The Seven Dials Mystery

She looked back and felt a sickening sensation in the middle of her anatomy. The car had not passed over the man, but nevertheless it must have struck him in passing. He was lying face downwards on the road, and he lay ominously still.

Bundle jumped out and ran back. She had never yet run over anything more important than a stray hen. The fact that the accident was hardly her fault did not weigh with her at the minute. The man had seemed drunk, but drunk or not, she had killed him. She was quite sure she had killed him. Her heart beat sickeningly in great pounding thumps, sounding right up in her ears.

She knelt down by the prone figure and turned him very gingerly over. He neither groaned nor moaned. He was young, she saw, rather a pleasant-faced young man, well dressed and wearing a small toothbrush moustache.

There was no external mark of injury that she could see, but she was quite positive that he was either dead or dying. His eyelids flickered and the eyes half opened. Piteous eyes, brown and suffering, like a dog’s. He seemed to be struggling to speak. Bundle bent right over.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes?’

There was something he wanted to say, she could see that. Wanted to say badly. And she couldn’t help him, couldn’t do anything.

At last the words came, a mere sighing breath:

‘Seven Dials…tell…’

‘Yes,’ said Bundle again. It was a name he was trying to get out–trying with all his failing strength. ‘Yes. Who am I to tell?’

‘Tell…Jimmy Thesiger…’ He got it out at last, and then, suddenly, his head fell back and his body went limp.

Bundle sat back on her heels, shivering from head to foot. She could never have imagined that anything so awful could have happened to her. He was dead–and she had killed him.

She tried to pull herself together. What must she do now? A doctor–that was her first thought. It was possible–just possible–that the man might only be unconscious, not dead. Her instinct cried out against the possibility, but she forced herself to act upon it. Somehow or other she must get him into the car and take him to the nearest doctor’s. It was a deserted stretch of country road and there was no one to help her.

Bundle, for all her slimness, was strong. She had muscles of whipcord. She brought the Hispano as close as possible, and then exerting all her strength, she dragged and pulled the inanimate figure into it. It was a horrid business, and one that made her set her teeth, but at last she managed it.

Then she jumped into the driver’s seat and set off. A couple of miles brought her into a small town and on inquiring she was quickly directed to the doctor’s house.

Dr Cassell, a kindly, middle-aged man, was startled to come into his surgery and find a girl there who was evidently on the verge of collapse.

Bundle spoke abruptly.

‘I–I think I’ve killed a man. I ran over him. I brought him along in the car. He’s outside now. I–I was driving too fast, I suppose. I’ve always driven too fast.’

The doctor cast a practised glance over her. He stepped over to a shelf and poured something into a glass. He brought it over to her.

‘Drink this down,’ he said, ‘and you’ll feel better. You’ve had a shock.’

Bundle drank obediently and a tinge of colour came into her pallid face. The doctor nodded approvingly.

‘That’s right. Now I want you to sit quietly here. I’ll go out and attend to things. After I’ve made sure there’s nothing to be done for the poor fellow, I’ll come back and we’ll talk about it.’

He was away some time. Bundle watched the clock on the mantelpiece. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes–would he ever come?

Then the door opened and Dr Cassell reappeared. He looked different–Bundle noticed that at once–grimmer and at the same time more alert. There was something else in his manner that she did not quite understand, a suggestion of repressed excitement.

‘Now then, young lady,’ he said. ‘Let’s have this out. You ran over this man, you say. Tell me just how the accident happened?’

Bundle explained to the best of her ability. The doctor followed her narrative with keen attention.

‘Just so; the car didn’t pass over his body?’

‘No. In fact, I thought I’d missed him altogether.’

‘He was reeling, you say?’

‘Yes, I thought he was drunk.’

‘And he came from the hedge?’

‘There was a gate just there, I think. He must have come through the gate.’

The doctor nodded, then he leaned back in his chair and removed his pince-nez.

‘I’ve no doubt at all,’ he said, ‘that you’re a very reckless driver, and that you’ll probably run over some poor fellow and do for him one of these days–but you haven’t done it this time.’

‘But–’

‘The car never touched him. This man was shot.’

Chapter 6

Seven Dials Again

Bundle stared at him. And very slowly the world, which for the last three quarters of an hour had been upside down, shifted till it stood once more the right way up. It was quite two minutes before Bundle spoke, but when she did it was no longer the panic-stricken girl but the real Bundle, cool, efficient and logical.

‘How could he be shot?’ she said.

‘I don’t know how he could,’ said the doctor dryly. ‘But he was. He’s got a rifle bullet in him all right. He bled internally, that’s why you didn’t notice anything.’

Bundle nodded.

‘The question is,’ the doctor continued, ‘who shot him? You saw nobody about?’

Bundle shook her head.

‘It’s odd,’ said the doctor. ‘If it was an accident, you’d expect the fellow who did it would come running to the rescue–unless just possibly he didn’t know what he’d done.’

‘There was no one about,’ said Bundle. ‘On the road, that is.’

‘It seems to me,’ said the doctor, ‘that the poor lad must have been running–the bullet got him just as he passed through the gate and he came reeling on to the road in consequence. You didn’t hear a shot?’

Bundle shook her head.

‘But I probably shouldn’t anyway,’ she said, ‘with the noise of the car.’

‘Just so. He didn’t say anything before he died?’

‘He muttered a few words.’

‘Nothing to throw light on the tragedy?’

‘No. He wanted something–I don’t know what–told to a friend of his. Oh! Yes, and he mentioned Seven Dials.’

‘H’m,’ said Doctor Cassell. ‘Not a likely neighbourhood for one of his class. Perhaps his assailant came from there. Well, we needn’t worry about that now. You can leave it in my hands. I’ll notify the police. You must, of course, leave your name and address, as the police are sure to want to question you. In fact, perhaps you’d better come round to the police station with me now. They might say I ought to have detained you.’

They went together in Bundle’s car. The police inspector was a slow-speaking man. He was somewhat overawed by Bundle’s name and address when she gave it to him, and he took down her statement with great care.

‘Lads!’ he said. ‘That’s what it is. Lads practising! Cruel stupid, them young varmints are. Always loosing off at birds with no consideration for anyone as may be the other side of a hedge.’

The doctor thought it a most unlikely solution, but he realized that the case would soon be in abler hands and it did not seem worth while to make objections.

‘Name of deceased?’ asked the sergeant, moistening his pencil.

‘He had a card-case on him. He appeared to have been a Mr Ronald Devereux, with an address in the Albany.’

Bundle frowned. The name Ronald Devereux awoke some chord of remembrance. She was sure she had heard it before.

It was not until she was half-way back to Chimneys in the car that it came to her. Of course! Ronny Devereux. Bill’s friend in the Foreign Office. He and Bill and–yes–Gerald Wade.

As this last realization came to her, Bundle nearly went into the hedge. First Gerald Wade–then Ronny Devereux. Gerry Wade’s death might have been natural–the result of carelessness–but Ronny Devereux’s surely bore a more sinister interpretation.

And then Bundle remembered something else. Seven Dials! When the dying man had said it, it had seemed vaguely familiar. Now she knew why. Gerald Wade had mentioned Seven Dials in that last letter of his written to his sister on the night before his death. And that again connected up with something else that escaped her.

Thinking all these things over, Bundle had slowed down to such a sober pace that nobody would have recognized her. She drove the car round to the garage and went in search of her father.

Lord Caterham was happily reading a catalogue of a forthcoming sale of rare editions and was immeasurably astonished to see Bundle.

‘Even you,’ he said, ‘can’t have been to London and back in this time.’

‘I haven’t been to London,’ said Bundle. ‘I ran over a man.’

‘What?’

‘Only I didn’t really. He was shot.’

‘How could he have been?’

‘I don’t know how he could have been, but he was.’

‘But why did you shoot him?’

‘I didn’t shoot him.’

‘You shouldn’t shoot people,’ said Lord Caterham in a tone of mild remonstrance. ‘You shouldn’t really. I daresay some of them richly deserve it–but all the same it will lead to trouble.’

‘I tell you I didn’t shoot him.’

‘Well, who did?’

‘Nobody knows,’ said Bundle.

‘Nonsense,’ said Lord Caterham. ‘A man can’t be shot and run over without anyone having done it.’

‘He wasn’t run over,’ said Bundle.

‘I thought you said he was.’

‘I said I thought I had.’

‘A tyre burst, I suppose,’ said Lord Caterham. ‘That does sound like a shot. It says so in detective stories.’

‘You really are perfectly impossible, Father. You don’t seem to have the brains of a rabbit.’

‘Not at all,’ said Lord Caterham. ‘You come in with a wildly impossible tale about men being run over and shot and I don’t know what, and then you expect me to know all about it by magic.’

Bundle sighed wearily.

‘Just attend,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you all about it in words of one syllable.’

‘There,’ she said when she had concluded. ‘Now have you got it?’

‘Of course. I understand perfectly now. I can make allowances for your being a little upset, my dear. I was not far wrong when I remarked to you before starting out that people looking for trouble usually found it. I am thankful,’ finished Lord Caterham with a slight shiver, ‘that I stayed quietly here.’

He picked up the catalogue again.

‘Father, where is Seven Dials?’

‘In the East End somewhere, I fancy. I have frequently observed buses going there–or do I mean Seven Sisters? I have never been there myself, I’m thankful to say. Just as well, because I don’t fancy it is the sort of spot I should like. And yet, curiously enough, I seem to have heard of it in some connection just lately.’

‘You don’t know a Jimmy Thesiger, do you?’

Lord Caterham was now engrossed in his catalogue once more. He had made an effort to be intelligent on the subject of Seven Dials. This time he made hardly any effort at all.

‘Thesiger,’ he murmured vaguely. ‘Thesiger. One of the Yorkshire Thesigers?’

‘That’s what I’m asking you. Do attend, Father. This is important.’

Lord Caterham made a desperate effort to look intelligent without really having to give his mind to the matter.

‘There are some Yorkshire Thesigers,’ he said earnestly. ‘And unless I am mistaken some Devonshire Thesigers also. Your Great Aunt Selina married a Thesiger.’

‘What good is that to me?’ cried Bundle.

Lord Caterham chuckled.

‘It was very little good to her, if I remember rightly.’

‘You’re impossible,’ said Bundle, rising. ‘I shall have to get hold of Bill.’

‘Do, dear,’ said her father absently as he turned a page. ‘Certainly. By all means. Quite so.’

Bundle rose to her feet with an impatient sigh.

‘I wish I could remember what that letter said,’ she murmured, more to herself than aloud. ‘I didn’t read it very carefully. Something about a joke, that the Seven Dials business wasn’t a joke.’

Lord Caterham emerged suddenly from his catalogue.

‘Seven Dials?’ he said. ‘Of course. I’ve got it now.’

‘Got what?’

‘I know why it sounded so familiar. George Lomax has been over. Tredwell failed for once and let him in. He was on his way up to town. It seems he’s having some political party at the Abbey next week and he got a warning letter.’

‘What do you mean by a warning letter?’

‘Well, I don’t really know. He didn’t go into details. I gather it said “Beware” and “Trouble is at hand”, and all those sort of things. But anyway it was written from Seven Dials, I distinctly remember his saying so. He was going up to town to consult Scotland Yard about it. You know George?’

Bundle nodded. She was well acquainted with that public-spirited Cabinet Minister, George Lomax, His Majesty’s permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who was shunned by many because of his inveterate habit of quoting from his public speeches in private. In allusion to his bulging eyeballs, he was known to many–Bill Eversleigh among others–as Codders.

‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘was Codders interested at all in Gerald Wade’s death?’

‘Not that I heard of. He may have been, of course.’

Bundle said nothing for some minutes. She was busily engaged in trying to remember the exact wording of the letter she had sent on to Loraine Wade, and at the same time she was trying to picture the girl to whom it had been written. What sort of a girl was this to whom, apparently, Gerald Wade was so devoted? The more she thought over it, the more it seemed to her that it was an unusual letter for a brother to write.

‘Did you say the Wade girl was Gerry’s half-sister?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Well, of course, strictly speaking, I suppose she isn’t–wasn’t, I mean–his sister at all.’

‘But her name’s Wade?’

‘Not really. She wasn’t old Wade’s child. As I was saying, he ran away with his second wife, who was married to a perfect blackguard. I suppose the Courts gave the rascally husband the custody of the child, but he certainly didn’t avail himself of the privilege. Old Wade got very fond of the child and insisted that she should be called by his name.’

‘I see,’ said Bundle. ‘That explains it.’

‘Explains what?’

‘Something that puzzled me about that letter.’

‘She’s rather a pretty girl, I believe,’ said Lord Caterham. ‘Or so I’ve heard.’

Bundle went upstairs thoughtfully. She had several objects in view. First she must find this Jimmy Thesiger. Bill, perhaps, would be helpful there. Ronny Devereux had been a friend of Bill’s. If Jimmy Thesiger was a friend of Ronny’s, the chances were that Bill would know him too. Then there was the girl, Loraine Wade. It was possible that she could throw some light on the problem of Seven Dials. Evidently Gerry Wade had said something to her about it. His anxiety that she should forget the fact had a sinister suggestion.

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