by Sapper
“Stop!”
Demonico’s imperious command rang out, and the two furious men pulled themselves together.
“This is no time for childish squabbles,” he went on sternly. “The stakes are altogether too great. We must co-operate – not fight.”
“Sorry, Doctor,” said Number Four sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
Pendleton accepted the apology with a curt nod.
“Now,” continued Demonico, “let’s get back to the beginning. Who is this man Standish that Sanderson should have telephoned to him particularly?”
“I can tell you that,” said Pendleton, “for I’ve been making enquiries. He was a friend of Sanderson’s, and is apparently a sort of amateur dabbler in crime with very distinct detective ability.”
“That’s right,” said Number Four. “That’s what Sanderson said. Miss Moxton and I had been codding him up about the cipher – the same as I did Drummond, and he suddenly decided to ring up Standish. And I couldn’t miss the opportunity. His head was steady: he suspected nothing when I pretended to fill the pen.”
“So much for him,” continued Demonico. “Now what about Drummond?”
“As far as I can make out he’s a friend of Standish,” said Pendleton. “He and the other two were playing bridge when Sanderson telephoned. But to my mind Drummond is the most dangerous of the lot. He’s immensely powerful, as we have found out to our cost, and he knows you.”
“He won’t the next time we meet,” said Demonico quietly. “That is, if there is a next time. The point is not, however, whether he knows me, but whether he knows anything of our plans.”
“He knows we use a cipher, boss,” remarked Number Four, “but he doesn’t know what it is.”
“It might be advisable to change it,” said Pendleton uneasily.
“Impossible, so late as this,” answered Demonico decisively. “It would result in hopeless confusion. Besides, no one can solve it without the key.”
“What’s got me stung,” said Number Four, “is that whoever it was who shot me – and I can’t think who it can have been except Standish – must have known about the pen. If he didn’t, why did he aim for my hand?”
“That weapon has served its purpose,” said Demonico, “though I admit it’s very disconcerting. It shows knowledge on their part which is not reassuring. You think it was Standish?”
“Who else could it have been? Darrell and that guy with an eyeglass were both shadowed to their flats: Leyton hasn’t left his rooms at all: it can’t have been the police. So it must have been Standish.”
“Then one wonders excessively why, having incapacitated you, they didn’t make you a prisoner.”
“Exactly, boss. I haven’t stopped wondering about that since it happened. They had me cold, and with the pen found on me I should have been taped direct for Sanderson.”
Demonico rose and began pacing up and down the room, whilst the others watched him anxiously. That he was worried was clear, though his voice when he spoke was quite calm.
“You say that Standish has not returned to his rooms?”
“Not when the last report came in an hour ago,” said Pendleton, and at that moment the telephone rang on his desk. He picked up the receiver.
“Yes. Sir Richard Pendleton speaking.”
The others waited in silence: the message was obviously surprising the listener. At length he replaced the instrument.
“An unexpected development,” he said. “Drummond left early this morning for Paris.”
“Who was that speaking?” asked Demonico.
“Spackman. Apparently he picked up one of the maids who was having her day out and she told him.”
“What can have caused that?” said Demonico thoughtfully.
“Possibly he found that things were getting too warm,” remarked Pendleton. “So he came to the conclusion that discretion was the better part of valour.”
Demonico shook his head decidedly.
“That is not my valuation of Captain Drummond at all,” he said. “In fact, I should not be at all surprised if it isn’t true. He may have said he was going to Paris for the benefit of his household staff and possible callers, whereas in reality he has done nothing of the sort. In any event, for the time we must regard both him and Standish as lost and make our plans accordingly. To start with, neither of them has an inkling that you are involved, Pendleton?”
“So far as I know it’s impossible that they should,” said the doctor. “They were both unconscious when I saw them in Standish’s rooms. And yet I must confess that the tone of the few remarks Drummond made to me at a cocktail party where we met yesterday gave me to think a bit.”
Demonico shrugged his shoulders.
“We must chance it. Now that the Old Hall is useless, I shall have to stay in London. It won’t be for long: I had absolute confirmation last night that it will be Tuesday week. Your yacht will be ready by then?”
“She’s ready now,” answered the doctor. “Who did you get your confirmation from?”
“One of the chief cashiers,” said Demonico, “whom I’ve bought.”
“A difficult thing to do,” said Pendleton dubiously.
Demonico laughed cynically.
“Not if you’re prepared to pay big enough,” he said.
“How can he be so certain?” persisted Pendleton.
“He knows the liner that the stuff is consigned to,” answered Demonico. “But if by chance there should be a change he will let me know at once. I had two other interesting visitors yesterday evening,” he continued. “Legrange and Daly.”
“Good Lord! they know nothing about it, do they?”
“No; though Daly wouldn’t mind if he did. I’ve met some Irish-Americans who are rabid against England, but he wins in a canter. However, don’t alarm yourself – they know nothing about our little coup. But they do know a lot about the financial condition of this country, and I was amazed at what they told me. If you want to pick up a packet for the asking – sell sterling short.”
Pendleton stared at him.
“Why?” he demanded.
“Because England has either got to go bankrupt or get off the gold standard. That’s what they tell me and they should know.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Pendleton. “As bad as that, is it? But why the deuce did they bother to tell you?”
Demonico gave a thin smile.
“It is not the first time I have had dealings with those two gentlemen,” he said. “We understand each other – admirably. And our schemes are going to help things a lot. However, to return to more pressing matters – Drummond and Standish have got to be found, and when they are found there must be no further mistake. The more I think of it, the less likely does it strike me that Drummond has gone to Paris. What possible reason could he have for suddenly going there on a Sunday morning? He is therefore either still in his house, in which case he must have a peculiar sort of staff if he can get a maid to say he’s left for Paris; or, and this is far more probable, he has left Town and is hiding somewhere.”
“In that case it’s going to be a pretty impossible proposition to find him,” said Pendleton. “In any event, he will have passed on to the police by now all that he knows.”
“But what does he know? He knows that he was drugged with Standish the night before last by the people who were concerned in Sanderson’s death. All the world will know that after the inquest tomorrow. He knows me as I am now, but not as I shall be in half an hour’s time. He knows about the Old Hall: that is now empty. He knows that he fought for his life in the squash court, but since he didn’t kill his assailant and only stunned him, there will be no evidence to produce there. My dear Pendleton, Sanderson’s very necessary death has turned this case into a cause célèbre already: anything further
that Drummond or Standish may say matters but little. Because they do not know what we are here for: they do not know where I am, nor, now that the men are scattered, where any of them are. And, last but not least, they do not know, nor will they ever know, the solution of our cipher. Furthermore, our arrangements are cut and dried, and we are only going to be in the country for a few more days. That is the position as I see it, though I frankly admit that I should feel happier if they were both out of the way. And, when they are found, they must be put out of the way, as I said before. Men who can call on a gang of friends to follow up their movements, as those two apparently can, are far more to be feared than the police.”
“I wish I felt as confident about it as you do,” said Pendleton uneasily.
“Not losing your nerve, are you?” remarked Demonico with a slight sneer. “What is worrying you?”
“The conversation I had with Drummond at that party,” said the other. “I can’t get out of my mind the feeling that he had his suspicions about me.”
“Nonsense,” cried Demonico. “How could he have? He could not possibly have seen you in the squash court, and anyway, that was after your party. And when you saw him in Standish’s rooms he was drugged and unconscious. As a medical man you could be certain of that.”
“He was drugged all right,” agreed Pendleton. “For all that I don’t feel sure.”
“Another thing,” put in Demonico. “If he’d had any suspicions of you, is it not more than likely he would have said something when he was in the squash court? He must have known that two men and a woman were looking on, and one of those men he knew was me, because I spoke to him. Surely, if he suspected you, he would have called out.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Pendleton. “Anyway, we will proceed on the assumption that he doesn’t. And if he doesn’t, Standish doesn’t either.”
“There is still another point which to my mind conclusively proves it,” went on Demonico. “If your surmise that he suspected you at the time of this cocktail party is correct, those suspicions must have been aroused before the party took place. So that even if he said nothing to you in the squash court he would surely have said something then.”
“Unless he’s playing a very deep game,” said Pendleton.
“Good God! man,” cried Demonico contemptuously, “what’s happened to you? If I’m not worrying, why should you? You might just see that the way is clear for me to get upstairs without any of your servants seeing me: I want to make a few radical alterations in my appearance. Then I, too, shall follow Drummond’s example, and – go to Paris.”
“All clear,” said Pendleton, returning from the door, and Demonico, after one swift glance round the hall, went rapidly upstairs.
“I didn’t quite get what he meant by selling sterling short,” said Number Four as the door closed behind him.
“That’s easy,” said Pendleton briefly. “If this country got into serious difficulties, and couldn’t pay her way, the value of the pound is going to fall abroad. Say it goes down to fifteen shillings. So that if I sell a pound now I get twenty shillings for it, but when I have to deliver it on settling day I only have to pay fifteen shillings. Clear gain of five shillings per pound, and you can work out what that comes to on a hundred thousand.”
“But supposing it doesn’t go down?”
“Doesn’t matter: I can’t lose anything except brokerage. It can’t go up above twenty shillings: I can’t have to pay more for it than I sell out at. Jove! it’s interesting. I knew things weren’t too good: I didn’t know they were as rocky as they evidently are. For Legrange doesn’t make many mistakes. And if he hasn’t made one this time, there are going to be a good many fortunes waiting to be picked up.”
He sat down at his desk, and began glancing through some papers, whilst the other watched him curiously.
“You’re an extraordinary bloke, Doctor,” said Number Four after a long silence. “You draw a fat income chopping up people’s insides: you can live in peace and quiet and the odour of sanctity, and yet you mix yourself up in these sorts of games. Why the devil do you do it?”
“Love of excitement,” answered Pendleton at once. “It takes us all in one way or another. To see a horse-race leaves me cold, and I wouldn’t cross the road to watch a game of football. But this – this is life. I wouldn’t miss next Tuesday or the rehearsal this week for any sum of money you could give me. Hullo! madam, what on earth are you doing here?”
The door had opened, and an elderly woman had entered. Her hair under a fashionable hat was grey: her clothes, to Pendleton’s discriminating eye, were exactly right in a woman of her age. And for a space she surveyed him through lorgnettes, while he continued to stand by his desk feeling increasingly surprised at this unexpected intrusion.
“Sir Richard Pendleton?” she asked, her survey concluded. Her voice was musical and cultured, and the doctor bowed.
“That is my name,” he said. “You wish to consult me?”
“Only to the extent, my dear Pendleton, of asking you to place the trousers I have left upstairs, along with the other male garments, in some safe hiding-place.”
The voice was still that of a woman, and for a moment or two Pendleton stared at her blankly. Then the truth dawned on him, and he sat down limply.
“Well, I’m damned,” he cried. “Demonico, I congratulate you. It is the most marvellous disguise I’ve ever seen. No one – no one – would ever recognise you. It is magnificent.”
Demonico smiled slightly.
“Nor even Drummond.”
Chapter 8
To Daphne Frensham the whole thing seemed like a nightmare. As Drummond had predicted, she had been accosted on leaving his house, and she had carried out his instructions to the letter. A natural actress, she had had no difficulty in playing the part of a parlourmaid out for the day, and she was convinced that she had completely deceived the man. Moreover, she knew that she had not been followed: the bus going west that she had boarded in Piccadilly had been empty save for herself, and when two hours later she had let herself into her tiny flat the street outside was deserted.
She found her employer in a trying mood when she arrived at her usual time on Monday morning. And there was no doubt that had her devoted following of film fans seen the beautiful Miss Moxton that day they would have received a severe shock. A programme that includes one successful and one unsuccessful murder on two consecutive evenings is not conducive to mental calm, and her features indicated as much.
But it was not the past that chiefly worried Corinne Moxton: it was the immediate future. She lunched with Sir Richard the previous day, and his misgivings had communicated themselves to her. How much did Drummond know? No good to argue that he could know nothing – no good to argue that unless he had positive proof he could say nothing: people with guilty consciences want something more substantial than that. How much did he know, and what was he going to say at the inquest?
Like Demonico she was convinced that he had not gone to Paris. There seemed to her to be no conceivable reason why he should leave the country early on a Sunday morning to go to France. And if that was so, the very fact that he had put up a blind made him the more dangerous. Why should he have bothered to do so?
Corinne Moxton was true to type in that she was utterly and absolutely selfish. So long as no shadow of suspicion rested on her the others might go to the devil. Even for Sir Richard she cared not one whit, except for the fact that if he was dragged in she might be involved also. And although she had not actually heard the conversation between him and Drummond at the cocktail party, it had left a bad impression on his mind.
“Your letters, Miss Moxton.”
Daphne Frensham brought them to the side of the bed.
“What are they?” she cried irritably.
“The usual autograph ones,” said the secretary, resisting a strong i
mpulse to add that her employer had better write “Murderess” after her signature. “Two luncheons; a line from the publicity agent, and a request that you will say you use Doctor Speedworthy’s Purple Ointment for removing blackheads in return for half a dozen tubes of it.”
She held the letters out, and the film star snatched them from her hand. What did Drummond know? What was he going to say at the inquest? Damn him. Damn that fool Pendleton. Damn that miserable bungler Number Four for having failed to kill him.
“Say – how do you hold inquests in this one-horse place?”
Daphne Frensham’s face registered just the right amount of surprise at such an apparently unusual question: so that was the lie of the land, was it?
“I’m afraid I don’t really know, Miss Moxton,” she said. “I’ve never attended one. I believe they have a man called a coroner, and a jury, and then they find a verdict. Why do you ask?”
“Can the public get in?”
“I believe so. I think the proceedings are always open.”
“Find out where they’re going to sit around on that guy who was killed on Friday night, and his house burned down.”
“You mean Mr Sanderson?”
For the life of her Daphne Frensham could not keep a slight tremor out of her voice: there in the bed in front of her was, if not the actual perpetrator of the crime, the woman who had stood by while it was done. And now she was calmly asking about the inquest: proposing to attend it.
“For the land’s sake don’t stand there gaping, Miss Frensham. Of course I mean Sanderson.”
The secretary left the room, and with a vicious movement Corinne Moxton flung the letters on to the floor. Then she sprang out of bed. What did that big guy Drummond know? What was he going to say?
“It is being held in the hall attached to the mortuary in Hampstead,” said Daphne Frensham, returning. “At eleven-thirty.”
Corinne Moxton glanced at the clock: ten-thirty now. Then she looked at her complexion in the glass: at least three-quarters of an hour’s hard work was necessary there. So it could not be done.