David said nothing, but his lazy blue eyes had assumed their old sleepiness. The case certainly promised to have its difficulties.
CHAPTER VI
The Frightened Man
“MARSH, YOU’RE INHUMAN. Either inhuman or you don’t realize. You’re mad. Good God, man, don’t you understand? I tell you I’ve seen her.”
Sir Leo, his shortly cropped white hair standing on end, and his face, which was usually so florid, an unpleasant shade of pinkish grey, strode up and down the thickly carpeted bedroom at the Arcadian, his hands thrust deep in his pockets and his small dark eyes flickering nervously.
There was a soft laugh from the bed. Propped up among the pillows, Saxon Marsh looked even less attractive than he did in the ordinary way. The bed on which he lay was huge, one of the best the Arcadian possessed. Behind the headboard hung a piece of tapestry, forming a canopy, adding considerably to its imposing appearance.
Saxon Marsh’s head and shoulders were supported by some half-dozen pillows, and his hands were folded neatly on the coverlet.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but you’re amusing. Stop in front of the mirror and have a look at yourself. You’ll see what I mean.”
Sir Leo advanced towards the end of the bed. His state of alarm was pitiable. He was too terrified even to be angry.
“Marsh,” he said, “I’m frightened. I’m deeper in this thing than you know. I don’t often lose my nerve. I never remember losing it before. But, good God, man, consider my position!”
Saxon Marsh’s thin eyelids dropped over his eyes. He looked a trifle bored.
“And I?” he said. “My dear fellow, I’m as deeply concerned in this business as you are, and I’m not alarmed in the least. We’ve had one or two little setbacks, I admit that, but in any undertaking which involves so much of what perhaps I may call delicate business, these small hitches are only to be expected. If we are very careful and play our part properly I don’t think that anything can possibly go wrong. Go to bed, Sir Leo. Go to bed and sleep, as I shall as soon as you leave me alone.”
“Small hitches!” exploded Sir Leo. “Haven’t I just told you that I saw Marguerite Ferney in this hotel? Do you understand what I’m saying? I tell you I’ve seen Marguerite Ferney smiling at that young Scotland Yard man and chatting away as though she had known him all her life.”
Saxon Marsh remained unimpressed.
“A pretty woman,” he observed after a pause. “A very decorative type.”
“A dangerous woman,” snapped Sir Leo. “Dangerous and clever. We’re up against it. My God, if I could get out of this I would!”
The pale eyes of the man in the bed opened and, for the first time since the beginning of the interview, a shrewd expression crept into their depths. Saxon Marsh frowned.
“Pull yourself together, Thyn,” he snapped. “What’s there to be afraid of in a woman, however many silly policemen she has in tow? There are times when you irritate me. We’re men of the world, not to be bothered by small fry.”
Sir Leo attempted a laugh and failed miserably.
“Marguerite Ferney is not my idea of small fry,” he said. “Once she gets hold of the girl——”
“She won’t get hold of the girl,” said Marsh quickly. “So don’t think about it. It’s out of the question. I will look after the girl.”
Sir Leo dropped into an armchair and passed his handkerchief over his forehead.
“Too many things,” he said huskily, “too many things have gone wrong today. There’s that man Deane. He’s not safe. I frightened him, but you never know with those fellows. You never know when they’re going to lose their nerve completely and run howling to the police. After all, suppose he told his version of the affair? Suppose he went to the police and told them everything and forced my hand? He knows I’ve no real evidence about that north country business. After all, what’s a trial to him if he gets off at the end of it? But with me it’s different. The least breath of suspicion and I’m done.”
Saxon Marsh yawned and, stretching out his hand, switched off the reading light, which was shining in his eyes.
“I don’t think you need bother about Major Johnny Deane any more, Thyn,” he said. “He wasn’t really a suitable person, you know. You need, if I may say so, more of a man of the world and less of a jailbird. I’ll see what I can do. We still have a month or two.”
Something in his tone sent an added chill down Sir Leo’s spine. The blood rushed into his face and rushed out again.
“What do you mean?” he said hoarsely.
He was sitting in his chair, striving to pierce the gloom which had fallen over the far end of the bed.
“I say don’t worry about Deane.” Saxon Marsh’s voice was even more languorous than before.
“Why?”
The whisper was so soft that it sounded no more than a sigh in the big room.
“Johnny Deane,” said Saxon Marsh placidly, “is dead, poor fellow. He was shot through the head at about a quarter-past eleven this evening. It’s very sad, but I don’t think he has any relatives to mourn him.”
“What have you done?”
The four words were uttered in a small, thin voice which Sir Leo would never have recognized as his own. “Oh, my God, what have you done?”
Saxon Marsh sat up in bed.
“Taken a leaf out of your book,” he said. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Sir Leo.”
“Imitation?” Thyn was pitiful to see. He moistened his dry lips. “On that occasion the method was foolproof,” he muttered. “The place was perfect. But this—this is murder. Obvious murder.”
“Quite,” said Saxon Marsh, still in the same quiet, satisfied tone. “But neither you nor I know anything about that, Thyn. No possible breath of suspicion can touch us.”
“How do you know?” As though he had been turned to ice, Sir Leo sat rigid; yet there were beads of perspiration on his forehead.
“You’ll see,” promised Saxon Marsh. “You’ll see. And now, my friend, for heaven’s sake, go to bed. Go to bed and sleep.”
Sir Leo peered into the dusk with haggard eyes.
“Sleep?” he muttered incredulously.
“Certainly,” said Saxon Marsh placidly. “Why not?”
CHAPTER VII
Ex-Sergeant Bloomer Remembers
“IF YOU KNOW so much about the dead man, Inspector Blest, perhaps you would oblige me by explaining who killed him. Then we could all go home.”
Inspector Winn allowed the words to be forced out of him against his better judgment. It was three o’clock in the morning, and the two police officers had paused in their labours to drink a cup of coffee sent in to them by a distracted but hopeful manager.
Much careful questioning had revealed nothing. Johnny Deane had walked into the Empress, collected his key from the desk, and had gone up to his room. Apparently no one had seen him alive again.
To make matters worse, Inspector Winn had lost his temper not once but many times, and each time it had made him feel more foolish than before.
After disliking him intensely for the first half hour, David had grown rather sorry for him. The man had ability, but he was alarmed at the size of the task in front of him. A mysterious murder in the middle of the season, with the chief constable himself on the warpath and Scotland Yard called in, was certain to have a great deal of publicity, and Winn was very conscious of his responsibility.
The two men had left the bedroom and were now established in a small office on the ground floor, where they had already questioned some twenty-five witnesses, none of whom had told them anything of any real worth.
David lit his pipe and perched himself on the edge of the table, his arms folded.
“Something’ll turn up,” he said.
Inspector Winn opened his mouth to speak, but as though in direct fulfilment of David’s prophecy, both men were startled by a timid rap on the door.
Winn leapt forward to open it, and a dishevelled figure in a coarse red
dressing gown stepped into the room, blinking in the strong light.
David recognized the girl as one of the many chambermaids whom they had already interviewed. She was an ugly girl, coarse-featured and stupid-looking, and had appeared very hysterical at the first interview.
“What is it?” Winn inquired. “You’re Miss Dartle, aren’t you? Ruth Dartle?”
Miss Dartle burst into tears.
“Edith made me come,” she said. “Edith does rooms sixty to eighty. She said I’d got to come and tell you or you’d arrest me.”
David and Inspector Winn exchanged glances, and for the first time the younger man saw a gleam of humour and humanity in the local man’s black eyes.
“Oh, well, Edith’s to blame, is she?” said Winn with a good-natured friendliness which David himself could not have surpassed. “What have you been up to?”
“Oh, I haven’t done anything, sir.” Miss Dartle wept afresh. “I didn’t mean not to tell you. I just forgot. It only came into my head half an hour ago, and me and Edith have been talking about it ever since. She shares a room with me, you see. I would have remembered, but it was such an ordinary thing for a guest to ask me to direct him to a friend’s room that I just told him, and it slipped out of my mind.”
“What’s that?” Both inspectors sat up with the first interest they had shown in Miss Dartle’s narrative, and she, feeling that she was a success, gained confidence and became more lucid.
“It was the nice old gentleman in number fifty,” she said. “He only came today, but I remember his name quite well, because when I went in to turn down the bed there was his case lying open, and when I shut it I read the name on the label. Mr. Lionel Birch.”
David stopped her.
“Let’s get this thing straight,” he said. “Who asked you the way to whose room?”
“Mr. Birch did, sir. Mr. Birch asked me what room his friend Major Deane slept in, and I told him.”
Inspector Winn was scribbling in his notebook.
“When was this?” he said.
“I’m not quite sure, sir. About eleven o’clock tonight, I should say. He was in a great hurry. I thought he wanted to see Major Deane before he went to bed.”
Miss Dartle’s sense of her own importance increased considerably in the next fifteen minutes. Never before had any two gentlemen shown such interest in her doings, sayings, and impressions in all her life.
But this thrilling experience was cut short by an even greater sensation. One of the plainclothes men on duty in the hall put his head round the door and, after a glimpse of his expression, Winn dismissed the girl, bidding her come to him in the morning, and beckoned the newcomer in.
That worthy in turn motioned peremptorily to someone who stood behind him, and there presently appeared a smart uniformed constable carrying something carefully in a large white handkerchief.
That something proved to be, on closer inspection, a small, slightly battered revolver.
For the first time both inspectors experienced a real thrill of hope. Perhaps, after all, the impossible, incomprehensible business was going to be less difficult than it had at first appeared.
David stretched out his hand but remembered himself in time and gave way to Inspector Winn, who, strangely enough, seemed to appreciate the courtesy.
Taking out his own handkerchief, the elder man picked up the little weapon, being careful not to obliterate any fingerprints.
“I do believe this is it,” he said. “Don’t you think so, Blest? It’s the right calibre, anyway. Where did you find it, Constable?”
“In White Horse Alley, sir. That’s the little street that runs along the back of the hotel. It was lying in the road just outside the main service entrance. Of course, I couldn’t say how long it would have been there. I’ve passed down the alley twice tonight already, but I might easily have missed it. It was lying right in the shadow of the houses opposite.”
David bent forward and silently indicated the little bright patches on the metal.
“Looks as though it’s been dropped from a height,” he suggested.
Winn looked at him sharply. Every trace of his old animosity had vanished in his enthusiasm.
“It does, doesn’t it?” he said. “Now I wonder.”
He walked over to the desk and looked at the plan of the hotel with which the management had furnished him earlier in the evening.
“Rooms twenty, twenty-two and twenty-four on the first floor,” he said. “And on the second, forty-six, forty-eight, and—yes, fifty. What did the girl say the fellow’s name was?—Lionel Birch. We must have a chat with this Lionel Birch.”
David was silent, his brows knitted and his eyes darker than usual and introspective. He was remembering another case not so very long ago, a case when a key had been found under a window, and on that occasion its evidence had been, in David’s own opinion, curiously misleading.
After all, if a key, why not a revolver?
This was no time, however, to mention any doubts to Inspector Winn. That gentleman was frankly delighted.
“Lionel Birch,” he said. “I’ll come out with you, Constable, and see exactly where you found the gun, and then I’ll verify this plan, Blest. Anything known about this man Lionel Birch? We’ll have him up and put him through it as soon as I’ve completed the routine.”
David said nothing, but he knew that even the impetuous Inspector Winn would hardly drag a man from his bed at four o’clock in the morning unless he was pretty sure in his own mind that the evidence he had collected, or was about to collect, was sufficient for an arrest.
Winn, the plainclothes man, and the constable hurried out to inspect the alley where the gun had been found, and David was left alone. He stood for a moment staring down at the table, a frown gathering upon his brow.
There was something he did not like about the way the case was going, something he could not understand. If the gun had not been found under the window it might have been different, and yet, from his own private knowledge, Lionel Birch was a friend of Judy Wellington’s, and who, save a friend of Judy Wellington’s, would be likely to want Johnny Deane out of the way so intensely that he stooped to murder?
A friend. After all, the man was more than a friend. He had brought the girl up from childhood. Yet he was no relation. Surely the tie was not strong enough to make that mild-looking old gentleman shoot the little confidence trickster in cold blood?
He paused. The door had opened, and he glanced up, expecting to see Winn return. However, his visitor was a very different person.
Bloomer, his collar loosened and his feet encased in enormous carpet slippers, was standing on the threshold, his small eyes sparkling with excitement.
“I’ve been turning over me old notebooks,” he said without preamble. “I ’ad to come down on the off-chance of finding you alone. I’ve remembered it, Captain.”
David looked at him blankly. His mind was still very far away.
“Remembered what?” he said at last. “I’m sorry, Bloomer, but I don’t quite follow you.”
“Why, the fellow’s name in the Fenchurch Street case.” Bloomer looked hurt. “You remember. I was telling you about ’im in the hall this evening. The fellow who was staying here under the name of Birch. The fellow who did seven years at Dartmoor.”
He came farther into the room and dropped his voice to a confidential whisper.
“I thought of ’im the moment this business broke, and I went and dug up my old books. I’ve remembered it all now: the young wife dying and leaving the kid, and all the excitement in the newspapers. It all come back to me.”
David stared at the old man in silent fascination. Something warned him of the revelation to come; nevertheless, his heart missed a beat as ex-Sergeant Bloomer’s hoarse whisper filled the room.
“His name was Wellington,” he said. “Jim Wellington. Does that convey anything to you, Captain? His wife died while he was in jail, and someone looked after the kid—I forget who. It was a girl, as f
ar as I can remember.”
Lionel Birch, suspected of killing Major Johnny Deane, was Judy’s father!
“It’s a wonderful thing, memory is,” remarked ex-Sergeant Bloomer affably after what seemed to David to be an interminable pause. “It was lucky I was able to set eyes on ’im for you, wasn’t it? It’s training that counts every time; every time, that’s what I always say.”
David looked at the other man sharply. Bloomer’s heavy face was positively glistening, and his small eyes danced. He was evidently more than ordinarily elated, and it occurred to the inspector that the house detective might very possibly have been indulging in a hasty celebration at the expense of the house whisky.
However, he was in no mood to think about the old man just then. The staggering quality of the revelation, together with its possible consequences, kept his mind fully occupied.
His immediate inclination was to resign from the case at once, but on second thoughts it occurred to him that there were definite disadvantages in this course of action. Instead of letting Judy out of the business he might be the actual means of dragging her into it.
He sighed. Anyhow, he had plenty of time to think. He could do nothing either way until the morning, when he would see Colonel Cream again.
“These local men!” said Bloomer with contempt. “It’s a funny thing, Captain, but they don’t seem to have the Yard’s flair, do they? This chap Winn, now. He’s a sound enough man in ’is way. All right for small cases and such-like. But a thing like this throws ’im off ’is balance.”
David frowned. He realized that Bloomer was flouting etiquette to a disgraceful extent by permitting himself to speak of one inspector in such terms in front of a colleague.
He had opened his mouth to remonstrate when the door opened and the subject of Bloomer’s remarks returned.
As soon as he caught sight of him David’s qualms returned. Inspector Winn was flushed and excited. The discovery of the gun had sent his hopes soaring, and all his old truculence had returned.
“Well, Blest,” he said, “I think we’re going to get it over before morning, after all.”
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