by Sapper
He glided up the steps like a dark shadow, only to find as he had expected that the door was locked. Yale latch-key: no hope there. Then keeping close to the walls he made a circuit of the house. There was a basement and with any luck he hoped to find a window open, or at any rate one he could force easily. There was just sufficient light for him to see without having to strike matches, and suddenly he gave a little exclamation. There, straight in front of him, was a broken pane of glass. He reached down, unfastened the bolt, and a moment later he was inside.
The darkness now was far more intense, and after taking two or three cautious steps forward he struck a match. It was a risk, but the window by which he had entered was at the back of the house, so the light could not be seen from the road. He held it above his head, and as he peered round a puzzled frown came over his face. The shortcomings of modern servants he had been told about, but the filth of the room called for some further explanation than that.
The dust was thick on the table and on the floor: clearly the place had not been touched for months. And when he opened the door and continued his exploration he found it was the same everywhere. Kitchen, scullery, and larder were all in like condition: the basement evidently was not used. Where, then, did they do the cooking?
A flight of stairs led to the next floor, and he went up them noiselessly. Luckily the door at the top was not locked. He opened it, and at once became aware of a strong odour of stale tobacco smoke. Directly facing him a faint light filtered in through the fan-light over the front door: he was in the hall.
He stood motionless, listening intently: the house was absolutely silent.
The smokers, whoever they had been, were there no longer. Then, step by step, he felt his way forward. And the first thing that struck him was that the condition of the basement was certainly not duplicated on this floor. His feet almost sank into the carpet, so rich was the pile, and a match carefully screened by his hand showed him that the whole place was furnished de luxe.
He found the staircase, and began to ascend on a carpet as thick as that in the hall. The second storey was his goal, and if he realised that every step he took now materially increased his danger his pulse beat no quicker. Every third or fourth stair he paused and listened: still the same deathly silence.
The smell of stale smoke seemed to be growing stronger the higher he mounted, till it reached a maximum on the first landing. His eyes were growing accustomed to it now, and in the very faint light that filtered in from a window at the end of the passage, he saw an open door just beside him. He stepped through it, and realised that he had found the origin of the smell of smoke.
Here the darkness was absolute, and after a moment’s hesitation he struck another match. And by its feeble glimmer he solved one, at any rate, of his problems. A single glance showed him what he had stumbled into, and the mystery of the dirty basement was explained.
The place was a private gambling den, and as soon as he realised the fact, he realised also that much of the need for caution was gone. The house was empty: he would not be disturbed until the two men returned, if they returned at all. He shut the door and switched on the light.
Heavy black curtains covered the windows, and the room which ran the whole depth of the house was sumptuously furnished. At one end stood a cold buffet, with the remains of many plates of sandwiches on the table. Empty champagne bottles galore littered the floor behind it: the spread was in keeping with the furniture. In the centre of the room was a roulette board: on each side of it all the usual paraphernalia for baccarat and chemin de fer lay scattered on two tables.
No servants kept, he reflected: provisions ordered in from a caterer. And in his satisfaction at having settled one point, for a while he forgot that there was a second far more important one to be enquired into. Moreover, that time was getting on.
He could move more freely now, and having switched off he went boldly up to the next landing. If he had been right about the light in the window just before the shot, the room would be one facing the road. That narrowed the choice to two, and for a while he hesitated, wondering which to try first. Both doors were shut: it was a toss up. Finally he took a chance, and as luck would have it he was right.
A big roll-top desk stood in the centre of the room, which was furnished like an office. Two or three leather chairs: a few books of reference in which Who’s Who and Burke’s figured prominently: some sporting prints on the walls, and a big safe in one corner comprised the rest of the stuff. Except for a pair of legs that stuck out beyond the desk…
He had turned on the light as he entered, and before examining the body he crossed to the window and drew the curtains closer together. Then he returned to the desk and stared down at the man lying on the floor. His face was in shadow but a glance was sufficient to show that he was dead. He was in evening clothes, and in the centre of his white shirt was a dark red stain. One arm was thrown up as if to ward off the shot: the other, with fist clenched, lay outstretched along the carpet. He had been plugged through the heart.
There was no stain on the carpet, which proved that the bullet was still inside him. And in that curiously detached mood which is experienced by some men when the circumstances are dangerous or unusual Jim found himself commenting mentally on what a very fortunate fact it was for the murderers, if they intended, as he assumed they did, to put the body elsewhere. The bleeding had ceased, and even the most bovine policeman would smell a rat if there was a wound in a dead man’s back and no blood on the ground underneath it.
He was far too accustomed to battle, murder, and sudden death to feel particularly upset about the matter. What had happened seemed fairly clear. There had been some row below, and the three of them had come up to the office to settle it. The dead man had lost his temper, hit the dago and the dago had shot him. So much seemed obvious. The point was – what was his next move?
In certain countries the answer would have been one word – nothing. But in England things were different. It was perfectly true that if he now walked out of the house as he had walked in, no one would be any the wiser. But he felt a strange disinclination to let the matter drop. A telephone was on the desk, and for a while he stared at it. Should he ring up the police? And then it struck him he didn’t even know the name of the house. It was absurd to state that he was in an unknown house with a dead man on the floor beside him. Almost equally absurd to ask the Exchange where he was. To find out he would have to go down and look outside the gates. Even then it might only be a number, and as he was also ignorant of the name of the road, he would be no better off.
At the same time it seemed equally fatuous to remain where he was. If the two men returned he knew that one of them, at least, had a gun which he did not scruple to use. And if there was one thing more than any other that he disliked, it was a balance debit in the matter of firearms. If they did not return it would be daylight in less than an hour, and he might be seen leaving the house, which would prove awkward.
Suddenly it struck him that as yet he had not examined the dead man’s face. The eyes were wide open and staring: the teeth were set in a snarl: the expression, in fact, was just what he would have expected in a man killed instantaneously in the middle of a quarrel. And so it was not that that caused him some few seconds later to rise to his feet with a look of incredulous amazement on his face. The thing was impossible; frankly impossible. And yet there was no mistaking the likeness of the murdered man to the girl he had been talking to that evening.
Jim Maitland had none of the popular disbelief in coincidence. He had met so many amazing ones in his life that he took them as a matter of course. So that it was not so much the strangeness of the affair that worried him, but how this new development affected his course of action. If this was Judy Draycott’s brother – and in view of the likeness he felt but little doubt on the fact – the whole thing became very much more personal. He liked what little he had seen of her immensely, and here he was confronted with the dead body of her twin brother, knowing
full well that the murderer was a dago whose Christian name was Ernesto.
His course of action was obvious. Ring up the Exchange: explain briefly what had occurred, and ask them to tell the police to come round. With the clues he could give them it should prove a very easy matter to lay hands on the man who had done it. Moreover he realised that if he did not take that course of action, and it should ever transpire that he had been mixed up in it the girl would never forgive him. And yet he hesitated. Twice did his hand go out to pick up the receiver: twice did he refrain.
It was certainly not due to any desire to shield the murderer. Even if the dead man had been a bit of a waster that was no excuse for a dago plugging him. His hesitation came from a very different cause. The instant the police came into the matter he automatically went out. And he was not sure he wanted to go out. The coincidence of the thing, and the strangeness of the whole episode had intrigued his curiosity.
When talking to the girl he had poured cold water on her tale about buried treasure, but now he found himself wondering. Was it possible that this was not a mere gambling quarrel, but something bigger? After all, no one would come home after a long absence abroad and spend his first night playing chemin de fer without even letting his people know he had returned. And clearly the girl had no idea that her brother was back.
A liner had berthed that morning: the dead man then had been in London well over twelve hours. Surely he would under normal circumstances have got in touch with his relatives.
Jim realised that the reasoning was thin, but it afforded him just sufficient excuse not to do his plain duty and use the telephone. Which was negative, not positive: to decide what you are not going to do is easier than deciding what you are.
If his supposition was right: if this youngster had been talking out of his turn with regard to some genuine proposition in South America one thing was vitally important. He must have a closer look at the two men who had been responsible for the murder. The girl would be coming into it, and he could help her far more by spotting the enemy unknown to them than by handing one of them over to the police. And it was as he arrived at this satisfactory, if somewhat unmoral, conclusion that he suddenly straightened up with every nerve taut. From outside had come the unmistakable sound of a door opening…
He looked into the passage, and realised he was a sitting target for a man with a gun: the only hope was to tackle him as he came in. And in one bound he was beside the door, pressed against the wall.
A board creaked close by, and Jim waited tensely. Then there stepped into the room a strange figure. It was that of a small man hardly more than five feet high, clad in a silk dressing-gown. His head, covered with a skullcap, moved quickly from side to side like that of a bird: his hands were stretched out gropingly in front of him. And suddenly Jim understood: the man was blind.
“Monty: is that you?”
The voice was querulous, and high pitched – almost like a woman’s, and a feeling of repugnance almost akin to nausea gripped Jim Maitland. He felt an overwhelming temptation to seize this little monstrosity by the throat and throttle him, and in the days that were to come he often recalled the fact. What a lot of trouble would have been saved if he had yielded to the impulse.
“Monty: where are you?”
It was almost a hiss, and the blind man’s head gradually moved slower and slower until at length it became stationary with the sightless eyes staring at Jim. With that strange sixth sense given to those who cannot see he had located the stranger in the room. With a feeling of unreality Jim stared at him: the whole thing seemed like a dream. There was something so hideously abnormal about the little man apart altogether from his blindness. The hands were huge but beautifully made: the shoulders had that great depth and width which showed strength far above the average. But the incongruous thing was the look of almost devilish malignity on the face, instead of the gentle peacefulness generally seen on the features of the blind.
Suddenly the man spoke again in a voice barely above a whisper.
“Who are you, and what do you want?”
Jim thought quickly. Should he say he was a policeman, and demand details of the crime? If he did he would have to carry the bluff through; an impossible thing if the others returned. And evidently the blind man was expecting them back, or at any rate someone called Monty. Better not: he would find out more if he kept silent. There would be no difficulty in eluding this little devil if it became necessary, or, should the worst come to the worst, in knocking him out. And then came the thing he had not expected. There was a click, and the room was in darkness.
For a moment he did not realise the significance of the move: then low breathing close beside him put him wise. The absence of light made no difference to his adversary, but it made all the difference to him. He stepped quickly backwards, and the other man chuckled gently. A hand touched his shirt front, and the chuckle was repeated.
“Evening clothes,” came a whisper. “You foolish fellow.”
Again Jim backed, but all the time he knew the other was following him. And suddenly there came to him a feeling he had experienced so rarely in his life that he refused to acknowledge it – fear. He had an almost irresistible desire to blunder about wildly: to hit out with all his force into the black, impenetrable wall around him. There was something abnormal about this squat, misshapen form which he knew was close beside him – invisible and yet so real.
He forced his nerves into control, and listened intently. Was that the sound of breathing behind his left shoulder? He swung his fist round, and cursed under his breath as he hit the wall. And once again came that odious chuckle from somewhere in the centre of the room.
A new idea came to him which steadied his nerves at once. With the room lit up he would have had the greatest compunction in hitting a blind man: it would have offended his sense of fair play. But now in the darkness things were different. The advantage was quite definitely on the side of his adversary. Superior strength was a legitimate weapon to use provided the other conditions were on an equality. He would lay the little swine out, gather what further information he could, and then clear out. And even as he arrived at this conclusion he heard the gentle click of a drawer shutting: the blind man was by the desk.
He took a step forward, and promptly blundered into a chair. Where the devil was he: he didn’t remember any chair in that part of the room at all. He had lost his bearings completely: he did not even know in which direction the door lay. Or the switch. And with the thought of the switch he gave a sudden, short laugh. Assuredly the flesh pots of London had atrophied his brain. He had actually forgotten that in his pocket was a box of perfectly good matches. He fumbled in his coat, and it was then that, too late, he realised the folly of having laughed. It all happened with incredible swiftness. He had hardly felt that hands were touching him behind before they were on his shoulders. Then came a heave, and the legs of the blind man were gripping him by the waist, whilst two arms were flung round his neck. And in the pitch blackness the fight began.
From the beginning it was a foregone conclusion, but the only feeling he was conscious of was one of rage at having been such a fool. Immensely powerful though he was, he knew at once that as far as strength in the arms was concerned the blind man was his match. Moreover he was fighting under the most disadvantageous conditions possible. To dislodge even a comparative weakling from such a position is no easy matter: to get rid of an abnormal monstrosity was an impossibility. And he knew it.
With every ounce of strength he possessed put forward he tried to release the iron grip round his neck: then he went for the legs. And for the third time the chuckle was repeated. He blundered round the room till he bumped into a wall: then with his back towards it he crashed his burden against it time after time. If only he could wind the little brute there would still be a chance. But beyond a grunt of rage at each bump it was useless: the grip merely tightened round his throat.
He was weakening, and the knowledge drove him wild. He began stagg
ering haphazard about the room, whilst the roaring in his ears increased. Once he hit the desk and nearly fell, only recovering himself with a vast effort. But it was his last kick: there was a limit to what even he could stand. His lungs were bursting: the veins on his forehead were standing out like whipcord. Hazily he realised that the room had suddenly been flooded with light, and that two men were standing by the door. Then with a crash he pitched forward on his face and knew no more…
He awoke to find himself in a small, bare room. The walls were whitewashed: the furniture non-existent save for the very hard apology for a bed on which he was lying. The door had a singularly solid look: the window was barred. And for a while he stared round trying to pull himself together.
Gradually recollection returned. The blind dwarf: the dead man: the gambling den. And now where the devil was he? He sat up: his shoes had been removed. And into his still bemused brain came a sudden light. He was in the cell of a police station.
In his mouth was a foul taste, the significance of which he realised only too well. Once, in his extreme youth, he had been shanghaied out east, and the after-taste of a drug can never be mistaken for anything else. After he had been throttled into insensibility, dope of sorts had been forced down his throat: so much was obvious.
He glanced at the window: the sun was streaming in. Then he looked for his watch only to find it had been taken away.
“Awake, are you? What we might describe as some blind – what?”
The man’s tone was good-humoured and Jim staggered to his feet.
“Then the description would be wrong, sergeant,” he said shortly. “Doped, my boy: drugged. At my age, too, by the Lord Harry! For the love of Pete, give me some water. I’ve got a mouth like a volcano in eruption.”
The sergeant shouted an order, and then looked at Jim curiously.
“Drugged, were you? Are you sure?”