The Round Table Murders

by Peter Baron

  “I’m sorry you think me—weird.”

  “Not weird, secretive. You never answer a straight question. I’ve been wanting to ask you one for days but I’ve been deterred by the fact that you were sure to evade the answer.”

  “Give me another chance,” he pleaded.

  “Now you’re making fun of me. Well, perhaps it is silly, but I wish you’d tell me one thing. Do you really think that Crale is the Poacher? After all, he was carrying a gun that night you were fired at.”

  “Who says I was fired at?” he retorted, but she merely smiled.

  “Your story of the chair may have convinced Mrs. Greer, but it failed to convince me of anything except the fact that you’re an excellent amateur actor.”

  “Astute woman. All right, I pass, but at the same time I’m not prepared to pin the identity of the Poacher on any one just yet. As for Crale, he seems to possess all the endearing qualities of the usual servant.”

  “Endearing? He doesn’t strike me as possessing endearing qualities.”

  “Perhaps not, but he’s typical. The other day I found him tidying up my room just before I missed a letter. It was his half day as it happened, and he’s the first butler I’ve ever known who felt the call of duty on that sacred occasion.”

  She puckered her forehead. “Sometimes I wonder exactly what he was before he became a butler. His references were quite satisfactory—but, well he helps to make this house a little more unpleasant. This place is rather terrifying you know. I wonder if you realize that there is no one I can turn to for an explanation of that shot and other mysterious happenings. Ian never discusses them, and the Poacher’s name is absolutely taboo.”

  “Taboo, how?”

  She shrugged. “Everybody closes up like a clam if it’s mentioned. Even you. And yet it concerns you as closely as any one.”

  Larry endeavored to look innocent. “In what way?”

  “My dear man,” she protested, “you don’t imagine that I think you are staying here because you like Ian?”

  “Why not? Great chap—schoolboy friends and all that——.”

  “Yes,” she interrupted, “but when I want a fairy story I’ll get it from Hans Andersen. It won’t do, Mr. Kaye. I’m getting the impression that you are trying to save me from the terrible truth—melodramatic exposure of wicked relative and all that kind of thing. Well, I don’t want to be saved. Can’t you be a little less discreet?”

  “Certainly, would you like me to make love to you in the open?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I could probably help you. I know, for instance, that Ian doesn’t work for his living.”

  “Oh, he works for his living all right—harder than most people. All crooks do.” He reflected bitterly on the truth of that remark.

  “Crooks, that’s an admission, but it doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t know. I haven’t spent the last twenty years of my life living with a crook and preserving my childhood beliefs about finding gold under gooseberry bushes. Ralph left Birmingham because some of the gold he found under gooseberry bushes had never been lost.”

  “Precocious child.”

  “I’d have been blind if I hadn’t doubted Ralph’s little bedtime stories about his stockbroking. And I’m not so blind that I can’t see that Ian is scared of something. One of his dubious schemes has gone amiss, hasn’t it?”

  “You seem to have worked it all out, why ask me?”

  She pouted. “You spar like a super detective from a novel. I know I should have loathed that conceited puppy, Sherlock Holmes, and you’re rather trying when you model your speech on his.”

  “I seem to have a genius for saying the wrong thing?” he smiled.

  “No, merely for saying nothing at all. And there’s so much that could be said. About Clem, for instance. That was the Poacher’s work—it was in the papers, and that’s what Ian thinks, only he won’t talk about it. I’m pretty sure that Clem took the bullet that was intended for Ian, and that the other night you were mistaken for Ian.”

  She said it defiantly, and he grinned.

  “Now, who is talking like the redoubtable Sherlock? Do go on. Your theories are quite entertaining.”

  “You’d be more entertaining if you weren’t so mysterious. I think working among criminals has given you a warped mind.”

  “Thanks, perhaps you’re right.”

  “I shouldn’t care to be in your shoes,” she said, looking at him thoughtfully. “Working solely amongst lawbreakers can’t be very—well, I’ll be rude—elevating.”

  “It isn’t. But if one forswore the society of criminals one would live alone.”

  “That’s rather a sweeping statement.”

  “But true. There are only two kinds of people in this world. Those who commit crimes, and those who get found out.”

  “Sage but cynical,” she reproved. “You should avoid cynicism, Mr. Kaye. It is usually the weapon with which a waster defends his own failures and attacks the success of another. But you’re probably right about the presence of a criminal tendency in most people. My own impulses are not always lawful—especially when Mrs. Greer sings.”

  “Or mine,” he admitted, and regretted that he could not share that joke with her.

  Barbara glanced at her watch and jumped to her feet with a little cry of dismay.

  “Good heavens, look at the time. I shall have to fly if I’m going to make myself presentable for dinner.”

  “Oh, it’s early yet,” he protested, but she was adamant. “I’m sure my nose is peeling and needs powder. Unpowdered noses cause half the strife of married life. If a husband finds a red-nosed wife waiting for him at home he goes out and gets his own even redder to preserve his sense of balance.”

  She nodded wisely, and leaving him, walked back to the house.

  It was not till she reached it that she remembered that she had forgotten to mention her meeting with Keating. Had she done so she might have been deprived very speedily of the society of “Superintendent Kaye,” but as a compensation life would have been considerably more peaceful during the following twelve hours. But the matter slipped her memory at dinner, and afterwards she had no chance to speak to Larry. He exchanged one form of matching wits with Ian for another, and abandoned verbal skirmishing to sit opposite his opponent at a chess board for an hour, before he retired on a plea of headache. A very convenient excuse that allowed him to go to his bedroom and snatch a few hours’ sleep before he indulged in the final stage of a further bout of brains with Ian.

  His early withdrawal interested his host, and Ian himself retired to bed earlier than usual for the sole purpose of watching Larry’s movements. Ian was uneasy, and it was the unconscious Larry who was the cause. Twice during that day Ian had studied the two slips of paper that the ruler contained, and speculated.

  Superintendent Kaye, as he knew Larry, had never once referred to his own loss of one of those slips. And yet he must have missed it. And if he had missed it what more natural than that he should suspect Ian of having taken it. Ian—who was something more than interested in it.

  It puzzled Ian all day and at night, seated on his bed, he began to perceive the first faint glimmerings of what had really happened. It was only supposition—but Ian’s life had been composed of movements based solely on supposition. He had a nose that automatically inhaled any fantastic hypothesis—and this time it smelt a trap, although of what nature he could not decide. For that reason he switched off his lights and sat in the darkness to await—anything.

  Nevertheless, it was no movement of Larry’s that brought him silently to his feet an hour later. The sound he had heard—a vague rustle intensified by the silence of the house-had come from somewhere beneath him, not from Larry’s room next door.

  The room beneath Larry’s bedroom and his own was the study, and the realization of what that meant came to him as he slipped from his room and halted in the corridor to listen. Sidling to Larry’s door he stooped and pressed his ear to the keyhole. Within a few seconds h
e heard Larry turn in bed, and was seeking elsewhere for an explanation of the sound that he had heard.

  It was “Crale” who first came into his thoughts, and for the second time in a week he cursed his weakness in pandering to Mrs. Greer’s whim. Cursed it, and then blessed it. If it was “Crale” who was prying about in the room below—then he was doing it for a reason that betrayed his identity. In that case—Ian’s hand slid into his jacket pocket and closed over the only argument that was likely to weigh with the man who signed himself “The Poacher.”

  Keeping close to the wall, Ian descended the stairs and peered across the hall in the direction of his study. The door of his private room was closed, but that did not particularly worry him. He did not propose to use it. He waited for some seconds, but no further sound came to him out of the darkness, and yet something told him pretty forcibly that behind the door of his study there was something more than furniture.

  Slipping across the hall, he stole down the passage leading to the kitchen, and pausing there opened a door that gave forth no protesting squeak in the process. All the doors in Ian’s house were well oiled. It had been a little peculiarity of its former tenant, his brother George, this passion for drenching locks in oil.

  Keeping close to the wall of the house, Ian rounded a corner and came out onto the lawn, bright in the moonlight, only a few paces away from the French windows that led into his study. Then he knew that he had not been mistaken for French windows that have been previously locked, rarely open themselves.

  Crouched flat against the wall he watched the heavy portieres stirring faintly in the cool night breeze that blew across the garden. His lips twisted in a queer smile. Whoever was in that room was there for one reason, and he knew what that reason was. Furthermore, within the next few seconds he proposed to know who the intruder was.

  Ian on occasion could move swiftly, and was doing so. He covered the short distance between the corner of the house and the windows in two strides that, for silence and speed, a cat would have envied.

  No sound came from the room as he stood there, his back to the wall with every sense straining to catch any sound that would betray the unseen visitor. For a moment he was puzzled. He was certain that he had not betrayed himself in his descent from his room, and, unless his visitor had left the study since Ian stepped out of his bedroom, barely a minute and a half ago, he should still be there.

  But Ian had forgotten that the moon, a treacherous jade at best, throws shadows that a lawn is well fitted to receive. It was the only mistake he made, and the only one he needed to make. Leaning forward he peered between the slit of the portieres and saw nothing at first, which was to be expected, and less afterwards, which was also to be expected.

  Among the many things that he did not see was the thing that hit him. Actually it was an ebony rider that had been poised three seconds after Ian’s shadow began to faithfully record the movements of its owner. The portieres were thick, but not thick enough to break the force of that blow, which caught him squarely. He went limp on the instant, and sagged sideways on to the springy turf.

  Another of the things that he might have seen but did not, was the black-clad figure of a man, muffled in an overcoat with a wide turned-up collar. A man whose felt hat was well pulled down over his eyes and whose every movement was a lesson in the art of doing things quietly and quickly.

  Stepping coolly over the prostrate figure of Ian, the Poacher walked swiftly across the strip of lawn that divided the house from the rhododendron bushes, and reaching their shelter pushed the foliage aside and forced his way through.

  If any one else had done the same thing they would have inevitably pitched into the oblong recently-dug hole on the edge of which he now stood. But the Poacher knew it was there. He had made it himself, for a purpose. It was roughly seven feet long, five feet wide, and three feet deep, and contemplating it his eyes gleamed with a peculiarly insane light. For a moment he half turned and gazed through the leafy screen of rhododendron at the prostrate figure of Ian lying on the grass—then he slowly shook his head, and stepping out to the grass, ran lightly towards the house and disappeared around an angle of the wall that shielded the market garden and the kitchen from observation.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Standing in the darkness of his own room, Larry examined an automatic pistol carefully and his personal appearance even more carefully without finding anything wrong with either. The automatic pistol was in perfect working order and his clothing betrayed no trace of white. White showed up in the darkness, and he had taken the precaution of wearing a black sweater and dark trousers. Black plimsolls and gloves encased his feet and hands respectively.

  With a final glance round he slipped out into the corridor, and closing the door, descended quietly to the hall. Now that he had something definite to do, an odd, calculating coolness had settled on him. He was at his best when he was playing his own hand in the darkness, and when he chose to move at night the only sounds were those made by other people.

  Crossing the hall he paused outside Ian’s study to listen to the mysterious little creaks peculiar to an old house and also to discover if any one of them owed an existence to human presence. Satisfied, he gently pushed the door ajar and slipped into the room.

  Inside he paused for a moment, and then made his way unerringly across the darkened room to the desk. He found the ruler, and within a few seconds the two halves came apart in his hands.

  Inserting his fingers in one of the hollowed out pieces he instantly found what he wanted. At least he found a folded sheet of paper, but even in the darkness his sensitive fingers detected something unfamiliar in the texture. Apart from which the hollow contained only one piece of paper, and that was considerably larger than the slip that he himself possessed.

  Before examining it more thoroughly, he felt in the other half of the ruler, but as he had expected, it was empty. It did something to heighten an already half-formed suspicion, and taking a torch from his pocket, he turned his back to the window and pressed down the switch.

  One glance was sufficient to confirm the diagnosis of his fingers. The sheet of paper he held was square and white, and containing not the apparently irrelevant letters that he had expected, but a clear message.

  It read, “Why search tomorrow for something that can be found today by the Poacher?”

  The paper fluttered in his hand as he looked down at it. The mocking note was like a blow in the face, but even in his rage he remained cool enough to recognize that the elusive legend that men called “The Poacher” was becoming definitely more real.

  He made a swift calculation. It was only a few hours ago that he had seen Ian place two slips—the genuine and the spurious—in that ruler, and yet the Poacher had rifled it first.

  From being a shadow the man was gradually resolving into something more tangible, but as yet he had revealed little but his hand. Until now it had been merely a matching of wits between them, but from this time onward it would be a fight, and sooner or later he would drag his opponent into the open.

  The paper fluttered in his hand again, and turning to ascertain the cause he saw the portieres swaying. At a loss to account for the breeze he took a half-step forward before he realized that the windows were open. He reached the wall beside them in one silent bound and crouched there, the revolver in his hand leveled at the bulging portieres.

  His hand was already raised to tear the plush hangings aside when he heard something that startled him—a faint groan. At the same moment the curtains were displaced by a stronger gust of wind, and a gleam of white close to the floor caught his eye.

  It was a cuff, and from it protruded a hand.

  Silently he pulled the portieres back and looked down into the face of the prostrate Ian.

  His host lay sprawled out on the lawn, and even as Larry watched, Ian’s eyes opened. The first thing they saw was the other’s half-raised pistol, and for a moment the two men stared at each other. Then Ian levered himself up on his el
bows and his lips twisted in a smile.

  “For a C.I.D. man you’re damned original, Kaye,” he said thickly.

  Larry pocketed his automatic.

  “If you mean that I flattened you out, you’re wrong,” he retorted softly. “I seldom stun people—the effect is too impermanent.”

  Ian rose to his feet and gingerly felt the lump on the back of his head. Hindered by his throbbing head he tried to piece events together, and succeeded imperfectly.

  “What brought you down?” he asked.

  “I might put the same question!”

  “And get a saner answer. There was some one in this room. I didn’t see who—I only felt him.”

  Larry permitted himself a faint smile. “I warned you. Some day, Ian, you’ll learn to take a tip.”

  Just too late he crumpled the paper he held. Ian had seen it a second earlier. He reached out a hand, and Larry, acting on impulse, allowed him to take the Poacher’s message.

  Ian read it through slowly and then pocketed it.

  “Where was that?” he asked.

  “On your desk.”

  Ian had known the answer before he put the question. He walked across to his desk, and switching on a small reading lamp, stared at the two halves of the ruler.

  “Close those windows, will you, Kaye?” he said. “I’m getting the feeling that the Poacher is altogether too close.”

  The look that accompanied the words caused Larry some secret amusement, but he closed the windows without comment.

  “I suppose it’s no good searching the place,” Ian said weakly. “This fellow comes and goes as he likes.”

  “Does he go?” asked Larry. “I wonder what the impeccable Crale is doing?”

  So did Ian, but the thought was overborne by the sudden fit of nausea that made him sway. Larry stepped forward hastily, and catching the other’s arm, steadied him.

  “I’m all right,” Ian protested, and switching off the light made his way unsteadily to the door. Larry followed slowly and watched the other’s uncertain progress up the stairs for some moments before he mounted them himself and made for Kaye’s bedroom.