Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery

by Freeman Wills Crofts

  She was of middle height, slender and willowy, though the lines of her figure were somewhat concealed by the painter’s blue overall which she wore. She was not beautiful in the classic sense, yet but few would have failed to find pleasure in the sight of her pretty, pleasant, kindly face, with its straightforward expression, and the direct gaze of her hazel eyes. Her face was rather thin and her chin rather sharp for perfect symmetry, but her nose tilted adorably and the arch of her eyebrows was delicacy itself. Her complexion was pale, but with the pallor of perfect health. But her great glory was her hair. It covered her head with a crown of burnished gold, and though in Cheyne’s opinion it lost much of its beauty from being shingled, it gave her an auriole like that of a mediæval saint in a stained glass window. Like a saint, indeed, she seemed to Cheyne; a very human and approachable saint, it is true, but a saint for all that. Seated on the top step of the stairs he was transfixed by the unexpected vision, and remained staring over his shoulder at her while he endeavoured to collect his scattered wits.

  The sight of a strange young man seated on the steps outside her door seemed equally astonishing to the vision, and she promptly stopped and stood staring at Cheyne. So they remained for an appreciable time, until Cheyne, flushed and abashed, stumbled to his feet and plunged into apologies.

  As a result of his somewhat incoherent explanation a light dawned on her face and she smiled.

  ‘Oh, you’re Mr Cheyne,’ she exclaimed. She looked at him very searchingly then invited: ‘But of course! Won’t you come in?’

  He followed her into No. 12. It proved to be a fair-sized room fitted up partly as a sitting-room and partly as a studio. A dormer window close to the fireplace gave on an expanse of roofs and chimneys with, in a gap between two houses, a glimpse of the lead-coloured waters of the river. In the partially coved ceiling was a large skylight which lit up a model’s throne and an easel bearing a half-finished study of a woman’s head. Other canvases, mostly figures in various stages of completion, were ranged round the walls, and the usual artist’s paraphernalia of brushes and palettes and colour tubes lay about. Drawn up to the fire were a couple of easy-chairs, books and ashtrays lay on an occasional table, while on another table was a tea equipage. A door beside the fireplace led to what was presumably the lady’s bedroom.

  ‘Can you find a seat?’ she went on, indicating the larger of the two arm-chairs. ‘You have come at a propitious moment. I was just about to make tea.’

  ‘That sounds delightful,’ Cheyne declared. ‘I came at the first moment that I thought I decently could. I was discharged from the hospital this morning and I thought I couldn’t let a day pass without coming to try at least to express my thanks for what you did for me.’

  Miss Merrill had filled an aluminium kettle from a tap at a small sink and now placed it on a gas stove.

  ‘We’ll suppose the thanks expressed, all due and right and proper,’ she answered. ‘But I’ll tell you what you can do. Light the stove! It makes such a plop I hate to go near it.’

  Cheyne, having duly produced the expected plop, returned to his arm-chair and took up again the burden of his tale.

  ‘But that’s all very well, Miss Merrill; awfully good of you and all that,’ he protested, ‘but it doesn’t really meet the case at all. If you hadn’t come along and played the good Samaritan I should have died. I was—’

  ‘If you don’t stop talking about it I shall begin to wish you had,’ she smiled. ‘How did the accident happen? I should be interested to hear that, because I’ve thought about it and haven’t been able to imagine any way it could have come about.’

  ‘I want to tell you.’ Cheyne looked into her clear eyes and suddenly said more than he had intended. ‘In fact, I should like to tell you the whole thing from the beginning. It’s rather a queer tale. You mayn’t believe it, but I think it would interest you. But first—please don’t be angry, but you must let me ask the question—Did you pay for the taxi or whatever means you took to get me to the hospital?’

  She laughed.

  ‘Well, you are persistent. However, I suppose I may allow you to pay for that. It was five and six, if you must know, and a shilling to the man because he helped to carry you and took no end of trouble.’ She blushed slightly as if recognising the unconscious admission. ‘A whole six and six you owe me.’

  ‘Is that all, Miss Merrill? Do tell me if there was anything else.’

  ‘There was nothing else, Mr Cheyne. That squares everything between us.’

  ‘By Jove! That’s the last thing it does! But if I mustn’t speak of that, I mustn’t. But please tell me this also. I understood from the nurse that you came with me to hospital. I am horrified every time I think of your having so much trouble, and I should like to understand how it all happened.’

  ‘There’s not much to tell,’ Miss Merrill answered. ‘It was all very simple and straightforward. There happened to be a garage in the main street, quite close, and I went there and got a taxi. It was very dark, and when the driver and I looked over the fence we could not see you, but the driver fortunately had a flash-lamp for examining his engine, and with its help we saw that you had fainted. We found you very awkward to get out.’ She smiled and her face lighted up charmingly. ‘We had to drag you round to the side of the building where there was a wire paling instead of the close sheeted fence in front. I held up the wires and the cabby dragged you through. Then when we got you into the cab I had to go along too, because the cabby said he wouldn’t take what might easily be a dead body—a corp, he called it—without someone to account for its presence. He talked of you as if you were a sack of coal.’

  Cheyne was really upset by the recital.

  ‘Good Lord!’ he cried. ‘I can’t say how distressed I am to know what I let you in for. I can’t ever forget it. All right, I won’t,’ he added as she held up her hand. ‘Go on, please. I want to hear it all.’

  Miss Merrill’s hazel eyes twinkled as she continued:

  ‘By the time we got to the hospital I was sure that nothing would save me from being hanged for murder. But there was no trouble. I simply told my story, left my name and address, and that was all. Now tell me what really happened to you; or rather wait until we’ve had tea.’

  Cheyne sat back in his chair admiring the easy grace with which she moved about as she prepared the meal. She was really an awfully nice looking girl, he thought; not perhaps exactly pretty, but jolly looking, the kind of girl it is a pleasure just to sit down and watch. And as they chatted over tea he discovered that she had a mind of her own. Indeed, she showed a nimble wit and a shrewd if rather quaint outlook on men and things.

  ‘You mentioned Dartmouth just now,’ she remarked presently. ‘Do you know it well?’

  ‘Why, I live there.’

  ‘Do you really? Do you know people there called Beresford?’

  ‘Archie and Flo? Rather. They live on our road, but about half a mile nearer the town. Do you know them?’

  ‘Flo only. I’ve been going to stay with them two or three times, though for one reason or another it has always fallen through. I was at school with Flo—Flo Salter, she was then.’

  ‘By Jove! Archie is rather a pal of mine. Comes out yachting sometimes. A good sort.’

  ‘I’ve never met him, but I used to chum with Flo. Congratulations, Mr Cheyne.’

  Cheyne stared at her and she smiled gaily across.

  ‘You haven’t said that the world is very small after all,’ she explained.

  Cheyne laughed.

  ‘I didn’t think of it or I should,’ he admitted. ‘But I hope you will come down to the Beresfords. I’d love to take you out in my yacht—that is, if you like yachting.’

  ‘That’s a promise,’ the girl declared. ‘If I come I shall hold you to it.’

  When tea was removed and cigarettes were alight she returned to the subject of his adventure.

  ‘Yes,’ Cheyne answered, ‘I should like to tell you the whole story if it really wouldn’t bore you.
But,’ he hesitated for a second, ‘you won’t mind my saying that it is simply desperately private. No hint of it must get out.’

  Her face clouded.

  ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, ‘I don’t want to hear it if it’s a secret. It doesn’t concern me anyway.’

  ‘Oh, but it does—now,’ Cheyne protested. ‘If I don’t tell you now you will think that I am a criminal with something to hide, and I think I couldn’t bear that.’

  ‘No,’ she contradicted, ‘you think that you are in my debt and bound to tell me.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Not at all,’ he retorted, ‘since contradiction is the order of the day. If that was it I could easily have put you off with the yarn I told the doctor. I want to tell you because I think you’d be interested, and because it really would be such a relief to discuss the thing with some rational being.’

  She looked at him keenly as she demanded: ‘Honour bright?’

  ‘Honour bright,’ he repeated, meeting her eyes.

  ‘Then you may,’ she decided. ‘You may also smoke a pipe if you like.’

  ‘The story opens about six weeks ago with a visit to Plymouth,’ he began, and he told her of his adventure in the Edgecombe Hotel, of the message about the burglary, of his ride home and what he found there, and of the despondent detective and his failure to discover the criminals. Then he described what took place on the launch Enid, his search of the coast towns and discovery of the trail of the men, his following them to London and to the Hopefield Avenue house, his adventure therein, the blow on his head, his coming to himself to find the tracing gone, his crawl to the fence and his relief at the sound of her footsteps approaching.

  She listened with an ever-increasing eagerness, which rose to positive excitement as he reached the climax of the story.

  ‘My word!’ she cried with shining eyes when he had finished. ‘To think of such things happening here in sober old London in the twentieth century! Why, it’s like the Arabian Nights! Who would believe such a story if they read it in a book? What fun! And you have no idea what the tracing was?’

  ‘No more than you have, Miss Merrill.’

  ‘It was a cipher,’ she declared breathlessly. ‘A cipher telling where there was buried treasure! Isn’t that all that is wanted to make it complete?’

  ‘Now you’re laughing at me,’ he complained. ‘Don’t you really believe my story?’

  ‘Believe it?’ she retorted. ‘Of course I believe it. How can you suggest such a thing? I think it’s perfectly splendid! I can’t say how splendid I think it. It was brave of you to go into that house in the way you did. I can’t think how you had the nerve. But now what are you going to do? What is the next step?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve thought and thought while I was in that blessed hospital and I don’t see the next move. What would you advise?’

  ‘I? Oh, Mr Cheyne, I couldn’t advise you. I’m thrilled more than I can say, but I don’t know enough for that.’

  ‘Would you give up and go to the police?’

  ‘Never.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘I’d go on and fight the gang! You’ll win yet, Mr Cheyne. Something tells me.’

  A wild idea shot into Cheyne’s mind and he sat for a moment motionless. Then swayed by a sudden impulse, he turned to the girl and said excitedly:

  ‘Miss Merrill, let’s join forces. You help me.’ He paused, then went on quickly: ‘Not in the actual thing, I mean, of course. I couldn’t allow you to get mixed up in what might turn out to be dangerous. But let me come and discuss the thing with you. It would be such a help.’

  ‘No!’ she said, her eyes shining. ‘I’ll join in if you like—I’d love it! But only if I share the fun. I’m either in altogether or out altogether.’

  He stood up and faced her.

  ‘Do you mean it?’ he asked seriously.

  ‘Of course I mean it,’ she answered as she got up also.

  ‘Then shake hands on it!’

  Solemnly they shook hands, and so the firm of Cheyne and Merrill came into being.

  8

  A Council of War

  Cheyne returned to his hotel that afternoon in a jubilant frame of mind. He had been depressed from his illness and his failure at the house in Hopefield Avenue and had come to believe he was wasting his time on a wild-goose chase. But now all his former enthusiasm had returned. Once again he was out to pit his wits against this mysterious gang of scoundrels, and he was all eagerness to be once more in the thick of the fray.

  Miss Merrill had told him something about herself before he had left. It appeared that she was the daughter of a doctor in Gloucester who had died some years previously. Her mother had died while she was a small child, and she was now alone in the world save for a sister who was married and living in Edinburgh. Her father had left her enough to live on fairly comfortably, but by cutting down her expenditure on board and lodging to the minimum she had been able to find the wherewithal necessary to enable her to take up seriously her hobby of painting. She was getting on well with that. She had not yet sold any pictures, but her art masters and the dealers to whom she had shown her work were encouraging. She also made a study of architectural details—mouldings, string courses, capitals, etc.—which, having photographed them with her half plate camera and flash-light apparatus, she worked into decorative panels and head and tail pieces for magazine illustration and poster work. With these also she was having fair success.

  Cheyne was enthused by the idea of this girl starting out thus boldly to carve, single handed, her career in the world, and he spent as much time that evening thinking of her pluck and of her chances of success as of the mysterious affair in which now they were both engaged.

  His first visit next day was to a man called Hake, whom he had met during the war and who was now a clerk in one of the departments of the Admiralty. From him he received definite confirmation that the whole of the Hull barony story was a fabrication of James Dangle’s nimble brain. No such diplomat as St John Price had ever existed, though it was true that Arnold Price had at the time in question been third officer of the Maurania. Hake added a further interesting fact, though whether it was connected with Cheyne’s affair there was nothing to indicate. Price, the real Arnold Price through whom the whole mystery had arisen, had recently disappeared. He had left his ship at Bombay on a few days’ leave and had not returned. At least he had not returned up to the latest date of which Hake had heard. Cheyne begged his friend to let him know, immediately if anything was learnt as to Price’s fate, which the other promised to do.

  In the afternoon Cheyne once more climbed the ten flights of stairs in No. 17 Horne Terrace, but this time he took the ascent slowly enough to avoid having to sit down to recover at the top. Miss Merrill opened to his knock. She was painting and a girl sat on the throne, the original of the picture he had seen the day before. He was told that he might sit down and smoke so long as he kept perfectly quiet and did not interrupt, and for half an hour he lay in the big arm-chair watching the face on the canvas grow more and more like that of the model. Then a little clock struck four silvery chimes, Miss Merrill threw down her brushes and palette and said ‘Time!’ and the model relaxed her position. Both girls disappeared into the bedroom and emerged presently, the model in outdoor garb and Miss Merrill without her overall. The model let herself out with a ‘Good-afternoon, Miss Merrill,’ while the lady of the house took up the aluminium kettle and began to fill it.

  ‘Gas stove,’ she said tersely.

  Cheyne produced the expected plop, then stood with his back to the fire, watching his hostess’s preparations for tea. The removal of the overall had revealed a light green knitted jumper of what he believed was artificial silk, with a skirt of a darker shade of the same colour. A simple dress, he thought, but tremendously effective. How splendidly it set off the red gold of her hair, and how charmingly it revealed the graceful lines of her slender figure! With her comely, pleasant face and her clear, direct eyes she looked one who would make a good pal. />
  ‘Well now, and what’s the programme?’ she said briskly when tea had been disposed of.

  Cheyne began to fill his pipe.

  ‘I scarcely know,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m afraid I’ve not got any cut and dried scheme to put up except that I already mentioned: to get into that house somehow and have a look round.’

  She moved nervously.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ she declared. ‘There are many objections to it.’

  ‘I know there are, but what can you suggest?’

  ‘First of all there’s the actual danger,’ she went on, continuing her own train of thought and ignoring his question. ‘These people have tried to murder you once already, and if they find you in their house again they’ll not bungle it a second time.’

  ‘I’ll take my chance of that.’

  ‘But have you thought that they have an easier way out of it than that? All they have to do is to hand you over to the nearest policeman on a charge of burglary. You would get two or three years or maybe more.’

  ‘They wouldn’t dare. Remember what I could tell about them.’

  ‘Who would believe you? They, the picture of injured innocence, would deny the whole thing. You would say they attempted to murder you. They would ridicule the idea. And—there you are.’

  ‘But I could prove it. There was my injured head, and you found me at that house.’

  ‘And what did you yourself tell the doctor had happened to you? No, you wouldn’t have the ghost of a case.’