Trent Intervenes

by E. C. Bentley

  ‘I suppose,’ he added, thoughtfully, ‘that occasion would be the only time a cockatoo was of any particular use.’

  And Trent went out.

  IV

  THE VANISHING LAWYER

  WHAT made the Gayles affair such an especially bad business was the culprit’s standing in his profession and in the eyes of the world. The firm of Gayles & Sims had a position as family solicitors that was second to none, and its head was a very important person indeed.

  So it was that John Charlton Gayles, after the fact of his disappearance became known, was one of the most badly wanted men who had ever attracted the attention of the police. According to the information furnished by his partner, he had always had the sole control of the firm’s accounts and financial business. An enormous amount of property entrusted to his care could not be traced; and neither could Mr Gayles, of whom nothing had been seen or heard since he retired to his bedroom one Tuesday night in May. During the following two days matters had been brought to the notice of Mr Sims which made it clear that there was a great deal requiring explanation from the senior partner; and on the Friday it was decided to give information to the police of his disappearance and of the firm’s predicament.

  Philip Trent, at the opening of his first article as the Record’s special investigator of this unusual case, dwelt upon the rock-ribbed respectability of the missing man.

  ‘It is a safe statement,’ he wrote, ‘that no lawyer has ever enjoyed a more spotless reputation. He has for some years been chairman of the Law Society’s Disciplinary Committee, whose duty is to examine and act upon cases of professional misconduct. In his own life he has always been a model of probity and high principle.

  ‘On Tuesday last Mr Gayles returned by an early train after a long weekend at Preakness, and drove from Victoria to his office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. This, at least, was his own account of how he had spent his time; but it is now established that nothing was seen of him that weekend at the hotel where he always stayed in Preakness. He did a normal day’s work, and a little after six o’clock went home to his house in Castle Terrace, Knightsbridge. At 9:30, as usual, he went to bed; for Mr Gayles believed in very early hours both night and morning.

  ‘He was not called next day, as he preferred to rise at his own time, and often did so before the servants were stirring. But at eight, his hour for breakfast, he did not appear; and when his butler went to call him, he found no sign anywhere of Mr Gayles. His bed had been slept in, and he had washed and shaved in the bathroom opening out of the bedroom. It would seem that he left the house before seven, the servants’ time for rising, and that he did not go out by either of the house doors, which were still bolted inside. Mr Gayles had his bedroom on the ground floor; it opens on the garden by way of a French window, and through this, it is surmised, he went to the end of the garden and out by a door in the wall, which was found unlocked with the key in its place. This door gives on a narrow blind alley leading into Knightsbridge, where an early bus or cab could have been taken. Mr Gayles, an old-fashioned man in many ways, did not own a car and had never learnt to drive one.

  ‘His partner, Mr Sims, when told of his disappearance, was completely mystified. Why Mr Gayles, the sanest of men, should have chosen so to absent himself without a word to anyone was quite incomprehensible; but Mr Sims was naturally unwilling to take any hasty action which might prejudice the reputation of the firm. When facts came to light, however, which made Mr Gayles’s presence desirable, to say the least, the police were called in. After a day of investigation they are believed to be still at a loss.

  ‘Mr Gayles recently drew from his bank a large sum in cash, being the whole of the amount standing to his credit.’

  The photograph accompanying this article showed a firm, grave face, of which the most striking details were the bushy brows over dark-rimmed glasses, the rather heavy jowls, and, by contrast, the hair not yet at all receded from the forehead. This was from a Press picture of the high table at a City banquet; for Gayles, as far as could be discovered, had never been photographed on his own account.

  Trent had added little to the bare facts given to the newspapers from Scotland Yard. He set out now to follow his own hunting nose; and on the morning of the appearance of this article he had an interview at the firm’s office with the junior partner. Mr Sims was a man in the forties, smart, worldly, and with competence stamped on his hard, clean-shaven face. He looked jaded and harassed.

  ‘You want to hear about Gayles as a personality?’ Sims said. ‘Well, I thought that if anybody knew John Gayles, I did. I would have trusted him with every shilling I had in the world. And now we find he has gambled away his own fortune and God knows how much of other people’s money. So much for being a very reserved character! Gayles was always that; and after his wife’s death he became very much more so. He was devoted to her—even he couldn’t help showing that—and it wasn’t until after she died, as far as we can make out, that this Stock Exchange mania got hold of him. It was a distraction, perhaps; anyhow, it seems to have begun the year after she died.’

  ‘I am told he was a Cambridge man,’ Trent said. ‘Did you ever hear of his doing any gambling in those days? It’s one of the tastes that can be acquired at the universities, I know.’

  ‘Oh no! Far from it. His father—the founder of the firm—was very proud of Gayles’s Cambridge record. He carried off two prizes, I remember, and got an excellent degree, besides being President of the Union. I never heard of his making a bet in his life.’

  ‘Did he take any interest in sport or games?’

  ‘Not the faintest. He never seemed to need exercise himself.’

  ‘Was his health good, then?’ Trent asked.

  ‘Why, he never looked healthy, because of that pale face of his,’ Sims said. ‘But as a matter of fact, I never knew him to have an illness until the time he took a holiday five years ago. He used always to go abroad for a month in the summer, not having letters forwarded. Well, this time, when the month was up, instead of Gayles came a post card from him saying he was obliged to prolong his holiday for a week or two. There was no address on the card, but it was postmarked Freiburg in Breisgau. This was very unlike Gayles, because he had always been keen to get back to his work—that and his garden at home. When he did return, it came out that he had travelled straight to Freiburg, arrived there feeling very ill, and been sent straight into the Heiliggeist Hospital with scarlet fever.’

  ‘Then was he there all by himself all that time?’

  ‘Absolutely. He only sent me that one disinfected post card, and remained there till he was out of quarantine. He had had it badly, and all his hair had fallen out. He was wearing a wig, a very expensive one he said it was, but it never looked like his own hair. He was evidently feeling very disgusted about it; and he said he wished never to have it referred to again. It wasn’t, either; it didn’t do to annoy Gayles. I suspect he had been rather proud of having a thick crop of dark hair at his age.’

  ‘And didn’t the illness mark him in any other way?’

  ‘Only that it had affected his eyes—he had to wear tinted glasses all the time. But his health recovered completely, in spite of the fact that he never took a proper holiday after that. He had had enough of long holidays, he said; and he made up for it by spending most of his weekends inhaling the sea-air at Preakness.’

  ‘Why at Preakness?’ Trent wondered. ‘I barely know its name, and I’ve never met anyone who has been there.’

  Sims made a grimace. ‘You wouldn’t. It’s on a branch off the main line to Mewstone, and once when I was there I ran over in my car to have a look at Preakness. Gayles always said it was the quietest spot on the South Coast, and I should say he wasn’t far wrong. Five minutes of it was ample for me. I believe the inn Gayles stayed at is good enough, though—people go there for the trout-fishing. Anyhow, it did Gayles good. The only thing he has ever had wrong with him since that illness is neuralgia, which he began to suffer from intermittently some tim
e ago. Now and then he would come to the office with his jaws tied up in a scarf—he was that way the last time he was here.’

  Trent considered a few moments. ‘His hair was entirely gone, you say. I suppose you never saw him without his wig.’

  ‘No, not I. Some of the staff have done, though. There’s Willis, the clerk who went to his room to take letters at eleven each morning. Once or twice he has caught Gayles with his wig off at the glass over by the window. Of course, Willis had the sense to pretend not to have seen, and Gayles had shoved it on again in a moment. Then there’s the office boy who had to take in Gayles’s cup of tea at 4:30. He caught him once in just the same way, Willis told me.’

  Trent smiled. ‘Would you describe Gayles as at all an eccentric man?’ he said as he got up to go.

  ‘Oh no,’ Sims said, rising also to his feet. ‘He was much like a hundred other lawyers of fifty-five to look at—more old-fashioned and black-coated than some, perhaps; but that’s all. And he was a perfect devil for punctuality and system in the office. But many of us are like that, and all of us ought to be. And it is just that, you see, Mr Trent, that makes this affair so completely bewildering. Gayles was almost inhumanly correct. It’s what makes me wonder’—Sims lowered his voice impressively here—‘if there can have been anything wrong with him mentally after all. Well, goodbye. Look me up again if you want to ask about anything more.’

  Trent had no difficulty, later in the day, in prevailing on Perfitt and his wife, the butler and cook-housekeeper in the Gayles household, to talk about their employer’s disappearance, and to allow an inspection of the bedroom from which the bird had so mysteriously flown. They found a gloomy enjoyment in their connection with fraud on such a scale, and the collapse of such a reputation. None of the four servants had had much liking for Gayles, but they had esteemed him a just man and a tower of respectability. It was, Mrs Perfitt said, like as if the world had turned upside down to think of Mr Gayles having took money, and being in hiding from the police.

  The bedroom was a large, airy, rather monastic apartment, with a small shelf of bedside books as its only humane feature. This, thought Trent, would be Gayles’s idea of light reading. His roving eye fell upon Serjeant Ballantine’s Experiences; Anomalies of the Law of England; Stories from the Law Reports; Life in the Law. Fiction was represented by The Pilgrim’s Progress, with the excellent illustrations of J. D. Watson.

  A little chilled by this glimpse into the mental privacy of John Gayles, Trent turned to the French window, still open upon a beautifully tended garden. Beds of tulips in luxuriant variety flanked the smooth lawn. Gayles, it could be seen, was an enthusiast. Companies of different blooms were arrayed in a carpet-work of diagonal stripes. Mr Gayles, said the butler, did most of the work himself, in the early morning or after office hours; when he was not planting and trimming he would just sit and look at them.

  A garden-book lay open on a table by the window, and Trent looked down on a list of tulips, in the order of the time of their flowering. Albino; Bronze Knight; Sieraad van Flora; Mewstone Glory; Rijnland; Pollux; Mr Zimmerman; Malicorne—so the list went on. With what a wrench must Gayles have torn himself away from all this! In a corner of the room stood a strange-looking standard lamp, topped by a metal cowl with wires attached, and stamped with a maker’s name and the words ULTRA-VIOLET RAY. Gayles used it, the butler said, for his neuralgia.

  There was a bathroom, with the usual outfit of toilet accessories, opening out of the bedroom. None of these things, nor, as far as Perfitt could say, any clothing or requisites of travel, had been taken away by Gayles. He seemed to have taken nothing but the clothes he stood up in—those he had worn the day before. This was as much as an inquirer without authority could gather from the household of the much-wanted man.

  Three days later Trent was closeted with Chief Inspector Murch in his bare little office at Scotland Yard; a room which the visitor knew well. He had even contributed to its scanty decoration a charcoal sketch of Mrs Murch, which beamed from above the fireplace.

  ‘Yes,’ Mr Murch said as he stuffed tobacco into a pipe. ‘We have been in communication with the police at Freiburg. What to make of it I don’t know; and I can’t think what put you onto suggesting this line. Nor how it’s going to help us, either. But the fact, for what it’s worth, is that the whole story about Gayles’s having scarlet fever in Freiburg is simply a lie.’

  Trent jumped to his feet. ‘Three ringing cheers! And just what did you hear from the police there?’

  Mr Murch got his pipe going, then said, ‘They’re very thorough; very anxious to be helpful, too. They say there was no Englishman, or any other foreigner, in that hospital with scarlet fever or with anything else all that summer. Not only that, but there wasn’t a single case of scarlet fever in the town all that year. So there you are—Gayles cooked up the whole thing. Presumably he did go there, because of the post card; but nobody calling himself Gayles stayed at any of the hotels at that time. And now, what about it?’

  ‘It depends,’ Trent said, ‘on the answer to another question. Do you know when he began helping himself to his clients’ money?’

  The inspector took up some typewritten sheets from a wire basket. ‘I can give you an outline of what has been found out so far. He started speculating on a large scale about nine years ago, and at first he made a lot of money. After that he had a run of serious losses, and he appears to have got through the whole of his private fortune four years after he began; anyhow, it was then that he took his first fatal step. He was a trustee of various settlements and other funds. He started with one of £17,000, which he converted for his own use and benefit; lost that, and went on going deeper and deeper, in the hope of getting square again. All the victims received their incomes regularly, so they naturally never suspected they were being paid out of stolen capital. You can see how easy it is, when every one has absolute confidence in a man’s integrity. First and last, nearly £200,000 had gone by the time Gayles did his disappearing act. Some of it, no doubt, he had stowed away somewhere where he could get at it under another name. The rest went down the drain. That’s the story, put short. It has taken some getting at, because he employed a number of different brokers.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Trent said. ‘It is just as I expected.’

  ‘You mean about the time when he went wrong?’

  ‘Yes, first we hear that he had scarlet fever five years ago. Now we hear that he began gambling nine years ago, and that ruin was staring him in the face after four years of it. You see? The Freiburg trick was staged just about the time when he had yielded to temptation, or was just going to, perhaps.’

  Mr Murch looked at Trent consideringly. ‘Well, if you will tell me why,’ he said slowly. ‘I suppose you are not suggesting he could have lost his hair any other way than by having a severe illness somewhere. And why should that have had anything to do with his starting out as a wrong ’un? I agree that he had been preparing his getaway a long time. The Perfitts say it was some years ago—they don’t remember exactly—that he took to sleeping in that convenient ground-floor room. And we know now why he never took a holiday apart from weekends—a show-up might come at any time, if he wasn’t on the spot to stave it off. I must say he managed very well. He knew Sims wouldn’t have any grounds for calling us in at first, so that the trail was stone-cold by the time we started. We don’t know when he left the house, and we haven’t a clue to where he went, and the watch-out for him at home and abroad has been absolutely fruitless so far.’

  ‘Yes, he certainly showed good judgment. But I should keep Freiburg in mind if I were you. Did you find anything out of the way when you went through Gayles’s place?’

  ‘Nothing—except that in the bathroom, among the little bottles over the basin, there was one of spirit gum. And I don’t see what he could have wanted with that. He couldn’t have imagined he could get away with a false beard or moustache.’

  ‘Perhaps he put it there to make it more difficult. You must have
been meant to find it.’

  ‘That’s just the kind of thing,’ the inspector said, ‘you can’t be so sure about. A criminal will often mess up the cleverest plan by some idiotic piece of carelessness—you know that as well as I do.’

  ‘Just so. Well, I hope the Freiburg myth seems to you worth pondering about—it does to me. Now I must be off—and I say, if I should manage to beat you to Gayles, I will let you know at once. The word will be Snowdrop.’

  ‘Well, it’s nice to see you again, Phil,’ Eunice Faviell said. ‘I wish it happened oftener. What did you want to see me about? You aren’t here on account of my beautiful eyes, I know.’

  She was receiving Trent in her dressing-room at the Siddons Theatre, after the first act of that vivacious comedy Beautiful Soup, and she was delicately adjusting, before her glass, the coronet she was to wear in the second act.

  ‘It was to get some advice about beauty treatment, at least,’ Trent said.

  ‘Beauty treatment!’ she stared at him. ‘My dear, do you want to have your face lifted, or your silhouette improved? I can put you onto a friend of mine who has just had ten pounds carved off below the waistline—or perhaps I hadn’t better, as no one is supposed to know. But really, Phil, you will do as you are for a few years yet. You mustn’t lose heart about your figure.’

  ‘I don’t. I want to know about something quite different. The question is whether a man can disguise his complexion in such a way that it will look natural by daylight and not be detected at all.’