by Bruce, Leo
Beef looked almost human. “I’ve come all the way to Ostend,” he said, “after a silly young fool who’s nearly ruined his life, and may yet be able to put it right if he does what I tell him. How much of that five hundred pounds have you got left?” he asked Wilson.
A broad grin spread over the chauffeur’s face. “About seven hundred and twenty,” he said.
I thought the Sergeant was working to suppress a smile, but he spoke severely. “Well, I’ll tell you what. You come straight back with me and see Mr. Peter Ferrers. If you hand him back the money at once, I don’t think he’ll say anything more about it. But if you don’t, it’ll be my duty to have you extricated.”
“Extradited,” I whispered. Beef scorned to correct himself.
Wilson grinned. “Well, I suppose that’s decent of you,” he said, “but you might have given me a few days longer here and let me turn it into a thousand.”
“Or lose it all,” said Beef. “I know you young chaps. What about the years I spent in the Force with nothing happening but a few chickens stolen and a drunk to run in for the night? Do you think I never wanted to hop off and see things? Everyone has that feeling whatever job they’re in. But you can’t go doing it. Not on stolen money, anyway.”
“Who else knows about this?” asked Ed Wilson. “Do the police?”
Beefs chest swelled. “No one knows about it—only me,” he said. “It took old Beef, what Inspector Stute doesn’t think much of, to realize that there were two lots of five hundred pounds. One of them had been drawn when Benson was away on his holidays, and never paid over at all.”
“But what was all this paying of money to Benson by Stewart Ferrers?” I asked impatiently.
“That’s one of the things we’ve got to find out. In the meantime I noticed that the five hundred pounds was locked away in a drawer in Stewart Ferrers’s bedroom, whereas the confession of suicide, which would have been equally incriminating, was still in his pocket. How was that? Well, I’ll tell you. Because the five hunded pounds that was in his drawer wasn’t the same that he’d paid to Benson that night at all, that’s why.”
“But how did you know?” I asked.
“I didn’t know,” said Beef, “but I knew this young fellow had something up his sleeve. I’m used to dealing with your type, you know,” he said to Wilson. “I’ve had young constables under me just like you. And I could tell there was something you was hiding. Then when you disappeared, I guessed you’d found that wad of notes on Benson in the morning, and slipped them in your pocket.”
“How did you trace me here?” asked Wilson with some interest.
“That’s part of my method of investigation which I don’t intend to reveal,” was Beefs grand reply. “And now I should like to know if you’re going to be sensible and come back with me?”
Wilson and Rose exchanged glances. I felt there was more than ordinary understanding between these two people, and was inclined to envy them the future.
“Yes,” said Wilson, after a moment’s hesitation, “I’ll come. You think you can put it right with Peter Ferrers, do you?”
“I can’t promise you that,” said Beef, “but I don’t think there’s much doubt.”
Ed Wilson seemed relieved, but he made no comment beyond a curt promise to be on the night boat.
“Better hand us over the money before you go,” said Beef.
“The five hundred, you mean?” asked Wilson anxiously.
“What you’ve been doing here is no business of mine,” was Beefs ponderous reply. “I’ll return this money to its owner, and you must hope for the best.”
Wilson invited us to his hotel, where, he said, he would give us the packet, and the four of us marched into the Super Splendide, a vast building not far from the Casino.
“Doing yourself all right, wasn’t you?” said Beef. “Mr. Townsend and I were staying at the Liverpool.”
Wilson grinned. “Why not?” he said. “It was only for once in a lifetime, and it was worth it. I know now what its like to live on a decent scale.”
Beef shook his head. “You’ve got to get back to your job,” he said severely, “and put all this nonsense out of your head. It’ll get you into worse trouble than this if you’re not careful. I’ve seen young chaps ruined by no more than a taste for big cigars.” He turned to Rose. “Can’t you put some sense into his head?” he said. “You’ll have him a criminal before you know where you are, with all this talk about riches and luxury.”
Rose spoke for the first time. “I don’t think I should mind,” she said in a quiet and blasé voice, “as long as he didn’t get caught, or anything sordid like that.”
Beef made an impatient sound with his lips. “If I thought you meant that,” he said, “I wouldn’t half have something to say to the pair of you. But I believe this’ll be a lesson. Now go and get those notes, and let’s get off.”
Wilson made an application at the manager’s office and returned with a packet similar to the one we had examined at the Cypresses. “It’s all there,” he said. “When I won last night I returned the full amount. I was going to send it back in any case.”
Beefs final comment to me when we were alone on the deck of the steamer going home with Ed and Rose Wilson below was characteristic.
“This roulette must be all right,” he said. “Two hundred and twenty pounds in two days. I wish we’d had the time to try it.”
Chapter XVIII
OUR return to London was a cue for a sudden burst of activity on Beef’s part. He told me that we should really have to get down to this, that there had been too much playing around, and that he meant business if no one else did. As Stewart Ferrers would come up for trial in about a fortnight, this resolution seemed reasonable enough, and I asked him if there was anything I could do. I was surprised to hear him say that there was.
“I want you to take Peter Ferrers and Sheila Benson out to dinner tonight. Somewhere classy,” he added.
“What about the expense?”
“That’s all right,” said Beef, “I’ve got money for expenses.”
“Are you suggesting that I should give Peter Ferrers dinner with his own money?” I asked.
“It’s not his own money yet,” said Beef, “and it won’t never be if I can clear Stewart as I expect. You ring him up and ask him, and ask her too. Tell them you’ve got something to explain about Wilson.
I nodded and went to the telephone. Rather to my surprise, they both accepted—Peter quietly, Sheila with verbal enthusiasm. Beef then gave me my instructions. It was his wish, apparently, to “have a look round” Peter’s flat while he wasn’t there, and in this design I was expected to assist him. The scheme he evolved for his own entry was ingenious, and really seemed to argue that he was not such a blunderer after all. I was to call for Peter that evening, and tell him that Beef and I had noticed a man in a jeweller’s shop not far from his flat whom we suspected of being the mysterious Orpen or Oppenstein. I was to say that Beef urgently wanted the point cleared up, and persuade him, Peter, to go round the corner and, on the pretence of examining something in the window, see if the man really was their visitor of some years ago. While he was out of the building I was to admit Beef into the flat and conceal him somewhere until Peter and I had left. Then, while we were dining, Beef would have all the opportunity he needed for making the search.
“Do you suspect Peter Ferrers, then?” I asked.
“Never mind who I suspect. If you do as I ask you, we’ll very soon get to the bottom of this.”
Duly, at seven-fifteen, I rang the electric bell at the door of Peter’s flat in that large block which he had mentioned to us as his address. He opened the door himself, and seemed quite genial and pleased to see me, perhaps a little relieved that Beef, on this occasion, was not expected to make an appearance. He gave me a drink, and I set about explaining the story of Ed Wilson. He seemed, as usual, more concerned for his brother’s sake than for anything else.
“It really does look as though Stewa
rt was being blackmailed,” he said. “I can’t understand that. However, I’ve arranged for us all to see him on Thursday, and perhaps that will clear the matter up a bit.”
“But about Wilson,” I began, for I had taken an interest in the young man and his wife.
“So far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing to be said. He’s returned the money. By his own account he stole it from Benson, and if, as I feel confident, Stewart can clear up this suggestion of blackmail and say why he was paying the doctor that sum, it’s really for Sheila to say what should be done. But I’ve no doubt that she will think as I do. Very reprehensible of course, but one can understand it. The silly boy had these ideas about seeing the world, and five hundred pounds in small notes belonging to a dead man was too much for him. I think it’s rather pathetic that his great adventure should have ended in Ostend, of all places.”
“Well, I think that’s a very decent way of looking at it, but by the way…” and I began to tell him about Orpen. He was frankly incredulous.
“I don’t see how it can be Orpen,” he said, “unless he’s lost a lot of money. He always seemed a most flourishing individual. Not at all the sort of man you’d expect to find in a small jeweller’s shop in the Edgware Road.”
“Well, that’s what Beef thinks, and you know that when he gets these ideas into his head they take a lot of shifting. He must have some reason for supposing that it’s Orpen. At any rate, it will be easy enough for you to settle the matter either one way or the other; it’s only a few hundred yards away, and you could see in a moment if it were he or not.”
Peter nodded. “I suppose I shall have to,” he said, “but I get a little tired of humouring your old sergeant. Actually I think I’ve a higher opinion of him as a detective than you have. It may seem odd, but I have the greatest confidence that he will get to the truth about this case. And the truth certainly isn’t that my brother’s a murderer. But that doesn’t make it any easier to put up with what seem the stupidities of his method, and now and again I wish that I had someone more frigidly efficient.”
“Still,” I persisted, “you’ll go round, won’t you?”
“Yes, I’ll go round,” said Peter. “I’ll go round straight away. Pour yourself out another drink; I shan’t be long.”
I waited four minutes after I heard the doors of the lift clang to, then the long whine as it took Peter down to the ground floor, before I ventured out into the passage. But when I did so there was no sign of Beef. From one of the flats along the corridor came a sudden burst of music as a young woman came out pulling on her gloves. Then she closed the door after her and the music ceased. Her high heels tapped icily on the stone as she walked away from me towards the lift at the far end of the passage, and the word or two she said to the cleaner in a baize apron who was gently moving a mop over the polished surface of the floor floated back to me in unrecognizable form. This man’s bent and distant figure—for the passages of that block seemed interminable—annoyed me, for it meant that the Sergeant’s entry would have a witness. I stood there hesitating, and noticed that the man was moving this way, steadily cleaning as he went. His back was towards me, and it wasn’t until he was right outside the door that he said “’Ush” in a sepulchral voice, and I knew that it was Beef.
“Ridiculous,” I told him when we were safely inside Peter’s flat. “You risked the whole thing with that nonsense. If you’d come up here normally dressed…”
“I did,” he said. “I only put this on when I got up to the landing.”
“Supposing one of the porters had seen you. What do you think he’d have thought? Whereas if you’d been in your ordinary clothes there would have been nothing to it.”
“I had my reasons,” said Beef. “Now, where shall I hide?”
It was useless, I reflected, to search one of these modern flats for a cupboard large enough for a man to stand in. The safest place was obviously the kitchen, and this wasn’t hard to find. Beef stepped in and sat down while I returned to do as Peter had invited me, and take another drink. It seemed a long time before I heard his latch-key in the door, but when he entered he showed no sign of excitement or dismay.
“Nothing like him,” he commented tersely. “I can’t think what gave Beef the idea. Orpen was a big man.” He glanced at his watch. “Hadn’t we better move along,” he said, “if we’re to meet Sheila at seven-forty-five?”
I agreed very heartily, and was relieved when the two of us had entered the lift, leaving Beef in possession of the flat.
I had chosen the Cul-de-Sac for dinner, though I don’t know whether this would have been what Beef had described as “classy.” Certainly the cooking is as good there as anywhere in London. But its traditionally dingy walls and tarnished candelabra, the red plush seats preserved from before the war, and its air of having been patronized by Edward VII, might not have seemed to Beef to make it the kind of place that he associated with “society.”
Sheila Benson really looked rather fine in a deep green dress which suited her dark eyes and hair. When she and Peter greeted one another it was, I felt, as very close and understanding friends. There was no gush or demonstration, but real pleasure and happiness in seeing one another again.
“This is charming of you, Mr. Townsend,” she said, “and I hope we’re not going to talk about finger-prints and things all the evening.”
I wanted to discourage any of the levity which had characterized our last conversation, and said, “I’m afraid while Stewart Ferrers is still under arrest we are bound to find ourselves still concerned with this case.”
“Naturally,” she said, “only don’t let’s be morbid. Have you, or your old Beef, discovered anything concrete yet?”
I evaded this awkward point by suggesting a drink, and we sat in the little foyer of the restaurant waiting for a table and enjoyed Tio Pepe. For the moment at any rate the details of the case seemed to have been pushed out of the door. There was a warmth and comfort in our casual conversation, as in the smell of cooked food and the subdued sounds of cutlery and careful movement in the other room.
As I watched the two of them I was suddenly struck at the strangeness of the fact that neither of them could be thought to be deeply concerned with the horrible facts which overhung them. To see Peter sipping his sherry and smiling at Sheila, one could never have believed that his brother was to be tried for murder in a fortnight. And to watch Sheila, who made no pretence at all of wearing mourning, was equally incomprehensible. I wondered whether Beefs theory, if he had a theory, took this into account.
We moved into the restaurant and ordered our meal. Once again I noticed how wholeheartedly these two studied the menu, how amiably they discussed with me the matter of wine, how much like a dinner with any engaged couple this seemed. The conversation turned to Wilson, and I repeated to Sheila the story which I had already told Peter Ferrers. She laughed outright.
“Ridiculous boy,” she said. “I always rather liked him though. Didn’t you, dear?” she added to Peter.
Peter nodded. “Seemed a decent sort of a chap. However, he’s returned the money, so there’s no great harm done. Beef needs him as a witness, you say?”
I pointed out that one piece of evidence had been supplied by Wilson alone.
“Does Beef depend on that?” asked Peter.
“He never tells me what he’s working out until the last.”
“But you think he’s getting somewhere?”
“I’ve been driven to the conclusion,” I said, “that Beef always gets somewhere in the end. The more I see of that man, the more I’m convinced that what appears to be simplicity is buffoonery as often as not. I sometimes wonder if he doesn’t put it on. Some buffoons are extremely acute, you know. Like Touchstone.”
“I daresay,” said Peter, and became occupied with his food.
As the evening went on, the apparent indifference of these people began to trouble me. I felt oppressed with an odd sense of responsibility. If Stewart were innocent there seemed to be n
othing in the world except the ability of Beef which could save him. And who was I to judge how far that went? I had to admit that I never knew with Beef how much his success had been luck and how much a natural gift. And if an innocent man’s life hung on it, it was a distressing position for me. Perhaps I showed this preoccupation, and perhaps Peter recognized the cause of it, for when we parted that evening he left me with a remark that seemed to me, in retrospect, quite extraordinary. With calm cheerfulness he patted my shoulder.
“Look here, Townsend,” he said, “I shouldn’t worry yourself unduly. I’ve a strong feeling that everything’s going to be all right. What’s more, Wakefield agrees with me.” And with Sheila on his arm he turned away.
I walked back to my rooms pondering that. Had he some secret piece of evidence that would clear his brother, or what did he mean? And why that sudden reference to Wakefield, whose name had not occurred in the conversation during the whole evening?
Chapter XIX
THIS time I was really anxious to hear from Beef what was the result of his search in Peter’s flat. It was just the kind of job in which he excelled. Without haste or flurry he would have gone through every nook and cranny in those rooms and, if there was any kind of evidence there, he would have found it. So that it was in good time the following morning that I went round to his small house and found him reading the newspaper.
“Lots of news,” he remarked sagaciously.
“Have you?” I said.
“I meant here,” he returned, tapping the Daily Mail. “Hitler’s off again about something. And they’ve bumped another dozen of them off in Russia.”
“I’m more interested,” I said, waving aside the fate of Russian reactionaries and German Jews, “in what you discovered last night in Peter’s rooms.”
“Oh, ah, that,” said Beef. “Well, I’ve got a little surprise for you there. After you’d gone I set to work. There was nothing solid, as you might say, around the room that told me anything. Artistic, mind you. Books and that. I daresay my wife’s cousin who’s in the antique trade could have learned a thing or two, but I didn’t. Then I started on his papers.”