The old man laughed. “I know. I wonder at it meself sometimes. But, after all, you can ’ave too much of officialdom. You’ve got to follow your own inclinations sometimes. Well, there you are. I’ve done it. I admit it. Now then, Captain, you know everything. What are you going to do?”
David was silent for some moments. His duty was very clear.
“I ought,” he said at last, “to arrest you both and take you to Westbourne.”
Bloomer rose and moved quietly to the door.
“Somehow I don’t think you’re going to do that, Captain,” he said.
David sprang to his feet, but Lionel Birch stood in his way.
“I’ll answer for Bloomer,” he said, “and for myself too. We must get Judy to safety. Once I know she is in safe hands I give you my word I will accompany you to face any charges you may care to bring against me. I saved your life this morning, Inspector. I had instructions from the leader of the gang of ruffians who stopped you last night to drag you out of the barn when the others were safely out of the way and throw you into one of the dykes in the saltings, which are covered with water at high tide. As soon as the water had gone down, your bonds were to be removed and your body would have been found drowned with no explanation.”
He paused and went on again quickly:
“Since my ‘disappearance’ I have been playing the part of a down-and-out willing to do anything for a few shillings, and in that capacity I was able to join the select company with which Mr. Saxon Marsh, Sir Leo’s associate and, I should say, master had seen fit to surround himself.
“Help me to save my daughter.”
David sat very still. He knew what he intended to do might easily cost him his position, won so hardly in the past few years. But he also knew that nothing really mattered to him in the world except Judy, and now her father’s appeal was answerable in only one way.
“We’ll get her,” he said. “In the ordinary way it should be possible to enlist the authorities on our side, but in the circumstances I don’t see quite how we can do that. After all, she went away with Miss Ferney of her own free will.”
“Poor Judy!” Lionel Birch spoke softly. “She didn’t know. I didn’t warn her. How could I? The last time I saw her I did not even know myself. Marguerite Ferney, you see, is the other heir. If Judy dies, Marguerite inherits the fortune.”
David was aghast. “She wouldn’t dare, in that case,” he said. “She wouldn’t dare to do Judy any harm, unless——”
He paused, not caring to finish the sentence.
Lionel Birch nodded. “Exactly,” he said grimly. “Unless she was certain she was safe. I wish Silas Gillimot’s fortune was at the bottom of the sea rather than that it should bring Judy so much danger.”
David sighed. “I wish to God it were,” he said, and the bitterness of his tone told Lionel Birch something which he had been wondering for some time.
He sighed with relief. Inspector David Blest was no fortune hunter.
The older man plunged into his scheme with alacrity.
“It’s a big lonely house on the coast, and closely guarded,” he said, “but I think we three might attempt it if we waited until dusk. The other person we have to contend with is Saxon Marsh himself. He’s more dangerous than the other two, although Webb is an unknown quantity as far as I’m concerned.”
David opened his mouth to speak, but the words were silenced by the sound of a departure in the yard below their window. He sprang to the casement and, peering out, was just in time to see Saxon Marsh step into his car, which shot out into the road at an alarming speed.
Almost immediately two or three men, who were quite obviously part of the bodyguard, entered a second car which thundered after the first.
The whole departure was made with such terrific haste that David was puzzled.
“It almost looked like a flight,” he said aloud. “I wonder what new monkey business this is.”
He was answered by Bloomer, who had just come into the room, a newspaper in his hand. His face was flushed with excitement.
“He’s gone,” he said. “Paid ’is bill and skedaddled like a rabbit. Now we’re going to see the feathers fly! And if you ask me, Captain, I think I can explain that little exit.
“The evening papers have just arrived,” he continued, “and very enlightening they are, too. Take a look at the front page, will you, Captain?”
David took the proffered news sheet and read the paragraph which Bloomer indicated so triumphantly.
The Welbourne Police [he read in the small type beneath the flaring headlines] this morning interviewed Sir Leo Thyn in a nursing home in Harwich. Late last night Sir Leo was interviewed by the police before embarking upon the Flushing boat. It was after this interview that Sir Leo became unwell and was taken to a nursing home in the town. It is understood that the baronet was too ill for a long interview this morning, but it is believed that Inspector Winn, of the Westbourne County Constabulary, is remaining in the town in the hope of a further interview this evening.
“There you are!” Bloomer’s voice was triumphant. “Sir Leo’s lost ’is nerve and ’is old friend Saxon Marsh is going to help ’im out. And if you ask me,” he continued with an elaborate wink at the inspector, “ ’e’s goin to see ’is old friend doesn’t open ’is mouth too wide.”
CHAPTER XVII
The Witness in the Case
“DEFINITELY NOT MORE than half an hour, Inspector, and I grant that only against my better judgment. Sir Leo is in danger of a complete collapse. I warn you, his reason may be permanently impaired if he is subjected to any worry at this stage.”
Like a great many other members of the unenlightened public, the doctor felt that the police were going a little far in their persistence in worrying so eminent a man as Sir Leo Thyn, especially when the affair which they were engaged in investigating could, everybody felt, have nothing to do with the distinguished lawyer.
Inspector Winn knew himself to be at a disadvantage, but never had his determination stood him in better stead. He clung to his task with an obstinacy which in the circumstances did him credit. Neither snubs nor downright rudeness put him off his self-appointed task.
It was true that he was investigating the death of an unworthy person, and the witness who had first put him on to the baronet would make an even more unattractive figure in the box than the deceased Johnny Deane might have done, but Inspector Winn felt he was nearing the truth, and the more he saw of Sir Leo the more convinced he was that Nifty Martin had been right.
Inspector Winn had not much experience of people of Sir Leo’s type and class, and the man’s reputation and title impressed him in spite of himself. But the fact remained that Sir Leo was behaving exactly like any other badly frightened man Inspector Winn had seen, and were it not for the fact that the whole thing seemed so extraordinarily unlikely, the inspector would have sworn that Sir Leo was a guilty man.
However, he nodded gravely to the doctor.
“I quite understand, sir,” he said in his most conciliatory manner. “I understand perfectly, and you can rely on me to see that the unfortunate gentleman is not disturbed any more than is absolutely necessary. But I have a witness here whom I am very anxious Sir Leo should see, and if you don’t mind I’ll take her in.”
The doctor glanced past the inspector to the shabby little figure who sat nervously in a corner of the big waiting room playing with a pair of dingy cotton gloves. Ruth Dartle was not at her best when she was nervous, and at the moment she was more or less paralytic with embarrassment. Inspector Winn almost felt he ought to apologize for her presence in that soberly magnificent building.
The doctor sighed.
“Very well. If you must, I suppose you must.”
He went out, and Inspector Winn turned to the girl. He had rehearsed her a dozen times but was never sure whether she had understood what he was saying or not.
“Now, don’t forget,” he said kindly, for he found that any severity in his tone reduce
d her to a state of complete blankness of mind. “When the nurse takes us in I want you to move round and look the gentleman full in the face. When he speaks I want you to listen to his voice. If you recognize it you can nod to me. If you don’t, keep quiet and follow the nurse out of the room and come back here. Understand?”
“Yes,” said Ruth dubiously, and inwardly Inspector Winn groaned. Every witness in this case, he reflected gloomily, seemed either to be completely unpresentable or a congenital idiot.
These gloomy thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a somewhat supercilious young person in nurse’s uniform. She conducted the ill-assorted couple down a narrow parquet-floored corridor to the far end of the building. Then, with a gesture enjoining quiet, she ushered them through a white enamelled door into a sun parlour, one of the private wards kept for convalescent patients.
It was a pretty little room, very bright and tasteful, one wall of which had been entirely replaced by special glass through which there was an uninterrupted view of a charming flower garden.
Sir Leo, a mere shadow of his former self, was sitting huddled in a big wicker chair, his head supported by a great bank of down-filled cushions. He sat up stiffly, however, when he caught sight of the inspector, and his face wore an expression of ludicrous terror.
Inspector Winn glanced sharply at his companion. The girl was goggling at the man in the chair, but there was no sign of recognition on her face, and when she caught the inspector’s eye she shook her head. When the nurse went out the girl followed her, and a great wave of depression passed over Inspector Winn.
Sir Leo remained in his uncomfortable upright position. Gone was all the ease of which he had been such a master.
“What do you want?” he said in a thin high voice utterly unlike his own. “I tell you I am ill—ill. You’ve got no business to come bothering me. Who was that woman? Why did she stare at me? I tell you I’ve nothing to say—nothing to say at all.”
Inspector Winn coughed depreciatingly. Behind his little sharp eyes his mind was working rapidly. The man was in a state of abject terror: he could see that. Why, his lips were blue and his pupils contracted. And yet he was not guilty—or at least, the girl had failed to recognize him.
Inspector Winn wondered savagely whether the girl was capable of recognizing anybody or remembering anything. He gripped his notebook and cleared his throat.
“Sir Leo,” he said gently, “this morning, if you remember, just before you were taken with your fainting fit, you told me that you had never heard of a man called Johnny Deane, alias the Major. Then, if you remember, you changed your mind and said that you thought you had heard of him but believed it was some time ago. I have here a note written by you to Mr. Deane on the morning of the day on which he died. Could you perhaps give me an explanation of the discrepancy in the two facts?”
It went against the inspector’s grain to treat a man who was so evidently lying with such gentleness and deference, but he was still more than a little impressed by the other’s eminence, and the girl’s reaction had taken a great deal of the wind out of his sails.
As his last word died away the other man hunched himself up in his chair and spoke again, still in the high, unnatural voice which told of a cracking nervous system.
“I tell you I don’t know. And I won’t be questioned. D’you hear me? I’m too ill to be questioned. You can’t question a sick man, probably a dying man. Didn’t the doctor tell you, you might drive me mad? He ought to have told you that.”
“But, Sir Leo, I must have an answer.” In spite of his care a touch of authority had crept into Winn’s tone.
To his delight, the other man reacted to it. The unaccustomed severity seemed to pull him together, and it was as though, the inspector reflected, a pail of water had been poured over a hysterical girl. He noticed with delight signs of returning normality. Sir Leo’s brain was beginning to work again, and he was becoming cautious. He put his hand up to his forehead.
“Let me think,” he said. “I’m sorry, Inspector, but my brain seems to have gone completely. I must have had some sort of stroke.”
He laughed, and the sound was meant to be apologetic. It sounded unnatural even to himself, however, and he became grave again.
“Let me think,” he continued. “Mr. Mazarine, you say? No, Inspector, the name is unfamiliar.”
Winn blinked. The man must be well at the end of his tether if he was going to attempt puerile subterfuge of this sort.
“No, Sir Leo,” he said. “You know very well that I’ve been talking about a man called Johnny Deane, who called himself the Major. You wrote a note asking him to come and see you at the Arcadian Hotel, Westbourne. That note is now in my possession.”
A smile of understanding which was only too obviously assumed passed over Sir Leo’s face.
“Deane?” he said. “But how absurd of me! Of course. It had quite slipped my memory. He was an unfortunate down-and-out sort of person, Inspector, who approached me in London with a long story of his hardships. I am inclined to be a sentimental old fool where ex-service men are concerned, and I told him that I was going away on holiday and would need a chauffeur for the trip. He came to see me at the Arcadian, I remember. Not a very satisfactory person. I didn’t engage him.”
He paused, and the expression on his face was terrible inasmuch as there was a forced smile of bland politeness on the lips, while the eyes were wild and terrified.
Inspector Winn was shocked. He got a glimpse of the man Sir Leo had been in the days of his greatness, in the days before he had lost his nerve, and it was somehow shocking to see him transformed into an unconvincing shadow of his former self.
Inspector Winn looked down at his notebook.
“I have here a deposition from Charles Wade, a waiter at the Arcadian. In it he states that you treated the man Deane as a friend, introduced him to your ward, and finally took him up to your suite. Do you always engage your chauffeurs that way, Sir Leo?”
“Do I understand that you don’t believe me?” Sir Leo meant the question to be dignified. Instead it sounded like an entreaty. He lay back and closed his eyes. “I can’t answer you any more,” he said. “I can’t say anything. I’m ill, I tell you, ill! I——”
His voice cracked.
Inspector Winn rose to his feet, but before he could reach the door it was opened, and a nurse and the doctor reappeared, and with them a man whom the inspector did not recognize.
Saxon Marsh was at his most imposing. Never had the tremendous personal force of the man been more apparent. There was an air of authority and dignity in his very bearing.
He glanced at Inspector Winn as at an entirely unworthy object.
“It is a damnable thing,” he said, and his voice was none the less impressive by virtue of its very quietness. “Here is a famous man, an important man, on the verge of a nervous breakdown of the first magnitude, and a pack of interfering noisy policemen are let loose upon him and permitted to ask him banal questions, aggravating his condition. I’ll speak to the commissioners myself, doctor. Don’t worry.”
The two men and the nurse looked coldly at the inspector, and it was the doctor who spoke.
“If you have quite finished, Inspector Winn, I should be glad if you would let my patient have a little rest. I’m afraid your visit has only done him a lot of harm. I hope it has been more satisfactory from your point of view.”
Inspector Winn squared his shoulders. It was on occasions such as this that his tenacity was best displayed. The snub passed over him like water over a duck’s back.
“I shall have to see Sir Leo again,” he said.
“My dear sir, talk about that later.” The doctor spoke testily. “If you don’t leave him alone you’ll see him in his coffin.”
He had lowered his voice so that the man in the chair might not hear, but Saxon Marsh appeared to be very shocked by the possibility of their being overheard and ushered the little group out into the corridor.
“This is my card,”
he said, thrusting a slip of pasteboard into the inspector’s hand. “You’ll hear of me again. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and see my poor sick friend.”
Accompanied by the nurse, now even more supercilious and disdainful than before, the unfortunate inspector made his way back to the waiting room to collect his unsatisfactory witness.
Here a delay occurred. Inspector Winn, boiling with indignation and very uncertain in his mind as to the correct course for him to adopt, decided to make a bold stand.
“I think I shall wait here until I hear when Sir Leo can see me again,” he said.
The nurse stared at him, her eyes widening.
“Really!” she said.
But the inspector was not to be put out by a little chit of a girl.
“That’ll do from you, miss,” he said meaningly. “You run along and tell the doctor I’m going to wait.”
With her cheeks flaming, the nurse strode out of the room and came as near to banging the door as nurses ever do.
There was a long silence, which was broken by Ruth.
“I’d never seen the little fat man before,” she said. “It wouldn’t do for me to say I had if I hadn’t, would it?”
“Oh, good heavens, no,” said the inspector savagely. “Don’t get ideas like that in your head. Tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
Once again there was a pause, which again was broken by the girl.
“Didn’t he look ill?” she said. “I thought he was going to faint, didn’t you?”
The inspector made some inaudible reply, and Miss Dartle, finding him in no mood for conversation, relapsed into injured silence. At last, in exasperation, she got up and walked over to the window, where she stood looking out onto the formal strip of garden in front of the imposing building.
Inspector Winn remained immersed in his own gloomy thoughts. He saw himself getting into trouble through no fault of his own, and the prospect was hardly comforting.
So engrossed was he that he did not hear the soft footsteps in the hall without, nor did he notice the murmur of discreetly subdued voices, and it was only a shrill scream from the girl at the window which brought him to the present again.
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