Trent's Own Case

by E. C. Bentley

  ‘And nothing of his face at all, then?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Well, what else did you notice about him? Was he tall and thin, or short and fat? Was he knock-kneed, or humpbacked, or bat-eared, or anything else that would give a touch of character to his rear elevation?’

  ‘Not short, sir, I should say. That’s about all I can say, seeing him only for a second.’

  ‘Hm! Portrait of a gentleman. Unmeasured in height, undistinguished in form, his breath it was lightning, his voice it was storm. As for his hair and complexion, he may have been a nigger for all we know. If one could have that little face of his painted upon a background of pale gold, such as the Tuscan’s early art prefers, how much trouble it would save. By the way, what about Mr Randolph? Did you see anything of him on this occasion?’

  ‘No, sir; but anyone letting a person in by that door could easy not be seen. The entrance is that narrow, you remember, sir, he would have to stand back against the wall, almost behind the door, to let a visitor pass in. I’ve done it so often, sir; I know.’

  For a few moments Trent digested this information in silence; then asked, ‘Was this man carrying a bag?’

  ‘That I’m sure he wasn’t, sir. Anything of any size, if he was carrying it, I should have seen, with him standing out against the light that way. I should say he hadn’t anything in his hands at all, sir.’

  ‘Three ringing cheers!’ Trent exclaimed. ‘This gets better and better. Evening dress, not short, no face and no bag! In a few deft strokes we have the man before us. Anything else you can remember? What about his tall hat, for instance? Was it a shiny one, or was it one of the collapsible sort?’

  ‘That I couldn’t say, sir. All I saw of him was just a glimpse, like, before the door shut.’

  Trent considered again. ‘The door shut. It would, of course. But not of its own accord, surely. Did the gentleman shut it, or did somebody else?’

  ‘I couldn’t see that, sir; it all happened so quick. But you remind me of one thing, sir—the door was shut very quiet.’

  ‘Then did it shut with a slam, as a rule?’

  ‘Well, sir, anyone letting himself out would have to slam it—it shuts a bit hard that way. But from inside you could shut it quite quiet if you liked. And speaking of being quiet, sir; that reminds me of something else, which I remember I passed a remark about it to Mrs Leather at the time. We had the window open at the top, the room being very warm from the stove; and we thought it was funny that neither of us had heard this gentleman’s footsteps going up to No. 5. Being so close, we should be able to hear anyone walking on the flagstones in Newbury Place, without it was a cat or dog.’

  Raught took up his cap, and moved to the open window. ‘I won’t keep you up any longer, sir. It’s time I was on my way.’

  ‘You have certainly given me enough to think about,’ Trent said. ‘By the way, Raught, before you go, I should like to know one thing. Perhaps you are the only person who can tell me, as you were the late Mr Randolph’s valet.’

  ‘What’s that, sir?’

  ‘Had he always used the same make of safety razor?’

  ‘No, sir. Most of the time I was with him he used an Oswego razor, an old one with the plating rather worn. Then he took to using a Bok, a more up-to-date make, sir.’

  ‘And that was not very long ago?’

  ‘Only a few weeks, sir. How did you know?’

  ‘I didn’t know; I only hoped.’ Trent laughed shortly and unpleasantly. ‘A safety razor can be a dangerous thing. Speaking of that, Raught, I think you said the police would have you listed now as a dangerous character. Are you a dangerous character?’

  For the first time Raught looked him directly in the face, and his expression hardened. ‘I might be, for them as interferes with me. I don’t mean to be took, not if I can help it. As for you, sir, you have treated me right, and I thank you. Good-night, sir.’

  He went out into the shadows.

  CHAPTER XVII

  FINE BODY OF MEN

  RAUGHT, as he made his way homewards to his place of refuge at the corner of Newbury Place, was in a dangerous temper. Always an unstable character, he had lived of late through days of desperate anxiety, a crushing culmination to the years of ceaseless chafing and smothered hatred in Randolph’s service. With lack of occupation, self-pity had wholly taken possession of him, encouraged as it was by the affection of the woman who had befriended him. He knew now that what he had dreaded had happened in fact; that the old man’s malevolence, even after death, had denounced him for the Maidstone crime of long ago. As he went through the half darkness of the lamp-lit streets, deserted almost entirely at this hour, he brooded over his hard luck. What chance had he ever been given? Raught, for that matter, like many another in cases like his, was far from grasping fully how bad his luck had been, how little the chance that life had offered. Neglect and harshness had marked him in infancy; there had been nothing at any time to tell against the effect of them. But in all of the past that he remembered and could understand there had been more than enough to be stored up as matter for savage resentment, for the soul-sick criminal’s conviction that he owes the world no more than such repayment as he can make in its own coin.

  The small figure, for all its scowling brow, moved with an assumed jauntiness of carriage. Raught knew well enough that he must not have the appearance of a hunted man; he was living up as he best could to the chauffeur’s uniform that clothed him. He was a skilled man in a good job, a man with a character and prospects; he was nobody’s football. It was well done, and the one or two policemen whom he passed had no more than a glance for him.

  Even less reason, it seemed, was there to look for any trouble from the solitary person to be seen as Raught turned up the long westward side of Purbeck Square. The tall man who was approaching him from the other end of the line of solid Georgian houses was, to any experienced eye, a slightly intoxicated gentleman. His clothes and bearing, the just perceptible deviation from the straight line in his walk, the occasional pause to gaze attentively at nothing in particular, could easily be made out in the lamplight. They told their own story; and it was one with which Raught had no fault to find. He was less afraid of gentlemen than of most other kinds of men; for instinct told him that, however detestable a gentleman’s personal character might be, he was usually not inclined to be censorious or even inquisitive about the conduct of his fellow-creatures. As for the condition in which this particular gentleman was, Raught made the natural assumption that, in what was evidently an early stage of it, tipsiness would conduce to an amiability that was even more to be approved than indifference.

  But in this assumption Raught was ill-advised. There are some natures which are too complex to conform to any recognized standard of behaviour; which are, in other words, unpleasant natures. This was eminently true of the person whom Raught was now able to recognize as they approached each other, both coming under the white beams of a street lamp. It was Eugene Wetherill, on his way home from a private place of resort where gambling was the principal attraction, and champagne figured as a popular sub-motive. Wetherill had done, for once in a way, pretty well at both sources of entertainment. He was in merry mood; and it was among his peculiarities, when in that mood, to be disposed to make himself a nuisance. He was far from being fighting drunk—a state in which he sometimes was, and in which he was never less than a violent and dangerous brute; but he was feeling mischievous.

  The recognition was mutual. On the two recent occasions when Wetherill had been admitted by Raught to the little establishment in Newbury Place, each had so far fallen in with prevalent public feeling as to dislike the other at sight. The second time, when Raught had dropped the visitor’s hat in taking it from him, Wetherill had cursed him peevishly, and had been silently cursed in return in language much less printable. Now, as Raught was about to pass him by with a studiously blank expression, Wetherill suddenly shot out an arm and gripped the little man’s shoulder.

  �
��Well, well! See who’s here!’ he crowed. ‘Murdered millionaire’s damned ugly-looking devil of a manservant, disappeared in highly s’picious cir’mstances. Where you going to, my pretty maid? You know you’re wanted by police? Damn queer taste to want you I must say; but police always had rotten taste—famous for it. Fine body of men, admiration and envy of civilized world, but as for their taste—simply ’plorable, no other word for it! Mind you, goes to my heart to say this, but fact must be faced—simply ’plorable.’

  Raught tried vainly to shake off the vigorous grasp. ‘You leave me alone,’ he growled. ‘Let go of my shoulder, blast you! I don’t know you, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Says he doesn’t know me,’ Wetherill lamented, shaking his head in sorrowful reproof. ‘Cutting me in the street, openly and ost’ashously. Modelling yourself on Beau Brummel—I know you! Tell your ’stinguished friends at White’s—met that damn feller Wetherill—I looked all round him, and there was an end of him. Stuck up, that’s what you are—just because you disappear in highly s’picious cir’mstances, and wanted by police. All right—not going to force my society on anybody.’ He suddenly raised his voice to a loud shout. ‘Police can have you … Police!’

  ‘You let me go, or you’ll be sorry,’ Raught muttered, pouring out a stream of obscenity as he struggled to wrench himself free. The man was now blind with rage and quite reckless.

  ‘Police!’ roared Wetherill again.

  ‘Have it then!’ Raught darted his right hand to a breast pocket, and thrust the nose of an automatic against his tormentor’s epigastrium. There was a dull report, and Wetherill, with a deep cough, dropped to the pavement and lay still.

  Instantly a whistle was blown from the end of the square, at the corner from which Raught had come.

  ‘Go on! Blow your—flute!’ Raught screamed. He kicked the body viciously. ‘You won’t bring him back!’ He fired a wild shot towards the uniformed figure that was now to be seen coming up at a run, and took to his heels in the opposite direction.

  Half-way down Lapworth Street, turning at a right angle out of Purbeck Square, the black cat in residence at No. 38 was sitting upon the steps, submitting with dignified condescension to being tickled behind the ears by Constable Mavor. Such attention to any small animal was automatic with that officer. What was really occupying his mind at the moment was his chance of being included in the divisional first eleven at the opening of the season. The time had come for it, he thought; he had given his proofs. If they had any sense they ought to play him for his bowling alone, good enough as he was all round; and this, as he was happily conscious, was not merely his own idea, but an opinion widely held even among his seniors.

  But Constable Mavor had another and yet more serious interest in life—the desire for advancement in his career. It was never far from his thoughts. He had devoted his capable and alert intelligence to those studies of police technique and the operation of the law which were a part of the routine of the force; and he had notions of his own. When his chance came, he would, he believed, be fully prepared for it.

  All this side of Mavor’s nature was startled into tense activity by a distant shout, ‘Police!’ from round the corner in Purbeck Square. The black cat, from whose ears his hand had been withdrawn as abruptly as if they were red-hot, stared after him with cool disdain as he departed at a brisk, athletic trot, pulling out his watch and noting the time as he went. Mavor was ready for business.

  There was another shout, and then a sound that opened Mavor’s eyes more wide, and brought a new light into them. It was that flat report for which American experts in homicide have coined the expressive word ‘Ker-bap!’; and it was followed immediately by the deep buzzing chord of a police whistle. As Mavor quickened his pace, he pressed his helmet firmly down on his head, shifted the strap slightly on his chin to get the maximum tension, and drew his baton.

  Another shot sounded; and then round the corner from the square, now some twenty yards away, a small man came pelting straight towards him. As the fugitive raised his hand with a menacing yell, Mavor could see the glint of lamplight on the automatic. Instantly he ducked his head, ‘covering up’ with his helmet and arms, and charged like a bull at a gate. A moment before the impact, there came a shattering pang in his left shoulder and the clap of the pistol deafened him; then Raught was down, fighting like a maniac to throw off the weight of Mavor’s thirteen stone, and to free the right arm to whose wrist Mavor was clinging with the only hand he now could use.

  All was over in the space of a few seconds. Before the first policeman could reach the scene of the wild-cat scramble, and while windows and doors were being flung open all the length of the street, the rising tumult of shouts and screams was cloven by a fourth report.

  Helmetless, breathless, white from the pain of his broken bone, and with blood running into his eyes from a cut on the forehead, Constable Mavor rose on his knees and looked down at the ugly sight before him.

  ‘—the—!’ he panted, while his right hand pressed his wounded shoulder. ‘He’s done himself in after all!’

  CHAPTER XVIII

  INFORMATION RECEIVED

  WHEN Raught had taken his leave after the secret interview in Trent’s studio, it was already midnight; and for more than an hour afterwards Trent had sat smoking and gazing into the fire as his mind played vehemently with the new train of ideas called into being by the story to which he had listened. The fire was nearly cold when he knocked out the last pipe and went to his bedroom. Sleep, when it came at last, was broken and unrefreshing; but a clear view and a testing purpose had already begun to shape themselves after so much fumbling in the dark.

  It was late in the following morning when, at work in his studio, he was called to the telephone and heard, to his surprise, the clear voice of Verney inquiring for him.

  ‘I rang you up,’ Verney said, ‘about something I am sure you would like to hear, and besides that, you are the only person I can think of who might be able to do something about it. It’s about Dr Fairman. I know you are a friend of his. It is a rather long story for telling over the phone. Can I see you about it sometime today?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Trent thought swiftly a few moments. ‘I think you told me you spend most of your time at the Randolph Institute. If you are going to be there this evening, how would it suit you if I were to call there somewhere about six o’clock. I’ve never seen the place, you know, and I should like to if I may. I can’t make it earlier, because I shall be working here as long as the light lasts.’

  ‘That will be just the thing,’ Verney said heartily. ‘It is just about then that we begin to get busy, and you will get some idea of what the Institute means to this part of the world. You know where it is—Marigold Street; anyone in the neighbourhood can tell you the way. I shall be about the place, and shall be delighted to see you.’

  ‘Right. I’ll be there.’

  It was a few minutes past six that evening that Trent, driving his car, invaded the territory of the Randolph Institute. He pulled up and asked his way of an aged loafer who was buttressing the wall of a public house. The man painstakingly removed a battered pipe from his mouth, spat ritually, and made a jab with his thumb over his right shoulder.

  ‘First to the right, second to the left. You’ll see the lights, and hear them damned boys a-playing ball.’

  He replaced his pipe and turned again to his Atlantean task with a finality that dried up any further inquiries on the tongue of Trent, who felt curious to know how any boys, whatever their spiritual state, could be playing ball in those narrow and crowded streets.

  The answer came to him as soon as he had reached the second to the left. There was a blaze of light from the top of a high building. Its flat roof was covered by a vast wire cage, brilliantly illuminated, and the thuds of footballs, kicked violently against walls, mingled with short bursts of applause, told that several games of ‘fug soccer’ were proceeding at once in the upper air of London.

&nb
sp; The entrance of the building was as easily to be seen. A powerful arc-lamp cast a pool of light round a large doorway, by which four or five youths were at the moment passing in. Trent left his car by the kerb and followed them into a tile-paved lobby from which half a dozen doors opened, with a stairway ascending from the opposite end. Addressing himself to a wiry-looking youth who was regarding him inquisitively, Trent asked if he knew where Verney could be found.

  ‘Upstairs, I expect,’ was the answer. ‘I’ll find him for you if you wait here. Any name?’

  Trent confessed to having a name, and mentioned what it was. The helpful youth fled up the stairs and left the visitor standing in the centre of the lobby, savouring the faint aroma of the place, which seemed to be compounded of soft-soap, coconut-fibre, leather and other elements less readily identifiable—a not displeasing, indeed a confidence-inspiring smell, as Trent thought.

  At one side of the lobby, some distance from him, a wall lamp shed its beams upon a green baize board, and before it a small group of youths stood examining notices displayed.

  ‘Somebody left his ticker lying about,’ one of them announced. ‘Found in the upstairs changing-room, it says here. Any claimants?’

  ‘Does it say a platinum bracelet wrist-watch, jewelled in forty-nine holes?’ another asked with affected anxiety. ‘I couldn’t think what I’d done with it. I was up there last night.’

  ‘Funny ass!’ the first youth remarked dispassionately. ‘It can’t be much good, anyway, or you’d have pinched it. Hullo! Here’s Ginger. Why ain’t you murdering mice at South Kensington, Ginger, this fine evening? Lost your interest in science? Or has the supply of poor dumb animals run out?’

  ‘I wish some of you could be dumb animals for a change,’ rejoined a tall youth with rebellious red hair and spectacles, who had just joined the group. ‘Lord knows I can’t afford to waste time, with my biology final coming on in a fortnight, but it’s the library committee this evening.’