“Help,” gasped Palmer. “They’re going to murder me——”
There was a rain of thunderous kicks on the door which leaped in its frame and shouts of “Open this door, you——” Palmer spun round, looked dazedly at the revolver the dark man had given him, and fired all five shots through the panels at a yard range. Yelps and curses outside indicated that this had taken effect on somebody, and there was a momentary pause in the uproar which allowed another sound to be heard, heavy knocking on the front door of the house and a deep voice demanding admission.
“Police,” said an awed voice in the passage. “Scram!” And there were sounds of departure merging at once into sounds of strife.
Palmer switched out the light and backed towards the window which suddenly showed a square of November dawn as somebody opened the outside shutters. The lower half slid up quietly; a pair of strong arms came in and grabbed the receiver, who uttered a squawk of terror and struggled violently.
“Don’t be a fool,” said the dark man hoarsely. “I’m trying to help you. Come on out of it and we’ll buzz off to Morley Park. This place is too hot for comfort.”
Palmer scrambled eagerly out of the window, and both men disappeared at once; the two policemen left behind looked at each other.
“Morley Park,” said one. “Where’s that?”
“I don’t know yet,” said the other, “but you bet we shall. It’s a place where there’ll be things happening very shortly.”
Three hours later the superintendent of police at Westerham arrived at Morley Park with an escort of constables and overawed the guardians of the gates into admitting them. At the house the superintendent asked for Dr. Goddard, who came hastily, a worried-looking little man with a ragged white moustache.
“Sorry to trouble you, sir,” said the superintendent. “The fact is, there’s been a prisoner escaped from custody near by here last night, and there’s reason to think he’s hiding in the neighbourhood. We have accordingly been given instructions to search all the houses in the district; I have a search warrant if you wish to see it.”
“Not at all,” said Dr. Goddard, “please——”
“Thank you, sir. Of course it’s a mere formality in your case, but it’s got to be gone through. Are there to your knowledge any clothes missing? Or any food? Those are the two things he’d go for.”
“I will have enquiries made,” said the doctor, “at once. I’ll send someone to show you round the house.”
The superintendent thanked him, and the search began. The doctor wondered what, if this search were a mere formality, a real one would be like. There were men on guard at every exit door from the big house, overlooking every side of it. Other men stood about on staircases and in passages while the superintendent and two more searched every room, every cupboard, wardrobe, alcove, and recess from ground floor to attic, to the pleased surprise of some of the inmates, who offered helpful suggestions.
“Doesn’t seem to be here, sir. Have you any cellars?”
The police were conducted through coal and coke cellars and “my simple wine cellar,” which appeared to the superintendent to be more than well stocked, through the basement furnace room for the central heating, but all to no effect. Palmer was not to be found.
“This is absolutely all there is to see, sir?”
“I think you’ve looked into everything in the house above the size of a boot box, Superintendent.”
“Thank you, sir——”
“Tell me, Superintendent, is he at all likely to be lurking in the grounds? Before I let my patients out for exercise I should like to be sure they will not be molested.”
“I have some more men outside who are having a look round. Unless he can change himself into a rabbit they’ll find him if he’s there. I will just enquire how they’re getting on,” said the superintendent, walking outside the front door. “Sanders!”
“Sir?”
“Any luck?”
“No, sir.”
“There you are, sir. You can let your patients out with perfect confidence. I am sorry to have had to give you so much trouble. Good morning, sir.”
“Good morning, Superintendent.”
The police got into their cars and drove away, and Dr. Goddard watched them till they were out of sight. When it became obvious that they were not coming back he walked across the hall to a large cupboard in which coats were hung, opened it and stepped inside as the superintendent had done, and opened another door at the back of the cupboard which the superintendent had not opened. It was not at all noticeable. Inside it was the head of a flight of stone stairs, leading down. Dr. Goddard leaned over and called down the stairs that it was all right now; the police had gone. Several men who were waiting rather anxiously at the bottom thereupon came up the stairs; the first of them was a tall man with a stiff black beard.
When the superintendent arrived back at the Westerham Police Station he rang up Bagshott at Scotland Yard.
“Nothing out of the usual in any place open to inspection, sir. There is no place aboveground to hide anybody that I could see; you gave orders the place was not to be pulled to pieces——”
“Quite right,” said Bagshott.
“But I think there are some cellars they didn’t show me. There are no cellar windows, but there are ventilators at ground level such as are put in houses to keep the foundations dry. One of my men was standing outside one of these and he smelled cigar smoke, sir. That was exactly behind the hall; I would say there was a room or so under the hall.”
“No obvious entrance, of course?”
“No, sir. But there is a large coat wardrobe in the hall; I looked into it, and the back might possibly be false. I did not tap it, sir.”
“Quite right. I shall be with you in about an hour and a half.”
“Very good, sir.”
When Hambledon returned to the Foreign Office at about half-past eleven from his interview with the Home Secretary which, incidentally, was about quite another matter, he found Bagshott waiting for him, bursting with news.
“I never heard of this place Morley Park in my life till you mentioned it to me last night, and now it’s cropped up again,” he said, and repeated what the two kidnapped policemen had heard, that Palmer was going there. “Your two gentlemen, Marden the burglar and his friend, were quite right. I thought I’d give the Morley Park people a chance to show they were all right, but they’re not.” He told Hambledon what the Westerham superintendent had said.
“Good man, that,” said Hambledon.
“Yes, and the man outside the ventilator wasn’t too dull, either.”
“I suppose they really do have loonies there, do they?” said Hambledon doubtfully.
“Oh yes, no doubt about that; I’ve had the place looked up. It’s properly licenced and all and has a very good reputation.”
“Very valuable asset, a good reputation,” said Hambledon. “That’s why I’m always so careful about mine.”
* * *
Warnford and Marden reached Westerham that morning later than they intended, but it was perhaps as well, since otherwise they would have encountered the police at Morley Park. As it was, they met quite a procession of cars about a mile beyond Westerham, and Marden ducked when he saw that they were all filled with police, headed by the superintendent in full uniform in the leading car.
“My golly,” said Marden in awed tones, “did you see that? What on earth can have called out that parade?”
“Somebody’s been doing something naughty,” said Warnford, “unless civil war has broken out between the Men of Kent and the Kentish Men. There’s the wall ahead of us; I shall pull the car off the road here and put it neatly away among those bushes.”
The road here ran unfenced across a stretch of common, rough and sandy, patched with heather and tall clumps of gorse, which was due for burning. Ahead of them the wall of Morley Park, ten feet of stone with barbed wire atop, came from the left and curved round to follow the road. Warnford turned the Bent
ley into a rough track on the left and bumped gently along for fifty yards till the track dropped into a hollow, and he stopped the car behind a patch of gorse, tall and straggling, but still bearing a spur or two of golden bloom even in November. It was a lovely day for the time of year, windless and sunny, smelling of fallen leaves and wet turf. The two men got out, carefully removed the ignition key, locked up the car, and looked round.
“I am a fool,” said Warnford. “We ought to have brought something to help us over that wall. I was hoping for a tree with overhanging branches we could drop from.”
“They’d take good care there wasn’t one, wouldn’t they,” said Marden, “in a lunatic asylum? I ought to have thought of it too. We couldn’t drive the car close up, could we?”
“Stand on my shoulders,” said Warnford, “and see if you can do any good.”
Marden said he never was a cat burglar but would try anything once; Warnford hoisted him up, and there was an interlude of effort.
“No good,” gasped Marden. “Down. The wall is about eighteen inches wide at the top; I can’t reach the farther edge, and it’s too smooth to get a grip anywhere.”
“What about the uprights for that wire?” suggested Warnford, thoughtfully rubbing his left shoulder.
“They’ve thought of that one; they are wound round with barbed wire. Otherwise this is a good spot; there’s a clump of trees between us and the house, so they wouldn’t see us hopping over.”
“It’s a pity,” said Warnford. “Once inside, we ought to be able to get away with that gas-meter story; they would think we must be all right if the gate guards let us pass. It’s only to get on the drive somewhere and walk up, and here we are stumped by a mere wall. This can’t be our lucky day. Let’s have a walk round and see if we——”
“Look,” said Marden. “What’s that?”
One short length of the Westerham road, where it topped a rise, was visible to them through the bushes, and upon it there was a small depressed-looking figure wheeling a handbarrow. Mr. Mullins was a painter and decorator in a small way; he had been busy on a job at home in the earlier part of the morning and was now on his way to paint the outside woodwork of a cottage just past the gates of Morley Park. He had with him the tools of his trade, several paintpots, a tin containing putty under water, several brushes in a jam pot, a canvas bag holding two hammers, a putty knife and a tin of the small nails called “sprigs,” and, what had attracted Marden’s attention, a twelve-foot ladder. He was always depressed because that was his habit of mind, but on this morning he was more miserable than usual. Yesterday’s dead certainty, on which he had put a whole ten shillings instead of his usual bob each way, had come in among the also-rans, and he was wondering how on earth he could keep the news from his wife. She was not a patient wife, and when she heard this he looked like being the patient. Better not tell her while she was rolling pastry. . . .
Two men emerged hastily from among the bushes and came up to him. The taller one held a piece of paper towards him and said abruptly, “Ten bob for the loan of your ladder for half an hour.”
Mullins hesitated. One does not lend one’s ladder to total strangers, but ten bob—just what he wanted.
“Come on,” said the tall stranger. “You shall have it back in half an hour.”
Mullins made up his mind. The tall man looked and spoke like a gentleman, for one thing; for another, Mullins was a nervous little man, and these people looked as though, if they did not get the ladder, they would take it, and finally there was the ten bob.
“Awright,” he said, and took the note. The two men untied the ladder from the handcart, lifted it off, and ran with it back into the bushes they had come from. “Be careful with it, mind,” Mullins called after them but got no reply.
He scratched his head, staring after them, then sat down on the handle of his cart and lit a cigarette. Last time somebody borrowed his ladder it was to get in at their own bedroom window which happened to be open. They had gone out in the garden to pick a few peas, and the door had slammed and locked them out. Half-a-crown he got that time. But there was no house just here; what would two gentlemen be wanting his ladder for?
He turned this over in his mind, got slowly to his feet, and walked into the bushes the way Warnford and Marden had gone. He was just in time to see them standing on the top of the wall in their shirt sleeves, because their coats were laid over the barbed wire. They were standing astride the wire and hauling the ladder up. While Mullins watched it tilted over the top like a seesaw and slid down the other side. The tall man descended a few rungs of it, lifted his coat off the wire, and disappeared. The shorter man followed him, and there was nothing to be seen but the ends of the ladder standing up against the wire, silhouetted against the soft blue sky. At least Mullins knew where it was; it was quite safe. He went back to the cart and waited. Stroke of luck, getting that ten bob.
He waited for a considerable time, smoked another cigarette, and then looked at the Ingersoll watch he carried. Good watch, that; bought it at a Jumble Sale for a tanner, and it went perfectly. Somebody made a mistake sending it, most likely. More than half an hour; they ought to be back.
He wandered into the bushes again and looked up at the spot where the two men had got over. There was nothing there but the wall and the wire; even the ends of his ladder had disappeared. Why? This was the wall of Morley Park, the loony asylum; perhaps those were two of the loonies, though they seemed all right. But whoever heard of two loonies trying to get into an asylum?
He sat on his barrow till one o’clock, which was an hour and a half, occasionally getting up to look at the wall and returning unsatisfied. At last he picked up the handle of his barrow and started disconsolately to walk the two miles back to Westerham, looking smaller and more depressed than ever.
22. Most Irregular
Hambledon and Bagshott were sitting in the superintendent’s office at Westerham Police Station, discussing ways and means, when Mr. Mullins walked into the outer office and spoke to the desk sergeant.
“Good afternoon,” he said.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Mullins. And what can we do for you this fine day?”
“My wife sent me,” said Mullins dismally.
“Want to give yourself in charge for something?”
“No. I’ve lost my ladder.”
“What d’you mean? Had it stolen?”
Mullins embarked on a long story about two men who borrowed his ladder for half an hour, disappeared over a wall with it, and didn’t come back, though he waited and waited and then went home and told his wife, who told him to come along to the police at once if he ever wished to see it again.
“Well, perhaps it’s come back by now if you go and have another look.”
“It’s a long way,” grumbled Mullins, “trailing out there and maybe not finding anything and having to come back.”
“Where is this place, then, where you lent the ladder?”
“Morley Park.”
“Morley—— Here, wait a minute.”
The sergeant carried the story into the superintendent’s office and was listened to with rapt attention.
“I’ve very little doubt these are the two men I told you about, Superintendent,” said Hambledon. “Can this fellow describe them?”
But beyond saying that one was taller than the other, Mullins was not helpful.
“Did they have a car there?”
There might have been a car there, but Mullins hadn’t seen one. There were some bushes about there; if there was a car behind them he wouldn’t have seen it. He was looking for his ladder, not a car.
“Do you generally lend your things to total strangers?” asked Bagshott.
“No. And I wouldn’t have done these, only they gave me ten bob. But the ladder’s worth much more than that.”
He was dismissed with words of hope and comfort, and the superintendent said it looked as though something might have happened to the two gentlemen.
“Yes,” said Ham
bledon. “They’ve got away with a lot of things, but they may have slipped up this time. Something must be done about it at once.”
“We could go up again,” said the superintendent, “and pull the place to pieces. We know where to look now—under the hall.”
“I’m a little nervous of doing that,” said Hambledon. “We want to rescue our friends alive, not fish them up out of wells. One of us has got to be there before you start operations, only it does seem a little difficult to get in. However, some method will doubtless present itself. They really do have bona fide lunatics there, don’t they? Are they all locked up in rooms?”
“Oh no,” said the superintendent. “Apparently there are more or less three sorts of patients there: those who are dangerous all the time; they’re more or less locked up in rooms, but even they come out for exercise, under supervision. Then there are the ones who have bad turns and are all right in between; they go about the grounds as they like in their better moments, as you might say. Then there are the harmless ones; they’re about all the time. Like the one who thinks he’s Saint Francis—his name happens to be Francis—and wanders about in a monk’s robe, talking to the birds. He was a stockbroker actually, and a very keen amateur racing motorist; he was injured in a crash at Brooklands. Then there’s the one who doesn’t like groundsel and wanders round the garden all day with a——”
“Just a moment,” said Hambledon. “This man Francis, what’s he like to look at?”
“Oh, medium height, hair thin on top—he calls that his tonsure—inclined to be a bit tubby——”
“Not too unlike me in a monk’s gown or frock or whatever you call it?”
Bagshott and the superintendent stared at Hambledon, who went on, “Any chance of finding a monk’s dress in Westerham? Do you run an amateur dramatic society here or anything like that?”
“We do,” said the superintendent with a slight gasp. “One of my constables fancies himself an actor.” He got up and opened the door. “Where’s young Verrall? I want him.”
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