The Bulldog Drummond Megapack

by H. C. McNeile

  “Ever been ratting?” he asked when I’d finished.

  Once more did I stare at this extraordinary individual in amazement. What on earth had that got to do with it?

  “Well—have you?” he repeated when I didn’t answer.

  “In the days of my youth I believe I did,” I answered. “Though the exact bearing of a boyish pastime on the point at issue is a little obscure.”

  “Then it oughtn’t to be,” he remarked curtly. “It’s only obscure because your grey matter is torpid. When a party of you go ratting, you put a bloke at every hole you know of before you start to bolt your rats.”

  He relapsed again into silence, and so did I. The confounded fellow seemed to have an answer for everything. And then just ahead of us we saw the deserted car.

  A constable was standing beside it, and a group of four or five children were looking on curiously. It stood some three or four feet from the left-hand side of the road, so that there was only just room for another car to pass. And the road itself at this point ran through a small wood—barely more than a copse.

  “You’ve moved nothing. Constable?” said the sergeant.

  “Just as I found it. Sergeant.”

  We crowded round the car and looked inside. It was an ordinary open touring model, and it was obvious at once that there were signs which indicated a struggle. The rug, for instance, instead of being folded, was half over the front seat and half in the back of the car. A lady’s handkerchief, crumpled up, was lying just behind the steering-wheel, and one of the covers which was fastened to the upholstery by means of press studs, was partially wrenched off. It was the cover for of the side doors, and underneath it was a pocket for maps and papers.

  “This is your car, sir?” asked the sergeant formally.

  “It is,” said Drummond, and once more we fell silent.

  There was something sinister about that deserted car. One felt an insane longing that the rug could speak, that a thrush singing in the drowsy heat on a tree close by could tell us what had happened. Its head, of course, was pointed away from Pangbourne, and suddenly Drummond gave an exclamation. He was looking at the road some fifteen yards in front of the bonnet.

  At first I noticed nothing, though my sight is as good as most men’s. And it wasn’t until I got close to the place that I could see what had attracted his attention. Covered with dust was a pool of black lubricating oil—and covered so well that only the sharpest eye would have detected it.

  “That accounts for one thing, anyway,” said Drummond quietly.

  “What is that, sir?” remarked the sergeant, with considerable respect in his voice. I was evidently not the only one who had been impressed with the keenness of Drummond’s sight.

  “I know my wife’s driving better than anybody else,” he answered, “and, under normal circumstances, if she pulled up, she would instinctively get into the side of the road. So the first question I asked myself was why she had stopped with the car where it is. She was either following another car which pulled up in front of her, or she came round the corner and found it stationary in the middle of the road, not leaving her room to pass. And the owners of the car that did not leave her room to pass wanted to conceal the fact that they had been here, if possible. So, finding they had leaked oil, they tried to cover it up. God! if only the Bentley could talk.”

  It was over in a moment—that sudden, natural spasm of feeling, and he was the same cool, imperturbable man again. And I felt my admiration for him growing. Criminal gangs or no criminal gangs, it’s a damnable thing to stand on the spot where an hour or two earlier your wife has been the victim of some dastardly outrage, and feel utterly impotent to do anything.

  “Do you think it’s possible to track that car?” said Darrell. We walked along the road for a considerable distance, but it was soon obvious that the idea was impossible. Far too much traffic had been along previously, and since there had been no rain the chance of following some distinctive tyre marking had gone. “Hopeless,” said Drummond heavily. “Absolutely hopeless. Hullo! one of those kids has found something.”

  They were running towards us in a body led by a little boy who was waving some object in his hand.

  “Found this, governor, in the grass beside the road,” he piped out.

  “My God!” said Drummond, staring at it with dilated eyes.

  For “this” was a large spanner, and one end was stained a dull red. Moreover, the red was still damp, and when he touched it, it came off on his finger. Blood. And the question which rose in all of our minds, and the question which none of us dared to answer was—Whose? I say, none of us dared to answer it out loud. I think we all of us had answered it to ourselves.

  “You don’t recognize the spanner, I suppose, sir?” said the sergeant. “Is it one from your car or not?”

  “I do recognize it,” answered Drummond. “It’s the regular set spanner I keep in the pocket with the maps and papers and not in the toolbox, because it fits the nut of the petrol tank.”

  “The pocket that was wrenched open,” I put in, and he nodded.

  “Show us just where you found it, nipper,” said the sergeant, and we all trooped back to the Bentley.

  “Here, sir,” said the urchin. “Behind that there stone.” He was pointing to a place just about level with the bonnet, and it required no keenness of vision such as had been necessary to spot the dust-covered pool of oil to see the next clue. From the stone where the spanner had been found to a point in the grass opposite where the other car must have stood, there stretched a continuous trail of ominous red spots. Some were big, and some were small, but the line was unbroken. Blood once again—and once again the same unspoken question.

  “Well, sir,” said the sergeant gravely, “it’s obvious that there has been foul play. I think the best thing I can do is to get back to the station and phone Scotland Yard. We want a lookout kept all over the country for a motorcar containing a wounded lady.”

  Drummond gave a short laugh.

  “Don’t be too sure of that, sergeant,” he remarked. “It was only my wife who knew where that spanner was kept. I should be more inclined, if I were you, to keep a lookout for a motor containing a wounded man. Though I tell you candidly if this thing is what I think it is—or, rather, what I know it is—you’re wasting your time.”

  And not another word would he say.

  CHAPTER III

  In Which I Get It in the Neck

  It was hopeless, of course, as I think we all realized from the beginning. But it was impossible to sit still and do nothing. And for the rest of that afternoon, until long past the time for dinner, we scoured the country. Drummond drove the Bentley alone—he was in no mood for talking—and I went with Darrell.

  It was in the course of that wearisome and fruitless search that I began to understand things a little more clearly. My companion amplified Mary Tracey’s vague remarks, until I began to ask myself if I was dreaming. That this affair was the work of no ordinary person was obvious, but for a long time I believed that he must be exaggerating. Some of the things he told me sounded too incredible.

  They concerned a man called Carl Peterson, who, it appeared, had been the head of the gang our hostess had alluded to. This man was none other than Wilmot, of airship fame. I, naturally, remembered the name perfectly—just as I remembered the destruction of his airship, mercifully after all the passengers had disembarked. Wilmot himself was killed—burned to death, as were the rest of the crew.

  And here was Darrell, in the most calm and matter-of-fact way, stating something completely different.

  “I was one of the passengers that night,” he said. “I know. Wilmot—or, rather Peterson, as we prefer to call him—was not burned to death. He was killed by Drummond.”

  “Killed!” I gasped. “Good God! what for?”

  Darrell smiled grimly.

  “It was long overdue,” he answered. “But that was the first opportunity there had been of actually doing it.”

  “A
nd this woman knows that he killed him?” I said.

  “No—and yes,” he said. “She was not there at the time, but four days later she met Drummond by the wreckage of the airship. And she told him the exact hour when Peterson had died. I don’t know how to account for it. Some form of telepathy, I suppose. She also told him that they would meet again. And this is the beginning of the meeting.”

  “So that verse was sent by her, was it?”

  He nodded.

  “But it seems rather an extraordinary thing to do,” I persisted. “Why go out of your way to warn a person?”

  “She is rather an extraordinary woman,” he answered. “She is also a most terribly dangerous one. Like all women who have a kink, they are more extreme than men. And I don’t mind telling you, Dixon, that I’m positively sick with anxiety over this show. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth—you know the old tag? I’m afraid it’s going to be a life for a life.”

  “You mean they may kill Mrs Drummond?” I cried in horror.

  “Just that and nothing more,” he said gravely. “Drummond killed her lover: she will kill his wife. She would have no more scruples over so doing than you would have over treading on a wasp. The only thing is—does it suit her book? Is she going to try and get Drummond into her power by using his wife as a lever? And only time will tell us that.”

  “What sort of a woman is she?” I said curiously.

  “To look at she is tall, dark, and very soignée. She’s handsome rather than pretty, and I should think has some Southern blood in her.” He smiled slightly. “But don’t run away with the impression that she’d be likely to look like that if you met her. Far more probably would she be a wizened-up crone covered with spectacles, or a portly dame with creaking corsets. So much for her appearance. Her character is a thing to stand aghast at. She has the criminal instinct developed to its highest degree: she is absolutely without mercy: she is singularly able. How much, of course, was her and how much Carl Peterson in the old days is a thing I don’t know. But even if it was him principally, to start with, she must have profited considerably by seeing him at work. And a final point which is just as important if not more so than those I’ve already given, she must be a very wealthy woman. Peterson’s life was not a wasted one as far as other people’s money was concerned.”

  “It sounds a tough proposition,” I murmured.

  “It is,” he agreed gravely. “A damned tough proposition. In fact, Dixon, there is only one ray of sunshine that I can see in the whole business. To do them both justice, in the past they have never been crude in their methods. In their own peculiar way they had a sense of art. If that sense of art is stronger now with her than her primitive desire for revenge, there’s hope.”

  “I don’t quite follow,” I said.

  “She will play the fish—the fish being us. To kill Mrs Drummond offhand would be crude.”

  “I fail to see much comfort,” I remarked, “in being played if the result is going to be the same. It’s only prolonging the agony.”

  “Quite so,” he said quietly, “but is the result going to be the same?”

  A peculiar smile flickered for a moment round his lip.

  “You probably think I’m talking rot,” he went on. “At least, that I’m exaggerating grossly.”

  “Well,” I admitted, “it’s all a little hard to follow.”

  “Naturally. You’ve never struck any of these people before. We have. We met them quite by accident at first, and since then we’ve almost become old friends. We know their ways: they know ours. Sometimes we’ve fought with the police on our side: sometimes we’ve fought a lone hand. And up to date on balance we have won hands down. That is why I cannot help feeling—at any rate hoping—that this woman would not regard the slate as being dean if she merely killed Mrs Drummond. It has been our wits against theirs up till now. She wants much fuller revenge than such a crude action as that would afford her.”

  “I am glad you feel optimistic over the prospect,” I murmured. “Chacun à son goût.”

  “Of course,” he went on thoughtfully, “I may be wrong. If so—it’s hopeless from the start. They’ve got Drummond’s wife: if they want to they can kill her right away. But somehow or other—”

  He broke off, staring at the road ahead. The light was of that half-and-half description when headlamps are useless and driving is most difficult.

  “Anyway, I’m afraid this is a pretty hopeless quest,” I said. “We don’t even know what sort of a car we are looking for—”

  He touched the accelerator with his foot.

  “What’s that dark thing there beside the road?” he said. “It’s a car right enough, and you never can tell.”

  We drew up beside it, and the first thing I noticed was a pool of lubricating oil in the road, under the back axle. Only a coincidence, of course, I reflected, but I felt a sudden tingle of excitement. Could it possibly be the car we were looking for?

  We got out and walked up to it. The car was empty—the blinds of the back windows drawn down. “We’d better be careful,” I said a little nervously, “the owner may be in the field.”

  “On the other hand, he may not,” said Darrell coolly, and opened the door.

  It was an ordinary standard limousine, and at first sight there seemed nothing out of the normal to be seen. There was no sign of disorder, as there had been in the Bentley: the rug on the seat was carefully folded. And it was almost mechanically that I opened one of the back doors, to stand nearly frozen with horror at what I saw. The covering of the front bucket seat beside the driver’s was saturated with blood from the top right down to the floorboards.

  “Good God!” I muttered, “look here.”

  Darrell came and looked over my shoulder, and I heard him catch his breath sharply.

  “This evidently,” he remarked, “is the car we are after. There’s a torch in the pocket of the Sunbeam: get it, like a good fellow.”

  By its light we examined the stain more closely. The average width was about six inches, though it narrowed off towards the bottom. But one very peculiar point about it was that near the top were a number of strange loops and smears, stretching away out of the main stream. They were the sort of smears that a child might make who had dipped its fingers in the blood, and had then started to draw patterns.

  “The person who sat in this seat must have bled like a pig,” said Darrell gravely. “From a wound in the head obviously.”

  Whose head? Who was it who had sat in the seat? Once again the same ghastly question, unasked and unanswered, save in our own minds. But I remember that to me all his hopes and ideas about crudeness and art suddenly became rather pitiful. To me there seemed no doubt who it was who had sat in that seat. And I felt thankful that Drummond wasn’t there with us.

  One could picture the poor girl sitting there, probably unconscious, with the blood welling out from some terrible wound in her head, while the devil beside her drove remorselessly on. A hideous thought, but what alternative was there?

  “What do you make of it, Dixon?”

  Darrell’s voice cut into my thoughts.

  “I’m afraid it’s pretty obvious,” I said. “And I’m afraid it rather disposes of your hopes as to crudity and art. This is the crudest and most brutal attack on a woman, that’s all.”

  “You think so?” he said thoughtfully, “And yet it’s all a little difficult to understand. Why did they stop here? What has become of them?”

  “It’s a road without much traffic,” I answered. “Probably they changed into another car to put people still more off the scent. Don’t forget that if they had garaged this car anywhere for the night they would have had some pretty awkward questions to answer.”

  “That’s true,” he agreed. “And yet it presupposes that the thing had been arranged beforehand.”

  “It probably was,” I pointed out. “They were anyway going to change cars, and the fact that the poor girl was so terribly wounded did not make them alter their plans.”r />
  “But why mess up two cars?” he argued. “That’s what I can’t get at.”

  He once more switched the torch on to the stained cover.

  “You know,” he said, “those loops and smears puzzle me. What on earth can have caused them? What possible agency can have made that stream of blood divert itself like that? Hold the torch a moment, will you? I’m going to copy them into a notebook.”

  “My dear fellow,” I remarked, “what on earth is the use? Do it if you like, but I should say that the best thing we can do is to make tracks for the nearest police station and give them the number of this car. We want to find the owner.”

  “It won’t take a moment,” he said, “and then we’ll push off. There—is that about right?”

  He handed me his rough sketch: a copy of it is before me, as I write.

  [The book here includes a picture of a scrawled message]

  “Yes,” I remarked, “that’s pretty well how it looks. But I’m afraid it’s not going to help us much.”

  “You never can tell,” he answered. “Those marks didn’t come there accidentally—that I swear. It’s a message of sorts: I’m certain of it.”

  “It may be a message, but it’s absolute gibberish,” I retorted. “Now don’t you think we’d better push on to a police station. I’ve got the number of this car—ZW 3214.”

  He looked at me thoughtfully.

  “Can you drive my Sunbeam?” he said.

  “I blush to admit it,” I answered, “but I’m one of those extraordinary people who have never driven a car in my life.”

  “That’s a pity,” he remarked. “Because I was going to propose that I stopped here while you went. I think one of us ought to remain in case anything happens.”

  “Good God!” I said, “hasn’t enough happened already? However, I don’t mind staying. Only get a move on: I’m beginning to feel like dinner.”

  “Stout fellow,” he cried. “I’ll be as quick as I possibly can.”

  He got into his car, and in half a minute was out of sight.