by Annie Haynes
“I think we will begin there.”
“Shall we begin right by the lodge, inspector?” the keeper said, beckoning to his man.
“Please.” Stoddart nodded. “And I think we shall want your lanterns now. The undergrowth is pretty thick and the trees make it dark. We must see what we are doing.”
They walked along by the side of the park, under the trees, throwing the light of their lanterns as they passed along.
“Don’t look as if there had been any disturbance here,” the gamekeeper remarked when they had gone a hundred yards or so.
The words had hardly left his mouth when the inspector uttered a sharp exclamation. Near to them stood an overhanging copper beech; close to it the bracken had been crushed and broken, and near the trunk a man was lying a little on one side. At first sight he looked as if he might be asleep. The inspector hurried forward. The gamekeeper flashed his lantern on the quiet figure.
“It’s him, sure enough!”
“Ay, sure enough!” the others echoed as they saw the broad face, pale enough now, and the burly form of Superintendent Mayer.
“Eh, poor chap, he must ha’ fell here and died,” said Constable Jones, blowing his nose noisily.
The inspector knelt down and put his hand inside the superintendent’s coat.
” I am not sure that he is dead,” he said, looking up. “I fancy I can detect a faint movement of the heart. We must get Dr. Middleton here at once. Constable Jones – No, Harbord, you will be the quickest. Send the doctor here and go on for the ambulance.”
“I wonder now if he had a fit, like?” Constable Jones hazarded.
The inspector was busy unfastening the superintendent’s rather tight collar. He did not answer for a minute, then he beckoned to the constable.
“Look here!”
Constable Jones was not a slim man. He moved forward slowly and ponderously and got down on his knees beside the inspector.
Stoddart turned back the superintendent’s coat and waistcoat. On the shirt beneath was a dull red stain extending right across. Nearly in the middle was a small round hole.
Constable Jones stared at it, his eyes growing rounder.
“It looks as if he’d bin shot.”
“It does that,” the inspector agreed.
The constable’s mouth dropped.
“But there’s nobody in Holford would go out of their way to shoot Superintendent Mayer.”
“Do you think so? What about the person who shot Robert Saunderson?” the inspector inquired grimly.
CHAPTER 13
“Good Lord! The devil must be about the place!” Lord Medchester ejaculated.
He was staring at Inspector Stoddart with an expression of utter bewilderment.
They were facing one another in the study, so-called. Lord Medchester had been fetched away from his dinner to hear the inspector’s account of the discovery of Superintendent Mayer.
“It is unbelievable – inconceivable!” he went on, rubbing his bald forehead. “Another man shot close to my house. It – it’s damnable! What’s the meaning of it all, inspector?”
“I would give a good deal to know, Lord Medchester. We can only hope that Superintendent Mayer may be able to tell us –”
“Well, of course,” his lordship assented. “But while we are waiting for the superintendent to tell us the devil who shot him may have got clean away.”
“I don’t think so,” the inspector said with an odd smile. “We shall comb out the village, and we have drawn a cordon round the park.”
“That’s a nice, jolly sort of thing, to have a lot of damned policemen stuck round your house. I beg your pardon, inspector, but you know what I mean.”
“I think I do. But on the whole the police round the house may be better than the murderer going undiscovered.”
“The very devil is in it, I should say,” Lord Medchester continued profanely. “And it seems to me – it really does seem to me – that when you were trying to find the murderer of Robert Saunderson, if you didn’t do that you might at least have prevented another man being shot.”
The inspector coughed. “It is not so easy as it sounds; short of making the police go about in couples it is not so easy to accomplish. If we could only get the smallest idea of Superintendent Mayer’s discovery, which he thought had given him the clue to Robert Saunderson’s murderer, we should be in a very different position. You cannot recollect anything that can give us the faintest indication – put us in any way on the right track, Lord Medchester?”
“Not the very least!” Lord Medchester pulled thoughtfully at his upper lip. “I did my best to get him to tell me,” he added candidly. “But it was no use: he was as close as wax. Shouldn’t have believed it of the man myself. When he gets better he will tell you –”
“Ah, when?” the inspector echoed. “The doctor has not been very definite yet, but I’m afraid it’s a bad case – a very bad case. There is internal haemorrhage.”
“Oh! I hardly understood. Tell Middleton to get any bigwig he likes down from town. I will stand the racket. We must have Mayer well again. Now I think of it, I will motor you down to the Cottage Hospital and see what Middleton has to say.”
“I shall be glad if you will, Lord Medchester. Two heads are better than one.”
As they bowled down the drive in Lord Medchester’s runabout, they did not speak at first. The inspector’s brain was hard at work. It was only a few hours before that the superintendent, full of health and strength, had come down exactly the same way. What had happened before he reached the lodge? How had he been lured across the grass to the spot where he was found? These questions rang the changes in Stoddart’s mind, together with another couple. What was – what could be – the discovery that the superintendent had made? And was it this discovery that had led to his death?
When they reached the bridge over the ravine; Lord Medchester stopped the car.
“There! It was here that I lost sight of him, just on the road. Hurrying along he was, too, as if he hadn’t a moment to spare. There’s a short cut through the shrubbery from here to the garden, but possibly he didn’t know it, and came the longest way round. Why he didn’t go straight on to the gate I can’t imagine.”
“No; it is but a step from here to the gate.” The inspector looked round meditatively. “And yet in this short distance a murderer must have been lurking, waiting for him.”
His lordship stared round apprehensively. “I wonder where the blighter is now? Nice, cheerful thought that is of yours, inspector.”
Stoddart cast a strange and searching glance at his companion. “I fancy you will be quite safe, Lord Medchester.”
“I don’t know that I shall, by Jove,” his lordship said, shrugging his shoulders. “As I look at it, it was because he had found out who shot Saunderson that Mayer was done in. Now they know the superintendent was with me the last thing, I suppose they think he gave the whole show away to me. I shall be the next one they will go for.”
In the bright moonlight his face looked white and drawn. The inspector smiled slightly.
“In that case I fancy you would not be here now.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I have been sticking pretty closely to the house so far. Her ladyship isn’t well, been going into hysterics ever since she heard Mayer was missing. What she will be like when she knows what has happened I can’t imagine. Women are like that, scare themselves into fits. Not that there hasn’t been enough to scare anybody about here lately. She won’t be well until she has been away. I’d have taken her abroad, but she wouldn’t come. Said she wouldn’t go away until Saunderson’s murderer was found. I had begun to think I should have to take her by main force. But now there will be other things to do. We shall have to find out who shot Mayer. You can’t go away and leave the place to itself when a man has been shot just outside your front door, can you?”
“No, not very well,” the inspector said slowly.
“I quite agree with you. I think it would be wise f
or both you and Lady Medchester to remain at Holford for some time at least.”
His lordship looked keenly at the inspector’s impassive face as he stroked his chin thoughtfully.
“I felt sure you would see matters in that light,” he said.
The inspector made no rejoinder; his eyes were glancing here, there, and everywhere; his right hand was thrust into his hip pocket.
As they neared the belt of trees in which the superintendent had been found, his fingers closed more tightly round a small, cold object; every muscle in his hand and arm was taut and ready. Lord Medchester was looking from side to side, starting at every slightest sound.
In silence they drove through the lodge gates, where a policeman stood on duty, and turned up the hill to the Cottage Hospital. This was a recent erection. The land had been given by Lord Medchester and there had been a public subscription to build the hospital itself. Constable Jones was outside to-day walking up and down the veranda, which faced south, and where in the daytime convalescent patients might be seen taking a sun-bath.
Constable Jones saluted. The inspector jumped out of the car.
“Any news?”
“No, sir. Dr. Middleton is there now.”
At that moment there came a burst of sobs and cries from the hospital.
“Mrs. Mayer, sir,” Constable Jones explained.
“She has been going on like that all the time – ever since she saw Dr. Middleton.”
“Poor soul!” the inspector said sympathetically. “You will want to see the doctor, I expect, Lord Medchester?”
“Yes. I must hear what he has to say. I must speak to poor Mrs. Mayer too.”
He got out of the car, the inspector following. Mrs. Mayer was huddled up in a chair in the wide hall, weeping bitterly, a white-capped nurse was trying to calm her. She looked up as Lord Medchester came in and made a momentary effort to rise.
Lord Medchester laid his hand on her shoulder. “I am so sorry for you, my poor woman. But you must not give up hope like this, Mrs. Mayer.”
Mrs. Mayer raised her head. Ordinarily a comely, middle-aged woman, to-day she was shaking from head to foot and her pale face was tired and drawn and tear-stained.
“There isn’t any hope to give up, my lord,” she sobbed. “Dr. Middleton, he said he couldn’t give me any. And him the best husband and father that ever lived. Just put out of life by that cruel, murdering brute! Who could have killed him, my lord? If I could get at him!” The tears momentarily forgotten, she clenched her fists and shook them in the air.
“When we find him we will take care he gets his deserts,” Lord Medchester promised. “And don’t you be down-hearted, Mrs. Mayer. While there’s life there’s hope is a good saying. And don’t you worry about ways and means. I’ll look after you until Mayer is about again. And now I’m going to tell Dr. Middleton he is to spare no expense, and to get down another doctor from town, the best he can think of for the case, and special nurses that can help the recovery. Oh, we will have the superintendent saved for you, Mrs. Mayer.”
A ray of hope lit up the poor woman’s face. “Your lordship is very kind. I always said there was no one like you and her ladyship for looking after the folks in your own village.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, but we will do our best for you now, Mrs. Mayer. But there’s the doctor; I will see you again when I hear what he has to say.”
Dr. Middleton had come quietly down the stairs; he held open a door at the back of the hall, and as soon as Lord Medchester and the inspector were inside closed it behind them. When he turned his face was grave. Lord Medchester began at once:
“Well, doctor, can you save him?”
The doctor shook his head. “No, from the first there was no real chance. But now the internal haemorrhage is increasing and the heart is weakening. It is only a question of a very short time.”
Lord Medchester took a few steps up and down the room.
“It’s the most damnable thing I’ve heard of. But I won’t give up hope, doctor. Get a second opinion at once!”
“Glover is here now – from Empton, you know. His opinion coincides with mine.”
“Oh, Glover,” his lordship said contemptuously. “Wire for some one from town. The very best you can think of in this line.”
“There wouldn’t be time to get him here. As a matter of fact, I know of no one anywhere to beat Amos Treherne, of Leeds. But I doubt if there is time –”
“Send for him at once! Tell him it is a matter of life and death, and that he is to take the very fastest car and driver he can get. Deuce take the regulations. I’ll pay the fine if he gets one.”
“I will send for him, but I must warn you that there is very small prospect of its being the slightest use. The end may come at any moment.”
“Is there any chance that he will recover consciousness and be able to tell us what devil shot him?” Medchester asked.
Dr. Middleton pursed up his lips. “There may be a conscious interval before the end. It is a possibility, that is all I can say. It is out of the question to be definite one way or the other.”
He hurried off to the telephone. Medchester turned to the door.
“Well, I suppose there is nothing more to be done, inspector. I must get back to the house and her ladyship. Where are you off to?”
“Nowhere, at present. I shall wait on the chance of the conscious interval Dr. Middleton thinks a possibility. It is above all things important to find out whether the superintendent recognized his assailant. Any word he lets drop may give us the clue.”
“Ah, well, I’m no good at that sort of thing. I’ll toddle off now and send down to see how the poor chap gets on last thing. Come in if you are passing, inspector, and let me know how you get on.”
“Certainly I will.”
The inspector watched the other across the hall; then he went over to the small ward on the ground floor in which the superintendent had been placed. The door was open, a screen had been placed round the bed. The sister came to him.
“Will you tell the doctor that there are signs of returning consciousness?”
The inspector turned, but the doctor was close behind him and they went in together. Mrs. Mayer was sitting by the bedside now, her eyes fixed anxiously on her husband’s face. The superintendent was rolling his head from side to side and moving his hands restlessly. At a sign from the doctor the nurse came forward with a glass of some restorative, but the difficulty of getting Mayer to swallow even a drop was great, and at last they had to desist. But his eyes were open now and there was the light of reason in them.
He looked at Stoddart; tried to speak, but no coherent words came.
Dr. Middleton glanced at the inspector and then took the dying man’s hand in his.
“Can you tell us who shot you, Mayer?” he asked, his fingers on the weakening pulse.
The listeners held their breath as the superintendent tried to answer.
“Shot? Was that it?” he whispered faintly. “Some one called me – and then – my heart –”
The doctor glanced sharply at Stoddart. “You had better be quick!”
The inspector bent nearer. “You sent for me, superintendent. You wanted to tell me something. Can you remember what it was?”
The pallor of death was settling over the superintendent’s face. “Tell – tell –” he repeated, the poor, gasping breath coming in painful sobs, “my lord.”
“My lord,” the inspector repeated. “Was my lord there when you were taken ill?”
They waited, every eye fixed upon the dying face, but no answer came.
Mrs. Mayer laid her head on the pillow close to her husband’s. “Who was it that hurt thee, Jack? Tell us, lad!”
The familiar voice penetrated the dying ears. The fast-glazing eyes sought the familiar face.
“Eh, Polly, lass. You and the kids – no father.”
“Eh, lad, don’t thee give up. Tell us who it was as made thee ill.”
But the momentary acc
ession of strength was passing.
“Tell us, Jack,” Mrs. Mayer urged. “Who was it?”
“It’s hid – safe – tell my lord – you’ll find –”
As the last word left the white lips the head slipped sideways, the mouth opened wide with a moan. There was a dead silence. Mrs. Mayer knelt by the bed with her face on her husband’s arm. At last the doctor laid down the hand he still held and took out his watch.
“It is all over now. He is at rest, poor fellow. And you see now, inspector, that he could tell you little more than you knew already.”
The inspector dissented. “I don’t know about that. I really do not know about that. What is it that’s hid – and where?”
CHAPTER 14
“Well, that’s that,” said the inspector.
“And so another chapter in the Holford mystery is finished.”
He and Harbord were sitting in their room at the “Medchester Arms.” The inspector had his case-book open upon the table before him and was going over his notes.
“This last affair is most unaccountable,” Harbord rejoined. “Its taking place in the park is so puzzling.”
“Robert Saunderson was not far from the park when he was shot,” the inspector said significantly.
Harbord looked at him. “The superintendent found out something that solved the mystery of Robert Saunderson’s death. Why shouldn’t we do the same? We have the same data to go upon.”
The inspector took up a silver cigarette-case with a laudatory inscription upon it. He toyed with it for a minute, then took a cigarette from it, lighted it, and in leisurely fashion asked:
“Are you quite sure that we have?”
Harbord got up and walked to the fireplace. “You don’t think the superintendent kept anything back?”
“The superintendent – and other people, possibly,” Stoddart assented.