by John Creasey
‘Cross Farm? Now let me see … I believe I heard someone mention it at the Tavern.’
‘Congratulations,’ murmured Alleyn. He chuckled, as though to himself. ‘I am inclined to believe, Mr. Chane, that you are more used to expeditions of this nature than you make out.’
Chane waved his hand airily, seeing the other’s fingers tighten about the automatic.
‘And yet I told you that I am a detective, Alleyn.…’
‘In the employ of the Café of Clouds?’
‘You score there,’ Chane admitted. The easy smile left his face and he leaned forward. Alleyn, sensing the change as well as seeing it, interrupted him.
‘Well, Mr. Chane? You were about to say.…’
Chane hesitated, as though weighing up his words. Actually he had been working out the plan of action that he would adopt since Alleyn had first revealed the more dangerous side of his nature. His plan was not foolproof, but it held possibilities and would probably give both him and Quinion an hour or two more in which to act.
‘I was about to say that you forget that I may have been engaged by someone other than the Café. Admitting that I erred in thinking that the least likely manner of awakening your suspicions, you must see that I did not come down here purely for the sake of butting in.’
Alleyn appeared to deliberate over this.
‘You mean that you are working on some third party’s behalf?’
‘Exactly that.’
‘Excluding Mr. Quinn?’
‘To be quite frank,’ said Chane, with a gesture that suggested his anxiety to stop fencing and to get to grips with the real situation, ‘I have met Quinn. He is staying at the Tavern, and quite by chance I discovered that he is interested in Oak Cottage through a young lady.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Alleyn, ‘I know that the young fool is concerning himself with my daughter.’
‘That is what I understood,’ admitted Chane. ‘Naturally, when I found that he was anxious to learn what he could of your activities, I invited him to join up with me. My greater experience in matters of—shall I say diplomacy?—appealed to him. We decided to make a concerted effort.’ He stopped again, laughing grimly. ‘I’m afraid I had not expected to meet with such clever opposition, Mr. Alleyn.’
‘It is never wise to dabble in matters of which you know nothing,’ said Alleyn, fingering the wheel of his chair with the fingers of his right hand. ‘On whose behalf are you working?’
There was no question of the anxiety that he showed. At least Chane had found a chink in the man’s armour. He shrugged his shoulders.
‘You can hardly expect me to tell you without covering myself.…’
‘What do you want for the information?’
‘What do I want?’ Chane appeared to deliberate. ‘Well, I want your assurance that I shall be allowed to go from here, together with Quinn.’
‘Why with Quinn?’ Alleyn’s voice, as he asked the question, lacked the silkiness which had hitherto been a characteristic. The words were rapped out and the tone was harsh.
‘Because I rather like the man, and I don’t like the idea of leaving him at your mercy, simply because he is fool enough to mix himself up with matters that are beyond him.’
The invalid leaned back in his chair, but the long white fingers still held their grip on the small butt of his automatic, and Chane did not relish the idea of making another attempt to get to his own revolver. Alleyn appeared to be deliberating. When he spoke he seemed undecided.
‘Supposing I agree, Mr. Chane, what guarantee have I that you will act in good faith?’
Chane pursed his lips.
‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘you have none, of course. But look at the situation from my point of view, Mr. Alleyn. I have been engaged, as an investigator, to discover what I can about the murder of Thomas Loder. Frankly, it is not my first murder case, but it is the first one in which I have been accosted with threats after the fashion of that gun of yours.’
‘Then why carry a gun yourself?’
Chane shrugged.
‘Simply as a precaution, and a means of persuasion. Look here, Mr. Alleyn, I’ve seen quite enough of this affair to want to get out of it with a whole skin. I am not, like Quinn, bent on a quixotic errand; I am in it for what I can get out of it, and my fees are not heavy enough to run the risk of getting shot. Let me go, with Quinn, and I give you my assurance that I shall make no further efforts to discover who killed Loder, nor interfere with you in any way. It’s to our mutual advantage.’
Alleyn interrupted him suddenly.
‘All right, Chane. I give you my word that both of you will be sent from here, unhurt. Now, who is it that is so interested in Loder that he wants to discover the name of his murderer?’
Alleyn was waiting on the other’s reply. Chane could see the anxiety which filled those queer, light eyes. It would have to remain there for a while, he thought grimly.
‘Come, Mr. Alleyn. You hardly expect me to act up to my part of the bargain while Quinn is still wherever you have hidden him, and I am still unable to get out of the range of your automatic.’
Alleyn’s eyes narrowed, and for a third time Chane saw the sneer which disfigured a face that was, in repose, a picture of dignified old age.
‘No, I suppose it is asking too much. In a few minutes now several of my friends will be here. I will get them to bring the man Quinn in. Meanwhile——’
He broke off suddenly, his head turned towards the door of the office. Chane, pouncing on the opportunity for which he had been waiting since Alleyn had first admitted to the ownership of the Café of Clouds, had his own automatic out of his pocket and directed towards the invalid before the other had recovered from his momentary surprise. Chane’s eyes were fixed on the forefinger of Alleyn’s left hand; at the first suggestion of a movement, his own finger would press the trigger of his automatic.
But Alleyn’s fingers, hitherto firmly gripping his gun, relaxed. His face, already pale, took on a deathly pallor.
While from behind the office door came the sound of a woman singing. Her voice was miraculous in its mastery; the silver notes might have been from the haven of a thousand nightingales, and yet again might have been from the flawless throat of one alone.
Chane, intent though he was on keeping Alleyn covered, had a hard job to stifle an ejaculation of amazement. He had heard that voice before; and there could only be one like it.…
It was the Queen of the Clouds!
13
Quinion has a Stiff Neck
THE Hon. James Quinion began by cursing the beer at the ‘Clarion’, but a few moments of hazy reflection convinced him that he had not spent the previous night at that haunt of London’s favoured few, and he turned his attention alternatively to the Tavern, Peter de Lorne’s flat and the Café of Clouds.
Arrived at the Café of Clouds he began to think more clearly. It was incredible that even a place which was ostensibly run to fleece the idle rich should risk unpopularity by selling a liquor which made an old hand of the nature of the Hon. James wake up in the morning with a head worse than anything else on earth; at least, Jimmy assured himself that it was so. He turned over, flinching as a sheet of pain flashed through his aching head. Where had he been last night?
Slowly it dawned on him that he was not in bed. First his shoe—an unusual item beneath the sheets—stubbed against a chair-leg; and no ordinary chair sleeps with its owner. Then his hand banged against a drawer which was open, with the papers once contained in it strewn about a table. Shoes, chairs and table … Quinion, gritting his teeth at the torture, opened his eyes. Never in all his life had he had a head like it.
He was too concerned with the throbbing in his head to show surprise when he found himself sitting on a hardwood chair in the room which he had entered burglariously some time before. As the realization of events came back to him he wondered, still without surprise, at being allowed to sit, unbound, on the chair. He remembered swerving round as someone crept up behind hi
m, and he remembered the sickening thud which had sent him to sleep. But why should he be left in the empty room unattended?
He allowed himself five minutes in which to give the throbbing a chance to settle before standing up uncertainly and looking round. The room was exactly as it had been before he had been knocked out; only the papers, strewn about the table—he could imagine that he had dropped the drawer as he had fallen unconscious—were out of place.
He felt in his pockets and smiled as he found that his automatic was there; no one had searched him, then. What had happened to make his assailant disappear? Returning to a semblance of his normal self he began to thank the great god of luck, only to be jerked back as he stumbled against a chair and made the throbbing in his head increase a hundredfold. Gad! What a head! If only he could douse it in cold water.
There was a tap, he remembered, in the scullery through which he had passed. Walking gingerly to the door, moving smoothly in order to prevent jarring his head more than necessary, he went to the tap, turning it full on and letting the cool water run where it would. After five minutes he felt a new man.
A glance at his watch told him that it was nearly six o’clock, more than an hour since he had left Reggie Chane. What had happened to Reggie? Had he fallen for it as easily as Quinion himself? And had he been comparatively free when he had awakened? Quinion found himself bewildered by the hundred-and-one questions which flashed into his mind. There was only one way to answer them: Oak Cottage would have to be more fully explored.
By all the rules of common sense he should make good his escape from the cottage while he could; he walked towards the door which led to the room in which he had first sat with Margaret Alleyn. His chief purpose was the discovery of Chane; it might be that his, Quinion’s, comparative freedom was accidental, and Chane was in need of help. Quinion turned the handle of the door.
He stood there for a moment, surprised into stupefaction. From the room ahead came the sound of a woman’s voice, lifted in song; and Quinion thought that he had never heard a voice more pure nor notes reached with less effort in spite of their flawlessness.
Never? What of the Queen of the Clouds?
He pushed the door gently, and darted back as a gruff voice warned him to keep away. He could see, through the inch-wide opening that he had made, the muzzle of a revolver pointed towards him, held in a lean brown hand which wavered not at all. After the first shock Quinion began to laugh, and as he laughed the revolver faltered and drooped towards the ground. Mr. Reginald Chane, his aristocratic face registering astonishment, annoyance and relief, pulled the door full open.
‘Funny, isn’t it?’ he demanded.
‘Funny!’ gasped Quinion. ‘Funny! Oh, my hat, my head! Funny!’
‘That’s right,’ said Chane lugubriously, ‘laugh. I don’t mind; in fact, I like it.’
‘For the love of Mike,’ implored Quinion, gasping, ‘shut off that damned gramophone and stop staring like a gargoyle. Go on. Hurry. Double.…’
He slipped gratefully into an arm-chair … the one which had sheltered him from Funny Face’s bullets, and gazed hopelessly at Chane as the latter lifted the needle from the record that was revolving on the cabinet gramophone standing in the middle of the room. Chane, who had steeled himself to deal with a small army of men which he had expected to arrive at any minute from Cross Farm, took some time to recover his equanimity. Gradually he began to smile. Finally he offered Quinion a cigarette, lit one himself, and sat in a companion chair to Quinion’s.
‘You haven’t got such a thing as a nip of strong liquor, have you, Reggie?’ Quinion asked.
‘There’s some whisky in that decanter,’ said Chane, reaching out for a decanter which stood on a small table. Quinion put it to his lips, spluttered, coughed, and suddenly remembered caution.
‘Sure it isn’t doped?’
‘Sure of nothing,’ said Chane comfortlessly, ‘but I took a swig myself twenty minutes ago, and I’m still looking at life.’
‘Sounds all right,’ admitted Quinion. He lit his cigarette thoughtfully before giving his friend a brief account of his effort in burglary. ‘And what have you got to talk about?’ he asked finally. ‘Been spending a happy hour with that?’ He pointed towards the cabinet in the middle of the room.
Chane regarded the gramophone with a friendly eye.
‘As a matter of fact you and I owe a great deal to that plaything, Jimmy, but I’m damned if I know just how.’
‘Tell me everything,’ demanded Quinion. ‘Especially the whereabouts of Arnold Alleyn.…’
‘I haven’t a notion,’ confessed Chane. ‘Let me start properly. I called on Alleyn with the story we’d fixed up, and was travelling splendidly when he outed me by saying that he was the owner of the Café of Clouds … that’s right, jump. Of all the crazy stunts, sending me to that mad hatter without first making sure that the story was foolproof.’
‘Even I don’t know everything,’ murmured Quinion.
‘I could have told you that many years ago, James. Alleyn had me more or less where he wanted me. I stalled him off for a bit, but was just about to give the whole thing up as a loser, and take whatever he had coming, when I heard that voice … just as you heard it just now. Jimmy, it turned Alleyn to cheese. There he was, looking at me with those nasty eyes of his and handling a nasty little gun in a businesslike method; then he just crumpled up.
‘I expected to see the woman who was singing come in through the door there’—he pointed towards the office and Quinion nodded—‘but a man at the window called my attention; a sceptic looking little blighter with a face like popcorn. He had a gun, though, and I had to move pretty smart to dodge him, until I, and he, discovered that his gun wasn’t loaded. After that I made grimaces at him and sent him running like a hare towards the end of the garden. All this time, you will gather, the voice was singing, and I had my back to Alleyn and the door; I don’t know why, but I fancied that there was no need to worry about Alleyn getting cross at that minute.’ He stopped, eyeing Quinion steadily, and it was several seconds before he went on.
‘Jimmy, believe it or not, when I turned round again Alleyn was gone, chair and all. There wasn’t a sign of him. The door leading into the office was open, but I could hear nothing coming through. I walked across, not too quickly in case someone popped round the corner, and saw that the “woman” was a tinned one. But there was no one at all in the room.
‘Feeling a bit on the jumpy side I kept my eyes open, but nothing happened. Catching sight of that decanter, I investigated and took a swig … being, I don’t mind telling you, thoroughly in need of a freshener, Jimmy. That made me gay, for after taking another look round I decided to hear my fair rescuer again, brought the gramophone in here and set her going. Then you came.’
Quinion sat silent for some time. Everything that had happened since he had first met Thomas Loder added to the confusion of his mind. That a man of the stamp of Arnold Alleyn would crumple up at the sound of a record being played was as near incredible as any of the things that had puzzled him, but it was a fact; Chane, in spite of the whisky, was quite sober.
‘When you were having a look round, didn’t it occur to you to try the door through which I came in?’
Chane frowned.
‘Yes. I did. I looked out of the front door, but there was no one about; then I tried the other joker. It was locked.’
‘Locked?’ Quinion’s tone was incredulous. ‘Damn it, I must have come in less than ten minutes after you had tried it, and it was open then. Sure you’re not dreaming?’
‘As sure as I’m here,’ affirmed Chane. He was looking tensely towards the door of the office; then he looked at the window. Quinion, his brows arched in puzzlement, followed his friend’s gaze.
‘Listen,’ said Chane constrainedly. ‘When I first came in the window was boarded up; yet the boards weren’t there when the man with the face looked through, but they’re back again.’
‘Go on,’ said Quinion grimly. He was
looking now at the door of the office.
‘When I tried the door through which you came, it was locked; ten minutes later it was open. When I looked through that office there was no one there, and I carted the gramophone into this room, leaving the door open; now the door is shut. I’m not dreaming; I’m dead sure! When you came in you left your door open, and that’s shut too! Yet neither of us has moved.…’
Quinion, grim-eyed, stood up. His revolver gleamed in his hand as he moved towards the front door of Oak Cottage, and tried the handle. As he had half expected, it was locked. He knelt down, intent on picking it with the wire he had used to unlock the drawers in Arnold Alleyn’s desk, but after a minute’s effort knew that it was hopeless. He turned round.
‘My God!’ he breathed fearfully.
For there was no sign of Chane, although the big arm-chair was standing just where it had been before he had walked towards the door.
14
A Trip to Cross Farm
AFTER the first moment of consternation Quinion moved quickly towards the door of the office. He held no faith in the supernatural where Oak Cottage was concerned; queer things were happening, but there was a definite explanation of them. That a man of the size and nature of Reginald Chane could be spirited away without a sound or struggle took some believing, but Quinion knew it for fact; it was the culminating point of the queer things that Chane had noticed and remarked upon, the silent closing and locking of doors and the boarding up of the window.
The door leading to the office was still locked, and the door of the room from which Quinion had come was equally fast. With his revolver still held firmly in his hand, Quinion began to walk slowly round the room, examining the walls and the floor for an opening of some kind; for Chane had gone, and it was nearly certain that he had not gone through the doors or the window. Quinion, who had played with the idea before, wondered whether the great fireplace sheltered any secret.
The ability to dissociate himself from anything but the problem immediately in front of him was one of the secrets of Quinion’s success with Department ‘Z’, and as he peered into the recess of the fireplace he had no thought in his mind save the need of discovering a way out of Oak Cottage; that he was in all probability being watched by more than one pair of eyes troubled him not at all.