face. “Excellent,” he said. “And see if you can find that water-squirt pistol I used to have—a Son of a Gun they called it. That ought to raise a laugh, when I arrest the murderer with it.”
II
The 30 h.p. two-seater made short work of the run to Godalming. Under the dickey seat behind lay a small bag, containing the bare necessaries for the night; and as Drummond thought of the two guns rolled up carefully in his pyjamas—the harmless toy and the wicked little automatic—he grinned gently to himself. The girl had not rung him up during the morning, and, after a comfortable lunch at his club, he had started about three o’clock. The hedges, fresh with the glory of spring, flashed past; the smell of the country came sweet and fragrant on the air. There was a gentle warmth, a balminess in the day that made it good to be alive, and once or twice he sang under his breath through sheer light-heartedness of spirit. Surrounded by the peaceful beauty of the fields, with an occasional village half hidden by great trees from under which the tiny houses peeped out, it seemed impossible that crime could exist—laughable. Of course the thing was a hoax, an elaborate leg-pull, but, being not guilty of any mental subterfuge, Hugh Drummond admitted to himself quite truly that he didn’t care a damn if it was. Phyllis Benton was at liberty to continue the jest, wherever and whenever she liked. Phyllis Benton was a very nice girl, and very nice girls are permitted a lot of latitude.
A persistent honking behind aroused him from his reverie, and he pulled into the side of the road. Under normal circumstances he would have let his own car out, and as she could touch ninety with ease, he very rarely found himself passed. But this afternoon he felt disinclined to race; he wanted to go quietly and think. Blue eyes and that glorious colouring were a dangerous combination—distinctly dangerous. Most engrossing to a healthy bachelor’s thoughts.
An open cream-coloured Rolls-Royce drew level, with five people on board, and he looked up as it passed. There were three people in the back—two men and a woman, and for a moment his eyes met those of the man nearest him. Then they drew ahead, and Drummond pulled up to avoid the thick cloud of dust.
With a slight frown he stared at the retreating car; he saw the man lean over and speak to the other man; he saw the other man look round. Then a bend in the road hid them from sight, and, still frowning, Drummond pulled out his case and lit a cigarette. For the man whose eye he had caught as the Rolls went by was Henry Lakington. There was no mistaking that hard-lipped, cruel face. Presumably, thought Hugh, the other two occupants were Mr. Peterson and the doubtful daughter, Irma; presumably they were returning to The Elms. And incidentally there seemed no pronounced reason why they shouldn’t. But, somehow, the sudden appearance of Lakington had upset him; he felt irritable and annoyed. What little he had seen of the man he had not liked; he did not want to be reminded of him, especially just as he was thinking of Phyllis.
He watched the white dust-cloud rise over the hill in front as the car topped it; he watched it settle and drift away in the faint breeze. Then he let in his clutch and followed quite slowly in the big car’s wake.
There had been two men in front—the driver and another, and he wondered idly if the latter was Mr. Benton. Probably not, he reflected, since Phyllis and said nothing about her father being in London. He accelerated up the hill and swung over the top; the next moment he braked hard and pulled up just in time. The Rolls, with the chauffeur peering into the bonnet had stopped in such a position that it was impossible for him to get by.
The girl was still seated in the back of the car, also the passenger in front, but the two other men were standing in the road apparently watching the chauffeur, and after a while the one whom Drummond had recognised as Lakington came towards him.
“I’m so sorry,” he began—and then paused in surprise. “Why, surely it’s Captain Drummond?”
Drummond nodded pleasantly. “The occupant of a car is hardly likely to change in a mile, is he?” he remarked. “I’m afraid I forgot to wave as you went past, but I got your smile all right.” He leant on his steering-wheel and lit a second cigarette. “Are you likely to be long?” he asked; “because if so, I’ll stop my engine.”
The other man was now approaching casually, and Drummond regarded him curiously. “A friend of our little Phyllis, Peterson,” said Lakington, as he came up. “I found them having tea together yesterday at the Carlton.”
“Any friend of Miss Benton’s is, I hope, ours,” said Peterson with a smile. “You’ve known her a long time, I expect?”
“Quite a long time,” returned Hugh. “We have jazzed together on many occasions.”
“Which makes it all the more unfortunate that we should have delayed you,” said Peterson. “I can’t help thinking, Lakington, that that new chauffeur is a bit of a fool.”
“I hope he avoided the crash all right,” murmured Drummond politely.
Both men looked at him. “The crash!” said Lakington. “There was no question of a crash. We just stopped.”
“Really,” remarked Drummond, “I think, sir, that you must be right in your diagnosis of your chauffeur’s mentality.” He turned courteously to Peterson. “When something goes wrong, for a fellah to stop his car by braking so hard that he locks both back wheels is no bon, as we used to say in France. I thought, judging by the tracks in the dust, that you must have been in imminent danger of ramming a traction engine. Or perhaps,” he added judicially, “a sudden order to stop would have produced the same effect.” If he saw the lightning glance that passed between the two men he gave no sign. “May I offer you a cigarette? Turkish that side—Virginian the other. I wonder if I could help your man,” he continued, when they had helped themselves. “I’m a bit of an expert with a Rolls.”
“How very kind of you,” said Peterson. “I’ll go and see.” He went over to the man and spoke a few words.
“Isn’t it extraordinary,” remarked Hugh, “how the eye of the boss galvanises the average man into activity! As long, probably, as Mr. Peterson had remained here talking, that chauffeur would have gone on tinkering with the engine. And now—look, in a second—all serene. And yet I dare say Mr. Peterson knows nothing about it really. Just the watching eye, Mr. Lakington. Wonderful thing—the human optic.”
He rambled on with a genial smile, watching with apparent interest the car in front. “Who’s the quaint bird sitting beside the chauffeur? He appeals to me immensely. Wish to Heaven I’d had a few more like him in France to turn into snipers.”
“May I ask why you think he would have been a success at the job?” Lakington’s voice expressed merely perfunctory interest, but his cold, steely eyes were fixed on Drummond.
“He’s so motionless,” answered Hugh. “The bally fellow hasn’t moved a muscle since I’ve been here. I believe he’d sit on a hornets’ nest, and leave the inmates guessing. Great gift, Mr. Lakington. Shows a strength of will but rarely met with—a mind which rises above mere vulgar curiosity.”
“It is undoubtedly a great gift to have such a mind, Captain Drummond,” said Lakington. “And if it isn’t born in a man, he should most certainly try to cultivate it.” He pitched his cigarette away, and buttoned up his coat. “Shall we be seeing you this evening?”
Drummond shrugged his shoulders. “I’m the vaguest man that ever lived,” he said lightly. “I might be listening to nightingales in the country; or I might be consuming steak and onions preparatory to going to a night club. So long… You must let me take you to Hector’s one night. Hope you don’t break down again so suddenly.”
He watched the Rolls-Royce start, but seemed in no hurry to follow suit. And his many friends, who were wont to regard Hugh Drummond as a mass of brawn not too plentifully supplied with brains, would have been puzzled had they seen the look of keen concentration on his face as he stared along the white, dusty road. He could not say why, but su
ddenly and very certainly the conviction had come to him that this was no hoax and no leg-pull—but grim and sober reality. In his imagination he heard the sudden sharp order to stop the instant they were over the hill, so that Peterson might have a chance of inspecting him; in a flash of intuition he knew that these two men were no ordinary people, and that he was suspect. And as he slipped smoothly after the big car, now well out of sight, two thoughts were dominant in his mind. The first was that there was some mystery about the motionless, unnatural man who had sat beside the driver; the second was a distinct feeling of relief that his automatic was fully loaded.
III
At half-past five he stopped in front of Godalming Post Office. To his surprise the girl handed him a wire, and Hugh tore the yellow envelope open quickly. It was from Denny, and it was brief and to the point:
Phone message received. AAA. Must see you Carlton tea day after tomorrow. Going Godalming now. AAA. Message ends.
With a slight smile he noticed the military phraseology—Denny at one time in his career had been a signaller—and then he frowned. “Must see you.” She should—at once.
He turned to the girl and inquired the way to The Larches. It was about two miles, he gathered, on the Guildford road, and impossible to miss—a biggish house standing well back in its own grounds.
“Is it anywhere near a house called The Elms?” he asked.
“Next door, sir,” said the girl. “The gardens adjoin.”
He thanked her, and having torn up the telegram into small pieces, he got into his car. There was nothing for it, he had decided, but to drive boldly up to the house, and say that he had come to call on Miss Benton. He had never been a man who beat about the bush, and simple methods appealed to him—a trait in his character which many a boxer, addicted to tortuous cunning in the ring, had good cause to remember. What more natural, he reflected, than to drive over and see such an old friend?
He had no difficulty in finding the house, and a few minutes later he was ringing the front-door bell. It was answered by a maidservant, who looked at him in mild surprise. Young men in motorcars were not common visitors at The Larches.
“Is Miss Benton in?” Hugh asked with a smile which at once won the girl’s heart.
“She has only just come back from London, sir,” she answered doubtfully. “I don’t know whether…”
“Would you tell her that Captain Drummond has called?” said Hugh as the maid hesitated. “That I happened to find myself near here, and came on chance of seeing her?”
Once again the smile was called into play, and the girl hesitated no longer. “Will you come inside, sir?” she said. “I will go and tell Miss Phyllis.”
She ushered him into the drawing-room and closed the door. It was a charming room, just such as he would have expected with Phyllis. Big windows, opening down to the ground, led out on to a lawn, which was already a blaze of colour. A few great oak trees threw a pleasant shade at the end of the garden, and, partially showing through them, he could see another house which he rightly assumed was The Elms. In fact, even as he heard the door open and shut behind him, he saw Peterson come out of a small summer-house and commence strolling up and down, smoking a cigar. Then he turned round and faced the girl.
Charming as she had looked in London, she was doubly so now, in a simple linen frock which showed off her figure to perfection. But if he thought he was going to have any leisure to enjoy the picture undisturbed, he was soon disillusioned.
“Why have you come here, Captain Drummond?” she said, a little breathlessly. “I said the Carlton—the day after tomorrow.”
“Unfortunately,” said Hugh, “I’d left London before that message came. My servant wired it on to the post office here. Not that it would have made any difference. I should have come, anyway.”
An involuntary smile hovered round her lips for a moment; then she grew serious again. “It’s very dangerous for you to come here,” she remarked quietly. “If once those men suspect anything, God knows what will happen.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that it was too late to worry about that; then he changed his mind. “And what is there suspicious,” he asked, “in an old friend who happens to be in the neighbourhood dropping in to call? Do you mind if I smoke?”
The girl beat her hands together. “My dear man,” she cried, “you don’t understand. You’re judging those devils by your own standard. They suspect everything—and everybody.”
“What a distressing habit,” he murmured. “Is it chronic, Or merely due to liver? I must send ’em a bottle of good salts. Wonderful thing—good salts. Never without some in France.”
The girl looked at him resignedly. “You’re hopeless,” she remarked—“absolutely hopeless.”
“Absolutely,” agreed Hugh, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “Wherefore your telephone message? What’s the worry?”
She bit her lip and drummed with her fingers on the arm of her chair. “If I tell you,” she said at length, “will you promise me, on your word of honour, that you won’t go blundering into The Elms, or do anything foolish like that?”
“At the present moment I’m very comfortable where I am, thanks,” remarked Hugh.
“I know,” she said; “but I’m so dreadfully afraid that you’re the type of person who…who…” She paused, at a loss for a word.
“Who bellows like a bull, and charges head down,” interrupted Hugh with a grin. She laughed with him, and just for a moment their eyes met, and she read in his something quite foreign to the point at issue. In fact, it is to be feared that the question of Lakington and his companions was not engrossing Drummond’s mind, as it doubtless should have been, to the exclusion of all else.
“They’re so utterly unscrupulous,” she continued, hurriedly, “so fiendishly clever, that even you would be like a child in their hands.”
Hugh endeavoured to dissemble his pleasure at that little word “even”, and only succeeded in frowning horribly.
“I will be discretion itself,” he assured her firmly. “I promise you.”
“I suppose I shall have to trust you,” she said. “Have you seen the evening papers today?”
“I looked at the ones that came out in the morning labelled 6 p.m. before I had lunch,” he answered. “Is there anything of interest?”
She handed him a copy of the Planet. “Read that little paragraph in the second column.” She pointed to it, as he took the paper, and Hugh read it aloud.
“Mr. Hiram C. Potts—the celebrated American millionaire—is progressing favourably. He has gone into the country for a few days, but is sufficiently recovered to conduct business as usual.” He laid down the paper and looked at the girl sitting opposite. “One is pleased,” he remarked in a puzzled tone, “for the sake of Mr. Potts. To be ill and have a name like that is more than most men could stand… But I don’t quite see…”
“That man was stopping at the Carlton, where he met Lakington,” said the girl. “He is a multi-millionaire, over here in connection with some big steel trust; and when multi-millionaires get friendly with Lakington, their health frequently does suffer.”
“But this paper says he’s getting better,” objected Drummond. “‘Sufficiently recovered to conduct business as usual.’ What’s wrong with that?”
“If he is sufficiently recovered to conduct business as usual, why did he send his confidential secretary away yesterday morning on an urgent mission to Belfast?”
“Search me,” said Hugh. “Incidentally, how do you know he did?”
“I asked at the Carlton this morning,” she answered. “I said I’d come after a job as typist for Mr. Potts. They told me at the inquiry office that he was ill in bed and unable to see anybody. So I asked for his secretary, and they told me what I’ve just told you—that he had left for Belfast that morning and would be away several days. It may be that there’s nothing in it; on the other hand, it may be that there’s a lot. And it’s only by following up every possible clue,” she conti
nued fiercely, “that I can hope to beat those fiends and get Daddy out of their clutches.”
Drummond nodded gravely, and did not speak. For into his mind had flashed suddenly the remembrance of that sinister, motionless figure seated by the chauffeur. The wildest guesswork certainly—no vestige of proof—and yet, having once come, the thought struck. And as he turned it over in his mind, almost prepared to laugh at himself for his credulity—millionaires are not removed against their will, in broad daylight, from one of the biggest hotels in London, to sit in immovable silence in an open car—the door opened and an elderly man came in.
Hugh rose, and the girl introduced the two men. “An old friend, Daddy,” she said. “You must have heard me speak of Captain Drummond.”
“I don’t recall the name at the moment, my dear,” he answered courteously—a fact which was hardly surprising—” but I fear I’m getting a little forgetful. I am pleased to meet you, Captain Drummond. You’ll stop and have some dinner, of course.”
Hugh bowed. “I should like to, Mr. Benton. Thank you very much. I’m afraid the hour of my call was a little informal, but being round in these parts, I felt I must come: and look Miss Benton up.”
His host smiled absent-mindedly, and walking to the window, stared through the gathering dusk at the house opposite, half hidden in the trees. And Hugh, who was watching him from under lowered lids, saw him suddenly clench both hands in a gesture of despair.
It cannot be said that dinner was a meal of sparkling gaiety. Mr. Benton was palpably ill at ease, and beyond a few desultory remarks spoke hardly at all: while the girl, who sat opposite Hugh, though she made one or two valiant attempts to break the long silences, spent most of the meal in covertly watching her father. If anything more had been required to convince Drummond of the genuineness of his interview with her at the Carlton the preceding day, the atmosphere at this strained and silent party supplied it.
The Bulldog Drummond Megapack Page 5