Doctor Bennett’s appearance at the door interrupted him. He was looking harassed and displeased. His glance at the two plain-clothes men was by no means friendly.
“You’re turning the place into a police-station!” he remarked bitterly. “There’s a ’phone call for you, Inspector,” adding hopefully: “Will you and your friends be leaving soon?”
“The ’phone call can wait,” Hood snapped. “We’re on our way. Sorry to have been such a nuisance to you——”
The other shrugged then, as Hood brushed past, he said:
“Perhaps I should mention it’s an urgent call from Wapping police-station. It’s been passed on here by Scotland Yard.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven – Hood’s Suspect
“Wapping police-station,” Hood muttered, stopping in his tracks. “What now?”
Followed by Doctor Morelle, he hurried across the hall to another room.
“Inspector Hood speaking.”
He listened intently for some moments, giving one or two grunts. The Doctor stood by impassively, apparently interested in the books which lined the walls. He gave a nod of appreciation as he noted one of his own works, Study of Deep Analysis in Drug Addiction,* [* Published by Manning and Hopper, London. (Also published by Karter, New York, and translated into French, Russian and Spanish.)] in a conspicuous position. He turned inquiringly as the Inspector gave a stifled groan.
“I’ve no time to waste on them now,” Hood grumbled into the ’phone. “Miss Frayle and Miss Carfax can cool their heels with you a bit longer. Hold ’em until you hear from me.”
He hung up and swung round on Doctor Morelle. Even the Doctor’s customarily impassive features wore a look of some surprise.
“More trouble!” Hood exploded. “Your Miss Frayle and Miss Carfax went off on a private wild-goose chase of their very own to Wapping. They’ve been picked up there by the police—Miss Frayle in a dead faint and the other one screaming her head off. Evidently they’d got a date with some small-time crook. Seems he was shot dead while they were talking to him.” He blew out his cheeks. “Another murder!”
Doctor Morelle’s austere countenance was a study of keen displeasure.
“Wapping,” he murmured. Then: “Was any indication offered as to their reason for meeting this man?”
“Far as I can make out, they thought they were doing a smart bit of following-up on the Zusky business.”
“Yes, indeed.” The Doctor nodded thoughtfully. “It would be possible . . .”
“However, we’ve got no time to waste on them.” Hood was moving towards the door. “I don’t know if you’re coming, too, but I’m off to Haywards Heath. . . .”
“Just a moment,” Doctor Morelle’s eyes were narrowed speculatively. “This is no time for hasty action——–”
“But you said just now we’ve no time to waste getting down to Stormhaven Towers!”
“This incident at Wapping tends to suggest another train of thought,” the Doctor replied equably. “We might be better advised to proceed to Wapping first, and hear what these two ridiculous females have to say.”
The other hesitated a moment.
He was extremely eager to follow up the trail of Baron Xavier and Cleo Latimer with the fullest speed. On the other hand, he was more than reluctant to dispense with the Doctor’s invaluable help. It occurred to him this case, involving as it did highly-placed and important people, might become somewhat complex. He was anxious to make no mistakes, and all during the investigation he had been conscious of a sneaking suspicion Doctor Morelle was not altogether seeing eye to eye with him. Above all things, he had a vast respect for the Doctor’s judgment.
Inspector Hood glanced worriedly at his watch.
“Well,” he muttered uneasily, “it shouldn’t take us more than half an hour to pick them up, anyway. Perhaps you’re right, Doctor. We’d better do as you say.”
“I happen to know I am right.”
And with that bland pronouncement, Doctor Morelle led the way out to the police-car.
Hood told the driver:
“Get to Wapping police-station quick as you can make it!” To the plain-clothes men: “You’d better stick with us.”
As the car raced off, Hood slumped moodily back in his seat, shot a dark look at Doctor Morelle. The Doctor was reclining comfortably, his hands crossed over the handle of his sword-stick, looking for all the world as if he were merely paying some social call.
The Inspector shrugged helplessly to himself. “Only hope you’re right about all this, Doctor. Because if Baron X. and Mrs. L. slip through my fingers, I’m not going to hear the end of it for a long time.”
“We are pursuing the wiser course,” Doctor Morelle reassured him. “That conclusion I arrived at by a process of simple reasoning. I gave Miss Frayle instructions she was to remain in the Carfax girl’s company at all times until the latter visited the nursing-home. It is clear at some time since we last saw her, the young woman received a message prompting her to arrange a meeting with this man whom, you say, is a petty criminal.”
The other nodded.
“Name of Lugg. Well-known to the police, he is. Shifty character, but too easily scared for any big stuff.”
“Such an individual might well obtain possession of certain information. Information which, because of his acquaintance with the police, he would not be prepared to vouchsafe them. But which, nevertheless, he would seek to sell to the highest bidder.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“It remains the only possible explanation for Miss Frayle and her companion being found where they were tonight,” Doctor Morelle retorted. “This person, Lugg, was shot dead presumably while in the act of imparting his information. From which may be drawn the conclusion that his murderer had reason to suspect him of possessing this information and—ah—eliminated him to ensure his silence. This crime is, I feel convinced, inexorably connected with the two earlier murders and its solution will point to the elucidation of the other homicides.”
Hood sighed heavily and started to chew his pipe-stem like a dog gnawing a bone.
“I hope you’re right,” he muttered again.
Doctor Morelle sniffed delicately and, in a gentle but ironic voice, replied:
“I always am, my dear Inspector.”
A small knot of morbid sightseers still hung outside the police-station, for the excitement of the shooting at Wapping Old Stairs had not yet died down. Inspector Hood and the Doctor brushed past them. Poor Miss Frayle, sitting on an extremely hard bench, Sherry Carfax beside her, felt her heart sink even lower as she saw the forbidding expression on Doctor Morelle’s face as he advanced towards them.
Miss Frayle did not exactly cower as he approached. She merely wore the wan and abject look of a rabbit held in fascinated thrall by the hypnotic stare of some deadly snake. She did not rise from the hard bench, although she had been longing to for some time past, for it was excessively uncomfortable. She simply sat, hands clasped in her lap and, with a rising feeling of hysteria, waited.
“My dear Miss Frayle!” There was an inevitable razor’s edge to his voice. “It would appear that, not satisfied with your role of my amanuensis, you have to take upon yourself that of a detective. I should have imagined you had sufficient work on your hands——”
Suddenly, as if released by a spring, she shot to her feet. Her eyes gleamed wildly behind her horn-rimmed spectacles, her mouth was half-open.
“I can’t bear it!” she cried desperately. “I can’t bear any more! If you’re going to be angry with me, I shall burst into tears! I shall scream the place down! You’re made of ice, or iron—anyway something that isn’t flesh and blood! You don’t seem to realize what I’ve been through. Since last night—three dead men practically one after the other! Zusky—I found him! Gresham, this afternoon—I found him. This evening, this other horrible little man——!”
“Miss Frayle!”
His voice was like a whiplash. Immediately, Miss Frayle collapsed on
to the bench again, Sherry Carfax taking her hand sympathetically. Hood looked on quizzically, the desk-sergeant mopped his forehead with an enormous handkerchief, and a constable in the background blew out his lips and rolled his eyes to the ceiling.
There was a quivering, indrawn breath from Miss Frayle, no more than a small sigh. Then Doctor Morelie observed quietly: “I was merely about to congratulate you upon your devotion to my instructions in not leaving Miss Carfax. Perhaps,” he conceded stiffly, “I made my approach too clumsily. I am, however, fully aware of the tension your nervous system has been subjected to during the past twenty-four hours.”
“Oh, Doctor! I didn’t think you realized——” She broke off, face wreathed in smiles. “I—I feel so much better now.”
Indeed, the colour was returning to her cheeks, the wild expression vanishing from her eye. Except for a certain wanness, she was becoming, quite magically, her old self again.
“And now, perhaps, you will give the Inspector and myself a brief account of the circumstances that brought you both to this locality, and exactly what transpired subsequently.”
“Statement, Sergeant?” Hood asked the officer at the desk.
The Sergeant pinched his nose.
“Well, both ladies was a bit—ah—high-strung, sir,” he said. “Hysterical, you might say. So I thought I’d wait till you come along.”
“Just as well we did!” Hood grunted.
“Oh,” the desk-sergeant replied, “Miss Frayle seemed certain Doctor Morelle was bound to turn up.”
Hood could picture Miss Frayle’s serene confidence that the Doctor would not fail to arrive and extricate her and her companion in distress from their difficulties. Hiding a half grin behind his hand, he snapped: “What steps have you taken?”
“’Phoned Scotland Yard to broadcast to police-cars in the neighbourhood,” the other answered promptly. “Got the river-patrol working—according to Miss Frayle and Miss Carfax the attack was made from the steps themselves, which could only have been approached from the river.”
“Witnesses?”
“Only Miss Frayle and Miss Carfax witnessed the actual shooting. No one else. Couple of chaps were in the pub down the road, they heard the shot and then Miss Carfax yelling her head off.”
“Where’s the body?”
The Sergeant graphically jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“Identify him?”
“Lugg, his name is. Small-time sneak-thief. Lives down this part, but works the West End. Been out on ticket of leave six weeks.”
“Any associates?”
The desk-sergeant shook his head.
“He worked alone.”
Inspector Hood grunted, swung round to the Doctor who, during the Inspector’s conversation with the sergeant, had been ‘elucidating the salient facts’ from Miss Frayle and Sherry. Hood pricked up his ears as he heard Miss Frayle graphically describing Lugg’s sudden demise.
“He slumped to the ground,” Miss Frayle was quite unconscious of her melodramatic attitude as she clutched her heart in imitation of the little crook’s last spasm, “after he’d said: ‘He did it!’—meaning, of course, the man who’d shot him. I dropped to my knees beside him. I caught his last words clearly. ‘Baron’, he said, ‘The Baron. . . .’”
Her voice faltered. “I—I couldn’t think what he meant at the time,” she went on. “I was confused and upset. But now——”
“The Baron, eh!” Hood echoed. “The Baron! Doctor, that just about clinches it. The poor devil’s helped us with his last breath!”
The telephone rang sharply.
“It’s the river-patrol, sir. They’ve found an empty skiff floating on the Rotherhithe side. Bringing it over for inspection.”
Hood nodded his satisfaction, and turned back to Miss Frayle and Sherry. “Now then, Miss Frayle. After he’d fired, you must have caught a glimpse of the murderer. I don’t mean his face necessarily. But you got a general impression of him?”
“I—I did—get a fleeting glance,” Miss Frayle agreed slowly.
“Tall, short, thin, fat . . .?”
“Tall.”
“He wore a raincoat,” Sherry Carfax put in. “And a soft hat pulled low over his eyes.”
“Either of you recognize his voice?”
Sherry frowned.
“I can only say—it—seemed familiar,” she said at length.
Miss Frayle nodded vigorously. “It did—it did sound familiar to me. I can’t quite place it——”
“Probably disguised.”
“Yes,” Miss Frayle agreed, “it may have been.”
Hood rubbed his hands.
“Doctor Morelle,” he exclaimed breezily, “I’m off! Don’t know if you want to come along, but I’m off to Haywards Heath, and if I don’t pick up a certain titled gentleman there, I’ll take that empty skiff and row out to sea in it!”
Doctor Morelle turned to Miss Frayle.
“Do you think, my dear Miss Frayle, your nerves will stand the strain sufficiently to witness the termination of this particular case?”
Miss Frayle glanced at him, blushingly pleased at his invitation.
“I think I would like to be in at the finish.”
“Right!” Hood snapped. “Let’s go. Sergeant, arrange for Miss Carfax to be taken home at once.” To Sherry: “Sir Hugh Albany’s doing pretty well, but getting a bit anxious about you. You’d better look in at the nursing-home and leave a message you’re still in the land of the living. Or—if they’ll let you,” he grinned widely, “tell him yourself. In person!”
Chapter Thirty-Eight – Stormhaven Towers
Between Cuckfield and Haywards Heath a narrow road, shadowed in the moonlight on one side by an ancient wall of Horsham stone some ten feet high, led to the gates of Stormhaven Towers. On the other side of the road fields stretched out, rising to a copse. A signpost, old and unpainted for many a year, pointed the way to Stormhaven Towers.
“Take it slowly,” Inspector Hood instructed the driver.
The car slowed, rolled almost noiselessly along the road with only the sidelights gleaming. At the narrowest point of the road, Doctor Morelle said quietly: “I think we should stop here and proceed the remainder of the way on foot. It would be advisable to leave the car in such a position that it cannot be passed by another.”
Hood instructed the car to be pulled up in the centre of the road. The driver cut the engine, and immediately the stillness and night-silence of the countryside rushed in on them.
By now the moon had risen and was beginning to soar in the sky, remote and tranquil, making the scene eerie with cold light and contrasting stark black shadow. A hundred yards down the road the high, ancient gates of Stormhaven Towers traced a delicate black pattern against the moonlight.
For a moment, none of the occupants of the car made a move. It might be the scene, the night-silence, held them in its grip. Then faint sounds crept upon them. Somewhere near by an owl hooted, the breeze tapped one twig against another, and from the distant village a dog barked. The sounds emphasized the cold, moonlit silence.
Inspector Hood cleared his throat.
“Well, what are we waiting for? You,” he spoke to one of the plain-clothes men, “you stay with the driver and keep your eyes skinned, both of you.” He nodded towards the second plain-clothes man. “You’d better come with us.”
Miss Frayle felt her heart beating more quickly as Doctor Morelle helped her out of the car, and she shivered a little.
“I trust you will contrive to keep your nerves under close control, Miss Frayle,” the Doctor murmured. “This is no time for fainting fits.”
She glared at him reproachfully. His countenance seemed longer and more saturnine than ever in the pale light of the moon. Nevertheless, there was something comforting in his presence.
Quietly they followed Hood and the other officer towards the gates. Then suddenly Miss Frayle jumped and clutched at Doctor Morelle’s arm.
From near by came the sharp, u
nmistakable crack of a firearm. It cut the silence and echoed against the copse on the hill and back to the high stone wall. Inspector Hood glanced across the fields, then at the Doctor.
“Poachers?”
“A revolver shot.”
Doctor Morelle led the way, moving quickly, but silently, towards the gates. Miss Frayle fluttered along close behind. Before they reached the gates, another shot rang out.
The Doctor halted abruptly at the stone pillar of the gate. Miss Frayle bumped into him and, though her nose tingled from the sudden, painful contact with his shoulder, she was comforted at its muscular hardness.
“Th—that was a second shot!” she gasped. “Is—is—he firing at us?”
He glared at her. Then to Hood, in a low voice: “The first was a .38, I fancy. The second was a smaller calibre.”
“Sounded much alike to me.”
Doctor Morelle shrugged his shoulders then, with a nod which was at once a signal for silence and to follow him, led the way.
One of the gates stood open. A flagged drive, overgrown and unkempt, led to the house. It was a fine old Queen Anne mansion, shimmering in the bright radiance of the moon. At the foot of the wide, shallow stone steps up to the terrace, the drive divided right and left in a sweeping circle round the house. From each wing of the house gardens stretched on either side.
This, thought Miss Frayle, sentimentally, is one of the stately homes of England.
Hurrying alongside Doctor Morelle, she speculated romantically on whether Sir Hugh and Sherry would live here when they were married. It looked beautiful, but silent and still, and with an ineffable melancholy, forlornness and neglect. Miss Frayle felt, with a tautening of nerves, a certain sinister atmosphere about it, companion of its decay.
Everywhere the feeling of decay lay on the air. Thick moss, black and sprawling in the moonlight, encroached upon the drive. Rank grasses had grown, splitting the ancient stones.
Miss Frayle shivered. The romantic speculation and sentimental dream she had been indulging in suddenly gave place to a cold feeling of oppression. She began to wish she was safe back in Harley Street, with the familiar, heartening sounds of London all around.
Menace for Dr. Morelle Page 21