The Round Table Murders

by Peter Baron

  As soon as the train came in Keating selected an empty carriage and, with Larry in close attendance, settled himself comfortably in a corner seat and began to philosophize.

  “This had to come, Larry. The world’s full of people like you. People who find that they can’t gratify Roll’s-Royce ambitions on Austin Seven incomes, and start working on the crook. Sooner or later they slip.”

  Larry, staring out of the window, made no reply. His course was obvious but it meant destroying his freedom forever. It meant rebuilding his life under an alias that might at any time be penetrated, and he was wondering if the price was worth it. For what he contemplated would put him definitely outside the law but within its clutch.

  It was something that would have given an ordinary man pause, but Larry made decisions swiftly. Before the train had gone a hundred yards on its way to London he had decided.

  Taking out his cigarette case he opened it and, if Keating had been less engrossed in self-congratulation he would have remembered that the last time he saw that case it had been practically full, whereas now, although Larry had not been smoking, it contained only five cigarettes. But Keating was not to know that Larry carried two cases of identical pattern if of slightly differing contents.

  Selecting the center cigarette Larry was about to light it when, as though suddenly remembering Keating’s presence, he paused and proffered the case.

  “Gasper?” he asked.

  Keating selected a cigarette mechanically and lighted it. “Make the most of that fag,” he said. “Where you’re going smoking isn’t too popular.”

  Larry shrugged. “I suppose this means the country?”

  “Yes, you’re for the ‘Moor,’ all right,” Keating answered with satisfaction, and stared dreamily out of the carriage window. For once in a way he was having a run of luck, and what was more he had beaten Kaye at his own job.

  It was a pleasing thought and it induced a superiority complex into Keating’s composition. The thought that he had got his man, and his evidence was balm to a soul that had been prodded too often by Kaye’s caustic wit. It was going to give Keating a lot of pleasure to place that slip of paper on Kaye’s table and tell the history of its discovery. He had little doubt that the Yard’s cipher expert would find the solving of the message, or part of a message, very difficult, and with success in view his feelings for Larry were almost fraternal.

  “It might save you a lot of trouble, Larry,” he said paternally, “if you’d come clean.”

  “If you read your book of words,” Larry grinned, “you’d know that I can’t speak without my solicitor being present.” Keating let the gibe pass.

  “There are one or two little points—I’d like to clear up—clear up——“ he coughed, and his voice became a trifle thicker. “For instance——how did you——God, these are——awful fags——what——.”

  With an effort he forced open his slowly closing eyes and stared vaguely into the smiling face beside him.

  “Damn you——,” he jerked out, “these fags——these——fags——.”

  Through a haze he saw Larry’s peculiar smile as a damning confirmation of his suspicions.

  “You——swine. So that’s——the game——the game——he muttered drowsily, and with a sudden effort, sat upright and plunged his hand into his trousers’ pocket.

  To have completed the maneuver he would have needed exactly five seconds more than he had at his disposal. Larry knew it and hurled himself sideways, dragging Keating with him. As they crashed to the floor his left hand closed over Keating’s right in a grip of iron.

  Keating, forced to use his energies to combat the drug was helpless in Larry’s hands, and it was a matter of minutes before he sprawled back unconscious.

  With a smile of satisfaction Larry forced open the Inspector’s nerveless fingers and took the key of the handcuffs. It was the one that Keating had taken from his trousers’ pocket in an effort to throw it out of the window, and incidentally destroy Larry’s chance of escape.

  When Larry rose to his feet a few minutes later he was a free man, and the positions were reversed, but he had burnt his boats in the reversing. For the first time he had definitely taken the offensive against the person of the Law. He was finished with the open existence that had hitherto been his, and from now on it meant the shadows—the life of the Colonel. He did not regret it—he had not time to. He had to move now, and move quickly.

  Stooping, he tossed the doped cigarette out of the window, and then kneeling beside Keating, took out his wallet. He found what he wanted—the slip of paper—almost at once, and something else besides. This in the Inspector’s trousers’ pocket—a small silver badge.

  Taking a flask from his hip pocket, he unscrewed the top and proceeded to force a little of the contents between Keating’s lips and rather more on his shirt front. A smell of whisky permeated the carriage.

  He was playing for a stake that demanded big risks and he would take them. One of the biggest was the risk he took at Victoria, and as he got out of the carriage supporting the Inspector’s limp figure he knew that the most dangerous time was to come.

  Yet his bearing was perfectly assured as he summoned a porter.

  “Gentleman ill, sir?” asked the porter interestedly.

  Larry winked. “Get me a taxi will you. My friend feels a little faint.”

  “Good luck to him,” said the other enviously, “I can’t get enough to feel faint.”

  With the other’s assistance Larry got Keating through the barrier to the waiting taxi, and the porter received a tip that astonished him. It would have been even larger but for the fact that Inspector Keating carried very little loose change.

  It did not occur to the porter that during the time he helped to carry Keating from the train to the taxi he never once saw the face of the unconscious man. Neither did any of the spectators. Larry had contrived to pull Keating’s slouch hat well over his eyes and had kept his arm before the Inspector’s face.

  Larry occupied the journey to the Barbican with thoughts that had an apparently fruitful result, because he was smiling when the taxi pulled up.

  He hauled Keating out and nodded cheerfully to the driver.

  “Thanks, I can manage now.”

  The driver pocketed his fare and grinned back.

  “Some of them can’t take it like gentlemen, can they?” he asked. “How much has he got outside? It’d take quarts to put me to sleep.”

  Larry had relied on the fact that a drunken man in the Barbican was no novelty, and fortunately the short journey to Lou Staam’s junk shop was achieved without attracting overmuch attention.

  Once inside the shop he lifted Keating in his arms and strode through to the lift in the back room.

  His advent in the room below caused something more than interest. It momentarily deprived the two men sitting there of their powers of speech.

  “Present for you, Lou,” grinned Larry, and allowed Keating to slide to the floor.

  “By cripes, Flea Powder,” breathed Chorley. “What’s the lay, Larry?”

  Larry took out his case and gazed obliquely at Keating. Then he proceeded to light a cigarette and blow smoke rings. His silence irritated Lou.

  “Vot you going to do mit der cop, Larry?” he asked nervously. “Dis ting you do is ver’ dangerous.”

  “Put him in the lower cellar, Lou. He’ll come around soon, he’s only doped. There are reasons—private ones—why I don’t want him skulking about town at present. The odds are, if I give him his liberty I’ll forfeit my own.”

  As he finished speaking his eyes met Chorley’s, and he turned so that he faced the other directly.

  “Remember, Chorley, you’re not sitting in on this hand,” he said slowly. “I’ve no objection to Keating being made uncomfortable, but I won’t have him—er—hurt. If I want him taken for a ride I’ll take him myself.”

  Chorley shrugged. “Why the fond affection?”

  “Curiosity,” Larry replied, pedantical
ly, “in a child is pardonable and in a woman natural, but in a man, deplorable. All you’ve got to do is to see that he doesn’t spot your ugly dial, or Lou’s.”

  “All alone mit de rats, eh?” Lou chuckled. “Rats don’t like Enspectors. Do dey, Chorley?”

  Chorley acknowledged the joke with a faint smile, which he effaced as he found Larry regarding him.

  He made no move to assist Larry when the other dragged Keating back to the lift, and it was Lou who accompanied Larry down into the cellar below.

  It was a dark place smelling of withered hay and dampness, and furnished only with a crude pallet above which was a staple let into the wall, from which hung an iron chain and padlock. Passing the chain round Keating’s wrist, Larry padlocked it and stood back to survey his handiwork for a moment before he returned to the lift.

  “I’ve got a few old scores to settle with Keating,” he said, “so don’t let him think he’s at the Ritz, Lou. See that all he gets for dinner is an appetite and don’t overdo the other meals. Bread and water will keep life in a man for a considerable time, I believe? Above all, don’t let him know where he is, and don’t let him see your face.”

  “Trust Lou,” said the old man. “I don’t vant to spend de rest of dese life in annoder cell. I vill feed de brute meinself mit mine face covered.”

  Depositing Lou on the first floor, Larry continued on in the lift to the room behind the shop.

  Seating himself at Lou’s desk he took out Keating’s wallet, and after a brief search discovered what he wanted—a few pencil notes in Keating’s writing. Propping one of them against an inkstand he took a sheet of notepaper from the stationery rack and, after a moment’s thought began to write.

  When he had finished he slipped the letter into an envelope and addressed it to Superintendent Kaye, New Scotland Yard, S.W. Then he rose to his feet and walking to the wardrobe called down the shaft. Within a few moments Lou joined him.

  “Vat is it you vant, Larry?” he grunted, seating himself close to the smelly little oil stove.

  Larry began to remove his tie and collar. “Clothes,” he said significantly, and the old Jew nodded wisely.

  “Vat is it to be dis time, Larry?” he enquired. “Me, I haf dem of all kinds——. Only a leetle time ago I fits up Clem wid de street artist cloze——dat vas a bad pizness, Larry.”

  “Was it?”

  “It vas, my poy. I hope you don’ go de way of dat poor brudder of yours.”

  “I sha’nt. I want an artist’s rig-out, Lou,” said Larry. “Can you manage a—er—light brown suit and a flowing tie—if possible rather a gaudy one?”

  “Der very thing,” chuckled Lou. “You vait, Larry, till I get heem. Der most beautiful suit it has ever been my good fortune to see.”

  Larry smiled and watched the old man wander off to the back of the shop, while he hastily stripped off the suit and shoes he was wearing.

  Lou returned wheezily after a few minutes with a rich brown colored suit, a pair of brown brogues, and a very light, almost ginger, tie. Stooping beneath the counter he brought forth a brown trilby hat and laid it in front of Larry.

  Larry looked them over casually and nodded.

  “They’ll do, Lou. Get me a gaudy handkerchief, will you.

  Something that will go with these things——oh, and you might rake out a beard.”

  “A beard,” reflected Lou. “Would it be a blonde or a brunette, Larry?”

  “Brunette,” grinned Larry, and proceeded to dress in the brown suit.

  Ten minutes later, with the aid of Lou, he affixed a dark beard to his face, penciled his eyebrows a little and added a few wrinkles. A hasty examination in a small hand mirror of Lou’s, decided him on shaving his eyebrows a little. That done, a completely metamorphosed Larry stepped out of Lou’s shop—portfolio under his arm and wide-brimmed slouch hat well over his eyes.

  As he walked towards the station Larry tried to memorize all the little peculiarities that he had ever noticed in the few artists whom he had met. And in a measure he succeeded.

  The pendant cigarette—with its lazy trail of smoke—the leisurely walk and the slightly rapt expression—a cleverly assumed nervousness. This last was rather well done—he was proud of it. It conveyed the impression of a man removed from this world—to a place of dreams, and palettes that could portray those dreams—a kind of detachment and disinterest for anything not concerned with his beloved profession of the brush.

  And that was exactly what it suggested to Ian Teyst an hour and a half later, when he strolled down the drive and discovered “the artist” dreamily surveying the empty, but picturesque lodge.

  Larry, steeling himself and carefully masking the derision that had momentarily shown in his eyes, took a risk.

  “A charming study, sir,” he offered, as Ian drew abreast. “One would like to try and capture—in water color, I think—some of the subtle shades of that old brick.”

  Ian halted, stared interestedly at the other and smiled.

  “You are at liberty to try it, sir,” he suggested courteously. “As you say, I think it would repay an attempt to transfer it to canvas.”

  Inwardly Larry exulted. That his disguise had passed muster before his enemy was proof enough that it was a safe one to assume. And Ian had no suspicion, only a mild interest. Artists did not greatly interest him.

  “Would you object to my sitting in your drive and—er studying it a little?” Larry suggested in the drawl he had assumed. He had been about to say “painting” it when he realized that he could not paint, and would have given himself away with the first stroke of his brush to even the veriest layman.

  “Not at all.”

  “It will not annoy your lodge keeper?”

  “Hardly,” Ian smiled. “There is no lodge keeper. The place has been empty for years. You would probably find the garden interesting. I looked in there once myself. If you would care to get the key—my housekeeper will let you have it.”

  “Thanks. I may avail myself of that offer later. For the present I think I’ll study the angle from which this could best be reproduced.”

  “Just as you like,” Ian replied. “If you’ll excuse me I’ll leave you. I have a call to pay in the village.”

  He raised his hat courteously, and Larry returned the salute and turned to watch his enemy stride away down the drive.

  For some time Larry looked at the lodge, and now there was no attempt to hide the mockery in his eyes. Then he stepped into the little two-seater that had brought him from town and drove away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  There was only one thing that Ian Teyst loathed more than reading a letter and that was reading two letters, yet during the past three mornings he had read upwards of fifty and his mail seemed to be increasing rather than decreasing.

  Seated before a pile of letters he grimaced wryly at Barbara across the breakfast table.

  “The butling trade seems to be painfully overcrowded,” he said. “Look at this.”

  Barbara, looking up from scanning a manuscript that a London Agency had sent her, smiled back.

  “Reading other people’s effusions is a disheartening job,” she agreed.

  “There’s a woman here,” he continued, “who offers to come as a companion and charlady thrown in free, provided that we will house her four children. She encloses a photograph that kills her chance stone dead at birth.”

  “I know. Have you had the inevitable epistle from the philanthropist, who will lend anything from ten pounds to ten thousand on no security?”

  “Two,” he admitted. “I suppose you wouldn’t care to take over the job of secretary for a little while?”

  “That’s one of the best things you do,” she smiled.

  “What is?”

  “Supposing that I wouldn’t care to take over the job of secretary.”

  “Unnatural child. This is the third time that you’ve callously declined to save me from the morass of appeals.”

  “Have we fixed on any on
e yet?” she asked.

  “I think so. Man named Crale. Ex-butler to the Duke of Banff.”

  “Won’t life with the ex-butler of a Duke be a little trying?” she suggested. “Personally I always feel paralyzed in the presence of those supermen.”

  “The fellow seems a reasonable kind of chap. Excellent references—unmarried—doesn’t drink—in fact the only vice he’s got must be in his work shop. He’s coming up here this morning.”

  He plunged into his correspondence again, but it was claiming less than half his attention. The knowledge that the very letters he was reading were a direct result of the Poacher’s activities, forced his thoughts back to the man who had murdered Clem. Everything seemed to revolve around that sinister personality, and it was to him that Ian owed the fact that he could not rely indefinitely on immunity from police attention. True, there was nothing to connect him with Clem’s death, but there were so many little points that might establish a connection. A chance remark of Barbara’s concerning the use of her car on that night, a slip of Mrs. Greer’s—anything might do it. His mental picture of the possible results was so vivid that he looked up to see if its effect on him had been observed.

  It had.

  “You look startled, Ian,” Barbara remarked. She had been watching him for some moments.

  He forced a laugh. “I am. In fact I’m scared stiff at the wage some of these fellows want. Read that.”

  He passed a letter across to her, but it was a very weak evasion and as soon as she had finished reading it he broke a rather embarrassing silence with the disturbing thought that anything he said would sound like an attempt to cover a blunder.

  “I’ve just remembered an important engagement that I ought to keep—I wondered if you would care to see this man Crale, Barbara?”

  “Who, the butler? Do I look like a girl who sees butlers?”

  “Really, I ought to get to town this morning, but this fellow ties me down. I thought if you were doing nothing in particular——”