The Bulldog Drummond Megapack

by H. C. McNeile

  “Gosh! boys,” he said, “if it wasn’t that it was Phyllis, what a glorious time we should have. Why did we never think of it before with Carl? We might have had two or three games in our spare time.”

  Then he became serious again.

  “Look here, Tracey,” he said: “and you, too, Dixon, may I rely on you not to say a word of this even to the ladies? The fewer people who know about it the better. If this came to the ears of a newspaper man we’d have the whole of Fleet Street on our heels. So—not a word to a soul.”

  “A police sergeant to see you, sir.”

  The butler was holding the door open.

  “Mind,” said Drummond urgently, “not a word.”

  The officer who had gone with us to the deserted Bentley the previous afternoon entered the room.

  “Good morning. Sergeant,” said Drummond quietly. “Found Mr Allbright’s car yet?”

  The policeman shook his head.

  “I’m afraid not, sir,” he said. “May I ask if you have any news of your wife?”

  Drummond frowned suddenly: then he gave a short laugh. “Yes—I have. Look here. Sergeant—you’re a man of discretion.”

  I looked at him covertly: what tale was he going to tell?

  “Well, sir,” said the officer, with a slightly gratified smile, “they don’t make you a sergeant for nothing.”

  “Precisely,” said Drummond. “Well—the fact of the matter is this. My wife has run away—bolted. With another man.” He lit a cigarette with a sort of savage resignation. “I didn’t say so yesterday, but I feared even then that that note that was brought her was from the swine who—”

  He broke off abruptly—words had failed him—and strode to the window.

  “Poor old Hugh,” said Sinclair sadly. “It’s a devilish business. That dirty little sweep of all people, too.”

  Drummond invoked the Deity twice, while the sergeant stared at him blankly.

  “But look here, sir,” he said, “what about all that blood?”

  “That, Sergeant,” remarked Drummond, “is the staggering part of the whole business. When my wife rang me up last night to tell me that she had—she had left me, she said ‘I suppose you’ve found the Bentley by now.’ I said to her, ‘But what about the blood on the grass?’ She said ‘What on earth are you talking about? If it’s a riddle I haven’t got time to buy it now.’ Then she rang off. She knew nothing about it, sergeant—absolutely nothing.”

  The officer’s face was blanker than before.

  “Since then,” went on Drummond, “we’ve been trying to reconstruct what happened. And the only possible conclusion we can come to is this. The car belonging to Mr Allbright was stolen by two or three men. Driving along the road they came on the deserted Bentley. Well, if they’d steal one car, they’d steal another. So they decided to steal that too. And then they fell out—why. Heaven alone knows. Probably one of them was already at the wheel of the Bentley—and there was a struggle in which somebody got hit over the head with the spanner. Much harder than was intended. They all became frightened, and bundled the wounded man into the closed car. Of course,” he continued modestly, “it’s only crude amateur deduction: there are doubtless many objections to our theory—”

  “Many,” agreed Darrell, staring out of the window.

  “Which your trained brain will spot,” went on Drummond. “But the great point as far as we are concerned is this. As far as I am concerned, I should say. The whole thing is merely an amazing coincidence. The blood we saw on the road, the blood in Mr Allbright’s car, has nothing to do with my wife’s disappearance. And since I still have hopes that she will realize the error of her way and come back to me, the last thing I want is to run any risk of hardening her heart by worrying her with police inquiries.”

  “You know my views, Hugh,” said Jerningham.

  “And I damned well don’t want to hear them again,” snapped Drummond.

  “A lounge lizard like that!” cried Jerningham scornfully. “How you can dream of forgiving her I don’t know.”

  “Lounge lizard, gentlemen?” said the bewildered policeman.

  “That’s right, sergeant,” Jerningham pointed an outraged finger at space. “A lounge lizard. A ballroom snake. What matter that his Black Bottom is the best in London.”

  “My Gawd! sir,” gasped the other. “His ’ow much?”

  “What matter, I say?” swept on Jerningham. “Is that a thing which should commend itself to reasonable decent men?”

  “I should ’ardly say so myself, sir,” agreed the sergeant fervently.

  Jerningham paused to recover his breath.

  “What is the gent’s name, sir,” said the sergeant, producing his pencil and notebook.

  “Albert. Albert Prodnut,” said Jerningham, and Drummond sat down abruptly.

  “And his address?”

  “I wish we knew,” answered Jerningham. “If we did, doubtless by this time Captain Drummond would have removed his liver with a rusty penknife. I speak metaphorically.”

  “So you don’t know where he is, sir?”

  “Somewhere on the Continent,” said Drummond in a hollow voice.

  “And your wife, too?”

  Drummond groaned and hid his face in his hands, while Jerningham rose and took the sergeant by the arm.

  “No more now, sergeant,” he whispered confidentially. “He is strung up to breaking point. In a week or two, perhaps. Or a month. And in the meantime you will treat what we have told you as absolutely confidential, won’t you?”

  He propelled him gently towards the door.

  “It’s all very strange, sir,” he said in a worried voice.

  “If you knew Albert Prodnut you’d think it was a damned sight stranger,” said Jerningham feelingly. “One of those strange cases of mental aberration. Sergeant—almost I might say of psycho-sclerosis—which baffle the cleverest doctor. Leave him to us now.”

  The door closed behind the harassed officer, and Jerningham held up his two thumbs.

  “Prodnut,” said Drummond weakly. “Why Prodnut?”

  “Why not? It’s very difficult to think of a name when you’re suddenly asked for one. There is a ring of sincerity about Albert Prodnut that carries entire conviction.”

  “Look here, you fellows,” said Tracey seriously, “this is getting beyond a joke. You can’t expect any man out of a lunatic asylum to believe that absurd rigmarole.”

  “We had to say something,” remarked Drummond. “Personally I think we told the tale rather well.”

  “Yes—but what about me?” said Tracey. “It’s a tissue of lies from beginning to end.”

  “We can’t tell the truth,” answered Drummond gravely. “Look here, Tracey. I’m very sorry about this, and I quite appreciate the difficulties of your position. In the bottom of your mind you probably think that that woman’s letter is a bluff. I know it isn’t. We’ve got to keep the police out of this if we possibly can. And I really couldn’t think of anything better on the spur of the moment.”

  “You still mean,” said Tracey amazed, “to take that woman at her word! To go hunting about all over England on clues she sends you which will probably lead you nowhere nearer your wife than you are at present!”

  “What else can I do?” cried Drummond. “She’s in the position of being able to dictate terms.”

  Once again the door opened and Parker came in, this time with a telegram on a salver. “For you, sir,” he said, handing it to Drummond.

  He tore open the yellow envelope, and as he read the message a look of complete bewilderment spread over his face. “Well, I’m damned!” he muttered. “No answer, thank you, Parker. Listen here, you fellows,” he went on as the butler left the room, “what in the name of fortune do you make of this?

  “My first a horse may draw or even two the rest is found at York and aids the view and when you’ve solved that bit by dint of trying an inn you’ll find where fishermen are lying”

  “It’s the first clue,” sai
d Jerningham excitedly. “She said you’d get it this morning.”

  “But it’s hopeless,” cried Drummond in despair. “The simplest crossword reduces me to a jibbering wreck. If I’ve got to try and solve these damned things I’m done before I start.”

  “There are half a dozen perfectly good people to help you, old boy,” said Darrell. “Sling the paper over. Let’s put it down as it’s meant to be—in the form of a verse.”

  He scribbled the words on a piece of paper while we leaned over his shoulder. And even Tracey seemed impressed by this sudden new development.

  “Now then,” said Darrell, “does that make it any better?”

  My first a horse may draw, or even two;

  The rest is found at York, and aids the view.

  And when you’ve solved that bit by dint of trying,

  An inn you’ll find where fishermen are lying.

  “If line three is right,” I said, “the first two are a complete clue in themselves.”

  “That’s so,” agreed Tracey. “But what sort of a clue? Is it the name of a man or a town or what?”

  “Let’s assume it’s a town to start with,” said Jerningham. “There’s an inn mentioned in the last line.”

  “What’s found at York?” demanded Drummond gloomily.

  “Ham, dear old boy,” burbled Algy Longworth.

  “And Archbishops,” said Sinclair hopefully.

  “I don’t know that it can be truthfully maintained,” said Tracey mildly, “that either ham or Archbishops aid the view.”

  “Hold hard a bit,” remarked Darrell. “Let’s start at the beginning. ‘My first a horse may draw, or even two.’ Presumably that means two horses. So it’s a horse-drawn vehicle suitable for one or two horses.”

  “By Jove! Peter, you’re a bunking marvel,” cried Drummond. “Cart, cab, wagon.”

  “You don’t have a two-horse cab,” objected Jerningham.

  “Wagon sounds possible,” said Darrell. “There must be places beginning with Wagon. Got a map Tracey?”

  “Here’s the Times Gazetteer,” he answered. “By Jove! Wagonmound.”

  “Got it!” shouted Drummond. “There’s bound to be a mound at York.”

  But Tracey was shaking his head.

  “Sorry. I spoke too soon. The darned place is in New Mexico. And that’s the only place beginning with Wagon that’s mentioned.”

  “Hell!” said Drummond, and relapsed into silence.

  “What about Dray,” I remarked. “You speak of a one-horse dray and a two-horse dray.”

  “Stout fellow,” cried Drummond. “Look up Dray, Tracey.”

  “There are about forty Draytons,” he said. “Lots of Draycotts: Drayminster, Drayney.”

  “Drayminster!” I yelled. “Minster, York Minster.”

  “I believe you’ve got it,” said Darrell. “It fits at any rate as far as the first two lines are concerned.”

  “By Jove! you fellows,” cried Jerningham. “Listen here. This is the AA handbook. Drayminster. Population 2231, Sussex. 55 miles to London. Now brace yourselves for it. Hotel—the Angler’s Rest. We have got it.”

  For a while we all stared at one another too excited to speak. Was there a mistake? Fishermen lying; Anglers’ Rest. No one could say that York Minster was not an aid to the view: a dray could certainly be drawn by one or two horses. It fitted, every clue fitted.

  “Get packed, boys,” cried Drummond. “We lunch at the Angler’s Rest. Gosh! I feel better. We’ve started. Beer, Tracey old lad, pints of beer! And you and Dixon shall wish us good hunting.”

  The beer arrived, and then Drummond raised his hand as for some solemn rite. Slowly he waved it to and fro, and once more did the words of his favourite refrain burst forth with vigour:

  “The more we are together—together—together: the more we are together the merrier we shall be.”

  “A new music-hall song?” I inquired politely.

  And all they did was to roar with laughter.

  “When we start hunting, boys,” he said, “that shall be the war-cry. Don’t forget—once for the rally, twice for danger.”

  I suppose it was foolish of me, but I really couldn’t help it. There was something contagious about the spirits of this extraordinary gang which must have infected me.

  “I must learn the tune,” I said. “For if you’ll allow me I should very much like to join you in whatever is coming.”

  They all stared at me, then, a little doubtfully, at one another.

  “Of course,” I said stiffly, “if you’d prefer I didn’t.”

  “It isn’t that,” interrupted Drummond. “Look here, Dixon, if you’re going to come in on this thing you’d better be under no delusions. You got a taste last night of the sort of people we’re going to be up against. And believe you me that’s nothing to what we shall strike. I want you to understand quite clearly that if you do join us you’ll be taking your life in your hands at most hours of the day and night. I mean it—quite literally. It’s not going to be a question of merely solving little puzzles.”

  “I’ll chance it,” I answered. “As a matter of fact I dislike most strongly the implication behind the phrase funny little man.”

  Once more the whole lot burst out laughing. “Right,” said Drummond. “That settles it. But don’t say you weren’t warned if you get your ear bitten badly.”

  CHAPTER VI

  In Which I Get the Second Clue

  The village of Drayminster is one of the beauty spots of England. Somewhat out of the beaten track, it is as yet unspoiled by motor coaches and hordes of trippers. The river Dray meanders on its peaceful way parallel to the main street, and in the very centre of the village stands the Angler’s Rest. A strip of grass separates it from the water’s edge, and moored to two stakes a punt stretches out into the stream from the end of which the energetic may fish for the wily roach and perch. A backwater—but what a pleasant backwater.

  “Your lady friend,” I said to Drummond, “has undoubtedly an artistic eye.” We were sitting on the lawn after lunch, and he grunted thoughtfully. The others had departed on a tour of exploration, and save for the motionless figure of the landlord’s son at the end of the punt, we were alone.

  “If only I could be absolutely certain that we were right,” he remarked. “That we aren’t wasting our time sitting here.”

  “Unless the whole thing is a stupid hoax,” I said reassuringly, “I’m certain our solution was correct.”

  It was the inaction that chafed him, I could see. I think he had expected to find another clue waiting for us on our arrival. But there had been nothing, and gradually his mood A of elation had left him. He had kept his eyes fixed so searchingly on an elderly parson and his daughter during lunch that the poor man had become quite hot and bothered. In fact, it wasn’t until our host had assured him that the reverend gentleman had come to the hotel regularly for the last twenty years that he desisted.

  “It’s not a hoax,” he said doggedly. “So why the devil, if we’re right, haven’t we heard something more?”

  “Quite possibly that’s all part of the game,” I answered. “They may know that that is a method of rattling you.”

  “By Jove!” he cried, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  He looked quite relieved at the suggestion.

  “There’s one thing we might do,” I went on. “It may not be any good, but it can’t do any harm. Let’s find out if there are any houses in the neighbourhood that have recently changed hands. If they are hiding your wife a house is the most likely place to do it in.”

  “Dixon,” he said, “you’re the bright boy all right. My brain at the moment is refusing to function altogether. Hi! John—or whatever your name is—cease tormenting fish and come here a moment.”

  Obediently the boy put down his rod and approached.

  “Now, you know all the big houses in the neighbourhood, don’t you?”

  The boy nodded his head.

  “That’s right, mister.
There be the Old Manor—that be Squire Foley’s. And there be Park House. That do belong to Sir James—but he be away now.”

  “Has there been any house sold round about here recently,” I put in.

  The boy scratched his head.

  “There be Widow Maybury’s,” he said. “She did sell her little cottage, and be gone to live with her darter near Lewes.”

  “Who bought it,” I cried.

  “They do say he be a writer from Lunnon, or sommat fulish like that. He just comes occasional like.”

  “Is he here now,” asked Drummond.

  “Ay,” said the boy. “He come last night. There was a young leddy with him.”

  I caught Drummond’s eye, and it was blazing with excitement.

  “They come in a motor car,” went on the boy.

  “Where is the cottage?” said Drummond.

  “End o’ village,” he replied. “‘Lily Cottage,’ it do be called.”

  Drummond had already risen to his feet, and the boy looked at him doubtfully.

  “He be a terrible funny-tempered gentleman,” he said. “He set about Luke Gurney with a stick, he did—two or three weeks ago. Had to pay Luke five pounds, he did, or old Gaffer Gurney would have had him up afore the beak.”

  “My lad,” said Drummond, “there is half a crown. You may now resume your occupation of catching fish.”

  He turned to me. “Are you coming,” he said.

  “Well,” I said a little doubtfully, “we’d better be careful, hadn’t we? This fellow may be a perfectly harmless individual.”

  “In which case we will withdraw gracefully,” he cried. “Damn it, man, I believe we’re on the scent. Why—Good God! Phyllis may be actually there now.”

  “All right—I’ll come,” I said. “Only—cautious does it.” But for the moment Drummond was beyond caution. The thought that possibly his wife was within half a mile of him had sent him completely crazy, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that I restrained him from bursting straight into the house when we got there. “You can’t, my dear fellow,” I cried. “We must have some sort of excuse.”

  It was a small cottage standing back a little from the road. A tiny patch of garden in front was bright with flowers, and two pigeons regarded us thoughtfully from a dovecot. “We’ll ask if it’s for sale,” he said, and then suddenly he gripped my arm like a vice.