"Yes," added Mrs. Bristed. "We were sorry then for some of the hard thoughts we had cherished against him."
Her husband glanced at her as if this speech had startled him. Then he laughed in his nervous way. "Yes," he said, "he kept us in hot water while he lived."
"I quite understand," said Mme Storey sympathetically. "And shall you carry on here?"
"No," said Bristed modestly. "I am scarcely qualified yet to do research work. We shall have to sell out for what we can get and find jobs."
"What were the relations between Mr. Hendrie and the charwoman?" Mme Storey asked unexpectedly.
Bristed looked at her as if at a loss how to answer. Mrs. Bristed put in quickly, with her cold smile: "Not very good. They were continually at loggerheads. He only kept her on because she rarely broke anything. She was never allowed in his room unless he were present."
"When did you last see Mr. Hendrie?" was the next question.
"Day before yesterday, in the afternoon," said Bristed. "He had not expected to come to the laboratory that day, but we had a fire, and I felt it my duty to telephone him."
"A fire?" exclaimed Mme Storey, looking around.
"Oh, a trifling affair. We soon cleared away the mess. But Mr. Hendrie insisted on coming down. He gave me a great rating for my carelessness." Bristed laughed heartily.
"And that is how he came to miss the afternoon train for London?"
"Yes, Madame.... It is terrible to think of it now!" he added with sudden gravity.
Later Mme Storey expressed a wish to be shown around the laboratory and especially the inner room. Bristed conducted us, and Mrs. Bristed brought up the rear of the procession, seldom speaking, but never ceasing to watch us with her cold eyes. Bristed was most anxious to make everything clear—too anxious, if anything. It occurred to me that there must have been a careful cleaning up since Mr. Hendrie's death. It did not seem possible that a man could have been cut off in the middle of his work like that and leave not a trace of it behind.
When we had completed our round Mme Storey said carelessly: "Where does the charwoman live?"
Husband and wife exchanged a quick glance and both started to make objections, voice answering voice in a sort of antiphony. "Such an ignorant woman! ... You couldn't get anything out of her! ... And absolutely unreliable.... Yes, what she didn't know she'd invent.... Lives in the worst quarter of town...."
"I am not afraid of a poor quarter," said Mme Storey with a smile. "The car I have waiting can take me there."
"In that case I had better accompany you," said Bristed.
"As you will," said Mme Storey pleasantly. I could see, though, that she had no intention of allowing him to be present at the interview.
We were driven to a mean little street lined by grimy two-story tenements, and with a swarm of filthy children in the gutters. There is a squalor, a hopelessness about the British poor that we do not see in America, thank God! From the house before which he stopped, however, issued the sound of a loud and unmelodious singing.
"That's her," said Bristed with a bleak smile. "Second floor front."
As we got out, Mme Storey appeared to be struck by a sudden recollection. "I have forgotten the station master!" she exclaimed. "Mr. Bristed, I wonder if you would attend to that for me, while I speak to this woman."
He looked sour but was obliged to consent, of course.
"Take the car," said Mme Storey. "The railway carriage in which the murder was committed goes up to London at eight to-night, on the same train. I want to reserve the compartment in which Mr. Hendrie travelled."
His face offered a study in chagrin and baulked curiosity. However, with an outward appearance of courteous willingness, he hurried away.
Mme Storey and I exchanged a look as we turned into the house. "It isn't possible," said I, "that he should be so ignorant of his master's work."
"Scarcely," she answered; "but you mustn't infer too much from that. He is probably in possession of the secret of Sims Hendrie's last work; but that doesn't connect him with the murder."
VII
I must confine my account of the exuberant Mrs. Freese within strict limits. If I gave her her head she would fill the balance of my pages. Talk foamed out of her in billows and cascades. There was no stopping her, no controlling her, we simply had to let her talk, and fish out what scraps of interesting matter the flood brought down. In ten minutes, I suppose, we were in possession of her entire life's history from her early love affairs to her latest quarrels with her neighbours. She was not in the least abashed by Mme Storey, but treated her immediately as an old friend. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Freese was not English but Irish, which explains a good deal.
Picture an elvish little woman with a wide mouth—only a whole tooth or two left—big ears, and a tight little twist of mouse-coloured hair. What she had to be cheerful about I don't know, but cheerful she was. The sordid room, no doubt her only room, was full of steam. She had her washtub on a chair, and she stood on a low box, bending over it. Having placed us on two other chairs, she returned to her tub and continued to scrub during our visit. And while she scrubbed she talked. Astonishing energy!
"Me and Mr. Hendrie, we understood each other. We got along good. My motter is: Never take people serious. Lor' bless you, nobody don't mean the half of what they say! He was a testy old gent, a temper like cayenne pepper, he had. He'd go off like a pack of firecrackers when you hang it up and light the bottom one. Lor', how he'd storm around that place when he mislaid anything, and it right under his nose all the time. If't had been a little yaller dog 'twould have bit him, I uster say. Ev'ybody was scairt stiff of him but me. But I seed he didn't mean nothin' by all his hullabaloo, an' I never let myself be put about by it. And he liked me because he seed that I seed that he didn't mean nothin' by it. It made the couple over there sore because he liked me; they wanted to run him theirselves. And you wouldn't believe all the dodges they put up to get me sacked—why, Mis' Bristed offered to clean up herself, but the old man wouldn't. Ah, he was an old bear, he was, but I miss 'im now 'e's gone! I'll look long before I find me another such a good place!"
"That was a fine cat of yours that I saw in the laboratory," remarked Mme Storey, apparently at random.
"Yes'm, Ruddy. Short for Rudyard Kipling. My young uns called him that because he looked like a tiger from India. I brung him home this morning when I got the sack, but he went right back again. They fed him too good over there for the likes of me to compete with."
"So you were sacked this morning?"
"Yes'm. Of course, I expected it."
"Were you there yesterday?"
"No'm. Yestiddy was my day home."
"Then you haven't been inside the laboratory since Mr. Hendrie's death?"
"No'm."
"How did you happen to take the cat over there in the first place?"
"Mr. Hendrie ast me if I had a cat, 'm. Said he was troubled with mice in the laboratory."
Mrs. Freese said this with so comical an air, primming up her lips and looking virtuous, that anybody not blind could have seen that she was holding something back. Repression was very difficult to one of her temperament.
"Come now, Mrs. Freese," said Mme Storey indulgently. "That's not the whole truth."
She shook her head and scrubbed hard. "I promised," she said.
"Promised whom?"
"Mr. Hendrie, 'm."
"But Mr. Hendrie is dead, and by foul play. I am trying to solve the crime."
Mrs. Freese looked greatly relieved. "Well, now, that do let me off my promise, don't it?" she said, and forthwith launched on her tale. "He said mice, 'm, and I had no reason to disbelieve him. But one morning, when I was cleaning, he called me in to do his room, forgetting that he was experimenting with Ruddy, and on the table I seed a box like, with a glass front to it, and alongside the box a little kittle sort of, with a pipe into the box; and inside the box my Ruddy stretched out flat with his toes curled so pretty. Dead as a door nail, 'm! Or so I thou
ght at the time. Lor', but it give me a turn: I'm that tender-hearted!
"I let a screech out of me, and Mr. Hendrie began to storm something awful. We had it hammer and tongs there for a while. I wasn't a-scairt of him. I says: 'You brutal torturer!' I says; and he says: 'There isn't anything the matter with your cat! He's just having a nice sleep! I do this to him half a dozen times a day,' he says, 'and he waxes fat on it!' 'The more shame to you, then!' I hollers. Well, the upshot was, Mr. Hendrie says if I'd go in the other room, he'd restore my cat to me.
"So I went out, and pretty soon he calls me in again, and there was Ruddy outside of the box, sitting up and washing his face large as life and twicet as natural. Only he was sleepy yet, 'cause he yawned once or twice. I could have hugged him to my bosom, only I was afraid he might have gas on him still that would lay me out, so I just stroked him gingerly at arm's length, and Mr. Hendrie told me to take my cat home and be damned to me, but he didn't mean nothing by it, and when I see how good Ruddy looked I told Mr. Hendrie he could keep him for his experiments, and he gave me a pun note and told me to keep it to myself, and that's all."
"Did Mr. and Mrs. Bristed know about this?" asked Mme Storey.
"No, 'm, they wasn't in the laboratory at the time. They never knew that I took any particular notice of the box with the glass front. There was so many queer gadgets about that I didn't know the use of."
"You say there was a sort of kettle outside it."
"A glass kettle, 'm. I could see inside it. There was a brown powder in the bottom of it, and water in the top part, I think, but I didn't take very good notice, I was that flustered."
"Any fire under it?"
"No, 'm, no fire, as I recollect."
"Now, think well. Did Mr. Hendrie say anything else about the gas?"
"Well, 'm, he kept saying as how it was good for both man and beast; and he offered to put both me and him under the influence to prove to me that it wouldn't hurt. But I declined with thanks."
"What became of the box?"
"Nothing, 'm. It was always in his room. It was too big to put away."
"Did you wash the kettle?"
"No, 'm. My instructions were never to touch anything that had chemicals in it. And I wasn't anxious to. They washed them theirselves."
That was all we got out of Mrs. Freese that was material to our case, though it was not all she volunteered. We got out as quickly as we could after Mme Storey had presented the cheerful and indigent little woman with a five-pound note, which called down ten thousand blessings on her head. When we got down to the street Bristed had not yet come back with the car, and we stood there talking for a few moments. From behind the closed windows of the second floor issued the sounds of Mrs. Freese's singing, more vociferous than ever but not a bit more tuneful.
"Not a poison gas, but a lethal gas, Bella," said my mistress thoughtfully. "There's a big difference. That coincides with what Sir Egerton Pulford told us. The scattered pieces of our puzzle are beginning to come together. One begins to understand what Sims Hendrie's scheme to end warfare was. Imagine the advantage of possessing a gas which would put the entire opposing army sound to sleep without a struggle! It is magnificent!"
After a moment she added: "Bella, I wonder if you and I didn't get a whiff of that gas in the train night before last?"
"But how could we?" I said helplessly.
"I don't know," she answered simply.
"Very likely Mr. Hendrie may have been carrying a sample of it up to the Royal Society," I agreed, "but he wouldn't have set it off voluntarily in the train; and if it escaped from him by accident, it would have put the young man to sleep as well as the rest of us, and he couldn't have robbed and murdered Mr. Hendrie."
"Oh, quite," she said.
"And if it was a thief who got on our car by accident and found us all asleep, your clothing was far richer than Mr. Hendrie's: there was your watch, your rings—would he not have chosen you for his victim?"
"Surely," she said. "We are not yet at the end of our work."
VIII
Bristed came along in the car, reporting that he had reserved the compartment for Mme Storey as requested. "How did you get along with Mrs. Freese?" he asked with his loud laugh. He laughed too much.
"What a woman!" said Mme Storey, humorously holding up her hands.
"I shouldn't think she could tell you anything of value," said Bristed.
"She didn't. I wasted my time."
He looked relieved. "What next?" he asked.
"I've done about all I can do in Banchester," said Mme Storey.
"Come to my house and rest for a while," he said eagerly. "Mrs. Bristed and I would be honoured."
"You are very kind," said my mistress. "We will."
It was now past six o'clock and growing dark. There was an agreeable mildness in the air, and the sunset was beautiful. Particularly lovely at that dusky moment were the great pansies growing around the Bristed cottage. Mrs. Bristed came to the door, as we walked up the path, and, hearing Mme Storey's exclamations of pleasure, came out. The pansies were growing in a narrow bed all around the foundation of the cottage. Their fragrance—for pansies have a fragrance, faintly perfumed the air.
"How exquisite!" exclaimed my mistress. "I must see them all!"
"They are nice," said Mrs. Bristed with her casual air. "I can't do much with flowers, I have so many other things to do, but I always try to have a few."
We strolled slowly around the cottage. "Do you raise them from seed?" asked Mme Storey.
"They may be raised from seed, if you have hot frames; but I have not the time. I buy the clumps from the gardeners."
"In pots?" asked Mme Storey innocently.
"No, they come in little baskets. So much lighter to carry."
"Quite."
At the back of the house several of the clumps were obviously freshly planted. Indeed, the basket and the trowel were lying close by. "I have been putting some in to-day," said Mrs. Bristed. "Some of the first ones died."
When we entered the house Mrs. Bristed said: "I hope that you and Miss Brickley will have a bit of dinner with us before you go to the train. It will not be much, of course."
Mme Storey thanked her heartily and declined. "We could not think of descending on you like that," she said. "You and Mr. Bristed must dine with us at the hotel opposite the station."
Mrs. Bristed looked at her husband, who enthusiastically accepted for both of them.
The interior of the house was sufficiently well furnished but quite lacking in charm. It was odd, the total absence of personality that it exhibited, like one of those completely equipped flats that they set up in furniture stores. Still, I suppose it was what you might have expected to find in the house of a woman who was a chemist first and a housekeeper second.
"Better still," said Mme Storey, with a careless look that suggested to me something important was coming; "perhaps you and Mrs. Bristed would be willing to coöperate with me in a plan that I propose. It will keep you up all night, but you are young; and I know how keen you are to get to the bottom of this terrible affair."
They looked at her questioningly.
"The trainmen have not been able to give us any information," Mme Storey went on, "and it occurred to me if I reproduced the journey of two nights ago in every detail so far as possible, it might strike on some chord in their memories."
So this was her plan! The subtlety of it was characteristic. One for the trainman and two for the Bristeds, I thought. Whatever they may have thought, they made haste to agree.
"Splendid idea!" cried Bristed.
"Miss Brickley and I will play ourselves," Mme Storey continued; "Mr. Bristed may represent Mr. Hendrie, and Mrs. Bristed the lady who sat next to Bella. All we lack is the young man who sat in the other corner, but we can do without him."
"It will be fun!" cried Bristed enthusiastically.
"Fun!" I said involuntarily.
"I mean interesting," he amended, somewhat confused.
"I have an old tweed hat such as he used to wear," said Bristed; "there is a pair of his glasses in the laboratory; and my wife has a great cape that I could put on over my overcoat."
"Excellent! We must also have a pot of pansies."
"Won't a basket do?" asked Mrs. Bristed.
"No, I think we ought to have a big pot exactly the same as he carried. If you will give Bella the name of a gardener, she will fetch it in the car while you are getting ready."
This was done. The gardener filled the pot with earth and planted the pansies in it, wondering, I suppose, why I insisted on such a clumsy pot.
"Hm!" said Mme Storey, weighing it when I got back. "How heavy it is! Yet Mr. Hendrie seemed to carry it without difficulty."
"Where on earth could he have got it?" put in Mrs. Bristed.
As we drove through the business part of town the boys were crying the evening papers, and we stopped to buy them. In the local sheet there was fresh matter in the case, new even to Mme Storey and myself. It appeared that an enterprising reporter had discovered the identity of the young man who called himself "George Albert."
"He is Harry Straiker, the second son of a highly respected resident of this place," so the Banchester story ran. "His father is Mr. Edward Straiker, manager of the Banchester branch of the London and Western Counties Bank. This tragic affair comes as the climax to a long series of escapades on the part of young Straiker at school and at Oxford. He was sent down from the University during his third term as the result of a peculiarly outrageous prank, the details of which his family refused to divulge. Since that time his father has made one attempt after another to set him up in a business of some sort, but each attempt ended in disaster. According to a member of the family, he never before exhibited any criminal tendencies in his excesses; they were the result simply of high spirits and an unconquerable levity of disposition.
"As his last attempt to give him a start in life the elder Mr. Straiker set up his son at his own request on a chicken farm in one of the Southern counties. Here for a time things went very well, until young Straiker was run to earth by a party of wild young fellows, his former associates at Oxford. It appears that they wished to emulate the meetings of the Hell Fire Club of unholy memory, and after several days of bacchanalian riot, during which the chicken farm was virtually wrecked and most of the birds escaped, local constables proceeded to the place for the purpose of taking the participators in charge. There were only three constables against five young men, and in the mêlée that resulted, the five succeeded in making good their escape, but without their car.
MRS3 The Velvet Hand Page 19