Part 10

“His uncle, the late Mr. Trasmere, did not like him. He told me once that Mr. Rex was extravagant and lazy. On seeing Mr. Rex at the gate my heart went down into my boots and I thought that he must immediately detect that something was wrong. He asked me if his uncle was ill and that gave me a moment to pull myself together, and I told him that I was going on a very urgent errand and running into the street, I had the good luck to find a taxi-cab which drove me to the Central Station. I did not, however, leave town, but made my way to a room which I had once occupied in a house which I knew in Reed Street, where I have been in hiding ever since. I did not see Mr. Trasmere again after lunch. He did not come out to enquire who had called when the telegram arrived; there were frequent callers, tradesmen and others, and I never reported to him unless there was something important or unless letters or telegrams came for him. I have never been in the vault or in the passage leading to the vault, nor have I at any time owned a revolver.

“I make this statement voluntarily, without any pressure, and have answered the questions which Inspector Carver has put to me, without any suggestion on his part as to the way they should be answered.”

XX

“There is the statement,” said Carver. “Not a line must be used; only the fact that the statement has been made can be published. What do you think of it?”

“It reads fairly honest to me,” said Tab, and the inspector nodded.

“It does to me also. I never had the slightest doubt in my mind that Walters, or Felling, was innocent. The references to Miss Ardfern’s visits are a little obscure, and in one sense rather remarkable, particularly the old man’s reference to the pin.”

“You are thinking of the pin we found in the corridor?” said Tab quickly.

Carver laughed softly.

“I was and I wasn’t,” he said. “The pin of which the old man spoke was obviously one of the jewels which were in the box, and as obviously he was taking an inventory of the jewel-case to see that everything was there.”

Tab was silent for a while.

“You mean that the jewels really belonged to Trasmere, that he loaned them to the girl and that she had to return them every night?” he asked quietly.

“There is no other explanation,” said Carver. “There is no other explanation, either, for her secretarial activities. Trasmere was in a score of enterprises and I have no doubt that he was the man who put up the money for Ursula Ardfern’s season. He was a shrewd old boy and probably had seen her acting. My own impression is that he made a fortune out of this girl--”

“But why should she, a successful actress, consent to act as his midnight secretary? Why should she go on as though she were a slave to this man, instead of being, if your theory is correct, an earner of big money?”

Carver looked at him steadily.

“Because he knew something about Miss Ardfern, something that she did not wish should be known,” he said gently. “I am not suggesting it is anything discreditable to her,” he went on discreetly, detecting the cloud gathering on Tab’s face. “Some day she’ll tell us all about it I daresay. At present, it is unimportant.”

He got up from his desk--they were talking in his office--and stretched himself.

“This concludes the day’s entertainment, gentlemen,” he said, “and if you are dissatisfied, your money will be returned to you at the doors.”

There were moments when Carver could be facetious.

“No, I’m not going home. I have a couple of hours’ work here. I shan’t be disturbed. Happily the station telephone is out of order. A tree fell across a line somewhere between here and the exchange. Remember, Tab, only the briefest notes of Walters’ arrest. Nothing about the charge, not a single item of his statement, beyond the fact that he has made one.”

Happily Jacques had gone home, or the news editor would have exploded at the meagre details with which Tab supplied his newspaper that night.

He reached home at half-past eleven with a queer little ache at his heart. What was Ursula Ardfern’s secret? Why the mystery? Why must her mystery be interwoven with the greater and the more sordid mystery of the old man’s death?

As he pushed open the door he saw a telegram in the box which was common to the whole of the flats, once the entrance door was closed. It was for him and he tore open the envelope and unfolded its flimsy contents. It was handed in at Naples and was from Rex.

“Going on to Egypt. Quite recovered. Shall be back in a month.”

He smiled to himself and hoped that “quite recovered” referred to his youthful infatuation as well as his disordered nerves. He paused outside the door of his flat to find his key and as he did so, he thought he heard a sound. It may have come from one of the flats above, but he did not give it any importance, and inserting the key, he caught a momentary flash of light through the transom of his sitting-room. It was as if at the second he had opened the door the lights in the sitting-room had been extinguished.

It must have been an optical delusion, he thought, but the memory of the burglar came to him as he closed the door slowly behind him. For a second he hesitated, and then pushed open the closed door of the sitting-room. The first thing he noticed was that all the blinds were down, and he had left them up. He heard the sound of heavy breathing.

“Who’s there?” he asked and then reached out his hand for the switch.

Before his fingers could close upon the lever something struck him. He felt no pain, was conscious only of a terrific shock that brought him to his knees, incapable of thought or movement. Somebody pushed past him in the darkness. There was a slam of the flat door, a quick patter of feet on the stairs, and the street-door slammed.

Still Tab remained on his hands and knees, held there by his own invincible will. There was a trickle of warm blood running over his forehead and into the corner of his eye and the subsequent smart of it brought him at last to his senses. He got unsteadily to his feet and put on the lights.

It was a chair that had struck him; it lay overturned near the door. Tab felt gingerly at his forehead and then went in search of a mirror. The injury was a very slight one, the wound being superficial. He guessed that the chair must have caught against the wall and eased the blow, for one of the legs was broken and there was a long scratch on the wall. Mechanically he bathed his face, put a rough dressing on his forehead and then went back to the sitting-room to get a better idea of the confusion which reigned there, than he had been able to appreciate at first. Every drawer in his desk had been emptied. One which he kept locked and which contained his more private papers, had been forcibly broken open and the contents were scattered, some on the floor, a few on the desk. A little bureau by the wall had been treated with the same lack of courtesy and the floor was littered with its contents.

He found the same in his bedroom; every drawer rummaged except his wardrobe, every box opened.

In Rex’s room the only thing that had been touched was the second trunk that the burglar had left on his previous visit. This was on the bed, opened, and its contents had been thrown around in confusion.

Tab’s gold watch and chain, which he had inadvertently left behind, was untouched. His cash-box had been wrenched open, but though the money had been emptied out, not a cent had been taken. Then he made a curious discovery. In one of the drawers of his desk he had a portfolio of photographs of himself which had been made a year before at the request of his many maiden-aunts. This had been removed and every photograph torn into four pieces. He found the debris with the other papers. It was the only wanton damage that the burglar had done. For what had he been searching? Tab puzzled his brains to remember the possession of something which might interest an outsider. What did Rex own that was worth all the trouble that this unknown visitor had taken?

He got on to the telephone and tried to reach Carver, and then remembered Carver had told him the station ’phone was out of order.

On the stroke of midnight Inspector Carver was tidying his desk, preparatory to leaving, when a dishevelled and damaged Tab made his appearance.

“Hullo,” said Carver, “been fighting?”

“The other fellow did the fighting,” said Tab. “Carver, I am going to sue the man who supplied us with our furniture. He said that the chairs were mahogany and they are only pine.”

“Sit down,” commanded the detective. “You seem to be a little out of your mind,” and then quickly, “you haven’t had another visit from your burglar?”

Tab nodded.

“And what is more, I found him at home,” he said grimly, and related all that had happened in the flat.

“I’ll come along and see the damage, though I don’t think it will help us much,” said Carver slowly. “So he tore up your photographs, did he? That is rather interesting.”

“I guess he didn’t like me,” said Tab. “I have been trying to remember all the crooks I have annoyed, Carver. It can’t be young Harry Bolton, because he must be still in prison and it can’t be Lew Sorki because, if I remember rightly, he got religion in prison and he is now conducting a mission to the submerged. They are the only two people who expressed their intention of cutting short my young life.”

“It is neither of these.” Carver was emphatic on this point. “Tell me again, Tab, from the moment you opened the door to the moment you lost interest in the proceedings, just what happened. First, did you close the flat door behind you?”

“Yes,” said Tab surprised.

“And then you went into the sitting-room and he caught you a whack with the chair? There were no lights?”

“None whatever.”

“No light on the landing outside the flat door?” asked Carver eagerly.

“None.”

“And he just rushed past you and was gone. You remember that very well, I suppose, although you were knocked out?”

“I remember his going and hearing the door slam,” said Tab wondering.

Carver was making notes on his blotting pad in that strange system of shorthand which nobody understood but Carver.

“Now Tab, think very carefully before you reply, was there anything in Lander’s box, any reference to his uncle, any document respecting his uncle, anything, indeed, that had to do, even remotely, with Trasmere, in that box of Lander’s? Because I am perfectly certain that there was the objective and that the search of your room was an after-thought. In fact, it is proved by the circumstances of the thief in your room when you arrived--he had evidently left that search to the last.”

Tab concentrated his mind upon Rex and all Rex’s belongings.

“No,” he confessed. “I can’t remember anything.”

Carver nodded.

“Very good,” he said rising, “and now we’ll go along and look at this trouble of yours. When did it happen?”

“About half-an-hour ago; maybe a little more,” he looked up at the clock, “yes, it was nearer an hour ago. I tried to get you on the ’phone--”

“The machine is out of order, it always is out of order,” said the fatalistic Carver, “when there is real trouble around. In fact, if I obeyed my impulse, I should double the men on duty every time that ’phone falls down.”

They were in front of the station, and the cab that Carver had called was pulling up to the curb when another cab came dashing toward them, swerved to the side-walk and stopped dead. Out of the cab’s interior tumbled a man who was sketchily attired, and whose pyjama coat showed where his shirt should have been. Mr. Stott had arrayed himself hurriedly and for once in his life, was careless of appearance.

He fell almost into Carver’s arms and his mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. When he did speak his voice was a squeak.

“They’re at it again! They’re at it again!” he piped.

XXI

Mr. John Stott had discovered to his gratification that the association of his name with the Trasmere case had enhanced, rather than detracted from his social standing. It is true that the newspapers, having long ceased to take the slightest interest in the murder, seemed oblivious to the part he had played, or the startling discovery which he had to his credit, but a more important circle of public opinion, that circle which met daily at Toby’s and discussed an expensive lunch and such matters of public interest as deserved attention, had applauded Mr. Stott’s decision to place in the hands of the police authorities the information which, up to that moment, had been confined to some twenty commercial gentlemen, their wives, their wives’ families, their servants, the servants of their wives’ families, the families of the servants, to say nothing of personal friends of all and each, their servants and attachments.

“So far as I am concerned, the matter is ended,” said Mr. Stott one day at Toby’s. “The police have behaved very shabbily. I have neither been thanked by the Commissioners nor their underlings.”

It is true that Mr. Stott had never expected thanks; it is true that he had expected a long term of imprisonment and had shivered every time the door bell rang, lest the callers be minions of the law, armed with warrants for his arrest. It is true that he had dismissed and reëngaged Eline at least twice a day, for having dragged him into this unenviable position. He had expected, at least, the severest censure and condemnation from all those who had to do with the administration of the law, but he had never expected a vote of thanks.

“I told this fellow Carver,” said Mr. Stott, “and Carver, I might say, in passing, is one of those thick-headed, unimaginative men that have made the police force what it is, I told him, ‘Don’t ever expect any further information from me. If you do, you will be disappointed.’”

“What did Carver say?” asked one of his fascinated audience.

Mr. Stott shrugged his broad shoulders.

“What could Carver say?” he asked enigmatically, and nobody seemed to be able to supply an answer on the spur of the moment.

“In my opinion,” said Mr. Stott impressively, “if a business man had had charge of this case, we should have had the murderer by the heels and executed by this time!”

Here every one of the business men at the long table was in complete agreement. They shared a common faith that a man who can make money by selling sugar, or can acquire a competence by trading in margins, must necessarily be the best type of mind to tackle every problem, however obscure. It was their wont to shake their heads sadly at every mistake the administration made, and hypothesize the same situation if business men had been in control. It was accepted without dispute, that no government or government department came up to the business man’s standard of requirements.

“They had their chance and they missed it,” said Mr. Stott, “when the Chinaman and the woman were in the house and I was holding them--well I was practically holding them--the police could have caught the whole gang if they had arrived in time. As it was, they allowed them to slip through their fingers. I hate to say so, though it has struck me since, that probably the police were in it!”

“In the house?” asked a foolish man.

“No,” snapped Mr. Stott, “in the plot, man! Anyway I’ve washed my hands of the whole affair.”

Mr. Stott was in the habit of washing his hands of the whole affair twice a day, once at lunch and once after dinner. He washed his hands that night to his placid wife, not only of the Trasmere case, but of Eline’s tooth, and he washed them with such effect on Eline herself, that she reluctantly agreed to have the offending ivory extracted on the following morning.

She did this after making the most searching enquiries as to whether people told their most intimate secrets when they were under the effects of anæsthesis.

Mr. Stott went up to bed at eleven o’clock, had a bath and got into his pyjamas. The night was warm--indeed it was oppressively hot, and bed was very uninviting. He opened the French window of his room and stepping out on to the small balcony, he seated himself in a cane chair which occupied exactly one half of the balcony space, and enjoyed what little breeze there was. His partner having gone to bed to sleep, was behaving according to plan. Mr. Stott remained contemplating the deserted street and then crept downstairs and brought back his cigar-case.

He smoked enjoyably for half-an-hour, watched the Manders return from the theatre and duly noted that Mr. Trammin, who lived three doors away from him, returned home in a state of intoxication and offered to fight the cabman for his fare. He saw old Pursuer’s car stop at “Flemington” and when these interests were exhausted, and his cigar was nearly through, he saw two men walking slowly toward him along the opposite side-walk. He failed to identify them and had ceased to be interested in their movements, when they turned into the gateway of Mayfield.

Instantly Mr. Stott was alert. They might be police officers, only--the sound of a large voice came to him.

“Let me tell you, my dear fellow, that Wellington Brown is a good friend and a bad enemy!”

Mr. Stott nearly fainted. Wellington Brown! The man whose portrait had been in the newspapers; the man for whom the police were searching.

The other said something in a voice which did not reach the balcony.

“I am not threatening,” said the strident voice of Wellington Brown.

They walked up the steps to the door of Mayfield and disappeared from view.

Mr. Stott rose with knees that trembled. In the shortest space of time he was at the telephone. Carver’s number he knew, he had been on to him several times in connection with the unfortunate little disagreement he had had with the police. But Carver’s number was out of order. The operator could not get any reply she said.

Strong as was Mr. Stott’s repugnance to assist the police in the lawful execution of their duty, he dashed back to his bedroom, pulled on his trousers over his pyjama-legs and with trembling fingers buttoned himself up. There was no time to get into boots and it was in his bedroom slippers that he shuffled down the street in search of a cab, looking back fearfully from time to time lest the mysterious men who had entered Mayfield should be upon his track with murder in their hearts.

After an unconscionable time a taxi-cab came past and Mr. Stott flung himself into the interior.

“Central police station,” he gasped, “quick! Double fare if you get me there in ten minutes.”

He knew that was the usual thing to say in such circumstances. As even a slow taxi could have covered the distance in five, Mr. Stott’s instructions were misplaced.

“They’re at it again,” he quavered as he fell into Carver’s arms.

XXII

“At what again?” asked Carver quickly.

“Mayfield,” gurgled Mr. Stott, “two men!”

“Two men have gone into Mayfield? When?”

“I don’t know how long ago I saw them. One was Brown.”

“Wellington Brown? Are you sure?”

“I heard him speak,” said the agitated Mr. Stott, “I’ll swear to it in a court of law. I was sitting on the balcony smoking a cigar, a box which a friend of mine has given to me--perhaps you know Morrison of the Morrison Gold Corporation--”

But Carver had gone back into the station with a rush, to reappear almost immediately.

He bundled Tab into a taxi and shot a direction at the driver.

“I had to go back to get our own key,” he said, “and--” he took something from his coat pocket and Tab heard the snick of an automatic jacket being pulled back. “Unless this man is suffering from delusions, we are going to see developments tonight, Tab.”

He looked back through the peep-hole at the back of the cab. The other taxi was following at a distance.

“I brought out every available man,” he said. “I wonder if they found room for Stott? Anyway he can walk,” he added cruelly.

Mayfield was in darkness when the cab drove up to the gate. Carver sprang out, ran across the concrete yard and up the steps to the door with Tab at his heels. He flashed a pocket lamp upon the keyhole, flung the door wide open, as the second cab drew up at the gate to discharge half-a-dozen police officers in various stages of attire.

The hall was in darkness, but they had the lights on in a second and Carver ran into the sitting-room. The door leading to the vault was open.

“Oh!” said Carver thoughtfully.

He came back to give instructions to his posse and then, followed by Tab, he went down the stone steps, and along the corridor. The door of the vault was closed and locked and the room was unlighted. Carver felt in his pocket, took out the duplicate key, that upon which Walters had worked so industriously and snapped back the lock. At touch from his thumb and the vault was flooded with light.

He paused in the open doorway and looked. Wellington Brown was lying face downward in the centre of the room, blood was flowing from under him, _and on the table, in the exact centre, was the key of the vault_!

Carver picked it up. There was no doubt about it; the old blood-stain was still upon it and he looked blankly at his companion.

“Well, what do you think of that, Tab,” he asked in a hushed voice.

Tab did not reply. He was standing just inside the doorway looking down at his feet, and between his feet was something, the sight of which deprived him of speech. He stooped slowly and picked it up, laying it upon the palm of his hand.

“Another new pin!” said the detective thoughtfully. “This time, inside!”

A thorough search of the house failed to discover the second man. He must have made his escape just before the police arrived, for the smoke of the pistol’s explosion still hung in the vaulted roof.

When the doctors came and the body was moved Tab spoke what was in his mind.

“Carver, I have been a fool,” he said quietly. “We ought to have been able to prevent this. We should have done it if I had only remembered.”

“What?” asked Carver, arousing himself from thoughts which did not seem to be particularly pleasant, to judge from his expression.

“That key was in Rex’s box. I remember now that he mentioned casually that he put it in his trunk before he went away.”

Carver nodded.

“I guessed that,” he said. “Probably we both arrived at that solution when we saw the key on the table. The burglary of your flat is, of course, explained. He came the first time for the key and was disturbed by the tenant from the flat beneath and got away before it had been found. Tonight, the need being urgent, he took a chance, found the key, and--” he shrugged. “How did the key get on the table? The door was locked both sides, yet there is the key--and the new pin,” he added half to himself, “the second new pin.”

He got up and stretched himself and began to pace up and down old Trasmere’s sitting-room.

“No weapon, nothing but the body--and the new pin,” he mused, half to himself. “This lets out friend Walters, of course; there isn’t a shadow of evidence against him after this second murder. We can hold him for theft on his own confession--but no more. Tab, I am going down to the vault; I don’t want you to come with me. There are one or two things that I want to be certain about.”

He was gone half-an-hour and Tab, whose head was throbbing, was glad to see him when he returned.

Carver said nothing, walked out into the hall where the police constable was sitting.

“Nobody is to be allowed into this house unless they are accompanied by me,” he said.

He drove Tab to Doughty Street and went up to see the damage that the burglar had done. But he was less interested in the condition of Rex Lander’s wardrobe than he was in the torn photographs. He held their borders to the light.

“No finger-prints, he wore gloves, of course. I wondered if--yes, ah, here it is.” He pieced together a torn photograph; scrawled on the face was a heavy black cross. “Yes, I expected that,” he said to himself.