by Sapper
“I think we may congratulate ourselves on the way that went off,” said Hardcastle to Drummond, as the jury began to disperse. “It was most masterly the way you avoided any direct reference to the ghost, and I’m very much obliged to you.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Drummond affably. “It is a pleasure to assist you in any way. But you’ll still have to watch it. We may have finished with the inquest, but we’ve not got rid of the reporters yet. Here’s one of the blighters bearing down on us now.”
But it was not at the newspaper man that Hardcastle was looking, and following the direction of his glance, Drummond saw Jerningham, at the other side of the hall, chatting to Mr Peters.
“May I trouble you for a few moments, gentlemen?” The reporter, notebook in hand, paused hopefully.
“You may not,” laughed Drummond. “Nothing on this earth is going to keep me one minute longer from the consumption of ale. My throat is like a lime-kiln. So long, Mr Hardcastle: doubtless we shall meet again in less stirring times. Are you coming, Ted? Peter is in the bus already.”
“A stroke of luck, Hugh,” said Jerningham as they left. “You remember my telling you about Dick Newall, whom I’ve often played golf with. Well, he is in the firm. He’s the sort of opposite number to young Marton. There’s an old Newall, and Dick is his nephew.”
“What sort of a bloke is he, Ted?”
“Quite a cheery lad, and plays no bad game.”
“Good! But we’ll have to get hold of him on the quiet. Hardcastle had an eye like a gimlet on you when you were talking to Peters.”
“And he had an eye like a gimlet on you when you were giving evidence, old son,” said Darrell.
“I know he had, Peter. He’s not very good at disguising his expression. I thought I was pretty hot stuff over the Puck-like elfin streak, didn’t you?”
“I damned near gave it away by laughing,” said Jerningham. “And as for your thirteenth child of a thirteenth child, it’s seventh, you ass.”
“To the great artist what is a trifle of that sort?” remarked Drummond. “It is the general atmosphere that counts. And incidentally,” he continued more seriously, “there’s nothing much wrong with the general atmosphere the other side have managed to produce, as far as they’re concerned. What a stroke of luck for them that Morris hadn’t got to be reckoned with! But, for all that, the more you look into it, the more masterly do you find the way they’ve extricated themselves from a very nasty position.”
“What’s going to happen if they do find the chopper?” said Darrell.
“Find your grandmother, Peter! Morris was not the only thing that went into Grimstone Mire that night. They aren’t the type of bunch who would keep a weapon covered with fingerprints that are not Morris’. No: I should say that delightful creature Penton bunged the chopper into the bog immediately the thing was done, and I’m wondering how it’s going to strike the Inspector when he fails to find it.”
“Bring the cocktails, Jennings,” shouted Jerningham, as they got out of the car.
“Because, if he only realises it, it knocks the whole verdict endways. If the original scheme had gone through, and Morris had been caught later, the point didn’t arise: naturally he would have thrown it away where it could never be found. And little Willie isn’t going to find it.”
“It would take more than a trifle of that sort to worry him,” said Darrell. “But the point now is, what’s the next move?”
“The trail here is dead for the moment,” remarked Drummond, lighting a cigarette. “I think we’d better try this pal of yours, Ted – young Newall.”
“Right you are, old lad: there’s nothing to stop us. We can easily beetle up to Town by the three o’clock train from Plymouth. But I can’t promise that we’ll get anything out of him. I mean, even if by chance he knows something, he may flatly refuse to pass it on.”
“We can but have a dart at it,” answered Drummond. “Because it’s perfectly obvious that the matter can’t stop where it is. I haven’t enjoyed myself so much for a long while.”
“It was rather interesting to hear that friend Hardcastle has a yacht,” said Darrell, as Jennings announced lunch.
“The whole thing is deuced interesting,” cried Drummond cheerfully. “Let’s get to the stewed hash, Ted, and tell him to throw a few toothbrushes into a bag. And you never can tell: I shouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t find ourselves travelling up with little Pansy-face.”
He paused, struck with a sudden idea.
“I say, chaps – what’s Algy Longworth doing these days?”
They both stared at him.
“Algy!” said Jerningham. “The last time I saw him he was pretending to do a job of work in his uncle’s office. What’s the idea?”
“Algy and Pansy-face: our Comtessa. Might be rather useful if they met one another. Algy wouldn’t know us: we wouldn’t know Algy. Perhaps we’d get on to something that way.”
“How are we going to get them to meet?”
“I haven’t an earthly at the moment,” admitted Drummond. “But it’s a possibility that’s worth bearing in mind. If we do travel up with Pansy-face – and she said she was going this afternoon – we’ll try and find out her haunts in Town.”
And, as it turned out, the first person they saw on the platform at Plymouth was the Comtessa. Hardcastle was with her, and she gave them a charming smile.
“Are you all going up to London as well, Captain Drummond?” she asked.
“That’s the idea, Comtessa. The country is really getting so deuced exciting these days, that one has to calm one’s nerves in the old Metropolis. Got rid of the reporters yet, Mr Hardcastle?”
“No, confound it!” cried the other. “That constable or the sergeant has been talking, and they’ve got on to a rumour about the ghost.”
“Barricade the front door and bark at them,” advised Drummond, as the train began to move out of the station. “So long, Mr Hardcastle: my love to your boy friends.”
“How thankful I am to get away from that dreadful place!” said the Comtessa, as he sat down opposite her. “These last two or three days have seemed like an awful nightmare.”
“They have certainly been full of incident,” agreed Drummond. “Ted is quite jealous that it didn’t happen at Merridale Hall.”
“I thought it was charming of you to give your evidence about the poor boy in the way you did,” she said, leaning towards him and lowering her voice.
He looked a little puzzled.
“I hope I’m not being dense, Comtessa, but I don’t quite follow you. In what other way could I have given it?”
“My dear man, you’re not going to tell me that you really thought the cause of his nerves was due to the fact that two warders suddenly loomed out of the fog?”
She smiled and lit a cigarette.
“No, Captain Drummond – that did well enough for the inquest, and it is much better that his poor mother should think so – but as a man of the world you cannot really believe it yourself.”
“My dear Comtessa,” he remarked, “you are, in our English phraseology, barking up the wrong tree. The youngster struck me as being very unfit: I should say he had been drinking too much and hitting it up generally. But more than that I frankly know nothing about.”
“Do you mean to say that he didn’t tell you he was in very serious trouble?”
Drummond nodded.
“My dear lady, he was a complete stranger to me. I was with him for ten minutes at the most. Would he be likely to spring an intimate confession on me in such a very short time? Now that you mention it, his condition, if what you say is true, is far more comprehensible. But it’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
She looked at him keenly, but Hugh Drummond was not accounted one of the best poker-players in London for nothing.
“It did sound a bit thin, I admit,” he laughed. “And yet there was the ghost that you and I both saw. However, if it wasn’t the ghost that took us there, what did you think it was?”
“I thought you were worried over Bob Marton, and that, knowing he was going to Glensham House, you came along to see if he was all right.”
“At ten o’clock at night! Really, Comtessa, it seems an odd hour to pay a call. And you are ignoring the somewhat important fact that he never even mentioned Glensham House to me.”
“It was such an extraordinary coincidence, wasn’t it, you selecting that particular night?”
“Foggy, you see. It is then that the ghost walks. Though the story current in these parts is of a very different type of manifestation from the one we saw.”
“Really! What is that?”
“Honestly I would sooner not tell you, Comtessa.”
He shook his head gravely and stared out of the window.
“But I would like to know,” she insisted.
“Comtessa,” he said after a while, “you wouldn’t think, would you, to look at me that I am at all a nervous individual? And I must say for myself that it has to be something pretty large in the human line for me to get the wind up. But when it comes to the thing that is reputed to haunt Glensham House, it’s a different matter. Ted knows more about it than I do, he’ll tell you.”
“What’s that, old lad?” said Jerningham, apparently waking up suddenly.
“I was telling the Comtessa about the horror of Glensham House,” explained Drummond. “It’s a thing, Comtessa – a monstrous misshapen thing.”
“That’s right,” said Jerningham. “No one knows what it is for certain, because everyone who has seen it either goes mad or dies. Some people say it is an elemental, of incredible strength and ferocity; others say that it is some dark secret of the Glenshams. And one of the few facts that seems to be known about it is that its appearance is always preceded by a horrible vault-like smell. Whether, of course, there is any truth in it at all, I don’t know. West Country people are notoriously superstitious. And it may be that occasionally on foggy nights Grimstone Mire produces this strange fetid odour, which by some means or other reaches the house.”
“And that is what you came to see,” she exclaimed a little breathlessly.
“That was our idea,” answered Drummond. “Though probably the whole thing is a fable.”
“That is what I say when sitting in a comfortable carriage on the way to London,” said Jerningham. “But what was it that sent young Roger Glensham mad in the course of a single night? Was it an accident that caused his great-uncle to fall from his bedroom window and break his neck, or was that look of terror in his staring eyes due to something else? I always think that it is one thing to talk about these matters in the broad light of day, and quite another when one is in an old house at night.”
“But has no one ever heard of the ghost that we saw?” asked the Comtessa.
“The Glenshams are notoriously uncommunicative about the whole thing,” said Jerningham. “I personally had never heard of a woman haunting the house, but since we all saw her, the matter is proved. And for my part, at any rate, I’m glad it was that one we saw, and not the other.”
The train was slowing down for Exeter, and he rose.
“What about a spot of tea?” he remarked.
“I’m with you, Ted,” said Darrell, but Drummond shook his head.
“I’ll come along a bit later, old boy,” he said. “Now, Comtessa,” he continued, as the other two left the compartment, “to revert once more to the question of young Marton. Don’t say anything if you would prefer not to: naturally I don’t want to pry into any secrets. But since you mentioned the matter in the first instance yourself, what was this trouble he was in?”
She hesitated: then, taking her cigarette case from her bag, she opened it. And over the match which Drummond held for her their eyes met.
“Very serious financial trouble, Captain Drummond,” she said gravely. “The poor lad confided in me. I can’t tell you the details: they are too complicated. And anyway, it’s not my secret.”
“I quite understand, Comtessa,” answered Drummond. “And I shall, of course, respect your confidence. Confound it! – here are some people getting in. Why is it that certain individuals are born without tact?”
She smiled at him sweetly.
“Do you ever dance in London?” she asked.
“I periodically tread a measure and then mangle a kipper,” he said. “Ciro’s and the Embassy, and one or two others of the smaller places.”
“Do you know the Custard Pot in Wardour Street?”
“That’s a new one on me,” he answered. “Is it a good spot?”
“It is a quiet one,” she murmured.
“Then it shall be added to my list, Comtessa,” he said. “Do you go there often?”
“Ça dépend,” she answered. “Most young men in London today are so boring, aren’t they?”
“If you dare to risk it,” said Drummond, “the Senior Sports will always find me.”
“I think I might – once. And my telephone number is Mayfair 0218.”
He scribbled the number in his notebook, and once again their eyes met.
“What about some tea, Comtessa?” he remarked but she shook her head.
“I detest eating in a train, mon ami,” she answered “But don’t let me stop you.”
“It always sounds better to call it tea,” he grinned. “So, if you will excuse me, I’ll join the other two for a while.”
He strolled along to the dining-car, and having joined them at their table, he ordered a whisky and soda.
“Have we or have we not?” he remarked thoughtfully.
“Have we not what?” said Darrell.
“Allayed her suspicions,” answered Drummond. “Since you left, chaps, I’ve got off with Pansy-face: we purpose dancing together at the Custard Pot in Wardour Street. But does she still think that Marton told me something while he was in the house? That is the crux.”
“Didn’t you think Ted was inventing the whole of that ghost stuff?” put in Darrell.
Drummond stared at him.
“Of course I did. And I thought he did it deuced well, though what he wanted to introduce the smell for, the Lord alone knows. You don’t mean to say there’s any truth in it, Ted?”
“No, I don’t say that. But for the first time today, funnily enough – and I’d forgotten to mention it before – I heard that story. Some bloke at the inquest told me. That is the Glensham legend.”
“Well, I think Pansy-face swallowed it all right. But it’s the other point that is the really important one. I asked her point blank what was the trouble she alluded to, and she said he had got into a mess over money, and had confided in her.”
“Possibly the truth,” said Darrell.
“He said to me that afternoon, ‘I wish it was only that,’” answered Drummond. “A mess over money doesn’t make a fellow go in fear of his life; and most certainly a mess over money isn’t going to cause them to murder him. No, Peter: it must be more than that. You may bet your bottom dollar that young Marton had served their purpose and had lost his nerve in so doing. They were afraid of his squealing, and wanted him out of the way. But what was the purpose? – that’s the point.”
He relapsed into silence and stared out of the window at the flying countryside. And though his most fervent admirer would never have called Hugh Drummond a second Newton, yet he possessed a great deal of sound common sense, which he could use to advantage on an occasion such as this. Essentia
lly of a direct nature himself, he always sought to reduce a problem to fundamental facts. And here, it seemed to him, those facts were clear.
Marton had been murdered for some reason as yet unknown, and the murderers had got away with it as far as the police were concerned. But what the murderers did not know was how far they had got away with it where he and Ted and Peter were concerned.
He tried to put himself in the position of the opponents. Assuming his basic foundation was correct, what line of action would they take? Would they take the point of view that since they had bluffed the police the other thing didn’t matter? Something big was on foot, since they had not hesitated to murder a man: would they merely carry on with their plans, and completely disregard him and the two sitting opposite him? They might reasonably assume that, since he had said nothing up to date, he proposed to let the matter drop altogether. They might even assume that their bluff had been successful all round. And it seemed to him that until they were certain one way or the other, their policy must be to wait and see. If they did anything else, if they gave the slightest hint that they were not sure if he believed the story, they gave themselves away at once. It was a question of the old chestnut – ‘That’s my story, and I’m going to stick to it.’
For the moment, therefore, it seemed to him that the other side would do nothing. In fact they would do nothing until their own next move proved that they had not been bluffed. Then the scrap would begin in earnest. But the difficulty lay in what the next move was going to be. Unless they could get some information out of Dick Newall, it looked as if they were up against a blank wall. And he realised that Jerningham’s fears were not groundless: to ask a lawyer, however great a friend he might be, to reveal what were possibly office secrets was to ask a lot.
“When can we get in touch with your pal, Ted?” he asked.
“Almost certainly this evening, old boy. He’s nearly always in the club before dinner. Hullo! here is Mr Peters.”
The solicitor paused by their table on seeing Jerningham.