He led the Superintendent to a panel of the wall where a large — map, was it? — or cartoon? — was wound up on a spring roller. Foster pulled upon a string, unrolled it and made the string fast to a nail; and, as if a military command had been given, everyone in that room took a step backwards and stared. Maltby was the first to find his tongue.
“It’s difficult to surprise me, but if not Big Business, then Hot Stuff!”
Mr. Ricardo, though he sought for a pointed and devastating phrase, could not achieve it. No doubt he was stunned. “Really, really, what vulgarity!” he stammered.
Inspector Herbert said nothing and made a note. Perhaps Monsieur Hanaud was the only one of the four to appreciate it properly. A laugh of enjoyment, if so thin a sound could be so described, tinkled suddenly. “He was a — what you call him? — a gamin, a monkey, an urchin, that Horbury! How I would have liked it if he had lived.”
Foster swung round, surprised, and in spite of himself pleased. He was not as a rule in favour of foreigners. Finicking people who would be frightened by a good square meal off a saddle of South Down lamb, and hadn’t learnt how to be beaten at games. Yet this one had got nearer to the truth than any of his visitors.
“That’s right, monsieur. A touch of the gutter boy in him, to be sure. Always winked at himself, whatever roguery he was up to.”
The Wembley Stadium had noticeably diminished the correctitude of the clerk, who chuckled and rubbed his hands. “Half of that was just fun to him,” he cried, pointing to the wall on which the big cartoon blazed.
It represented a crowded House of Commons, Horbury standing in the Prime Minister’s usual place at the Treasury Bench, with his hand on a red box and an incredulous face turned towards an opponent who had dared to interrupt him, and the Speaker on his feet with a shocked expression and these words enclosed, as it were, in a bubble issuing from his lips: “Order! Order! If it’s in Horbury’s Newsbag, it is so.”
“Pretty crude, the colours,” said Maltby with a grin.
“No doubt, but it would nobble the public,” Foster returned.
“Horbury’s Newsbag,” said Maltby. “A newspaper?”
“A weekly,” returned Foster.
“But I’ve never heard of it.”
“You were going to,” Foster replied. “Switchback business. A big lottery on the Derby in Switzerland put us up. Horbury’s Newsbag was going to put us higher. In a fortnight that poster was going to go on every hoarding big enough to hold it which Horbury could lay his hands upon. A week afterwards the first number was to be published. He had got his staff for it. There were to be competitions with tremendous prizes. All the political stuff he was going to write himself. I warned him that he was overdoing it. But he wouldn’t hear a word. He just looked at that cartoon — I told you he had a sense of humour — and cried with a grin as broad as his face, ‘I tell you, Foster, Horbury’s News-Bag is going to be Horbury’s Nosebag, and pretty full too!’ Now mark me, Superintendent “ — and Foster sat down in one of those too easy chairs and shook his finger at the Superintendent— “and you too, the detective of France. Horbury said that to me less than a week ago! Well then, explain to me last night!”
Maltby nodded his head thoughtfully and Hanaud sat himself down at Foster’s side. “There was real money in the bank?” he asked.
Foster answered him a little more stiffly than he would have answered Maltby. “Lots of it. The accountants, Trenlove and Timmins, a firm of the highest integrity, will no doubt supply you with a statement.”
“You were up, up, up,” said Hanaud, “with the cocks porping.”
Foster agreed with a smile. “That little joke amused you, eh?” And he added with a shrug of the shoulders, “but there have been times when the car rushed head-long down the curve, and there, perhaps, was the Superintendent at the bottom of the curve, waiting for the smash, and the razor perhaps not so far from the throat, But last night — no!”
Ricardo was oddly affected by the scene, so that he felt always on the edge of a revelation, but a revelation which never broke. Maltby, greatly annoyed that a simple verdict of suicide was becoming less and less acceptable, and at the same time honestly troubled as to what dark mystery the evidence was leading to, stood alone, staring now at the preposterous cartoon, now at the portraits of Horbury’s second-class racehorses. And in the two armchairs, side by side, Hanaud and the clerk talked in low voices quickly together. Anyone who has stumbled into an accidental witticism and finds it credited to him as intentional will regard with favour the man who has made this pleasant error. Altogether, what with this engaging Frenchman and the comrade of Wembley, Foster was now inclined to give all the help which he had meant to deny.
“Apart from his lottery and the nosebag,” Hanaud asked, “was there, do you think, any private affair which troubled him?” Mr. Foster shook his head. “Any enemy getting nearer and nearer to him?” Foster looked sharply at Hanaud and pondered and pondered in vain. “Did you ever hear him mention Bryan Devisher?”
Foster sprang at the name. Here at all events was something definite, even if it was definitely to be denied. “I never heard the name before you spoke it.”
The hopefulness died out of Hanaud’s voice and Mr. Ricardo recognised that the moment had come for him to encourage his friend. “But Mr. Horbury, no doubt, was a man of many secrets,” he said.
“Secrets is it?” cried Foster. “To be sure, there were secrets! His, mind you.”
“Yes, his, of course. But sometimes perhaps these secrets had outward signs with them?”
Superintendent Maltby had swung round upon this question and stood, holding his attitude, afraid lest a movement catching the eye or ear should distract Foster’s attention.
“Outward signs?” Foster repeated.
“Such as an unlikely visitor and a long conference?”
Mr. Foster reflected, heaved a sigh and shook his head.
“Some unusual thing he did and hid?”
Mr. Foster sat up straight.
“Oh!” he said. “I wonder,” and then he sat so long with his eyes bright and his head on one side like a bird that patience herself could hardly have borne it.
“I wonder,” he whispered to himself, and every head was bent towards him. But he only relaxed in his chair. He was still seeing something that no other of them could see. “And hid, you said?” He turned towards Hanaud.
“And hid,” Hanaud confirmed.
“Did and hid?”
“Did and hid,” repeated Hanaud.
“Yesterday,” said Mr. Foster suddenly, and of the four, three started and smiled, and were warned by a movement of Hanaud’s wrist.
“Yesterday,” Hanaud whispered.
Foster rose from his chair and crossed the room to the walnut writing-table. There was a row of pigeon-holes with drawers underneath them and in the middle a small locked door with walnut wood pillars on each side. Underneath the table there was a long drawer across and two smaller drawers, one on each side. Foster pulled at the brass handle of the smaller and lower drawer on the left-hand side and found it locked. He looked up at Maltby. “You have Horbury’s keys?”
Inspector Herbert advanced, he took an envelope from his pocket and the bunch of keys from the envelope.
“Thank you!”
Mr. Foster tried one or two before he lit upon the right one. It might have been play-acting, but, to Ricardo’s thought, the man was feverishly eager now to reveal the secret of that drawer.
“Now we shall see,” and he pulled it open. He peered into it, he thrust his hand into the furthest end of it, and drew it out again with a cry of disappointment. The drawer was empty. He sat back in Horbury’s chair and looked from face to face, bidding them notice how the fates played with men.
“But it was there! I saw him put it away when he had done with it and lock the drawer before he went to his bath. Ah!”
He sprang up, passed through his own room along a corridor. At the end of the corridor a dressing-roo
m led into a bathroom. A charwoman had evidently cleaned the room after Horbury had dressed, for the clothes he had worn in his office lay neatly folded on a couch.
“Oh!” cried Mr. Foster and he darted forward. “To be sure! To be sure! I had forgotten.” He turned round, flourishing triumphantly a copy of an evening newspaper above his head.
“Was that what you were looking for?” Maltby asked glumly.
“Oh no,” he admitted, dropping at once to disappointment. Mr. Foster was rather like a rock which expands in the sun and contracts sharply in a frost. “No, and I don’t see it anywhere at all. However, we have got the evening paper,” and once more he flourished the paper. He had found it carefully folded like the clothes and half hidden beneath them. “And that may help!”
“How?” asked Mr. Ricardo.
But Mr. Foster was lost in thought and to Ricardo’s idea, most provokingly. “I have a notion,” Foster exclaimed, and he turned to the corridor.
“What we want is a fact,” Maltby returned.
Over his shoulder Foster called out, “A notion is the cocoon of a fact.”
He hurried down the passage back to Horbury’s office, seated himself importantly in Horbury’s chair and, after a definite poise of his left hand to make clear to all the thing which he was doing, he struck a gong upon the table with the flat of his palm and sat back, his arms folded.
“Napoleon,” Hanaud whispered. “Something will come of it.”
A boy came of it. He sat in the general clerks’ room, behind Foster’s, and appeared by a parallel doorway.
“John,” said Mr. Foster with dignity.
“John yourself,” said the boy. “Mr. John Urwick Esquire to you, please!” So quickly had the discipline of Daniel Horbury’s firm disintegrated.
“Mr. John Urwick, will you ask the commissionaire to step here for a moment?”
“I don’t mind, seeing it’s you,” John Urwick answered as he swaggered by. But he swaggered by Mr. Ricardo too, and he, incensed by so much impertinence crowning so many failures and delays, was carried to the very extreme of violence. “Really! Really?” he cried and, swinging his leg, he landed Mr. John Urwick Esquire a real one in the right place with the right foot. John with a yelp flew across the room, dropping the Mr. on one side and the Esquire on the other. He dashed out of the door and with a speed which marked a new era in his life, brought in the commissionaire and slunk away behind him to his office. Mr. Ricardo, however, rather pleased with his resource, was completely occupied by the commissionaire, who stood at attention before Mr. Foster.
“Brown, you saw Mr. Horbury go away from the office yesterday?”
“I did, sir.”
“Did he take anything with him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know what it was?”
“I couldn’t help knowing, sir. I was a petty officer in the Navy.”
“Oh!” and Mr Foster was not the only one of that company who was startled by the answer. “What was it that he took away?”
“A chart, sir,” and Foster’s hand thumped down upon the table. “Of course!” and for the first time the Superintendent and his companions began to learn something of that missing article which had so intrigued the secretary.
It was a small chart pinned at the four corners on to a flat ebony board by ordinary flat brass drawing-pins. It was easy enough to carry and it might have been carried under the arm, but for a difficulty. Pins had been pricked into the chart as if to mark out a course — only a few of them, but long ones, black ones with glass heads in the shape and colour of white ensigns.
Mr. Foster’s memory responded to this extra flick. His hand darted to a small flat box of white cardboard. Within a decorative wreath on the outside was the name Hamley, and an address. Mr. Foster lifted out the box from the pigeon-hole in which it lay and opened it. “Like that?” he asked, holding up just such a pin as Brown had described.
“Exactly that,” Brown answered.
Maltby closed the box and took it up from under his nose. Not a very considerate action, in Mr. Ricardo’s judgment, but to be expected. Fortunately, however, Foster’s fingers were still holding the pin which he had taken out of the box for Brown’s inspection. He stepped noiselessly forward. “One for me, please!” and he snatched at it.
But he only scratched a red line across the back of his hand, for which the managing clerk made no apology.
“Later on, no doubt,” he said, waving the pin back wards and forwards and using familiar words to answer familiar questions, but with his mind lost in other matters.
“Horbury was sitting where I am,” they heard him say, “and I came in behind him from my office with some letters for him to sign. Yes. He hadn’t heard me come in. He was bending over something in front of him, which I now know to be a chart, hunched over it. But where does the evening paper come in? — wait a bit — I know. Horbury grabbed at it. It was lying on the top of the desk above the pigeon-holes. He turned over the pages, hardly read a line at the top of a page, and drove in a new pin rather viciously. Did he turn the pages of the paper back again — ?”
“No,” Monsieur Hanaud broke in.
Maltby turned round, half jealous, half friendly.
“How do you know?”
“Look!” Hanaud pointed to the top line of the page. “Shipping news,” and underneath it, “El Rey passed Frawle Point at 6 a.m.”
Maltby recognised the name and all that it meant in the shape of further investigation. He heaved a sigh, reluctant to abandon the simple verdict of suicide. But he was honest down to the soles of his boots. He smiled grimly at Hanaud. “Yes, that was the ship which carried Bryan Devisher. And seven miles farther on, Devisher took a header into a rough sea. Yes — but damn!”
The oath came from the heart of a busy, overworked public servant who couldn’t have shirked the least item of his job even had he wished to.
Mr. Foster had no ears at this moment for either Hanaud or Maltby. He was sunk deep in his recollections.
“I was standing “ — he looked round— “just where Brown is standing. There was, yes — I think I can say that — a little gasp of fear when he looked at the evening paper, and he jabbed rather viciously the last pin into the chart. By the way—” and he turned round with a smile. “All right, Brown, that will do,” but when Brown had gone, the smile was still upon his face. “Did you notice those pins? Black pins with the White Ensign flying. Very characteristic of Horbury. All for King and Country. The old rogue — you couldn’t but like him. He must have gone out of his way to the toy shop in Regent Street to get those pins. However, there he was jabbing his pin in, and he was suddenly aware of me behind him. He just flung himself over the chart and said: ‘You can leave those letters on the little table by the fireplace. I’ll sign them before I go,’ and he pulled out the lower drawer on his left hand, as if he were going to replace the chart as soon as I left the room. But, you see, he took it away.”
Mr. Foster swung round in his chair.
“Yes,” said Maltby.
“Yes,” said Hanaud.
“Yes,” said Mr. Ricardo.
“Yes,” said Inspector Herbert.
They stood in a semicircle about Foster’s chair, brooding upon him. Mr. Ricardo could imagine nothing more intimidating than the group they formed, and, indeed, felt some secret pleasure that he was one of the intimidators. Foster was undoubtedly affected. He rubbed the palms of his hands together, leaning forward in his chair.
“There, that’s all,” he cried, throwing himself back and meeting Ricardo’s gaze rather than the gaze of any of the others.
“Ah, ha! he looks at you. You are the magnetic one,” said Hanaud in a low voice.
Ricardo wished that the charge were true. “I accuse him less,” he answered regretfully.
“It is curious, though, that Horbury should have taken that chart away with him to White Barn,” Foster resumed carelessly. He was seeking an opportunity of breaking up that arc of intimidati
ng bodies and faces and slipping out of it. But Hanaud was too quick for him.
“It is still more curious that not a fragment of the chart, not a splinter of the ebony board, nor even one of the drawing-pins was to be found at White Barn.”
“Yes; that is more curious still,” Foster admitted. “Someone must have taken it away.”
“Then you admit a someone,” said Maltby sternly.
“No, I do not,” cried Foster agitatedly, and then surrendering: “Kamerad!”
He took the bunch of keys from the lower left-hand drawer where it dangled and, fitting one to the lock of the small chamber in the middle of the pigeon-holes, he said:
“There’s a letter. It won’t help you. I didn’t mean to mention it because it could clearly have nothing whatever to do with your case. It is written to really big business, you know. I was more than a little astonished that Horbury should be writing at all to this person. However, he was, and a long letter, too.”
“Do you know what it was about?” Maltby asked.
“Not an idea,” replied Foster. “But it had enclosures, I remember noticing that.”
“And the address?” said Hanaud.
“Oh, yes. The address, of course. Horbury made no secret from me that there was such a letter, you must understand. If anything happened to him — you know the way men talk — I was to see that it went.”
“He said that?” exclaimed Mr. Ricardo. “If anything happened to him—”
“I think the material words were I was to see that it went,” replied Foster. “For he said them with a wink...”
“A wink?” repeated Hanaud.
Foster nodded. “A bit phoney, eh? But you’ll be able to break the seal and see for yourselves.”
“It was sealed, was it?”
“Yes, black wax. Horbury pointed that out to me and winked again. Suggestive, eh? Hot stuff, I think, my late employer.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 159