The Bulldog Drummond Megapack

by H. C. McNeile

  ‘And then he appeared on the scene.’ McIver jerked his thumb towards the mortuary. ‘Half French, half English—he spoke both languages fluently. He was wished on to me by the Sûreté, and we took him for what he was worth. Name of Esmer, which was as good as any other, but what his motive was we didn’t inquire. Not, I venture to think, a very exalted one: he was a gentleman with a sultry past if I’m any judge. But he offered to help us, and we didn’t say no. It was his funeral—and that’s what it’s turned out to be.

  ‘Evidently he knew the gang and managed to link up with them. I should say he’d been mixed up in the dope traffic himself in the past, so he had no difficulty over that. And consequently he got in with the men at the top, sufficiently to get information he passed to you.’

  ‘Where is Aldmersham?’ asked Drummond.

  ‘Suffolk. About ten miles from the coast. But it wasn’t only that that made me suspect before I saw the body. I thought I recognized the writing, even though it was a mere scrawl. In any event, we now know where we stand. The Rest House at Aldmersham is a red spot on the map. Whether it’s the red spot remains to be seen.’

  ‘By me?’ said Drummond.

  McIver nodded.

  ‘If you’re on,’ he said. ‘Though of course we shall be in the vicinity; very much so. But in view of their record up to date I’m under no delusions about these gentlemen. They’re a swift crowd, and although we don’t know them, I’m pretty certain they know the classic features of most of the Yard. And if they saw me at the Rest House, it would be a case of goodbye forever. We’ve got to have ’em pointed out to us without their knowing it. And if in addition to that we can catch ’em with the stuff on ’em, we’re home. So, once again, are you on?’

  ‘You bet I’m on,’ said Drummond. ‘I haven’t had any fun for a long while. What are your ideas on the plan of campaign?’

  McIver rang a bell and the sergeant entered.

  ‘Find out at once full particulars of the Rest House at Aldmersham,’ he said. ‘And when we know those we’ll decide, Captain Drummond.’

  ‘Will you be able to run these swine for murder?’ asked Drummond.

  McIver shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Not much to go on up to date,’ he said. ‘But one never knows. I should have liked to have seen the charlotte russe episode,’ he added irrelevantly.

  ‘You would,’ agreed Drummond as the sergeant came back.

  ‘Eight bedrooms, sir. Fully licensed,’ he announced. ‘Good reputation and crowded at this time of the year with cyclists and hikers.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said McIver. ‘What about a bicycle tour, Captain Drummond?’

  ‘Great Scot!’ cried Drummond. ‘I hadn’t bargained for that.’

  ‘Or you can hike,’ said McIver kindly. ‘Shorts and a nice knapsack. However, I leave it to you.’

  ‘Thanks awfully, old boy.’

  ‘Not at all, not at all. Having arrived there you will engage a room and make it your headquarters.’

  ‘Hiking every day?’

  ‘But never going far from the Rest House. You might be an artist. However,’ he continued hurriedly, ‘once again I leave that to you. I will arrange for some youngster of ours to be there too. He will make himself known to you by asking you for a match. If and when our birds turn up you will let him know by asking him for one. And he will pass that on to me. After that events must shape themselves. But I want to catch ’em, Captain Drummond—with the stuff.’

  ‘So do I, McIver. And we will.’

  * * * *

  The Rest House at Aldmersham was certainly crowded when Drummond and Algy Longworth arrived at six o’clock that evening. Quite rightly contending that the cause of the whole affair was Mrs. van Ranton’s party, his attendance at which was directly due to Algy, Drummond had insisted on that young gentleman accompanying him.

  ‘Variety, you scourge, is the salt of life,’ he had remarked. ‘After the caviar of Bridgewater Square, we go to the ham and eggs of great open spaces in Suffolk. So put on your shorts, if you own any, and we will join the great army of hikers. It’s all right,’ he added consolingly. ‘We do all but the last mile by train.’

  They found an empty table in a corner of the verandah, and proceeded to take stock of their surroundings. And it would have been hard to imagine a setting less likely to harbor crime. Young men and maidens clad in varying degrees of shorts were taking nourishment. Strange noises from an open window proclaimed that the Hosh-Bosh sextette had jumped a claim on Regional. And in one corner two very dreadful women in plus fours were eating boiled eggs. Just a little bit of unspoiled England...

  ‘Beer,’ said Algy faintly. ‘Beer at all costs. It isn’t,’ he went on plaintively, ‘that I dislike legs. Far from it. But a permanent diet of this would send any man into a monastery screaming for mercy. There should be a law passed on the matter. The wearing of shorts and other dangerous practices related thereto. No woman having a knee of greater circumference than a yard is ever to be permitted to show it in public: penalty imprisonment. If said knee is scalded red in the sun the penalty to be amputation.’

  A waiter brought them their beer, and at the same moment a pleasant-looking youth rose from a neighbouring table and came over.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said to Drummond. ‘I wonder if I could trouble you for a match. Thank you. You’ll hold him if he comes, won’t you, sir. Until the inspector has seen him.’

  ‘Our ally, Algy,’ remarked Drummond as the youth sat down again. ‘And there, I take it, is the proprietor.’

  A stout and smiling man was standing in the doorway leading into the house, regarding the scene complacently. Aesthetic quibbles on legs concerned him not. His mental range began and ended with the capacity of the human stomach for food. And on that standard all was well.

  He caught Drummond’s eye and came over to the table. A room? Certainly. He could manage that for them with ease. And if they had a car there was a garage attached to the house, with a competent man in charge. Just been opened.

  He strolled away and Drummond lit a cigarette.

  ‘Lower your beer, Algy,’ he said, ‘and we’ll do our little tour of inspection. On the face of it,’ he continued as they threaded their way through the tables, ‘mine host has no appearance of a criminal. One cannot quite visualize him as the centre of a dope gang.’

  ‘They probably use the place unknown to him,’ answered Algy. ‘One can hardly think of an atmosphere that would afford a better blind.’

  They rounded a corner. In front of them stood the garage. It was, as the landlord had said, evidently a new addition, and they walked over to the entrance. Three baby cars were in the yard, and a small empty van with the back axle jacked up and minus its rear wheels. And they were just turning away again when a man emerged from a workshop at the back carrying a spare wheel. He stared at them for a moment; then he stood the wheel up against the running board of the van and came towards them.

  ‘Looking for anything, gents?’ he remarked.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Drummond affably. ‘This is new since my friend and I were last here.’

  ‘Opened last May,’ answered the man, shading his eyes with his hand and staring up the road.

  ‘Pretty busy?’ continued Drummond.

  ‘So-so,’ said the man. ‘Varies, you know; it varies. Good evening.’

  With a nod he turned away and went back to his workshop, to come out again shortly with another spare wheel which he placed by the first. Then, apparently conscious of arduous work well done, he sat down on the running-board of the van and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Nothing doing here,’ said Drummond swinging on his heels. ‘Let’s go and sample the bar.’

  ‘Anything you like,’ said Algy cheerfully, ‘so long as I don’t see those female plus fours again.’

  ‘You’ll see something a damned sight more interesting,’ said Drummond curtly. ‘Here’s our man.’

  A big Bentley had drawn up by the pe
trol pump, and the garage attendant had appeared hurriedly.

  ‘That big fellow driving,’ continued Drummond, ‘know him a mile off. MFF236. So far, so good. Let’s get hold of McIver’s warrior.’

  The young plain-clothes man was still at the same table, and he glanced up as Drummond approached.

  ‘Just getting out of that Bentley,’ said Drummond quietly. ‘The tall, dark man.’

  He strolled on towards the bar, followed by Algy. McIver’s man promptly vanished, and the driver of the Bentley, with passenger, was evidently bound barwards also.

  ‘So we’ve got to keep him for a while, Algy, until McIver has given him the once over. Now, as I get it, if there’s anything in this place at all, he’ll either be picking the stuff up here or dropping it. Otherwise there’s no meaning to the performance, since no one would come here for fun.’

  ‘Which means that there’s a confederate in the house,’ said Algy.

  ‘Probably. Steady the Buffs! Here he comes.’

  The first thing that became apparent was that the visitor had been there before. He called the barman ‘George,’ and was greeted as Mr. Margiter in reply. And having given Drummond and Algy one brief uncompromising stare, in which no shadow of recognition lurked, Mr. Margiter ordered two double whiskies.

  ‘Trade good?’ he asked in a harsh domineering voice which was obviously natural.

  ‘Very, sir,’ answered George. ‘Nothing to complain of.’

  ‘Then you’re luckier than most of us,’ said Margiter with a laugh, which turned into a snarl of anger as Drummond bumped accidentally against his arm and spilled his drink. ‘Confound you, sir! Don’t be so infernally clumsy.’

  Drummond turned round very slowly.

  ‘Are you speaking to me, my good man?’ he said in a drawl so offensive that it would have provoked sudden death at a pacifist meeting.

  Mr. Margiter put the remains of his drink on the counter, and his face turned a full red.

  ‘Did you call me “my good man”?’ he remarked softly.

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen!’ George was dancing up and down in his agitation, but he might have been a fly on the wall for all the notice anyone paid him. His companion was plucking at Margiter’s coat. Algy, wise to the ways of Drummond, suppressed a happy grin. And at the same time felt the tingle in his veins which is borne of murder in the air.

  ‘I did,’ said Drummond casually. ‘But now that I’ve seen you more closely, I withdraw the phrase in its literal sense.’

  The veins stood out on Margiter’s forehead. A vicious back-hander nearly knocked over his friend, who was muttering feverishly in his ear. Margiter was dead to caution. So dead that there was nothing real in his universe save a yokel in grey flannel trousers and an old tweed coat, who had deliberately gone out of his way to insult him. He failed to notice the watchful glint that had come into the yokel’s eyes; and when a vicious left-hander missed its objective by a foot he failed to read the writing on the wall.

  He swung a right haymaker, and then something that felt like a pile driver hit him straight in the mouth, so that he staggered back, spitting blood, into the arms of his friend just as the door opened and a stern official voice rang out.

  ‘Now then—what’s all this?’

  * * * *

  Inspector McIver was standing there, giving Drummond a glance without a trace of recognition.

  ‘Can’t have brawling here, gentlemen. Stop it you, sir,’ he roared, as Margiter showed further signs of wanting to go on, ‘or I’ll take you in charge. I’m an Inspector of Police.’

  With a gigantic effort Margiter pulled himself together.

  ‘Yes,’ continued McIver, staring at him thoughtfully. ‘And I’m just wondering where I’ve seen you before,’

  ‘Professionally?’ cried Drummond happily. ‘Has he murdered his wife?’

  And through half-closed eyes, he saw that the second man had turned very white.

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ said Margiter, now completely in control of himself. ‘Why should you have seen me before?’

  He lit a cigarette with a perfectly steady hand, and Drummond wondered. Was McIver bluffing, or did he really recognize the man? In either case, what was the idea? If he wanted to catch them actually with the stuff, why warn them to start with?

  ‘Why should you have seen me before?’ repeated Margiter with rising warmth. ‘Put as you put it, it seems to me a damned libelous remark.’

  ‘In fact, I’d like to question both you gentlemen,’ continued McIver unperturbed, and his gaze shifted to Drummond.

  ‘I trust you haven’t seen me before,’ said Drummond in alarm.

  ‘Maybe not. But if my suspicions are correct we shan’t be strangers in the future. What were you two men fighting about?’

  ‘I accidentally upset his drink, Inspector,’ remarked Drummond, and McIver snorted.

  ‘Don’t play the fool with me, sir,’ he said sternly. ‘It won’t pay you. Now where’s the stuff?’

  ‘The stuff?’ echoed Drummond blankly.

  ‘The dope. You’re running a load of it between you, and that’s what you were fighting about. Moreover, I’m going to find it.’

  ‘I think, Inspector,’ said Margiter solicitously, ‘that the Suffolk sun must have gone to your head. My friend and I arrived here ten minutes ago: our car is outside. If you wish to, you are at perfect liberty to search us and the car.’

  Drummond still failed to get McIver’s idea: did he really imagine the stuff was in the car? Or on Margiter? And the humorous point was that Margiter was now treating him as an ally. ‘Well, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Are you ready?’

  Margiter began to turn out his pockets, until McIver stopped him.

  ‘We’ll have a look at your car,’ he said curtly. ‘You stay where you are, sir.’ He turned to Drummond, who bowed.

  ‘Your slightest wish is law, Inspector,’ he remarked amiably. ‘I’ll have a look for the hiding-place in here.’

  He watched the three men troop out; then he crossed to the window which opened on to the garage. And having got there he paused, an unlighted cigarette half-way to his mouth.

  ‘Come here, Algy,’ he said curtly. ‘Another van has arrived.’

  ‘What of it?’ remarked Algy as he joined Drummond.

  It was true: another van, identical with the one that had been in the yard, was now there. And the back wheels were being changed. It was one of those vans that had double wheels on the rear axle, and against the running-boards they could see three wheels propped up on each side.

  ‘Most interesting,’ said Drummond thoughtfully. ‘Our friend in charge of the garage must be a prophet. How,’ he continued even more thoughtfully as Algy stared at him, ‘did he guess that the two spare wheels he brought out while we were watching him would be required? You note that they no longer adorn the side of the original van, and they are just being put on van number two. Let us see what happens to the two wheels that have just come off van number two.’

  For a few minutes they watched in silence, and Drummond’s frown grew more pronounced.

  ‘Is this a new game?’ he said, as the van, the change completed, drove away, leaving its own two wheels behind. ‘Is it conceivable?’ he went on half to himself, ‘that. . . Come on,’ he cried suddenly. ‘It’s sheer guess work, but it’s worth following up. We will jape with them, Algy, and see if we strike a bull.’

  He strode over to a table and picked up a large bowl of castor sugar. Then he left the bar, followed by a completely bewildered Algy Longworth, and walked towards the Bentley.

  ‘Are you satisfied now, Inspector,’ Margiter was saying with a sneer. ‘Or would you like me to have the engine taken down?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ cried Drummond. ‘I know where the dope is.’

  For the fraction of a second Margiter’s face grew strained. Then as Drummond produced the sugar-bowl from behind his back he laughed heartily.

  ‘In the bar, Chief Constable,’ continued Drummond. �
�Right under our noses. Snow, my dear fellah: cocaine by the pound. Have some.’

  He offered the bowl to McIver, and Margiter laughed even more heartily.

  ‘Do you good, Inspector,’ he said jovially. ‘And now, if you don’t mind, I’ll be getting along. How much was that petrol?’ he called out, and the garage man approached.

  ‘Twelve and eight, sir. I suppose you aren’t by any chance going past Durnover’s garage just this side of Ipswich?’

  ‘I am. Why?’

  ‘I was wondering, sir, if you would mind dropping these two spare wheels there. They were lent to a van, and...’

  ‘Put ’em in the back,’ said Margiter, getting into the driving seat. ‘And another time, Inspector, I think it would be better if you didn’t jump to such farcical conclusions.’

  ‘Quite,’ remarked Drummond, emerging from behind the car. ‘Quite. In fact, McIver, it was most reprehensible of you,’ he continued as the car drove off. ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘Search this place for the stuff.’

  ‘I’ll bet you a well-earned pint it’s not here,’ said Drummond with a grin. ‘And I’ll bet you another that I know where it is.’

  ‘Where?’ snapped McIver.

  In the car. Summon the Baby Austin, old sleuth hound, and we will chase the Bentley.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Captain Drummond,’ said McIver. ‘How can we possibly overtake it?’

  ‘Yet a third pint is now on,’ grinned Drummond. ‘I’ll bet you we find the Bentley stationary by the road within three miles.’

  ‘Whereabouts in the car is it?’ said McIver as their driver drew up beside them.

  ‘Those two spares,’ answered Drummond. They boarded the car and started in pursuit.

  ‘Not a place one would think of looking when they were actually on the van wheels. The inside one of each pair: always changed at the Rest House. And I’ll bet that Durnover’s garage would be a bit surprised if they were handed in... What did I tell you, McIver?’ He was pointing ahead. ‘The third pint is OK. There’s the Bentley.’