Cheyne’s driver was a skilful man and they kept steadily behind the quarry, not close enough to excite suspicion, but too near to run any risk of being shaken off. Cheyne was chuckling excitedly and hugging himself at the success of his efforts thus far when, with the extraordinary capriciousness that Fate so often shows, his luck turned.
They had passed down Praed Street and turned up the Edgware Road, and it was just where the latter merges into Maida Vale that the blow fell. Here the street was up and the traffic was congested. Both vehicles slackened down, but whereas the leader got through without a stop, Cheyne’s was held up to give the road to cross traffic. In vain Cheyne chafed and fretted; the raised arm of the law could not be disregarded, and when at last they were free to go forward, all trace of the other taxi had vanished.
In vain the driver put on a spurt. There were scores of vehicles ahead and a thousand and one turnings off the straight road. In a few minutes Cheyne had to recognise that the game was up and that he had lost his chance.
He stopped and took counsel with his driver, with the result that he decided to go back to Paddington in the hope that when the other taxi had completed its run it would return to the station rank. He had been near enough to take its number, and his man was able to give him the other driver’s address, in case the latter went home instead of to the station.
Having reserved a room at the Station Hotel and written a brief note to his sister saying that his business had brought him to London and that he would let her know when he was returning, he lit his pipe, and turning up the collar of his coat, fell to pacing up and down the platform alongside the cab rank. He was relieved to find that vehicles were still turning up and taking their places at the end of the line, and he eagerly scanned the number plate of each arrival. For endless æons of time he seemed to wait, and then at last, a few minutes before ten, his patience was rewarded. Taxi Z1729 suddenly appeared and drew into position.
In a moment Cheyne was beside its driver.
‘Ten bob over the fare if you’ll take me quickly to where you set down those two men you got off the Cornish express,’ he said in a low eager voice.
This man also looked at him curiously and answered, ‘Right y’are, guv’nor,’ then having paused to say something to the driver of the leading car on the rank, they turned out into Praed Street.
The man drove rapidly along the Edgware Road, through Maida Vale and on into a part of the town unfamiliar to Cheyne. As they rattled through the endless streets Cheyne instructed him not to stop at the exact place, but slightly short of it, as he wished to complete the journey on foot. It seemed a very long distance, but still the man kept steadily on. The town was now taking on a surburban appearance and here and there vacant building lots were to be seen.
Presently they passed an ornate building which Cheyne recognised as the new tube station at Hendon, and shortly afterwards the vehicle stopped. Cheyne got out and looked about him, while the driver explained the lie of the land.
They had turned at right angles off the main thoroughfare leading from town into a road which bore the imposing title of ‘Hopefield Avenue.’ This penetrated into what seemed to be an estate recently handed over to the jerry builder, for all around were small, detached and semi-detached houses in various stages of construction. Many were complete and occupied, but in scores of other cases the vacant lots still remained, untouched save for their ‘To let for building’ signboards.
Leaving the taxi in a deserted cross-road, the driver signified to Cheyne that they should go forward on foot. A hundred yards farther on they reached another cross-road—the place was laid out in squares like an American city—and there the driver pointed to a house in the opposite angle, intimating that this was their goal.
It was a small detached villa surrounded by a privet hedge and a few small trees and shrubs, evidently not long planted. The two adjoining lots, both along Hopefield Avenue and down the cross-road—Alwyn Road, Cheyne saw its name was—were vacant. Facing it on both streets were finished and occupied houses, but in the angle diagonally opposite was a new building whose walls were only half up.
Thrilled with eager anticipation and excitement, Cheyne dismissed the driver with his ten-shilling tip and then turned to examine his surroundings more carefully, and to devise a plan of campaign for his attack on the enemy’s stronghold.
He began by crossing Alwyn Road and walking along Hopefield Avenue past the house, while he examined it as well as he could by the light of the street lamps. It was a two story building of rather pleasing design, apparently quite new, and conforming to the type of small suburban villas springing up by thousands all around London. As far as he could make out it had the usual rectangular plan, a red-tiled roof with deep overhanging eaves and a large porch with above it, a balcony, roofed over but open in front. A narrow walk edged with flower beds led across the forty or fifty feet of lawn between the road and the hall door. On the green gate Cheyne could just make out the words ‘Laurel Lodge’ in white letters. So far as he could see the house appeared to be deserted, the windows and fanlight being in darkness. After the two vacant lots was a half-finished house.
Returning presently, he passed the house again, this time rounding its corner and walking down Alwyn Road. Between the first vacant lot and Laurel Lodge ran a narrow lane, evidently intended to be the approach to the back premises of the future houses.
Glancing round and seeing that no one was in sight, Cheyne slipped into this lane, and crouching behind a shrub, examined the back of Laurel Lodge.
It was very dark in the lane. Presently it would be lighter, as a quadrant moon was rising, but for the moment everything outside the radius of the street lamps was hidden in a black pall. The outline of the house was just discernible against the sky, though Cheyne could not from here make out the details of its construction. But, standing Out sharply against its black background, was one brightly illuminated rectangle—a window on the first floor.
The window was open at the top, and the light coloured blind was pulled down, though even from where he stood Cheyne could see that it did not entirely reach the bottom of the opening. Even as he watched a shadow appeared on the blind. It was a man’s head and shoulders and it remained steady for a moment, then moved slowly out of sight.
Stealthily Cheyne edged his way forward. The back premises of Laurel Lodge were separated from the lane by a gate, and this Cheyne opened silently, passing within. Gradually he worked his way round a tiny greenhouse and between a few flower beds until he reached the wall of the house. There he listened intently, but no sound came from above.
‘If only I could get up to the window,’ he thought, ‘I could see in under the blind.’
But there was no roof or tree upon which he might have climbed, and he stood motionless, undecided what to do next.
Suddenly an idea occurred to him, and full once more of eager excitement, he carefully retraced his steps until he reached the lane. It ran on between rough wire palings, past the two vacant lots and behind the adjoining half-finished house. Cheyne followed it until he reached the half-completed building, and then entering, he began to search for a short ladder.
Every moment the light of the rising moon was increasing, and after stumbling about and making noises which sent him into a cold sweat of apprehension, he succeeded, partly by sight and partly by feeling, in finding what he wanted. Then with great care he lifted it into the lane and bore it back to Laurel Lodge.
With infinite pains he carried it through the gate, round the greenhouse and past the flower beds to the house. Then fixing the bottom on the grass plot which surrounded the building, he lowered it gently against the wall at the side of the window.
A moment later he reached the slot of clear glass showing beneath the blind and peeped into the room. There he saw a sight so unexpected that in spite of his precarious position a cry of surprise all but escaped him.
6
The House in Hopefield Avenue
The room was of medium size and plain
ly though comfortably furnished as a man’s study or smoking room. In one corner was a small roll-top desk, in another a table bearing books and papers and a tantalus. Two large leather covered arm-chairs stood one at each side of the grate, in which burned a cheerful fire. In the corner opposite the window was a press or cupboard built into the wall, and in front of this all furniture had been cleared away, leaving a wide unoccupied space on the floor. Beside the wall near this space was a large camera, already set up, and on a table beside it lay a flash-light apparatus and two dark slides, apparently of full plate size.
In the room were four persons, and it was the identity of the last of these that had so amazed Cheyne. Standing beside the camera were Price and Lewisham, while no less a personage than Mr Hubert Parkes of Edgecombe Hotel notoriety stood looking on with his back to the fire. But it was not on these that Cheyne’s eyes were glued. Reclining in one of the arm-chairs with her feet on the fender was Susan, the house and parlourmaid at Warren Lodge!
Cheyne gasped. Here was the explanation of one mystery at all events. He saw now where the gang’s knowledge of himself and his surroundings had been obtained. He remembered that he had discussed his visit to Plymouth during dinner, a day or two before the event. Susan had been waiting at table, and Susan had been the channel through which the information had been passed on. And the burglary! He could see Susan’s hand in this also. In all probability she had taken full advantage of her opportunities to make a thorough search of the house for Price’s letter, and it was doubtless only when it became necessary to deal with the safe that her friends had been called in. Probably also she had been waiting for them, and had admitted them and shown them over the house before submitting to be tied up as a blind to mislead the detectives who would presumably be called in. Cheyne suspected also that Price’s visit was timed at a propitious moment, when he himself was available and with a free afternoon to be filled up. No doubt Susan’s part in the affair had been vital to its success.
But her participation also showed the extraordinary importance which the conspirators attached to the letter. Susan’s make up for the part she was to play, the forging of her references, her installation in the Cheyne household and her undertaking nearly two months of domestic service in order to gain the document, showed a tenacity of purpose which could only have been evoked to attain some urgent end. Evidently the gang believed that Price’s claim on the barony was good, and evidently the others intended to share the spoils.
Cheyne watched breathlessly what was going on in the room, and to his delight he presently found that through the open upper sash he could also hear a good deal of what was said.
The camera had been set up to face the cupboard, and Cheyne now saw that a document of some kind was fastened with drawing pins to its door. Price put his head under the cloth and moved the camera back and forwards, evidently focusing it on the document. Lewisham lifted and examined the flash-light apparatus then stood waiting. Parkes stooped and said something in a low tone to Susan, at which she laughed sarcastically.
‘Do you think two will be enough or should we take four?’ said Price when he had arranged the camera to his satisfaction.
‘Two, I should say,’ Parkes answered. ‘Even if we lost the tracing, two negatives should be an ample record.’
‘I should take four,’ Lewisham declared. ‘After all we’ve done what is the extra trouble of developing a couple of negatives? One or two might be failures.’
‘Sime is right,’ Price decided. ‘I shall take four.’
Sime? Cheyne thought perplexedly that the man who had run the motor on the Enid had been introduced to him as Lewisham. Sime, was it? Then it occurred to him that probably each one of the four had met him under an assumed name, and he listened even more intently in the hope of finding this out.
‘I wonder if that ass Cheyne put the cops on to us,’ went on Sime to the company generally. ‘James talked to him like a father and he seemed to swallow it all down as sweet as milk. Lordy! But you should have heard old James spouting. He rattled off his patter like a good ’un. Fresh absurdities each time and all that. Didn’t you, James?’
‘He didn’t give much trouble,’ Price replied. ‘I shouldn’t have believed anyone would have given in as soft as he did. I pitched him a yarn about yours truly being heir to the barony of Hull that wouldn’t have deceived an oyster, and he sucked it in like a sponge. But it wasn’t that that worked. It was keeping him without water that did the trick. When I offered him another day to think it over he collapsed like a pricked bubble.’
‘So would you if you had been in his shoes,’ Susan declared. ‘I’d like to see you standing out for anything against your own comfort.’
‘You wouldn’t have seen me get into his shoes,’ Price retorted, fitting a dark slide into the camera. ‘Now, Sime, if you’re ready.’
Price pressed the bulb uncovering the lens and at the same time Sime burned a length of magnesium wire before the document on the door, while Cheyne writhed with impotent rage at the discovery that he had been duped in still another particular.
‘We’ve done uncommonly well,’ Parkes remarked when the photograph had been taken, ‘but we’re not by any means out of the wood yet. In fact the real work is only beginning. We don’t even yet know the size of the problem we’re up against. We’ve got to find that out and then we’ve got to make a plan and put it through, and all the time we’ve got to lie low in case that infernal ass has reported us to the police.’
‘We’ve got to get these photographs taken and then we’ve got to get our supper,’ retorted Price. ‘For goodness’ sake let’s have one thing at a time, Blessington. If you’d lend a hand instead of standing there preaching, it would be more to the point.’
Here was another alias. Parkes’s real name was Blessington. Cheyne was beginning to wonder what Price and Susan were really called, when the next remark satisfied his curiosity.
Parkes—or Blessington—took Price’s remark easily.
‘Now that’s, where you make the mistake, Mr James Dangle,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Miss Dangle and I do the real work in this joint: don’t we, Miss Dangle? We supply the brains, you and Sime only rise to the muscles. Eh, Miss Dangle?’
But Miss Dangle was not in a mood for pleasantries.
‘We shall want all the brains that you can supply and more,’ she answered irritably, and then turning lazily to the others demanded if they weren’t ever going to be done messing with the darned camera.
At last Cheyne thought he had got the four fixed in his mind. The man on the rug—the man who had drugged him in the Plymouth hotel—was Blessington. The man who had introduced himself as Lamson and afterwards said his name was Price bore neither of these appellations: his name was Dangle. Susan was ‘Miss Dangle’ and almost certainly sister to James. Lewisham, the motorman of the Enid, was Sime.
Dangle, Sime and Blessington! Why, there was something sinister in the very names, and as Cheyne peeped guardedly in beneath the blind, he felt there was something even more sinister in their owners. Dangle, with his hard-bitten features and without his veneer of polish, looked a crafty scoundrel. There was a nasty gleam in his foxy eyes. He looked a man who would sell his best friend for a shilling. Perhaps Cheyne’s imagination had by this time run away with him, but Sime now struck him as a murderous looking ruffian, and Blessington’s smug features seemed but to cloak an evil and cruel nature. He was smiling, but there was nothing mirthful about his smile. Rather was it the expression that a wolf might be supposed to wear when he sees a sheep helpless before his attack. Cheyne did not know if Susan was dangerous, but he had always suspected she could be vindictive and bad tempered. A nice crew, he thought, and he shivered in spite of himself as he pictured his fate were some accident to lead to his discovery.
And what inventive genius they had shown! They had now told him three yarns, all convincing, well-thought out statements, and all entirely false. There was first of all Blessington’s dissertation on h
is, Cheyne’s, literary efforts, told to get him off his guard so that a drug might be administered to him and his pockets be searched. Then there was the account of the position indicator for ships, detailed and plausible, a bait to lure him voluntarily aboard the Enid. Lastly there was the story of the Hull succession, including the interesting episode of the attempted rescue of the uncle St John Price, undoubtedly related with the object of reducing Cheyne’s scruples in handing over the letter. These people were certainly past masters in the art of decorative lying, and once again he marvelled at the trouble which had been taken in making each story watertight so as to assure its success. It was for no small reward that this had been done.
Cheyne was getting stiff with cold on the ladder. Though keenly interested in what he saw, he wished his enemies would make some move so that he might advance or, if necessary, retreat. But they appeared in no special hurry, proceeding with the photographs in the most careful and deliberate way.
A desultory conversation was kept up, only part of which he heard, but nothing further was said which threw any light on the identity of the conspirators or of the objects for which they were assembled. The work with the camera progressed, however, and presently three photographs had been taken.
‘One more,’ he heard Dangle remark, and having pulled out the shutter, the whilom skipper of the Enid pressed the bulb and another photograph was taken.
‘That’s four altogether,’ Dangle went on in satisfied tones. ‘I guess we’re well provided for against accidents. What about that bit of supper, old lady?’
‘Aren’t we waiting for you?’ Susan demanded as she slowly pulled herself up out of the chair. ‘Gosh!’ she went on, lazily stretching herself and yawning, ‘but it’s good to be done with Devonshire! I was fed up, I can tell you! Susan this and Susan that! “Susan, we’ll have tea now,” “Susan, you might bring a tray and take up the mistress’s breakfast,” “Susan, you might light the fire in the study; Mr Cheyne wants to work.” Yah! I guess I’ve about done my share.’
Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery Page 7