‘Thank you.’ He sat down gingerly, holding between his knees the handle of the umbrella he had brought into the drawing-room. ‘I’m afraid my visit may be inopportune, Miss Leicester,’ he said. ‘Have you by any chance heard about Mr Barberton?’
Her brows wrinkled in thought. ‘Barberton? I seem to have heard the name.’
‘He was killed yesterday on the Thames Embankment.’
Then she recollected.
‘The man who was bitten by the snake?’ she asked in horror.
The visitor nodded.
‘It was a great shock to me, because I have been a friend of his for many years, and had arranged to call at his hôtel on the night of his death.’ And then abruptly he turned the conversation in another and a surprising direction. ‘Your father was a scientist, Miss Leicester?’
She nodded.
‘Yes, he was an astronomer, an authority upon meteors.’
‘Exactly. I thought that was the gentleman. I have only recently had his book read to me. He was in Africa for some years?’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly, ‘he died there. He was studying meteors for three years in Angola. You probably know that a very large number of shooting stars fall in that country. My father’s theory was that it was due to the ironstone mountains which attract them – so he set up a little observatory in the interior.’ Her lips trembled for a second. ‘He was killed in a native rising,’ she said.
‘Do you know the part of Angola where be had his observatory?’
She shook her head.
‘I’m not sure. I have never been in Africa, but perhaps Aunt Alma may know.’
She went out to find Alma waiting in the passage, in conversation with the pipe-smoker. The man withdrew hastily at the sight of her.
‘Alma, do you remember what part of Angola father had his observatory?’ she asked.
Alma did not know off-hand, but one of her invaluable scrap-books contained all the information that the girl wanted, and she carried the book to Mr Lee.
‘Here are the particulars,’ she said, and laid the book open before them.
‘Would you read it for me?’ he requested gently, and she read to him the three short paragraphs which noted that Professor Leicester had taken up his residence in Bishaka.
‘That is the place,’ interrupted the visitor. ‘Bishaka! You are you sure that Mr Barberton did not communicate with you?’
‘With me?’ she said in amazement ‘No – why should he?’
He did not answer, but sat for a long time, turning the matter over in his mind.
‘You’re perfectly certain that nobody sent you a document, probably in the Portuguese language, concerning – ’ he hesitated – ‘Bishaka?’
She shook her head, and then, as though he had not seen the gesture, he asked the question again.
‘I’m certain,’ she said. ‘We have very little correspondence at the farm, and it isn’t possible that I could overlook anything so remarkable.’
Again he turned the problem over in his mind.
‘Have you any documents in Portuguese or in English . . . any letters from your father about Angola?’
‘None,’ she said. ‘The only reference my father ever made to Bishaka was that he was getting a lot of information which he thought would be valuable, and that he was a little troubled because his cameras, which he had fixed in various parts of the country to cover every sector of the skies, were being disturbed by wandering prospectors.’
‘He said that, did he?’ asked Mr Lee eagerly. ‘Come now, that explains a great deal!’
In spite of herself she laughed. ‘It doesn’t explain much to me, Mr Lee,’ she said frankly. And then, in a more serious tone: ‘Did Barberton come from Angola?’
‘Yes, Barberton came from that country,’ he said in a lower voice. ‘I should like to tell you,’ – he hesitated – ‘but I am rather afraid.’
‘Afraid to tell me? Why?’
He shook his head.
‘So many dreadful things have happened recently to poor Barberton and others, that knowledge seems a most dangerous thing. I wish I could believe that it would not be dangerous to you,’ he added kindly, ‘and then I could speak what is in my mind and relieve myself of a great deal of anxiety.’ He rose slowly. ‘I think the best thing I can do is to consult my lawyer. I was foolish to keep it from him so long. He is the only man I can trust to search my documents.’
She could only look at him in astonishment
‘But surely you can search your own documents?’ she said good-humouredly.
‘No, I’m afraid I can’t. Because – ’ he spoke with the simplicity of a child – ‘I am blind.’
‘Blind?’ gasped Mirabelle, and the man laughed gently.
‘I am pretty capable for a blind man, am I not? I can walk across a room and avoid all the furniture. The only thing I cannot do is to read – at least, read the ordinary print. I can read Braille: poor Barberton taught me. He was a school-master,’ he explained, ‘at a blind school near Brightlingsea. Not a particularly well-educated man, but a marvellously quick writer of Braille. We have corresponded for years through that medium. He could write a Braille letter almost as quickly as you can with pen and ink.’
Her heart was full of pity for the man: he was so cheery, so confident, and withal so proud of his own accomplishments, that pity turned to admiration. He had the ineffable air of obstinacy which is the possession of so many men similarly stricken, and she began to realize that self-pity, that greatest of all afflictions which attends blindness, had been eliminated from his philosophy.
‘I should like to tell you more,’ he said, as he held out his hand. ‘Probably I will dictate a long letter to you tomorrow, or else my lawyer will do so, putting all the facts before you. For the moment, however, I must be sure of my ground. I have no desire to raise in your heart either fear or – hope. Do you know a Mr Manfred?’
‘I don’t know him personally,’ she said quickly. ‘George Manfred?’
He nodded.
‘Have you met him?’ she asked eagerly. ‘And Mr Poiccart, the Frenchman?’
‘No, not Mr Poiccart. Manfred was on the telephone to me very early this morning. He seemed to know all about my relationships with my poor friend. He knew also of my blindness. A remarkable man, very gentle and courteous. It was he who gave me your address. Perhaps,’ he roused, ‘it would be advisable if I first consulted him.’
‘I’m sure it would!’ she said enthusiastically. ‘They are wonderful. You have heard of them, of course, Mr Lee – the Four Just Men?’
He smiled.
‘That sounds as though you admire them,’ he said. ‘Yes, I have heard of them. They are the men who, many years ago, set out to regularize the inconsistencies of the English law, to punish where no punishment is provided by the code. Strange I never associated them . . . ’
He meditated upon the matter in silence for a long while, and then: ‘I wonder,’ he said, but did not tell her what he was wondering.
She walked down the garden path with him into the road-way and stood chatting about the country and the flowers that he had never seen, and the weather and such trivialities as people talk about when their minds are occupied with more serious thoughts which they cannot share, until the big limousine pulled up and he stepped into its cool interior. He had the independence which comes to the educated blind and gently refused the offer of her guidance, an offer she did not attempt to repeat, sensing the satisfaction he must have had in making his way without help. She waved her hand to the car as it moved off, and so naturally did his hand go up in salute that for a moment she thought he had seen her.
So he passed out of her sight, and might well have passed out of her life, for Mr Oberzohn had decreed that the remaining hours of blind Johnson Lee were to be few.
Chapter 14
The pedlar
The man with the pipe was standing within half a dozen paces of her. She was going back through the gate, when she remembered Aunt Alma’s views on the guardianship.
‘Are you waiting here all day?’ she asked.
‘Till this evening, miss. We’re to be relieved by some men from Gloucester – we came from town, and we’re going back with the nurse, if you can do without her?’
‘Who placed you here?’ she asked.
‘Mr Gonsalez. He thought it would be wise to have somebody around.’
‘But why?’
The big man grinned.
‘I’ve known Mr Gonsalez many years,’ he said. ‘I’m a police pensioner, and I can remember the time when I’d have given a lot of money to lay my hands on him – but I’ve never asked him why, miss. There is generally a good reason for everything he does.’
Mirabelle went back into the farmhouse, very thoughtful. Happily, Alma was not inquisitive; she was left alone in the drawing-room to reconstruct her exciting yesterday.
Mirabelle harboured very few illusions. She had read much, guessed much, and in the days of her childhood had been in the habit of linking cause to effect. The advertisement was designed especially for her: that was her first conclusion. It was designed to bring her into the charge of Oberzohn. For now she recognized this significant circumstance: never once, since she had entered the offices of Oberzohn & Smitts, until the episode of the orangeade, had she been free to come and go as she wished. He had taken her to lunch, he had brought her back; Joan Newton had been her companion in the drive from the house, and from the house to the hall; and from then on she did not doubt that Oberzohn’s surveillance had continued, until . . .
Dimly she remembered the man in the cloak who had stood in the rocking doorway. Was that Gonsalez? Somehow she thought it must have been. Gonsalez, watchful, alert – why? She had been in danger – was still in danger. Though why anybody should have picked unimportant her was the greatest of all mysteries.
In some inexplicable way the death of Barberton had been associated with that advertisement and the attention she had received from Dr Oberzohn and his creatures. Who was Lord Evington? She remembered his German accent and his ‘gracious lady’, the curious click of his heels and his stiff bow. That was a clumsy subterfuge which she ought to have seen through from the first. He was another of her watchers. And the drugged orangeade was his work. She shuddered. Suppose Leon Gonsalez, or whoever it was, had not arrived so providentially, where would she be at this moment?
Walking to the window, she looked out, and the sight of the two men just inside the gate gave her a sense of infinite relief and calm; and the knowledge that she, for some reason, was under the care and protection of this strange organization about which she had read, thrilled her.
She walked into the vaulted kitchen, to find the kitchen table covered with fat volumes, and Aunt Alma explaining to the interested nurse her system of filing. Two subjects interested that hard-featured lady: crime and family records. She had two books filled with snippings from country newspapers relating to the family of a distant cousin who had been raised to a peerage during the war. She had another devoted to the social triumphs of a distant woman, Goddard, who had finally made a sensational appearance as petitioner in the most celebrated divorce suit of the age. But crime, generally speaking, was Aunt Alma’s chief preoccupation. It was from these voluminous cuttings that Mirabelle had gained her complete knowledge of the Four Just Men and their operations. There were books packed with the story of the Ramon murder, arranged with loving care in order of time, for chronology was almost a vice in Alma Goddard. Only one public sensation was missing from her collection, and she was explaining the reason to the nurse as Mirabelle came into the kitchen.
‘No, my dear,’ she was saying, ‘there is nothing about The Snake. I won’t have anything to do with that: it gives me the creeps. In fact, I haven’t read anything that has the slightest reference to it.’
‘I’ve got every line,’ said the nurse enthusiastically. ‘My brother is a reporter on the Megaphone, and he says this is the best story they’ve had for years – ’
Mirabelle interrupted this somewhat gruesome conversation to make inquiries about luncheon. Her head was steady now and she had developed an appetite.
The front door stood open, and as she turned to go into the dining-room to get her writing materials, she heard an altercation at the gate. A third man had appeared: a grimy-looking pedlar who carried a tray before him, packed with all manner of cheap buttons and laces. He was a middle-aged man with a ragged beard, and despite the warmth of the day, was wearing a long overcoat that almost reached to his heels.
‘You may or you may not be,’ the man with the pipe was saying, ‘but you’re not going in here.’
‘I’ve served this house for years,’ snarled the pedlar. ‘What do you mean by interfering with me? You’re not a policeman.’
‘Whether I’m a policeman or a dustman or a postman,’ said the patient guard, ‘you don’t pass through this gate – do you understand that?’
At this moment the pedlar caught sight of the girl at the door and raised his battered hat with a grin. He was unknown to the girl; she did not remember having seen him at the house before. Nor did Alma, who came out at that moment.
‘He’s a stranger here, but we’re always getting new people up from Gloucester,’ she said. ‘What does he want to sell?’
She stalked out into the garden, and at the sight of her the grin left the pedlar’s face.
‘I’ve got some things I’d like to sell to the young lady, ma’am,’ he said.
‘I’m not so old, and I’m a lady,’ replied Alma sharply. ‘And how long is it since you started picking and choosing your customers?’
The man grumbled something under his breath, and without waiting even to display his wares, shuffled off along the dusty road, and they watched him until he was out of sight.
Heavytree Farm was rather grandly named for so small a property. The little estate followed the road to Heavytree Lane, which formed the southern boundary of the property. The lane itself ran at an angle to behind the house, where the third boundary was formed by a hedge dividing the farmland from the more pretentious estate of a local magnate. It was down the lane the pedlar turned.
‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ said the companion of the man with the pipe.
He opened the gate, walked in, and, making a circuit of the house, reached the orchard behind. Here a few outhouses were scattered, and, clearing these, he came to the meadow, where Mirabelle’s one cow ruminated in the lazy manner of her kind. Half-hidden by a thick-boled apple-tree, the watcher waited, and presently, as he expected, he saw a head appear through the boundary hedge. After an observation the pedlar sprang into the meadow and stood, taking stock of his ground. He had left his tray and his bag, and, running with surprising swiftness for a man of his age, he gained a little wooden barn, and, pulling open the door, disappeared into its interior. By this time the guard had been joined by his companion and they had a short consultation, the man with the pipe going back to his post before the house, whilst the other walked slowly across the meadow until he came to the closed door of the barn.
Wise in his generation, he first made a circuit of the building, and discovered there were no exits through the blackened gates. Then, pulling both doors open wide:
‘Come out, bo’!’ he said.
The barn was empty, except for a heap of hay that lay in one corner and some old and wheel-less farm-wagons propped up on three trestles awaiting the wheelwright’s attention.
A ladder led to a loft, and the guard cl
imbed slowly. His head was on a level with the dark opening, when: ‘Put up your hands!’
He was looking into the adequate muzzle of an automatic pistol.
‘Come down, bo’!’
‘Put up your hands,’ hissed the voice in the darkness, ‘or you’re a dead man!’
The watcher obeyed, cursing his folly that he had come alone.
‘Now climb up.’
With some difficulty the guard brought himself up to the floor level.
‘Step this way, and step lively,’ said the pedlar. ‘Hold your hands out.’
He felt the touch of cold steel on his wrist, heard a click.
‘Now the other hand.’
The moment he was manacled, the pedlar began a rapid search.
‘Carry a gun, do you?’ he sneered, as he drew a pistol from the man’s hip pocket. ‘Now sit down.’
In a few seconds the discomfited guard was bound and gagged. The pedlar, crawling to the entrance of the loft, looked out between a crevice in the boards. He was watching, not the house, but the hedge through which he had climbed. Two other men had appeared there, and he grunted his satisfaction. Descending into the barn, he pulled away the ladder and let it fall on the floor, before he came out into the open and made a signal.
The second guard had made his way back by the short cut to the front of the house, passing through the garden and in through the kitchen door. He stopped to shoot the bolt, and the girl, coming into the kitchen, saw him.
‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked anxiously.
‘I don’t know, miss.’ He was looking at the kitchen windows: they were heavily barred. ‘My mate has just seen that pedlar go into the barn.’
She followed him to the front door. He had turned to go, but, changing his mind, came back, and she saw him put his hand into his hip pocket and was staggered to see him produce a long-barrelled Browning.
‘Can you use a pistol, miss?’
She nodded, too surprised to speak, and watched him as he jerked back the jacket and put up the safety catch.
The Complete Four Just Men Page 78