BHAG’S RETURN
THE girl screamed and gripped Michael’s arm.
“What is that?” she asked. “Is it the Thing that came to my—my room?”
Michael put her aside gently, and ran toward the tower. As he did so,
Bhag took a leap and dropped on the ground. For a moment he stood, his
knuckles on the ground, his malignant face turned in the direction of
the man. And then he sniffed, and, with that queer twittering noise of
his, went ambling across the downs and disappeared over a nearby crest.
Michael raced in pursuit. By the time he came into view, the great ape
was a quarter of a mile away, running at top speed, and always keeping
close to the hedges that divided the fields he had to cross. Pursuit was
useless, and the detective went slowly back to the alarmed company.
“It is only an orang-outang belonging to Sir Gregory, and perfectly
harmless,” he said. “He has been missing from the house for two or three
days.”
“He must have been hiding in the tower,” said Knebworth, and Michael
nodded. “Well, I’m darned glad he didn’t choose to come out at the
moment I was shooting,” said the director, mopping his forehead. “You
didn’t see anything of him, Adele?”
Michael guessed that the girl was pale under her yellow make-up, and the
hand she raised to her lips shook a little.
“That explains the mystery of the handcuffs,” said Knebworth.
“Did you notice them?” asked Michael quickly. “Yes, that explains the
broken link,” he said, “but it doesn’t exactly explain the butyl
chloride.”
He held the girl’s arm as he spoke, and in the warm, strong pressure she
felt something more than his sympathy.
“Were you a little frightened?”
“I was badly frightened,” she confessed. “How terrible! Was that Bhag?”
He nodded.
“That was Bhag,” he said. “I suppose he’s been hiding in the tower ever
since his disappearance. You saw nothing when you were on the top of the
wall?”
“I’m glad to say I didn’t, or I should have dropped. There are a large
number of bushes where he might have been hidden.”
Michael decided to look for himself. They put up the ladder and he
climbed to the broad top of the tower and looked down. At the base of
the stonework the ground sloped away in a manner curiously reminiscent
of the shell-holes he had seen during the war in France. The actual
floor of the tower was not visible under the hawthorn bushes which grew
thickly at the centre. He caught a glimpse of the jagged edges of rock,
the distorted branches of an old tree, and that was all.
There was ample opportunity for concealment. Possibly Bhag had hidden
there most of the time, sleeping off the effects of his labour and his
wounds; for Michael had seen something that nobody else had noticed—the
gashed skin, and the ear that had been slashed in half.
He came down the ladder again and rejoined Knebworth.
“I think that finishes our work for to-day,” said Jack dubiously. “I
smell hysteria, and it will be a long time before I can get the girls to
come up for a night picture.”
Michael drove the director back in his car, and all the way home he was
considering this strange appearance of the ape. Somebody had handcuffed
Bhag: he ought to have guessed that when he saw the torn link. No human
being could have broken those apart. And Bhag had escaped—from whom?
How? And why had he not returned to Griff Towers and to his master?
When he had dropped the director at the studio he went straight on to
Gregory’s house, and found the baronet playing clock-golf on a strip of
lawn that ran by the side of the house. The man was still heavily
bandaged, but he was making good recovery.
“Yes, Bhag is back. He returned half an hour ago. Where he has been,
heaven knows! I’ve often wished that chap could talk, but I’ve never
wished it so much as I do at this moment. Somebody had put irons on him:
I’ve just taken them off.”
“Can I see them?”
“You knew it, did you?”
“I saw him. He came out of the old tower on the hill.” Michael pointed;
from where they stood, the tower was in sight.
“Is that so? And what the devil was he doing there?”
Sir Gregory scratched his chin thoughtfully.
“He’s been away before, but mostly he goes to a shoot of mine about
three miles away, where there’s plenty of cover and no intruders. I
discovered that when a poacher saw him, and, like a fool, shot at
him—that poacher was a lucky man to escape with his life. Have you
found the body of Foss?”
The baronet had resumed his playing, and was looking at the ball at his
feet.
“No,” said Michael quietly.
“Expect to find it?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised.”
Sir Gregory stood, his hands leaning on his club, looking across the
wold.
“What’s the law in this country, suppose a man accidentally kills a
servant who tried to knife him?”
“He would have to stand his trial,” said Michael, “and a verdict of
‘justifiable homicide’ would be returned and he would be set free.”
“But suppose he didn’t reveal it? Suppose he—well, did away with the
body—buried it—and let the matter slide?”
“Then he would place himself in a remarkably dangerous position,” said
Michael. “Particularly”—he watched the man closely—“if a woman friend,
who is no longer a woman friend, happened to be a witness or had
knowledge of the act.”
Gregory Penne’s one visible eye blinked quickly, and he went that
curious purple colour which Michael had seen before when he was
agitated.
“Suppose she tried to get money out of him by threatening to tell the
police?”
“Then,” said the patient Michael, “she would go to prison for blackmail,
and possibly as an accessory to or after the fact.”
“Would she?” Sir Gregory’s voice was eager. “She would be an accessory
if she saw—him cut the man down? Mind you, this happened years ago.
There’s a Statute of Limitations, isn’t there?”
“Not for murder,” said Michael.
“Murder! Would you call that murder?” asked the other in alarm. “In
self-defence? Rot!”
Things were gradually being made light to Michael. Once Stella Mendoza
had called the man a murderer, and Michael’s nimble mind, which could
reconstruct the scene with almost unerring precision, began to grow
active. A servant, a coloured man, probably, one of his Malayan slaves,
had run amok, and Penne had killed him—possibly in self-defence—and
then had grown frightened of the consequences. He remembered Stella’s
description—“Penne is a bluffer and a coward at heart.” That was the
story in a nutshell.
“Where did you bury your unfortunate victim?” he asked coolly, and the
man started.
“Bury? What do you mean?” he blustered. “I didn’t murder or bury
anybody. I was merely putting a hypothetical case to you.”
“It sounded more real than hypothesis,” said Michael, “but I won’t press
the question.”
In truth, crimes of this character bored Michael Brixan; and, but for
the unusual and curious circumstances of the Head-Hunter’s villainies,
he would have dropped the case almost as soon as he came on to it.
There was yet another attraction, which he did not name, even to
himself. As for Sir Gregory Penne, the grossness of the man and his
hobbies, the sordid vulgarity of his amours, were more than a little
sickening. He would gladly have cut Sir Gregory out of life, only—he
was not yet sure.
“It is very curious how these questions crop up,” Penne was saying, as
he came out of his reverie. “A chap like myself, who doesn’t have much
to occupy his mind, gets on an abstract problem of that kind and never
leaves it. So she’d be an accessory after the fact, would she? That
would mean penal servitude.”
He seemed to derive a great deal of satisfaction from this thought, and
was almost amiable by the time Michael parted from him, after an
examination of the broken handcuffs. They were British and of an old
pattern.
“Is Bhag hurt very much?” asked Michael as he put them down.
“Not very much; he’s got a cut or two,” said the other calmly. He made
no attempt to disguise the happenings of that night. “He came to my
assistance, poor brute! This fellow nearly got him. In fact, poor old
Bhag was knocked out, but went after them like a brick.”
“What hat was that man wearing—the brown man?”
“Keji? I don’t know. I suppose he wore a hat, but I didn’t notice it.
Why?”
“I was merely asking,” said Michael carelessly. “Perhaps he lost it in
the caves.”
He watched the other narrowly as he spoke.
“Caves? I’ve never heard about those. What are they? Are there any caves
near by?” asked Sir Gregory innocently. “You’ve a wonderful grip of the
topography of the county, Brixan. I’ve been living here off and on for
twenty years, and I lose myself every time I go into Chichester!”