The Bulldog Drummond Megapack

by H. C. McNeile

  “They’ve stopped talking, Algy,” he whispered, “which is unlike women. We’d better go and see.”

  The back door was open, and they crept into the passage. In front of them light was shining out from a half-shut door, and they stopped outside it; stopped to see reflected in a mirror a woman sitting in a chair, whose terrified eyes met theirs from above the gag in her mouth.

  “Just in time,” muttered Drummond as he entered.

  A man, who had been leaning out of the window, swung round and stared at them, his jaw dropping as he did so. And then, he too was spared any further worry for a space. Drummond was not wasting time though this one struggled more than his friend outside.

  “Undo the women, Algy,” he said, as he dropped his limp opponent on the floor.

  They were all three there, tightly bound and gagged. “They came in suddenly on us,” said Alice Blackton as she stood up. “Have you got the other?

  “Yes,” answered Drummond. “I don’t know who you ladies are,” he continued, staring straight at her, “but if I was you I’d go home before the police come.”

  The emphasis was clear and she nodded.

  “And if your name comes out you must disappear for a time.”

  Again she nodded, and then smiled faintly at the outburst in the corner. For it was going to be even money whether Mrs. Cartwright or Mrs. Turnbull had hysterics first.

  “Come back with us, lovey,” sobbed Mrs. Turnbull, “and we’ll telephone the police from my house.”

  “I couldn’t stop here,” sniffed Mrs. Cartwright. “In my own parlour too.”

  “Excellent,” whispered Drummond to the girl. “Get ’em back. And postpone telephoning as long as you can. If possible I don’t want these men caught. And, of course, you don’t know us…”

  He beckoned to Algy and they faded silently away.

  “Much better if they are not caught,” he repeated as they walked along the street. “For if they are, Burton will know they’ve failed; but if they’re not, they’ll pretend they’ve succeeded and destroyed the papers.”

  “Where to now?” asked Algy.

  “Back to Heppel Street to examine our catch,” said Drummond, hailing a taxi. “Jove! Algy, what we’d have done without those two girls in this show don’t bear thinking about.”

  They were met at the door by Mrs. Penny.

  “That gentleman that lunched with you the other day, dearie,” she said, “rang up half an hour ago.”

  “Ginger Lawson,” said Drummond to Algy. “What did he want, Jane?”

  “To see you, Master Hugh. I said you were out and he’s coming round at eleven.”

  “Ten-thirty now. All right, Jane. Show him in when he comes. Now, Algy, let’s get to it.”

  He drew up a chair to the table, and from his pocket he pulled out the bundle of papers. There were five in all, and picking up the first he opened it.

  It was a blue print such as is common in engineering plans. But this one seemed to consist entirely of wheels and springs. There was one central diagram, and a series of smaller ones which seemed to represent parts of the main design enlarged. Drummond stared at it; then he suddenly rose and pressed the bell.

  “Jane,” he said, “do we patronise Petworth’s Fruit Salad?”

  “I’ve got a tin in the house now, dearie.”

  “Then bring it here, like an angel,” he cried. “Don’t open it.”

  Somewhat mystified, the old dame retired and brought the tin.

  “All right, Jane, leave it here. As I thought, Algy,” he said when she had gone, “it’s the exact size of the central diagram. This is the print of the mechanism we got from Maier’s house in Switzerland—or at any rate, something of the same type.”

  “On which, presumably, Cartwright was working,” remarked Algy.

  “Precisely. But since we’ve got the actual machine itself, the print doesn’t seem of much importance, except that it brings the actual doings to England. Let’s go on.”

  The second and third were in the nature of lists of stores. They were compiled in pencil with numerous erasion and alterations. 250 No. 1 wheels had been altered to 320; 150 D. springs had been half rubbed out and the number 200 substituted; 1,000 nuts various were a few of many similar items.

  “It fits in so far, Algy,” said Drummond, lighting a cigarette. “Even to my limited brain it is obvious that there are not 150 D. springs, whatever a D. spring may be, in that one machine. Therefore Cartwright was employed in making a number of them. And I think we can take as a working theory that Mr. Maier of Veytaux was the original pebble on the beach. He it was who designed the first mechanism—the one that he kept, and which for some reason or other was stolen from him the night he was murdered, and which we’ve now got. Why they murdered him, we don’t know—since he must have been in their confidence to start with. Perhaps he started opening his mouth too wide; perhaps he threatened them. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. Maier produced the original, a blue print of which was sent to Cartwright to copy. How’s that?”

  “Sounds perfectly feasible to me,” answered Algy.

  “So let us to Number 4,” said Drummond. “By Jove! Algy,” he cried excitedly. “Look. One of the very papers Jimmy Latimer got hold of.”

  He spread it out and they both pored over it. It was an outline map of England and Scotland, with dots sprinkled all over it. No names were printed at all, but it was easy to see that the dots represented towns. And as Madame Pélain had said, they were far more numerous in the Midlands and north than in the south.

  Against some of them numbers in red were written. And the area so filled in on the map before them comprised Bristol and the South of Wales, and a few isolated ones in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. Further, in the margin, was a total which read 320.

  “And we have 320 No. 1 wheels,” said Drummond thoughtfully. “Listen, Algy. In the map Madame Pélain saw, these numbers were entered everywhere—not only in one district. What do you make of that?”

  “That the district marked here was Cartwright’s? remarked Algy promptly.

  “Exactly,” agreed Drummond. “In which case, he was only one of several employed on the same game—all working on identical blue prints. Very possibly each of them was given a district far removed from where he lives, to prevent any personal feeling coming into the matter, and the finished map is never seen by the underlings.”

  Algy nodded.

  “It all sounds perfectly feasible to me,” he said.

  “At any rate, there’s nothing wildly fantastic so far,” remarked Drummond, picking up the last paper. “What’s this?” he said, staring at it. “Helverton; where or what the deuce is Helverton?”

  There came the sound of voices in the hall.

  “Come in, Ginger,” he called out. “You arrive in the nick of time. Where, or what, or why is Helverton?”

  Ginger Lawson stood in the doorway eyeing him queerly.

  “Strange you should ask that,” he said at length. “Helverton is a village in Cornwall, near which there have been strange doings of late. So strange that it’s filtered through to the Yard.”

  It was Drummond’s turn to stare.

  “What sort of doings?”

  “They say that a headland not far from the village is haunted, and undoubtedly a man who went out to investigate was found dead.”

  “How did he die?”

  Ginger Lawson closed the door.

  “He was washed ashore four days later. The body was beginning to decompose, and the natural assumption was that he had been drowned. But when they came to examine him more closely, they came to the amazing conclusion that he had been burned, if not to death, at any rate very near it.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  THE TRAIL NARROWS

  He came on into the room.

  “And how, might I ask, did you come to hear of Helverton?”

  In silence Drummond pushed the documents over to him, and Lawson studied them.

  “Where did these come from?�
�� he said at length.

  “A gentleman who was murdered the night before last by Burton,” answered Drummond. “His body, which may or may not have been discovered by now, is in a wood on the top of Bury Hill in Sussex. Unfortunately his death, as in Jimmy’s case, will, apparently, have been due to natural causes.”

  “Who was the man?” asked Ginger.

  “Samuel Cartwright—if that conveys anything to you. A working clock-maker, old boy “—and Drummond put a significant finger on the blue print. “We’re getting warm, Ginger,” he continued. “Unless I’m much mistaken, that print represents Maier’s model. And that district”—he pointed to the map—”is Cartwright’s district. Now we happen to know that Cartwright joined some so-called political society a few months ago. We also know that recently he has been an extremely worried and nervy man. And now he’s dead. What do you make of it?”

  “That he showed signs of splitting and had to be put out of the way,” said Lawson.

  “Exactly. Now take that figure 320. My idea is that he had to make 320 similar machines to the one we took from Maier’s house. Other people in other districts had to make their quotas also, so that the total would be sufficient to account for the whole map. And then these various contributions have been or will be collected at one central depot.”

  “And after that?”

  “I wonder if it would be possible,” said Drummond thoughtfully, “to find out if any large order from a new customer has been given recently for Petworth’s Fancy Quality Fruit Salad?”

  “It could probably be done,” answered Lawson.

  “And where it’s been despatched to…Ginger,” he continued gravely. “I’m no ruddy engineer. But what would be the result if you took a dynamo or a fly-wheel, rotating at speed, and exploded a bomb on one of its bearings?”

  “Hell let loose backwards, I should say. The whole thing would fly to pieces and smash up the entire shooting-box.”

  “Just what I thought,” said Drummond. “We’ve got to find where that central depot is.”

  “What price this place—Helverton?” remarked Algy. “Why such a remote spot?” objected Lawson.

  “Ask me another,” said Drummond. “But it’s a strange coincidence—this paper, and what you’ve just told us about the man being burned.”

  “Didn’t you find out anything about the island of Varda?”

  “Algy, with great brilliance, took that on. Both Burton and Menalin reacted to it.”

  “So Ronald is on the track,” said Lawson.

  “What news of him? I’ve heard nothing except that he’s escaped.”

  “That’s the main reason that I came round to see you,” answered Lawson. “Somehow or other he got away from the place where Menalin was holding him as a prisoner, and swam out to a private yacht. He must have heard Varda mentioned in the house before he escaped, I suppose. Anyway he got a wire through to me from the yacht, whose owner he must have bluffed into keeping him. And he’s on his way home now…”

  “What about Gasdon?”

  “He was knifed in Paris as he drove in. He was taken to hospital, but I gather it’s not serious.” Drummond shook both his fists in the air.

  “By God! Ginger—what a day of reckoning there’s going to be. And it’s not going to be put off long, either. In fact, I seem to feel that the overture is playing for the last act…”

  With eyes half closed he stared across the smoke-filled room.

  “Do you remember what I told you once, that strange vision of a fleeting second that I had in the Golden Boot? It’s coming; I know it. And it will be battle, murder and sudden death before we get through to the end…”

  “What about bringing in the police now?”

  “We can’t, Ginger—yet…We don’t know. It’s all guess work. We’ve got to find out first. Otherwise we’ll merely put them on their guard.”

  “And how do you propose to do so?”

  “Go to Helverton. I’ll take Algy and Peter with me. This can’t be coincidence.”

  “I wish to Heaven I could come with you,” said Lawson.

  “I know you do, old man but you can’t. If Ronald arrives, or Gasdon, tell them where I am. I’ll keep in touch with you. I’ll send you a wire every day, signed H U D with just the day of the week on it. If you don’t get it you’ll know something has happened, and you can get gay.”

  Ginger Lawson nodded, and rose.

  “Trust me, Hugh. How shall I get at you if I want to?”

  “Where is this place, Helverton?”

  “On the coast—not far from Bodmin.”

  “Then send anything you want to Hudson at the post office, Bodmin, Night-night, old boy…We shall start tomorrow.”

  He came back into the room after he had locked the front door.

  “It’s big stuff this time, Algy,” he said quietly. “Very big. I think we’re going to get our money’s worth. Ring Peter up at his pub tomorrow morning, and tell him to motor straight to Exeter. Chuck over that A.A. book…Here’s a one star pub. He is to go to the Lowestoft and wait for us there. I’ll bring a a gun for him and a disguise.”

  And when Algy went to bed five minutes later, Drummond was still sitting hunched in his chair staring at the embers of the dying fire. Strange—this premonition of his, for he was one of the least fanciful men in the world. But try as he would he could not shake it off. And the thought that worried him was whether he was justified in what he had said to Ginger Lawson about the police…Was he justified in trying to tackle the show on his own?

  That he was itching to get at it was neither here nor there. But supposing they got him and Peter and Algy—what then? There might be delay—fatal delay. On the other hand, if the police started making enquiries Menalin and Burton might close the whole thing down for a time, and come back with it again later under more favourable conditions.

  He lit a cigarette and poured out some more beer. Balancing the two alternatives he felt he was right. The delay would not be great if he had bad luck; just one day when Ginger got no wire. And, in any event, he felt certain that there was one big point he would be able to clear up. Was this village of Helverton a spot of importance, or not?

  At the bottom of his mind he felt it must be. That Cartwright—a confirmed Cockney should have troubled to write down the name of an obscure Cornish village without some good reason, seemed very improbable. And, even if he had, why put the paper with documents connected with the other affair? This mystery, too, of the burned man…

  “Helverton has it,” he muttered to himself. “All Lombard Street to a china orange on it…Go to bed, my boy, go to bed.”

  It was Algy who woke him the next morning at nine o’clock.

  “I’ve just got through to Peter,” he said. “He lost three quid to Ted yesterday, and is blaspheming with rage at not getting it back this morning. He’s going straight to Exeter.”

  “Well done, Algy. So we shan’t want another car there. Go and look up the trains, while I dress.”

  “There’s a ten-thirty-five from Paddington,” sang out Algy from the hall.

  “Couldn’t be better,” answered Drummond. “We will honour it with our presence.”

  Gone completely were the doubts of last night; life was just a hundred percent.

  “Money, fool,” he roared. “Have we any? If not, go out and cash your maintenance order.”

  “Is forty quid enough to keep you in beer?”

  “No. Tell Jane I’ll be down in ten minutes. And, Algy, look in the papers and see if they’ve found the body on Bury Hill.”

  Came a pause and then Algy’s voice:

  “Don’t see any sign of it. But there’s a paragraph here about last night.”

  He came upstairs with the paper in his hand.

  “‘A strange outrage occurred last night at the house of Mrs. Samuel Cartwright, who lives near the Royal Albert road. She was entertaining two friends after supper when the house was entered by two men, who bound and gagged all three of them. One of the
men remained on guard, whilst the other went into the yard at the back.

  “‘Shortly afterwards two other men appeared…”

  “Damn!” said Drummond. “I’d hoped we might have been left out of it. Go on.”

  “‘…appeared, who overpowered the man on guard and stunned him. Then having set free the three ladies these men disappeared. Mrs. Cartwright, who was overcome with the shock, accompanied her friends to their house, from where she rang up the police, who at once went to the scene of the outrage. Unfortunately they were too late; the house was empty, the miscreants had fled.

  “‘The motive of the crime is obscure. The door of a shed in the yard, which is used by Mr. Cartwright, a clock-maker, and at present away from home, had been forced. But since nothing had apparently been taken from it, or from the house, the whole matter is difficult to understand.

  “‘Unfortunately, the descriptions of the men, as given by Mrs. Cartwright, are so vague as to be almost valueless. The most she can say is that the second pair, who liberated her and her friends, looked like dockyard hands.’”

  “Good up to a point,” said Drummond, brushing his hair. “There’s no mention of Alice. But I wonder if the old girl said anything about Burton. And the police have suppressed it. For if so, Master Charles won’t feel so good, when Cartwright’s body is found and identified.”

  “He can still bluff it,” remarked Algy.

  “Oh, yes! he can still bluff it,” agreed Drummond. “But I’ve got a sort of idea that our Charles is not quite as happy as he was. After you went up for your bath on Saturday night, he and Menalin were having a little heart to heart chat in the hall…”

  “Was it you,” interrupted Algy, “that Molly saw looking through the window by the front door?”

  “Who the hell did you think it was? An anthroppoidal ape? As I say, they were having a little chat. I couldn’t, of course, hear what they said, but it struck me that Burton was a bit worried.”

  “He was damned silent during the early part of dinner,” said Algy.

  “So Talbot told me. By the same token,” he added with a grin, “it strikes me that Captain Talbot would not be averse to a spot of walking out with little Molly Castledon. I definitely caught the love-light in his eyes when discussing her. And before breakfast, too, which takes a lot of getting round.”