The Bulldog Drummond Megapack

by H. C. McNeile

  Demonico gave a thin smile.

  “It is not the first time I have had dealings with those two gentlemen,” he said. “We understand each other—admirably. And our schemes are going to help things a lot. However, to return to more pressing matters—Drummond and Standish have got to be found, and when they are found there must be no further mistake. The more I think of it, the less likely does it strike me that Drummond has gone to Paris. What possible reason could he have for suddenly going there on a Sunday morning? He is therefore either still in his house, in which case he must have a peculiar sort of staff if he can get a maid to say he’s left for Paris; or, and this is far more probable, he has left Town and is hiding somewhere.”

  “In that case it’s going to be a pretty impossible proposition to find him,” said Pendleton. “In any event, he will have passed on to the police by now all that he knows.”

  “But what does he know? He knows that he was drugged with Standish the night before last by the people who were concerned in Sanderson’s death. All the world will know that after the inquest tomorrow. He knows me as I am now, but not as I shall be in half an hour’s time. He knows about the Old Hall: that is now empty. He knows that he fought for his life in the squash court, but since he didn’t kill his assailant and only stunned him, there will be no evidence to produce there. My dear Pendleton, Sanderson’s very necessary death has turned this case into a cause célèbre already: anything further that Drummond or Standish may say matters but little. Because they do not know what we are here for: they do not know where I am, nor, now that the men are scattered, where any of them are. And, last but not least, they do not know, nor will they ever know, the solution of our cipher. Furthermore, our arrangements are cut and dried, and we are only going to be in the country for a few more days. That is the position as I see it, though I frankly admit that I should feel happier if they were both out of the way. And, when they are found, they must be put out of the way, as I said before. Men who can call on a gang of friends to follow up their movements, as those two apparently can, are far more to be feared than the police.”

  “I wish I felt as confident about it as you do,” said Pendleton uneasily.

  “Not losing your nerve, are you?” remarked Demonico with a slight sneer. “What is worrying you?”

  “The conversation I had with Drummond at that party,” said the other. “I can’t get out of my mind the feeling that he had his suspicions about me.”

  “Nonsense,” cried Demonico. “How could he have? He could not possibly have seen you in the squash court, and anyway, that was after your party. And when you saw him in Standish’s rooms he was drugged and unconscious. As a medical man you could be certain of that.”

  “He was drugged all right,” agreed Pendleton. “For all that I don’t feel sure.”

  “Another thing,” put in Demonico. “If he’d had any suspicions of you, is it not more than likely he would have said something when he was in the squash court? He must have known that two men and a woman were looking on, and one of those men he knew was me, because I spoke to him. Surely, if he suspected you, he would have called out.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” said Pendleton. “Anyway, we will proceed on the assumption that he doesn’t. And if he doesn’t, Standish doesn’t either.”

  “There is still another point which to my mind conclusively proves it,” went on Demonico. “If your surmise that he suspected you at the time of this cocktail party is correct, those suspicions must have been aroused before the party took place. So that even if he said nothing to you in the squash court he would surely have said something then.”

  “Unless he’s playing a very deep game,” said Pendleton.

  “Good God! man,” cried Demonico contemptuously, “what’s happened to you? If I’m not worrying, why should you? You might just see that the way is clear for me to get upstairs without any of your servants seeing me: I want to make a few radical alterations in my appearance. Then I, too, shall follow Drummond’s example, and—go to Paris.”

  “All clear,” said Pendleton, returning from the door, and Demonico, after one swift glance round the hall, went rapidly upstairs.

  “I didn’t quite get what he meant by selling sterling short,” said Number Four as the door closed behind him.

  “That’s easy,” said Pendleton briefly. “If this country got into serious difficulties, and couldn’t pay her way, the value of the pound is going to fall abroad. Say it goes down to fifteen shillings. So that if I sell a pound now I get twenty shillings for it, but when I have to deliver it on settling day I only have to pay fifteen shillings. Clear gain of five shillings per pound, and you can work out what that comes to on a hundred thousand.”

  “But supposing it doesn’t go down?”

  “Doesn’t matter: I can’t lose anything except brokerage. It can’t go up above twenty shillings: I can’t have to pay more for it than I sell out at. Jove! it’s interesting. I knew things weren’t too good: I didn’t know they were as rocky as they evidently are. For Legrange doesn’t make many mistakes. And if he hasn’t made one this time, there are going to be a good many fortunes waiting to be picked up.”

  He sat down at his desk, and began glancing through some papers, whilst the other watched him curiously.

  “You’re an extraordinary bloke, Doctor,” said Number Four after a long silence. “You draw a fat income chopping up people’s insides: you can live in peace and quiet and the odour of sanctity, and yet you mix yourself up in these sorts of games. Why the devil do you do it?”

  “Love of excitement,” answered Pendleton at once. “It takes us all in one way or another. To see a horse-race leaves me cold, and I wouldn’t cross the road to watch a game of football. But this—this is life. I wouldn’t miss next Tuesday or the rehearsal this week for any sum of money you could give me. Hullo! madam, what on earth are you doing here?”

  The door had opened, and an elderly woman had entered. Her hair under a fashionable hat was grey: her clothes, to Pendleton’s discriminating eye, were exactly right in a woman of her age. And for a space she surveyed him through lorgnettes, while he continued to stand by his desk feeling increasingly surprised at this unexpected intrusion.

  “Sir Richard Pendleton?” she asked, her survey concluded. Her voice was musical and cultured, and the doctor bowed.

  “That is my name,” he said. “You wish to consult me?”

  “Only to the extent, my dear Pendleton, of asking you to place the trousers I have left upstairs, along with the other male garments, in some safe hiding-place.”

  The voice was still that of a woman, and for a moment or two Pendleton stared at her blankly. Then the truth dawned on him, and he sat down limply.

  “Well, I’m damned,” he cried. “Demonico, I congratulate you. It is the most marvellous disguise I’ve ever seen. No one—no one—would ever recognise you. It is magnificent.”

  Demonico smiled slightly.

  “Nor even Drummond.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  To Daphne Frensham the whole thing seemed like a nightmare. As Drummond had predicted, she had been accosted on leaving his house, and she had carried out his instructions to the letter. A natural actress, she had had no difficulty in playing the part of a parlourmaid out for the day, and she was convinced that she had completely deceived the man. Moreover, she knew that she had not been followed: the bus going west that she had boarded in Piccadilly had been empty save for herself, and when two hours later she had let herself into her tiny flat the street outside was deserted.

  She found her employer in a trying mood when she arrived at her usual time on Monday morning. And there was no doubt that had her devoted following of film fans seen the beautiful Miss Moxton that day they would have received a severe shock. A programme that includes one successful and one unsuccessful murder on two consecutive evenings is not conducive to mental calm, and her features indicated as much.

  But it was not the past that chiefly worried Corinne Moxton:
it was the immediate future. She lunched with Sir Richard the previous day, and his misgivings had communicated themselves to her. How much did Drummond know? No good to argue that he could know nothing—no good to argue that unless he had positive proof he could say nothing: people with guilty consciences want something more substantial than that. How much did he know, and what was he going to say at the inquest?

  Like Demonico she was convinced that he had not gone to Paris. There seemed to her to be no conceivable reason why he should leave the country early on a Sunday morning to go to France. And if that was so, the very fact that he had put up a blind made him the more dangerous. Why should he have bothered to do so?

  Corinne Moxton was true to type in that she was utterly and absolutely selfish. So long as no shadow of suspicion rested on her the others might go to the devil. Even for Sir Richard she cared not one whit, except for the fact that if he was dragged in she might be involved also. And although she had not actually heard the conversation between him and Drummond at the cocktail party, it had left a bad impression on his mind.

  “Your letters, Miss Moxton.”

  Daphne Frensham brought them to the side of the bed. “What are they?” she cried irritably.

  “The usual autograph ones,” said the secretary, resisting a strong impulse to add that her employer had better write “Murderess” after her signature. “Two luncheons; a line from the publicity agent, and a request that you will say you use Doctor Speedworthy’s Purple Ointment for removing blackheads in return for half a dozen tubes of it.”

  She held the letters out, and the film star snatched them from her hand. What did Drummond know? What was he going to say at the inquest? Damn him. Damn that fool Pendleton. Damn that miserable bungler Number Four for having failed to kill him.

  “Say—how do you hold inquests in this one-horse place?”

  Daphne Frensham’s face registered just the right amount of surprise at such an apparently unusual question: so that was the lie of the land, was it?

  “I’m afraid I don’t really know, Miss Moxton,” she said. “I’ve never attended one. I believe they have a man called a coroner, and a jury, and then they find a verdict. Why do you ask?”

  “Can the public get in?”

  “I believe so. I think the proceedings are always open.”

  “Find out where they’re going to sit around on that guy who was killed on Friday night, and his house burned down.”

  “You mean Mr Sanderson?”

  For the life of her Daphne Frensham could not keep a slight tremor out of her voice: there in the bed in front of her was, if not the actual perpetrator of the crime, the woman who had stood by while it was done. And now she was calmly asking about the inquest: proposing to attend it.

  “For the land’s sake don’t stand there gaping, Miss Frensham. Of course I mean Sanderson.”

  The secretary left the room, and with a vicious movement Corinne Moxton flung the letters on to the floor. Then she sprang out of bed. What did that big guy Drummond know? What was he going to say?

  “It is being held in the hall attached to the mortuary in Hampstead,” said Daphne Frensham, returning. “At eleven-thirty.”

  Corinne Moxton glanced at the clock: ten-thirty now. Then she looked at her complexion in the glass: at least three-quarters of an hour’s hard work was necessary there. So it could not be done.

  “All right,” she snapped. “Pick up the mail, and answer as usual.”

  It was better so, she reflected, snatching a pot of face cream from the dressing-table. It would have looked very curious for Corinne Moxton, the famous film star, to attend an inquest. Almost as if she was interested in it—in the dead man. And suddenly a look of gloating ecstasy came into her eyes: Number Four had not bungled that time. She saw again that deadly pen that was not a pen; she heard again that quick hiss, saw Sanderson crumple in his chair, his head crash forward—dead. If only they could have got him before he had rung up: it was that that had caused the trouble. But he was too wily. Number Four had no chance; she admitted that. And one thing at any rate was certain: Sanderson had said nothing incriminating over the telephone.

  Her thoughts automatically turned to Standish: where did he come in? She had never seen him: he meant nothing to her, but it was him that Sanderson had rung up. A sort of detective, so Sir Richard said; moreover, the man who had shot Number Four. But he could know no more than Drummond, and once again her mind went back to that large individual. What was he going to say at the inquest?

  She finished dressing, and went into the sitting-room, where Daphne Frensham was awaiting her with the answers to her letters. Twenty-past eleven: the thing was just going to begin.

  “Sign them for me,” she said. “I can’t be bothered.”

  “But I can’t sign the ones asking for your autograph,” protested the other.

  “Then throw them in the fire,” screamed Corinne Moxton.

  What a maddening girl! Couldn’t the fool understand that her nerves were all on edge? That she did not want to be worried signing trashy letters to idiots. And then she pulled herself together; Daphne Frensham was looking at her in a very strange way. She must be careful: never do to let her secretary suspect anything. Not that she would, of course: the only person who knew she had been present when Sanderson was murdered was Number Four, and his mouth was effectively shut. And Sir Richard, but he did not count.

  “I guess my nerves are a bit on the jag this morning, Miss Frensham,” she forced herself to say. “Give me the letters and I’ll do them now.”

  She scrawled her signature at the foot of each, not even bothering to read them through. The clock showed eleven-thirty: the inquest was starting.

  “I shan’t want you any more today, Miss Frensham,” she said. “You can have it to yourself.”

  “Thank you,” said the other. “But I’ve got two or three hours’ work filing your press cuttings which I’d like to do before I go.”

  Corinne Moxton, as she watched Daphne Frensham methodically gathering the letters together, checked a strong desire to tell her to clear out of the flat: she must be careful. Damn the fool woman: could the idiot not understand that she wanted to be alone—that unless she could know something definite soon she would scream? At last the secretary left the room, and Corinne Moxton began pacing up and down.

  A quarter to twelve: it had begun. At that very moment the words might have been spoken which would end her career, would brand her in the eyes of the world, would… Great God! she had not thought of that.

  “Miss Frensham,” she called loudly. “Miss Frensham.” The secretary appeared.

  “Say, Miss Frensham,” she cried, “what would happen in this country if—if, well, if say someone was murdered by someone and someone else was present at the time?”

  Daphne Frensham’s face was quite expressionless.

  “I suppose you mean, what would happen to the someone else,” she said with maddening deliberation, and Corinne Moxton felt she could hit her. Was the girl completely daft this morning? What else could she have meant? And what was that the fool was saying? The someone else would be hanged!

  “Even if she had nothing to do with it?” cried the film star shrilly.

  “She!” Daphne Frensham raised her eyebrows. “Your someone else is a woman, is it? It makes no difference, Miss Moxton: women are hanged in England just the same as men. And, you see,” she continued, “she must have had something to do with it, otherwise she’d have told the police at once, wouldn’t she?”

  Corinne Moxton bit her lip, and her nails cut into the palms of her hand. She must be careful what she said: there was no doubt whatever that her secretary was now looking at her most strangely.

  “Thank you, Miss Frensham,” she said. “The point comes up in a new film I’m thinking of. Don’t let me keep you any more.”

  Hanged! Great heavens, what a fool she had been to go! Why had not that miserable cur Pendleton told her that she would be hanged? It was not possible; it wa
s not justice: she could not be hanged. She had not done it: you cannot hang a person merely for watching someone being killed.

  A frenzy of panic seized her, and rushing into her bedroom she began hurling things into her dressing-case. She must get away: leave the country while there was still time. Hanged! Taken out in the early morning with a rope round one’s neck and hanged.

  “Are you going away, Miss Moxton?”

  Daphne Frensham was standing in the door and with a superhuman effort Corinne Moxton pulled herself together. If only some occult force had struck her secretary dead on the spot she would have danced with joy on the body. But it did not: she continued standing by the door, watching her employer out of a pair of wondering blue eyes.

  “I thought you said you were filing press cuttings, Miss Frensham,” she cried furiously. “It seems to me, I guess, you’re spending most of the morning fooling around the passages.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Moxton,” said Daphne Frensham sweetly. “The filing is not urgent, and I thought perhaps I could help you pack. Does that come into the film, too?”

  She left the room, leaving Corinne Moxton motionless. What did the girl mean? Did she suspect? Impossible: utterly impossible. No one could suspect—yet. No one could know anything about it at all. Unless… God! unless Drummond had said something at the inquest. But what could he have said—be saying now?

  A quarter-past twelve: was it over? Anyway, it was too late now to bolt: the police watched the boats, she had been told, in cases like that. Hanged! Hanged! Like that film of Mata Hari in which she had played a small part before she became a star. Only Mata Hari was shot. With snow on the ground.

  She bit her thumb to prevent herself shrieking. She had seen a play once—a Grand Guignol play—”Eight O’clock.” The last half-hour of a man’s life before he was hanged. He had prayed with the chaplain: the sole of one of his boots had had a patch in it—she remembered noticing that as he knelt by the bed. And then suddenly the whole cell had been full of people, and a thin-lipped man in a sort of uniform had come swiftly up to the murderer, and pinioned his arms, and half pushed, half carried him up some stairs behind the cell. Screaming; screaming. And then a dull thud, and silence.