The Bulldog Drummond Megapack

by H. C. McNeile

  “A peeler has just gone by, sir,” answered the ferret-faced man at the window. “He’s turned the corner into Curzon. Street.”

  “All right. I’ll just finish going through these papers, and then we’ll get him into the car.”

  “What are you going to do with the big bloke, sir?” asked Gulliver.

  “Leave him here,” said the other indifferently. “He’s not the sort of thing one wants as a pet.”

  Silence fell on the room save for the rustling of the papers on Standish’s desk, and Drummond began to do some rapid thinking. He had got a certain amount of information, though nothing of much value. The existence of a criminal organisation had been confirmed, if confirmation was necessary, and he knew the names of two of the members. Moreover, the features of the man in evening clothes were stamped indelibly on his memory, even though he was still in ignorance of his name. But the point that now arose was what he was going to do himself in the next few minutes.

  The advantages of remaining apparently unconscious were obvious: he possessed knowledge which the other side did not know he possessed. But dare he allow them to remove Standish? Murder seemed to mean nothing in their young lives, and he could not run the risk of allowing them to kill him. On the other hand, if they intended to do him in why had they not done so at once?

  Had he been in Standish’s place he would have liked to chance it, in the hopes of finding out something really important. But in view of their very brief acquaintance he felt he was hardly justified in assuming that Standish would feel the same way. And yet it went against the grain to sacrifice the advantage he had got.

  Once more he half opened one eye, and the next moment he almost gave himself away. For Standish was staring at him, and had quite deliberately winked. He was still sprawling on the hearth-rug breathing loudly, but since his face was turned towards the fireplace neither of the men at the desk could see him.

  Now what was the line of action? The effects of the drug had evidently worn off, and Standish had been playing the same game—lying doggo and listening. But it completely altered matters, for now there were two of them and they were both armed. It would be the simplest thing in the world to capture the lot.

  Again he glanced at Standish, and this time he saw his lips move. And even to one who had no knowledge of lip language the message was clear.

  “Do nothing.”

  He closed his eyes: Standish had sized up the situation in the same way as he would have done. He deliberately intended to allow himself to be abducted on the chance of getting to the heart of things. So now they could both work from different ends.

  “Nothing here at all.”

  The man in evening clothes pushed back his chair and rose.

  “What’s the time? Four o’clock. Get him below, and don’t make a sound. Then cart him across the pavement between you as if he was drunk. Just wait till I see it’s all clear.”

  He went to the door and peered out.

  “All right,” he whispered. “Get on with it.”

  The two others picked Standish up, and Drummond could hear the soft creaking of their footsteps as they carried him down the stairs. Then the front door opened and he heard them cross the pavement: the engine was started, and a few seconds later the noise of the car died away in the distance.

  He sat very still, conscious that the man in evening clothes had not gone himself. He was standing on the hearth-rug close by, and after a while it required all the will power he possessed not to open his eyes. It was nerve-racking to a degree to feel the other man so near to him and not know what he was doing.

  Suddenly he realised that the man was bending over him: he could feel his breath on his face. Was it possible he suspected? For if he did Drummond was at a terrible disadvantage. At any moment Sanderson’s fate might be his.

  He stirred a little and muttered foolishly: movement of some sort was imperative. And still the other man bent over him in silence, while the perspiration began to gather on Drummond’s brow with the strain.

  He rolled over with his head hanging across the side of the chair so that his forehead should not be seen, but he knew that he could not stand it much longer. What was the fellow doing? What was he waiting for?

  And then he felt the man’s hand on his arm, and only by the most monstrous effort of will did he avoid clenching his fist. The man was feeling his muscles, much as a butcher might feel a piece of meat. And all of a sudden he began to chuckle softly to himself.

  The sweat was almost dripping on the floor, and yet Drummond made no movement. Never in his life had he heard such a diabolical sound. There was madness in it: a sort of gloating anticipation. But of what?

  The man’s fingers, like thin bars of steel, were travelling up and down his biceps and still that evil chuckling continued. And Drummond felt he would willingly have given a thousand pounds to be able to jump up and catch him one straight between the eyes. But it would not do: he must stick it. And then, at last, to his unspeakable relief the man moved away from him.

  But he still remained in the room: Drummond could hear him moving quietly about. Once or twice he knew the man was behind him, but in the position he had rolled into it was impossible to see anything even if he opened his eyes. Five minutes, or was it five years, went by, and at length the ordeal was over. He heard the man go down the stairs; the front door shut and his footsteps on the pavement died gradually away.

  With a sigh of relief he sat up in the chair, and stared round the room. The fire was out: he felt cramped and stiff. But the fearful tension of the last quarter of an hour was over, and the reaction was incredible. Never in his life had he been through a period of such unbelievable strain. And even now he was not quite certain whether he had bluffed him or not. He felt that the betting was that he had, but what had that devilish laughter meant? Had it been the idea in his mind? Why, if he believed Drummond was unconscious, should it afford him pleasure to find out what sort of condition he was in?

  He went over to the window, and keeping behind the curtain looked out. The man who earlier on had been on the other side of the road was no longer there: the street was deserted. He could go whenever he liked, and a desire for something stronger than beer was beginning to make itself felt.

  At the same time it would not do to run any risk. It was possible that his own rooms were being watched, and if so a comparison of times would show that he had left Clarges Street very shortly after the man in evening clothes, a fact which would tend to confirm any doubts that gentleman might have with regard to his having been genuinely drugged. And so after due reflection he decided to wait at least another hour before leaving. Beer it would have to be, and worse fates have befallen man.

  He poured himself out a glass and sat down at Standish’s desk. There were one or two points that had to be decided in his mind, and the first was what he was going to say at the inquest concerning Standish’s disappearance. One thing was obvious: he must stick consistently to the line he had started on. He had been unconscious the whole night, and knew nothing. Why had he been unconscious? He had been drugged through drinking Standish’s whisky.

  And at that stage in his reflections he happened to glance at the sideboard and his eyes narrowed. The tantalus was empty. He looked at the coal scuttle where he had placed his own half-empty glass: it had disappeared. So they had removed all traces of the drug whilst he had been in the chair with his eyes shut. Probably the man in evening clothes had done it after the others had gone: it would have been a simple thing to do without his hearing. Any proof, therefore, of having been drugged was gone as far as the authorities were concerned.

  But did that matter? It was the opponents who were the principal factor to be considered. They knew that a drug had been placed in the whisky: they would at once suspect if he did not mention it, even if it were incapable of proof. The essential thing as far as they were concerned was that everything should be consistent with the fact that he had been genuinely doped, and knew it.

  A fu
rther point also arose: even when talking privately to McIver the fiction would have to be kept up. The Inspector was a good fellow, but however tolerant he might be unofficially there was no getting away from it, their action that night was most reprehensible. They had had an easy chance of collaring three of the gang, one of whom at any rate had been guilty of a grave assault on a policeman. And they had not taken their opportunity, but had deliberately let it go. It was a bird in the hand with McIver, especially when, as in this case, the two in the bush were somewhat problematical.

  However, rightly or wrongly they had done it, and having started on the line there was nothing for it but to carry on. On Standish’s behalf he felt fairly confident: he struck him as being quite capable of looking after himself. It was a pity he had not been able to get the number of the car, but it could not be helped. It meant that Standish would have to play an absolutely lone hand unless he could trace him by some other means. And as he recalled the conversation he had listened to that night he had to admit that so far he had no vestige of a clue as to where they had taken Standish.

  One thing, of course, had come out: the man in evening clothes was not the head. There was a bigger man behind him—the man who had given the orders for Sanderson’s death. And for the death of—what name had they said?—Jean Picot. A Frenchman presumably, and a low-class one if he had been killed in an East End brawl. And yet he had been in a position to give information to a man like Sanderson.

  One thing it certainly tended to show: the gang was a large one with wide ramifications. People from all sections of society seemed to belong to it. The three who had been in the room that night were fairly typical of the upper, middle, and lower classes. What was it Sanderson had said to him: something which bore that out?

  “I’ve been finding clues in all sorts of unsuspected spots: in the Ritz and in a doss-house down in the docks. And they’re connected, but I can’t get the connection at the moment.”

  And now, poor devil, he would never get it. Or perhaps he had got it, and that was why they had done him in. There was some more of their conversation, too, that he recalled.

  “The robbery of the Exminster pearls four months ago, and the pulling of Light Parade at Newmarket—not much resemblance between the two, is there? And yet I am as certain as I can be that the same brain planned both. One was big, the other comparatively small, though as a matter of fact a syndicate made a packet over pulling that horse. And there have been other crimes—just as widely divergent, where one gets a trace here or a trace there that points to one central control. The thing has been outside my scope up to date, but there are indications now that they are beginning to concern themselves with things political.”

  “You mean Communism?” Drummond had asked.

  “Not exactly—though a bit of that may come in as a sideshow,” Sanderson had answered. “Communism in this country is never likely to do much harm: we’re too level-headed. But it’s a pretty open secret that all is not too well with us financially, and that is a state of affairs which, under certain circumstances, can be exploited with great advantage by the individual.”

  Drummond rose and began to pace up and down the room. If only he had paid more attention at the time, and taken Sanderson’s words a bit more seriously, the old boy might be alive now. He had hinted in that last conversation that he knew he was in danger, but then someone else had come butting in and Drummond had drifted off. And now he was dead, and any information he had got had died with him. Something might perhaps be found in his office in Whitehall, but anything like that would be kept to themselves by the police.

  Moreover, from what Standish had said to him he knew practically nothing either: they were both starting completely in the dark. And their opponents were evidently men who did not let the grass grow under their feet, or, when they deemed it necessary, stick at anything. It was going, in fact, to be a game of no mistakes, and it was not the first time he had played under those rules.

  The faint grey streaks of dawn were beginning to show over the roofs opposite, and he decided that it would be safe to go. So once again he took his beer glass to the bathroom and washed it. And it was as he was returning to the sitting-room that he saw a piece of paper lying on the floor of the passage.

  He stooped and picked it up. It had been torn off a larger piece, and at first sight it seemed to be a mere jumble of capital letters. And then as he studied it closer he saw that there were two lines of writing—the top one in ink, neatly written, the bottom one scrawled roughly and almost illegibly in pencil.

  BMSMQYLIRPQMLQCMT

  GOTOSANDERSONSHO

  “Go to Sanderson’s house.”

  It was not hard to supply the three final letters, and to realise what he held in his hand. Clearly it was part of the orders received by the man who had impersonated the policeman. He must have torn the paper up, put the pieces in his pocket and accidentally dropped one on the floor.

  Drummond sat down again at the desk and studied the message carefully. The ink letters had presumably been written by the giver of the order: the pencil ones had been added by the recipient. And he wondered if messages were always sent in cipher.

  It was a subject of which he knew next to nothing. He had a vague idea that E was the commonest letter in the English language and that A, T, I, and O came next. And assuming that “house” was correct he had the cipher equivalent of four of the five vowels. A was Y, E was R, O was M, and U was T. Only I was lacking. In addition to that he held the clue to seven of the commonest consonants.

  He lit a cigarette thoughtfully: this was a valuable find. Unskilled though he was in anything to do with decoding, even he could see that, with his knowledge of eleven frequently used letters, four of which were vowels, it should prove a comparatively simple matter to read any further message that might fall into his hands.

  Presumably an expert would have been able to solve the thing without the pencilled solution below, though he dimly remembered having heard that even the simplest cipher could defeat a man unless there was a good deal of it. Now if E was the letter that was used most frequently the solver would almost certainly have started on the assumption that M stood for it.

  Inspired with enthusiasm, it struck him that he might find out still more. Was there some regular sequence in the cipher letters? For instance G was represented by B. Now G was the seventh letter of the alphabet, and B was the second. Was the cipher letter always five in advance of the real one? But a moment’s inspection caused him to scratch his head mournfully. By no possible method could S be regarded as five in advance of T, and it was worse still when the little matter of A and Y cropped up.

  “Blank, old sport,” he murmured sadly, “blank as be damned. Solving these blamed things ain’t your forte.”

  He put the paper carefully in his pocket-book, and took one final look round the room. McIver would almost certainly insist on coming to see it, and he wanted to leave nothing inconsistent with his story. He remembered of old that the Inspector was a hard man to bluff, but he had done it in the past and he felt tolerably confident of doing it again. There was nothing, so far as he could see, to give the show away, so switching off the light he left the room.

  He glanced searchingly both ways when he reached the street: no one was in sight. But Drummond was taking no chances, and the whole way to his house in Brook Street he walked as if he was slightly drunk. And when he finally let himself in he fumbled for an appreciable time with his latchkey. To the best of his knowledge only a watering cart was about, but there were one or two small mews where a man could stand concealed and watch.

  He closed the door behind him: the game would begin in earnest shortly. But in the meantime he wanted sleep. And his last coherent thought after he fell into bed was to wish Standish luck.

  CHAPTER III

  He awoke about ten o’clock to find Peter Darrell sprawling in an easy chair reading a morning paper.

  “By Jove! old lad,” he remarked as Drummond sat up in bed, “you ou
ght to let yourself out as a foghorn. I’ve never heard such an infernal row as you were making in my life.”

  “Dry up,” answered Drummond. “Those were my deep-breathing exercises. How’s that long, thin, warrior’s face?”

  “Haven’t seen it this morning, but it looked like a Turner sunset when I left him last night. How did you get on?”

  Drummond swung his legs out of bed and lit a cigarette.

  “Peter, old son,” he remarked, “we had the hellova time. Is there anything in that rag about it?”

  “Not a word that I can see.”

  “Nothing about them setting fire to the house?”

  “The devil they did! No—there’s nothing about it here.”

  “I suppose the fire was too late for ’em to get it in. Anything about a policeman running around London in his pants? Oh! boy, we had a wonderful time, which finished up with them kidnapping your pal Standish.”

  Darrell looked at him in amazement.

  “Kidnapping Ronald! Why the deuce did you let ’em do that?”

  Drummond went to the door and shouted for his man.

  “Beer, fool, beer: I have already been awake for hours. Yes, Peter,” he repeated, coming back into the room, “they kidnapped him. In fact, old boy, bar that and one or two other small trifles, they put it across us good and hearty last night. Thank you, Denny: turn on the bath, will you?”

  “What clothes will you be wearing, sir?” asked his man.

  “Something neat and tasty, Denny; something that will carry conviction at Scotland Yard, where presumably I shall have to repair shortly.”

  His servant left the room and Drummond took a long drink of ale.

  “Do you mind explaining?” said Darrell resignedly. “You say—’bar that’. Kidnapping Ronald doesn’t sound to me a screamingly successful point to you.”

  “That, old lad, is where you are wrong. We did it on purpose—with eyes open. At least I speak metaphorically: in reality they were shut. Their first score, Peter, was the policeman who interviewed us, who wasn’t a policeman at all. After you two had gone Standish and I waited and waited and nothing happened. No one came: for the very good reason, as we discovered later, that no one had been told to come. So at last we decided to breeze along to the station ourselves and pull out McIver, and on the way we ran into the soul-shattering sight of an unconscious and semi-naked man in large boots, who turned out to be the real policeman. Point one to them. They’d got our names and addresses and gained an hour of valuable time.