The Round Table Murders

by Peter Baron

  “Shy is right. He can’t stand the light of day. If he could he wouldn’t for long.”

  That was a little cryptic, and he explained, confident that he had momentarily made her forget a little.

  “Kaye works in the dark. ‘Brer Rabbit he lay low’ stunt. He does most of his good work at his office at the Yard. If he showed his face too often it’d be a bullet or the knife. It’s that kind of a face. Annoys people.”

  He saw her shiver and smiled tolerantly.

  “Sounds like a penny shocker, eh? Mebbe, but it’s true. Your Uncle Dennis, for instance, is a bit too free with weapons. And talking of Dennis it’s about time Kerrow showed up.”

  He turned to Brown.

  “Do you park a gat?”

  “No, sir,” the man replied, and his superior grunted.

  “Can you beat it? Half of ‘em would go out elephant hunting with catapults,” he frowned. “This is absolutely a gift to Dennis. He’ll be at Hurst Park or Honolulu before Kerrow wakes up, while I’ve got to sit here and wait. If you could forget your pacifist disarmament schemes I shouldn’t have to waste more time calling in at the Yard.”

  He scowled at the unfortunate Brown.

  “Is the something you’re going to the Yard for, a gun?” Barbara asked suddenly, and he nodded. “You’ll find one in the drawer of that desk beside you.”

  He opened the drawer and took out an automatic pistol that had been lying on an oil rag. It was a Browning, in correct working order, and fitted with a fresh clip of cartridges.

  “With or without?” he asked.

  “With, I think. I once heard Ralph say that an automatic paid for its keep.”

  The mention of her father’s name brought some recollection to her, and he saw the look of horror in her eyes again.

  “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go and dress,” she said. “I shan’t sleep again tonight—I suppose it’s morning, really. Anyway, I know I can’t sleep with that memory.”

  As she left the telephone whirred again.

  Brown picked it up, and after a moment placed his hand over the mouthpiece.

  “Kerrow, on here, sir,” he said. “Dennis Teyst is at Larry Wade’s flat in Bruton Street.”

  Keating started.

  “Did you say Larry Wade?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Bruton Street? Gosh, that’s close. I hand it to Dennis. He’s got a nerve to camp on the remains.”

  “He left Upper Brook Street, and made a circuit via Park Lane, Piccadilly and Bond Street,” Brown supplied, between intervals of listening to the voice at the other end of the line.

  “Right, that’s all,” Keating replied, and Brown replaced the receiver. “The gentle Dennis is getting old. Evidently he didn’t know he was being tailed this morning. He wouldn’t. I was doing the tailing. Well, this is where I go and earn Kaye’s living for him.”

  He slipped the automatic into a side pocket and rose to his feet.

  He smiled complacently. “There will shortly be a vacancy on the Round Table which, speaking with all modesty, I shall probably fill.”

  He was half-way across the landing when Barbara appeared at the door of her bedroom. To his surprise she was fully dressed and carried a small hat in her hand.

  “Going?” she asked, and her lip twitched a little.

  “Yes. We’ve—er—traced your uncle Dennis.”

  She went very white but rallied bravely.

  “Tha—that sounds very clever.”

  “Well, it’s original Keating,” he said, “which is nearly the same thing. I’ve had three men sticking to Dennis closer than unpaid tailors ever since he left here.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “At Larry Wade’s flat.”

  He saw her start and looked at her curiously.

  “I’ve heard that name before. Ralph mentioned it. He didn’t like this Larry.”

  “The only thing that Ralph and I had in common was dislike for Larry,” said Keating, and attempted to pass her.

  “Are you going there now?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good, then I can drive you there in my car,” she said firmly, and her calmness amazed him.

  “You could,” he said dubiously, “but you aren’t going to. There’s going to be a spot of trouble at Bruton Street.”

  “There’s been trouble here,” she retorted. “I can stand quite a lot. And, anyway, I want to see justice done. Besides, Dennis came here for a reason. I want to know what it was. He may have stolen something of Ralph’s, and I want to see what it is. He didn’t come here for nothing. That’s settled.” It was, although Keating was a little bewildered. Nevertheless, he made a stipulation.

  “You’ll stay outside.”

  Two minutes later they were driving towards Bruton Street, through the West End, at a speed for which no Justice of the Peace would have hesitated to fine them forty shillings.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Barbara’s little Rover made short work of the journey to Bruton Street, but Keating counted every minute as wasted. Besides which Brown, who was sitting on his lap, seemed to be adding a stone to his weight every hundred yards.

  At Keating’s request Barbara pulled her car to a standstill at the corner, and the two men descended. As soon as she joined them they walked slowly down the street keeping in the shadow of the houses. As they reached the door of number 12A a figure appeared suddenly in the high ceilinged porch.

  “Wade’s flat is on the top floor, sir,” said the man as Keating hastened up the steps. “Teyst has been up there about twenty minutes.”

  “Think he saw you?”

  “No, sir, pretty sure he didn’t.”

  “Doesn’t do to be pretty sure. Have to be damn certain if you’re trailing a Teyst. Got a key to this door?”

  “No, sir.”

  Keating beckoned to Brown.

  “This is your line,” he said. “Try your hand on that door.”

  Brown was one of those quiet large men, unremarkable save for one achievement—a singular skill at opening doors by other than the recognized means, but it took him a good four minutes by Keating’s watch to master the door before them.

  During that time the taxi that had followed Barbara’s car from Brook Street passed them and proceeded to the end of the block before it pulled up. A well-muffled man stepped out and entered the flat outside which the taxi had stopped. His movements might have interested Keating had he witnessed them but beyond a casual glance, as the taxi passed, and an instinctive shrinking into the shadows of the porch, the Inspector paid no attention and remained absorbed in Brown’s maneuvers with a small steel cylinder.

  “You’d make a better safe worker than a policeman,” he said.

  “Might have been more profitable,” the other answered, and the door swung open before them.

  Keating turned to the man who had been watching the flat.

  “You get round to the mews at the back of this place and see that he doesn’t bolt by the back way.”

  The man saluted, and Keating entered the hall, followed by Brown and Barbara. A fact which he noted with disapproval.

  “Young woman,” he said sternly. “You stay in the hall.”

  Barbara had other ideas on the subject, but she felt that this was not the moment to voice them. It had occurred to her that the hall was altogether too dark, and unpleasantly creepy, nevertheless she nodded and Keating moved silently in the direction of the stairs with Brown in close attendance. Barbara also. Not close, but in attendance.

  The stairs were of stone, and ran in long flights interspersed at regular intervals by hair-pin bends to minimize space, so that anyone on the top landing who chanced to be looking down could watch the progress of others ascending.

  Which was what happened. On the top floor Dennis withdrew into the room which, with intervals for watching the stairs, he had paced for the last half hour.

  He locked the door behind him quietly, a feat difficult to perform if one’s hand shakes
. He was not totally unprepared, and although he had made a wide detour and resorted to every know;n ruse to shake off any possible pursuit, the knowledge that he had failed did not come as a ghastly surprise. There had always been a possibility. Sufficiently dangerous for him to have taken at least one minor precaution.

  He picked up the hastily scrawled letter which he had written on first entering the flat, and slipped it into an envelope. With it he enclosed the small slip his brother, the Colonel, had given him. Hastily sealing the envelope he walked into the adjoining bedroom and gazed swiftly round him. A few moments later the envelope was securely hidden beneath a layer of expensive cigarettes in a carved wooden box beside the bed.

  That done he passed into the third room, the bathroom, and closed the door. Jumping lightly on to a small table, he reached upwards and opened the skylight. Then he climbed up on to the roof.

  Three feet away from him was a wide chimney stack that should have concealed the waiting watcher. In fact it did, but no one can rely on the friendliness of the moon. Without warning she emerged and cast a shadow that moved. Dennis saw it and the watcher was not quite quick enough.

  As he appeared, Dennis leapt sideways and dropped through the skylight. The wooden hatch was back in place and bolted on the inside before the man on the roof reached it, and Dennis, his normal composure a little ruffled, was thinking furiously.

  He passed into the bedroom, closing and locking the bathroom door behind him and repeated the same maneuver on entering the living room. Then mounting a chair he removed the electric light bulb.

  With the bulb in his hand he paused to listen. Then, moving softly forward to the wall crouched down by the door.

  Only one sound broke the silence. A faint scratching sound that Dennis recognized. Someone was forcing the lock, and without knowing that it was Brown he suspected the hand of a master.

  He crouched there silently. There was just the one chance, and that chance was worth taking. Either that or go tamely to the rope. At that moment, in the most dangerous corner of a dangerous life, Dennis Teyst had few illusions, and no fears.

  Without warning the door swung open and a hand reached for the electric light switch above his head. He heard the faint click as the switch was depressed and smiled grimly to himself at the exclamation that heralded the discovery that no light was forthcoming.

  He waited until two figures materialized cautiously in the outer darkness, and then flinging the bulb on the floor he leapt at the detectives. The staccatoed explosion synchronized with the collision and momentarily paralyzed Keating and Brown.

  Dennis, flinging off the restraining hand of Brown and hurling Keating against the balustrade, took the first flight in one jump and was already flying across the lower landing when he pulled up abruptly. Someone was coming up the stairs!

  Had he known that it was Barbara, defying Keating’s edict, he might have gone on. Instead he turned desperately as Keating appeared at the head of the stairs above him.

  “Stay right where you are,” bellowed Keating, “or—would you!”

  They fired together, but Dennis was just a fraction of a second behind.

  The stone walls were still flinging back the echo when Dennis staggered, clutched at the wall and then pitched head first down the stairs in front of him to crumple up at the feet of the terror-stricken Barbara. As before, on an earlier occasion, it was her scream that brought Keating dashing down the stairs.

  “Hold everything, little lady,” he said reassuringly, and reached out to touch her in the surrounding darkness. “He’s not dead, only hurt a little.”

  He bent down and touched the inert Dennis.

  “Lights,” he bawled, and there were lights. They revealed a terror-faced girl cowering against the wall staring down at a twisted figure on the landing at her feet.

  Keating looked up at Brown, still fingering the light switch.

  “For a gunman,” he said with a satisfied smile, “that boy’s not so fast with a gat as he thinks he is.”

  He stooped over Dennis again, and what he saw caused him to frown.

  “I’m losing my sense of direction I think,” he grunted. “If I’m not mistaken I’ve got him in the left lung, and it’ll be a miracle if he lives long enough to see if black suits the judge. Help me get him up to the flat.”

  Barbara followed them slowly and stood quietly by while Keating ‘phoned for the ambulance. He turned to find her beside him as he replaced the receiver.

  “Gee, you’re having a bad night, Barbara,” he said, and wasn’t even aware of the familiarity.

  She let it pass.

  “I feel a little done up,” she confessed.

  A few minutes later Brown, who had ascertained the cause of the darkness, fitted a new bulb from the bedroom, and in the sudden stream of light Keating saw that the girl’s face was drawn and pale.

  “Stick it, soldier,” he said gruffly, and pushed her gently into a chair. At the same time he looked round for help and encountered only the photo of the owner of the flat on a nearby table. He cursed feelingly and realized that he was hoping for something that ordinarily would have filled him with disgust—female interference.

  In any ordinary flat a shooting match would have brought forth the occupants in fear and nightgowns, but Keating knew Larry’s efficient methods too well to expect that. Larry was a night bird, and wanted no eyes to watch his nocturnal comings and goings. Therefore, although he only occupied the top floor, the whole building was leased to him.

  It was Barbara herself who solved the difficulty for him. She sat up abruptly and dabbed her eyes with a small and quite inadequate handkerchief.

  “I’m behaving like a fool,” she said awkwardly, “and Dennis is more hurt than you think. That wound will have to be bathed.”

  Rising, she entered the bedroom and passed through into the bathroom, to reappear a few minutes later with a towel and a basin of water. After she had cleansed the wound she borrowed handkerchiefs from Brown and Keating and contrived a temporary bandage for the wounded Dennis.

  Inspector Keating watched with relief, in fact with admiration. He was so absorbed that he failed to notice the arrival of a uniformed constable in the doorway.

  The newcomer had to cough twice to gain his attention.

  “And what do you want?” Keating asked absently, and then remembered, “M’m. You’re on this beat are you? D’ye hear the shot?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, I’m holding this case down. Know who I am?”

  “Yes, sir, everybody knows Inspector Keating.”

  “Do they?” asked the astonished Keating. “Good. I must tell Kaye that one.”

  “And him, sir,” said the constable enthusiastically. “Cleverest officer in the force if I may say so, sir.”

  “Not so good,” grunted Keating, and eyed the young man thoughtfully. Obviously new to his job and, by the sound of him, a Varsity man. He frowned heavily but withheld a rebuke. The kid would learn the dangers of amicable confidences with his superiors quickly enough.

  “Make out your report if you like,” he said, and bent over Dennis.

  Barbara, partially recovered, stared about her interestedly noting the tastefully furnished flat. Fascinated and a little revolted she watched Keating callously emptying the pockets of the wounded Dennis, but noticed that his hands were peculiarly gentle.

  Keating found only two things of any interest. The first was the envelope containing the blue slip that Dennis had taken from Ralph’s safe. He passed it across to Barbara with a puzzled look.

  “Does this belong to Ralph, or does it convey anything to you?”

  She read aloud, “ ‘A safe is the one thing in the world that isn’t, The Poacher.’ What does it mean, and who is the Poacher, anyway?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” he said, “and by gosh when I get that feller—but that’s beside the point. The point is, did Dennis take that from your father’s safe or was he going to put it there himself, or ha
s it got nothing to do with this business at all?”

  “If Dennis wrote that, it must mean that he is the Poacher,” she said curiously. “But that doesn’t seem to explain the matter.”

  “Dennis didn’t write that. I know his writing, and somehow I don’t fancy that Dennis is the Poacher. He’s not the same build.”

  “You’ve met this Poacher then?”

  “Met,” he replied, “is one way of putting it. I’d give five years’ promotion to meet him again. When I do I’ve got a little present for him.”

  He forbore to mention that the little present would take the form of a protracted stay at Wormwood Scrubbs.

  “Well, that isn’t Ralph’s writing anyway,” she said definitely.

  “I believe you. If your parent was the Poacher, I’ll poach my own hat and eat it. And now, little woman, you’re going home.”

  She tried to refuse and failed. The excitement that had made her forget was slowly fading.

  “Yes, I think I’ll go,” she said. “I believe Molly Wendover will take me in. Somehow I couldn’t sleep in that house tonight.”

  He nodded sympathetically. “I’ll have to stay on here for a bit, but Brown will drive you to your friends.”

  “It isn’t really necessary,” she protested, but he insisted, and Brown, looking rather sheepish, opened the door for her. She held out her hand and Keating took it mechanically. He had almost forgotten her existence before she left the room.

  The reason for his preoccupation was the other thing he had found on Dennis—something that he had not shown Barbara and something that gave him considerable food for thought.

  It was a letter, but he had no need to look at the signature at the foot to know who had written it. He had seen that writing before.

  “My dear Dennis,” it ran, “with the aid of the enclosed and similar slips of paper in the possession of your brothers you will find something that ought to make life a little .smoother. As you know, I am hoping that the quest will reunite the three of you. Perhaps it will, if you remember that it was made possible by the death of

  “Your brother,

  “George.”

  Keating read the letter twice, and then searched the unconscious Dennis again, but he failed to find the enclosure. Sitting back he watched the other, but his thoughts were not of the wounded man.