“I rumble,” he said. “It is the luncheon gong.”
Mr. Ricardo bowed eagerly to Superintendent Maltby. “I shall be honoured if you will join us,” he exclaimed, but the Superintendent shook his head.
“I must go back to the Yard. There are other matters awaiting me.” He noticed the gloom gather on Hanaud’s face and hurriedly went on: “You may be assured that we shall not neglect the interesting points you have raised. Inspector Herbert will submit a full report, of which you shall have a copy at the corner house in Grosvenor Square.” Not by the twitch of a muscle did he express his pleasure in that unusual address. “And I think you should come with me to Mr. Horbury’s offices in King Street. At half-past three? Will you and Mr. Ricardo call for me just before the half-hour? Meanwhile, I’ll send out a call for Bryan Devisher, on the chance that he will have something to tell us. And I hope to find all ready for us at the Yard, some particulars of Mrs. Horbury’s history.”
Hanaud’s face had been growing happier and happier, now that the file was not to be closed and put away upon its shelf.
“I thank you,” he said gratefully.
Maltby was carrying a key with a linen tab tied to it. He called the constable on duty at the gate.
“This is the charwoman’s key. You will be responsible for it, and Inspector Herbert will see that you are relieved. You will allow no one to enter the house without his or my leave.”
The constable saluted and took the key.
“No one, sir? Not even Mrs. Horbury?”
Hanaud gasped audibly.
“That woman! Above all, no,” he whispered, and Maltby took up the words at once.
“Above all, not Mrs. Horbury.”
The constable saluted again and retired to the gate. Maltby glanced curiously at the Frenchman.
“I thought that you were rather on her side,” he said.
And, for a moment, Hanaud hung in a suspense. Should he speak? Shouldn’t he? But he was effervescent. He simply had to.
“That woman!” he cried, and admiration was loud in his voice. “She is a oner! She is the goods! I tell you. She is out of the top of her drawers.”
“Really, really,” cried Mr. Ricardo, quite shocked.
“An idiom, my friend. I use him,” said Hanaud affably.
“Use him properly then,” Ricardo remonstrated. “She is out of the top drawer.”
“So I said, my friend,” Hanaud returned, he continued enthusiastically: “And how she lied! Mind you, she will give back the money of Monsieur Gravot, even if she starves. In the name of the Place Vendôme, I honour her for it. But how she lied to us! And with what aplumbing! The woman screamed, and she jumped out of bed half-awake and turned the key of her door and fainted. Did she? Oh, no, no!” and his face lost all its humour, and his voice all its excitement. “Oh, no, no,” he repeated in a whisper, and the lids of his eyes half closed, as though he were watching somewhere a long way off a scene of horror which nothing could prevent.
“I was looking very sharply, my Maltby, when you placed the long cardboard fan case down on the table in front of her. I think that already she knew what was in it. It was not surprise she betrayed. There was no staring up into your face to read what startling discovery you had made. No, she gazed at the case, she gathered herself, her feet pressed upon the ground, her hands gripping each other, to meet with nothing more than a shock of horror, a recoil of disgust, her second view of that brutal weapon. She pushed her chair back — yes, with the proper violence, and no doubt there was nature enough in the violence, but there was no surprise.”
Undoubtedly both Maltby and Herbert listened with discomfort. It was not merely that Hanaud’s words strengthened an unwelcome suspicion of their own. But through his heavy features there shone a light, even in his whispers there sounded an authority which could not but arrest their judgment.
“You think she knew already what the thing in the cardboard box was? What it had done?” cried Ricardo.
“I do,” Hanaud returned slowly. “I think that she was present when a great crime was committed—”
“By Horbury,” cried Maltby.
“By Devisher,” Mr. Ricardo amended.
“I don’t know,” said Hanaud.
“And, if she knew, why should she keep silent?” Maltby asked.
“Again, I don’t know,” Hanaud repeated.
But he was not abandoning his inspiration. If anything, it grew stronger. For he looked about him, and in that noonday sunlight, with the blackbirds and the thrushes calling from the garden, he suddenly shivered.
“I wish I knew,” he cried, a man in distress. “What happened here when even this house was silent, and nothing moved but the shadows on path and meadow and lawn, as the moon drenched the world in silver? Let me tell you what I — see. Her, Olivia Horbury, when the crime was done and the house empty, climbing the stairs to her room. It was not yet midnight — and all the long night to live through. She must go to bed, leave the light on to help the man who needs no more helping. She turns from one side to the other until — surely it is close on dawn? — suddenly the telephone rings through the house, shrill enough even to wake that sprawling figure in the room below. Did she look at her watch and note that the night was not half spent? And suddenly the telephone stops. Too abruptly, too quickly! Someone is in the house besides herself and the dead man. A friend? No! The murderer returned, not trusting her word, to make sure. To make sure by a second crime. Imagine her panic, if you can? She sprang out of bed, she locked the door between her and death, and so fell fainting to the floor, to be awakened: hours afterwards by the screams, the banging upon the panels.”
He stopped and a silence followed upon his words. Maltby was the first to shake off the obsession, but he was troubled, none the less. Although he strove to speak lightly, his voice betrayed him. “Facts, Monsieur Hanaud! Facts we must cling to. Not imagination, however subtle.”
Hanaud answered with a smile. “Yes, facts, my dear Maltby, and a little imagination to interpret them. Imagination on a leash — he is the blind man’s dog.” He mounted into Mr Ricardo’s car and produced his blue packet of abominable cigarettes. “Just before half-past three, then!”
“Just before half-past three,” cried Maltby from the window of the police car, “and, my dear colleague, I shall hope for some more idioms from you in the course of the afternoon.”
CHAPTER 12
BIG BUSINESS AND SWITCHBACK BUSINESS
AT A SMALL table for two in Signor Bentano’s restaurant in the Strand, Monsieur Hanaud tucked the end of his napkin between his collar and his neck and drank a glass of Porto as an appetiser. It was a restaurant famous for its cuisine, which was hampered in the evening by an orchestra in gallery and a crowd on its way to the theatres. But in the morning the clients were for the most part of the more jovial and sporting business men.
“So it was here that the Horbury lunched,” said Hanaud, looking about him. “Good! So we get the atmosphere, and that is enough. We eat and we keep our eyes open, and we talk of the ballet and whether the filet mignon is as tender here as at Lame’s.”
And in that way the meal was eaten pleasantly enough, with a bottle of Clos de Tart to keep it company. At the end of it, Hanaud produced his inevitable blue packet of black cigarettes. But Mr. Ricardo was firm and stern. “You shall not,” he said. “There are limits. On the borderland of the Clos de Tart there are Hoyo de Monterrey cigars, but not your revolting cigarettes.”
Monsieur Hanaud was, having been well fed, docile. He lit his cigar. “Am I allowed a peppermint?” he asked.
Mr. Ricardo smiled indulgently. “You are. A simple glass of Signor Bentano’s brandy will do for me.”
Hanaud smiled affably as he sipped his peppermint. “What did your Mr. Gladstone say in 1884?”
“That will never be known,” Ricardo declared firmly. He was not prepared to argue. By three o’clock Signor Bentano’s clients had gone back to their amusements or their business. At a quarter
past, Mr. Ricardo paid his bill, and the pair travelled in the Rolls-Royce to Scotland Yard. Maltby and Herbert were waiting, and Maltby handed an envelope to Hanaud.
“You will find in that a copy of all we know about Olivia Horbury. It is much what you would expect, I think.”
Hanaud put the envelope away in his pocket, and the half-hour had not struck when they were on their way to what had once been Witherton’s Rooms in St. James’.
They were received in a small office of unnoticeable appointments by a long grey man, as thin as a question mark and almost as bent. He was handsomely dressed in a dark grey suit with a cutaway morning coat, a stiff white collar and a grey silk tie. He had a thin grey Chinaman’s moustache, of which he would lure the ends into his mouth and by biting them assure himself that there was something he need not question. He had so few qualities akin to the boisterous roguery of Mr. Horbury’s career that all the four men counted him as a watchdog, put in by a firm which was owed money. The grey man, however, rose to his feet and made a small bow.
“Superintendent Maltby, I believe. I have been instructed to put the office at your disposal.”
“Mr. Foster, then?”
“Yes.”
“You have been Mr. Horbury’s manager for five years?”
There was still some surprise in Maltby’s voice and it brought a sardonic smile to Foster’s mouth. “His managing clerk,” he answered, lifting a hand in correction. “Mr. Horbury’s business was, in the main, personal and conducted by himself. I fancy that I owe my length of service and my very good salary to the fact that I was honest and that, however uncongenial some of his activities may have been, I did not pry into what didn’t concern me.”
“I see,” said Maltby dryly. “It’s no use coming to you for secrets.”
“No. For I don’t know any,” said Foster. He crossed the room to a door and, with something of mockery in the gesture, flung it open. “This, gentlemen, was Mr. Horbury’s private office.”
They went into it one by one and stared. Maltby pursed up his lips and whistled. Rosewood panels decorated the walls, the furniture was upholstered in red damask, leather arm-chairs stood on each side of the Adam fireplace, and in the centre, on a thick Aubusson carpet, stood a beautiful big walnut writing-table, with a semi-circular top of pigeon-holes and drawers.
“Queen Anne,” Mr. Ricardo thought, looking at it with envy.
“Yes, all sheen and costliness,” said Mr. Foster, in answer to the Superintendent’s whistle. Maltby, however, was less concerned with the glitter of the office than with his need to reach more familiar terms with this difficult managing clerk. He had not noticed the irony in Foster’s voice, and was led consequently to make the most unfortunate mistake. He looked about him with admiration.
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Big Business, eh?” and saw disdain completely occupy Foster’s face.
“Forty years in the City have led me to associate Big Business with furniture which invites you to go away as soon as your business is concluded.”
The Superintendent’s approach had been faulty. But he had still one other pebble if he could fit it somehow into his sling. At the present moment, however, Foster was not mixing his metaphors. He was driving straight on.
“Mr. Horbury himself, who had the most redeeming sense of humour, knew quite well that Big Business had nothing to do with the style of this room. For I ventured, falling, if I may say so, into your mistake, Superintendent, to expostulate with Mr. Horbury upon it, and he answered, ‘My good Foster, the sort of clients you are used to will no doubt shudder, but the sort of clients I expect will imagine this is the replica of a nobleman’s study.’”
Mr. Ricardo felt internally a sort of warmth. It is, after all, always pleasant to see a policeman put in his place.
“Big Business,” continued Mr. Foster, warming to his theme. He crossed the room, unlocked a cupboard and flung open the door. On one shelf stood glasses, capacious goblets of thin glass. On the other bottle upon bottle of Pommery ‘06. “Look!” cried Mr. Foster, and he added with the most assertive waggings of his head, “Cocks don’t porp in Big Business.”
Mr. Ricardo here felt constrained to intervene. “Mr. Foster means, of course, that corks don’t—” but he was allowed to get no further.
“No, no, my friend,” cried Hanaud. “I like him as he is. Cocks don’t porp in Big Business. There is a profundity there.” He turned with a bow to Foster. “I thank you, sir. I use him.”
But Mr. Foster was staring curiously at Hanaud. He said to the Superintendent:
“You did not, I think, present me to these gentlemen.”
“I am sorry,” Maltby answered with a little discomfort. “This is Monsieur Hanaud of the Sureté of Paris.”
He paused, his eyes watching the clerk keenly, but on Foster’s face there was nothing but bewilderment, no realisation that here was Horbury’s enemy; not even any recognition of the name.
“Monsieur Hanaud?” he repeated with an inquisitive glance at the Frenchman. “But as I told you, Superintendent, Mr. Horbury worked alone.” His eyes came quickly back to the Frenchman’s face. “Might I ask you, sir, whether we owe to your sudden arrival the — the crisis of last night? If my question is incorrect, I beg you to forget it.”
“Your question is incorrect to the last degree,” Hanaud returned with a smile. “But I am glad that you asked. For everywhere I see eyes of suspicion and hear ditto voices. I came from France yesterday, the complete incog of the wheel. No one knows me. I came to see the Horbury, it is true, but on a small matter of business.”
Foster’s gaze passed doubtfully on.
“And this,” said Maltby, “is Mr. Ricardo.”
“Oh!” cried Foster. “That is interesting. You rang up Mr. Horbury yesterday afternoon.”
“I did!” exclaimed the astounded Ricardo.
“Yes,” said Maltby keenly. “I want the details of that call, Mr. Ricardo.”
Ricardo stared blankly at the Superintendent. “You knew about it?”
“Certainly I did. At my first contact with this office I was told that an unknown Mr. Ricardo had rung up yesterday and obtained from some incautious clerk Mr. Horbury’s address in the suburbs. Come, come, sir! You have been very quiet about it all, but we have been waiting for you.”
Superintendent Maltby, Mr. Foster the clerk, and Inspector Herbert were all closing in on Mr. Ricardo with determination. He seemed to hear the handcuffs jingling, he almost looked round for the ewer of his prison-cell that he might wet his throat.
“Take out your notebook, Inspector, and set down the business Mr. Ricardo had with Horbury yesterday afternoon.”
“I had no business with Horbury,” Ricardo persisted.
“And why he wanted the address in Lordship Lane,” he exclaimed.
“What time was it when Mr. Ricardo rang up?” Maltby asked.
“Immediately after five,” Foster returned; and a great light shone in upon Ricardo’s troubled mind.
“Yes, of course, and he rang up from Victoria Station,” he declared, gazing at Monsieur Hanaud with indignant eyes. “The Continental train was no doubt punctual.”
Hanaud was seldom abashed. “Evidently I rang up from the Victoria Station. I did not wish my visit to excite the fear, so I did not give my name.”
“That’s no excuse for giving mine. And why should people be afraid of you?” Mr. Ricardo straightened his knees and scoffed at Hanaud’s self-importance.
The Frenchman shook his head in melancholy reproof. “So! You trample on the poor Hanaud, the alien, the humble one. Yet how you are unjust! It is a mixture, a jumble up. If I say it is someone who stays with the fine Mr. Ricardo of Grosvenor Square it becomes, before you can twinkle a bedpost, Mr. Ricardo himself. You all see that, I am sure.”
What Mr. Ricardo saw was that the prison walls were fading into air: what Superintendent Maltby saw was that a hopeful clue to the suicide of Horbury, upon which he had set some store, was dead as a doornail.
“With cocks porping,” Hanaud interposed.
“And the Banks smiling. Sometimes we are down, down, down, with the creditors filling King Street and Mr. Horbury invisible — and perhaps Superintendent Maltby not so far away.”
“And what was it this time?” Maltby asked quickly, but Foster was equally quick to avoid an answer. He shrugged his shoulders.
“It was, as I told you, a personal business. We shall know when the accountants make their report,” he said frostily. “But do not expect Big Business. Even those fine gentlemen,” and he pointed to a photograph of a horse hanging upon a nail, “never won a race except at Ostend.”
“Ah,” cried Maltby, seizing his opportunity at last, “I’d sooner see a Rugby football match at Twickenham any day.”
Foster gasped. Under the solemn aspect of Superintendent Maltby, he had found a brother. “Would you?” he cried.
“Rather! Wouldn’t you?”
Both faces went back to the Ostend champion, but their thoughts had nothing to do with the sport of kings. Mr. Foster was turning over in his mind pictures of finely fought football matches. Maltby was saying prudently to himself, “You’ve hooked him. Play him carefully!” With invariable care, he had left a direction early that morning for a check-up of Horbury’s staff, and of the few discoveries this was apparently the most valuable. It established him on a brotherly footing with the old clerk.
“Do you remember the last England and Scotland match?” Foster asked eagerly.
“My word, yes,” Maltby exclaimed ecstatically. He had never seen a Rugby game since his boyhood. “That was a match!”
“Just a run away from the beginning.”
“To the end,” Maltby was about to add, and fortunately saved his prestige by smiling at the ceiling.
“Until the last two quick goals saved us,” cried Foster. He laughed aloud. He almost stood upright. Every Saturday he hurried from the office, drank a glass of beer, swallowed a sandwich, and passed an afternoon of enchantment, watching heroes. He turned to Maltby and grasped him by the arm. “I’ll show you what is puzzling me.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 158