Inside, I could have found my way blindfolded through the little dark entry, and up two flights of stairs past doors that showed rooms full of typists, filing-cabinets, and harsh electric lights. It was surprisingly modern in this ancient stone rookery, whose halls smelt of stone, damp, and dead cigarettes. (This, by the way, is a part of old Whitehall Palace.) Nothing had changed. There was still a peeling war-poster stuck on the wall, where it had been for twelve years. The past came back with a shock, of men grown older but time stood still; of young fledglings clumping up these stairs a-whistling, with officers’ swagger-stick cocked under one arm; and outside on the Embankment a barrel-organ grinding out a tune to which our feet still tap. That flattened cigarette-stump on the stairs might just have been tossed away by Johnny Ireton or Captain Bunky Knapp, if one hadn’t been dead of fever in Mesopotamia and the other long disposed of by a pot-helmeted firing party outside Metz. I never realized until then how damned lucky I had been. …
On the fourth flight you must pass a barrier in the person of old Carstairs. The sergeant-major looked exactly the same, leaning out of his cubicle and smoking a forbidden pipe. Our greetings were affable, though it was strange to be saluted again; I told him glibly that I had an appointment with H.M.—which he knew was a lie—and trusted to old times. He looked dubious. He said:
“Why, I dunno, sir. I daresay it’s all right. Though there’s a sort of bloke just gone up.” His boiled eye was contemptuous. “A bloke from down the way, ‘e said. From Scotland Yard. Ayagh!”
Featherton and I looked at each other. After thanking Carstairs, we hurried up the remaining and darkest flight of stairs. We caught sight of the bloke on the landing, just raising his hand to knock at H.M.’s door.
I said: “Shame on you, Masters. What would the assistant commissioner say?”
Masters looked first angry, and then amused. He was back in his old stolid placidity again, where he could feel the brick walls of Whitehall: well-brushed, and heavy of motion. Any reference to his unheard-of behavior last night would probably startle him as much as it startled me to think of it.
“Ah! So it’s you?” he said. “Um. And Major Featherton, I see. Why, that’s all right. I’ve got the assistant commissioner’s permission. Now—”
In the dingy light of the landing, I could see the familiar door. It bore a severe plate which said, “Sir Henry Merrivale.” Above this plate H.M. had long ago taken white paint and inscribed in enormous staggering letters: “BUSY!!! NO ADMITTANCE!!! KEEP OUT!!!” and below the plate, as though with a pointed, afterthought, “This means YOU!” Masters, like everybody else, merely turned the knob and walked in.
It was still unchanged. The low-ceilinged room, with its two big windows overlooking the gardens and the Embankment, was as untidy as ever; as full of papers, pipes, pictures, and junk. Behind a broad flat desk, also littered, H.M.’s great bulk was sprawled in a leather chair. His big feet were on the desk, entangled with the telephone and he wore white socks. A goose-neck reading-lamp was switched on, but bent down so far that its light fell flat on the desk. Back in shadow, H.M.’s big baldish dusty head was bent forward, and his big tortoise-shell spectacles had slid down his nose.
“Hullo!” grumbled Major Featherton, rapping on the inside of the door. “I say, Henry! Look here—”
H.M. opened one eye.
“Go ’way!” he rumbled, and made a gesture. Some papers spilled out of his lap to the floor, and he went on querulously: “Go ’way, will you? Can’t you see I’m busy?… Go ’way!”
“You were asleep,” said Featherton.
“I wasn’t asleep, damn you,” said H.M. “I was cogitatin’. That’s the way I cogitate. Ain’t there ever goin’ to be any peace around here, so a man can fix his mind on the coruscations of the infinite? I ask you!” Laboriously he rolled up his big, wrinkled, impassive face, which rarely changed its expression no matter what his mood was. The corners of his broad mouth were turned down; he looked as though he were smelling a bad breakfast-egg. He peered at us through the spectacles, a great, stolid lump with his hands folded over his stomach, and went on testily: “Well, well, who is it? Who’s there?… Oh, its you, Masters? Yes, I’ve been readin’ your reports. Humph. If you’d only let a man alone for a while, I might’a been able to tell you something. Humph. Well, since you’re here, I s’pose you might as well come in.” He peered, suspiciously. “Who’s that with you? I’m busy! BUSY! Get out! If it’s that Goncharev business again, tell him to go jump in the Volga. I got all I want now.”
Featherton and I both started to explain at once. H.M. grunted, but looked a little less severe.
“Oh, it’s you two. Yes, it would be. Come in, then, and find a chair. … I s’pose you ought to have a drink. You know where the stuff is, Ken. Same place. Go get it.”
I did know. A few more pictures and trophies were added to the walls, but everything was in its old place. Over the white marble fireplace, where a dull heap of embers glowed was the tall Mephistophelian portrait of Fouché. Incongruously, on either side of it was a smaller picture of the only two writers H.M. would ever admit had ever possessed the least ability: Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. The walls on either side the fireplace were disorderly with crammed bookshelves. Over against one of those stood a large iron safe, on the door of which (H.M. has a very primitive sense of humor) was pointed in the same sprawling white letters, “IMPORTANT STATE DOCUMENTS! DO NOT TOUCH!!” The same legend was added beneath in German, French, Italian and—I think—Russian. H.M. has a habit of ticketing, according to his fancy, most of the exhibits in this room; Johnny Ireton used to say it was like going through Alice in Wonderland.
The safe door was open, and I took out the whisky-bottle, the siphon, and five rather dusty glasses. While I was doing the proper offices, H.M.’s voice kept on in its same rumbling strain: never raising or lowering, always talking. … But he sounded even more querulous.
“I ain’t got any cigars, you know. My Nephew Horace—you know, Featherton, Letty’s kid; the fourteen-year-old ’un with the feet—gave me a box of Henry Clays for my birthday. (Sit down, dammit, can’t you? And mind that hole in the rug; everybody who comes in here kicks it and makes it bigger.) But I haven’t smoked ’em. I haven’t even tried ’em. Because why?” inquired H.M. He lifted one hand and pointed it at Masters with a sinister expression. “Eh? I’ll tell you. Because I’ve got a dark suspicion that they explode, that’s why. Anyway, you have to make sure. Fancy any right kind of nephew givin’ his uncle explodin’ cigars!—I tell you, they won’t take me seriously, they won’t. … So, d’ye see, I gave the box to the Home Secretary. If I don’t hear anything about it by tonight, I’ll ask for ’em back. I got some good pipe-tobacco, though. … over there. …”
“Look here, Henry,” interposed the major, who had been wheezing and glaring for some time, “we’ve come to you about a dashed serious matter—”
“No!” said H.M., holding up his hand. “Not yet! Not for a minute! Drink first.”
This was a rite. I brought the glasses, and we went through it, though Featherton was fuming with impatience. Masters remained stolid, holding his glass steadily as though he were afraid it might fall; but there was some new development on his mind. H.M. said, “Honk-honk!” with the utmost solemnity, and drained his glass at a gulp. He relaxed. He adjusted his feet on the desk, wheezing. He picked up a black pipe. When he settled back in the chair, it was with an air of gentle benevolence wrapping him round. His expression did not change, but at least he looked like a Chinese image after a good dinner.
“Humph. I’m feelin’ better. … Yes, I know what you came for. And it’s a confounded nuisance. Still—” His small eyes blinked, and moved slowly from one to the other of us. “If you’ve got the assistant commissioner’s permission. …”
“Here it is, sir,” said Masters. “In writing.”
“Eh? Oh, yes. Put it down, put it down. He’d always got pretty good sense, Follett had,” H.M. admitted grudgingly. He grunted. “More than mo
st of your people, anyhow.” The small eyes fixed on Masters with that disconcerting stare which the old boy knew best how to employ. “That was why you got me, eh? Because Follett backed you up. Because Follett thought you’d tossed ’em a loose pack of dynamite, and at last you’d got a real up-and-at-em Sizzler of a case?”
“I don’t mind admitting that,” said Masters, “or, as you say, that Sir George thought—”
“Well, he was quite right, son,” said H.M., and nodded somberly. “You have.”
During a long silence the rain splashed on the windows. I looked at the spot of yellow light made on the desk by H.M.’s goose-neck lamp. Among a litter of typewritten reports, spattered over with tobacco-ash, lay a sheet of foolscap sprawled over with notes in thick blue penciling. H.M. had headed it, “Plague Court.” I was fairly certain that, if Masters had furnished him with all the reports, he knew as much as we did.
“Any ideas?” I inquired.
With painful effort H.M. moved his heel on the desk and struck the foolscap sheet. “Plenty of ideas. Only, d’ye see, they don’t altogether make sense—just yet. I shall want to hear a lot of talkin’ from you three. Humph, yes. What’s more, and it’s a blasted nuisance, I’m afraid I’ve got to go and have a look at the house. …”
“Well, sir,” Masters said briskly, “I can have a car at the door in three minutes, if you’ll let me use your phone. We’ll be at Plague Court within fifteen minutes. …”
“Don’t interrupt me, dammit,” said H.M. with dignity. “Plague Court? Nonsense! Who said anything, about Plague Court? I mean Darworth’s house. Think I mean to get out of a comfortable chair to mess about in the other place? Bah. But I’m glad they appreciate me.” He spread his spatulate fingers and examined them with the same sour expression. The voice grew querulous again. “Trouble with the English people is, they won’t take serious things seriously. And I’m gettin’ tired of it, I am. One of these days I’m goin’ over to France, where they’ll give me the Legion of Honor or something, and shout about me with bated breath. But what do my own flesh-and-blood countrymen do, I ask you?” he demanded. “The minute they learn what department I’m in, they think it’s funny. They sneak up to me, and look round mysterious-like, and ask whether I have discovered the identity of the sinister stranger in the pink velours hat, and if I have sent K-14 into Beloochistan disguised as a Veiled Touareg to find out what 2XY is doing about PR2.
“Grr-rr!” said H.M., waving his flippers and glaring. “And what’s more, their idea of sending me messages, and bribing Chinamen to call, and the cards that’re sent up here. … Why, only last week they phoned up from the downstairs office and said an Asiatic gent wanted to see me, and gave his name. I was so bloomin’ mad I chewed the phone, and I yelled down and told Carstairs to chuck the feller down all four flights of stairs. And he did. And then it turned out that the poor feller’s name really was Dr. Fu-Manchu after all, and he come from the Chinese Legation. Well, sir, the Chinese Ambassador was wild, and we hadda cable an apology to Pekin. And what’s more—”
Featherton hammered the desk. He was still coughing heavily, but he contrived to get out: “I tell you, Henry, and I’ve been telling you, this is a dashed serious business! And I want you to get down to it. Why, I said to young Blake only this afternoon, I said, ‘We’ll put this thing up to Henry as a matter of—caste dammit. Won’t be any aspersions cast on the ruling classes of England, by Gad, if old Henry Merrivale—’ ”
H.M. stared, and literally began to swell. As an appeal to a fanatical Socialist, this was not precisely the way to draw a man out.
“He’s ragging you, H.M.,” I said quickly, before the storm broke. “He knows your views. What we did say was this. We agreed to try you as a last resort, but I pointed out that this was utterly beyond you—not in your line—foolish to think you could see through it—”
“NO?” said H.M., and leered. “You want to bet? Hey?”
“Well, for instance,” I continued persuasively, “you’ve read all the testimony, I suppose?”
“Uh. Masters here sent it over this morning, along with a pretty first-class report of his own. Oh, yes.”
“Find anything interesting, suggestive, in what anybody said?”
“Sure I did.”
“In whose testimony, for example?”
Again H.M. inspected his fingers. Again the corners of his mouth were turned down, and again he blinked. He grunted:
“Humph. For a starter, I’ll call your attention to what was said by the two Latimers: Marion and Ted. Eh?”
“You mean—suspicious?”
Major Featherton snorted. H.M.’s expressionless eyes moved to him; H.M. was locked up at last, in the cage of his own brain. Once enticed into the cage, you could let him alone to pad up and down noiselessly, until the door was opened and he pounced.
“Oh, I dunno as I’d call it suspicious, Ken. What do you think?… Point is, I’d rather like to talk to ’em. I’m not going to stir out of this room, mind you. I’m not wastin’ good shoe-leather just to give Scotland Yard a bouquet. Too much trouble. All the same—”
“You can’t, sir,” Masters said heavily.
There was something in the tone of his voice that made us all look at him. What had been on his mind, some new development that was worrying him, all seemed packed into those few words.
“Can’t what?”
“See Ted Latimer.” Masters leaned forward, and his placid tones got a little out of control. “He’s bolted, Sir Henry. Done a bunk. Packed a bag and cleared out. That’s what!”
CHAPTER XIV
Nobody spoke. Featherton made a movement as though to protest, but that was all. The patter of the rain grew loud in the quiet room. Masters, drawing a deep breath as though he had at last got a weight off his chest, took out his notebook and an envelope stuffed with papers. He began to sort over the papers.
“Has he, now?” inquired H.M., blinking. “That’s—interesting. Might mean something, might not. All depends. I shouldn’t jump at it, if I was you. Humph. What have you done?”
“What can I do? Swear out a warrant for murder without even being able to tell a coroner’s jury how it was done?… No, thanks,” Masters said curtly. His face showed that he had not been to bed for twenty-four hours. He looked straight at H.M. “This is my official head, Sir Henry, if I make any more mistakes, and if I don’t pull it off. The papers are saying, ‘While an inspector of the C.I.D. was amusing himself with the occult, it seems rum that a brutal murder should be pulled off under his nose; very rum indeed.’ To top that, the story got into the papers in spite of me. … Sir George gave it pretty straight to me this morning. So, if you’ve got any ideas, I’d appreciate them.”
“Oh, hell,” said H.M. gruffly. He looked down his nose. “Well, what the devil are you waiting for? Get started! Give me facts! Get down to business.—Tell me what you’ve done today.”
“Thanks.” Masters spread out his papers. “I’ve got a few things, anyhow, that may be leads. As soon as I got back to the Yard, I began rummaging the files about Darworth. Part of the information I’ve already sent you, but not this. You read about that scandal over his first wife, Elsie Fenwick’s disappearance, following the alleged attempt to poison her while they were in Switzerland?”
H.M. grunted.
“Just so. Now, there was a woman mixed up in that business who might or might not’ve been important. That was the maid; the maid who swore old Elsie had swallowed the arsenic herself, and pretty well saved Darworth’s bacon. I was curious about that maid, so I looked her up. And now,” said Masters, lifting his dull eyes, “here are some names and figures. The alleged poisoning attempt took place at Berne some time in January, 1916, and the maid’s name was Glenda Watson. She was still with the old woman when Elsie disappeared from their new home in Surrey on April 12th, 1919. Afterwards the maid left England. …”
“Well?”
“At eight o’clock this morning I cabled the French police for any information
about Darworth’s second wife. They keep tabs on everybody in the country, harmless or otherwise. This was the reply.”
He shoved a cable-form at H.M., who scarcely glanced at it, grunted, and passed it to me. It said:
“MAIDEN NAME GLENDA WATSON. MARRIED ROGER GORDON DARWORTH, HOTEL DE VILLE, 2nd ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS, JUNE 1, 1926. WIFE’S LAST ADDRESS VILLA D’IVRY, AVENUE EDWARD VII, NICE. WILL INVESTIGATE AND COMMUNICATE.
DURRAND, SURETE.”
“Well?” inquired H.M., blinking placidly at me. “Make anything of it, son?—Y’know, Masters, I got a suspicion you’re on a blinking awful wild-goose chase. I got an even darker suspicion that it ain’t Glenda Watson who’s going to figure in this; but somebody in nice high-up places that knew what Glenda knew. But you’re right to keep kickin’ the ball. … Well, Ken?”
I said: “The first of June, 1926. Seven years and a month-odd. They’re devilish law-abiding people. They wait exactly the length of time until old Elsie is legally dead, and then rush into each other’s arms. …”
“But I don’t see—!” protested Featherton, rumbling and drawing himself up. “I’m dashed if I can understand—”
“Shut up,” said H.M. austerely. “And quite right they are too, son. Got to have it legal. And this raises the interesting point: was it worth it for the Watson woman? Darworth got any money, by the way?”
Masters smiled heavily. He was growing more assured now.
“Has he got any money? Ha! Listen, sir. Immediately after the splash in the papers, we got a phone call from Darworth’s solicitor. Now it happens (and this I’ll admit is a piece of luck) that I know old Stiller pretty well. So I hopped round to him straightway. He hemmed and hawed and looked out the window; but it boils down to the fact that Darworth leaves an estate of about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Eh?”
The major whistled, and Masters peered round the desk as though well satisfied. But this information, acted on H.M. in a rather different way than I had expected. He opened his fishy eyes wide. He pulled off his spectacles and shook them in the air. For a second I thought his feet were going to slide off the desk or his chair tip backwards.
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