The Bulldog Drummond Megapack

by H. C. McNeile

  “I see,” murmured Drummond quietly, and Sir Raymond shifted a little in his chair. Ridiculous though it was, this vast young man facing him had a peculiarly direct stare which he found almost disconcerting.

  “I see,” repeated Drummond. “So the system was a dud.”

  “Precisely, Captain Drummond. The system was of no use. A gigantic advance, you will understand, on anything that has ever been done before in that line—but still, of no use. And if one may extract some little ray of comfort from the appalling tragedy which caused Professor Goodman’s death, it surely is that he was at any rate spared from the laughter of the scientific world whose good opinion he valued so greatly.”

  Sir Raymond leaned back in his chair, and a murmur of sympathetic approval for words well and truly uttered passed round the room. And feeling considerably more sure of himself, it dawned on the mind of the chairman that up to date he had done most of the talking, and that so far his visitor’s principal contribution had been confined to monosyllables. Who was he, anyway, this Captain Drummond? Some friend of the idiotic youth with the eyeglass, presumably. He began to wonder why he had ever consented to see him…

  “However, Captain Drummond,” he continued with a trace of asperity, “you doubtless came round to speak to me about something. And since we are rather busy this evening…”

  He broke off and waited. “I did wish to speak to you,” said Drummond, carefully selecting a cigarette. “But since the process is no good, I don’t think it matters very much.”

  “It is certainly no good,” answered Sir Raymond.

  “So I’m afraid old Scheidstrun will only be wasting his time.”

  For a moment it almost seemed as if the clock had stopped, so intense was the sudden silence.

  “I don’t quite understand what you mean,” said Sir Raymond, in a voice which, strive as he would, he could not make quite steady.

  “No?” murmured Drummond placidly. “You didn’t know of Professor Goodman’s last instructions? However, since the whole thing is a dud, I won’t worry you.”

  “What do you know of Scheidstrun?” asked Sir Raymond.

  “Just a funny old Boche. He came to see me yesterday afternoon with the Professor’s last will, so to speak. And then I interviewed him this morning in the office of the excellent Mr Tootem, and pulled his nose—poor old dear!”

  “Professor Scheidstrun came to see you?” cried Sir Raymond, standing up suddenly. “What for?”

  “Why, to get the notes of the diamond process, which the Professor gave me at lunch on the day of his death.”

  Drummond thoughtfully lit his cigarette, apparently oblivious of the fact that every man in the room was glaring at him speechlessly.

  “But since it’s a dud—I’m afraid he’ll waste his time.”

  “But the notes were destroyed.” Every vestige of control had left Sir Raymond’s voice; his agitation was obvious.

  “How do you know?” snapped Drummond, and the President of the Metropolitan Diamond Syndicate found himself staring almost fascinated at a pair of eyes from which every trace of laziness had vanished.

  “He always carried them with him,” he stammered. “And I—er—assumed…”

  “Then you assumed wrong. Professor Goodman handed me those notes at lunch the day he died.”

  “Where are they now?” It was Mr Leibhaus who asked the question in his guttural voice.

  “Since they are of no use, what does it matter?” answered Drummond indifferently.

  “Gentlemen!” Sir Raymond’s peremptory voice checked the sudden buzz of conversation. “Captain Drummond,” he remarked, “I must confess that what you have told me this afternoon has given me a slight shock. As I say, I had assumed that the notes of the process had perished with the Professor. You now tell us that he handed them to you. Well, I make no bones about it that though—from a purely scientific point of view the process fails—yet—er—from a business point of view it is not one that any of us would care to have noised abroad. You will understand that if diamonds can be made cheaply which except to the eye of the most practical expert are real, it will—er—not be a good thing for those who are interested in the diamond market. You can understand that, can’t you?”

  “I tell you what I can’t understand, Sir Raymond,” said Drummond quietly. “And that is that you’re a damned bad poker player. If flaws—as you say—have appeared in the diamonds manufactured by this process, you and your pals here would not now be giving the finest example of a vertical typhoon that I’ve ever seen.”

  Sir Raymond subsided in his chair a little foolishly; he felt at a complete loss as to where he stood with this astonishing young man. And it was left to Mr Leibhaus to make the next move.

  “Let us leave that point for the moment,” he remarked. “Where are these notes now?”

  “I’ve already told you,” replied Drummond casually. “The worthy Scheidstrun has them. And in accordance with Professor Goodman’s written instructions he proposes to give the secret to the world of science at an early date. In fact he is going back to Germany tomorrow to do so.”

  “But the thing is impossible,” cried Sir Raymond, recovering his speech. “You mean to say that Professor Goodman left written instructions that the notes of his process were to be handed over to—to Scheidstrun?”

  “I do,” returned Drummond. “And if you want confirmation, you can ring up Mr Tootem of Austin Friars—Professor Goodman’s lawyer. He saw the letter, and it was in his office the notes were handed over.”

  “You will excuse me, Captain Drummond, if I confer for a few moments with my friends,” said Sir Raymond, rising.

  The directors of the Metropolitan Diamond Syndicate withdrew to the farther end of the long room, leaving Drummond still sitting at the table. And to that gentleman’s shrewd eye it was soon apparent that his chance arrow had hit the mark, though exactly what mark it was, was still beyond him. But the agitation displayed by the group of men in the window was too obvious to miss, and had he known all the facts he would have found it hardly surprising.

  The directors were faced unexpectedly with as thorny a problem as could well be devised.

  Believing as they had that the notes had been destroyed—had not Mr Edward Blackton assured them of that fact?—they had unanimously decided to adopt the role that the process had proved useless, thereby removing any possible suspicion that might attach itself to them. And now they found that not only had the notes not been destroyed, but that they were in the possession of Blackton himself. And it needed but little imagination to realise that dangerous though the knowledge of the process had been in the hands of Professor Goodman, it was twenty times more so in the hands of Blackton if he meant to double-cross them.

  That was the point: did he? Or had he discovered somehow or other that Drummond held the notes and taken these steps in order to get them?

  And the second little matter which had to be solved was how much this man Drummond knew. If he knew nothing at all, why had he bothered to come round and see them? It was out of the question, surely, that he could have any inkling of the real truth concerning the bogus Professor Scheidstrun. Had not the impersonation deceived even London scientists who knew the real man at the funeral that afternoon?

  For a while the directors conferred together in whispers; then Sir Raymond advanced towards the table. The first thing was to get rid of Drummond.

  “I am sure we are all very much obliged to you, Captain Drummond, for taking so much trouble and coming round to see us, but I don’t think there is anything more you can do. Should an opportunity arise I will take steps to let Professor Scheidstrun know what we think—” He held out a cordial hand to terminate the interview.

  But it takes two people to terminate an interview, and Drummond had no intention of being the second. He realised that he was on delicate ground and that it behoved him to walk warily. But his conviction that something was wrong somewhere was stronger than ever, and he was determined to try to get to
the bottom of it.

  “It might perhaps be as well, Sir Raymond,” he remarked, “to go round and tell him now. I know where he is stopping.” Was it his imagination, or did the men in the window look at one another uneasily? “As I told you, I pulled the poor old bean’s nose this morning, and it seems a good way of making amends.”

  Sir Raymond stared at him. “May I ask you why you pulled his nose?” And Drummond decided on a bold move.

  “Because, Sir Raymond, I came to the conclusion that Professor Scheidstrun was not Professor Scheidstrun, but somebody else.” There was no mistaking the air of tension now. “I may say that I was mistaken.”

  “Who did you think he was?” Sir Raymond gave a forced laugh.

  “A gentleman of international reputation,” said Drummond quietly, “who masquerades under a variety of names. I knew him first as Carl Peterson, but he answers to a lot of titles. The Comte de Guy is one of them.”

  And now the atmosphere was electric, a fact which did not escape Drummond. His eyes had narrowed; he was sitting very still. In the language of the old nursery game, he was getting warm.

  “But I conclusively proved, gentlemen,” he continued, “that the man to whom I handed those notes this morning was not the Comte de Guy. The Comte, gentlemen, has arms as big as mine. His physical strength is very great. This man had arms like walking sticks, and he couldn’t have strangled a mouse.”

  One by one the men at the window had returned to their seats, and now they sat in perfect silence staring at Drummond. What on earth was this new complication, or was this man deliberately deceiving them?

  “Do you know the Comte de Guy well?” said Sir Raymond after a pause.

  “Very well,” remarked Drummond. “Do you?”

  “I have heard of him,” answered the other.

  “Then, as you probably know, his power of disguising himself is so miraculous as to be uncanny. He has one little mannerism, however, which he sometimes shows in moments of excitement whatever his disguise. And it has enabled me to spot him on one or two occasions. When therefore I saw that little trick of his in the lawyer’s office this morning, I jumped to the conclusion that my old friend was on the war-path again. So I leaped upon him and the subsequent scene was dreadful. It was not my old friend at all, but a complete stranger with a vast wife who nearly felled me with a blow on the ear.”

  He selected another cigarette with care.

  “However,” he continued casually, “It’s a very good thing for you that the process is a dud. Because I am sure nothing would induce him to disregard Professor Goodman’s wishes on the subject if it hadn’t been.”

  “You say you know where he is stopping?” said Sir Raymond.

  “I do,” answered Drummond.

  “Then I think perhaps that it would be a good thing to do as you suggest, and go round and see him now.”

  He had been thinking rapidly while Drummond was speaking, and one or two points were clear. In some miraculous way this young man had blundered on to the truth. That the man Drummond had met in the lawyer’s office that morning was any other than Blackton he did not for a moment believe. But Blackton had bluffed him somehow, and for the time had thrown him off the scent. The one vital thing was to prevent him getting on to it again. And since there was no way of telling what Drummond would find when he went round to the house, it was imperative that he should be there himself. For if there was one person whom Sir Raymond did not expect to meet there, it was Professor Scheidstrun. And in that event he must be on hand to see what happened. “Shall we go at once? My car is here.”

  “By all means,” said Drummond. “And if there’s room we might take Algy as well. He gets into mischief if he’s left lying about.”

  On one point at any rate Sir Raymond’s expectations were not realised. Professor Scheidstrun was at the house right enough; in fact he and his wife had just finished their tea. And neither the worthy Teuton nor his spouse evinced the slightest pleasure on seeing their visitors. With the termination of the funeral they had believed their troubles to be over, and now this extremely powerful and objectionable young man had come to worry them again, to say nothing of his friend who had spoken to the Professor at the funeral. And what did Sir Raymond Blantyre want? Scheidstrun had been coached carefully as to whom and what Sir Raymond was, but what on earth had he come round about? Especially with Drummond?

  It was the latter who stated the reason of their visit. “I’ve come about those notes, Professor,” he remarked cheerfully. “You know—the ones that caused that slight breeze in old Tootem’s office this morning.”

  “So,” grunted the Professor, blinking uneasily behind his spectacles. It struck him that the ground was getting dangerous.

  “I feel,” went on Drummond affably, “that after our unfortunate little contretemps I ought to try to make some amends. And as I know you’re a busy man I shouldn’t like you to waste your time needlessly. Now, you propose, don’t you, to carry on with Professor Goodman’s process, and demonstrate it to the world at large?”

  “That is so,” said the German. Out of the corner of his eye Drummond looked at Sir Raymond, but the President of the Metropolitan Diamond Syndicate was staring impassively out of the window.

  “Well, I’m sorry to say the process is a dud; a failure; no bally earthly. You get me, I trust.”

  “A failure. Ach! is dot so?” rumbled Scheidstrun, who was by this time completely out of his depth.

  “And that being the case, Professor,” murmured Sir Raymond, “it would be better to destroy the notes at once, don’t you think? I was under the impression”—he added pointedly—”that they had already been destroyed in the accident.”

  Strangely enough, the presence of Drummond gave him a feeling of confidence with Mr Edward Blackton which he had never experienced before. And this was a golden opportunity for securing the destruction of those accursed papers, and thus preventing any possibility of his being double-crossed.

  “Shall we therefore destroy them at once?” he repeated quietly.

  The German fidgeted in his chair. Willingly would he have destroyed them on the spot if they had still been in his possession. Anything to be rid of his visitors. He glanced from one to the other of them. Drummond was apparently staring at the flies on the ceiling; Sir Raymond was staring at him, and his stare was full of some hidden meaning. But since it was manifestly impossible for him to do as Sir Raymond suggested, the only thing to do was to temporise.

  “I fear that to destroy them I cannot,” he murmured. “At least not yet. My duty to my dear friend…”

  “Duty be damned!” snarled Sir Raymond, forgetting Drummond’s presence in his rage. This swine was trying to double-cross him after all. “You’ll destroy those notes here and now, or…” With a great effort he pulled himself together.

  “Or what?” asked Drummond mildly. “You seem strangely determined, Sir Raymond, that Professor Scheidstrun shouldn’t waste his time. Deuced praiseworthy, I call it, on your part.… Interests of science and all that.…” Sir Raymond smothered a curse, and glared still more furiously at the German. And suddenly Drummond rose to his feet, and strolled over to the open window.

  “Well, I don’t think there’s much good our waiting here,” he remarked in a bored voice. “If he wants to fool round with the process, he must. Coming, Sir Raymond?”

  “In a moment or two, Captain Drummond. Don’t you wait.”

  “Right. Come on, Algy. Apologies again about the nose, Professor. So long.”

  He opened the door, and paused outside for Algy to join him. And every trace of boredom had vanished from his face. “Go downstairs noisily,” he whispered. “Make a remark as if I was with you. Go out and slam the front door. Then hang about and wait for me.”

  “Right,” answered the either. “But what are you going to do?”

  “Listen to their conversation, old man. I have an idea it may be interesting.” Without a sound he opened the door of the next room and went in. It was a
bedroom and it was empty, and Drummond heaved a sigh of relief. The window, he knew, would be open—he had seen that as he looked out in the other room. Moreover, the square was a quiet one; he could hear easily what was being said next door by leaning out.

  And for the next five minutes he leaned out, and he heard. And so engrossed was he in what he heard that he quite failed to notice a dark-skinned, sturdy man who paused abruptly on the pavement a few houses away, and disappeared as suddenly as he had come. So engrossed was he in what he heard that he even failed to hear a faint click from the door behind him a few moments later.

  All he noticed was that the voices in the next room suddenly ceased, but he had heard quite enough. There was not one Scheidstrun, but two Scheidstruns, and he had assaulted the wrong one.

  Of Mr Edward Blackton he had never heard; but there was only one man living who could have suggested that unmistakable trick with his hand—the man he knew as Carl Peterson. Somehow or other he had found out this mannerism of his and had used it deliberately to bluff Drummond, even as he had deliberately double-crossed the Metropolitan Diamond Syndicate. It was just the sort of thing that would appeal to his sense of humour.

  So be it: they would crack a jest together over it later. At the moment he wanted a word or two with Sir Raymond Blantyre. He crossed to the door and tried to open it. But the door was locked, and the key was on the outside.

  For a moment or two he stood staring at it. His mind was still busy with the staggering conversation he had been listening to, which had almost, if not quite, explained everything. Facts, disconnected before, now joined themselves together in a more or less logical sequence. Sir Raymond Blantyre’s visit to Montreux to enlist the aid of this Mr Edward Blackton; the arrival in England of the spurious Professor Scheidstrun; the accident at Hampstead—all this part was clear now. And with regard to that accident, Drummond’s face was grim. Cold-blooded murder it must have been, in spite of all Sir Raymond’s guarded utterances on the subject.

  For it had taken that gentleman ten minutes before he finally realised that the Scheidstrun he was talking to was the genuine article, and during that ten minutes he had spoken with some freedom. And then when he had finally realised it, and grasped the fact that he and his syndicate had been double-crossed, his rage had been terrible. Moreover, he had then said things which made matters even clearer to the man who was listening in the next room.