Hanaud was leaning forward to speak, when Septimus said: “You have let your cigar go out, Monsieur Hanaud.”
“And if you think that’s a good beginning, my friend, you are wrong,” Ricardo commented silently.
Even Hanaud realised his fault. “I have, indeed. It is not to be pardoned. But with a wooden match, I light him again. So.”
“Now blow once.”
Monsieur Hanaud blew.
“Now you can smoke it.”
Hanaud drew in a breath. “It is delicious,” he said.
“Of course,” replied Septimus.
“But I waste the time. There was a man of whom, Monsieur Crottle, you will only have heard. Daniel Horbury.”
From neither James nor George was there a start nor any movement.
“He committed suicide,” said Septimus.
“So it is said.”
“An inquest will be held on Tuesday.”
“And that same verdict will probably be given.”
“But you don’t believe it, Monsieur Hanaud?”
There was no shrugging of the shoulders now in Monsieur Hanaud, no flourishing of arms. “I don’t believe it, Monsieur Crottle.”
“And whether it was suicide or murder — I take murder to be the only alternative — ?”
Crottle paused, but his eyes met only a face of wood, and he resumed: “How am I concerned?”
“He wrote a letter to you, sir.”
The sentence was thrown quickly at Septimus — a grenade to produce an explosion. All it produced was a smile of amusement on Crottle’s old pippin of a face.
“They all do.”
Hanaud was clearly puzzled. “They?” he repeated.
“Horbury and men like him,” Septimus repeated.
“What is it, then, they want?”
“A passage on the Dagger Line, Monsieur Hanaud, to the land of their dreams — a land where there are no extradition treaties.”
“But there were enclosures in the letter.”
“There would be. Passages must be paid for.”
“And he didn’t send the letter at once. He kept it by him.”
“That, also, they all do — for Mr. Micawber’s immortal reason.”
“Something turning up,” Mr. Ricardo interpreted.
Hanaud was disappointed. He refused to accept the obvious and practical conclusions of Septimus Crottle.
“But Monsieur Crottle, you will pardon me. Horbury was not in distress. In fact “ — if it came to idiomatic phrases, Hanaud could hold his own— “in fact,” he exclaimed triumphantly, “he was upsidaisy.”
“Financially?”
“Yes. We have the evidence, eh, my friend,” and he turned to Ricardo. “Horbury’s nosebag.”
“But was he upsidaisy with the police, Monsieur Hanaud?” Septimus answered with his eyes twinkling.
Hanaud, however, was ready for him there. “The Superintendent Maltby had no intention to arrest him.”
Septimus Crottle smiled. “It might be that the Superintendent Maltby didn’t explain, even to you, Monsieur Hanaud, all that he had in his mind. I am afraid that, after all, you have found a mare’s nest.”
“And I, no doubt, am the foal,” Hanaud returned quickly.
Mr. Ricardo was in the mood to applaud the witticism, even though it was founded on a mispronunciation. He did not like to see his friend so put down. Even Septimus began to laugh, but corrected himself immediately. Instead of a congratulation, he implied a censure. He said: “You have again let your cigar go out.”
“It is the excitement,” returned Hanaud. He rose, and young George Crottle was in front of him with a match-box in his hand. For a moment Hanaud stared at him as if he had forgotten his presence. Then he looked from him to James. Then he said: “Oh, yes, Mr. George Crottle! Mr. James Crottle! You agree, of course, with your uncle?”
The question, though out of keeping no doubt with the times, was quite appropriate to this particular uncle and nephews, so masterful the one, so debonair or amenable the others.
“Yes, I should say old Horbury wrote the letter,” replied the debonair George, “and put it away on the chance that he might some time want it in a hurry. There it was.”
“But there it isn’t,” replied Hanaud.
“It has disappeared?” asked James. He looked quickly at his uncle.
“Without trace. We have searched the office, Horbury’s desk, his blotting-pad, and his house.”
“‘White Barn?” said James Crottle.
“Yes,” answered Hanaud, and Septimus appeared surprised.
“You know the house?” he asked of his nephew.
“The name was in the evening papers,” George explained.
“There is no reason that I can see “ — and Hanaud, who had started smoothly, now halted and pronounced slowly each word, as if he had just begun to see— “why Horbury should have taken the letter to White Barn. But he may have done.”
“However, it wasn’t there, and, mind you, we looked everywhere, Maltby and I.”
“In the blotting-book?” James asked.
“The one on the floor?” said Hanaud, and George Crottle chuckled loudly.
“I’ve heard that Horbury did a good deal of his business over a bottle, or bottles, of Pommery, but I never thought that he couldn’t stand up to it and had to keep his blotting-book on the floor.”
A little long-winded Mr Ricardo thought. Rather silly, too. George Crottle, with all his good fellowship, might become a rattle, when a gaffe had been made, to cover up the man who had made it. But the rally of dialogue was swift enough to cover more than a gaffe. Moreover, Hanaud chose that moment to close a subject which had become interesting to Ricardo. He flung himself away from George Crottle and the big offending box of Bryant and May.
“In a moment I ask for the match, Monsieur George, the splutter, the flame. Yes, I shall ask for them,” and with a laugh he challenged George to contradict him. “But at the moment “ — he turned, still smiling, to Septimus— “it is to you, Mr. Crottle, that I would like to tell all, if you will have the patience to listen to me.”
“Of course,” replied Septimus.
“I have little concern in this affair,” and Hanaud explained the case of Devisher and Gravot of the Place Vendôme. “That is all settled. I shall carry back from the widow Horbury in notes of the Bank of England the money owed to him. But I went with Maltby” — and he described with a quiet force what he had seen and what he had inferred; the sudden determination of the Horburys to spend the night at the house in Lordship Lane, the manner of Olivia Horbury itself— “to read what people say is one thing, to hear them saying it is very much another” — the locked door, the telephone receiver lifted and replaced in the dark of the morning, the absence of all the natural fingerprints on the furniture, the want of any reason why suicide should have been committed, the disappearance of Devisher. “Yes, and something more, the disappearance of a little chart, fixed on an ebony board.”
“Chart?” exclaimed Septimus, sitting forward.
“Chart?” George Crottle echoed.
“Chart?” James Crottle repeated.
They were men of the sea, the three of them. Charts were part of their business. There were rolls of charts in the cupboards of the offices of the Dagger Line. It was inevitable that the Crottles should sit up and wonder what in the world Daniel Horbury was doing with a chart.
“Yes. It was marked, too, with pins, little black glass pins, with a white ensign on the top, such as you may buy at a toyshop. They seemed to mark the passage of a steamship — El Rey, which brought Devisher home.”
“And the chart has disappeared?” Septimus asked.
“Yes,” replied Hanaud, “with the letter.”
“Burnt, no doubt,” George returned.
“Cartridge paper,” said Septimus with a shake of the head.
“And the ebony board, too? Yes, it is possible. There was a small fire at White Barn. But why should Horbury be so anxiou
s to burn so carefully that not splinter of the wood nor an edge of the cartridge paper should be left for us to find? And after so much trouble to stretch his chart flat and prick it day by day? It doesn’t sound reasonable.”
Septimus Crottle nodded his head.
“No, it doesn’t. But this man, Devisher? He was rescued by Mordaunt’s yacht. He left Kingswear by the Torbay Express “ — once more Septimus went over the old ground. “Devisher is the man to look for.”
“No doubt,” said Hanaud. “Yes, no doubt, and Maltby is looking for him.”
Septimus Crottle was watching Hanaud’s face closely. “But he has disappeared?”
Hanaud nodded his head. “Yes. Like Horbury’s letter to you, the marked chart: and the ebony board.”
“With them, perhaps,” suggested George Crottle, and Hanaud swung swiftly round to him.
“Then Devisher was at White Barn on Thursday night,” returned Hanaud, and George Crottle’s face flamed red. He began to make in a kind of hurry some faltering suggestions which seemed superlatively foolish to Mr. Ricardo.
“Then he will have taken the letter.”
“From the blotting-book on the floor,” Hanaud interposed with a grin.
“And the chart,” James Crottle added without remarking upon the interposition, “and gone off according to his plan.”
Hanaud broke in again, shaking his head as if thus he shook all the plans away into the air.
“How can he have made plans, Mr. James? He arrived in London by the Torbay Express. He had no luggage, no friends, a borrowed suit of clothes, and ten or eleven pounds, and he had been at least six years away, buried in a foreign prison. Yet, within a few hours, he has made such fine plans that he can commit a murder in Lordship Lane and make a vanishing that all the police in London cannot explain.”
Septimus Crottle was as interested now as if some baffling crime had been committed on a ship under his command.
“But he has disappeared, Monsieur Hanaud! That’s the fact, the impossible fact which is always happening.”
“I do not lose sight of him. It is one of the facts which make me think he did not murder on Thursday night. I think that somehow he fitted in with other plans — maybe Horbury’s, if, indeed, Horbury did the slitting, maybe some unknown murderer’s.” He turned with confidence to Ricardo. “My very good friend and consultationist “ — Ricardo shivered a little at the coinage of that new and, alas! adoptable word— “Ricardo was for some hours on Mordaunt’s boat with Devisher. Tell us what you thought of Bryan Devisher, Mr. Julius.”
Among the innumerable irritations which vexed the even flow of Mr. Ricardo’s spirit, perhaps none hurt so much as liberties taken with his name. To be “Mr. Julius” was to be a younger son addressed by a superior being — like a butler, say. He was being bidden to speak up and tell his little story. On the other hand, his good name as a man of observation was at stake, and that was more important than irritation. Mr. Ricardo spoke up.
“He did not seem to be revengeful. He was hard, yes. But six years in the island dungeon had killed I think, the spirit in him. To lie soft and easy was the idea, and he saw a way of realising it, so long as he could get away from the steamer El Rey without reporters, and the police checking up on him. No, I agree with Hanaud, I doubt if he was the man to commit a murder.”
“So the murderer escapes,” said George Crottle with a smile of sympathy. “I am afraid we all prefer a laugh at the police to the capture of a criminal.”
Hanaud took up the statement very good-humouredly. He laughed with George Crottle.
“Yes, to be sure, that is so. But why do we prefer a laugh at the police? Because, in our heart and soul, we know that the criminal will not escape, after all.”
“He will do it again, you mean?”
“I mean more. The little offences, if they escape, at once there is some bad example and some harm is done. That is all. But the big crimes like murder, they may not escape. Once or twice, in the blue of the moon, there may be a nobility and it never fails to be recognised. Oh, never! But, as a rule, Monsieur George, accept the creed of an old tracker, the two remarkable characteristics of the big crime are its meanness and its cruelty.”
Septimus Crottle was undoubtedly interested. He nodded his head, sitting upright in his high-backed chair.
James Crottle said with a trifle of cynicism: “It would need a bold man to hold out against you and Mr. Ricardo.”
“I hope that one day, Monsieur Hanaud,” Septimus added, “you will come on some other than a Sunday evening and tell me in detail a few of your cases.”
“I hope,” cried Hanaud, “that I may give you some day the whole story of the night at White Barn in the Lordship Lane.”
As this was spoken, it took on a more important meaning, certainly in Hanaud’s ears, no less certainly in Mr. Ricardo’s. Hanaud glanced slyly at George Crottle and James.
“It may be, after all, that I make a mistake. Once I made one. In this case, however, I am sure.”
“Although the coroner’s jury will say suicide?” James Crottle asked.
“Yes.”
“But in that case it is over.”
“No. You see, Mr. James, Maltby is not satisfied.”
“Oh?”
The exclamation came from Septimus. What this flibbertigibbet of a Frenchman, who hadn’t the stomach to let him smoke a Romeo and Juliet Corona cigar, thought, was one thing — of the mere weight of a cigarette, say. What the Superintendent Maltby, of the tenacious, deliberate mind, thought, was quite another — of the weight of a Romeo and Juliet Corona cigar, in fact.
“Therefore, if the letter from the late Horbury were to reach you,” Hanaud continued, as he rose from his chair, “it might, perhaps, help to send it on to Maltby.”
“I will do so,” said Septimus, accompanying his two guests to the front door.
Hanaud drove home uncomfortably by Ricardo’s side in the Rolls-Royce No. 1, which had that evening arrived by way of Cherbourg. He had many postures, but no words, and experience had made Mr. Ricardo too wary to provoke them.
CHAPTER 17
THE TORN CARD
ONCE THE TWO friends were seated in the study of the corner house, Hanaud had to speak.
“A peppermint frappé?” he asked, and added, rather proud of what he thought to be a humorous phrase, “Can do?”
“I should think nothing is more unlikely,” Ricardo returned as he rang the bell. “Thompson, could yon manage a peppermint frappé at this hour?”
Thompson came as near to a smile as his code of manners permitted.
“Monsieur asked for one once some years ago and caught us at a disadvantage. A few moments, monsieur.”
So Hanaud sipped his peppermint frappé and smoked his black cigarettes, whilst Ricardo reflected on the oddities of friendship.
Suddenly Hanaud smiled: “You shall tell me what you saw when you were kind enough to search for the diary I had not left in my topcoat.”
Ricardo made a grimace. “It was not pleasant.”
“The Miss Agatha, then?”
“Yes.”
Ricardo described her shuddering in horror with the broken drawer open at her side and the torn pieces of a card upon her lap.
“She swept them into the wastepaper basket,” he continued, “and after I was in the hall she turned out the lights and went up to bed.”
“Dropped them — just like that — in the wastepaper basket?” Hanaud mused, “and turned out the lights.”
“But that didn’t baffle me,” cried Mr. Ricardo triumphantly. “I knew Miss Agatha might perhaps hear the snap of the switch if I turned the lights on, so I didn’t touch it. I knew she might wonder if a chair or a table were overturned, so I slipped like an eel between them;” and Mr. Ricardo, to make this piece of sleuthing as admirable and vivid to Hanaud as it was to himself, twisted and slid towards the table; and undoubtedly Hanaud did admire — little cries of admiration broke from him. He had hands raised ready to applau
d. Mr. Ricardo loved that moment, and to complete the movement with a most dramatic finish, he plunged his hand into his trouser pocket and flung the two pieces of pasteboard below Hanaud’s eyes upon the table.
Well, where were the words of praise? Or, if not of praise, of thanks, for a most difficult example of the detective’s art? Mr. Ricardo opened his eyes. He had closed them as he had flung the pasteboard fragments — and he saw Hanaud staring at those fragments in consternation.
“You picked them out of the tub?” he said quietly.
“Of course. Wasn’t I right?”
“No, my friend.”
“But there was a word written on the card.”
“I read it when Septimus jerked open the drawer.”
“I am sorry if I did wrong,” said Mr. Ricardo tartly. Hanaud was swift to reassure his friend. It was not that Mr. Ricardo had done wrong. No, no! On the contrary! He had done too much right. Miss Agatha’s agitations, they were suggestive, and described with a particularity only to be found in a master — and with an economy, too — it is so rare to use few words when many would do. It did not really matter so much that he had removed the two pieces of card.
“In any case the servants would have emptied them into the dustbin in the morning,” said Ricardo, once more smiling.
“No, no.”
The contradiction came like a slap in the face.
“Why no, no?”
“Because,” said Hanaud sweetly, “at this moment, perhaps, or perhaps in an hour or in two hours, Agatha will wake uneasy. And in a little while she will understand why she is uneasy. That torn card — it should be burnt. She will creep down in the dark, with a torch, perhaps — and the pieces — they have gone! Oh, in the long run it does not matter. Very likely she will, think, ‘Oh, it is that inquisitive one from France, he was at the elbow of Septimus,’ and she will be more discreet. But...”
“But what?” Mr Ricardo demanded impatiently
Hanaud finished his peppermint and stubbed out his cigarette. “I should not be quick to destroy those two pieces of card,” he replied slowly. “It is for you, of course, to say... For me, I wait upon the exquisite Madame Horbury to-morrow morning and in the afternoon I return to Paris. But, my friend, if I were you, I should lock them up. One never knows.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 163