He looked up as Mr. Budd stopped by the table.
“Well, look who’s ’ere,” he exclaimed. “I aint seen you for ages.”
“You nearly did, Harry—about three weeks ago,” remarked the big man, pulling up a vacant chair and lowering himself gingerly into it. “However, we’ll let that pass. I’m in search of information.”
A shadow passed over the broad, good-looking face of Mr. Bates.
“I’m no squealer,” he muttered.
“You were a pretty good friend of Sam Sprigot’s, wasn’t you?” inquired Mr. Budd.
“Poor old Sam,” said Harry Bates, shaking his head. “I read about that in the papers. Who did him in?”
“I don’t know—not yet,” said Mr. Budd.
“Queer business, eh?” said the other. “You on it?”
“Yes, I believe you can help. I’m hopin’ you can. . . .”
Mr. Monelli came through with a cup of coffee which he set down in front of the big man.
“On the ’ouse,” he said briefly and departed.
Harry Bates grinned.
“Not often ’e does that,” he remarked. “Break ’is heart to give anything away. I don’t see how I can help you—about Sam. I don’t know anything about it. . . .”
There was a wary expression in his small, dark eyes that convinced Mr. Budd that he was lying.
“I’ll tell you what I want to know, Harry,” he said, leaning forward across the table and lowering his voice. “Did you see or hear anything from Sam after he came out of stir?”
Harry Bates pushed aside his newspaper, fumbled in his pocket, took out a packet of cigarettes, stuck one between his rather thick lips, and lit. He performed these actions with great deliberation.
“Sam was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?” prompted Mr. Budd gently. “You’d like to know that the person what killed him was goin’ to pay for it, wouldn’t you? It wasn’t a nice killin’, you know.”
Harry blew out a cloud of smoke. His small eyes surveyed Mr. Budd shrewdly.
“I liked old Sam,” he said after a pause. “He was a good feller. I can’t tell you much because I don’t know much, but I’ll tell you what I do know.”
The big man pulled his chair a little closer to the table.
“Not here,” said Harry Bates. “D’you know that little teashop in Oxford Street—it’s just past the news theatre?”
Mr. Budd nodded.
“You go along there an’ wait for me,” said Harry. “I’ll be along in five or ten minutes.”
He picked up his paper and leaned back in his chair. Mr. Budd got up.
“So long, Harry,” he said and walked ponderously towards the exit.
“You finds him?” asked Mr. Monelli, drying a cup from a stack on the counter.
“You know I did,” answered Mr. Budd. “Might as well’ve saved meself the trouble.”
Mr. Monelli shrugged his fat shoulders.
“These fellers,” he said. “Like childers.”
Mr. Budd thought there wasn’t very much that was childlike about the customers who frequented Mr. Monelli’s establishment, but he kept the thought to himself, wished the proprietor good morning, and went out into the street. Two men who saw him leave the restaurant crossed hastily over to the other side of the road.
The stout superintendent had no difficulty in finding the teashop that Harry had mentioned, but there was a long string of people waiting to go in.
Mr. Budd frowned. It was the lunch hour. There wouldn’t be much chance of getting in here, and even if he did there would be no chance at all of talking to Harry and finding out what he had to tell. The only thing he could do was to wait until Harry Bates arrived and try and find another rendezvous. There was a pub on the corner a few doors up the street. That might do.
It wasn’t long before he saw Harry threading his way through the crowds on the pavement and went to meet him.
“I ought to have thought about its bein’ lunch time,” he said, when Mr. Budd explained the predicament. “All right, let’s go into the pub. You go along first. I don’t want to be seen talking to you. It’ll get me a bad reputation.”
The saloon bar was full, but there was plenty of room in one corner away from the bar. Mr. Budd ordered two pints of bitter and carried them over to a small table. Most of the customers were grouped at the bar, laughing and chattering, and there would be nobody near enough to overhear what they were saying.
In a few seconds, Harry Bates came in, gave a swift glance round to assure himself that there was nobody he knew, and joined Mr. Budd in the corner. He set the chair carefully, before sitting down, so that he had his back to the bar.
“Now, Harry,” said the big man. “Let’s hear what you’ve got to say.”
Harry took a long drink, set down his glass, and leaned forward.
“You’re goin’ to be disappointed,” he said in a low voice. “I can’t tell you very much. When Sam came out of stir, he phoned me. He hadn’t much money an’ he wanted to borrow some, see? Sam was all right about that. If you lent him money you could be sure of gettin’ it back. I arranged to see him at Victoria, under the clock. He wouldn’t go to “Spotties” or any of the other places. Under the clock at Victoria, he said an’ nothin’ ’ud shift him. Sam was an obstinate bloke an’ I knew it was no good arguin’, so at eight that evenin’ I went along—eight was the time he’d arranged. There was no sign of Sam when I got there an’ he didn’t turn up until twenty minutes past.
“You’re lucky I’m still here,” I said. “Another coupla minutes an’ I was goin’.” “I couldn’t get along before,” he said. “I got held up.” He was fidgety an’ excited, kept on lookin’ over his shoulder, an’ eyein’ all the people that was passin’. I suggested we should go along to one of the buffets an’ have a drink. Sam agreed, though I thought he seemed a bit reluctant, and when we was drinkin’ a coupla scotches I handed him over the money he’d asked for—twenty pounds.
“Thanks, Harry,” he said. “I’ll let you have this back in a week or two.”
“Got any plans?” I asked and he looked at me queerly over the top of his glass.
“I’m on to somethin’ really big,” he said seriously. “The biggest thing I’ve ever got hold of.”
“What are you goin’ to do?” I said jokingly, “rob the Bank of England?”
“It’s got nothin’ to do with robbery,” he answered. “It’s somethin’ I stumbled on by accident. It frightens me a bit. . . .”
“He looked scared. His hands were tremblin’ a bit an’ his eyes were shiftin’ all over the place. I tried to get him to tell me more about it, but he wouldn’t. ‘I got to be careful,’ he said, ‘but I’ll tell you this, Harry. I won’t have to bother with climbin’ pipes no more. I’ll be livin’ in luxury for the rest o’ me life.’ That’s all I could get out of him an’ that was the last I ever saw of him.”
“Or hear from him?” asked Mr. Budd.
“No, I heard from him,” said Harry Bates. “About a month later, it was. He sent back the twenty quid with a short note—only a few lines. ‘I’ll be seein’ you soon, Harry an’ many thanks. I’ll be amongst the aristocracy when you hear from me again. Good luck. Sam.’ That was all. I didn’t see or hear anythin’ more from him. The next thing I knew about him was that he’d been murdered.”
Harry Bates finished his beer, and Mr. Budd frowned. He hadn’t learnt very much but at least it advanced him that tiny bit further. Sam Sprigot had discovered something that he thought was going to bring him in a lot of money. It sounded to the big man like blackmail.
“I s’pose,” he said, “you didn’t see where this note with the money was posted?”
“Greystock,” answered Harry.
Greystock. The nearest town to the village of Marbury.
So that night, when someone had ended Sam Sprigot’s dreams of unlimited wealth in the old ruin of Jackson’s Folly, had not been the little crooks first visit to the neighbourhood. He had, at least for suff
iciently long to post a letter, been in Greystock. Had he been there during the whole period of those missing three months? If so why had he gone back to London and taken lodgings with Mrs. Bagley? And what was this stupendous thing he had accidentally discovered, which, in his own words, had “frightened him a bit”? That remark in his note to Harry Bates about the aristocracy. Could that have referred to the Conyers?
“An’ Sam never gave you any inkling of what this thing was ’e had discovered?” said Mr. Budd.
Harry Bates shook his head.
“Not a thing,” he declared. “Close as an’ oyster over it. I’ve told you all he told me.”
But he hadn’t. Long experience had taught Mr. Budd to know when a person was lying. It had become a kind of sixth sense. And he was pretty sure that Harry Bates knew something that he had not divulged concerning the late Mr. Sam Sprigot’s aspirations to wealth.
Chapter Thirteen
After leaving Harry Bates, Mr. Budd got on a bus and was taken with more or less swiftness to Whitehall. During the journey his mind was busily occupied with what he had just learnt, and there was a very thoughtful expression on his heavy face as he turned in at the entrance to Scotland Yard, nodded to the man on duty, and slowly walked up the stairs to his room. Going into his bare, cheerless office, he hung up his hat, sat down behind the desk, and clasping his hands over his capacious stomach, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
Anyone who might have looked in the room would have thought that the stout man was asleep, but they would have been very far from the truth. The alert brain behind the bovine appearance and slowness of speech, which many people had discounted to their subsequent undoing, was busy worrying like a ferret at the problem which its owner was trying to solve.
The big man had not brought the mournful Leek with him from Marbury, a fact for which the sergeant had been very thankful. He preferred the peace and quietness of Kenwiddy’s farm.
For nearly an hour, Mr. Budd remained lost in his thoughts, and then he roused himself, lit one of his atrocious black cigars, and picking up the house telephone asked to be put through to an extension number.
A few seconds after he had hung up the receiver, there was a tap on the office door, and a youngish man of nondescript appearance came in.
“Sit down, Willit,” said Mr. Budd, and Detective Constable Willit perched himself on the edge of a chair. “D’you know a feller called Harry Bates?”
The other nodded.
“Used to be mixed up in the tipster racket,” he said. “Goes in mostly for small racing swindles. He was in that greyhound doping business. . . .”
“That’s the feller,” said Mr. Budd. “Now, I want him tailed. I want him tailed night an’ day an’ a full report of where ’e goes an’ who he sees.”
“Okay,” said Willit.
“They’ll give you full particulars about him in Records,” went on the stout superintendent, “where ’e lives an’ his usual haunts. I want you to get onto it at once. Your relief ’ull be arranged for. I want to know everythin’ that feller does from now on, understand?”
Detective Constable Willit said he understood very well and departed.
Mr. Budd brushed the ash from the front of his waistcoat and went along to see the assistant commissioner.
Colonel Blair, as dapper and neat as usual, looked up as the big man came in.
“Hello, Budd,” he greeted. “I was just thinking about you. I thought you were at Marbury.”
Mr. Budd explained the reason why he was not.
“I see,” remarked the assistant commissioner, twiddling a pencil between his fingers. “Difficult case, eh?”
“Very, sir,” answered the stout superintendent. “There’s practically nothin’ to go on. I’m hopin’ that Harry Bates may give us a line.”
“You think he knows something he hasn’t told you?” said Colonel Blair, “Well, you may be right. What other lines are you following up?”
“Two,” answered Mr. Budd. “I want a detailed report on Sam Sprigot. Who his parents was, where ’e was born, everything about him. An’ I’d like the same thing with Sir Basil an’ Lady Conyers, sir.”
Colonel Blair made a brief note on a pad at his elbow.
“I’ll have that attended to,” he said. “It shouldn’t take very long.”
“There was a brother, sir—Francis Conyers. He blotted his copy book some years ago over a forged cheque, or somethin’ of the sort. I’d like to know all about that.”
The assistant commissioner scrawled another note.
“Where is he now?” he asked.
“Nobody seems to know, sir,” replied Mr. Budd. “He disappeared after this cheque business, or whatever-it-was, and nobody’s seen or heard of him since.”
“And, I suppose, he’s now the heir to the estate, eh?” said Colonel Blair. “Um, yes. I see the line you’re working on there. Anything else?”
“Well, sir,” said Mr. Budd, “there is one other thing. It seems that durin’ the war, the Germans dropped a feller in Marbury by parachute. This feller injured his leg in landin’ an’ had to hide up in Jackson’s Folly. . . .”
Colonel Blair’s eyes narrowed.
“Jackson’s Folly, eh?” he said. “Where Sprigot and Conyers were killed.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Mr. Budd. “I don’t think there’s any connection. . . .”
“You’re quite right not to neglect anything,” interrupted the assistant commissioner.
“He was captured by the Home Guard before he could get in touch with his ‘contact’,” said Mr. Budd. “Now, what I’d like to know is what happened to this feller, who ’e was, an’ whether the contact was ever found.”
Colonel Blair made a third note.
“I’ll get on to M.I.5 and ask them to look up their records,” he said. “It’s a long time ago but I expect they’ll still be able to let us have the information. You know, this is a queer business, Superintendent, and the queerest thing about it is that recurring nursery rhyme. Have you any theory to account for that?”
Mr. Budd shook his head.
“I haven’t any theory to account for anything, sir,” he replied candidly. “I’m just flounderin’ about in the dark tryin’ to get hold of something.”
“Which you usually do,” said Colonel Blair with a smile. “I’m quite happy to leave the matter in your hands. You always pull something out of the bag in the end.”
Mr. Budd was not feeling so optimistic as he went back to his office, But still, he had set a few wheels turning. Maybe, from the various results that would accrue there would be, as he had said, “something to get hold of”.
*
Mr. Harry Bates finished his coffee, lighted a cigarette, and sat at the stained table in “Spotties” smoking thoughtfully. He was trying to make up his mind on a course of action that had been hovering in his brain ever since he had read of the murder of his friend, Sam Sprigot.
The unexpected interview with Mr. Budd had rather taken him by surprise. He had not been prepared for that but, he hoped, that he had satisfied the stout superintendent with what he had told him.
Up to a point what he had said had been the truth. It was what he had not said—what he had kept back—that was the cause of his deep cogitation. For Sam had revealed a little more than he, Harry Bates, had told the big man. It was a very little, but it might, if it was handled properly, prove to be profitable.
The question that was troubling him at the moment was the best way to handle it.
Harry was no fool. The business in which Sam had got himself involved was dangerous. There was no doubt about that. The fact that Sam was dead was sufficient proof that it was dangerous, but there might be quite a lot to be got out of it—if it was handled right.
That was the crux of the whole thing—to handle it right.
He finished his cigarette and lighted another.
He was under no illusions regarding what Mr. Budd would do. He wouldn’t just accept his word that he h
ad told him all he knew. He was too cute for that. So what would he do? He’d have him watched, that’s what he’d do. Somebody ’ud be put on to tail him and that somebody would have to be shaken off before Harry could put into practice the idea which was then taking shape in his mind.
That would be fairly easy. Harry Bates had more than once succeeded in dodging a possible tailer. . . .
He looked at his watch. It was a little after six o’clock. He got up, said goodnight to the greasy Mr. Monelli behind the counter and went out into the street, strolling slowly off in the direction of Oxford Street. Without appearing to be the least interested, his eyes were vigilently on the look out for possible tailers, and he soon spotted the man who was casually walking along in his wake.
The same man had been on the other side of the road when he had come out of Spotties.
To make sure, Harry negotiated a number of side turnings, walking at the same leisurely pace. The man behind him was still there, at almost the same distance in his rear, when he once more came back to the main thoroughfare.
Harry smiled to himself. He continued on his way up Oxford Street until he reached the Circus. Here he paused on the edge of the pavement waiting for the traffic to stop so that he could cross the road. At least this was the impression he wished to give to the tailer. Out of the corner of his eye he saw, at last, what he was waiting for—a taxi for hire. He signalled the driver and before the man had time to pull up, had opened the door and jumped inside with a muttered “Victoria Station”.
The taxi gathered speed as Harry slumped down in a corner. After a moment or two, he cautiously looked out the little window at the back. Another taxi was speeding along in their wake. It was going fast and could easily have overtaken them but a few yards behind it slowed and, adjusting its speed to the other, followed behind.
Harry Bates smiled to himself. The “tail” had been lucky. There must have been another empty cab almost immediately behind the one he had got. Oh, well, he could elude the follower at Victoria. It ought to be easy.
The Nursery Rhyme Murders Page 9