The Dusky Hour

by E. R. Punshon

  He gave up the effort to smash it down by his own strength and looked about the room for some implement to aid him. He found none. Even the fire-irons in the grate were small, finicking modernities with no weight to them. In a fury he pounded on the door with his fists and shouted, and then was ashamed of so futile a display of temper and of helplessness.

  He found himself beginning to wonder if he had really seen Reeves or if he had dreamed him. He turned to make sure it was in fact Pegley lying there, unconscious and bleeding, by the chair that Hayes had been sitting in just before.

  It was all, he thought, exactly what one would expect to happen in a madhouse suddenly deprived of doctors, nurses, and keepers.

  What had happened to Hayes? Who had attacked Pegley, and why? What was Reeves of all living people doing here, and why did he continue to look so exactly like the butler that he was? And what was Noll Moffatt up to?

  Standing looking bewilderedly from fastened door to prostrate Pegley, Bobby reminded himself ruefully that he had come here to-night precisely and exactly because he had thought developments were possible.

  But not developments like these.

  What was happening now was outside, he felt, the boundary of sane explanation. It was because of that belief of his that events were drawing of themselves to some unknown crisis that he had asked Colonel Warden’s deputy, the chief superintendent, for permission to come alone, and why he had been careful to arrive at dusk and as unobtrusively as possible. It had seemed to him a good idea to allow full scope for their development to whatever plans might be in progress; and so again he had not wished to be accompanied by anyone in uniform. For he knew well how much virtue there is in a uniform, how intimidating, how authoritative in quality a uniform can be, containing, indeed, in itself so strange a magic it can even make a dictator and throw whole nations into thraldom.

  But now Bobby felt that the presence of a constable or two in uniform would be a help, and, though the chief superintendent had promised either to come himself, or at least to send help, before midnight, that hour was still far distant.

  He made another attack on the door, again without result. No doubt he could break it down in time, but time the task would take, and time was precisely what he could not spare, he who had no knowledge of what might or might not be happening on the door’s further side. He turned to the window. Exit there would be easy enough, but would he be any better off outside? He might find all the rest of the house secure against him, and even this window barred and barricaded if he tried to return by it. Again the vision came into his mind of the chief superintendent on his arrival finding him standing helplessly outside, on the doorstep.

  As he hesitated there broke out a wild tumult of noise, a rush of feet, shouting, a confused and general clamour, wood breaking and splintering, glass smashing, blows given and returned, then someone screaming wildly, incoherently. Bobby turned towards the open window. Anything was better than standing helplessly there, listening and wondering.

  He heard someone at the door and stopped abruptly, half way to the window. The door flew open and a man rushed in. It was Thoms. Bobby jumped forward to stop him. The impact and impetus of Thoms’s rush flung him aside. Thoms seemed hardly even aware of Bobby’s presence. He made a dive through the open window and Bobby heard him running fast as the darkness hid him.

  “Oh, well, now then,” Bobby said aloud.

  He ran out and along the study passage into the hall. It was quiet and deserted now. Clear enough though were the signs of the struggle or pursuit Bobby had heard. Furniture was upset and broken, crockery and vases were lying about in fragments; a gaping breach in the banisters showed where three or four had been broken off, the door into the small room used as a cloak-room hung drunkenly on one hinge, the front door was wide open, and through it from the night without came a sound of more shouting, more running to and fro.

  “Mr. Hayes! Hayes!” Bobby shouted.

  There was no answer, and Bobby ran out through the open door to take part in the lunatic pursuit and chasing to and fro that seemed in progress without. He ran down the drive, keeping to the gravelled path. From his left there rang out pistol shots in swift succession, and he saw how little darting flames stabbed through the darkness.

  Someone screamed.

  Bobby ran wildly in the direction whence the shots had come.

  Another shot rang out, and then silence dropped, dropped as the curtain drops when the play is over and it is time to go home.

  The holly hedge again checked Bobby’s progress. He turned back towards the drive, listening intently, walking slowly and carefully. In the silence that had followed on that earlier tumult he thought he heard small steps creeping slowly, not far off. He turned in that direction and caught his foot and fell full length. It was a body he had tripped upon. He could not tell whose it was. He felt for a match. By its light he was able to recognise the blood-stained face of Hayes. Those creeping steps were nearer now, and Bobby thought he saw near by a shadow move. He leaped and seized it in a grip that was not gentle, for indeed he was in no gentle mood. A muffled scream and he relaxed at once his hold.

  “The devil!” he exclaimed.

  “No, it’s me,” a low voice answered – the voice of Molly Oulton.

  CHAPTER 30

  ARREST AT LAST

  For this night at least Bobby’s capacity for surprise was entirely exhausted. In a matter-of-fact tone, as one greeting a casual acquaintance in the street, he said:

  “Oh, it’s you. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m looking for Noll,” she explained, equally matter of fact. “Have you seen him?”

  “He’s up there somewhere,” Bobby answered, nodding towards the house. “What’s he doing here?”

  “Henrietta sent him,” Molly answered. “She hadn’t any right to. She wanted him to stop Teddy. You can’t stop Teddy, he’s so stupid and pig-headed. Reeves told me, and I told Henrietta, and she got Noll to go after them, and so I came for him.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Bobby, trying to get this clear. “Yes. Have you seen your brother? He’s Teddy, isn’t he?”

  “Well, of course,” she said, and before she could continue, at a little distance, the headlamps of a car blazed suddenly, making in the vast ocean of night a little island of bright light.

  Its radiance hardly reached them where they stood, but in its full glare there showed the figure of a man, quite still, as if astonished and held fast by that sudden beam of light flung at him from the darkness.

  “There he is,” said Molly calmly. “Teddy, Teddy,” she called.

  Teddy – Thoms – Oulton turned at the summons. At the same instant another pistol-shot rang out, and Bobby heard plainly the wicked, evil scream of the bullet as it flew by, between him and Molly, snarling, as it were, its disappointment that its message of death had failed. Simultaneously Bobby tripped Molly up, and pushed her, as she fell, under the shelter of a near-by bush.

  He heard her cry out in surprise and anger at this rough handling; he snapped an order to her to lie still; he ran towards that bright illumined oblong patch the motor headlights made and that he saw was now empty.

  He heard a hoarse, passionate voice shout:

  “Give them back, quick, now, or you’re getting yours. Hand over or –”

  There was a note of finality, of triumph almost and achieved certainty, in that hoarse voice that made it seem the speaker knew success was his at last, that the end had come, and had come as he had wished. But the answer – the instant answer – was a snarl of defiance, and Bobby felt and knew that the reply to that would be the report of a pistol fired at close quarters, fired from so near that to miss would be impossible, death given and received – even in that moment of suspense he wondered, given by whom, by whom received? For that hoarse voice he had heard, distorted by rage and threat and triumph, he had failed to recognise.

  But what he actually heard was unexpected. For there sounded no loud summons to death to come, obedie
nt and swift, at the pressing of a trigger, but merely a sharp, snapping sound, as of an ineffective hammer driving home a useless tack.

  Then followed an oath, screamed aloud in frantic surprise and disappointment, and hard upon it a sound half laugh, half-sob, full of a wild relief. Bobby realised that the pistol had been empty, its cartridges fired away, its magazine exhausted. The thought came to him that the automatic of our advanced civilisation has, however, its disadvantages when compared with the club or knife of our merely barbarian ancestors. Club and knife do not exhaust their deadliness in their wielder’s hands or turn abruptly useless. He heard a voice, apparently that of the man who had just laughed:

  “Well, now then, come and get them if you can.”

  A curse, a shout, a sound of stamping and of struggling told that the challenge had been accepted. Into the island of light that lay between impenetrable walls of darkness came now two stumbling, interlaced, and struggling bodies, locked in such an ecstasy of hate and combat they had no heed of Bobby, though he, too, was now within that same radius of light. They rolled over each other on the ground, they tore at each other, they clawed, they fought as the beasts fight, with all nature had given them to fight with and with nothing else. Bobby stood for a moment as they rolled and fought at his feet. They knew no more that he was there than they knew aught else in the frenzy of hate and fear that held them in their primeval lust of combat. No sound came from them but their heavy breathing; their limbs were intertwined, their hands clawed at each other’s throats. So closely interwoven were their bodies by their hate, it seemed as if nothing but death would part them. One rolled somehow uppermost and with a gasp of triumph got his hands about the other’s throat. The next instant they had rolled over again, and now the other was on top and striking wildly down with his clenched fist on his adversary’s head.

  “Oh, stop them, why don’t you?” Molly’s voice said at Bobby’s side. “You’ve torn my frock,” she added reproachfully. “Oh, stop them, please.”

  Bobby jumped forward, only just in time. The one of the two wrestlers who was now the uppermost had somehow caught up a heavy stone and with it was about to batter out his opponent’s brains. Bobby only just managed to grab wrist and stone, wrench the stone away, fling it aside.

  “That’s enough,” he said.

  The man whose blow he had arrested screamed a curse at Bobby and struck out at him viciously. Bobby drew back. The other who had been undermost, whose life Bobby’s intervention had probably saved, wrenched himself free, got somehow to his feet. He stood for a moment quite still, breathing heavily, a little bewildered. Bobby recognised him as Thoms. He saw now that the other was Larson. Larson did not seem to recognise Bobby. He was standing close to the car, and abruptly he put back his hand and snatched up a big spanner that had been lying within. His face was distorted with his fury; his eyes were frantic; there was froth and blood dripping from his mouth some chance blow had cut. He seemed to see Bobby all at once, and, lifting the spanner, ran at him, yelling as he ran. Bobby stepped sideways and with one clear, straight, well-delivered blow sent him crashing to the ground.

  An instinct made him turn. Thoms was running at him now. Somehow he had picked up the empty automatic. He held it like a club. He, too, blinded with fury and the strange rage of conflict, did not appear to have recognised Bobby, perhaps even did not distinguish him from Larson with whom he had been at such deadly grips. Bobby gathered himself together, meaning to meet that charge with a flying tackle, when Molly stepped between them.

  “I’ll tell Henrietta,” she said severely. “You wait till Henrietta knows.”

  Thoms stopped short in his rush. He looked at her bewilderedly and passed one hand across his face, as if wiping something away.

  “Oh, well,” he said, “she can jaw till doomsday, but I’ve got ’em all right.” He looked at Bobby as if seeing him clearly for the first time. “Oh, Lord, it’s the cop,” he said, and turned and ran.

  “Here, come, I say,” protested Bobby.

  From the darkness a voice floated back:

  “I say, Molly, don’t be a sneak.”

  “Yes, I shall,” said Molly determinedly.

  Bobby turned to help Larson, who was slowly getting to his feet, still more than a little dazed from that tremendous blow with which Bobby had sent him flying.

  “Hold up. All right now?” Bobby said to him, and then added to Molly: “Does that mean your brother’s got the bonds?”

  Molly did not answer. Instead, Larson said:

  “My bonds... bearer bonds... he’s got them, robbed me... fifteen thousand pounds’ worth. He robbed me, got me down and robbed me.”

  “You’ve been robbed?” Bobby asked.

  “That’s right,” Larson said. “It’s my head. A tree fell, or something... I can’t remember.” He felt gingerly the spot where Bobby’s fist and his skull had made contact. “No, it was him, I suppose. He must have had a club or something.”

  “Think so?” said Bobby, flattered to the very depths of his being. One could almost hear him purr. Ambitious schemes flashed through his mind of entering for the next police boxing championships at the Albert Hall. “It was a bit of a whack,” he admitted modestly. “The timing does it,” he explained.

  Mr. Larson was in no mood to appreciate technicalities of the ring. He was in fact still finding some difficulty with an earth that seemed much less firm than usual; inclined, indeed, to tie itself up in knots under his feet. He sat down on the footboard of the car, though even that seemed less steady than are well-conducted footboards as a general rule. All the same, he felt safer there. He said:

  “Why aren’t you doing something? What are police for? Get after him. Why don’t you?”

  “You mean you intend to charge him with theft?” Bobby asked.

  “Yes; robbery, assault. Couldn’t you see for yourself?” retorted Mr. Larson indignantly. He felt his aching head again. “Violent, brutal attack,” he complained. “Theft and robbery; highway robbery.”

  “Oh, it isn’t,” interposed Molly indignantly. “I don’t know how you can say such things! If he means the bond things and Teddy’s got them,” she explained to Bobby, “then they’re ours – mother’s, I mean. Teddy’s got them back, that’s all. He said he would.”

  “Sounds more like a civil action,” Bobby remarked. “Ownership disputed, apparently. Of course,” he added to Larson, “if you can prove ownership and forcible removal from your custody, no doubt you could proceed criminally.”

  “So I will, so I will,” declared Larson. “I’ll see he gets penal servitude for this.”

  “They’re mother’s. You can’t. They aren’t yours; they never were,” protested Molly. “You tell the most awful stories,” she added gravely.

  “In the meantime,” Bobby said, “you might explain what you are doing here and what all this is about.”

  “Doing your job; helping you out,” Mr. Larson told him sternly. “This is what I get for it. Robbed and assaulted.” He paused for sympathy. None came. In an even angrier tone he went on: “I could see you were just blundering along, doing nothing, getting nowhere, just as you are now. I tell you I’ve been robbed of £15,000 and all you do is to stand there with your hands in your pockets and talk. Police, indeed. Same with the murder. Doing nothing; getting nowhere; hopelessly incompetent. I felt I had to do something.”

  “Yes?” said Bobby as he paused.

  “I felt I had to do something,” Larson repeated. “I don’t choose to remain under even the faintest touch of possible suspicion of being connected with such an affair in any way whatever. There are some people in the City only too ready to whisper stories. Get some gossip started about me and they might have a chance to get some of the business I handle. I couldn’t afford it. I knew perfectly well where there was hidden conclusive proof of the guilt of the real murderer. I knew your out-of-date, incompetent, muddled official methods would never get it, and I knew it might be destroyed any moment. I decided to act. I enter
ed the house where I knew it was hidden.” He put his hand in one of the pockets of the car and brought out an envelope. “If you look at what’s inside there,” he said, “you’ll find something to interest even your slow official mind.”

  “Photographs?” asked Bobby meekly.

  “Yes. I’ve only had time to give them the merest glance, but you’ll find snaps taken by Hayes of Mrs. O’Brien and Bennett in Battling Copse that afternoon. You remember a lipstick was found there? Hers. You remember a bit of film wrapper – wasn’t it? – was found there, too? Hayes dropped it. I dare say he hadn’t intended murder then. He wanted the snap for proof Mrs. O’Brien’s husband was still alive and that she was meeting him on the quiet. That divorce of hers wasn’t even near valid; wouldn’t have held water even in American courts, or Mexican either. Hayes thought that snap would let him out of any promise of marriage she might have wheedled out of him. Most likely there was some sort of row afterwards. Perhaps Bennett tried to get the snap away. I don’t know.”

  “How can you prove the photo was taken that day?” Bobby asked, studying it intently.

  “Because of the hat Mrs. O’Brien is wearing, quite plainly shown,” Larson answered. “You can easily get proof it was only delivered that morning and only worn by her that afternoon. She never wore it on any other occasion, and her movements can easily be checked. And you can soon satisfy yourself that that snap comes from a type of camera Hayes has and no one else owns about here. Proof absolutely convincing that Hayes was there that afternoon watching Mrs. O’Brien and Bennett just before the murder was committed, and with no one else near. Good enough?”

  “Seems good enough,” agreed Bobby, putting away the photograph with great care.

  They heard someone else coming. It was Hayes, pale and excited, uncertain on his feet, wiping the blood from his face. He shouted to Bobby:

  “I’ve been robbed – knocked down and robbed.”