by Frank Froest
‘I’m not saying that Treasury counsel would follow the line I’m laying down if we ever get Ling in the dock. There’s more than one thing that bears me out, however. A thread of cloth was found near the dead man which corresponds to a suit that Ling was wearing on at least one occasion. You, Mr Hallett, took off him too one or two things of importance, among them Mr Greye-Stratton’s missing pistol—the pistol which probably the murder was committed with.’
He roused himself, and tapped his pipe on the fender. ‘Now I promised you I’d lay down my hand—a thing I’ve not done to outsiders before a case was completed for twenty years. I have done it because I believe it will remove any scruples you may have in clearing up some matters. Miss Greye-Stratton—I may be wrong, but I don’t think so—has probably been actuated by an idea that her brother had committed a big crime, and a desire to save him from the consequences.
She looked up gravely. ‘I thought,’ she murmured in a low voice—so low that she was scarcely audible—‘that he might have shot my father in a fit of passion.’
‘I guessed there was something of that sort in your mind.’ He sat suddenly upright and slapped his thigh. ‘What a maundering old fool I am. Here I’ve been talking my head off, and I’ve clean forgot to say what I really meant to. Do you know, Miss Greye-Stratton, you’re not married at all? Ling was married before he met you.’
Jimmie Hallett’s face had surged a vivid scarlet and he felt his heart pumping like a steam piston. He stole a look at the girl as she scrutinised the detective, in wide-eyed amazement. Her eyes became detached for a moment, and met his. Then the flush of colour into her cheeks rivalled his.
‘Not married?’ she repeated.
‘I told you I was your fairy godfather,’ chuckled Menzies.
CHAPTER XXVII
A SYMPATHETIC grin was on the chief-inspector’s face.
‘That’s so,’ he said. ‘He was tied up tight to an actress in New York five years since. I gather the little woman doesn’t quite know what sort of a crook he is. There was a letter from her in your pocket this morning, Mr Hallett. I guess you either hadn’t the time or curiosity to read it? I sent a cable to New York, and the answer was brought out from the Yard to me here. He’s a married man O.K., and if we didn’t have this other thing up against him we could pull him for bigamy. The move smells of Gwennie Lyne. She wasn’t going to put her pals’ hooks into the money bags unless she’d got a collar and chain on him. If the part of the bridegroom had been played by a pukka single man she might have had to whistle for her share of the plunder. But a man who was already married couldn’t put the double cross on the gang.’
Jimmie’s spirits had unaccountably risen to the wildest exuberance. He clapped a hand down on Menzies’ shoulders with a force that caused the other to wince.
‘You garrulous old sinner,’ he exclaimed. ‘I take it all back. Consider yourself staked to the best dinner that this little old village can produce the minute you say you’ve got an evening.’
‘You take what back?’ demanded Peggy, more for the sake of covering a certain confusion than from any curiosity. Jimmie’s face grew hotter as he remembered the handcuffs.
‘There was a little academic discussion this morning on a point of professional ethics,’ said Menzies.
‘Hardly academic,’ laughed Jimmie. ‘I should call it a practical demonstration.’
‘We differed anyhow. But I’m being switched off my line. I’m just making clear, Miss Greye-Stratton, that you’ve got no family ties now to prevent you speaking out. I want you to tell me straightforwardly everything you know. Will you be as frank with me as I with you?’
The brief wave of happiness that had come to her with the knowledge that she was not tied to Ling was followed by a return of depression. ‘I am willing enough to tell you anything I can now,’ she said slowly. ‘But won’t it do when all this horrible business is over. I am tired, so tired.’
‘Come, Menzies,’ urged Jimmie, with a geniality that he had not always shown in his remonstrances to the detective. ‘You can see how it is. Another day won’t hurt. You don’t think Miss Greye-Stratton’s made of iron.’
Menzies took out his watch. ‘If it hadn’t been for me, young fellow, my lad,’ he said, ‘you’d still be playing piquet with Royal at the hotel. In half an hour I’ve got to be digging Mr Ling out, and I guess this young lady can stand a quiet talk, meanwhile. Now, Miss Greye-Stratton, please. Tell me everything your own way, and if any question occurs to me I’ll ask it.’
His manner, suave though his voice was, admitted of no further dispute. Even if Jimmie had been inclined to argue the question Peggy stopped him.
‘I’m unreasonable, Mr Menzies,’ she said. ‘I can see you’re quite right.’
‘Go on,’ he said, and lit a fresh pipe.
He smoked quietly while she told her story, occasionally interjecting a question as some point became obscure. An ejaculation of appreciation escaped him as she told how she had refused to be wife in anything but name to Ling.
‘Good for you, Miss Greye-Stratton.’
Her vivid face ebbed and flowed with colour as she went on. When she had concluded he scribbled a few Greek notes on the back of an envelope. ‘That bears out things as I placed them,’ he commented. ‘There’s a point that’s puzzling me, however. Your brother had a knife wound which he said was due to an accident. Do you believe that?’
The peremptory question took her unawares as Menzies had meant it to. She reflected for a second before replying. ‘No,’ she said, slowly. ‘I do not.’
‘Did he say anything more—no hint or explanation of any kind?’
‘He never said a word, and I never questioned him. In any case he was never in a condition to be questioned.’
The chief-inspector gnawed absently at his moustache. ‘I’ll own it puzzles me a bit,’ he said. ‘If it was Ling who did it, why didn’t he make a clean job of it? Anyway, why should he get Errol up here, and send for Miss Greye-Stratton to nurse him? He doesn’t do things like that.’
‘Remorse,’ suggested Jimmie.
Menzies smiled. ‘Try again. You don’t know Ling.’
‘It’s too far fetched, I suppose,’ said Jimmie, thoughtfully, ‘to think that it was done with the idea of bagging me. Besides, how should he judge that Pe—Miss Greye-Stratton would write to me?’
‘Much too far fetched,’ agreed the other man, drily. ‘But you’ve given me some sort of an idea. You were not the only person they wanted out of the way. If Miss Greye-Stratton took the bit between her teeth they would realise that she could have made things pretty hot for them. They would want to keep an eye on her. I suppose you are sure’—he addressed the girl—‘that Errol really was wounded?’ It wasn’t just a frame up?’
‘I’ll answer that he was a very sick man when I saw him,’ said Jimmie.
‘Yes, of course. I forgot your little scrimmage. Still, I think we’ve got a motive, and I’d sooner have a motive to build an assumption on any day than a heap of cigarette ash or scratches on a watch.’
‘I don’t see that it matters,’ exclaimed Jimmie, who secretly nursed a little contempt for what he considered the detective’s over-subtlety. ‘Isn’t it a by-point, however you look at it? You know that Ling did the killing. You can get him for that. All you’ve got to do is to catch him.’
Menzies’ smile broadened. ‘Now that is nice of you,’ he said suavely. ‘There’s only one little objection to it. I don’t know that he’s guilty. I don’t believe that he is. There never has been a case except when the murderer has been taken red-handed, of conclusive proof. It is only when you feel that a man is guilty that the worst difficulties begin to crop up. A detective has to examine every side-path, even if he goes off the main road to do it. His main road may be a cul-de-sac, and the apparent by-path the real main road—though in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it isn’t. I don’t like leaving things behind me. We’ll take it that so far as the wound is concerned it was no frame-up.
No sane person would believe that an injury like that was an accident. Now if Errol had got it in a row apart from this case he’d have no reason not to tell his sister. If Ling had done it, or had it done purposely, Errol probably would have been mad enough to give the gang away.’
‘Unless he was scared,’ said Hallett.
‘Precisely. Unless he was scared. But I don’t think he was scared. What I believed happened was that someone got out of hand, and tried to do Errol in. Who it was we’ll very likely find out when we know who’s standing in with Ling. The gang probably had something else mapped out to keep Miss Greye-Stratton under their wing, but they jumped to this racket.’ He pointed his pipe towards her. ‘It meant that if you had a sick brother you’d be as anxious to keep out of the way of the police as any other of them. Oh, they’re a wise mob. I’d bet any money, if I was a betting man, that you never had any suspicion of Mrs Battle being anything but what she was made up to be?’
Peggy stared at him. ‘Wasn’t she?’ she said.
‘She was Gwennie Lyne. There’s not an ounce of the Cockney about her.’
‘I’d have sworn it was she when I came out last night,’ said Jimmie.
‘I wish to blazes you’d have said so, then,’ said Menzies. He glanced at his watch again. ‘Well, if anything more occurs to either of you people perhaps you’ll let me know? I’ve got to get to work again. I’ve sent for a police matron and a nurse, Mr Hallett, so perhaps you’ll stay with Miss Greye-Stratton till they come? They’ll be able to make arrangements.’
Jimmie’s eyebrows jumped up, but the girl was before him. ‘A police matron?’ she repeated.
‘I could understand a nurse,’ said Hallett. ‘But as Miss Greye-Stratton says, why a police matron? You’re not proposing to put her under—under any restaint?’
A little flash of temper showed in the chief-inspector’s face. It was gone instantly. He placed his hands on the sides of his chair, and heaved himself up ponderously. ‘Not in the least,’ he said, urbanely. ‘I’m only remembering that a little while ago some people preferred to try to burn her to death rather than run a risk of her telling what she has told. I don’t believe she’s in any danger now, but I should deserve to be broke if I didn’t see that she was protected. That’s why I sent for the matron, and what’s more’—he thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and jingled some coins—‘she won’t be left alone night or day now till this case is over.’
Peggy’s eyes met Hallett’s, and in their blue depths there lurked an appeal. Torn as she had been by the travail of the last few days, she instinctively shrank from contact with strangers. It was not that she did not see and understand the reasonableness of Menzies’ proposition. It was just one of those psychological phenomena of which there is no explanation. She had a latent impression, conjured up by the use of the word police-matron, of a hard-featured, strident-voiced disciplinarian, and she still retained enough of her old independent spirit to resent even the suggestion that she should be placed under any control.
Hallett answered the appeal.
‘You’re going a little beyond your right, Menzies. If Miss Greye-Stratton doesn’t object I haven’t another word to say. But she’s a free agent, and you can’t force protection on her against her will. So far as that goes, I should consider it a privilege if she’d allow me—’
Her face gleamed with gratitude. ‘I could go back to my flat,’ she cried, ‘and I could get a friend to come in to stay with me.’
Their failure to see his point of view exasperated Menzies, the more especially as he had been at some trouble to send for a matron of his acquaintance, the antithesis of Peggy’s imaginings—a little grey-eyed person, whose sympathetic tact and good nature had more than once tamed even the fiercest of suffragettes who came under her influence.
‘You’re a pair of young fools,’ he said bluntly.
Jimmie bowed.
‘You’d better get it out of your heads that I’m going to stand for any of this nonsense,’ he went on. ‘A fine thing to have you blundering round London on your little own if Ling or any of the others slipped us now. I tell you, any danger you were in before wouldn’t be a circumstance to what it would be then. We’ve stirred up this hornet’s nest, and they’re ready to sting. They won’t stand on ceremony if they can put anyone who can testify them down and out, believe me.’
‘That’s a bluff,’ said Hallett, coolly. ‘You’re trying to frighten Miss Greye-Stratton. I guess she’ll take the risk as I will.’
‘I guess she won’t,’ said Menzies, a little flushed about the temples. He was thoroughly honest in his belief that she might find herself in peril if she were allowed to go without surveillance at this stage. At the back of his mind, too, there lurked a suspicion that he had perhaps exposed his hand too openly, and until matters had matured he didn’t want to take any chances.
‘She’s been shaken up a bit,’ he went on, ‘or she’d see that it would be sheer stupidity to get out of touch with us—sheer fatuous stupidity.’
‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’ demanded Jimmie. ‘She naturally prefers her own friends, and I will say I agree with her. Going to threaten to arrest her as you did me?’
The detective cocked a moody eye at him. ‘Something of the kind. Don’t you forget I’ve got power to detain a person on suspicion without making any actual charge. What’s to hinder me doing that to both of you if you persist in this attitude?’
‘Surely,’ persisted Jimmie, ‘considering what Miss Greye-Stratton has passed through—’
‘That’s just what I am considering. I hate to use the appearance of force, but if you won’t be reasonable I’ve got to see that precautions are taken for her own sake. Now wait a minute. Forget I’m a police officer for a minute. Miss Greye-Stratton, I’m sure I’m speaking for my wife when I ask you to be our guest for a few days. We’ll do our best to make you comfortable.’
She almost laughed in her relief. ‘Thank you very much,’ she said. ‘It’s silly of me, I know; but I just hate the idea of a police-matron. It would make me feel as if I really was a criminal.’
‘That’s all right, then,’ he said, and smiled across at Hallett. ‘Any objections?’ he asked.
‘You’re a sport—sometimes,’ said the young man, and held out his hand.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE minute search of the enclosed area on which Weir Menzies had set his heart he knew to be no trifling business. The crowds both inside and outside the still unbroken cordons had thinned as the fire burnt out, and no promise of further spectacular action presented itself.
So far as was humanly possible the detectives and uniformed police had seen that no unauthorised person had entered or left the cordon. If Ling had ever been inside they were confident he could not have broken out.
Yet none knew better than the chief-inspector that the raid did not bear the same promise of success as it might have done had it been conducted without warning. He had a high respect for the brains and audacity of both Gwennie Lyne and Ling, and though he believed he had managed to isolate them as it were in an island of some hundreds of houses, at the back of his mind he was not altogether confident of the result.
The whole district was a human rabbit warren. In the majority of the houses one might have graded the occupants as tenants, sub-tenants, sub-sub-tenants, and sub-sub-sub-tenants, according to the sleeping capacity. He had known four separate families occupy one room—each with a corner of their own, and with at least one of the families taking in a lodger.
The sifting of the runs were going to take time. Enquiries which in a better class district might have resulted in something tangible were not to be thought of. The breed of liar who inhabited those slums would talk—oh, yes, they would talk. A flood of information could be let loose at a second’s notice—and it would be information such as they thought was wanted. They would not hurt the feelings of the police on any account, and the things that might be disagreeable would be scrupulously kept back.<
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Moreover, the difficulty of the search was going to be increased by a number of people who had their own reasons for avoiding association with the police.
Menzies bit his lip as Foyle, the collar of his waterproof well turned up to protect his face from the driving rain, approached.
‘Nasty weather for a job like this,’ he commented. ‘How did you get on?’ He jerked his head towards the public-house.
‘Oh, her,’ Menzies shrugged his shoulders. ‘That was as easy as pie. She coughed up everything. She’s a good girl, and I’ve invited her to meet Mrs Menzies.’
The superintendent wiped the rain-drops off his pince-nez. ‘I sometimes think you’re more human than you give yourself out to be,’ he observed drily. ‘You’ve been the dickens and all of a time in there. Have you forgotten Ling? You’ve stopped this rats’ hole. When are you going to begin to dig out?’
‘Might as well begin, I suppose,’ agreed Menzies, a little doubtfully. ‘We’ll have the streets cleared absolutely first, I think.’
No one of the scores of detectives took any part in this opening move. A dozen uniformed men began to steadily sweep away the few remaining groups of spectators. There was nothing unusual to be noticed about this process except by those individuals who had no retreat within the surrounded area, and so were driven by ones and twos on to the detachments still lined across the roadway.
They were dealt with with swift precision. There were few questions and no argument—at least upon the side of the police. The senior officer at each barrier had a formula. ‘You will have to accompany a constable to the station until you have given an account of yourself, and inquiries have been made.’
From that edict there was no appeal. Menzies’ net was a wide one, and he was willing to accept the risk of some estimable citizen being caught in it, and raising a storm about his head.