The Round Table Murders

by Peter Baron

  All of which was true, but he omitted to add that it gave him the opportunity of keeping an eye on Larry’s early morning expedition, which had not escaped him nor suggested a reason for its necessity.

  Now he knew what necessitated it, just as he knew the contents of the telegram.

  Larry took the telegram and slit it open, but as on a previous occasion the threat contained in its message failed to betray itself in his eyes.

  For perhaps a minute he stared at the words “Kaye. That train leaves for London at the same time tonight,” and then, folding the telegram, pocketed it, and strolled off in the direction of the post office. He wasted half an hour there, and the only information he received was that it had been handed in at Charing Cross on the previous night. Obviously it had been arranged that it should be delivered to Ian’s house whether the person it was addressed to was there to receive it or not. It made Larry think. The Poacher had a definite reason for wanting to get Kaye out of the house, and was taking any risk to do it. That, by impersonating Kaye, Larry had assumed the risks of the Yard man’s position did not disturb him greatly. It took a lot to disturb Larry.

  Neither did it cause him to waste valuable time speculating idly on the Poacher’s identity. He fancied he knew that. His suspicions would probably have amused Kaye had he been aware of them. Certainly the butler was considerably in Larry’s thoughts during his leisurely stroll back to the house. He found the others at breakfast when he returned. Apparently they had all overslept, a fact which he discovered by chance in discovering something more important. Toward the end of the meal he casually thanked Barbara for sending Kaye on with the telegram, and was a little surprised when she looked up and laughed.

  “My dear man, I didn’t send him. I’ve only been up half an hour. As the result of a broken night’s rest I overslept hideously.”

  “For which you have me to thank,” Larry apologized. “I’m sorry. Did you send that telegram, Teyst?”

  “I did not,” retorted Ian curtly, and buried himself in his paper.

  Privately he was beginning to wonder a little about his butler. There was something queer about the fellow. He had been hanging about the house that night when Clem had been killed and now he had taken it on himself to deliver telegrams. Ian made a resolve to discuss the matter with Crale as soon as possible, and the opportunity came directly after breakfast.

  “I understand you delivered a telegram to Superintendent Kaye this morning, Crale,’9 said Ian, intercepting the other as he was leaving the room.

  “That is so, sir.”

  “Who asked you to?”

  Crale gathered up a cup.

  “No one, sir. None of the others were up, so I hurried down to the town with it myself. I thought that it might contain an important message and that it might not otherwise be delivered—until it was too late.”

  Ian did not miss the significance of that pause. His reply was curt.

  “You might remember in future that I engaged you as a butler, not a district messenger,” he snapped. “That’s all.”

  Kaye took the rebuke meekly and retired to his quarters, not to discharge any duties appertaining to them, but because he was rather anxious to discover exactly to what use Larry proposed putting the recently purchased periscope.

  Very few things escaped the eyes of Superintendent Kaye. From the window of his pantry it was possible to get a clear view of Larry’s bedroom window, which was in the back of the house and directly above that of Ian’s study, and Kaye saw all he wanted to. What he did not see he surmised. And it was what he surmised that led him to remain at a discreet but sufficient distance from the door of Ian’s study a few seconds after Larry entered it.

  There was nothing in Ian’s manner to suggest that Larry’s visit was a welcome one. In fact, his concentration on his book became almost painfully marked. All of which Larry took in amusedly without allowing it to affect his purpose. Which was that of talking like a Dutch uncle to his host.

  “I want to talk to you about that butler of yours, Ian,”

  he said, dropping into a chair and calmly helping himself to one of Ian’s cigarettes from a silver box.

  “‘Which,” replied Ian, closing the cigarette box without looking up, “is no guarantee that I want to talk to you on that or any other subject.”

  “Nevertheless you will. This concerns you more nearly than me.”

  “I didn’t know we had anything in common.”

  ““We have, a number of things,” Larry assured him quite truthfully. “Where did you pick Crale up?”

  “Is that anything to do with you?”

  “To some extent. He was fully dressed and carrying a gun last night when I was potted at.”

  “Are you expecting me to weep because some one nearly croaked you? If I weep, it’ll be because they didn’t.”

  “One of these days gallery play’ll land you in Queer Street,” Larry observed. “All I’m expecting you to do is to see that some one is doing their level best to drive me out of this house.”

  “That,” observed Ian coldly, “leaves me all broken up and worried.”

  “If they succeed, you’ll be more worried. If I’m removed from this house, Ian, it’ll be that much less between you and the Poacher.”

  That certainly produced a more satisfactory effect. Ian closed his book and laid it down.

  “I got Crale through an advertisement,” he said. “Are you suggesting that he’s the Poacher?”

  “I’m suggesting nothing except that if you want to preserve a whole skin you’ll hand over that piece of paper your brother gave you. The Poacher won’t let up on you while you’ve got it.”

  “So far he hasn’t let up on you,” Ian returned, “and if Crale is the Poacher then I prefer to have him here where I can watch him.”

  “And where he can watch you? Just as you like, but either way I want the companion to this.”

  Taking out a wallet he extracted a small strip of blue paper. Ian looked at it casually and smiled.

  “I doubt if you’ll get it. If I had it I know you wouldn’t. Where did you get that?”

  “Your brother gave it to Dennis, as you know. He passed it on to Larry Wade—which you may not know—and we got it from him—very simply.”

  Larry found it necessary to conceal his mouth by fingering his beard.

  “And the Poacher’s got the third slip,” he continued. “He beat Dennis to it and rifled Ralph’s safe. I’m warning you, Ian, a Reigate undertaker is going to profit by your loss. Not that you’d be much loss, but we’re out to stop excess profits.”

  Both his eyes and his tone were ironical, but irony was not his own peculiar monopoly. Ian was no novice.

  “If I were to hand you over the slip that you say I’ve got,” Ian smiled, “I’d be exposing you to a double dose of the Poacher’s attention, which wouldn’t do. I’m too fond of you.”

  That remark came under the category of water on a duck’s back, but its successor certainly amused Larry.

  “I’ll give you a tip, Kaye. If you’ve been near enough to Larry Wade to get that slip of paper you’ve been near enough to the Poacher to grab him. Now, unless your perceptions are particularly dulled you have probably guessed that twenty minutes of your society is exactly nineteen too long. Goodbye.”

  Larry replaced the slip of paper in his wallet and rose. As he did so Ian’s eyes flickered oddly.

  Apparently Larry was unaware that the other had shifted his right foot a trifle to the left. As a matter of fact the subject of Ian seemed to have exhausted all interest for him, nevertheless he paused at the door to add a final warning.

  “If one kind of persuasion fails, Ian, there may be other more effective brands,” he remarked. “The coroner’s verdict on Clem Wade as ‘murder by a person or persons unknown’ struck me as a little inaccurate.”

  He departed with a slightly sinister smile and left Ian to his reflections. Reflections that in no way centered on that threat. His thoughts centered, to be
exact, on his right foot, and shifting it he stooped swiftly and picked up the strip of paper that had fallen from Larry’s wallet as he replaced it.

  For some moments Ian stared at the blue slip, and then, walking to the door, he opened it quickly and looked out. The corridor was deserted, and closing the door he turned the key in the lock and returned to the desk.

  Sitting down before it, he placed the piece of paper carefully on his blotting pad and picked up a round ebony ruler. Taking hold of it at either end, he twisted his hands in opposite directions and the ruler began to unscrew in the center. As it came apart, a tightly rolled tube of blue paper fell from the hollowed out interior. It was the strip of paper that his brother George had given him.

  Two minutes later he was comparing two slips of paper—his own and the one Larry had dropped—in an effort to extract a message or part of a message from the combination.

  He failed.

  One glance told him that a protracted examination would be just as fruitless, and the conclusion that his brother George had been even more astute than he realized was slowly borne in on it. Without the third slip the message was useless.

  Which was not so very surprising. For although Larry had carefully matched his slip of paper at a London stationer’s and had also faultlessly copied the Colonel’s writing—no difficult task for an artist like himself—the letters that he had written down in no way corresponded with those on the slip he had received from Dennis.

  Within a quarter of an hour Ian had abandoned his efforts to read the code—if it was a code—and the two slips were placed together in the hollow ruler.

  At the same moment Larry at his window drew up his newly acquired periscope and placed it in a drawer with a satisfied smile.

  In the butler’s pantry Kaye’s smile was even more satisfied.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Detective-Sergeant Brown munched a sandwich of bread and cheese, and regarded his captor balefully. It was Brown’s third day of captivity, and despite the fact that he had heard from Kaye the previous day that his “enforced retirement” was almost concluded, the knowledge did nothing to improve his feeling towards Larry Wade. Freedom and fresh air were as meat and drink to the virile Brown, who saw no particular sense in the present arrangement. His own endurance in staying the course so long, he regarded as almost epic.

  Larry, on the other hand, was in an expansive mood. His experiments with a periscope had resulted even more favorably than he had hoped. So much so, that Ian’s clue to the hiding place of the Morcovian emeralds was as good as in his hand.

  Lounging in the only chair that the room possessed, he smoked coolly. A small automatic pistol dangled negligently from his right hand, but not so negligently that any undue movement on the part of Brown brought it into direct line with that gentleman’s ribs. Which accounted for the unfortunate detective’s disinclination for light banter.

  He had received Larry’s last three sallies with grunts, and munched on silently, or nearly so. His indifference failed to disturb the other. Larry was in an excellent humor and, taking a newspaper from his jacket pocket, he disclosed the reason.

  “Apparently there are people who set more value on your august carcass than I do,” he said mockingly. “The Yard have advertised your disappearance and are referring to you as a distinguished and able officer. It is a pity that I am not in a position to correct that error.”

  Brown received the remark in silence. Privately, it amused him. He knew that the Yard were advertising for Kaye. In fact, it was Kaye who had told him so. The paragraph had been sent to the Press at the Superintendent’s instigation, as being a sure way of confirming Larry’s belief that his prisoner really was Kaye. Furthermore, Brown knew that the Yard had been instructed not to pursue its search too closely in the neighborhood of Reigate, because Kaye in the role of cat had not yet finished playing opposite to Larry in the part of the mouse.

  Under the circumstances Larry’s remark was a source of satisfaction to Brown, but he could not reply without putting Larry in possession of facts that must be withheld from him. “Sullen, eh?” grinned Larry.

  “You can’t speak with a mouth full of bread and cheese,” Brown retorted in dignified tones.

  “You’re having a pretty good try.”

  “Apart from which,” continued Brown, ignoring the innuendo and speaking very carefully, “‘Nature has given us two ears, two eyes and but one tongue, to the end that we shall see and hear more than we speak.’”

  He glanced cautiously at Larry to see how the quotation had been received. He had learnt it the previous day from Kaye and was a little unsure of his ground.

  Larry grinned and made a mental note of it.

  “That’s a gem. By whom, may I ask?”

  “Socrates,” Brown answered profoundly. “Now I’ll tell you something original, but quite as good. Some day you’re going to come a cropper over this business.”

  Larry could afford to banter. He did so.

  “Think so?”

  “Know it,” munched Brown. “For every one of you, there’s two of us. What Cicero said of his world thousands of years ago is just as true today. ‘Nothing is profitable that is dishonest.’ Bite on that.”

  Kaye’s priming had resulted very creditably to himself. Larry made another mental note and then launched the fruits of his own study of “Classical Quotations, Ancient and Modern.”

  “Possibly, but ‘Need teaches things unlawful.’ That’s Seneca and the Gospel. Take it from me, Kaye, you and Keating are sleeping partners.”

  The last sentence piqued Brown’s interest. He looked up.

  “And Keating,” he repeated.

  “Exactly, and Keating,” Larry answered, and enjoyed the joke. “Our Sam is definitely missing his cue in this act, but the Yard are not so concerned about him. He writes nice letters home regularly, but his activities at the moment are suspended. The trouble with Sam is that he is getting too roomy in the tonneau and too trusting under the thatch.”

  He rose and crossing to Brown, picked up the gag that lay on the floor. Brown submitted to being gagged again in silence, but he was thinking all the more. He watched Larry walk to the door, wondering if the other intended to say anything more definite.

  That was not Larry’s intention.

  “So long, Kaye,” he said cheerfully. “Remember the phrase that Pliny left behind him. ‘Hope is the waking man’s dream.’ You hope—hard. If you behave like a good boy you’ll soon be free to mess up another case.”

  That, reflected Brown placidly, was probably true, but the events which would verify it might not prove too palatable for Larry. He contented himself with ignoring the other’s parting smile.

  Walking downstairs to the hall Larry peered cautiously out of the little side window by the door and, satisfied that the drive was deserted, slipped out on to the porch and made his way up to the house.

  From an upper window of the lodge, Superintendent Kaye watched him go, and then descended to the basement, and Brown.

  It was Kaye’s half day and for a while he was not altogether sorry to shelve a pretense that normally amused him. The bearing of an ex-butler to a Duke was a lesson in the art of correctness that required no little maintaining.

  He found Brown staring up at the ceiling and still pondering Larry’s remarks concerning Keating, and for some moments after his superior had removed the gag Brown remained silent, while Kaye lighted his own cigarette and one for his subordinate.

  “You don’t happen to have something solid in the way of food, sir, do you?” Brown asked. “Cigarettes aren’t very nourishing and my keep isn’t costing Larry Wade much.”

  Kaye felt in his pockets and produced a bar of chocolate.

  “You’re not doing badly,” he said proffering it. “I saw Larry abstract a wing of chicken from the pantry after lunch today. Anyway, a little dieting won’t harm you. You know opinion is divided on the subject of food. Homer says, ‘The belly is the commanding part of the body,’ whil
e Plato says, ‘The wicked man lives to eat and drink, but the good man eats and drinks to live.’ Personally I agree with Plato.”

  Brown eyed his superior’s chubby figure amazedly.

  “You agree?” he asked blankly.

  “Certainly,” smiled Kaye, “but I never allow my convictions to influence my inclinations. Some people do. In fact, that is the one thing that turns a casual offender into an habitual criminal.”

  The change of subject bewildered Brown, but it also reminded him of something.

  “Talking of shop, sir,” he said suddenly, “have you heard anything lately from Inspector Keating?”

  “No. And it’s unusual. The last time I heard from Sam he was pursuing an imaginary Larry up North. Storm says he is still getting letters from Sam, but as I have informed the Round Table that Larry is here in Reigate, they are beginning to think hard thoughts about Sam.”

  “I fancy Larry Wade could tell you something about Inspector Keating’s whereabouts, sir. He made a peculiar remark just now,” said Brown, and retailed the latter end of Larry’s conversation.

  “So that’s it,” mused Kaye. “Larry is becoming a collector of objets d’art in the form of police officers. He’ll find it an expensive hobby.”

  “He’s got something up his sleeve,” answered Brown. “Says I’ll be free pretty soon. So I shall—but no thanks to him.” He looked anxiously at Kaye.

  “I shall be free soon, shan’t I?” he demanded anxiously. “What with lying gagged on this damn bed, getting cramp, and having to listen to that crooked louse Wade, crowing like a prize-cock—this game is getting me beat. I’d like to be the beak who sentences him!”

  He spoke viciously, and Kaye smiled.

  “So should I, but in the words of Plato, ‘No man may be both accuser and judge.’ By the way you might lend me that master key of yours. I may need it.”

  “Help yourself. Right-hand trouser pocket.”

  “Thanks. How is the classical contest progressing?”