Dixie came back to the matter in hand. ‘I say, Doc, where do you come into this Leamington business? Does Diana…?’
‘As soon as you pass the stuff to Diana, she drives to Warwick. I take it over at Warwick, and get the stuff back here. Horace does the rest. It’ll be in Amsterdam by Saturday.’
‘Any idea what cut we’re going to get out of this?’
‘I’m not sure, Skid,’ the doctor replied. ‘Frobisher’s got a pretty heavy stock. There’s a ring worth £6,000.’
‘Six thousand!’ repeated Skid, almost savouring the words with his tongue.
Dixie whistled. ‘The Knave can certainly pick ’em!’
Suddenly they heard a loud knock. Even the nonchalant Skid jumped.
‘There’s somebody at the panel!’ he whispered, with alarm.
Dr. Milton hastened to reassure him. ‘It’s only Diana.’
‘Blimey!’ was Horace’s comment. ‘You ain’t ’alf jumpy!’
In the far wall, away from the hall door, a panel moved, disclosing an open space. Then a figure appeared, and the four men recognized Diana Thornley. The opening in the wall was about a foot above the floor and some four feet high. Normally, it was completely invisible, effectively camouflaged by the old oak panelling.
Diana Thornley stepped out of the opening, and came towards the waiting men.
‘Sorry I’m late, Doc!’ she apologized. She turned to see Horace Daley closing the panel behind her.
‘No, don’t shut the panel!’
‘Why not?’ asked the doctor.
Quietly, almost with reverence in her voice, Diana answered him. ‘The Chief’s coming!’
‘Here?’ exclaimed Dr. Milton.
‘Yes.’
‘Oh!’ There was a pause. ‘Still I think we’d better shut it,’ he said, and signed to Horace Daley to do so.
‘He’s coming here? The Knave?’ asked Dixie, with surprise.
‘Yes,’ answered Diana. ‘He’s got the Birmingham money. It came through this morning.’
‘Blimey, that’s quick work!’ came from Skid. For the first time the air of bored indifference had fallen from him. He smiled very broadly.
‘Have you given them the Leamington details?’ Diana was speaking to Milton, yet there was a note of authority in her voice.
‘Yes.’
‘How do you feel about it, Skid? Think you can manage the smash all right?’
A smile spread across Skid’s face, and he rubbed his hands.
‘As easy as falling off a log!’
‘Good,’ said Diana, obviously pleased, ‘but we want as much row as possible, remember that!’
‘Sure.’
‘And don’t forget to dash back to the shop, Dixie,’ she continued. ‘There’s bound to be a crowd.’
‘O.K.,’ was the reply. ‘Have you got a list of the stuff?’
Diana opened her handbag. From its capacious depths, she extracted three folded quarto sheets of paper. It was a list of the articles about which they had inquired, complete with their values. She passed it across to Dixie. He looked down the list, page after page.
‘Any good, Dixie?’ inquired Horace somewhat anxiously.
‘Any good,’ repeated Dixie with a wealth of intonation in his voice. ‘Any good—’
At that moment, another knock came from the mysterious panel. It was Horace this time who looked round in alarm. ‘What’s that?’ he asked nervously.
‘It’s the Chief,’ Diana informed him. ‘Open the panel, Doc.’
Dr. Milton walked quickly over to the wall and fingered the oak panelling. Presently the panel began to move.
Dr. Milton stepped forward.
In an impressive voice, he made his announcement.
‘Gentlemen, meet the Knave!’
Absolute astonishment greeted his words. For a few seconds, no one spoke.
‘The Knave, but—’ said Horace Daley at last.
Then they all began to speak at once.
‘I thought you said the Chief was a—’ Skid was not allowed to complete his sentence. Dixie’s amazement made him almost shriek his surprise.
‘But—but this isn’t the Knave!’ he shouted. ‘Why…Why—’
Dr. Milton looked round with satisfaction and amusement.
‘Surprised, gentlemen?’ he asked. ‘Surprised?’
Again he looked round, this time into each of their astonished faces. Then he began to laugh, slowly, deeply.
CHAPTER VIII
A Message from Scotland Yard!
During the previous summer Paul Temple had spent several months in Holland and he had noticed, with amusement, that on several of the houses miniature windows were fitted into the front doors. Most of the windows were also equipped with stout grills for protection. Now, however, when callers were frequent and newspaper reporters had become an intolerable nuisance, he was beginning to appreciate the advantages of such a device. He summoned carpenters from the nearby village, and much to their astonishment, they found themselves fitting such safety windows in all the doors at Bramley Lodge.
It was no insignificant precaution. Paul Temple fully realized that the Lorraine gang would stop at nothing. They were quite capable of despatching a member to Bramley Lodge and putting a simultaneous end to his investigations and existence.
But now, however, it was quite impossible to enter Bramley Lodge by force. Not that Temple admitted to any fear in this respect. But he had to keep out reporters and had installed these little windows purely for this reason. That they also protected him against the gang, however, was certainly an additional advantage, not to be readily underestimated.
On the Saturday at the end of a very eventful week Steve Trent had to undergo inspection through the grill for the first time. At about ten that morning she had left her office behind Fleet Street and stepped into her fast sports car. It was a low, black under-slung model with an engine whose six small, but very powerful cylinders, gave her as much speed as any driver could cope with. Moreover, Miss Trent was still young and unspoiled enough to get a renewed thrill out of speeding.
It provided her with a means of escape from the hard and often sordid details of her daily work. Letting her hair stream out, and with the windscreen flat down in front of her, she would press the accelerator hard down with an exhilarated feeling of freedom. She had reached the office soon after half-past eight on this particular Saturday morning in order to complete a weekly woman’s article, and then fled from the building before an unfeeling news editor could prevent her from keeping her appointment with Paul Temple.
Late the night before had come a telegram from the novelist asking her if she could possibly come and have lunch with him the next day. ‘Interesting news to discuss,’ was the intriguing reason he had given. Steve Trent wondered what the urgency was that had persuaded Temple to send for her in such an unusual fashion. Nevertheless, as she resolutely set her alarm clock for seven o’clock the next morning, she felt tremendously elated.
And she felt even more elated at the near prospect of the meeting as she swung her car out of Tudor Street towards Blackfriars Bridge and the hundred odd miles to Bramley Lodge. A traffic block at the Blackfriars Bridge junction which disregarded the regular ‘Go!’ signal of the traffic lights held her up for nearly ten minutes.
But somehow, on this particular morning, Steve did not seem to care.
At last she was able to release the brakes and, earnestly praying that no vigilant police patrol car would be drawn to her by the lusty roar from the car’s exhaust, she started down the Thames Embankment. Looking periodically into her tiny driving mirror, for the reflection of any suspicious-looking car in the rear, she shot along the wide clear road at just over fifty.
Two and a half hours later, she had parked the car in the drive of Bramley Lodge and was undergoing Pryce’s careful inspection through the little grill. This time, there was none of the enmity Pryce had been forced to display on the first occasion she had called.
In fact
she had already won a unique place in the old man’s affections.
Steve Trent had a happy knack of making people like her, at times even against what they firmly believed to be their better judgment. Like Temple she assessed people, not by the rank they held, but at their real value as human beings, and in Pryce Steve found the completely efficient manservant, old-fashioned in his ideas, perhaps, but nevertheless faithful, solid and reliable, who could carry out for the novelist all the many duties of a bachelor establishment.
On the few brief occasions he had seen her, she had completely enslaved Pryce. So much so that, when Temple asked him the day before to prepare lunch for them both and to ‘do your stuff because Miss Trent will be coming,’ he set out to provide a meal fit for a proverbial princess. And Steve Trent enjoyed it to the full when it was set before her.
Nearly as much as she enjoyed being in this lovely old room. Its oak panelling gave it a character which Temple had managed to preserve with the help of, or perhaps in spite of, some real Chippendale furniture an aunt had left him. ‘Always be kind to wealthy aunts,’ had been his never-failing maxim after that occasion. Through the windows the fruit trees could be seen in full blossom.
In the summer it was a very proud host who placed bowls of apples and pears, peaches and less common fruits before his appreciative guests.
The sight of the luxuriant white blossom outside the dining-room windows kept Steve Trent chattering like an excited child. Already her girlhood memories of the even more luxuriant blooms of South Africa were growing dim, and in London she had far too little opportunity of tasting the joys of the countryside.
By common consent, neither of them said a word about Steve’s brother and the crimes that had led their paths together. But Max Lorraine, the mystery man, and his gang of jewel thieves were not very far from the thoughts of either of them. Both regarded this lunch together as something in the nature of a respite. And both host and guest kept up a steady chatter of current events. They talked of Mr. Coward’s versatility, the capriciousness of editors, the publicity value of Mr. Hore-Belisha, the lack of good shows in town, and kindred topics. Each seemed to feel it was essential to go on talking, if only to keep at bay the dark shadow of the powerful gang behind the ‘Midland Mysteries’. They could discuss all that over their coffee later in the afternoon.
And all too soon the coffee stage was reached. Paul Temple made his usual apologies at this time of the year for ‘not being able to give you fruit out of my garden: you will have to wait a bit for that!’ but he produced quite excellent substitutes from foreign climes. The dessert seemed to have the effect of making them silent. After a while they got up and Temple led the way into the lounge.
It was a rather chilly day, and a great fire was burning in the ingle. A number of logs were piled up by the side, drying in the heat of the flames and imparting a pleasant but keen aromatic smell to the room. He pulled up a comfortable armchair for his guest at one corner of the inglenook and produced boxes of Virginia and Turkish cigarettes for her. These Turkish cigarettes were made for Temple by a Greek who kept a little cafe in Shaftesbury Avenue, and Paul Temple, in his self-imposed role of being the perfect host, was very proud of them. They were of excellent tobacco, and the cigarette itself was attached to a gold-tipped tube of equal length which formed the mouthpiece.
He himself took a Virginia and inserted it carefully into his ivory cigarette holder.
‘Would you care for a liqueur, Steve?’ he asked, as he started pouring out the coffee.
Steve Trent hesitated. ‘No, I don’t think so, thanks.’ But then, how was Steve to know that one never refused a liqueur at Bramley Lodge? Temple’s cherry brandy had an almost notorious reputation.
‘Nonsense!’ exclaimed Temple. ‘By Timothy, this coffee needs it. Pryce,’ he called, ‘a cherry brandy for Miss Trent.’
Pryce had been tactfully hovering in the background waiting for this very command. He, at all events, had no delusions about the cherry brandy at Bramley Lodge.
‘Certainly, sir,’ he replied, and proceeded to pour out precious drops of the rosy liquid. Then he set the bottle down conveniently and temptingly on the sideboard, and silently withdrew.
‘Well, it was very decent of you to come down from town at a moment’s notice like this,’ Temple started at last. ‘I hope it wasn’t too inconvenient?’
‘No, of course not, but—’ and she paused, ‘but why did you send for me so suddenly?’
‘Well, Steve, because…oh, by the way, I’ve decided to drop the Miss Trent,’ he added a little inconsequently. ‘It reminded me of a rather elderly lady I met at a garden party. She thought I was part author of Gone With the Wind.’
A ripple of happy laughter floated across the air.
‘I sent for you, Steve, because I’ve been thinking of what you told me the other day.’
‘You mean, about my brother and—Max Lorraine?’
‘Yes.’ Paul Temple hesitated. ‘If your brother was right, and this man Lorraine, alias the Knave of Diamonds, really is the big noise behind these jewel robberies, then I think you ought to tell Sir Graham all you know about him.’
‘He’d never believe me!’ she exclaimed. ‘This man Lorraine is—’
‘I’m not so sure that he wouldn’t, Steve,’ Paul Temple interrupted. ‘The Commissioner isn’t quite such a fool as people think. He’s got his head screwed on all right. Even though he won’t send for Paul Temple!’ he smiled, as an afterthought.
‘But they don’t even believe my brother was murdered!’ Steve Trent put in excitedly. ‘If they think he committed suicide, then they’re—’
Paul Temple was able to stem even Steve Trent’s rapid flow of words.
‘I can prove to them that he did not commit suicide,’ he said quietly. ‘If they need any proof!’
‘You can!’
‘Yes. According to Horace Daley, the landlord of “The Little General”, when your brother came downstairs, he asked him to change a pound note, and Daley then went into the back parlour to get the money.’
Steve Trent looked at Paul Temple expectantly.
‘Well,’ he continued, ‘why should he go into the back parlour? There was thirty-seven and sixpence in the till behind the bar counter. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘Because I examined the till when Daley went upstairs to fetch Miss Parchment down. In fact, that’s why I sent him.’
Steve Trent showed she realized the importance of his discovery. Nevertheless, she had no intention of being so blinded by it that she could not see any of the other facts.
‘Of course, there may be a perfectly simple explanation,’ she said. ‘Perhaps the landlord didn’t want to—’
‘Oh, yes. There may be quite a simple explanation. But there’s just one other little point. Your brother was holding the revolver in his left hand.’
Steve Trent looked puzzled. ‘But Gerald was left-handed,’ she said.
‘Yes, of course,’ replied Temple, quietly. ‘That’s just the point.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Steve.
‘I mean, my dear Miss Trent, that your brother was murdered by someone with a little too much imagination and not sufficient intelligence.’
A journalistic training had sharpened Steve Trent’s already quick powers of perception. Moreover, she never accepted facts at their face value but preferred to look both behind and beyond them.
‘But if it’s so very obvious that my brother was murdered, why do the police think he committed suicide?’
‘What makes you so certain that the police think he committed suicide?’ asked Paul Temple.
‘Why, it’s been in all the newspapers, and even at the inquest, they…they—’ she broke off, apparently in deep thought. Suddenly she exclaimed with a queer note of surprise in her voice: ‘You think they know he was murdered?’
‘I’m almost sure of it.’
‘Then why on earth did they make out it was su
icide?’ she asked. ‘Surely—’
‘I expect they have a reason, Steve. And I shouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t a very good one.’
Paul Temple slowly stretched his legs, poured more coffee out for each of them, then strolled towards the sideboard and returned with the bottle of cherry brandy between his fingers. He refilled their glasses and offered Steve another of the Turkish cigarettes she had liked so much.
Then he blew through his long cigarette holder, watched the butt end of his cigarette go flying into the fire, and carefully replaced the holder on the mantelpiece. Paul Temple was by no means a cigarette smoker, but he liked an occasional cigarette, especially while drinking tea or coffee.
He now brought forth the briar pipe which had been his constant companion for three years. It was alight and going well before he sat down again.
‘Who was the lady that was staying at the inn? Miss…er…?’
‘Miss Parchment?’ asked Temple. ‘She’s a retired schoolmistress with a passion for old English inns. Very old English inns. Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, no particular reason,’ Steve replied. ‘I noticed her at the inquest, that’s all.’ She paused. ‘I called in at “The Little General” last time I was down here. I don’t trust that man Daley – there’s just something about him that makes me suspicious.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Temple quietly. ‘Yes – I can understand that. As a matter of fact, there’s something rather peculiar about the inn itself, if you ask me.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Well, according to Miss Parchment, the inn wasn’t always called “The Little General”; it used to be known as “The Green Finger”!’
‘“The Green Finger”…that’s a peculiar name.’
‘Yes, it’s peculiar in more senses than one,’ replied Paul Temple. ‘After the Birmingham robbery, the night watchman died. He was chloroformed. Before he died, however, he said “The Green Finger”.’
‘You don’t think this inn – “The Little General” – is used as a sort of meeting-place? That would account for—’
Temple interrupted. ‘Yes. I did think of that,’ he said quietly.
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