Fire, Burn!

by John Dickson Carr

  Again Cheviot nodded without looking up. He felt she was casting him quick and furtive looks, her broad innocent mouth open.

  “Again last night, you see, I t-tried to tell you when you were putting questions at people. But there were so many, all listening! I could do no more than hint.”

  A sweat of excitement stood out on Cheviot’s forehead. He might be closer to finding the murderer than he thought. He stood facing Louise, head down, his left hand gripped round the burned edge of the table.

  “Yes, I know,” he said. “So did Lady Cork. But your hints were so mysterious, all of a jumble, that I could read no meaning into them until Freddie Debbitt explained it this morning in a coffee-room. Louise! All this has been common gossip. Yet I never knew it?”

  “Well! Papa and Mama have spoken of it. I always listen, though they think I don’t.”

  “But listen to me. Someone must know the name of this lover who threatened her! Have you heard it?”

  “Haven’t—haven’t you?”

  “No; how should I, with all mouths closed? Who do they say he is?”

  “C-can’t you guess?”

  “No, no! Who do they say it is?”

  “Well!” murmured Louise, keeping her eyes lowered. “Some say it was you.”

  There are some shocks so unexpected and fantastic that they take a little time to seep into every corner of the brain before they are understood.

  Seconds passed. Cheviot, resting his whole weight with the left hand on the table, suddenly found his palm growing moist. He slipped, and nearly stumbled forward.

  “To be sure,” flattered Louise, “I knew it couldn’t be truth!”

  But she wasn’t quite sure; she was terrified of him, despite all the trouble to warn him; her voice pleaded for a denial.

  “Although, to be sure,” she went on in a rush, “you are sometimes a very heavy gambler. But that is only when you have been drinking quite heavily, and you are never seen the worse for drink in public.”

  They were almost the same words Colonel Rowan had used last night.

  Louise stopped. She saw his face as he looked up.

  “Louise,” he said hoarsely, “do you imagine I would take money from a woman? Or that I should need to? I’m not hard up!”

  “No, no, no! But—but often people say they’re not, don’t they, when they are? And some wonder, if you had so much money, why you should take this odious place as a police-officer.”

  Cheviot controlled himself. He could see the dangers opening all round him, amid dumb-faced people who would neither affirm nor denounce. And he had tried to question them about the murder!

  Did Flora know all this? She must know some of it, at any rate. And that would explain …

  “Will you believe me,” he asked, “if I tell you I never met Margaret Renfrew before last night? In fact, she said as much herself before other persons!”

  “But—but she would say that, wouldn’t she? And Peg always declared she could fall in love only with an older man, who had,” Louise shied away from some word as being improper, “who had been in the world. Once I can recall how she remarked (oh, so very negligently, touching her bonnet) how well you carried yourself on horseback.”

  “Listen! The first time I ever heard that woman’s name—!”

  Cheviot stopped abruptly.

  As shocks can stun the emotions, so they can open the brain to facts hitherto observed yet never properly understood. He saw his own words printed in his mind, and the fact they represented. Another fact followed, then another and another.

  He could not see them before. He had been blinded by his feelings. Standing beside the table, his gaze wandered down. There, beneath the unlighted red lamp and beside his own report, he saw Colonel Rowan’s medium-bore pistol with the polished silver handle.

  If only, last night, he had performed that simple fingerprint test to see who fired a pistol, he would have seen through to the heart of truth. Instead—

  “Smoke!” he said aloud. “Smoke, smoke!”

  Louise Tremayne jumped up from the chair and backed away.

  “Mr. Cheviot!” she breathed, extending lilac-gloved hands and then hastily dropping them.

  “I have not told you,” she rushed on, “the most dreadful circumstance of it all. It concerns both you and—and Lady Drayton.”

  Cheviot flung away speculation. “Yes?” he demanded, rather too roughly. “Yes?”

  Louise moved still farther towards the window. Evidently she was torn between fear and tenderness; a hatred of being hurt, yet an obscure desire to be hurt by him.

  “Hugo Hogben and I,” she said, “were dancing together. That must have been just after … after …”

  “After Miss Renfrew was shot. Yes?”

  “Well! We—” Now it was Louise who paused, twitching her head round.

  She was more alert than he. Cheviot had not heard heavy, fat footsteps squelching towards the house, or a port-winy voice upraised in addressing the door.

  “It’s Papa,” said Louise. Her short nose and wide mouth seemed to crumple up, like a child’s. “He’ll beat me. He’s a dear, good, kind man; but he’ll beat me if I don’t think of some fib. I can’t stay; I can’t!”

  She flew to the door, which opened and slammed behind her.

  Cheviot was after her in a moment, but he was too late. Except for a constable examining a number of dark lanterns under a hanging petroleum-oil lamp, the passage was empty and the front door closed.

  He could hear the domineering male voice upraised above the creak of hooves and carriage-wheels as the vehicle drove round. He and Flora walked amid still taller dangers; Louise could tell him. But she and her dear, good, kind papa were gone.

  Cheviot went to fetch his hat. He did not communicate with those waiting upstairs, in Colonel Rowan’s living-quarters. Instead, after brief orders to Inspector Seagrave and Sergeant Bulmer, he hastened out.

  At the top of Whitehall he found a hackney cabriolet. After what seemed an interminable drive, through muddy streets beginning to glimmer with gas-lamps, he got down at number eighteen Cavendish Square.

  Flora’s house was of whitish stone, untainted by smoke. But it was without light or sound, every window closely shuttered. Though he hammered at the door, and nearly broke the bell-wire in pulling at its brass knob, there was no reply.

  At half-past ten that night, after dinner and after dressing himself carefully, Cheviot stood back waiting in a dark doorway of Bennet Street, off St. James’s Street—looking across towards Vulcan’s gaming-house, and what awaited him there.

  12

  The Black Thirteen

  TWO FACES, ONE lower down and the other higher up, shone in the gloom of the doorway on either side of him.

  Cheviot, in full evening-dress, wearing over it an ankle-length black cloak with a short cape whose collar was trimmed with astrakhan, and the most glossy of heavy hats, stood between them.

  “Got yer rattle, sir?” whispered Sergeant Bulmer, on his right.

  “Yes.” Cheviot felt in the small of his back. “The tails of my coat hide it. You can’t see it even with the cloak off.”

  “And yer truncheon?”

  “No.”

  “No truncheon, sir?” demanded Inspector Seagrave, from his right side. “But a pistol, surely?”

  “Pistol?” Cheviot rounded on him. “Since when have the C.I.D. been permitted to carry firearms?”

  “The—the what, sir?”

  Cheviot pulled himself up. He kept swallowing and swallowing, because he was nervous.

  “Pardon me. A slip of the tongue. Now listen, I don’t think it’ll be necessary for either of you, or any of the others, to enter the house. But if it should be necessary, and any man-jack of you is carrying a pistol, get rid of it. Do you understand me?”

  Sergeant Bulmer, he had discovered, was stout-hearted but happy-go-lucky. Inspector Seagrave, though hard and capable, was a constant worrier.

  “Sir!” said the latter, his long f
igure formally drawn up. “Begging your pardon, Superintendent, but there’s a great store of pistols and cutlasses at number four. On special occasions, Mr. Peel says, we’re allowed to use ’em.”

  “This isn’t one of the occasions. Look there!”

  It was a fine, cool night; no moon, but a bright crowding of stars.

  Bennet Street, a short and narrow lane lighted by only one feeble gas-lamp, was the first street on the right as you turned down St. James’s Street from Piccadilly. Cheviot, with his companions, stood in the doorway beside the dark premises of Messrs. Hooper, the coach-builders. Bennet Street was as deserted as a byway in Pompeii. But, through the thick and unsavoury mud in St. James’s Street, a stream of gigs, curricles, berlines, hackney coaches or cabs went with a rattle and clop-clop up and down the hill.

  Cheviot nodded towards them.

  “The time will come,” he said, “when those people—all people!—will regard you as their friends, their protectors, their guardians in peace and war. It is a high honour. Remember it!”

  Sergeant Bulmer was silent. Inspector Seagrave grunted a short laugh.

  “Reckon it won’t be in our time, sir.”

  “No. It will not be in your time. But it will come,” and Cheviot gripped his arm, “if you behave as I tell you. No swords or firearms; your hands and your truncheons if need be.”

  “I’m with you, sir,” said Sergeant Bulmer. “I can’t pitch away the barker in the street. But I can unload it.”

  “Sir!” said Inspector Seagrave. “You’ve been at Vulcan’s before this?”

  “Yes,” lied Cheviot.

  “You know what to expect, then, if they twig it you’re an officer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very good, sir!” said the Inspector, saluting and then folding his arms.

  Fumbling through the cloak with a white-gloved hand, Cheviot drew out the double-cased silver watch, with the silver chain, as befitted evening-wear.

  “Just ten-thirty,” he said. “Time to go in. Oh! One question I forgot to ask. This ‘Vulcan.’ What does he look like?”

  Sergeant Bulmer’s astonishment breathed out of the gloom.

  “You’ve been to the place, sir? But you never saw him?”

  “Not beknown to me, at least.”

  “He’s a big cove, sir,” muttered Sergeant Buhner, shaking his head. “Taller than you, and broader-like. Got a bald head without a single hair on it, and one glass eye: I disremember whether it’s the left eye or the right. Got the airs and speech of a gentleman, too, though I can’t say where he picked ’em up. If you mean to talk to him—”

  “I mean to talk to him. You already know that.”

  “Then look sharp, sir! You can’t hear his step, and he moves like lightning. If he tumbles to anything, don’t let him get behind you!”

  “Why do they call him Vulcan? It can’t be his real name?”

  “Dunno his real name.” The Sergeant brooded. “But a gentleman, a eddicated gentleman it was, he tells me the story. It’s in the Bible, I think.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yessir. Vulcan, he’s the god of the underworld; and his wife’s the goddess Wenus. One day she’s up to her games with Mars, who’s the god of war, and Vulcan catches ’em at it. Well! It happened the same with this Vulcan, across the road.”

  “Oh? How?”

  “Well! He’s got a wife, or a mort, maybe: a handsome piece but a spittin’ firebrand. One day he catches her in what you might call an embarrassin’ position, no clothes there weren’t, with a Army officer. This Vulcan pitches this Mars out of a two-pairs-o’-stairs window.—He’s a hard nail, sir! Look sharp!”

  “Yes. Well, you have your instructions. Good luck.”

  And Cheviot stepped down and sauntered across the dim street.

  Everywhere, all over London, trembled that shaky noise of hooves and wheels: vast, unfamiliar, yet one he could never get out of his ears.

  Vulcan’s was a trim brick house three floors high, the top storey smaller than the others. Not a chink of light gleamed anywhere, except that the front door was set a little way open, and a tiny glow shone inside the entry. This was common to all gambling-houses, he had been told, as a sign and invitation of what they were.

  Cheviot put his foot on the first of the stone steps leading to the front door, and looked up.

  Yes; he could admit he was nervous.

  But that, he knew in his heart, was because he could not find Flora. During those desperate hours when he searched and inquired after her, he had come to recognize one truth. Flora was more than a woman with whom he believed himself to be in love. She was necessary to him, entwined in his life and soul; and, though he would never have dared to say aloud such hideously banal words, he could not live without her.

  Well, you think that. But live you must. And he must live in this lost London, so strange and yet so vaguely familiar, which was Flora’s.

  If—

  Cheviot woke up, his foot on the stone step.

  A smart gig with bright lamps, driven by just as smart a manservant, came bowling along from the direction of Arlington Street. It swerved across the street and drew up at Vulcan’s door.

  Down from the gig, swiftly assisted by the manservant, alighted a gentleman of about Cheviot’s own height and dressed exactly as he was. But the newcomer was younger, with a dissipated eye, long red nose, and luxuriant brown side-whiskers.

  Together he and Cheviot mounted the few stone steps, silently assessing each other, until they reached the partly open door.

  “After you, sir,” said Cheviot, politely standing aside.

  “Not at all, sir!” declared the newcomer, who was slightly drunk and elaborately courteous. “Come, come! Shouldn’t dream of it! After you.”

  This sort of exchange might have gone on forever if Cheviot had not pushed the door wide open, and with mutual bows and smiles they both went into the small, den-like entry. Facing them was another door: heavy, very thick despite its black paint and gilt-work, with an oblong closed spy-hole at eye-level.

  With another elaborate bow of excuse, the amiable stranger with the luxuriant side-whiskers leaned past Cheviot and dragged at a brass bell-pull. Immediately the panel of the spy-hole was shot back. First the stranger, then Cheviot, were given careful scrutiny from a pair of sharp, rather disturbing eyes.

  A heavy key turned. Two bolts thumped back. The door was opened by a footman in sombre red-and-black livery, lightened by white at neck and wrists and (seemingly) gold shoe-buckles. Like other footmen he wore hair-powder, though otherwise hair-powder had been a dead fashion for thirty years.

  Any experienced policeman, after one look at that footman’s seamed and shut-up face, would have seen his quality and been on the alert.

  “Good evening, my lord,” the footman said very deferentially to the amiable one. Then, only a slight shade less deferentially: “Good evening, Mr. Cheviot.”

  Cheviot murmured something inaudible. His nerves, twitching momentarily at a smell of danger, quietened again as he realized he must be well known here.

  Deftly the footman removed the cloak of my lord, whoever he was. But, since my lord made no move to take off his hat, Cheviot left his own hat on his head when the footman twitched off his cloak.

  “Ha ha ha!” suddenly chuckled my lord. His eyes gleamed, and he rubbed his white-gloved hands together as though in anticipation. “Play good tonight, Skimpson?”

  “As always, my lord. Will it trouble you, gentlemen, to walk upstairs?”

  The marble foyer at Vulcan’s was large and high, though of a sour and stuffy atmosphere thickening through a faint scent of flowers. A journalist, describing the foyer, had written that it was “full of tubs containing the choicest blooms and exotic plants.”

  A red-carpeted staircase ascended to a closed door above. Though its hand-rail was of rather fine wrought-iron scrollwork, it was spoiled by being brightly gilded. My lord grew even more affable as he went up beside Cheviot.

 
“New to Vulcan’s, sir?” he inquired.

  “Rather new, I confess.”

  “Ah, well! That don’t signify.” My lord’s face momentarily darkened. “I’ve dropped two thou here, I’ll acknowledge it, in a few days. But the play’s fair, and that’s the thing.” His amiability brightened again. “And my luck’s in tonight. I feel it; I always feel it. What’s your fancy? Rouge-et-noir? Hazard? Roly-poly?”

  “I fear I have little knowledge of rouge-et-noir.”

  Abruptly my lord stopped, and swung round unsteadily with his back supported by the iron hand-rail.

  “Not know rouge-et-noir?” he exclaimed, his eyes opening wide in amazement. “Come! Damme! What a Johnny Newcome you must be! Simplest game there is. Here, I’ll show you!”

  My lord threw out his white-gloved hands.

  “Here’s the table,” he explained, indicating a long one. “Here’s black, that’s the noir, on my left. Here’s red, that’s the rouge, on my right. In the middle sits the croupie—”

  He broke off to utter his neighing chuckle; then became very solemn.

  “Apologize,” said my lord, with a bow. “Been so long with these sportin’ blades (good fellers, very!) I begin to talk like ’em. I mean the croupier, of course.”

  “Yes. I think I understand.”

  “All right. The croupie, with six packs of shuffled cards, deals first to the left for black. The idea is to make the pips of the cards reach thirty-one, or as close to it as you can. Suppose the croupie deals thirty-one. He says, ‘One!’ Then he deals to the right, for the red. Got it so far?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. This time suppose he deals an ace (that’s one), a court-card (that counts ten), a nine, another court-card, a five, a deuce—” My lord stopped, puzzling and pursing up his lips. “I say! How many does that make for the red?”

  “Thirty-five.”

  “Ah, that’s bad! The croupie cries, ‘Four! Black wins.’ Simple: you lay your wager on black or red, that’s all.” My lord hesitated. “True, there’s always the chance of an après.”

  “And what, if I may ask, is an après?”