The Terror

And here he spoke prophetically.

He got through by ’phone to Monkshall, but Sergeant Dobie, who had been left in charge, had no information.

‘Has that woman, Elvery, left?’ asked Hallick.

‘Not she!’ came the reply. ‘She will hang on to the last minute. That woman is a regular crime hound. And, Mr Hallick, that fellow Fane is tight again.’

‘Is he ever sober?’ asked Hallick.

He did not trouble about Fane’s insobriety, but he was interested to learn that life in Monkshall, despite the tragedy and the startling event of the morning, was going on as though nothing had happened. Reporters had called in the course of the day and had tried to interview the colonel.

‘But I shunted them off. The general theory here is that Connor had somebody with him, that they got hold of the money and quarrelled about it. The other fellow killed Connor and got away with the stuff. When I said “The general idea”,’ said Dobie carefully, ‘I meant it is my idea. What do you think of that, sir?’

‘Rotten,’ said Hallick, and hung up the receiver.

CHAPTER X

ALL the machinery of Scotland Yard was at work. Inquiries had gone out in every direction and not even Mrs Elvery and her daughter had been spared. By midnight Hallick learned the private history, as far as it could be ascertained, of every inmate of Monkshall.

Mrs Elvery was a woman in fairly comfortable circumstances, and, since her husband’s death had released her from a gloomy house in Devonshire, she had no permanent home. She was more than comfortably off, by certain standards she was a wealthy woman, one of that mysterious band of middle-aged women who move from one hotel to another, and live frugally in fashionable resorts in the season. You find them on the Lido in August, in Deauville in July, on the Riviera or in Egypt in the winter.

Mr Goodman held a sleeping partnership in an old-established and not too prosperous firm of tea importers. Probably, thought Hallick, the days of its prosperity expired before Goodman retired from business.

Cotton, the butler, had the least savoury record. He was a man who had been discharged from three jobs under suspicion of pilfering, but no conviction could be traced against him. (Hallick wrote in his notebook: ‘Find some way of getting Cotton’s fingerprints.’) In every case Cotton had been employed at boarding houses and always small articles of jewellery had disappeared in circumstances which suggested that he was not entirely ignorant of the reason for such disappearance.

Colonel Redmayne’s record occupied a sheet of foolscap. He had been an impecunious officer in the Auxiliary Medical Staff, had been court-martialled in the last week of the war for drunkenness and severely reprimanded. He had, by some miracle, been appointed to a responsible position in a military charity. The disappearance of funds had led to an investigation, there had been some talk of prosecution, and Scotland Yard had actually been consulted, but had been advised against such a prosecution in the absence of direct proof that the colonel was guilty of anything but culpable negligence. The missing money had been refunded and the matter was dropped. He was next heard of when he bought Monkshall.

The information concerning Redmayne’s military career was news to Hallick.

‘A doctor, eh?’

Elk nodded. He had been charged with collecting the information.

‘He joined up in the beginning of the war and got his rank towards the finish,’ he said. ‘Funny how these birds hang on to their military rank—“doctor” would be good enough for me.’

‘Was he ever in the regular army?’

Elk shook his head.

‘So far as I could find out, no. Owing to the trouble he got into at the end of the war he was not offered a permanent commission.’

Hallick spent the evening studying a large plan of Monkshall and its grounds, and even a larger one of the room in which Connor had been found. There was one thing certain: Connor had not ‘broken and entered’. It was, in a sense, an inside job, he must have been admitted by—whom? Not by Redmayne, certainly not by his daughter. By a servant, and that servant was Cotton. The house was almost impossible to burgle from outside without inside assistance; there were alarms in all the windows and he had seen electric controls on the doors. Monkshall was almost prepared for a siege. Indeed, it seemed as though Colonel Redmayne expected sooner or later the visitation of a burglar.

Hallick went to bed a very tired man that night, fully expecting to be called by telephone, but nothing happened. He ’phoned Monkshall before he left his house and Dobie reported ‘All is well.’ He had not been to bed that night, and nothing untoward had occurred. There was neither sound or sight of the ghostly visitor.

‘Ghosts!’ scoffed Hallick. ‘Did you expect to see one?’

‘Well,’ said Dobie’s half-apologetic voice, ‘I am really beginning to believe there is something here that isn’t quite natural.’

‘There is nothing anywhere that is not natural, sergeant,’ said Hallick sharply.

There was another case in which he was engaged, and he spent two unprofitable hours interviewing a particularly stupid servant girl concerning the mysterious disappearance of a large quantity of jewellery. It was nearly noon when he got back to his office and his clerk greeted him with a piece of unexpected information.

‘Mr Goodman is waiting to see you, sir. I put him in the reception-room.’

‘Goodman?’ Hallick frowned. At the moment he could not recall the name. ‘Oh, yes, from Monkshall? What does he want?’

‘He said he wished to see you. He was quite willing to wait.’

‘Bring him in,’ said Hallick.

Mr Goodman came into the tidy office a rather timid and diffident man.

‘I quite expected you to throw me out for I realise how busy you are, inspector,’ he said, putting down his hat and umbrella very carefully; ‘but as I had some business in town I thought I’d come along and see you.’

‘I am very glad to see you, Mr Goodman.’ Hallick placed a chair for him. ‘Are you coming to enlarge on your theories?’

Goodman smiled.

‘I think I told you before I had no theories. I am terribly worried about Miss Redmayne, though.’ He hesitated. ‘You cross-examined her. She was distressed about it.’ He paused a little helplessly, but Hallick did not help him. ‘I think I told you that I am—fond of Mary Redmayne. I would do anything to clear up this matter so that you would see, what I am sure is a fact, that her father had nothing whatever to do with this terrible affair.’

‘I never said he had,’ interrupted Hallick.

Mr Goodman nodded.

‘That I realise. But I am not as foolish as, perhaps, I appear to be; I know that he is under suspicion. In fact, I imagine that everybody in the house, including myself, must of necessity be suspected.’

Again he waited and again Hallick was wilfully silent. He was wondering what was coming next.

‘I am a fairly wealthy man,’ Goodman went on at last. He gave the impression that it required a desperate effort on his part to put his proposition into words. ‘And I would be quite willing to spend a very considerable sum, not necessarily to help the police, but to clear Redmayne from all suspicion. I don’t understand the methods of Scotland Yard and I feel I needn’t tell you this’—he smiled—‘and probably I am exposing my ignorance with every word I utter. But what I came to see you about is this—is it possible for me to engage a Scotland Yard detective?’

Hallick shook his head.

‘If you mean in the same way as you engage a private detective—no,’ he said. Goodman’s face fell.

‘That’s a pity. I had heard so much from Mrs Elvery—a very loquacious and trying lady, but with an extraordinary knowledge of—er—criminality, that there is a gentleman at Scotland Yard who would have been of the greatest assistance to me—Inspector Bradley.’

Hallick laughed.

‘Inspector Bradley is at the moment abroad,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ replied Mr Goodman, getting glum. ‘That is a great pity. Mrs Elvery says—’

‘I am afraid she says a great deal that is not very helpful,’ said Hallick good-humouredly. ‘No, Mr Goodman, it is impossible to oblige you and I am afraid you will have to leave the matter in our hands. I don’t think you will be a loser by that. We have no other desire than to get the truth. We are just as anxious to clear any person who is wrongfully suspected as we are to convict any person who comes under suspicion and who justifies that suspicion.’

That should have finished the matter, but Mr Goodman sat on looking very embarrassed.

‘It is a thousand pities,’ he said at last. ‘Mr Bradley is abroad? So I shan’t be able even to satisfy my curiosity. You see, Mr Hallick, the lady in question was talking so much about this superman—I suppose he is clever?’

‘Very,’ said Hallick. ‘One of the ablest men we have had at the Yard.’

‘Ah.’ Goodman nodded. ‘That makes my disappointment a little more keen. I would have liked to have seen what he looked like. When one hears so much about a person—’

Hallick looked at him for a second, then turning his back upon the visitor he scanned the wall where were hanging three framed portrait groups. One of these he lifted down from the hook and laid on the table. It was a conventional group of about thirty men sitting or standing in three rows and beneath were the words ‘H.Q. Staff.’

‘I can satisfy your curiosity,’ he said. ‘The fourth man on the left from the commissioner who is seated in the centre is Inspector Bradley.’

Mr Goodman adjusted his glasses and looked. He saw a large, florid-looking man of fifty, heavy-featured, heavily built. The last person in the group he would have picked out.

‘That’s Bradley; he isn’t much to look at, is he?’ smiled Hallick.

‘He is the livest wire in this department.’ Goodman stared at the photograph rather nervously, and then he smiled.

‘That’s very good of you, Mr Hallick,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t look like a detective, but then no detective ever does. That is the peculiar thing about them. They look rather—er—’

‘A commonplace lot, eh?’ said Hallick, his eyes twinkling. ‘So they are.’

He hung up the portrait on the wall.

‘Don’t bother about Miss Redmayne,’ he said, ‘and for heaven’s sake don’t think that the employment of a detective, private or public, on her behalf will be of the slightest use to her or her father. Innocent people have nothing to fear. Guilty people have a great deal. You have known Colonel Redmayne for a long time, I think?’

‘All my life.’

‘You know about his past?’

The old tea merchant hesitated.

‘Yes, I think I know,’ he said quietly. ‘There were one or two incidents which were a little discreditable, were there not? He told me himself. He drinks a great deal too much, which is unfortunate. I think he was drinking more heavily at the time these unfortunate incidents occurred.’

He picked up his hat and umbrella, took out his pipe with a mechanical gesture, looked at it, rubbed the bowl, and replaced it hastily.

‘You can smoke, Mr Goodman, we shan’t hang you for it,’ chuckled Hallick.

He himself walked through the long corridor and down the stairs to the entrance hall with his visitor, and saw him off the premises. He hoped and believed that he had sent Goodman away feeling a little happier, and his hope was not without reason.

CHAPTER XI

IT was four o’clock when Goodman reached the little station which is some four miles distant from Monkshall, and, declining the offer of the solitary fly, started to walk across to the village. He had gone a mile when he heard the whir of a motor behind him. He did not attempt to turn his head, and was surprised when he heard the car slacken speed and a voice hailing him. It was Ferdie Fane who sat at the wheel.

‘Hop in, brother. Why waste your own shoe leather when somebody else’s rubber tyres are available?’

The face was flushed and the eyes behind the horn-rimmed spectacles glistened. Mr Goodman feared the worst.

‘No, no, thank you. I’d rather walk,’ he said.

‘Stuff! Get in,’ scoffed Ferdie. ‘I am a better driver when I am tight than when I am sober, but I am not tight.’

Very reluctantly the tea merchant climbed into the seat beside the driver.

‘I’ll go very slowly,’ the new inmate of Monkshall went on. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

‘You think I am afraid?’ said Mr Goodman with a certain asperity.

‘I’m certain,’ said the other cheerfully. ‘Where have you been this fine day?’

‘I went up to London,’ said Mr Goodman.

‘An interesting place to go to,’ said Fane; ‘but a deuced uncomfortable place to live in.’

He was keeping his word and driving with remarkable care, Mr Goodman discovered to his relief.

He was puzzled as to where Ferdie had obtained the car and ventured upon an inquiry.

‘I hired it from a brigand in the village,’ said Ferdie. ‘Do you drive a car?’

Mr Goodman shook his head.

‘It is an easy road for a car, but a pretty poisonous one for a lorry, especially a lorry with a lot of weight in it. You know Lark Hill?’

Mr Goodman nodded.

‘A lorry was stuck there. I guess it will be there still even though the road is as dry as a bone. What it must be like to run up that hill with a heavy load on a wet and slippery night heaven knows. I bet that hill has broken more hearts than any other in the county.’

He rumbled on aimlessly about nothing until they reached the foot of the redoubtable hill where the heavy lorry was still standing disconsolate by the side of the road.

‘There she is,’ said Ferdie with the satisfaction of one who is responsible. ‘And it will take a bit of haulage to get her to the top, eh? Only a super-driver could have got her there. Only a man with a brain and imagination could have nursed her.’

Goodman smiled.

‘I didn’t know there were such things as super-brains amongst lorry drivers,’ he said. ‘But I suppose every trade, however humble, has its Napoleon.’

‘You bet,’ said Ferdie.

He brought the car up the long drive to Monkshall, paid the garage hand who was waiting to take it from him, and disappeared into the house.

Goodman looked round. In spite of his age his eyesight was remarkably good, and he noticed the slim figure walking on the far side of the ruins. Handing his umbrella to Cotton he walked across to Mary. She recognised and turned to meet him. Her father was in his study and she was going back for tea. He thought that she looked a little peaked and paler than usual.

‘Nothing has happened today?’ he asked quickly.

She shook her head.

‘Nothing. Mr Goodman, I am dreading the night.’

He patted her gently on the shoulder. ‘My dear, you ought to get away out of this. I will speak to the colonel.’

‘Please don’t,’ she said quickly. ‘Father does not want me to go. My nerves are a little on edge.’

‘Has that young man been—?’ he began.

‘No, no. You mean Mr Fane? He has been quite nice. I have only seen him for a few minutes today. He is out driving a motor car. He asked me—’

She stopped.

‘To go with him? That young man is certainly not troubled with nerves!’

‘He was quite nice,’ she said quickly; ‘only I didn’t feel like motoring. I thought it was he who had just come back, but I suppose it was you who came in the car.’ He explained the circumstances of his meeting with Ferdie Fane. She smiled for the first time that day.

‘He is—rather queer,’ she said. ‘Sometimes he is quite sensible and nice. Cotton hates him for some reason or other. He told me today that unless Mr Fane left he would.’

Mr Goodman smiled.

‘You seem to have a very troublesome household,’ he said; ‘except myself—oh, I beg his pardon, the new guest. What is his name? Mr Partridge? I hope he is behaving himself.’

She smiled faintly.

‘Yes, he’s quite charming. I don’t think I have seen him today,’ she added inconsequently.

‘You can see him now.’ Mr Goodman nodded towards the lawn.

The slim, black figure of Mr Partridge was not easily discernible against the dark background of the foliage. He was strolling slowly up and down, reading a book as he walked; but evidently his eyes and attention were not entirely for the literature which he studied, for he closed his book and walked towards them.

‘A delightful place, my dear Miss Redmayne,’ he said. ‘A most charming place! A little heaven upon earth, if I may use a sacred expression to describe terrestrial beauties.’

In the light of day, and without the softening effect of curtains, his face was not too pleasant, she thought. It was a hard face, angular, wasted. The dark eyes which surveyed her were not his least unpleasant feature. His voice was gentle enough—gentle to the point of unctuousness. Instinctively she had disliked him the first time they had met; her second impression of him did not help her to overcome her prejudice.

‘I saw you come up. Mr Fane was driving you.’ There was a gentle reproach in his tone. ‘A curious young man, Mr Fane—given, I fear, to the inordinate consumption of alcoholic beverage. “Oh,” as the prophet said, “that a man should put an enemy into his mouth to steal away his brains!”’

‘I can testify,’ interrupted Mr Goodman staunchly, ‘that Mr Fane is perfectly sober. He drove me with the greatest care and skill. I think he is a very excitable young man, and one may often do him an injustice because of his peculiar mannerisms.’

The reverend gentleman sniffed. He was obviously no lover of Fane, and sceptical of his virtues. Yet he might find no fault with Ferdie, who came into the lounge soon after tea was served, and would have sat alone if Goodman had not invited him to the little circle which included himself, Mrs Elvery and Mary. He was unusually quiet, and though many opportunities presented themselves he was neither flippant nor aggressive.

Mary watched him furtively, more than interested in the normal man. He was older than she had thought; her father had made the same discovery. There was a touch of grey in his hair, and though the face was unlined it had the setness of a man who was well past his thirties, and possibly his forties.

His voice was deep, rather brusque. She thought she detected signs of nervousness, for once or twice, when he was addressed, he started so violently as to spill from the cup of tea which he held in his hand.

She saw him after the party had dispersed. ‘You’re very subdued today, Mr Fane.’

‘Am I?’ He made an attempt at gaiety and failed. ‘It’s funny, parsons always depress me. I suppose my conscience gets to work, and there’s nothing more depressing than conscience.’

‘What have you been doing all day?’ she asked.

She told herself she was not really interested. The question was one of the commonplaces of speech that she had employed a dozen times with guests.

‘Ghost-hunting,’ he said, and when he saw her pale he was instantly penitent. ‘Sorry—terribly sorry! I was being funny.’

But he had been very much in earnest; she realised that when she was in the privacy of her own room, where she could think without distraction. Ferdie Fane had spent that day looking for the Terror. Was he himself the Terror? That she could not believe.

CHAPTER XII

NIGHT came—the dreary night with its black mysteries and its suggestive horrors.

The telephone in the deserted lounge rang shrilly. Cotton came from some mysterious recess in a hurry to answer it. He heard Hallick’s voice and winced painfully. He did not like Hallick, and wondered how soon this officer of Scotland Yard, with the resources at his disposal, would discover his own unsavoury antecedents.

‘I want to speak to Dobie,’ said Hallick’s voice.

‘Yes, sir; I’ll call him.’

There was no need to call Sergeant Dobie; he was at Cotton’s elbow.

‘Is that for me?’

Cotton passed him across the instrument.

‘Yes, sir?…’ He glanced out of the corner of his eye and saw the interested Cotton. ‘Hop it,’ he said under his breath, and Cotton withdrew reluctantly.

‘Have you found anything further?’ asked Hallick.

‘Nothing, sir. Another spent cartridge—you saw one of them before you left.’

There was a long pause at the other end of the wire, and then Hallick spoke again.

‘I’ve got an idea something may happen tonight. You have my private telephone number?…Good! Call me if anything happens that has an unusual appearance. Don’t be afraid of bringing me down on a fool’s errand. I shall have a car waiting, and I can be with you in an hour.’

Dobie hung up the receiver as Mr Goodman came ambling into the lounge. He wore his black velvet smoking jacket; his old pipe was gripped between his teeth. Dobie was on his way to the door when the tea merchant called him back.

‘You’re staying with us tonight, aren’t you, Mr Dobie?…Thank goodness for that!’

‘You’re nervous, are you, sir?’ smiled Dobie, and Goodman’s good-natured face reflected the smile.

‘Why, yes, I am a little—raw. If anybody had told me I should get jumpy I should have laughed.’

He took out his cigar case and offered it to the detective, who chose one with considerable care.

‘There’s no new clue, I suppose?’ said Goodman, making himself comfortable at the end of the settee.

‘No, sir,’ said Dobie.

Goodman chuckled.

‘If you had any you wouldn’t tell me, eh? That isn’t one of the peculiar weaknesses of Scotland Yard officers, that they wear their—I won’t say hearts, but their brains, upon their sleeves. You didn’t find the gentleman who did the shooting yesterday? I ask you because I have been in town all day, and was a little disappointed when I came back to find that apparently nothing had happened.’

‘No, we haven’t found the shooter,’ said Dobie.

Neither of them saw the door open, nor the pale face of Mr Partridge peeping through.

‘I was at Scotland Yard today,’ said Goodman; ‘and I had a chat with Mr Hallick. A nice man.’

‘Very,’ agreed Dobie heartily.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.