Fire, Burn!

by John Dickson Carr

  Lieutenant Wentworth, still motionless, spoke in a high voice.

  “Release him!” said Lieutenant Wentworth, with so superior and commanding an air that Cheviot’s rage boiled again. “Do you hear, Peeler? Release him, I say!”

  “With pleasure,” snarled Cheviot.

  He dropped Hogben’s arms. Both hands flashed down nearly to the small of the Captain’s back. Again all his strength went out in one catapult-shove.

  Hogben staggered forward for three long paces, reeled, and just saved himself from falling on his face. He bent down, one knee touching the ground, while you might have counted six.

  Then he straightened up and turned round, breathing hard. The white mudless patch under his right eye gave that right eye a singular appearance: tip-tilted, distorted, devilish.

  “God damn you,” he whispered.

  His left hand jerked the sword-scabbard to one side. There was a rasp of steel as he whipped out the straight sabre and charged again.

  There could be no foretelling the result if Hogben, all but on top of his adversary, had lunged out for a thrust with the point. A simultaneous yell of warning, rising from many throats of people Cheviot could not see, burst like a war-whoop over the yard.

  But it was not necessary. Captain Hogben flung back arm and shoulder for an overhand cut with the edge. In the split-second he was off balance, Cheviot leaped in at him.

  Mr. Robert Peel, Colonel Charles Rowan, Mr. Richard Mayne, and Mr. Alan Henley, all unashamedly fighting each other to look out of one window, had long found their view obscured.

  Officers as well as constables, disregarding orders, poured out of the house and lined up against the walls to watch.

  Mr. Peel, for instance, saw the sword-blade whirl high in the air. It dropped, point downwards, and stuck upright in the mud not four feet in front of Lieutenant Wentworth. Mr. Peel could not see how Cheviot’s hands altered their grip.

  But Captain Hogben seemed to sail out in the air, feet forward and back parallel with the ground. They saw the soles of Hog-ben’s boots, kicking towards the house, before he landed on his back and head, and lay still.

  It was different, very different, in that deadly little circle of emotion round the fallen Hogben.

  Cheviot, the breath whistling in his throat and sweat running down his body, strode forward. With his right hand round the hilt, he jerked the sabre out of the ground. His left hand fastened round the blunt edge. There was a sharp crack as he broke the blade across his knee. The two pieces he tossed away.

  “Oh, God,” whispered Freddie Debbitt.

  Lieutenant Wentworth’s fair complexion had gone chalk-white. He moistened his lips. Though he spoke clearly, it was with a kind of horror.

  “You have broken the sword of a Guards officer,” he said.

  “Indeed?” gasped the unimpressed Cheviot. “Now just who the devil,” he added, almost pleasantly, “do you Guardsmen think you are?”

  Lieutenant Wentworth did not reply. He could not. It was as though Cheviot had asked the King who the devil he thought he was, or perhaps put the same question to the Deity Himself. Again Wentworth was merely bewildered.

  “Mr. Cheviot, I—”

  For the first time Cheviot raised his voice.

  “Now look here,” he shouted, dragging out his watch, opening it, and glancing at the fallen Hogben. “I’ll give you just thirty seconds to take that—that specimen away from here. If you don’t, I’ll collar the lot of you and charge you with assaulting a police-officer. Take your choice.”

  “Jack, old boy!” bleated Freddie.

  “Ah, my dear Freddie!” Cheviot said with rich politeness. “You professed to be a friend of mine, I think? What do you do in the camp of the enemy?”

  “Dash it, Jack, I am your friend! I tried to prevent this! Ask Wentworth if I didn’t!” Here Freddie paused in alarm as he looked sideways. “Hogben! Stop!”

  For the indomitable Captain Hogben had again struggled up to his feet.

  “No!” Lieutenant Wentworth said curtly.

  Stalking towards Hogben, he seized his friend’s left arm and held him back. Freddie, with surprising strength and firmness, dived and held Hogben’s right arm.

  “No!” Wentworth repeated. “If you use your hands against him, like a ploughboy, he’ll make a fool of you every time. Be still!”

  “Ten seconds,” murmured Cheviot.

  Wentworth drew himself up formally.

  “Mr. Cheviot! You don’t really mean to arrest—?”

  “Don’t I?” asked Cheviot, with a broad smile. “What do you think?”

  “I am informed, Mr. Cheviot, that you are a gentleman despite your profession. A while ago, in the excusable heat of the moment, I uttered words of which I am heartily ashamed. Sir, I apologize.” Wentworth slightly ducked his bearskin cap. “Nevertheless, matters have gone too far. You must meet Captain Hogben in the field—”

  “With pistols?” Cheviot asked sardonically. “Fifteen seconds!”

  “Yes, with pistols! You must meet him, I say, or he will have the right to shoot you down in the street.”

  Cheviot, about to answer contemptuously, caught sight of Freddie Debbitt’s face. Inspiration came to him from the sort of moral blackmail Freddie had attempted to use that morning. He saw now what he stood to gain.

  “Agreed!” said Cheviot, and shut up his watch.

  “You will meet him?”

  “I will meet him.”

  “You would have done much better,” said Wentworth, drawing a deep breath, “had you said so earlier today. To whom do you refer me as a friend?”

  “To Mr. Debbitt there. He will arrange matters with you, at any time and place you like.” Cheviot replaced his watch. “You will, Freddie, won’t you?”

  “I … I … curse it, yes!”

  “Very well. But, before our formal meeting, I shall insist on one condition.”

  Lieutenant Wentworth’s back stiffened.

  Cheviot, staring out at the cool grey air, went hot-and-cold all over. He was trying, in an abstract way, to remember the appearance of the flat in which he had lived (where?) in his old life as Superintendent of C-One.

  He could recall nothing. Slowly, relentlessly, his memory was being submerged. Yet he could now remember the appearance, the numbers, even the smell and atmosphere, of places he did not even believe he knew.

  “Joe Manton’s shooting-gallery,” Cheviot snapped, “is at number twenty-five Davies Street? Yes, yes, I am aware Manton is dead! But his son still keeps the gallery, and the gunsmith’s at number twenty-four next door?”

  “Well?”

  “Before our formal meeting,” said Cheviot, “Captain Hogben and I shall try our hands against each other, six shots each at a wafer, and for any wager he cares to name.”

  Lieutenant Wentworth was scandalized.

  “Two principals,” he cried, “to practice together before a meeting? That’s imposs—!”

  “Stop! Wait!” croaked out Hogben.

  Hogben was now pretty steady on his feet. He jerked his arms loose. His face, under mud-stains, was paper-white between the black side-whiskers and feathery black hair. Though he drew his breath with difficulty, he bit at mud-caked lips and spoke again.

  “Any wager, ye say?” And greed moistened his lips.

  “Yes!”

  “A thousand guineas? Hey?”

  “Done!” said Cheviot.

  “You fancy yourself, I hear,” sneered Hogben through panting breaths, “at pistol-shootin’ at a wafer. It’ll be different when you face fire in the field, I promise you. Still! You do fancy yourself when there’s no danger. What odds d’ye give?”

  This time Cheviot drew a deep breath.

  “All odds,” he retorted in a loud voice. “If you outshoot me, in the opinion of judges to be agreed upon, I pay you a thousand guineas on the spot. If I outshoot you—”

  “Hey? Well?”

  “On your word as a British officer, you shall tell all you know about
the late Margaret Renfrew. And so shall your friend Lieutenant Wentworth. That is all.”

  Once more the wind went stirring and rustling in the bushes. Mr. Peel’s carriage, with its still-restive horses soothed by the coachman, had clopped up to a point almost behind them and towards their left.

  “Wait!” said Wentworth, with an indecipherable expression on his face. “I again protest against—”

  Hogben silenced him, still holding himself upright without swaying.

  Captain Hogben was not an articulate or an intelligent man, as Lieutenant Wentworth clearly was. For Hogben, at all times, courage alone sufficed. And yet, as he rolled round that one vivid tip-tilted eye, it held a look of such malicious and delighted cunning that Cheviot ought to have been warned. He should have sensed fanged dangers in ambush, an unseen stroke to crush him forever.

  “Done!” Hogben said softly.

  “I tell you, the code—” began Wentworth.

  “Damn the code. Be quiet, Adrian, and fetch my cap!”

  Lieutenant Wentworth hurried to pick up the muddied bearskin cap, slapped at it to clean it, and fitted it slowly down on his friend’s head as he adjusted the chin-piece. Hogben winced slightly with pain, but held himself straight. He did not even glance at the pieces of the broken sword.

  Freddie Debbitt ran out into Whitehall. Putting two fingers into his mouth, he whistled shrilly. A large and wide open carriage, drawn by two black horses and with its rather grimy silk upholstery in white as though to match the plume of the Grenadier Guards, came spanking into view.

  Behind it, almost too close, rattled another open carriage: more severe, but better kept from its red wheels to its glossy dapple-grey mares.

  In this latter carriage sat a fat and purplish-faced gentleman with a velvet-collared surtout over his coat, and a majestic hat. Beside him, on the near side, Louise Tremayne leaned out and looked straight at Cheviot.

  Young Louise wore one of the fashionable turbans in blue silk; a white cloak, with blue-striped cape to it, was clasped round her neck. Her hazel eyes, very intense in the pretty, immature face, conveyed a message as plainly as her wide mouth moved without sound.

  “I must see you immediately at—”

  The fat gentleman, observing the turn of her head, touched her shoulder. While Louise shrank meekly inside her cape, the fat gentleman—obviously father or uncle or close relative—raised his thick black eyebrows so outrageously high that it might have been a gesture of pained astonishment on the stage.

  “You, fellow!” sneered Captain Hogben.

  Cheviot shifted his eyes back. All hatred rose again.

  “Manton’s?” asked Captain Hogben. “Nine o’clock tomorrow morning?”

  Cheviot nodded curtly.

  “And afterwards, hey, the meetin’?”

  Again Cheviot nodded.

  Ignoring him, Captain Hogben swung round and moved towards the first carriage. His step faltered; Wentworth and Freddie Debbitt held his arms on either side. But he had gone only two steps when he whirled round again.

  The venom of the one eye had a tint and taint of the demoniac.

  “May Christ help you,” Hogben said, not loudly, “when I get you at the end of a duellin’ pistol!”

  Lieutenant Wentworth jerked at his arm. He and Freddie hurried Hogben forward, assisting him into the first carriage between them. The driver’s whip cracked; the black horses swept the carriage away up Whitehall. A lighter flick danced over the dapple-grey mares of the second carriage. While Louise kept her eyelashes demurely lowered, and the purplish-faced gentleman took a pinch of snuff from an ivory box, the carriage rattled after Hogben’s past the grey courtyard of the Admiralty across the road.

  Superintendent John Cheviot stood motionless, his head down.

  His high collar had wilted; its points ceased to stab him under the chin. He was cooling off, both in mind and body.

  He had beaten Hogben hands down. But he was far from sure he had not made a fool of himself. There, in the mud, lay the two pieces of the broken sword. Cheviot, a little ashamed, bent down, picked them up, and weighed them in his hand.

  Still with his gaze on the ground, he walked slowly and heavily towards the house.

  Then he raised his head—and stopped short.

  For he saw what he had never expected to see.

  Every man of the division’s sixty-five constables stood motionless, in a double rank on either side of the door. Just in front of them stood the sixteen sergeants, eight on either side to mark the path to the door. And, in front of these, the four Inspectors stood two on either side.

  They stood rigidly at attention, their shoulders so far back as to threaten the cloth of the blue coats. Their hands were straight down the trouser-seams. Their eyes were fixed straight ahead, in a sightless and glassy stare, though any observer could have seen that each man’s lungs were all but bursting to cheer.

  Still silence, while only the wind stirred.

  It was the greatest tribute they could have paid him. Cheviot knew it. To his heart it drove the blood of pride and pleasure; it straightened his own back, and made his head sing. But he sensed how he must deal with it, to avoid embarrassment.

  So he marched straight up, and stopped before the cleared path to the door. There he ran his eye slowly to the left along those motionless lines, and then slowly to the right, as though in careful inspection.

  “Which of you,” he asked curtly, “is the senior Inspector?”

  The tall and lean man, whom he had seen before and who had a nose like the as-yet-uncreated Mr. Punch of the magazine-cover, took two stiff paces forward and saluted.

  “Sir!” he said. “Inspector Seagrave, sir.”

  “A good parade, Inspector Seagrave. I congratulate you.”

  “Sir!”

  Cheviot glanced down at the two pieces of the sword in his left hand.

  “I have here,” he added, “a small trophy for our first trophy-room. It belongs to all of you. Take it.”

  Abruptly he threw the pieces to Inspector Seagrave, who caught them neatly in one hand with a sharp clash of steel. The short, slight gesture of the Inspector’s other hand indicated, “No cheering!” to the men behind him, though the lines of tall hats wavered and an explosion hovered close.

  Once again Cheviot glanced slowly left and right.

  “Stand easy,” he said.

  And, smiling for the first time, he sauntered between the ranks, up the step, and through the open door into the house.

  He did not even hear the outburst behind him. Cheviot had the bit in his teeth; Mr. Richard Mayne was attacking, and there was one who must be kept from any danger, if he must outface the Home Secretary too.

  Striding to the door of Colonel Rowan’s office on the right, Cheviot opened it without the formality of knocking. He closed the door behind him.

  Then he looked slowly round at Mr. Robert Peel, at Colonel Rowan, at Mr. Alan Henley again behind the desk, and above all at Mr. Richard Mayne.

  “And now, gentlemen,” he began briskly, “as we were saying before this unseemly interruption? Mr. Mayne, I believe, was accusing Flora Drayton of having committed murder?”

  11

  Louise Tremayne—and Dear Papa

  “BUT, DAMME, MAN,” exclaimed Mr. Mayne, removing his hands from under his coat-tails, “I never said any such thing! I only said—”

  Colonel Rowan held up a hand for silence.

  The Colonel, who had clipped and lighted a cigar, was pacing restlessly. He stopped in front of Cheviot, with his large nostrils distended.

  “Superintendent,” he said, taking the cigar out of his mouth, “the First or Grenadier Foot Guards are the oldest regiment in the British Army. Your conduct was infamous; I must rebuke you severely. Er—consider yourself rebuked,” added Colonel Rowan, and put the cigar back in his mouth.

  “Yes, sir,” said Cheviot.

  Mr. Peel, not a man much addicted to mirth, uttered a great gust of laughter. Then his large eyes narrowe
d with cold shrewdness.

  “For myself, Mr. Cheviot,” he said, “I should give much to know whether you merely lost your temper, or whether you did that deliberately to impress your men. Well, you impressed ’em. And by gad, sir, you impressed me! But you’ve landed yourself in trouble all the same.”

  “With Captain Hogben, sir?”

  “Hogben? That lout? The other officers of the First Foot won’t even speak to him; that’s why he needed a Coldstreamer for support. No! I meant the Duke. The Guards are the Duke’s pets. To talk to him, you’d think no other regiments were even present at Waterloo—”

  Here Colonel Rowan grew rigid.

  “—and there’ll be a fine mess if he hears of this. Further,” mused Mr. Peel, with his chin in his big hand, “I wonder what you and Hogben were discussing so formally just before he left?”

  “A purely private matter, sir. It does not concern us.”

  “H’m,” Mr. Peel said thoughtfully.

  Cheviot advanced to the table.

  “But what does concern us,” he drove at them, “is Mr. Mayne’s statement that I failed in my duty and that I shielded Lady Drayton.”

  “I said as much. Yes!” Mr. Mayne retorted with drawn-up dignity.

  “On what grounds?” Cheviot struck the table. “With your permission, sir, I will repeat the argument. You are suspicious, you state, on the grounds of what I ‘do not say.’ I have never heard, in law, of a man being condemned for perjury because of what he does not say.”

  “You are twisting—!”

  “I am stating. Your only so-called evidence, which you term an ‘unusual circumstance,’ is that Lady Drayton carried a muff indoors. Had you read this report, however,” and Cheviot lifted the sheets and dropped them, “you would have seen it was not at all unusual. Lady Drayton had split her right-hand glove wide open, as everyone can testify; and, like other ladies, she wished to conceal it. Where is your evidence that any pistol was in the muff or existed at all?”

  Mr. Mayne’s dark eyes glittered.

  “Evidence? I mentioned none. I but suggested a line of inquiry which you seem to have neglected.”

  “Sir!” blurted out a hoarse, heavy voice behind him.

  Alan Henley leaned out with his thick hands on the desk. Though it was only five o’clock, the grey sky had grown so dark that these people loomed up like the ghosts they might have been.