Comes a Stranger

by E. R. Punshon

  “Who takes Mr. Nat Kayne’s place? Do you know?”

  “I rather think I do,” the librarian answered, though with some reluctance. “I really am not sure. Perhaps only for the time. I should have to refer to the will to be sure.”

  The Major went on to ask a few more questions. Mr. Broast’s replies only confirmed what they knew already. Regarding his own movements, he explained that he had gone to his room almost immediately after dinner on the previous night, in order to attend to his correspondence. It was his habit to speak his letters into a Dictaphone, Miss Perkins typing them afterwards from the records. He finished fairly early, about half past nine or a quarter to ten, he supposed, and then he had waited for a time, expecting Sir William, who had rung up to say he was driving over for a chat. That was not unusual. They had many interests in common, apart from Sir William’s position as library trustee. After a time he assumed that Sir William must have changed his mind, or that something or another had prevented him from carrying out his intention. It was, Mr. Broast explained, his own invariable custom to take a brisk walk before bed as a means of inducing sleep, and he had gone out as usual, soon after ten, probably, as soon as he felt it was useless waiting any longer. So far as he knew no one saw him go. He remembered looking into the drawing-room, but it was empty, and he took it that the two ladies had gone to bed. Briggs and the maids were presumably in their own quarters. He had not seen them, and he supposed they had not seen him. He had been out his usual thirty or forty minutes, and on his return had entered by the front door, which was unlocked as usual. He locked and bolted it on his return, also as usual. So far as he knew no one had heard or seen him. No reason why anyone should. His habits were well known and well established. His evening walk before bed was his sole outdoor exercise, and it was quite regular. So far as he knew no one could confirm his statements, but was confirmation really necessary? Mr. Nat Kayne was an extraordinarily ignorant and uncultivated young man but one to whom Mr. Broast had no ill will. He would pick up a rare first edition and handle it as though it were a shilling magazine just bought from a railway book-stall. He was inclined to be bumptious, and aggressive, too, but he had little to do with the library except on inspection days, and even then seldom had much to say to Mr. Broast.

  “He really thought,” explained Mr. Broast, “that a librarian was just a clerk with a certain knowledge of books, exactly as a man in a bank is a clerk with a certain knowledge of figures. His ignorance was too gross even to be offensive. I really believe his chief interest in life was football pools. I understand he spent four or five shillings every week, and a very great deal of time, over them, and was highly elated when on one occasion he won one of the prizes offered.”

  “He won something once?” exclaimed the Major, much impressed, for indeed he had never before heard of such a thing.

  “I gather all his forecasts were correct on that occasion, so he won what they call the pool. Very remarkable. His share came to seven and ninepence, as a great many others were correct that week, too. He was very excited by his success, he thought it highly encouraging.”

  Bobby, frowning over his notebook, wondered if the librarian had really been as indifferent to Nat Kayne’s activities as he now pretended. Suppose, for example, there had been hints of Miss Kayne being inclined to yield to her cousin’s importunities? True, there had been no sign of that as far as seemed to be known. But Broast might have been aware of under-currents unknown to others. Again, had Broast really been as little touched by Nat Kayne’s ill-bred behaviour as he now claimed? He had used the word ‘offensive’. And had he really remained entirely aloof from the quarrels between the two trustees? It was to be remarked, too, that the alibi he put forward had no independent evidence to support it, and he admitted having finished his letters in time for him to have reached the scene of the murder by ten. Apparently it would have been easy for him to slip both out and in again unperceived.

  On one point Mr. Broast was emphatic. He repudiated with scorn the mere possibility of there being even a modicum of truth in Virtue’s story.

  “Barefaced lie, pure invention,” he declared. “The shutters were closed, and how could he see through them? Even if the shutters had been opened again, which they weren’t, for there was no one to do it, he could have seen nothing in the dark.”

  “He suggested,” remarked Bobby, “that the light might have come from a strong electric torch.”

  “Nonsense,” snapped Mr. Broast. “Just a pack of lies. There’s a lot of rare valuable stuff here. That’s what he was after. Hired by some rascally collector perhaps—some of them would stop at nothing. Or perhaps he’s a collector himself. The tale he told was his first move. He was trying to get in here when I wasn’t present. Then, while your men were searching for a dead body that didn’t exist, would be his opportunity to pocket something.”

  The Major looked impressed. Put like that, it sounded plausible. He remembered, too, that Virtue had admitted that one of his relatives was ‘crazy’ about books and first editions and so on. Perhaps that relative was himself. There had been, too, his insistence on his right, as he had called it, to be present at the search he demanded. All very suggestive. Major Harley glanced at Bobby, who, as a matter of fact, was thinking on much the same lines. He said:

  “We are of course considering every possibility. A cable has been sent, asking for information about Mr. Virtue’s identity and standing, though at present there does not seem much reason to think he is concerned in the murder. There is one more little matter and then I think we shan’t have to worry you any more at present, though I’m afraid I can’t promise we won’t return. It’s possible there may still be information you can help us with. We have not been able to find the pistol used, so as a matter of routine we are checking all we know of. Apparently Kayne was shot with a three-two, and I think I’m right in saying you have a permit for a Colt revolver, a three-two?”

  “Yes, it’s here,” answered Mr. Broast, pointing to one of the drawers of his writing table. “Very necessary. We have to admit the public once a month. Anyone could easily lay hands on items worth thousands of pounds.”

  “I suppose you’ve missed nothing lately?” the Major asked.

  “Certainly not,” snapped Mr. Broast. “I take my precautions. That is what I have a revolver for—in case of emergencies. I know how to use it, too. I took lessons.”

  The Major glanced at Bobby. This seemed finally to dispose of the vague accusations Miss Kayne had seemed to want to make against the little typist. Mr. Broast closed with a bang the drawer he had been looking in and opened another. He said:

  “It ought to be there. Of course, any thief would have to know what to take and what to leave.” He pointed to a shelf near. “One of those books,” he said, “is the Caxton Dictes, almost perfect copy—mint condition. It would fetch a nice little sum at auction if anyone got the chance and knew enough to pick it out.”

  “Most interesting,” murmured the Major, looking at the indicated shelf and wondering which was the volume referred to, since to him they all seemed much alike. He added: “You won’t mind our taking your pistol away for examination?”

  “No. I can’t see it,” Mr. Broast said. He opened yet another drawer. He closed it and looked at them. “It’s gone,” he said uneasily. “It’s been taken. Someone’s stolen it.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE PHOTOGRAPH AGAIN

  In spite of the sharp questioning to which he was subjected, Mr. Broast either could or would tell them no more. The revolver had been there and now it had vanished, and that was all knew. He was not even certain when he had seen it last. Not for some days he thought. He scowled and frowned a good deal, too, at the questioning to which he was subjected—he was certainly not blessed with the most equable of tempers—and often returned testy answers. Finally he refused flatly to say anything more, and tried to order the Major and Bobby out of the library, whereupon he had to be reminded sharply that a case of murder was under investiga
tion.

  “If you take that attitude, Mr. Broast,” Major Harley said, “I shall certainly ‘clear out’ as you express it, but you will accompany me. I shall detain you for inquiries. Before you force me into action of that kind, I suggest you had better think well.”

  “You have no right to do any such thing,” almost shouted Mr. Broast. “You’ve no warrant.”

  “I don’t need a warrant,” retorted the Major, “to detain a person under grave suspicion of complicity in murder who refuses to answer questions.”

  Mr. Broast had been standing up and hammering on the table with his clenched fists, had indeed looked almost as if preparing to launch a physical attack on them in spite of his age and the fact that they were two and he only one. But at this he sat down abruptly. His face, flushed with anger, turned very pale. Trembling a little, his voice stammering and low and different indeed from the tone he had been using, he said:

  “Good God, you don’t mean you think I shot young Kayne?”

  “You are under the gravest suspicion, much intensified by your present attitude,” retorted the Major.

  “Why on earth do you suppose I should want to do anything like that?” demanded the librarian. “I had hardly anything to do with him.”

  “It’s not a question of ‘why’ at present,” answered the Major. “It’s still a question of ‘who.’ The murder was committed with a three-two revolver. You are known to have had one in your possession and you are unable to produce it. You are unable to offer any independent confirmation of your statement that you were in your room at the moment of the murder. Mr. Kayne was a trustee of the library and on his death you take his place.”

  Broast was fidgeting nervously with the various articles on his desk. He said after a pause:

  “It’s simply absurd to suppose I had anything to do with it. Why should I? The trustee business is merely formal—merely a precaution against Miss Kayne marrying some-one unsuitable. I’m sorry if I lost my temper. I apologize. I’m afraid I didn’t understand. I never, never in my wildest dreams,” he declared with emphasis, “expected to be under suspicion for murder.” He paused again, glaring at them challengingly. He gave a harsh laugh. “I suppose next,” he said, “I shall be accused of murdering the original of that photograph you’ve got there. It wouldn’t surprise me. Is that the next item?” he asked with a dark irony.

  “All we require at present is that you should answer the questions put you,” the Major retorted. “You may refuse to do so. You may require the presence of a lawyer if you wish. You understand that our questions are connected with our inquiry into the murder of Mr. Nat Kayne. Are you willing to answer them or do you refuse?”

  “Certainly, certainly I am perfectly willing,” Mr. Broast answered now. “I must apologize again. I am afraid I didn’t quite understand at first. If you really think I murdered young Kayne or the man whose photograph you’ve got there and that I’ve hidden the body—well, you are perfectly welcome to look on all the shelves to see if I’ve got it tucked away somewhere behind the books. To me, this young American’s story sounds obvious invention. If you think differently, if you take seriously this tale of something seen through thick shutters in the dark—” He shrugged his shoulders with an evident sneer. “After all,” he said, “it should be easy to find a hidden body here. I haven’t had much time to hide it, have I?”

  The Major paid no attention to this. He asked a good many more questions, repeating some of them over again, but he always got the same answers, and he got no further information. Probably, Mr. Broast agreed, everyone knew he possessed a pistol. Probably most of them knew where he kept it. Most of them could have taken it, if they wished, and waited their opportunity. Young Kayne himself, for that matter, or his co-trustee, Sir William.

  “The ladies as well,” went on Mr. Broast. “Miss Kayne, Miss Farrar,” this last name he accompanied by a malicious glance at Bobby, “my typist, Miss Perkins, the rest of the servants, including the charwomen who come in to clean, that sham American professor, Mr. Adams—I suppose it would not occur to you he might be worth questioning?”

  “He has been interrogated,” the Major answered. “Any-one else?”

  Mr. Broast added the names of one or two other visitors.

  “Including,” he finished with emphasis, “the young man whose preposterous story seems to interest you so much, who says he saw a dead body here at the moment when there was actually a dead body not far away. To my mind, highly suggestive.”

  Major Harley observed that the point had not been over-looked, and after one or two more questions he and Bobby retired. Mr. Broast made no attempt to accompany them to the door, and when he and the Major reached it, Bobby looked back and saw Mr. Broast standing there in the shadows at the further end of the library, watching their departure. It was growing late now, and in that dark and airless place of gloom, cut up by the transverse book-cases into little bays where all day long the light was dim, already the coming night lay heavily. This library seemed to Bobby no place of peace and calm and learning, but of lurking evil, a place of darkness and old death, a place of hidden whispers and secret device, and the aged, white-haired librarian, standing there in the distance, watching them with a malign intentness, gave him the impression of an ancient spider for ever spinning webs in which his victims were to be entangled.

  Major Harley, unimaginative army man as he was, seemed to experience something of the same feeling.

  “Wants some air here, some light, too,” he muttered. “I don’t like the place. I don’t like the man. Inhuman. He would commit a murder as easily as you or I would eat our dinners.”

  “Only,” said Bobby thoughtfully, “not without cause.”

  He turned abruptly and walked back towards Broast. He had seen him lift his hand. He had seen something gleam in it. As he approached the librarian raised his hand again, and again there was something bright and hard in it. Bobby walked on. Broast slipped away behind some book cases. Bobby paused. Broast appeared again from behind. He had slipped round somehow. His smile was dark and thin. He was holding in his hand a small electric torch. Bobby wondered if it was that he had seen or if it had been something else. Broast said:

  “You have forgotten something?”

  “Not at all,” Bobby answered, looking at him steadily.

  If it had been a pistol in his hand, the weapon had probably now been well hidden. Bobby went back to the Major.

  “I thought I saw a small pistol in his hand,” he explained. “When I got up to him, he was holding an electric torch. If it was a pistol I saw, he hid it again.”

  “Oh, well,” the Major said thoughtfully.

  They opened the heavy, fireproof door and went into the ante-room where Miss Perkins was sitting before her typewriter, though she was making no attempt to use it. She looked up when they entered, and then got to her feet with her accustomed giggle.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, “but I couldn’t help hearing a little—I mean, when Mr. Broast was talking. He has such a penetrating voice, hasn’t he? especially when he’s at all upset.”

  “I shouldn’t have thought anything could have been heard through that door when it was shut,” observed the Major, looking at it.

  “Oh, no, only it wasn’t shut, it was open,” explained Miss Perkins, giggling again. “I’m so sorry, but it was.”

  “How was that?” demanded the Major.

  Miss Perkins did not explain. Instead she said:

  “So I couldn’t Help hearing, could I? It’s so dreadful about Mr. Broast’s pistol being lost, isn’t it? Only I’m sure you can’t think he would murder Anyone—not even Mr. Kayne, even if he did Dislike him so much.”

  “Why do you think he did?” demanded the Major sharply.

  “Mr. Broast always said so himself,” answered Miss Perkins, “only of course he didn’t Mean it—I mean to say, not like that. Because if people murdered everyone they disliked, it would be so Dreadful, wouldn’t it?” She stopped to giggle again,
and then went on: “Oh, I’m so sorry, only I do think now, though it’s most Unpleasant, perhaps I ought to confess.”

  “Confess?” snapped the Major, startled. “Miss Perkins, please remember this is a serious matter.”

  “Oh, yes, indeed it is, isn’t it? that’s just what I’ve been thinking,” said Miss Perkins, looking more like a frightened canary than ever, too frightened even to produce her accustomed giggle. “Only of course it isn’t Really important, only it isn’t Quite True what I told you about the photograph, I mean to say, about its being his, because I haven’t got one, not of him, and I daresay now he never really meant it, and when I told people they didn’t very often look as if they believed it, so when I found the photograph, and Mrs. Somerville didn’t know who it was, and hadn’t ever seen it, and no one else here had ever seen it either, I thought it might have been him if I had ever had one, and so I mean to say I said it was him, and he really was an American gentleman, and when I saw this one had New York on the back, I thought perhaps it was Meant, so I didn’t think it was Really Wrong, at least not very. I mean to say, with me expecting a letter every day, and always looking in the paper to see when the post was in from America.”

  “Good God,” said the Major feebly, looking at Bobby as though asking for help to stand up against this torrent of words to which Bobby himself had been listening with close attention.

  “May I put a few questions, sir?” he asked, and when the Major nodded a relieved assent Bobby proceeded to try to disentangle the facts that Miss Perkins’s involved observations seemed to contain somewhere.

  Ultimately it emerged that Miss Perkins had no special reason to think Mr. Broast disliked the dead man, other than the fact that a good deal of quarrelling went on between them all, the two trustees and the librarian, jointly, variously, and severally. Nat Kayne was quarrelsome argumentative, and resentful. Sir William was authoritative and bullying. Mr. Broast was prickly, hated interference, contemptuous of all opinions that did not coincide with his own. Fertile breeding ground for displays of bad temper, but hardly for murder, Bobby thought. As regards her own corrected story she now told, Miss Perkins insisted that she had, in fact, been very friendly with a young American during her term of employment in London. He had taken her out a few times to dinners and theatres. What grounds had really existed for her belief that he was actuated by anything more than a good-natured sympathy for a pathetically lonely and helpless woman, did not appear. A few kisses seemed to have passed, nothing more. But Bobby, watching her more attentively now, remembered what Olive had said about Miss Perkins’s potential good looks being quite up to the average if she would only try to make the best of herself. He noticed specially the perfection of form and regularity of her small white teeth Olive had mentioned. After all, there are few girls who do not possess at any rate a share of attractiveness, real ugliness is as rare as great beauty, even though Miss Perkins did seem as much inclined to emphasize her bad points as are most of her sex to bring out their good ones. She admitted quite frankly though that there had been nothing of the nature of a formal engagement.