Part 2

Mr. Jesse Trasmere sat at the end of a long, and, except in his immediate vicinity, bare table. At his end it was laid and Mr. Trasmere was slowly and deliberately enjoying a lean cutlet.

The room gave no suggestion of immense wealth and paid no silent tribute either to his artistic taste or his acquaintance with China. The walls were innocent of pictures, the furniture old, European and shabby. Mr. Trasmere had bought it second-hand and had never ceased to boast of the bargain he had secured.

If there were no pictures, there were no books. Jesse Trasmere was not a reader, even of newspapers.

It was one o’clock in the afternoon and through the folds of his dressing-gown, the grey of his pyjama jacket showed open at his lean throat, for Mr. Trasmere had only just got out of bed. Presently he would dress in his rusty black suit and would be immensely wakeful until the dawn of tomorrow. He never went to bed until the grey showed in the sky, nor slept later than two o’clock in the afternoon.

At six-thirty, to the second, Walters, his valet, would assist him into his overcoat, a light one if it was warm, a heavy, fur-lined garment if it was cold, and Mr. Trasmere would go for his walk and transact whatever business he found to his hand. But before he left the house there was a certain ceremonial, the locking of doors, the banishment of the valet to his own quarters, and the disappearance of Mr. Trasmere through the door which led from his study-dining-room to the basement of the house. This done he would go out. Walters had watched him from one of the upper windows scores of times, walking slowly down the street, an unfurled umbrella in one hand, a black bag in another. At eight-thirty to the minute he was back in the house. He invariably dined out. Walters would bring him a cup of black coffee and at ten o’clock would retire to his own room, which was separated from the main building by a heavy door which Mr. Trasmere invariably locked.

Once in the early days of his service, Walters had expostulated.

“Suppose there is a fire, sir,” he complained.

“You can get through your bath-room window on to the kitchen and if you can’t drop to the ground from there, you deserve to be burnt to death,” snarled the old man. “If you don’t like the job you needn’t stay. Those are the rules of my establishment and there are no others.”

So, night after night, Walters had gone to his room and Mr. Trasmere had shuffled after him in his slippered feet, had banged and locked the door upon him and had left Walters to solitude.

This procedure was only altered when the old man was taken ill one night and was unable to reach the door. Thereafter a key was hung in a small, glass-fronted case, in very much the same way as fire-keys are hung. In the event of his illness, or of any other unexpected happening, Walters could secure the key and answer the bell above his bed-head. That necessity had not arisen.

Every morning the valet found the door unlocked. At what hour old Jesse came he could not discover, but he guessed that his employer stopped on his way to bed in the morning to perform this service.

Walters was never allowed an evening off. Two days a week he was given twenty-four hours’ leave of absence, but he had to be in the house by ten.

“And if you are a minute later, don’t come back,” said Jesse Trasmere.

As the old man’s valet, Walters had exceptional opportunities for discovering something more about his master than Mr. Trasmere would care to have known. He was for a very particular reason anxious to know what the basement contained. Once he had met a man who had been engaged in the building of the house, and learnt that there was a room below, built of concrete, but though he had, with the greatest care and discretion, searched for keys which might, during the daily absence of his employer, reveal the secret of this underground room he had never succeeded in laying his hand upon them. Mr. Trasmere had apparently only one key, a master key, which he wore round his neck at night, and in the same inaccessible position in his clothing during the daytime, and Walters’ search had been in vain, until one morning, when taking Mr. Trasmere his shaving-water, the servant found him suffering from one of those fainting fits which periodically overcame him. There was a cake of soap handy and Walters was a resourceful man.

Mr. Trasmere looked up from his plate and fixed his servant with his grey-blue eyes.

“Has anybody called this morning?”

“No, sir.”

“Have any letters come?”

“Only a few. They are on your desk, sir.”

Mr. Trasmere grunted.

“Did you put the notice in the paper that I was leaving town for two or three days?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” said Walters.

Jesse Trasmere grunted again.

“A man is coming from China, and I don’t want to see him,” he explained. He was oddly communicative at moments to his servant, but Walters, who knew his master extremely well, did not make the mistake of asking questions. “No, I don’t want to see him,” the old man chewed a tooth-pick reflectively and his unattractive face bore an expression of distaste. “He was a partner of mine, twenty, thirty years ago, a card-playing, gambling, drinking man, who gave himself airs because--well, never mind what he gave himself airs about,” he said impatiently, as though he anticipated a question which he should have known never would have been put to him. “He was that kind of man.”

He stared at the fireless grate with its red brick walls and its microscopic radiator and clicked his lips.

“If he comes, he is not to be admitted. If he asks questions, you’re not to answer. You know nothing ... about anybody. Why he’s coming at all ... well, that doesn’t matter. He’s just trash, a soakin’ dope. He had his chance, got under it and went to sleep. Phew! That fellow! He might have been rich, but he sold ... and sold. A soak! Rather drink than sit in the Empress of China’s council ... she’s dead. White trash ... nothing ... h’m.”

He glared up of a sudden and asked harshly:

“Why the hell are you listening?”

“Sorry, sir, I thought....”

“Get out!”

“Yes, sir,” said Walters with alacrity.

For half-an-hour old Jesse Trasmere sat where the valet had left him, the red end of his tooth-pick leaping up and down eccentrically. Then he got up, and, going to an old-fashioned bureau, opened the glass front.

He brought to the table a shallow bowl of white porcelain, half-filled with Indian ink. His second visit to the secretaire produced a thick pad of paper. It was unusually large and its texture of a peculiar character. From an open-work iron box he took a long-handled brush and sitting down again dipped the fine point into the ink.

Another long interval of inaction and he commenced to write, beginning at the top right-hand corner and working down the page. The grotesque and intricate Chinese characters appeared with magic rapidity. He finished one column and commenced another and so until the page was covered except for two spaces beneath the last and the penultimate line.

Laying down the brush, he felt with the slow deliberation of age, in his right-hand waistcoat pocket and pulled out an ivory cylinder as big round as a large pencil. He slipped one end out and pressed it on the paper. When he took the stamp away there appeared within a red circle two Chinese characters. This was Jesse Trasmere’s “hong”, his sign manual; a thousand merchants from Shanghai to Fi Chen would honour cheques which bore that queer mark, and those for startling sums.

When the paper was dry he folded it into a small compass and getting up, went to the empty fireplace. Outside on the stairs a deeply-interested Walters craned his neck to see what happened. From his position and through the fanlight above the door, he commanded a view of at least a third of the room. But now Jesse had passed out of sight and although he stretched himself perilously he could not see what was happening. Only, when the old man reappeared the paper was no longer in his hand.

He touched a bell and Walters came at once.

“Remember,” he rasped, “I am not at home--to anybody!”

“Very good, sir,” said Walters a little impatiently.

Mr. Trasmere had gone out that afternoon when the visitor called.

It was unfortunate for the old man’s scheme that the China mail had made a record voyage and had arrived thirty-six hours ahead of her scheduled time. Mr. Trasmere was not a reader of newspapers, or he would have learnt the fact in that morning’s paper.

Walters answered the bell after some delay, for he was busily engaged in his own room on a matter that was entirely private to himself, and when he did answer the tinkling summons it was to find a brown-faced stranger standing on the broad step. He was dressed in an old suit which did not fit him, his linen was stained and his boots were patched, but his manner would not have been out of place in Lorenzo the Magnificent.

With his hands thrust into his trousers pockets, his soiled soft hat on the back of his head, he met the enquiring and deferential gaze of Walters with a calm and insolent stare, for Mr. Brown was rather drunk.

“Well, well, my man,” he said impatiently, “why the devil do you keep me waiting on the doorstep of my friend Jesse’s house, eh?” He removed one of his hands from his pocket, possibly not the cleanest one, and tugged at his short grey beard.

“Mr.--er--Mr. Trasmere is out,” said Walters, “I will tell him you have called. What name, sir?”

“Wellington Brown is my name, good fellow,” said the stranger. “Wellington Brown from Chei-feu. I will come in and wait.”

But Walters barred the way.

“Mr. Trasmere has given me strict orders not to admit anybody unless he is in the house,” he said.

A wave of anger turned Wellington Brown’s face to a deeper red.

“He has given orders!” he spluttered. “That I am not to be admitted--I, Wellington Brown, who made his fortune, the swindling old thief! He knows I am coming!”

“Are you from China, sir?” blurted Walters.

“I have told you, menial and boot-licking yellow-plush, that I am from Chei-feu. If you are illiterate, as you appear to be, I will explain to you that Chei-feu is in China.”

“I don’t care whether Chei-feu is in China or in the moon,” said Walters obstinately. “You can’t come in, Mr. Brown! Mr. Trasmere is away--he’ll be away for a fortnight.”

“Oh, won’t I come in!”

The struggle was a brief one, for Walters was a man of powerful physique, and Wellington Brown was a man nearer to sixty than fifty. He was flung against the stone wall of the porch and might, in his bemused condition, have fallen had not Walters’ quick hand grabbed him back.

The stranger breathed noisily.

“I’ve killed men for that,” he said, jerkily, “shot ’em down like dogs! I’ll remember this, flunkey!”

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” said Walters, aggrieved that any onus for the unpleasantness should rest on him.

The stranger raised his hand haughtily.

“I will settle accounts with your master--remember that, lackey! He shall pay, by God!”

With drunken dignity, he walked unsteadily through the patch of garden that separated the house from the road, leaving Walters a puzzled man.

IV

At nine o’clock that night the bell of Tab Holland’s flat rang long and noisily.

“Who the dickens is that?” he growled.

He was in his shirt-sleeves, writing for dear life and the table was strewn with proofs of his industry.

Rex Lander came out of his bedroom.

“Your boy, I expect,” he said. “I left the lower door open for him.”

Tab shook his head.

“The office is sending for the copy at eleven,” he said. “See who it is, Babe.”

Mr. Lander grumbled. He always grumbled when he was called upon for physical effort. He opened the door and Tab, hearing a loud and unfamiliar voice, joined him. On the landing without, was a bearded, swaying figure and he was talking noisily.

“What is wrong?” asked Tab.

“Everything, sir,” hiccoughed the caller, “everything is wrong. A man, a gen’leman cannot be robbed with impunity or assaulted by me-menials with--with--” He considered a moment and added: “impunity.”

“Bring him in, the poor soused herring,” said Tab, and Mr. Wellington Brown swaggered and staggered into the sitting-room. He was abominably intoxicated.

“Wish of you young gen’lemen is Rex Lander?”

“That is my name,” said the puzzled Rex.

“I’m Wellin’ton Brown of Chei-Feu. A pensioner at the mercy of a dam’ ol’ scound’l! A pension’r! He pays me a pittance out of what he robbed me. I can tell you some’n about ol’ Trasmere.”

“Trasmere, my uncle?” asked the startled young man.

The other nodded gravely and sleepily.

“I can tell you some’n about him. I was his bookkeeper ’n sec’tary. I know! I’ll tell you some’n about him!”

“You can save your breath,” said Rex coldly. “Why have you come here?”

“Because you’re ’is nephew. Thas why! He robbed me--robbed me!” he sobbed. “Took bread out ’f the mouth of innocent child--that what! Took bread out ’f orphan’s mouth and robbed me, swin’led me out ’f my share Mancurian Trading Syn’cate, an’ then gave me remittance ’n said ‘Drink yourself to death’--thas what he said!”

“And did you?” asked Tab sardonically.

The stranger eyed him unfavourably.

“Who’s this?” he demanded.

“This is a friend of mine,” said Rex, “and you’re in his flat. And if the only business you have is to abuse my uncle, you can get out just as soon as you like.”

Mr. Wellington Brown tapped the young man’s chest with a grimy forefinger.

“Your uncle is a rascal! Get that! A low thief!”

“Better write and tell him so,” said Tab, briskly. “Just now I am engaged in churning out two yards of journalese, and you’re disturbing my thoughts.”

“Write to him!” roared Mr. Brown delightedly, “write to him! Thas good--best thing I’ve heard for years! Why--!”

“Get out!”

Babe Lander threw open the door with a crash and the visitor glared at him.

“Like uncle, like nephew,” he said, “like nephew, like lackey--I’m goin’. And let me tell you--”

The door slammed in his face.

“Phew!” said Babe, wiping his brow. “Let’s open the window and let in some fresh air!”

“Who is he?”

“Search me,” said Rex Lander. “I’ve no illusions about Uncle Jesse’s early friends. I gather that he’s been a pensioner of the old boy’s, and there is probably some truth in his charge that he was robbed. I cannot imagine uncle giving money away from charitable motives. Anyway, I’m seeing him tomorrow and I’ll ask.”

“You’ll see nothing,” said Tab. “Do you ever read the fashionable intelligence or society news? Uncle is leaving town tomorrow.”

Rex smiled.

“That is an old trick when he doesn’t want to be seen--by Joab! It is the Wellington who has put his name in the society column!”

Tab paused, pen in hand.

“Silence will now reign,” he commanded, “whilst a great journalist deals adequately with the Milligan Murder Appeal.”

Rex looked at him, admiringly.

“How you can stick your nose at the grindstone is a source of wonder to me,” he said. “I couldn’t--”

“Shut up!” snapped Tab, and the desirable silence was his. He finished the last page at eleven, sent off his copy by a punctual messenger, then filling his pipe, stretched himself luxuriously in his mission chair.

“Now I’m a free man until Monday afternoon--”

The hall telephone signalled at that moment and he got up with a groan.

“Boast not!” he growled. “That is the office or I’m a saint!”

It was the office, as he had so intelligently foreseen. He snapped a few words at the transmitter and came back to the room. And Tab was very voluble.

A Polish gentleman concerned in certain frauds on insurance companies had been arrested, escaped again, and having barricaded himself in his house, was keeping the police at bay with the aid of boiling water and a large axe.

“Jacko is enthusiastic about it,” said the savage Tab, speaking thus disrespectfully of his city editor, “says it is real drama--I told him to send the dramatic critic. Gosh--I did his job the other night.”

“Going out?” asked Rex with mild interest.

“Of course I’m going out, you thick-headed jibberer!” said the other unkindly as he struggled into the collar he had discarded.

“I thought all that sort of stuff was invented in the office,” said the young architect monstrously. “Personally I never believe what I read in newspapers.”

But Tab had gone.

At midnight he joined a little group of police officers that stood at safe range from the besieged house, whose demented occupant had found a shot-gun. Tab was with them until the door of the house was stormed and the defender borne down and clubbed to a state of placidity.

At two o’clock in the morning, he and Carver, the chief of the detectives engaged in the case, adjourned to the police mess and had supper. It was half-past three and the streets were lit by the ghostly light of dawn, when he started to walk home.

Passing through Park Street, he heard the whirr of wheels and a motor-car flew past him. It had gone a hundred yards when there came to him the explosion of a burst tire. He saw the car swerve and stop. A woman alighted and examined the damage. Apparently she was alone, for he saw her open the tool-box on the running-board, and take out a jack. He hastened his footsteps and crossed to the middle of the road. The only other person in sight was a cyclist down the road who had dismounted and was examining his wheel.

“Can I be of any assistance?” asked Tab.

The woman started and turned.

“Miss Ardfern!” he said in astonishment.

For a second she seemed uncomfortable and then with a quick smile:

“It is Mr. Tab! Please forgive the familiarity, I cannot remember your other name.”

“Don’t try,” he said, taking the jack from her hands, “but if you are very anxious to remember, I am called Holland.”

She said nothing whilst he was raising the car. When he was knocking the torn wheel free, she said:

“I am out rather late, I have been to a party.”

There was light enough for him to see that she was dressed very plainly and that the shoes she wore were heavy and serviceable. He would have gone farther and said that she was dressed poorly. Inside the car on the seat by her side was a square black case, smaller but deeper than a suit-case. Perhaps she had changed her clothes--but for all their surprising agility in this direction, actresses do not change their clothes to go home from a party.

“I have been to a party too,” he said, jerking off the wheel and rolling it to the front of the car, “a surprise party with fireworks.”

“A dance?”

Tab smiled to himself.

“I only danced once,” he said, “I saw the gentleman taking aim with the shot-gun and danced right merrily yo ho!”

He heard the quick intake of her breath.

“Oh, yes, it was the Pole. We heard the shots and I knew that he had taken refuge in his house before I left the theatre.”

The wheel was replaced now, the tools returned and the old wheel strapped to the car.

“That is O. K.,” said Tab stepping back. “Oh no, it was nothing,” he said hastily as she began to thank him, “nothing at all.”

She did not offer to drive him home. He rather hoped that she would; indeed, her method of going was a little precipitate, and she was out of sight before he realized that she was gone.

What on earth was she doing at that time in the morning he wondered? A party she had said, but again it occurred to him that fashionable actresses did not go to parties in that kind of outfit.

Rex was awake when he reached home and came out to him. Strangely enough, although they discussed the happenings of the night, Tab did not mention his meeting with Ursula Ardfern.

V

“Ursula Ardfern,” Tab woke with the words on his lips. The hour was eleven and Rex had been out and was back again.

“L’ami de mon oncle has been--did you hear him?” asked Rex, stopping his towel-encompassed companion on his way to the bath-room.

“Who--Bonaparte?”

“Wellington is his name, I believe. Yes, he came rather subdued and apologetic, but full of horrific threats toward Uncle Jesse. I turned him out.”

“Why did he come?”

Rex Lander shook his head.

“Heaven knows! Unless it was that he simply had to find somebody who knew uncle well enough to be interested in hearing him curse the old man. I’ve persuaded him to leave town until the end of next week. But I must say that I was impressed by the brute’s threats. He says he will kill Uncle Jesse unless he makes reparation.”

“Twiff!” said Tab contemptuously and went to his tub. Over his breakfast (Rex had had his two hours before) he returned to the subject of Mr. Jesse Trasmere and his enemy.

“When a man soaks he’s dangerous,” he said. “There isn’t any such thing as a harmless drunkard, any more than there is a harmless lunatic. Carver and I had a talk on the matter early this morning and he agreed. That man is certainly intelligent, which is more than you can say of the majority of detectives. Not that it is their faults, poor fellows; they are the victims of a system which calls for a sixty-nine inch brain.”

“Eh?”

“A sixty-nine inch brain,” explained Tab, and there was really no excuse for Babe Lander to be puzzled, for Tab was on his favorite topic, “is the brain of a man who is chosen for the subtle business of criminal investigation, not because he is clever, or shrewd or has a knowledge of the world, but because he stands sixty-nine inches in his stockings and has a chest expansion to thirty-eight. Funny, isn’t it? And yet detectives are chosen that way. They have to strip hard, very hard, but they need not think very hard. Do you ever realize that Napoleon and Julius Cæsar, to mention only two bright lads, could never have got into the police force?”

“It hasn’t struck me before,” admitted Rex. “But I’ve never had any doubt as to the size of your brain, Tab.”

There were exactly seventy inches of Tab, though he did not look so tall, having thickness and breadth to his shoulders. He had a habit of stooping, which made him seem round-shouldered. This trick came from pounding a typewriter or crouching over a desk which was just a little too low for him. He was fresh-coloured, but brown rather than pink. His face was finer drawn than is usual in a man of his build, his eyes deep-set and steadfastly grey. When he spoke he drawled a little. Those who knew him very well indeed detected one imperfection of speech. He could not say “very”--it was “verthy” but spoken so quickly that only the trained and acquainted ear could detect the lisp.

He came to journalism from one of the Universities bringing no particular reputation for learning, but universally honoured as the best three-quarter back of his time. Without being rich he was comfortably placed and as he was one of those fortunates who had innumerable maiden-aunts he received on an average one legacy a year, though he had studiously neglected them because of their possessions.

It would be more true to say that Tab leapt into journalism, and that particular department of journalism which he found most fascinating, when he dived off the end of a river pier and rescued Jasper Dorgon, the defaulting banker who had tried to commit suicide, and had extracted an exclusive story from the banker whilst both sat in a state of nudity before a night watchman’s fire watching their clothes dry.

“Let it strike you now, Babe,” he said. “The sixty-ninth inch brain, the generally accepted theory that anything under the sixty-nine inch level is solid ivory is the theory that keeps Lew Vann and old Joe Haspinell and similar crook acquaintances of mine dining in the Grand Criterion when they ought to be atoning for their sins in the Cold Stone Jug. But Carver is a good man. He thinks, though it is against regulations.”

“What does he think about Wellington?”

“Didn’t tell him,” said Tab. “You ought to warn your uncle.”

“I’ll see him today,” nodded Rex.