The Round Table Murders
Page 29
Keating took the letter that his subordinate proffered, and for a moment Brown thought the Inspector was going to burst. Then he appeared to control himself, but his first remark was unprintable and his second hardly a benediction.
“Of all the damn nerve. Do you have to bring me a letter at two o’clock in the morning, you blithering slab of ignorance? What the blazes do you think the Post Office is for?” “Sorry, sir,” Brown apologized. “Perhaps you had better read the letter. It’s from—er—a friend of yours.”
He paused and looked warningly at the hotel proprietor who had remained with the idea of seeing if either of his guests was a madman intent on arson.
“No friend of mine sends me a letter at two in the morning,” snarled Keating. “For two pins I’d cut your heart out and feed it to pot-belly.”
He glared at the little proprietor and received a glare in return, but what reply the little gentleman so described might have made, was lost to the world.
At that moment a voice from somewhere above them said with remarkable clarity “Henry!”
And Henry went forth earnestly to explain that he “never so much as looked in at the tap room, and anyway beer in the early hours gave him indigestion.”
He left behind him a decidedly apprehensive detective and an Inspector whose temper was strained to breaking point.
As Keating began to read the letter, Brown took up a strategic position at the foot of the bed with the silent prayer that Kaye’s letter contained news that would not cause Keating to break an already ominous silence with even more ominous speech.
Unfortunately the Affiliated Union of Patron Saints had decreed that this day should be a national holiday.
“This is what Kaye calls friendship,” said Keating bitterly, and proceeded to climb out of bed and collect his clothes. “This is his idea of a garden party. He thinks I like it. A three-mile tramp, uphill all the way, at two o’clock in the morning with a nice warm garage waiting at the other end of it. Has that thieving little pot-belly sneaked my pants?”
Detective Sergeant Brown tendered the articles in question.
“I didn’t catch that bit about the garage, sir,” he said tentatively.
“No, about all we catch is double pneumonia in that rotten garage. Why the devil can’t Kaye wait there himself?”
“About that garage—“ Brown began.
“Damn the garage, and you with it. Take your big ugly hoof off my sock. If Kaye thinks I’m going to drive to town tonight, he’s jolly well—look at that sock, you lout. Wipe your feet on the counterpane or something.”
Continuing to state at frequent intervals what he would do to Superintendent Kaye and Detective-Sergeant Brown at a more suitable opportunity he eventually announced his readiness for departure. In the hall he all but knocked down the landlady of the house, who, unconvinced by Henry’s rhetoric, had decided to demand an explanation in person. One glance at Inspector Keating’s face convinced her that there was a time and a place for everything, and that two a.m. was the time for sleep.
Henry heartily endorsed that opinion, but the lady changed her mind in the bedroom and began to tell him in what ways he fell short of the ideal Galahad. That was at two-fifteen, and she had only just sketched out the recitative by the time that the Inspector and his companion arrived at Marske House.
By that time Keating had exhausted his store of expletives, but was perfectly willing to oblige with repetitions from his repertoire. And did so as soon as he discovered the stone garage in which he was supposed to be spending the rest of the night.
The door opened to their touch, and entering they found themselves groping about in pitch darkness. Before many minutes had passed Inspector Keating had explored five of the many possibilities of scraping the skin of his shins.
“How long do we park here, sir?” Brown whispered.
“God alone knows,” grunted Keating. “Kaye says he wants the car ready for instant use. Says he will signal us when he wants us.”
“Signal us, how?”
“How the devil do I know? Tap on the window with a piece of cotton wool, I expect. Damn, what’s that?”
“That,” which had “scraped” acquaintance with the Inspector’s head, on investigation proved to be a cupboard fastened to the wall. Keating flashed his torch upwards, and pulling open the cupboard door disclosed a variety of adjustable spanners, sparking plugs and other attachments peculiar to a car. On the top shelf, however, was something more within his province. It was a small box from the front of which protruded three ebonite levers, and feeling behind it Keating found as he had anticipated, a circular ebonite receiver.
“That looks like a dictograph, sir,” Brown ventured.
“Possibly, because it is a dictograph,” agreed Keating, and began to examine his find interestedly.
Detective-Sergeant Brown grunted, and taking a service revolver from his pocket walked cautiously past the garage along the narrow gravel path between the wall and the house, leading to the kitchen garden. He had gone perhaps twenty paces when Keating joined him. Together they walked a few paces, and then Keating raised his hand. Somewhere ahead of them a familiar voice was speaking. Familiar—but horribly distorted. It took Keating some moments to realize that the speaker was Barbara. When he did, he started forward, and coming out into the kitchen garden found himself staring at the two tense figures standing before the rhododendrons less than fifty feet away.
Paralyzed, he stood stock still listening to the violent diatribe, of which he himself was the subject, unconscious of anything around him save that voice.
As a man in a trance he saw the girl he loved raise the gun she held, and heard a gasp from Brown beside him.
Then Brown’s gun went off with a crash that shook the echoes. Before the report had ceased echoing Barbara twisted suddenly, and flinging up her hands pitched backwards.
As she fell Kaye opened his eyes. Dazed, he gaped at the graceful figure prone on the grass. Then he looked up slowly and saw Keating a few yards away. There was a look of utter misery in the Inspector’s eyes, but Kaye’s own eyes were too dimmed to notice it. ‘Without warning the Superintendent swayed, and losing his balance, crashed through the rhododendrons and fell—into the hole that had bran dug as his grave. He had fainted.
He regained consciousness with a damp feeling about his face and neck, and sat up slowly. The first face he saw was Keating’s, and its owner was kneeling beside him staring down at the handcuffs he had taken from Kaye’s wrists. Beside him the Morcovian emeralds and a fortune in notes lay unheeded on the grass.
Kaye reached out a hand and patted his friend on the shoulder.
“I’m sorry, old man,” he said simply.
Keating looked past him miserably.
“Not your fault,” he said gruffly.
“Is she——?”
“No. Brown aimed at her shoulder. She’s only winged, but Larry’s in a bad way and Ian’s got concussion. We found Kate Alice strapped to her bed and half crazy. The ambulance is on the way.”
“A pretty good dean up,” said Kaye, rising painfully to his feet.
Keating nodded and looked back at the house into which Brown had carried Barbara.
“I always said women were no good,” he said huskily, “and my first real adventure with one proves it.”
Even at that moment Kaye could not forsake the habits of a lifetime. He began, philosophically, to quote Kipling:
“‘A fool there was, and he made a prayer to a rag, a bone—’”
He broke off abruptly as he noticed the agony in Keating’s eyes.
“No, perhaps not,” he said slowly, and for the first and last time in his life, left his friend to fight a battle unaided.
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