Webb smiled slowly and enigmatically.
“We shall be ready for you,” he said.
As Saxon Marsh drove slowly down the drive of that strange gaunt house, two people stood at the sitting-room window and watched his departing car. When it was out of sight Marguerite Ferney caught her companion’s arm.
“You got rid of him?” she said huskily. “There’s something terrible about him, something dangerous. Didn’t you feel it?”
The man ignored her.
“Is the girl awake?” he demanded abruptly.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been in. What are you going to do?”
“Keep your nerve,” he whispered. “Keep your nerve.”
Marguerite swallowed noisily.
“He’ll come back,” she said in a strange hoarse voice utterly unlike her own.
The man nodded grimly. “Oh yes, he’ll come back. He didn’t come here with any hopes of getting the girl. D’you know why he came, my dear Marguerite? He came to spy out the land.”
“And that means——?” The woman was white and trembling.
Carlton Webb dropped a kiss upon her forehead and, taking her chin in his hand, looked down into her face.
“That means we’ve got to hurry,” he said. His voice sank upon the last word, and the air in the bright room seemed to have become strangely cold.
CHAPTER XVI
The Men in Disguise
“NO, SIR. I’m sorry, sir. No room at all.”
The landlord of the White Lion, the one hotel which the tiny township of Hintlesham possessed, spoke with a certain amount of satisfaction, a fact which David found oddly irritating in the circumstances.
“Booked right up, we are,” the man continued, and added gracelessly that he was not a one for company.
David, tired and exhausted with his journey, and still shaken by the tumultuous events of the preceding night, turned away from the oaken bar and stood for some moments looking out of the small lattice window at the cobbled square.
He had only just left the railway station and had been hoping to find someone from whom he could learn something about the district.
The landlord had proved singularly surly, however, and he was waiting patiently for the next customer when he was surprised to see a long grey car which looked oddly familiar pull up outside the inn.
Almost immediately a hand seized his arm and a familiar voice said huskily:
“This way, Captain. You don’t want to let ’im see yer.”
David swung round and stared into the pink and happy face of ex-Sergeant Bloomer, late of the Metropolitan Police.
Bloomer, in disgraceful flannel trousers and a sporting jacket, was an even more unprepossessing figure than Bloomer collarless and in carpet slippers. But this was Bloomer triumphant. This was Bloomer while the going was good.
He laid a finger on his lips, and, taking the inspector’s arm, led him up to the bar, where they were not visible from the open doorway to the passage.
He was only just in time. There was a clatter of feet outside, and David heard a voice which he recognized at once. It was not a voice that one easily forgot.
“Marsh,” he said.
“That’s right. ’E’s staying ’ere. ’Im and a whole gang of toughs. Nice old gent, isn’t ’e? Not up to any good, either. ’E’s the one to be careful of, if you ask me. Now, come on quick,” he added as the last footstep died away. “Me and my friend have got the little back room on the second floor. We can talk there.”
David suffered himself to be led up the narrow, roughly carpeted stairs. The little room into which Bloomer showed him was a bedroom, with clean covers and a low raftered ceiling.
Bloomer seated himself upon the bed and regarded David solemnly.
“I’m sorry I ’ad to drag you away like that,” he said. “But if you’d been seen it might ’ave given the game away.”
David turned upon him.
“Look here, Bloomer, what’s all this about?” he demanded. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Pursuin’ my own investigation and givin’ a friend a hand,” said Mr. Bloomer, who seemed to have lost entirely his hangdog expression, and whose lugubriousness was obviously entirely a thing of the past. “And if you’ll forgive me sayin’ so, Captain, I’ve got a fancy that you and me are on the same track. So why shouldn’t we join forces? We’re both after the same young lady, aren’t we? Miss Judy Wellington. Well, per’aps if you’re not au fait with the situation, Captain, as they say among the Frogs, I may as well let you know that she’s in a house not far from ’ere, and Mr. Marsh ’as just come back from an interview with the lady who’s keepin’ her a prisoner. You know this is better than old times, isn’t it? Better than anything I’ve come across before.”
David was silent. This was an entirely new aspect of the case. He regarded Bloomer thoughtfully.
The ex-sergeant, he knew, must be interested solely in the murder of Johnny Deane, and if, as he supposed, Judy’s father was still the suspect, then Bloomer could only be anxious to get hold of the girl in his attempt to find her father.
However, the main thing was to find Judy and bring her to safety. He had been convinced that Sir Leo had not been lying in that outburst at the Arcadian. That sort of admission he knew from experience was nearly always the truth.
He opened his mouth to speak but changed his mind. Bloomer had risen from the bed and had hurried over towards the door. There were footsteps on the stairs outside.
Bloomer opened the door cautiously.
“All right,” he said huskily. “Steady on there, mate. We’ve got a visitor.”
A man came hurrying into the room and stopped impulsively on the threshold, an exclamation on his lips.
David too had risen from his chair by the window. The man facing him was Bloomer’s companion of his visit to the Arcadian, the man who had rescued and then attacked him only a few hours before. He was begrimed with oil and dust, and he looked gaunter and more disreputable than ever.
It was David who spoke first.
“There’ll have to be an explanation,” he said quietly.
The man sank down on the edge of the bed where Bloomer had been sitting. For a moment he remained passive, his head bowed. Then he looked up and seemed to pull himself together with a tremendous effort.
He was old, David noticed again, old in spite of all his strength and spareness.
“Explanations can come later,” he said. “You shall hear everything. But not now. Now we’ve got to save her. She’s in that house. Those fiends have got hold of her. Good heavens, man, don’t you realize she’s in danger? Real danger! Even Marsh couldn’t get any satisfaction from those people. I saw it in his eyes as I waited in the hedge for him to come out.”
“You don’t think he noticed you?” It was Bloomer who cut in, his small eyes sharp with interest.
“Oh no. I kept well behind them. Besides, the roads aren’t so very lonely. There’s plenty of other motor-bikes. I stopped when I saw him turn in on the drive, and went on on foot, keeping behind a hedge. I tell you I saw his face as he came out, although it was only for a second as the car flashed by me. He looked like a disappointed fiend. I’m going to get in touch with the others. If they’re going to attempt some rescue by force we may be able to use them for our own ends and get her away. We couldn’t do it on our own. It would be fatal to attempt it. It might only hurry them in their project on her.”
His voice rose unsteadily.
“There are eight men there. We couldn’t do it alone, you and I, Bloomer. But perhaps with this young man——” He looked at David dubiously and broke off.
Bloomer shook his head and glanced at David. But that young man was staring at the newcomer, an odd expression in his eyes. There had been something in the agony hidden in the voice which had awakened his memory, and now, rising to his feet, he strode across the room and peered down into the old man’s face.
Even that most effective disguise in the world, th
e simple change of class and type with but the faintest of artificial aids, cannot bear so close a scrutiny.
There was a moment of dead silence. Then David straightened his back. Although he had only seen the man once before in his normal appearance, he recognized him now.
A wave of comprehension passed over him, but a comprehension not untinged with amazement when he considered Bloomer’s part in the deception.
“You are Lionel Birch!”
The man rose to his feet and, turning away abruptly, went over to the washstand, where he effected several minor but startling changes in his appearance. Then he turned round.
“Inspector Blest,” he said, “I am Jim Wellington. Judy is my daughter. Will you sit down? I should like to have a few words with you.”
For a long moment there was silence in the room. This was an eventuality of which David had never dreamed, and his first reaction was one of intense astonishment at the part Bloomer must have played in Lionel Birch’s extraordinary escape. But always at the back of his mind was the urgent fear for Judy and the passionate desire to get her in safe hands as soon as possible.
He sat down at last and faced the other man, his eyes questioning.
“I think Sergeant Bloomer here told you that he recognized me when I first entered the Empress Hotel,” Birch said, speaking in a strange detached voice, as though his emotions were fixed on something quite different, as indeed they were. “Twenty years ago I held a very good position in a firm of solicitors. One day there was a crash. A burglary had been effected, and it was proved by the police that the evidence had been largely faked and that the job had been done from the inside. Unfortunately a policeman had also been attacked.
“I won’t bother you with details of my trial, and I won’t weary you by assuring you that, just as the evidence of the burglary had been counterfeited, just so was the evidence against me. Unfortunately, the second time the real criminal got away with his deception. I was sentenced and served my time in Dartmoor.”
He paused and looked at David earnestly. The boy found it impossible to suspect the sincerity of that quiet voice and the honesty of those cold, pain-stricken eyes.
“Yes,” he said softly. “Go on.”
“When I came out of Dartmoor,” continued the man who had once been Jim Wellington, “the first thing I did, not unnaturally, was to change my name. I became Lionel Birch. From then on my life was very difficult. I should have gone abroad, of course, had it not been for one thing. My wife, whom I adored, had died while I was in prison, but our daughter Judy was alive, and I wanted to be near her. Therefore I went to her guardian, Sir Leo Thyn.”
As the name left his lips a very curious expression passed over his face, and David began to realize some of the hatred which the man before him had felt for that much-respected figure.
“He had a very good reason for helping me,” Lionel Birch continued grimly. “He had been junior partner in the firm from which I had been so ignominiously dismissed, and although of course I had no proof, I was sure as anyone may be sure in this world that it was his crime for which I had paid the penalty, his crime which had cost me my wife and my liberty and my career.”
His voice shook. David could see that he was in the grip of a tremendous nervous strain. All the hatred and resentment of the past twenty years was evident for a moment in his voice.
“Well,” he said at last, “he did help me. He was the child’s guardian and the administrator of the fortune which a relation of her mother’s had left for her. While the child was young he was content that I should have her. We lived in a little cottage on the Suffolk coast, and I suppose I was as happy as I ever had been since the few brief months of my marriage.
“I taught Judy to read. I brought her up, and I trained her mind. But as soon as she was fourteen or fifteen Sir Leo wanted to take her away from me. Neither she nor I could bear the parting, although she knew me only as her uncle. It was then we hit on the deception of which you have heard. As far as Sir Leo was concerned, she became a chronic invalid. I had a friend, the local doctor, now unhappily dead, who helped me with my deception. I told him as much of the story as I dared, and I think he guessed the rest.
“Sir Leo understood that Judy could not leave the district without grave danger to her health, and as he was particularly anxious that she should live to inherit her fortune, he let her stay.”
He paused and sighed.
“The rest I think you know. The time came when for his own ends it was necessary that she should marry. For my sake, she kept up the deception. I was so frantic about her that I followed her to Westbourne, and, staying at a different hotel, made an arrangement to meet her every evening.
“It was after the first of these meetings that I returned to the Empress to find I had taken her case. It was that case which you returned for me, Inspector.”
David nodded. Delicate ground had been reached. He knew that his duty required him to take a statement, to warn the man that anything he said might be used in evidence against him, but for some reason he did none of these things, but sat quiet, listening. There was something compelling about the man, a quiet dignity combined with a passionate intensity of feeling which was quite irresistible and convincing.
“Judy had told me that she had been introduced to the man Sir Leo intended her to marry. I tried to get her to describe him, but she could not. She seemed hardly to have noticed him. She could not even remember his name. She seemed to me to be thinking of someone else.”
He looked at David sharply, and the young man felt his heart move uncomfortably in his side.
“You can believe me or not, Inspector,” Birch continued, “but I did not know at that time, nor at the time of his death, that Major Deane, who had a room on the same floor as myself, was the man whom Sir Leo had picked out to be the husband of my girl. Had I known as much about him as I do now,” he continued, “believe me, I might easily have been moved to murder, but my victim would not have been the insignificant little swindler who was merely carrying out one of his more despicable projects for the sake of a few pounds. I should have killed the man who had conceived the abominable idea, the man who was prepared to sacrifice my daughter, just as he had sacrificed me, for the sake of his own worthless hide. And if you’re a man as well as a policeman, Inspector, I think you’ll agree with me that I should have had good cause.”
David said nothing. His official capacity made him necessarily dumb. But he could not help sympathizing entirely with that pale, tortured man who stood before him.
There was silence again in the low hotel bedroom. It was broken rather surprisingly by Bloomer, who had sat quiet in a corner during the old man’s story and now heaved himself to his feet and came forward with a slightly self-conscious swagger.
“P’r’aps while we’re ’aving this little talk I ought to explain where I come in,” he said. “I don’t want you to get me wrong, Captain, and I’d like to point out that I’m a free agent, as it were. Not connected with the police any longer.”
David began to understand. Bloomer’s red face wore a slightly anxious expression which would have been comic at any less critical moment, and it occurred to David that he was doing his best to make a confession which at the same time would reflect a certain amount of glory upon his own perspicacity.
“You may remember, Captain,” he said, clearing his throat, “that I had a few words with Inspector Winn on the night the murder was discovered. Well, I went off almost in a ’uff, as you might say.”
He paused, and his small eyes sought David’s questioningly, as though imploring for a certain amount of decent human tolerance.
“I don’t mind confessing,” he went on, “that I was a bit above meself, what with one thing and another; a bit—how shall I say?”—he waved his plump hands—“well, anxious to get me own back.”
David conquered a desire to smile. The spectacle of Bloomer boiling under the affront to his dignity returned to him vividly.
“So you went upstai
rs and arrested Inspector Winn’s prisoner yourself?” he suggested.
“Well, no, I didn’t exac’ly do that.” Bloomer was beginning to look uncomfortable. “I just moved ’im into another room, and we ’ad a bit of a chat. I understood ’is point of view, and ’e understood my intentions—why, even a child, Captain, could see ’e’s not the man the inspector wants! Anyone can see that ’e’s telling the truth. After all, consider it, Captain, why should ’e go and kill a feller that’s going to marry ’is daughter when ’e knows that as soon as that chap’s out of the way the old bloke with the title was goin’ to dig up someone else? It’s not reasonable, is it? Think, Captain, think. . . .”
David sighed. He was beginning to understand the extraordinary state in which Lionel Birch’s room had been left on the night of the murder. It had been systematically untidied by someone without much imagination, and that someone, he saw now, was none other than ex-Sergeant Bloomer.
“I put ’im in me own room for the night and rigged ’im up,” Bloomer continued modestly. “In the morning it was the easiest thing in the world for me to get ’im out of the ’otel and bring ’im back again as an old friend of mine. Everybody was so busy looking for the murderer, they never thought of suspecting my old friend.
“As a matter of fact,” he continued with justifiable pride, “the disguise was very good. It took you in and everybody else.”
“Why on earth did you go to see Judy?” The Christian name escaped David in spite of himself.
“Oh, we had to. Just to let ’er know ’er uncle Jim was all right. We told ’er not to worry and she’d ’ear from us soon.
“I must admit,” he continued, blinking thoughtfully at David, “you gave me a bit of a shock, sir. But I carried it off all right, didn’t I?”
This last remark was too much for David. He smiled. The ex-sergeant’s tremendous satisfaction was too much for his gravity.
“Bloomer, this is disgraceful,” he said.
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