The Bulldog Drummond Megapack

by H. C. McNeile

  “May I do so in person?” he murmured.

  “Of course,” she answered. “My uncle and I will be delighted to see you at any time.”

  “Good-bye, sir.” He turned to Meredith. “And don’t despair.”

  They accompanied him to his car, and as he let in his clutch the girl leaned over the side.

  “At any time,” she whispered. “I think it is too sweet of you to do this for two complete strangers.”

  “Strangers?” he said reproachfully. “That’s unkind of you, Doris.”

  They watched the car till it turned into the main road; then Meredith turned to the girl.

  “What the deuce,” he spluttered, “is the game? What is this bunk about a code?”

  “Don’t you realise what this message is?” said the girl quietly as the German joined them. “‘Found paper in garden. On it written SBZALFTRPTE. Eskdale.’ Don’t you realise it is a code message right enough?”

  “But what?… Why?…” cried Meredith, completely bewildered. “Why Kessingland?”

  “Oh! you’re dense; you’re dense. What did I tell Drummond on the way here? That if there was a message it would be the place they were taking Harold to. So any town with eleven letters would do, and Kessingland happens to be not too near and not too far. It will keep him quiet hunting round the sand dunes, whereas if I’d said nothing he would almost certainly have taken this up to London. Or else had it repeated from the old woman.”

  “Gad! Emil, the girl is quick on the uptake,” said Meredith.

  “Extremely,” remarked the German, studying the telegram. “I wonder what this really does stand for.”

  “Not a doubt about it in my mind,” said the girl. “It’s the address of your headquarters.”

  For a moment or two the German stared at her; then he smiled.

  “Well, my dear,” he remarked suavely, “if that is so, you’ve certainly done no harm in sending that bovine individual to Kessingland.”

  And with the utmost deliberation he tore up the telegram and put the pieces in his pocket.

  CHAPTER IV

  It was at precisely twelve o’clock that Peter Darrell entered the lounge of the Royal Hotel, and perceived Drummond with his legs stretched out in front of him, and his face buried in a tankard of ale. Periodically during the last half-hour the large form of the drinker had been shaken with gusts of internal mirth, to the evident alarm of an old lady opposite who was knitting some incomprehensible garment. And now, realising that a second was approaching, she rose hurriedly and bolted to cover in the drawing-room.

  “Come hither, my Peter,” boomed Drummond. “Things is ’appening.”

  “So I gathered, confound you,” cried Darrell. “I was lunching with the Marriot filly. Why the dickens aren’t you killing ducks?”

  “Draw up, Peter, my boy, and put your nose inside a pint. This is my third, and my confidence in myself is even now not restored. There was a time,” he continued sadly, “when I regarded myself as a pretty ready liar—somewhere round about scratch. This morning, Peter, I have been holding converse with a plus two performer.”

  “Do you mean to say you’ve brought me down here to tell me that? Who is this bloke?”

  “It’s a lady, Peter, a beautiful, charming girl with an uncle. And the dear child yearned greatly for a message to be sent her by telegram: a message doubtless of hope and comfort to cheer her maiden heart. But you look bewildered, Peter: let us begin at the beginning.”

  He hitched his chair closer to Darrell’s, and lit a cigarette. The lounge was empty save for the hall porter, and he so far came out of his habitual coma as to wonder once or twice what the big man in the corner was talking so earnestly about to the owner of the racing car outside. For it was twenty minutes later that the owner of the car spoke for the first time.

  “But, damn it, Hugh,” he said, “I don’t understand about this second message. The one they were after, you found in the window. That’s clear. What is this other one that Mrs. Eskdale found?”

  Drummond grinned.

  “Peter,” he remarked, “I have exercised a little story-teller’s licence on you. Mrs. Eskdale never found a message. When I told you I wired Mrs. Eskdale to send a message I did not add that I told her what message to send. And for a time I wondered what message I should tell her to send. It had to be something mysterious, and yet something that looked genuine. Suddenly—out of the blue, as a gift from the gods—came the idea. A newspaper was lying in the next compartment and I happened to glance at it. And my prepaid wire ran as follows:

  Wire Meredith Hartley Court Cambridge following message Stop found paper in garden on it written SBZALFTRPTE Eskdale.”

  “But what is SBZ and all the rest of it?”

  “Coldspur’s cipher nap tip for Lingfield in the Daily Leader,” said Drummond quietly.

  Darrell stared at him open-mouthed.

  “Then how the deuce has she made Kessingland out of it?” he spluttered.

  Once again Drummond grinned.

  “Because, old lad, Miss Doris Venables, as I said at the beginning, is definitely rated at plus two and she plays quicker than George Duncan. I take off my hat to that wench.”

  “More beer,” said Darrell decidedly. “This is too obscure for me. I still don’t see her object.”

  “Simple, Peter. To get rid of me. I’m becoming a nuisance: in fact, I always have been a nuisance since I appeared in the picture. But it was quick of her—damned quick. Think it over, old boy: look at the matter from her point of view. Every single move that the other side has made since Emil and his boy friend paid me their visit last night has been directed to one end—to get the message that was wrapped round the brick. And though I may not be quite up to her form I flatter myself that I’m sufficiently near it to play level. Obviously she believes that I’ve swallowed her precious Harold lock, stock and barrel. And to tell you the truth, Peter, until the Kessingland episode I wasn’t at all certain that Harold was a myth. Now it’s plain that he is.”

  “I don’t exactly see that, old boy.”

  Don’t be dense, Peter. That’s Coldspur’s cipher: by no hook or crook can you make Kessingland out of it. There ain’t such a horse. Therefore all the talk about her code with Harold was a lie. Now she thinks that she’s got the genuine message that they’ve been hunting for, and so the one urgent thing for them to do was to get shot of me. Mark her guile. She believes that I think she’s got a message from Harold. So she looks up a town with eleven letters in it, and if I hadn’t suggested going there you can bet your bottom dollar she’d have made the suggestion for me. She took care, you see—in the most natural way, I admit—not to let me see the wire. Otherwise I might have wondered why Z and A both stood for S. But as it is she thinks I’m taped for Kessingland, and God forbid she should think otherwise!”

  “How are you going to work it?” demanded Darrell.

  “After we’ve had lunch, Peter, we are going to Kessingland. There, with our well-known charm, we will get hold of someone of comparative intelligence to whom we will give stamped telegrams—three or four should be enough. We will concoct them later. The first, which can be sent to the lady this evening, will merely announce my arrival. Tomorrow, in the morning, a hint that I am on the track of foreigners; in the evening, still on the track. The next day, that the trail has died, but still trying, etc., and so forth. I might even go so far as to write a letter to be posted late tomorrow evening, which should convince her that little Willie is still safely buried in that delectable spot. Then, Peter, having done this, we shall return here.”

  “And what then?”

  “A closer inspection of Hartley Court by night seems to me to be indicated.”

  Drummond beckoned a waiter and ordered two Martinis.

  “I can’t help feeling, Peter,” he continued, “that there are things afoot here which are bigger than ordinary common or garden crime.”

  “Do you mean political?”

  “That’s the notion. I’m
inclined to believe that there’s something in that Key Club business.”

  “Mightn’t be a bad idea to rope in Ronald Standish,” said Darrell thoughtfully.

  “Not at all bad,” agreed Drummond. “He’d know, if anybody did. Go and ring him up, Peter. Tell him that aught is amiss here in the children’s kindergarten, and will he kindly report his vile dog’s body as soon as possible.”

  Darrell crossed to the telephone box and Drummond lit a cigarette. Definitely a good idea: if his surmise was right, if by a strange freak of fate he had blundered into deep waters, there was no one who would pull his weight better than Ronald Standish. He knew all the hush-hush men intimately, and what was more, they trusted him implicitly. For the more Drummond thought things over, the more did he feel convinced that this was going to prove a hush-hush job.

  “He’ll be down in time for dinner this evening,” said Darrell, rejoining him.

  “Splendid,” cried Drummond. “Let’s go and have a spot of food, Peter, and then push off. The sooner we lay the Kessingland trail the better.”

  And at that delectable East Coast watering-place luck proved to be right in. One of the first people they saw was a man they both knew, who was staying there for a few days, and who readily agreed to send the wires for them.

  “For Heaven’s sake, get ’em in the right order, old boy,” said Drummond, “and don’t send ’em all off at once or we are undone. And now, Peter—to horse. I propose to go back via Nannie’s cottage to warn the dear old thing that I shan’t be back for a few days. It’s very little out of our way, and she’ll worry herself sick if I don’t turn up.

  “Still there, you see, Peter,” he cried as they approached the cottage some half-hour later. “There’s the trampled-down bit of verge; there’s the pool of oil. It’s dusty now, but you can see the outline clear enough.”

  “The poor devil must have bled some,” said Darrell.

  “You’re right,” remarked Drummond gravely. “Gad! Peter, I wish I could get to the bottom of this show.”

  He drew up outside the cottage.

  “Shan’t be a moment,” he cried. “The old darling will probably want us to stop to tea, but I’ll tell her we can’t. Nannie,” he shouted, opening the gate, “where are you?”

  There was no answer, and he walked up the path. His terrier and spaniel came bounding to meet him, and he stopped to pat them.

  “Where,” he demanded, “is that lazy devil Jerry?”

  And then, on the threshold of the door, he paused, and stood very still.

  “Peter,” he called softly, “come here.”

  Darrell joined him: the reason for Jerry’s laziness was clear. For the bulldog was lying motionless on the carpet, and it was obvious at a glance that he had been shot through the head.

  “By God! old Jerry,” muttered Drummond in a voice that shook a little, “somebody is going to pay to the uttermost farthing for this. How did it happen, boy; how did it happen?”

  His eyes were roving round the room, and suddenly he gave an exclamation and stepped to the table. Then he bent down and picked up a pair of leather gloves which were lying near.

  “Look at these, Peter,” he cried. “See that brown and white stitching effect? Can’t mistake it. These are the gloves Doris Venables was wearing this morning when I motored her to Cambridge.”

  “Are you sure, Hugh?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Or they’re an identical pair, and that is too amazing a coincidence to swallow. What the devil has happened?”

  “She must have been back here.”

  “But why, Peter? What did she want to come back for?”

  “Perhaps to make certain the wire was genuine,” suggested Darrell.

  “But why shoot Jerry?” cried Drummond. “Why, in the name of all that is miraculous, shoot the old chap? He made great friends with her this morning.”

  Darrell made no answer: he was standing by the door listening intently.

  “There’s someone asleep upstairs, Hugh. I can hear breathing.”

  Drummond joined him at the door; there was no doubt about it. Somebody was almost snoring in the room above, and they were up the stairs in a flash. And there an even more amazing spectacle met their eyes.

  Lying on the bed fully dressed and completely unconscious was the ample form of Mrs. Eskdale. Her face was flushed, and every now and then a strangled snort convulsed her.

  “If I didn’t know her better, Peter,” said Drummond after a while, “I’d say she was blind drunk. But the old dear never touches a drop of anything except an occasional glass of some hell brew of her own. Elderberry wine, or something.”

  “She’s either drunk or drugged, Hugh,” said Darrell decidedly. “There’s not the smallest doubt of that.”

  They bent over her, but there was no suspicion of alcohol about her breath.

  “That settles it, Peter,” said Drummond. “She’s been doped.”

  He shook her gently by the shoulder, and then not so gently, but it produced no result.

  “It may be hours before she awakes,” he continued with a frown. “This is the devil and all, Peter; I don’t like to leave the old lady.”

  “It’s not that that is worrying me so much,” said Darrell. “I’m trying to reconstruct the crime as they say. How did she get here? No girl could possibly have carried or dragged an unconscious woman of her weight up those steep stairs.”

  “Therefore,” remarked Drummond, “if the girl was alone Mrs. Eskdale must have been up here when she was given the dope. No; hold hard a minute. Let’s suppose she was giving the girl a cup of tea, and that little Doris pulled the same stuff on her as she tried to do on me this morning. Then the old dear began to feel queer, but still managed to get up here under her own steam. How’s that?”

  Darrell nodded.

  “It fits. But what about Jerry? If all that happened was that Mrs. Eskdale came upstairs more or less normally, why should he get excited? And surely no one would shoot a dog just for the fun of the thing.”

  “You think the girl was not alone.”

  “I don’t know what to think, Hugh; the whole thing is baffling. But the only solution that seems to fit Jerry having been killed and Mrs. Eskdale being up here is that some sort of a rough house took place below. What it was about the Lord only knows.”

  “She’s loyal to the core, is that old dear. It’s just possible they wanted to see the message itself, and she wouldn’t show it to them. And it would have been a bit difficult seeing that she hadn’t got one to show.”

  He broke off abruptly, staring out of the window with narrowed eyes.

  “Do you see that clump of bushes, Peter, one finger left of that stunted alder?” he said softly. “There’s something just moved in them.”

  Darrell picked up the target a hundred and fifty yards away on the other side of the road.

  “I’ll take your word for it, old boy,” he answered. “Your sight is so damned uncanny.… No, by Jove! you’re right. I saw it myself.”

  “It’s a man; I can see his face, just to the right of the middle.”

  Drummond rubbed his hands gently together.

  “Stay here, Peter; I’m going to stalk that gentleman. And in this flat country it’ll mean a big détour starting from the back of the cottage. But if I can manage to get under cover of that hedge running by the alder, I’m home. Show yourself every now and then at the window.”

  And then followed for Peter Darrell an interval of pure joy. An ardent stalker himself, it was an education to watch Drummond at work. Conditions naturally were different, but the principles were the same, and as an object lesson in how to make cover where none existed it could not have been beaten. He had forgotten Mrs. Eskdale, who still snored placidly on her bed; his whole attention was riveted on a blurred white face peering out of the undergrowth, and the slinking figure away to the right.

  At last Drummond reached the hedge which was his first objective and scrambled through it. Then out of sight of his quarr
y he straightened up and started to run. Nearer and nearer he got, and now he was moving cautiously. Ten yards; five yards, and then in a flash it was over. Came a sudden spring; a shrill squeal of fear and the next moment Drummond emerged into the open field with his prisoner. And his prisoner’s gun.

  Darrell met them at the gate, and studied the captive with interest. And somewhat to his surprise he saw that he was of a very different type to what he had anticipated. The man was well dressed, and on the surface at any rate appeared to be a gentleman. He was dark and clean shaven, and his nationality was not obvious. But his English when he spoke was perfect.

  “May I ask,” he remarked icily, “the reason for this incredible outrage?”

  “Get inside,” said Drummond curtly. “A pretty weapon this, Peter; compressed air. And you will kindly remember, my friend, that any attempt on your part to escape would cause it to be used on your right knee. And that’s a painful wound.”

  “I shall have the law on you for this,” said the man in a voice that shook with rage.

  “By all means,” cried Drummond affably. “But just at the moment my friend and I are the law.”

  The man went slowly up the path, and as he came to the door he paused for a second. The sound of Mrs. Eskdale’s snores still came rhythmically from above, and Darrell watching his face saw a faint look of relief flash for a moment across it. Then it became as mask-like as ever.

  “Now, sir,” he remarked, “once more I insist on an explanation.”

  “Are you the man who did that?” said Drummond quietly, pointing to the dead bulldog.

  “I am not,” answered the man. “This is the first time I have been in this cottage.”

  And Jock, his teeth bared, snarled in a corner.

  “You lie,” said Drummond softly. “You lie, damn you, and there’s the proof.” He pointed to the terrier. “However for the moment we will leave that. Why were you lying up in those bushes watching this house?”

  The man lit a cigarette.

  “I’ll buy it,” he remarked with a yawn.

  “I wonder,” said Drummond pleasantly, “if you have ever read a book called Stalky and Co.?”