The Bulldog Drummond Megapack

by H. C. McNeile

  “It’s strictly irregular,” he said, grinning, “but, dash it all, Captain Drummond, I’ll do it.”

  “Good fellow!” cried Drummond. “Let’s get on with it.”

  “I’ll keep a couple of my men below in 10 to follow her if she goes out,” went on MacIver.

  “Excellent,” said Drummond. “And Toby can tell my chauffeur to bring the Hispano up to Jersey Street. For I’ll guarantee to keep in sight of anything in England in her.”

  And so, once more, we returned to Number 10. No one had entered the house next door during our absence—and no one had come out, at any rate at the front. Of that Fosdick, who was still on duty, was sure. And then there commenced a weary vigil. Personally, I make no bones about it, I dozed through most of the afternoon. We were in the room which communicated with Number 12, but though we pulled back the panel on our side, no sound came from the next house. If she was carrying out her intention of restoring some semblance of order she was being very quiet about it.

  Just once we heard the noise of drawers being pulled out, and what sounded like their contents being scattered on the floor; and later on footsteps in the next room caused MacIver to noiselessly slide back the panel into its closed position. But that was all we heard, while the sleepy afternoon drowsed on and the shadows outside grew longer and longer.

  I think MacIver was nodding himself when there suddenly came the sound that banished all sleep. It was a scream—a woman’s scream—curiously muffled, and it came from Number 12. It was not repeated, and as we dashed open the other panel the house was as silent as before. We rushed through into the passage and thence into the bedrooms: everywhere the same scene of disorder. Clothes thrown here and there: bedclothes ripped off and scattered on the floor.

  “She’s restored a semblance of order all right,” said MacIver grimly, as we went downstairs.

  And then he paused: a light was filtering out from the half-opened cellar door.

  “The end of the search, Mac,” said Drummond. “Go easy.”

  At first as we stood on the top of the stairs we could see nothing. A solitary candle guttered on the floor, throwing monstrous shadows in all directions: and then we smelt it once again—that strange bitter sweet smell—the smell of death.

  MacIver’s torch flashed out—to circle round and finally concentrate on something that lay just beyond the buttress wall still stained with Robin Gaunt’s blood. And there was no need to ask what that something was: the poison had claimed another victim.

  She lay there—the woman who had taken Miss Simpson’s place—and the scream we had heard had been with her last breath. The same dreadful distortion: the same staring look of horror in the eyes—everything was just the same as in the other cases. But somehow with a woman it seemed more horrible.

  “My God! but it’s diabolical stuff,” cried MacIver fiercely as he bent over the woman. “How did it happen, I wonder?”

  “It’s on her hand,” said Drummond. “She’s cut it on something. Look, man—there’s a bit of a broken bottle beside her with liquid in it. For Heaven’s sake be careful: the whole place is saturated with the stuff.”

  “We’ll leave the body exactly as it is,” said the Inspector, “until Sir John Dallas comes. I’ll go and telephone him now. Captain Drummond, will you and Mr Stockton mount guard until I return?”

  “Certainly,” answered Drummond, and we followed the Inspector up the stairs.

  “So that’s what they came to look for,” I remarked as the front door closed behind MacIver.

  “Seems like it,” agreed Drummond, lighting a cigarette thoughtfully. “And yet it’s all a little difficult. A fellow may quite easily forget his handkerchief when he goes out, and he ain’t likely to forget his trousers. What I mean, Stockton, is this. The whole thing has been done from the very beginning with the sole idea of getting the secret of that poison. Are we really to believe that after committing half-a-dozen murders and a few trifles of that description they went off and left it behind? Is that the only sample in existence? And if it isn’t, what is the good of worrying about it? Why send back for it at all? It looked as if it was quite a small bottle.

  “There’s another point,” he went on after a moment. “Where was that bottle this morning? I’ll stake my dying oath that it wasn’t lying about in the cellar. It was either hidden there somewhere, or that woman took it down there with her. Great Scott! but it’s a baffling show!”

  We sat on in silence, each busy with his own thoughts. For me it was Robin who filled them: what had happened to him—where was he now? Or had they killed him? Or had he died as the result of his injuries? It was a possible solution to many things.

  “If Gaunt is dead, Drummond,” I said after a while, “it may account for a lot. It’s not likely that he had very large supplies of the stuff in his rooms. And we know anyway that a lot of it was wasted when you shot our friend the night before last. So it seems to me to be perfectly feasible that that bottle down below contained the only existing sample—which in the event of Gaunt’s death would become invaluable to them. They may not know his secret: in which case their only hope would be to get a sample.”

  “But why leave it behind?” he objected. “Why go to the worry and trouble of hiding it in the cellar? For I think it must have been hidden there: the idea that that unfortunate woman should have carried it down there seems pointless. It’s just my trouser example, Stockton.”

  “Each one may have thought the other had it,” I said, but he shook his head.

  “You may be right,” he remarked, “but I don’t believe it was that that she was looking for. And my opinion is that the clue to the whole thing is contained in that blood-stained handkerchief, if only one could interpret it. 3P 7 A N T. It’s directions for something: it can’t be meaningless.”

  Once again we relapsed into silence, until the sound of a taxi outside announced the arrival of someone. It was MacIver, and with him was Sir John carrying some guinea-pigs in cases.

  “Sorry to have been so long,” said the Inspector, “but I couldn’t get Sir John on the telephone, so I had to go and find him. Anything happened?”

  “Not a thing,” said Drummond.

  MacIver had brought another torch and several candles, and by their light Sir John proceeded to make his examination. He had donned a pair of stout india-rubber gloves, but even with their protection he handled things very gingerly.

  First he poured what was left of the poison into another bottle, and corked it with a rubber cork. Then he took a sample of the dead woman’s blood, which he placed in a test-tube and carefully stoppered. And finally, after a minute examination of the cut in her hand and the terrible staring eyes, he rose to his feet.

  “We can now carry her upstairs,” he remarked. “There is nothing more to be seen here. But on your life don’t touch her hand.” We lifted her up, and MacIver gave a sudden exclamation. Underneath where the body had been lying, and so unseen by us until then, was a hole in the floor. It had been made by removing a brick, and the brick, itself, which had been concealed by the body, lay beside the hole. At the bottom of the hole was some broken glass and the neck of the bottle from the base of which Sir John had removed the poison. So it was obviously the place where the poison had been hidden. But who had hidden it—and why?

  “Obviously not a member of the gang,” said MacIver, “or she would have known where it was and not wasted time ransacking the house.”

  “Therefore obviously Gaunt himself,” said Drummond. “Great Scott! man,” he added, “it’s the third brick from the wall. Give me your stick, Sir John. The handkerchief, MacIver-3 and 7.”

  He tapped on the seventh brick, and sure enough it sounded hollow. With growing excitement we crowded round as he endeavoured to prise it up.

  “Careful—careful,” cried Sir John anxiously. “If there’s another bottle we don’t want any risk of another casualty. Let me: I’ve got gloves on.”

  And sure enough when the seventh brick was removed, a s
imilar hole was disclosed, at the bottom of which lay a small cardboard pill-box. With the utmost care he lifted it out, and removed the lid. It was filled with a white paste, which looked like boracic ointment.

  “Hullo!” he said after he’d sniffed it. “What fresh development have we here?”

  And suddenly Drummond gave a shout of comprehension.

  “I’ve got it. It’s the message on the handkerchief. 3P. The third brick—poison: 7 A N T—the seventh brick, antidote. That’s the antidote, Sir John, you’ve got in your hand; and that’s what they’ve been after. That woman came down to look for it—and she only found the poison. Gaunt must have hidden them both while he was a prisoner down here, and then left that last despairing message of his…”

  “We’ll try at once,” said Sir John quietly.

  He handed me the pill-box, and took the poison himself.

  “Take a little of the ointment on the end of a match,” he said, “and I’ll take a little of the poison. You hold one of the guinea-pigs, MacIver. Now the instant I have applied the poison, you follow it up with your stuff in the same place, Stockton.”

  But the experiment was valueless. With a sudden convulsive shudder the little animal died, and when we tried with another the result was the same.

  “Not a very effective antidote,” said Sir John sarcastically.

  “Nevertheless,” said Drummond doggedly, “I’ll bet you it is the antidote. Couldn’t you analyse it, Sir John?”

  “Of course I can analyse it,” snapped the other. “And I shall analyse it.”

  He slipped the box into his bag, followed by the bottle of poison.

  “I wonder if I might make a suggestion,” said Drummond. “I don’t want to seem unduly alarmist, but I think we’ve seen enough to realise that we are up against a pretty tough proposition. Now do you think it’s wise to have all one’s eggs in one basket, or rather all that stuff in one box? It might get lost: it might be stolen. Wouldn’t it be safer, Sir John, to give, say, half of it to MacIver—until at any rate your analysis is concluded? I see you have a spare box in your bag.”

  We were going up the steps as he spoke and he was in front. And suddenly he paused for a moment or two and stared at the door. Then he went on into the hall, and I noticed that he glanced round him in all directions.

  “A most sensible suggestion,” said Sir John, “with which I fully agree.”

  “Then come in here, Sir John,” said Drummond. He led the way into one of the downstairs rooms, and shut the door. And it seemed to me that he was looking unduly grave. He watched the transfer of half the paste to another box, and he waited till MacIver had it in his pocket. Then—

  “Please send for Fosdick, MacIver.”

  A little surprised, the Inspector stepped to the window and beckoned to the man outside.

  “Anyone been in this house, Fosdick, during the last half-hour?” said Drummond.

  “Only Sir John’s assistant, sir.”

  “I haven’t got an assistant,” snapped Sir John.

  “My saint aunt, Mac,” said Drummond grimly, “we’re up against the real thing this time. He’s gone, I suppose?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Fosdick. “About ten minutes ago.”

  “Then I tell you, Sir John, your life is not safe. It’s the stuff in the pill-box that they are after. Perhaps we’ve put it on wrong: perhaps you’ve got to eat it. Anyway that man who posed as your assistant knows you’ve got it. I beg of you to put yourself under police protection day and night. If possible, at any rate, until you have analysed the stuff don’t go near your house. Remain inside Scotland Yard itself.”

  But what Sir John lacked in inches he made up for in pugnacity.

  “If you imagine, sir,” he snapped, “that I am going to be kept out of my own laboratory by a gang of dirty poisoners you’re wrong. If the Inspector here considers it necessary he can send one of his men to stand outside the house. But not one jot will I deviate from my ordinary method of life for twenty would-be murderers. Incidentally”—he added curiously—“how did you know a man had been here?”

  “The position of the cellar door,” answered Drummond. “It’s a heavy door, and I know how I left it when we went in. It was a foot farther open when we came out—and there is no draught.”

  Sir John nodded approvingly.

  “Quick: I like quickness. What in the name of fortune have you done to your face?”

  “Don’t you worry about my face, Sir John,” said Drummond quietly: “you concentrate on your own life.”

  “And you mind your own business, young man,” snapped the other angrily. “My life is my own affair.”

  “It isn’t,” answered Drummond. “It’s the nation’s—until you’ve analysed that stuff. After that, I agree with you: no one is likely to care two hoots.”

  Sir John turned purple.

  “You insolent young puppy,” he stuttered.

  “Cut it out, you silly little man,” said Drummond wearily. “But don’t forget—I’ve warned you. Come on, Stockton: we’ll rope in the others and push off. Mount Street finds me, Mac; but I must have some sleep. Let me know how things go, like a good fellow.”

  “Sorry I lost my temper with the little bloke,” he said to me, as he spun the Hispano into the Euston Road. “But really, old man, this stunt of yours is enough to try anybody’s nerves.”

  The other four were behind, all more or less asleep, and I was nodding myself. In fact I hardly noticed where he was taking us until we pulled up in front of his house.

  “My warrior can take you round and drop you,” he said, yawning prodigiously. “And tomorrow we might resume the good work.”

  Personally I didn’t even get as far as bed. I just fell asleep in an easy-chair in my room, until I woke with a start to find the lights lit and someone shaking me by the shoulder.

  It was Drummond, and the look on his face made me sit up quickly.

  “They’ve got him,” he said, “as I knew they would. Sir John was stabbed through the heart in his laboratory an hour ago.”

  “My God!” I muttered. “How do you know!”

  “MacIver has just rung up. Stockton—as I’ve said before—we’re up against the real thing this time.”

  THE FINAL COUNT [Part 2]

  CHAPTER VII

  In Which I Appear to Become Irrelevant

  I think it was the method of the murder of Sir John that brought home to me most forcibly the nerve of the gang that confronted us. And though there will be many people who remember the affair, yet, for the benefit of those who do not, I will set forth what happened as detailed in the papers of the following day. The cutting is before me as I write.

  “Another astounding and cold-blooded murder occurred between the hours of nine and ten last night. Sir John Dallas, the well-known scientist and authority on toxicology, was stabbed through the heart in his own laboratory.

  “The following are the facts of the case. Sir John, as our readers will remember, gave evidence as recently as the day before yesterday in the sensational Robin Gaunt affair. He described in court the action of the new and deadly poison, by means of which the dog, the policeman and the Australian—David Ganton—had been killed. He also stated that he was endeavouring to analyse the drug, and there can be little doubt that he was engaged on that very work when he met his end.

  “It appears that yesterday afternoon a further and, at present, secret development occurred which caused Sir John to feel hopeful of success. He returned to his house in Eaton Square in time for dinner, which he had served in his study—the usual course of procedure when he was busy. At eight-thirty he rang the bell and Elizabeth Perkins, the parlour-maid, came and removed the tray. He was apparently completely absorbed in his research at that time, since he failed to answer her twice-repeated question as to what time he would like his milk. On the desk in front of him was a bottle containing a colourless liquid which looked like water, and a small cardboard box.

  “These facts are interesting in view
of what is to follow, and may prove to have an important bearing on the case. At between nine o’clock and a quarter-past the front-door bell rang, and it was answered by Perkins. There was a man outside who stated that he had come to see Sir John on a very important matter. She told him that Sir John was busy, but when he told her that it was in connection with Sir John’s work that he was there, she showed him along the passage to the laboratory. And then she heard the stranger say distinctly, ‘I’ve come from Scotland Yard, Sir John.’ Now there can be but little doubt that this man was the murderer himself, since no one from Scotland Yard visited Sir John at t hat hour. And as walking openly into a man’s house, killing him, and walking out again requires a nerve possessed by few, the added touch of introducing himself as a member of the police is quite in keeping with the whole amazing case.

  “To return, however, to what happened. Perkins, having shown this man into the laboratory, returned to the servants’ hall, where she remained till ten o’clock. At ten o’clock she had a standing order to take Sir John a glass of warm milk, if he had not rung for it sooner. She got the milk and took it along to the laboratory. She knocked and, receiving no answer, she entered the room. At first she thought he must have gone out, as the laboratory appeared to be empty, and then, suddenly, she saw a leg sticking out from behind the desk. She went quickly to the place to find, to her horror, that Sir John was lying on the floor with a dagger driven up to the hilt in his heart.

  “She saw at a glance that he was dead, and rushing out of the house she called in a policeman, who at once rang up Scotland Yard. Inspector MacIver, who, it will be recalled, is in charge of the Robin Gaunt mystery, at once hurried to the scene. And it was he who elucidated the fact that the bottle containing the colourless liquid, and the little cardboard box, had completely disappeared. It seems, therefore, impossible to doubt that at any rate one motive for the murder of this distinguished savant was the theft of these two things with their unknown contents. And further, since we know that Sir John was experimenting with this mysterious new poison, the connection between this dastardly crime and the Gaunt affair seems conclusive.