by Molly Thynne
“Pretty bad trouble, I’m afraid, and I’m sorry for it. It always goes against the grain to pull in a man with a good war record. He’s all right, I suppose, from your point of view?”
“Very much all right. He was a Billingsgate fish porter by trade, one of those chaps who’d never seen the sea until they joined up. He served in the Navy from 1914 till 1919, was mined twice and torpedoed once. You’ve only got to look at his papers to see whether his country owes him anything. And there’s only one thing he asks—work, and I can’t get him any!”
The little man spoke bitterly, and he had Fenn’s hearty sympathy. He knew something of the disappointments that fall to the lot of a conscientious Legion secretary.
“It’s hard lines on the man,” he agreed. “And if it was a case of theft, we should be very willing to speak for him. But this is a capital charge. If he can’t prove that he left the building when he says he did, he’ll stand a poor chance, I’m afraid.”
“It all hangs on the production of this man he calls ‘Scotty,’ then?”
“If this man corroborates what Stephens has told us, he’s cleared—of the murder charge, that is. The theft stands, of course; but he’ll come under the First Offenders Act there, and his war record will stand him in good stead.”
Mr. Whitaker rose, without wasting further time, and picked up his hat.
“Then it’s up to us to find ‘Scotty,’” he said briskly. “Will you back us if we ask for a wireless S.O.S.?”
Fenn held out his hand.
“Of course,” he said, as the other took it. “We can’t refuse, though we’re putting a spoke in our own wheel! My job’s to catch the murderer, and I don’t mind telling you that I thought I’d got him! I should have felt better, however, if he’d been a habitual criminal. They go into the job with their eyes open, and they know what’s coming to them, sooner or later.”
He stood looking down at the little man with a humorous twinkle in his eyes.
“You’re going to be a damned nuisance to us, you know,” he added. “But I wish you luck, all the same.”
His good wishes were genuine enough, but his spirits sank as he watched the door close behind Whitaker. There was something abominably efficient about the little man, besides which his own conviction that as regards Stephens they were barking up the wrong tree was growing in intensity.
Two days later he attended the inquest, and saw to it that it was “adjourned at the request of the police.” He ran into Gilroy as he was leaving and accepted his offer of lunch. The truth was, he felt the need to unburden his soul to some one, and Gilroy, in spite of his exasperating North-country habit of caution, was a satisfactory person to talk things over with.
As they walked back to Romney Chambers Fenn told him how things stood.
“Now that we’ve narrowed the time of the murder down to between six-forty-five and seven-ten we’re pretty well forced into choosing between Jill Braid and this man Stephens. And if Stephens’ witness comes forward—”
“Why six-forty-five? Miss Braid heard voices as late as seven.”
“It was you who insisted that we must take her evidence with reservations,” Fenn reminded him.
Gilroy had the grace to look confused.
“I don’t accept her evidence even now,” he declared. “But we’re bound to take into account the chance of its being true. Given the possibility that she did hear Sir Adam’s voice at seven and that Stephens’ pal does turn up and clear him, things look a bit blank.”
“Considering that that leaves little Webb as our only suspect, they look perfectly damnable,” was Fenn’s whole-hearted rejoinder. “We’ve got the movements of every one else in the building. Adams, the caretaker, and his wife were walking in Battersea Park with a friend; Smith, the man above you, did not get back to his flat till seven-thirty, and you were at the Institute. That leaves Webb. After all, he was on the spot!”
“If you’ve got a more fantastic theory, produce it,” said Gilroy, as he fitted his latchkey into the lock. “Poor little Webb was frightened out of his wits of Sir Adam. However, there’s this about it, Webb would never dream of committing a murder without talking it over, in all its aspects, with his sister. You’d better go down and tackle Miss Webb after lunch.”
While they were eating Fenn showed him a copy of Stephens’ statement to the police. He read it through carefully.
“So he found the flat door open?” he said, when he had finished. “What do you make of that?”
“It rests between him and Johnson,” said Fenn. “Johnson swears that he left the door securely locked. I’d give something to get to the bottom of Johnson!”
Gilroy laughed.
“On the contrary, you’d give a good deal not to,” he gibed. “Johnson’s altogether too easy a problem at present. He’s got a cast-iron alibi, and even supposing that he did leave the door open on purpose, who on earth did he leave it open for?”
Fenn put down his knife and fork and leaned forward.
“Give your mind to this,” he said. “Some one put Stephens wise to the fact that Sir Adam kept money in the house. Common talk in a bar, Stephens called it. And that some one knew that the money was kept in the old man’s bedroom. Also, mark you, Stephens expected to find Sir Adam shut up in his study. And Johnson, we know, had just left him there. It’s not such a wild theory.”
“Johnson may have been in league with Stephens, of course,” agreed Gilroy thoughtfully. “But given that he was, and that he left the flat door open for Stephens, and it turns out that Stephens did actually leave the flat before six-forty-five, where are you then?”
“Playing Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark,” was Fenn’s crestfallen rejoinder, “unless we cast Jill Braid for the part. That’s where I’m up against it. If only you had been on the premises at the time it would give me something to build my hopes on! At least, you’d make a more convincing murderer than Webb!”
“Thanks! I was engaged on my lawful occasions and can prove it!”
He reverted unexpectedly to the subject when he was seeing Fenn out of the flat.
“Here’s a little ray of hope for you,” he suggested, under his breath. “If you’re as hard up as all that, what about our top-floor tenant as a possible suspect?”
He jerked his head in the direction of a man who was mounting the stairs from the hall.
Fenn’s answer was to step forward and place himself squarely in front of the new-comer.
“Hallo, Smith,” he said pleasantly enough, but there was an undercurrent of authority in his voice that was new to Gilroy. He realized, with a certain glee, that he was being vouchsafed the spectacle of his old friend in his professional capacity.
The upstairs tenant halted in surprise. Then an engagingly frank smile illuminated his countenance.
“Why, it’s Mr. Fenn!” he exclaimed. “I suppose it’s the poor old gentleman downstairs that’s brought you here.”
“That’s one of my little problems, certainly,” admitted Fenn. “But I’m always willing to take advantage of an opportunity. It’s a long time since we had a chat,”
The smiling eyes that never left Fenn’s for an instant seemed to harden, but the invitation, when it came, was cordial enough.
“If you’d care to step upstairs, Mr. Fenn!” said the man, moving to one side and waiting for the detective to pass him.
Gilroy, watching him, thought he had never seen a man with his faculties more keenly on the alert.
Fenn passed him and went up the stairs. Smith followed in silence. Gilroy watched them as they disappeared round the bend of the staircase.
“Well, I’m damned!” was his comment, as he went back into his flat.
Once inside Smith’s sitting-room, Fenn took up his position on the hearthrug, his back to the fire and his keen eyes roving round the room. It was a singularly characterless apartment. Beyond the fact that it contained the usual equipment of chairs and tables, and was clean and almost oppressively tidy, it gave no clue
to the habits or occupations of its tenants. Except for an expensive gramophone in one corner and a woman’s work things lying on the table, it might have been an unoccupied sitting-room in a second-rate hotel.
Smith seated himself on the edge of the table and waited.
Fenn knew only too well the lines on which the ensuing conversation would run. All through he would be forced to take the initiative, Smith’s task being to watch for any dangerous thrusts and parry them. And Fenn knew from experience that Smith was a past-master in the art of evasion. He opened his attack without any preliminary skirmish.
“I suppose you can give me an account of your movements between the hours of, say, six and seven-thirty on the night of November the sixth,” he said briskly.
Smith’s eyes twinkled with retrospective mirth.
“I had a visit from one of your men,” he said. “A bright young feller, but new to the force, I should say. He made a very careful report, wrote it down in his little book and all that, but it just happened that we’d never met before. I expect you’d have found it more interesting if we had.”
The shot went home. Fenn had been careless and he knew it. He had accepted the Edward Smith, commercial traveller, of the constable’s report without question.
“You’ve dropped the ‘Stanley,’ I see,” he remarked pleasantly.
“Edward S. Smith, Mr. Fenn,” corrected Smith. “Stanley always was my second name, you know, and one naturally gives one’s right name to the police,” he added virtuously.
Fenn nodded. Smith’s godmother and godfather had, apparently, been unnecessarily generous in the variety of names they had bestowed on him.
It was a phenomena peculiar to gentlemen of Smith’s persuasion.
He cast his mind back to the constable’s report.
“As far as I can remember, you were not in the flat at the time of the murder,” he said.
“That’s right,” agreed Smith amiably. “I got in about seven-thirty. I’d been down to Luton on business. No, I wasn’t buying hats,” he added, neatly forestalling the ironic comment that rose involuntarily to Fenn’s lips. “I don’t travel in them. A patent gas-saving device is my line at present. I’d like to sell you one, Mr. Fenn, if you can spare me a few minutes later. It’s a peach! There hasn’t been anything like it on the market before.”
“I’m quite ready to believe it,” commented Fenn dryly. “Where were you between six-forty-five and seven-thirty?”
“In Luton and getting back from Luton. My train arrived at St. Pancras at six-fifty. I went into the station bar and had a snack and then came on home. My wife’ll vouch for the time I got back.”
Fenn dropped his easy manner abruptly.
“That may be good enough for the local police, but it won’t do for me,” he said shortly. “I know you and I know Mrs. Smith! She’s a good wife, but a bad citizen. You’ll have to prove a better alibi than that, Smith.”
For the first time Smith’s composure seemed shaken. He hesitated.
“I didn’t meet a soul,” he said uncertainly. “The waitress in the station restaurant might recognize me. There was a crowd of people in the restaurant, though, and unless she’s Pelman’s pet pupil she’s hardly likely to.”
“Anybody see you get into the train at Luton?”
Smith shook his head, his lips twitching involuntarily. There was an answering gleam in Fenn’s eyes. The detective had no doubt but that the confidence man’s entry into the train had been as unobtrusive as possible.
“I don’t know any one at Luton except the chap I was doing business with,” was Smith’s noncommittal reply.
“And your wife was here waiting for you?” pursued Fenn inexorably.
The mask fell from Smith’s face. He became an ordinary, very perturbed, human being.
“My wife’s not in this, Mr. Fenn,” he said heatedly. “Why, she’d never even spoken to the old man.”
Fenn pursued his advantage. He knew Mrs. Smith, a frail, delicate little woman, whose strength lay in her guileless eye and deft fingers. Unless she were actuated by an almost insane fury she was physically incapable of inflicting the wound from which Sir Adam had died, but having got Smith on the hop he meant to keep him there. It was on the cards that he might know something. The difficulty would be to persuade him to speak.
“We know that there was a woman in Sir Adam Braid’s flat on the night he was killed,” he said, his eyes on Smith’s face. “She was there a few minutes before he was murdered and no one saw her leave this building. What’s more, she was having high words with Braid. We’re after that woman, Smith.”
“You won’t find her here, Mr. Fenn.” Smith had grown perceptibly paler, but he spoke with conviction. “I’m not concealing anything from you. My wife was in the flat, I’m not denying it and I can’t speak for her, because I was on my way home, as I said. But I’ll swear she had nothing to do with that job downstairs. You know her, Mr. Fenn! It doesn’t need me to tell you that she couldn’t hurt a fly, even if she wanted to. As for housebreaking, it’s not our line, and never has been. What should she do a thing like that for?”
“I might answer that travelling in gas contraptions isn’t your line and never has been,” answered Fenn dryly. “I don’t say that either of you are actually under suspicion, but you’d better get a move on with that alibi, and for the present you’ll both stay where I can lay my hand on you. If you or your wife can produce any kind of proof that she did not leave this floor of the building on the night in question, it may save a lot of unpleasantness. And if either of you saw or heard anything that may be of assistance to the police, you’d better look me up at the Yard.”
Leaving Smith to digest this rather drastic dose he made his way out of the flat. He had barely reached the door, however, before the man was after him.
“I may as well spill it,” he said. “You’re bound to get on to it, anyway, once you get back to the Yard. If you want to know, I was pulled in on the morning of November the seventh for sharping. A mug of an American had lost a pot of money the day before on that train I was speaking of, playing with some chap he knew nothing about, and, of course, he went to the police about it. Well, I was charged all right, but when it came to a parade, the American couldn’t identify and they had to let me go. I had nothing to do with it, anyway. I’d come up from Luton by an earlier train, and I was in this flat by five o’clock that evening. I was here with my wife, as she told your people, and I can vouch for it that she never left this flat while I was in it. That’s the truth, Mr. Fenn.”
Fenn glared at him.
“Chock-full of alibis, aren’t you?” he growled. “Just seem to take your choice, according to the circumstances. You told me five minutes ago that you were not in this flat because you were on that very train from Luton!”
“Well, wouldn’t you have done the same yourself?” was Smith’s unabashed reply. “When you first sprung the murder on me I naturally got the wind up, and that blooming train seemed the best way out. I didn’t know then that you were on to the wife. But I did come up by the earlier train, as I told the police at the time, and seeing that I was here and in a position to swear that we neither of us left this place that night, what could I do but tell the truth? It wouldn’t have been fair to her if I hadn’t. It is the truth this time, Mr. Fenn.”
“Take my advice and make up your mind which of the two crimes you haven’t committed and stick to it, and we’ll pull you in for the other,” was Fenn’s dour comment as he departed.
On arriving at the Yard he went at once to the Record Office. There, sure enough, was the report of Smith’s arrest on November the seventh for card-sharping on the London train on November the sixth. The American, on whose complaint he had been charged and who had lost over a hundred dollars, had confessed to being so inebriated on the day before as to have no clear recollection of the appearance of the ingratiating gentleman who had cleaned him out so neatly. He had been unable to pick out Smith when he was paraded before him, and on Mrs.
Smith’s added evidence that he was in their flat at the time the offence took place, the charge against her husband had fallen through.
By confessing that his wife’s evidence was false and pleading guilty to the minor offence of card-sharping, the confidence man could have cleared himself completely of any complicity in the murder of Sir Adam Braid. Rather than leave his wife to face the music alone he had deliberately placed himself under suspicion.
Fenn, who shared the conviction of the detective who had run Smith in that the man was guilty of the card-sharping offence and had only escaped identification by a miracle, took off his hat, metaphorically speaking, to Smith.
CHAPTER VII
Three mornings later, Fenn was sitting in his room at New Scotland Yard, his hands deep in his pockets, his pipe in his mouth, and his gloomy eyes fixed on the ceiling with an absorption that suggested he was deriving some obscure comfort from the contemplation of cracks and cobwebs. He was wishing, with all his heart, that whoever murdered Sir Adam Braid could have done so on a day when his granddaughter was not on the premises, in which case he would have been free to give his whole mind to a case which promised to be as involved as any he had come across in the course of his career. As it was, he pursued his investigations doggedly, with the conscientiousness that was part of his nature, but never ceasing to dread the possible results of his efforts.
The news that Miss Webb was asking to see him did not serve to lighten his depression.
He rose to his feet as she bustled in. She seemed even plumper and more ineffectual looking than usual.
“I know how busy you are, inspector,” was her greeting, “and I’m only going to keep you a minute. It is important, or I should never have had the courage to beard you in your den! It’s rather terrible, you know, to feel oneself positively surrounded by policemen! I suppose you’re so used to it that you don’t notice it!”
“Well, I’m one myself, you see. Perhaps that has something to do with it,” suggested Fenn, with a noble effort to be amiable, as he placed a chair for her.