by Sapper
But the man called Emil took no notice. His revolver had dropped to his side: his gaze was riveted on the broken window.
“When did that happen?” he said slowly.
“What the ’ell’s that to do with thee?”
“Silence, you fool!”
His glance wandered to the broken cover of the stuffed weasel, and finally rested on the stone itself, which he bent down and picked up. Then, balancing it in his hand, he fixed the large young man with a pair of dark, penetrating eyes.
“When did this happen?” he repeated softly.
“What’s that to do with thee?”
“Who threw this stone through the window?”
“Danged if I knows, mister.”
“How long ago did it happen?”
For the fraction of a second the young man hesitated: then he made up his mind he would tell the truth. It seemed to him that by doing so he stood a better chance of getting some light thrown on a mystery that was growing more incomprehensible every minute.
“Nigh about ten minutes,” he said. “T’wor that that took me down to gate.”
“So.” The other’s eyes bored into him. “So. And you did not see the man who threw the stone?”
“Noa.”
“Did he call out to you? Speak to you?”
“Noa.”
“What did you do after it happened?”
“Got cap and went to gate with pups.”
“And you saw no sign of him?”
“Noa.”
The man called Emil crossed to the window and shouted, and his companion who had discovered the blood in the road joined him at once. They stood conversing in low voices in a tongue which the large young man recognised as German. One or two stray phrases came to his ear: “dummer bauer” (imbecile peasant)… “zeit verwendung” (waste of time); remarks which he had no difficulty in interpreting. Up to date, at any rate, it was clear that he had bluffed them into thinking he was a local product. But what infuriated him was that he was still as far off as ever from discovering what all the excitement was about. And then suddenly he caught another sentence: “sich versicheren” (better make sure).
Better make sure. Sure of what? He was not left long in doubt, The second man vaulted through the open window and vanished upstairs. His steps could be heard going into each room above: then he came down again and went into the kitchen.
“Nichts” (nothing), he said, reappearing.
“Search him,” ordered his leader, and the large young man recoiled a pace.
“’Ere – wot do ’ee think ’ee be a’doing of?” he cried, only to find the revolver pointing unwaveringly at his head.
“Put your hands above your head!”
The order was curt, and, after a pause, the large young man obeyed. Not that there was anything incriminating in his pockets, except that confounded Free Forester tie, and his pulse beat a trifle faster when he saw it extracted and thrown on the table. Worse still, it fell in such a position that the name of the shop where it had been bought lay uppermost for all to see, and Norfolk yokels rarely buy their neckwear from Mr Black, of Jermyn Street. But his luck held; neither man paid any attention to it whatever. Evidently they were looking for something else, and the question which began to hammer at his brain, even before he was allowed to put his hands down, was – what? Assuming that he was a labourer, as they undoubtedly did, what under the sun could they expect to find in his pockets which could possibly prove of the slightest interest to them?
At last the searcher was satisfied, and once again the two men held an earnest conversation. But this time their voices were so low that the listener could hear nothing. Evidently the man who had searched him was urging Emil to do something, and Emil was doubtful. At length, however, he seemed convinced, and having nodded his head two or three times, his companion returned to the car and restarted the engine, leaving Emil and the large young man alone.
“Can you keep your mouth shut, my man?”
The rustle of notes came pleasantly to the ear.
“If so be, mister, that folks make it worth my while.”
“A lunatic has escaped from a private asylum,” said Emil, “and he is the poor fellow who threw the stone through your window. We are trying to find him, but we do not wish it talked about. Here are two pounds which will pay for mending the glass.”
He placed the notes on the table, and the large young man eyed them greedily.
“In a day or two,” continued the other, “I shall be returning this way, and I shall make a point of calling in at the pub. And if I find that no one knows anything about this there will be three more to mend the cover of the stuffed animal. But if I find that people do know, why then – God help you!”
He said the last three words very softly, and the large young man stared at him thoughtfully. For the moment he had forgotten his role of bucolic yokel; he was only conscious that opposite him was standing a very dangerous customer. And as his eyes fell on that tell-tale tie lying on the table he became conscious also of a profound feeling of relief that his vis-à-vis’ cricketing education had been neglected.
“You understand what I say?”
“Aye, mister. I’ll say nowt.”
With a nod the man called Emil left the room and strode down the garden path. And it was not until the sound of the engine was getting faint in the distance that the large young man stretched himself and lit another cigarette.
“What the devil does it all mean, Jerry?” he said, apostrophising the bulldog. “Why does Mr Emil tell me such a fatuous lie, even if he does think I’m a half-wit? Why do people throw bricks through the window, and leave pools of blood in the road? Presumably there is some reason, but for the life of me I can’t see what it is at the moment.”
He glanced at his watch: it was nearly one o’clock, and he gave a prodigious yawn.
“Tomorrow we will battle with the enigma,” he announced. “Tomorrow father will bring the grey matter to bear on what is at present shrouded in impenetrable gloom. Tonight – bed.”
And even as he spoke, sharp and clear through the stillness there came the sound of one solitary shot.
The dogs stirred; the large young man stiffened abruptly. The noise had come from the direction in which the car had gone, and he waited tensely. Silence: the sound was not repeated. But there had been no mistaking what it was. Someone had fired a revolver.
“Stay where you are, boys!”
The front door banged behind him, and the dogs, after one wistful look, relapsed once more into slumber, as their master, running with the easy stride of a born athlete, followed the car. The mist was still heavy, but as he got farther from the cottage, clear pockets began to appear from time to time. And it was as he was passing through one of these, that he heard in front of him the thrumming of an engine. He had caught up with the car.
He halted abruptly; then, getting on to the grass verge, he crept forward cautiously. The noise of the engine grew louder; he could hear voices ahead. And then suddenly, looming out of the fog which had again closed down on the road, he saw the red tail light of the car.
Inch by inch he moved towards it, fearful that at any moment a sudden eddy of breeze might clear the mist away and show him up. But he need not have worried: he had arrived at the end of the entertainment. He was still two or three yards from the back of the car when the driver let in his gear, the red light disappeared into the fog, and half a minute later all was silent again.
The large young man stepped out into the road and moved a few paces forward. What had they found in that particular spot to fire at? Was it the man they were looking for – the man who had presumably thrown the stone through the window? And even as he asked himself the question there came the ominous answer. No small patch this time, but a great dark pool stained the road at his feet. Blood again, and he grunted savagely.
“The poor devil must have damned near bled to death,” he muttered under his breath.
With the help of a box of matc
hes he searched the surrounding ground, but he could find nothing. At one point the grass seemed a little beaten down, but whether that had been done by the man in the car or by somebody else earlier in the day it was impossible to tell. And at last he gave it up and started back to the cottage.
He walked slowly, his hands in his pockets. Try as he would, he could get no possible solution that fitted. There always seemed to be something that refused to come into line. If, as appeared obvious, a wounded man was being pursued by the occupants of the car – a wounded man, moreover, who was capable of throwing a stone with considerable force, and after doing so of walking or crawling over a quarter of a mile – why had he not come to the cottage? Answer – because he guessed the cottage would be searched. Then why thrown the stone? What good could it possibly do?
He opened the gate and turned up the path, vainly racking his brains for a solution. The dogs stirred lazily, and for a while he stood in the door staring round the room. And then his eyes narrowed. The things on the table had been moved. The oil bottle and rag were not in the same position; the gun itself was not where he had left it.
Quietly he walked across, and sitting down in the chair he opened the drawer of the table. And there he found proof positive; some papers which had been in front were now pushed to one side. Someone had been in the room in the last quarter of an hour. The two notes still remained on the cloth: it was clearly not the work of a tramp or a passing thief. So there was no doubt left in his mind as to whom it was the work of. Somebody had been left behind when the car drove away with instructions to watch the cottage, and he had seized the opportunity of the owner’s absence to search it. The point was whether he was still there.
The large young man’s eyes strayed towards the kitchen door: it was as he had left it. Unlikely, he reflected, that the man would be in the house, but he decided to make sure. He sauntered across and flung the door open; the room beyond was empty. Presumably therefore, if his visitor was there at all he was outside, hiding somewhere in the little garden.
There the dogs would come in. Only too well did their master know the unfailing courtesy with which they all three welcomed strangers inside the house: in all probability they had sat round the man as he searched hoping for biscuits. Outside it would be a very different matter.
“Jock! Jerry!”
He opened the front door, the terrier and the bulldog beside him.
“See him off! Good dogs! See him off!”
And then things happened quickly. Like a streak of lightning the terrier shot across a flower bed, barking furiously; his grunting companion at his heels. Came a commotion in some shrubs, and a yell of terror followed by ominous tearing sounds. Then footsteps going at speed up the road, urged on evidently by Jock.
Not so Jerry. Not for him such violent exercise at these ungodly hours: besides, his part of the performance was over. Snorting dispassionately, he waddled into sight, and deposited at his master’s feet the spoils of war. Then he returned to his basket, whilst the large young man examined the catch.
“First blood to us, Jerry,” he remarked approvingly. “The seat of his pants, or I’m a Dutchman. That’ll larn the blighter. For all that, I wish to Heaven I could think why we are thus honoured.”
He gave another vast yawn, and went over to the window; whatever the solution of the mystery might prove to be, there was nothing more to be done that night. The cottage did not boast of a telephone, and the nearest police station was five miles away. And since his car was being repaired in Sheringham, and would not be back till the following morning, there was no possible method of getting there except by walking, the mere thought of which caused him to break into a cold sweat.
Jock had returned, and his master pulled down the lower sash of the window. Broken glass fell on the floor, though most of it still remained between the two panes – large, jagged pieces, wickedly dangerous for dog’s paws. So he raised the top sash carefully, and even as he put out one hand to catch the rest, he saw it. In between the fragments lay a piece of crumpled paper.
For a moment or two its significance did not strike him, and he carried the handful of glass over to the table. Then he extracted the paper and looked at it. In the centre was a frayed hole, and there were two or three crimson smears near it. But it was the scrawled words that riveted his attention.
Mary Jane. Urgent. G G Pont. A5.
He had the greatest difficulty in making out the words, which had been written with a blunt pencil. And when he had deciphered them, they did not seem to convey much. But, as he began to reason things out, the piece of paper conveyed a great deal. Things, at last, were becoming clearer, and with increased lucidity came increased caution. The mist had lifted; the road was deserted, but the large young man went to the window and pulled down the blind. So this piece of paper was what his visitors had been looking for. The writer must have wrapped it round the stone, and thrown it through the window. And the glass cutting it, had left the stone free to go on, whilst the wrapping had remained between the two panes – the one place where no one had thought of searching.
Thoughtfully he folded the paper up and put it in his pocket. And had the man called Emil seen Hugh Drummond’s expression as he blew out the lamp, it might have caused him food for thought.
Chapter 2
It has been stated somewhere that men can be divided into two classes – those who can and those who cannot stop a dog fight. With equal justification the classification might be, those who look for trouble and those who do not. So that it was a trifle unfortunate for the nocturnal motorists that by no possible stretch of imagination could the recipient of the brick be placed in the second category.
Hugh Drummond had come to his old nurse’s cottage, during her temporary absence, for a few days duck shooting, but with the arrival of that cryptic message out of the fog all ideas of that innocent pastime had at once left his head. And when he awoke the next morning to find the sun pouring through the window of his bedroom he was still of the same way of thinking.
That he ought, as a right-minded citizen, to take the message and story to the police was obvious. The trouble was that he did not feel in the least degree like doing so. A hard-worked body of men: it struck him that it would be a crime to overburden them still more. Besides, he felt that the reception of his story by the local constable would probably leave much to be desired. But for the broken windows of the parlour he himself could almost have believed the whole thing to have been a nightmare. What then was the reaction of the village guardian of the peace going to be?
A cheerful rat-tat on the door announced the arrival of the post and Drummond put his head out of the window.
“Morning, Joe. Anything for me?”
“No, sir,” said the postman. “Two for Mrs Eskdale. Be she coming back this morning?”
“She is, Joe.”
The postman’s glance strayed to the parlour window.
“Good Lord, sir! what have ’ee been doing here?”
“Got angry with it and bit it, Joe,” answered the other with a grin. “Chuck the letters through the bottom hole into the parlour.”
The postman did as he was asked, still clearly intrigued beyond measure at the broken glass.
“It was all right yesterday evening, sir,” he remarked.
“Indigestion in the middle of the night, Joe: eating glass is the best thing in the world for it.”
“Strikes me a motorcar had indigestion up the road there, too: I never did see such a pool of oil. Ten times the size of that there one outside your gate.”
“What’s that, Joe?”
Hugh Drummond, who had slipped on a shirt and a pair of flannel trousers, appeared at the door.
“Oil outside the gate? Let’s go and have a look at it.”
The dew was still heavy on the grass as the two men strolled down the path, with the dogs behind them.
“B’ain’t nothing to pool up further,” repeated the postman. “There it be.”
“So I see,
” said the other thoughtfully. “Yes – that’s oil right enough.”
“Darned near skidded in other patch, I did.” The postman prepared to mount his bicycle. “Dratted stinking machines, I calls ’em. Well, good morning, sir.”
“Morning, Joe.”
For a moment or two it was on the tip of his tongue to ask this reservoir of local gossip if any strangers had been seen in the neighbourhood, but he refrained. If they had, he reflected, Joe would have passed it on by now; and if they had not it would only whet still more that worthy’s insatiable curiosity, already strained to bursting point by the broken window.
He watched the postman cycle away; then he again looked at the pool of oil. Nothing very interesting about it, except one thing. It exactly covered and obliterated the pool of blood which had been there a few hours previously.
“Interesting,” he muttered to himself. “Very interesting. One wonders excessively.”
He whistled the dogs to follow him and started up the road. He did not wonder at all: he knew what he was going to find, but it was better to make certain. And sure enough he had only gone a bare quarter of a mile when he saw a large dark patch in the dust in front of him. There was no mistake about it: beside it was the beaten-down bit of the verge. This was the place where he had overtaken the car.
For a while he stood there smoking thoughtfully. This oil had not been put down at the time – that he was prepared to swear. Therefore someone had been sent back during the night to do it. A clumsy way of covering their tracks: oil does not generally flow from a motorcar quite so prolifically. Besides, this was new oil, and not old stuff from the sump. At the same time it was difficult to see what better method could have been thought of on the spur of the moment. And one thing it proved conclusively: Mr Emil and Co. were desperately anxious to blush unseen.
He strolled back to the cottage, where a loud hissing noise in the kitchen announced that the kettle was boiling, and made himself some tea. As a cook he did not excel, but having raided the local hen he was proceeding to boil the fruit of her labours, when a knock on the front door and a chorus from the dogs proclaimed a visitor.