The Bulldog Drummond Megapack

by H. C. McNeile

  Now as I have already explained I am not one of those fortunate individuals to whom battle, murder, and sudden death come as the zest of life. And honesty compels me to admit that at no period of my career have I more bitterly regretted not having had lessons in driving. Moreover, I am essentially a town man: the country always seems to me to be so full of strange noises. Especially at night—and it was dark by now.

  I lit a cigarette—quite unaware of the horror with which Drummond would have viewed such a proceeding. To see and not be seen, to hear and not be heard, was a dictum of his I was to learn later.

  All sorts of weird whispering sounds came to my ears as I stood there beside the car. And once I gave a terrific start as a shrill scream came from the field close by.

  “An animal,” I reflected angrily. “A rabbit caught by a stoat. Don’t be such a fool.”

  I began pacing up and down the middle of the road, conscious of an absurd desire for someone to speak to, even if it was only an inebriated farm labourer. And then by way of forcing discipline on my mind, I made myself go over the whole amazing business from the beginning.

  What was the letter that had made Mrs Drummond leave the house? Where did the two men at the Cat and Custard Pot come in? Why had this car stopped here and what had happened after? And finally those strange smears. Were they indeed some message, and if so who had written it? Was it that poor girl trying to write some final communication as she felt her life slipping away from her?

  My thoughts turned to Drummond, and I felt most bitterly sorry for my earlier sarcasm. Still, there had been some excuse: I defy any ordinary person to have viewed his behaviour without feeling some doubts as to his sanity. The fact remained, however, that I owed him the most abject apology. Not that my apology would be much use to the poor devil in exchange for his wife.

  I ground my cigarette out with my heel, and stared down the road. Surely it was about time for Darrell to get back. And as I stood there leaning against the bonnet, a bird got up with a sharp cry from a point in the hedge some hundred yards away. It was the cry of sudden alarm from which a poacher might have read much, but I read nothing.

  And then a twig cracked: I heard it distinctly and stiffened. Another—and yet another, whilst I stood there motionless peering into the darkness. Did my eyes deceive me, or was there something dark moving cautiously along the grass beside the road, in the shadow of the hedge? I recalled times in France when strange things took shape in No-Man’s-Land: when men became as bushes and bushes as men. And putting my hand to my forehead I found it was wet with sweat.

  I listened again: all was silent. The stealthy mover, if there was a mover, was moving no more. My imagination probably, and with a shaking hand I extracted my cigarette case. Damn it! what was there to be frightened at?

  “Lawks sakes—look at this ’ere!”

  The voice came from the hedge not ten yards away, and in my fright I dropped my case in the road. Then with an effort I pulled myself together: to be frightened at my time of life by a mere yokel was not good for one’s pride.

  “Look ’e ’ere, mister.”

  “Where are you?” I said. “I can’t see you.”

  The fellow gave a cackling laugh which made me think he was not quite right in his head. And then came another remark which caused me to start forward in horror.

  “A dead ’un.”

  “Where?” I cried, moving towards him slowly. My mouth felt suddenly dry. It required all my will power to force myself to go. I knew what I was going to see: I knew that there in the darkness just ahead of me I would find some half-witted yokel staring inquisitively at the body of the unfortunate girl. There would be a terrible wound in her head, and at each step I took my reluctance increased. I loathed the thought of having definite proof: up to date there had been a doubt, however shadowy.

  “Where?” I said thickly, once again, and then I saw him just in front. His back was towards me, and he was bending over something that lay in the ditch close to the hedge. He was chuckling to himself in an idiotic way, and I heard a voice croak at him: “Shut up!” It was my own.

  I reached his side, and bent over, too. And for a moment or two I stood there staring, hardly able to believe my eyes. True, a body was there, lying in that peculiar twisted position which tells its own tale. True, there was a terrible wound in the head, dearly visible even in the darkness. But it was not a woman; it was a man. And the feeling of relief was stupendous.

  I turned to the yokel foolishly: turned and froze into immobility. The idiotic chuckling had ceased, and the face that was thrust near mine wore a sarcastic smile.

  “Too easy,” he remarked.

  A pair of hands fastened on my throat, and I began to struggle desperately. Dimly I realized that it was a trap: that the man had been acting a part so as to draw me into an advantageous position in which to attack me. And then all other thoughts were blotted out by the appalling knowledge that as far as strength went I was a child in his hands. There was a roaring in my ears, a ghastly tightness in my throat. And I remember that my last coherent thought before I became unconscious was that if Drummond had been in my place the result would have been very different.

  It was fitting, therefore, that the first man I should see when I opened my eyes was Drummond himself. For a moment or two I couldn’t remember what had happened, and I stared foolishly around. I was lying on the grass beside the road, and my head and coat were sopping wet. Drummond with Darrell and another man were standing close to me in the light of the headlamps of a car.

  “Hullo!” I said feebly.

  They swung round.

  “Hullo! little man,” said Drummond. “You gave us a nasty shock. What fun and laughter have you been engaged in?”

  “Where’s the dead man?” I cried, sitting up.

  They all stared at me.

  “What’s that?” said Drummond slowly. “A dead man, you say?”

  I struggled to my feet, and stood swaying dizzily.

  “Steady, old man,” said Drummond. “Easy does it.”

  “There was a dead man,” I repeated, and then I stared round. “Where’s the other car?”

  “Precisely,” agreed Drummond. “Where is it? It wasn’t here when we arrived.”

  “Not here,” I repeated stupidly, “I don’t understand. What’s happened?”

  “That’s easily told,” said Drummond. “By mere chance I ran into Peter at the police station, and when I heard what you’d found I came along with him and this officer. We must have gone half a mile beyond here before he knew we’d gone too far. So we turned and came back. And the pool of oil told us where the car had been. Peter knew you couldn’t drive, so we thought you must have been abducted in the car. And then quite by chance the officer found you in the ditch. You looked like a goner at first, but we sluiced you with cold water, and you’ll be as fit as a trivet in a minute or two. When you do let’s hear what happened to you.”

  “I’m all right now,” I said. “A bit dizzy, that’s all. Let me sit down in the car for a little.”

  It was quite true. My head was quite clear, and, except for a most infernally stiff neck, I felt none the worse for my experience. And I told them exactly what had taken place. They listened in silence, and it was only when I hesitated a little over saying who it was I had expected to find in the ditch that Drummond spoke.

  “I understand,” he said curtly. “Go on.”

  I finished my story, and then he spoke again.

  “If any confirmation is needed,” he remarked, “the ditch should supply it. Where was the body lying?”

  I got out of the car and led them to the spot. As he had said, the ditch did supply it. A great pool of blood showed up red and sinister in the light of Darrell’s torch, but of the body of the man whose blood it was there was no trace.

  “So what happened,” said Drummond thoughtfully, “is fairly easy to spot. But the reason for it is a little more obscure. The gentleman who caressed your windpipe had evidently been sent
back to retrieve car and corpse. Finding you here he gave you the necessary medicine. Then he removed corpse in car. But if that was the great idea, why were car and corpse left here in the first place?”

  “Would you recognize the man who attacked you, sir?” said the police officer, speaking for the first time.

  “I think I’d recognise him,” I said, “but I couldn’t give you a description of him that would be the slightest help.”

  “Well, there doesn’t seem much use our standing here any more,” remarked Drummond at length, and his voice was weary. “We know the number of the car, so the owner can be traced. But I shall be very much surprised if we find that helps us much.”

  He sighed, and lit a cigarette. “Come on, Peter, we’d better be getting back. My stomach is flapping against my backbone for want of food, and we can’t do any more good here.”

  And I, for one, agreed with him fervently.

  CHAPTER IV

  In Which We Get the Semblance of a Clue

  Looking back on it now after the lapse of time, I find it hard to recall my exact state of mind that night. I remember that amongst certain members of the house party I found myself in the position of a popular hero. To have been assaulted and left for dead conferred an air of distinction on me which I found rather grateful and comforting. The tacit assumption seemed to be that only abnormal strength of constitution on my part had saved my life.

  I also remember experiencing a distinct feeling of pique that amongst other members of the party my adventure seemed to cut no ice at all. They appeared to regard it as the most ordinary thing in the world. Two new arrivals had come—the two whom Longworth had been told to summon under the names of Ted and Toby. Their surnames were respectively Jerningham and Sinclair, and Tracey had managed to squeeze them into the house. And it was in describing the events of the afternoon and evening to these two that the point of view of this second section of the party became obvious. Not, I mean, that I wished it to be exaggerated in any way: at the same time I admit that I felt, when all was said and done, that whilst Drummond and Darrel had been in perfect safety at a police-station, I had had a murderous assault made on my life. And to have it described by Darrell as getting a clip over the earhole struck me as somewhat inadequate. The replies of the audience also left, I thought, a certain amount to be desired.

  Jerningham said: “Pity you didn’t ladle the bloke one back.”

  Sinclair said: “Splendid! So we know one of them by sight, anyway.”

  Then they all dismissed the matter as trifling, and resumed the interminable discussion. Not that I minded, you understand—but it struck me that it showed a slight lack of a proper sense of proportion.

  However, I waived the matter: it was not my wife who had been forcibly dragged from her car in broad daylight. Had it been I should have been insane with worry. And that was the extraordinary thing about Drummond. Outwardly he seemed the most self-possessed of us all, and only the strained look in his eyes showed the mental condition he was in.

  Bill Tracey was absolutely beside himself. That such a thing should have happened in his house made him almost incoherent. And it was characteristic of Drummond that, in spite of his own agonising suspense, he should have gone out of his way to ease things for Bill.

  “My dear fellow,” he said more than once, “please don’t blame yourself. The fact that it happened to take place here is nothing whatever to do with you. They waited till they were ready and then they struck. That they happened to become ready when we were staying with you is just pure chance.”

  Which, though perfectly true, did but little to alleviate his feelings of responsibility. It was his house, and the bald fact remained that one of his guests, and a woman at that, had been decoyed away from it and been made the victim of foul play. And apart from his natural grief at such a thing happening, the prospect of the notoriety involved concerned him, of course, more than any of us save Drummond himself. It was Jerningham who summarized the situation after a while.

  “Let’s just see,” he said, “that we’ve got this thing clear. Whilst playing tennis this afternoon Phyllis got a note delivered by hand of such importance that she stops playing and goes out alone in the Bentley. At that time Hugh was having a bit of back chat with the two foreign-looking blokes—”

  “Who have not been traced at the railway station,” put in Tracey.

  “Who have since disappeared,” went on Jerningham. “But it is generally agreed that they had something to do with it, though what we don’t know. Shortly after, the Bentley is found deserted, showing every sign of having been the scene of a struggle.”

  “She dotted him one, Ted,” said Drummond with certainty. “She dotted him good and hard with that spanner. In fact she killed him—glory be to Allah!”

  They pondered this point in silence for a while.

  “It stands to reason, old boy,” went on Drummond, “that the man Dixon saw lying in the ditch is the same man whose trail we followed on the grass beside the Bentley.”

  “Very well then,” said Jerningham, “make it so. She dotted him one. Finding herself suddenly attacked she out with the spanner and slogged him good and hard. So then the other bloke—there must have been at least one more—bunged Phyllis into the back of the other car, stuffed his pal into the seat beside him, and pushed off.”

  “It don’t sound right to me, Ted,” said Drummond slowly.

  “What’s wrong?” demanded Jerningham.

  “All the last part. If you were driving a motorcar in broad daylight, and had to take with you a fellow who was bleeding like a pig from a wound in the head, would you put him on the seat beside you? Especially if you did not want to draw attention to yourself.”

  He took a long gulp of beer.

  “Not so, old lad: you’d bung him on the floor at the back. And from Peter’s description of the blood in the car that’s what happened. If he’d been sitting in the seat beside the driver, the front of it would have been stained, too. It wasn’t—only the back.”

  “I don’t see that it matters much, anyway,” I remarked. “Back or front the result is the same. Perhaps Mrs Drummond was beside the driver.”

  “Good Lord!” said Drummond, sitting up and staring at me. “I hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps she was.”

  “What’s stung you?” said Darrell, surprised, and we all looked at him curiously. He seemed strangely excited.

  “Supposing Phyllis was sitting in that seat,” he remarked. “Supposing the man was bleeding to death behind. Supposing she managed to get her hand over the back of the seat, with the idea of getting some message through by dipping her finger in the blood and writing on the cover.”

  His excitement infected us all though, for the life of me, I couldn’t see what he was getting at.

  “Well—get on with it,” said Darrell.

  “Don’t you see that the writing would be upside down?” cried Drummond. “Where’s your notebook, Peter? Turn the page the other way round.”

  We crowded over his shoulder and stared at the rough sketch.

  “It is,” shouted Drummond. “Smeared letters, or I’ll eat my hat. There’s a K there: two K’s. And L: and E. What’s that first word? Something KE… LUKE is it?

  “Like,” I hazarded. “That first letter might be L.”

  “Then it’s like LAK,” said Drummond, and we stared at one another a little blankly. If that was the solution it didn’t seem to advance us much. Like Lak. It was meaningless. Probably not realizing that it was useless the message had continued into the stream of blood where it had been obliterated. But that was no help.

  “Anyway,” said Drummond quietly, “it proves one thing. She wasn’t unconscious.”

  He got up and went to the open window, where he stood with his back to us, staring out into the darkness. His shoulders were a little bowed: his hands were in his pockets. And, by Jove! I felt for the poor chap. Somewhere out under those same stars—perhaps twenty miles away, perhaps a hundred—his wife was in
the hands of this infamous gang. Up-to-date, action had kept him going, even if it had only consisted of futile motoring up and down roads. Now the time of forced inaction had come. There was nothing to distract his thoughts, nothing to take his mind off the ghastly possibilities of the situation.

  There was no use sympathizing with him: the matter had passed beyond words. Besides, it struck me that he was of the brand that is apt to shy away from sympathy like a frightened colt. And so we sat on in silence, hardly daring to meet one another’s eyes, with the same fear clutching at all our hearts. It didn’t seem to matter very much whether or not Mrs Drummond had been conscious in the car. Was she conscious now? Was she even alive? It seemed too incredible to be sitting there in that peaceful room contemplating such an appalling thought. And yet what was there to be done? That was the maddening part of it. Literally the only clue in our possession was the number of the car—ZW 3214. It was true that I might recognize the man who had nearly throttled me, but even on that point I felt doubtful. And that wasn’t going to be much use unless I saw him again.

  The same applied to the two men at the Cat and Custard Pot. Both Drummond and I would recognize them again—but where were they? And even if they were found they would probably prove to be only very minor characters in the caste. The telephone on Tracey’s desk rang suddenly, sounding unnaturally loud in the silence, and we looked at it almost apprehensively. Was it some further complication, or was it news?

  “Hullo!” said Tracey, picking up the receiver. “Yes—speaking.”

  Drummond had swung round, his hands still in his pockets. And he stood there, his face expressionless, while the metallic voice from the machine, punctuated by occasional grunts from our host, droned on. At last Tracey replaced the receiver, and shook his head gloomily.

  “Nothing, I’m afraid,” he said. “It was the police. They’ve traced the car, and it belongs to a man called Allbright in Reading. He’s a retired grocer, and absolutely above suspicion. He is away from home at the moment, and the car must have been coolly stolen from his garage this morning. He has a deaf housekeeper, who is also above suspicion, and who was in complete ignorance that the car had gone until visited by the police this evening.”