A wide replica of his chief’s smile appeared upon Curtis’s face but only to fade almost as soon as it had come. Curtis shook his head. ‘I’m afraid, sir,’ he said, ‘I don’t see it. I thought I did for a minute, but even if we did get pictures of everyone who posts letters on a day when this ’ere Butcher posts a letter, I don’t see how we’re that much better off as you make out, because—’
Pike cut across this speech. ‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘be a fool! Even if you didn’t know it, you must’ve realised that by this time I’ve got an arrangement with the postmaster that the postmen making each collection from the boxes put each box’s lot into a separate little bag so that instead of the letters being mixed up together, we know, after every collection, which letters have come out of which box.’
Curtis raised thick, astonished brows. ‘I didn’t know that, sir,’ he said.
Pike snapped at him. ‘Well, you ought to’ve guessed. The only thing that can go wrong with this is if it’s the post-master or one of the postmen who’s the Butcher—then we’re pipped, but it’s a good move. It’s an idea. It’s the best idea I’ve had since I’ve been down here.’ He went to the door. ‘Now get a hat and coat and come along.’
CHAPTER XV
I
AT seven-thirty upon the next morning, which was that of Saturday, December 8th, the telephone in Miss Marable’s hall rang shrill and impatient. It went on, at first intermittently and then without break, until—still rather sleepy-eyed, the elder of Miss Marable’s two ‘dailies’ stopped its ringing with her ‘’Ullo!’
The telephone was curt and official, and, to Janet, a thought alarming. It was, it said, speaking for the Chief Constable and wished to talk with Mr Pike. Janet, stammering but ultimately clear, stated that she would call Mr Pike.
But she did not call Mr Pike because Mr Pike was not there. Mr Pike’s bed had been slept in but Mr Pike must have risen and gone out very, very early, because she had entered the house at six forty-five and she knew that, between then and now, no one had so much as moved within the house.
All this Janet, still stammering a little, eventually told the telephone … The telephone, human anger destroying much of its officiality, would leave no message for Mr Pike. The telephone, brusquely, cut itself off and Janet went once more about her work.
Mr Pike, she noted, was not in to breakfast, which began at eight-fifteen—for what Miss Marable called her ‘town-birds’—and ended at ten for Miss Marable’s ‘lazybones.’ But Mr Pike came in at a quarter to eleven. He was smiling ever so pleased like and yet he didn’t seem quite hisself like, for he took no notice of Janet at all when he brushed by her in the passage although usually he was one who had a pleasant word for everyone … It seemed to Janet as if Mr Pike was so pleased and sort of excited like that he couldn’t properly think about where he was going and what he was doing …
Janet was right. Pike was pleased indeed with his morning’s work. It had been a tough job to do in the time, not only without help but also with the necessity for secrecy making it the more difficult. But it had been done and well done … He went upstairs for a belated shave whistling beneath his breath. And then he passed the door behind which lay Molly Brade and the whistling ceased and the half-smile faded and once more the colour left his face and the harsh deep lines were graven upon it again.
But he was all the more pleased with the morning’s work, for this seemed to him the first really powerful move against this powerful devil. He set about his shaving and, while the razor worked, went over this work in his mind.
There were thirteen pillar-boxes in Holmdale including that in the wall of the main post office. And now, unknown to anyone, each of these thirteen boxes had trained upon it a cinematograph camera. It was the secrecy which had made the work so hard and so pardonably exhilarating. But fortune had been with him to this extent—out of the thirteen boxes no less than eight had untenanted houses near enough to them and in such relative positions that the cameras, unseen, could be worked from within them through the windows. Getting the men and the machines into these houses without being seen by patrols or neighbours had been no small task for the short time they were forced to allot to it. But Curtis had been invaluable. They had had—successfully as it turned out—to chance the neighbour problem, but the real danger of the patrols Curtis, carrying out his own plan, had averted. Each time there was a likelihood of patrols seeing an entrance, Curtis had gone on ahead and, on pretence of being on a surprise inspection, delayed the patrol long enough for the entry to be made and the rest of the party to hide or pass along by another way.
Of the remaining five boxes, three had been covered—as late, these three, as nine o’clock—by a room to let in an adjoining house being taken with bona-fides supplied by Pike as guarantee. The cameras, not being of the very large, heavily-tripoded kind, had been skilfully camouflaged as ordinary baggage and thus, as it were, had helped themselves in by the very respectability of their seeming.
Two boxes only had it been impossible to cover from houses … Pike, wiping the soap from his face, frowned again in memory as he had frowned in thought at the time; smiled again in memory as he had grinned with relief when the idea had come to him … Facing each of these two boxes, all day, would be a broken-down car, an ostensible mechanic busily tinkering beneath its bonnet or even chassis. And, sometimes in the car and sometimes beside it, would be its ostensible owner … A good thing—a very good thing—that Curtis had brought more than one man to each machine; and a better thing that, among the cameras, someone had had the foresight to include two newly-patented, no bigger than an ordinary snapshot-box and as simple to handle …
Pike finished his shaving. Pike, having put on fresh linen, looked at his watch. His lips pursed themselves into a soundless whistle. He sat down at his table, reached for pen and paper, chewed for a moment at the penholder and began busily to write. He seemed in a hurry. The pen scratched and spluttered and ran on. Three sheets he covered with precise, angular script.
He threw down the pen at last, dabbed the last sheet upon the blotter and then, folding it with its fellows, thrust the small wad into a pocket and looked round the room for his hat …
II
‘God Almighty!’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Where in the Lord’s name’ve you been, Superintendent? Been lookin’ for you and huntin’ for you all over the blasted shop. Had to start without you … What you been at?’
Pike sat down. Facing him across Jeffson’s table the Chief Constable looked like an overgrown and ill-tempered schoolboy. One at each side of him sat Farrow and Davis. In the background Jeffson hovered like a burly, solid ghost …
Pike felt for the Chief Constable—a man out of his depth as they all, perhaps, were out of their depth; but a man for whom the depths held strange and worried fears to mangle the fair smoothness of a life till now too placid.
‘Sorry, Sir Gerald,’ said Pike smoothly. ‘I’d no intention of keeping you waiting …’
‘Where’ve you been, man?’
‘Nowhere, sir.’ Pike was gentle with the Chief Constable. ‘Only in my rooms. I’ve worked out a scheme.’ He pulled out the three sheets of paper.
The Chief Constable snatched them with a hand that shook so that the stiff sheets rattled against each other. He spread them out on the desk with little exasperated thumps. He grunted, and bent over them. He read in a silence broken only by the sound of his own laboured breathing. He looked up at last. Some of the tension had gone from his face. The frown between his brows was no longer so deep and, as he looked at Farrow and David, his heavy-lipped mouth twitched to something like a smile. He said, breaking his speech with swings of his head and body as he turned from Davis to Farrow and Farrow to Davis:
‘Dammit, that’s good! … Damn good! … It’s clever, that’s what it is. Downright clever!’
‘What’s clever, sir?’ Farrow was blunt.
Davis said nothing and sniffed over saying it.
‘What’s clever, sir?’
Farrow said again.
‘This,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘This.’ He tapped upon the sheets of paper covered with Pike’s writing. ‘This, man. Briefly, the Superintendent’s suggestion is that we should make …’ He broke off. He looked at Pike. ‘Perhaps you’d put it shorter and quicker than I would, Superintendent. I won’t pass these papers round, I think your talk’d be quicker. We can file your notes.’
Pike nodded. ‘Thank you, sir.’ He looked at Davis, then at Farrow. He said: ‘Briefly, my plan was to advertise to Holmdale generally that those citizens wishing to assist the police in discovering the identity of the Butcher should send along a statement, witnessed by one or more of their friends, as to what they were doing at the time of the last murder … Purely a voluntary measure, of course, but a useful and, as you might say, patriotic one.’
Davis sniffed. ‘Don’t see it. We’ll only be snowed under with papers. That’s what we’ll be.’
Farrow turned on him. ‘And what if there was hundreds of these alibis! Only wants a good clerk to deal with ’em and classify ’em like … I see the Superintendent’s idea.’ He looked at Pike with a certain warmth of admiration. ‘I see the Superintendent’s idea,’ he said again. ‘He knows we’d get hundreds of these things—thousands of ’em—and he knows that when we get thousands of ’em we could discount all the thousands that bore reading and enquiry if necessary, thus, Davis me lad, what they call narrowin’ our field.’
Davis sniffed again. ‘Can’t say,’ he said, ‘that I think much of it.’ He paused, and added: ‘With all due respect, of course.’
‘Any proposal,’ said the Chief Constable not without pomposity, ‘that narrows our field is a move which must at least be considered.’ He looked at Pike, ‘Suppose, Superintendent, that you tell us really what you think of this scheme of yours yourself.’
Pike shrugged. ‘Not much, sir. Not a great deal, that is. But I do think it’s worth trying. As Inspector Farrow said just now, it narrows our field and while we’re doing nothing we might just as well, you might say, do something.’
‘Ha!’ For the first time in forty-eight hours the Chief Constable laughed; or tried to laugh. ‘But I see,’ he said, ‘what you mean, Superintendent.’ Once more he looked from Farrow to Davis from Davis to Farrow. ‘What do you think?’
Farrow was emphatic in assent. Davis, giving a little under the pressure of majority opinion, nodded non-commitally.
‘How do you propose …’ began the Chief Constable, looking at Pike; and then stopped.
‘What’s that?’ said the Chief Constable.
The ten eyes in the room were fixed upon the window. The ten ears in the room had heard hurrying footsteps up the little flagged path. The ears went on hearing the footsteps and the eyes beheld a uniformed figure pass the window upon its way to the front door.
‘Postman,’ said Farrow unnecessarily.
Jeffson started for the door. But although he had an advantage of several feet and also a clear path Pike was at it before him.
It was Pike who threw open the small front door and Pike who snatched from the breathless postman’s hands a thick, official envelope addressed, in an angular, official hand, to the Police Officer in charge …
Pike went back to the room, pushing by Jeffson’s bulk. Jeffson entered after, closing the door behind him with an exaggerated and somehow ominous softness.
Pike walked to the table. As he walked he slit with his thumb the flap of the O.H.M.S. envelope. He reached the table. He shot out from the envelope, so that they lay fully exposed to the glaring eyes of the Chief Constable and his two satellites, three square yellow envelopes upon which were addresses written with a peculiarly backward-sloping hand and in a curiously black and shining ink.
‘Christ Almighty!’ said the Chief Constable.
There came a little hissing intake of breath from Farrow and a nervous half-strangled gasp from Davis. They bent over the envelopes. The first was addressed to The Chief Constable of the County, c/o Police Station, Holmdale. The second was addressed to Sir Montague Flushing, The Hospice, Holmdale, and the third was addressed to Miss Ursula Finch, Editor of the Holmdale Clarion, Claypits Road, Holmdale …
The contents of the three envelopes were identical. Each contained three single sheets of yellow notepaper. In each case, upon the first of these sheets, there appeared the following letter, differing only in its line of greeting:
I must confess that I am regarding your efforts with a great deal of amusement. You have not got very far, have you? I don’t think it is for want of trying, but I must say, without in any way intending to give offence, that I consider that it is for want of brains.
I am afraid the message by this little note of mine is going to cause you more trouble than ever, but it really cannot be helped!
I am writing to tell you that I propose to take a little—and I hope you will agree well-earned—holiday. In other words, I am not going to carry out any further removals for quite a little while. When I really feel like it, of course, and when the time is propitious, I shall start again. You can hardly expect me to be so magnanimous as to give up altogether, can you?
I hope this will not put you in a very awkward position though I fear it may.
Very cordially yours,
THE BUTCHER
P.S.—I am so sorry that I have hitherto omitted to send you my little reference notes—which I hope will be useful for your files—in regard to the late Marjorie Williams and Millicent Brade. I now repair this omission and enclose them herewith.
The first enclosure was as follows:
My Reference FIVE.
R.I.P.
Marjory Williams,
Died Friday, 30th November.
THE BUTCHER
And the second:
My Reference SIX.
R.I.P.
Millicent Brade,
Died Friday, December 7th.
THE BUTCHER
II
The sheets of yellow paper still lay open before the Chief Constable and now, for the first time during the ten minutes in which they had been there, the Chief Constable was not looking at them. Instead he was looking, twisting round in his chair, at the door which had just slammed behind Superintendent Arnold Pike.
The Chief Constable straightened himself. He looked, like a bewildered infant, from one of his subordinates to the other. He said, in a tone curiously and almost comically blent of bewilderment and indignation:
‘Where’s he gone?’
Farrow, frowning, was silent. But Davis sniffed one of his most expressive sniffs.
III
‘Yes,’ said the post-master. ‘They were taken from the box in Inniless Road by the second collection.’ He looked eagerly at Superintendent Pike who faced him across the table. ‘As you said, Superintendent, I didn’t say anything to anybody and as I sorted the things myself I don’t suppose there’s anybody knows. And I didn’t—bearing in mind your instructions, Superintendent—give that information in the covering note.’
Pike cut him short. ‘Quite right. Quite right.’ He got suddenly to his feet, pushing back his chair with a squeaking sound across the post-master’s floor. He leant his palms on the table and looking down at the postmaster with eyes which seemed to bore through the postmaster’s head, he said, speaking slowly and deliberately in great contrast to his previous curtness: ‘You know, Mr Myers, you are carrying a great responsibility.’
The postmaster shifted uneasily in his chair. ‘I realise that, Superintendent,’ he said nervously, ‘I realise that, I assure you …’ He laughed a small, restrained and yet almost hysterical laugh. ‘But how do you know, Superintendent, that I’m not the Butcher himself?’
Pike’s mouth twitched to the grim semblance of a smile. ‘I know that,’ he said, ‘because I’ve taken the trouble to find out, Mr Myers, without your knowing it, that on the occasions of these … these killings, you were conducting yourself ordinarily and properly somewhere else.’
‘Been d
oing things thoroughly, haven’t you?’ said the post-master, still leavening his words with nervous giggling sounds.
Pike nodded sombrely. ‘Got to,’ he said. ‘Now, Mr Myers, you’ve been helping the police very considerably; a good deal more considerably than you know …’
Mr Myers swelled with importance. ‘Only too glad!’ he said. ‘Only too glad! If I can be of any use—’
He was cut short. He was told how he could be of use.
IV
Within five hours Mr Myers, astonished and thrilled, yet intelligently dutiful, was sitting in the long barnlike tea-room of The Royal George in Batley. The time had gone fast for Mr Myers. He had been whirled here and there in a closed car driven at a speed which he knew was illegal and felt was dangerous. He had been first to Number Nineteen Inniless Road and from the car had watched the curious and stealthy emergence from Number Nineteen,—which was an empty house!—of a man carrying a square, black and apparently very heavy box. This man had joined the party in the car, seating himself beside the Superintendent, who was driving. The car had then hurtled Mr Myers and the rest of the party out of Holmdale by Dale Road and along the Main Road, by way of the new by-pass, to Batley.
Mr Myers kept his eyes and ears open and, as befitted his new role of assistant to Scotland Yard, his mouth shut. Mr Myers, arrived at The Royal George, witnessed a curious transformation. Superintendent Pike seemed to be no longer Superintendent Pike. His very speech and gait—almost, if he had not known this to be impossible, Mr Myers would have said his clothes also—had changed. He was now, it seemed, a Mr Fortescue and Mr Fortescue was a gentleman who had something to do with the film industry; something which he appeared to wish to keep a very close trade secret; something about which The Royal George had been partially taken into confidence … And the men who composed the rest of the party—the strange man who had emerged from the house in Inniless Road and the two men who, at first, were called Curtis and Blaine by Superintendent Pike and now were called Ashbridge and Barney by Mr Fortescue—all now seemed to have changed not only their labels but their deportment …
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