The Confession
At three minutes to ten the following night, a closed car drove
slowly into Steyne Square and came to a halt at the corner of Clarges
Street. A few minutes later Thalia Drummond walked into the square
from the other end. She wore a long black cloak, and the little hat
upon her head was held in its position by a thick veil knotted under
her chin.
Without a second’s hesitation she opened the door of the car and
stepped in. It was in complete darkness, but she could see the figure
of the driver indistinctly. He did not turn his head, nor did he
attempt to start the car, although she felt the vibration of the
engines beneath her feet.
“You were charged at the Marylebone Police Court yesterday morning
with theft,” said the driver without preamble. “Yesterday afternoon
you inserted an advertisement, describing yourself as a newly-arrived
colonial, your intention being to find another situation, where you
could continue your career of petty pilfering.”
“This is very interesting,” said Thalia without a tremor of voice,
“but you did not bring me here to give me my past history. When I had
your letter I guessed that you thought I would be a very useful
assistant. But there is one question I want to ask you.”
“If I wish to reply I shall,” was the uncompromising answer.
“I realise that,” said Thalia, with a faint smile in the darkness.
“Suppose I had communicated with the police and I had come here
attended by Mr. Parr and the clever Mr. Derrick Yale?”
“You would have been lying on the pavement dead by now,” was the calm
announcement. “Miss Drummond, I am going to put easy money in your way
and find you a very excellent job. I do not even mind if you indulge
in your eccentricity in your spare time, but your principal task will
be to serve me. You understand?”
She nodded, and then realising he could not see her, she said:
“Yes.”
“You will be well paid for everything you do; I shall always be on
hand to help you--or to punish you if you attempt to betray me,” he
added. “Do you understand?”
“Perfectly,” she replied.
“Your job will be a very simple one,” went on the unknown driver. “You
will present yourself at Brabazon’s Bank to-morrow. Brabazon is in
need of a secretary.”
“But will he employ me?” she interrupted. “Must I go in another name?”
“Go in your own name,” said the man impatiently. “Don’t interrupt. I
will pay you two hundred pounds for your services. Here is the money.”
He thrust two notes over his shoulder and she took them.
Her hand accidentally touched his shoulder, and she felt something
hard beneath his fleecy coat.
“A bullet-proof waistcoat,” she noted mentally, and then aloud: “What
am I to say to Mr. Brabazon about my earlier experience?”
“It will be unnecessary to say anything, or do anything. You will
receive your instructions from time to time. That is all,” he added
shortly.
A few minutes later Thalia Drummond sat in the corner of the taxi-cab
which was taking her back to Lexington Street. Behind her, at
intervals, came another taxi-cab which slowed when hers did, but never
overtook her, not even when she descended at the corner of the street
where her lodgings were situated. And when she turned the key of her
street door, Inspector Parr was only a dozen paces from her. If she
knew that she was being shadowed, she made no sign.
Parr only waited for a few minutes, watching the house from the
opposite side of the roadway, and then, as her light appeared in the
upper window, he turned and walked thoughtfully back to the cab which
had brought him so far eastward.
He had opened the door of the cab and was stepping in, when somebody
passed him on the side-walk; somebody who was walking briskly with his
collar turned up, but Inspector Parr knew him.
“Flush,” he called sharply, and the man turned round on his heel.
He was a little dark, thin-faced, lithe man, at the sight of the
Inspector his jaw dropped.
“Why--why, Mr. Parr,” he said, with ill-affected geniality, “whoever
thought of seeing you in this part of the world?”
“I want a little talk with you, Flush. Will you walk along with me?”
It was an ominous invitation, which Mr. “Flush” had heard before.
“You haven’t got anything against me, Mr. Parr?” he said loudly.
“Nothing,” admitted Parr. “Besides, you’re going straight now. I seem
to remember you telling me that the day you came out of prison.”
“That’s right,” said “Flush” Barnet, heaving a sigh of relief. “Going
straight, working for my living, and engaged to be married.”
“You don’t tell me?” said the stout Mr. Parr with well-simulated
astonishment. “And is it Bella or Milly?”
“It is Milly,” said “Flush,” inwardly cursing the excellent memory of
the police inspector. “She’s going straight, too. She’s got a job at
one of the shops.”
“At Brabazon’s Bank, to be exact,” said the inspector, and then turned
as though some thought had arrested him. “I wonder,” he muttered, “I
wonder if that is it?”
“She’s a perfect young lady, is Milly,” Mr. “Flush” hastened to
explain. “Honest as the day, wouldn’t swipe a clock, not if her life
depended on it. I don’t want you to think she is bad, Mr. Parr,
because she’s not. We’re both living what I might term an honest
life.”
Parr’s placid face wrinkled in a smile.
“That’s grand news you’re telling me, ‘Flush.’ Where is Milly to be
found in these days?”
“She’s living in diggings on the other side of the river,” said
“Flush” reluctantly. “You’re not going to rake up old scandals, are
you, Mr. Parr?”
“Heaven forbid,” said Inspector Parr piously. “No, I’d like to have a
talk with her. Perhaps----” he hesitated, “anyway, it can wait. It was
rather providential meeting you, ‘Flush.’”
But “Flush” did not share that view, even though he expressed a faint
acquiescence.
“So that’s it,” said Inspector Parr to himself, but he did not express
the nature of his suspicions, even when he met Derrick Yale at his
club half-an-hour later. And it was a further curious fact, that
though they touched every aspect of the Crimson Circle mystery in the
long conversation which followed, never once did Mr. Parr mention
Thalia Drummond’s interview, which, if he had not seen, he had at
least guessed.
The two men left early the next morning for the little country town
where one Ambrose Sibly, described as an able-seaman, was held on a
charge of murder. At his own earnest request, Jack Beardmore was
allowed to accompany them, though he was not present at the interview
between the two detectives and the sullen man who had slain his
father.
A brawny, unshaven fellow, half Scottish, half Swede, Sibly proved to
be. He could neither read nor write, and had been in the hands of the
police before. This much Parr had discovered from a reference of his
fingerprints.
At first he was not inclined to commit himself, and it was rather
Derrick Yale’s skilful cross-examination, than Inspector Parr’s
efforts, which produced the confession.
“Yes, I did it all right,” he said at last.
They were seated in the cell with an official shorthand-writer taking
a note of his statement.
“You’ve got me proper, but you wouldn’t have got me if I hadn’t been
drunk. And whilst I’m confessing, I might as well own up that I killed
Harry Hobbs. He was a shipmate of mine on the _Oritianga_ in
1912--they can only hang me once. Killed him and chucked his body
overboard, I did, over the question of a woman that we met at Newport
News, which is in America. I’ll tell you how this happened, gentlemen.
I lost my ship about a month ago, and was stranded at the Sailors’
Home at Wapping. I got chucked out of there for being drunk, and on
top of that I was locked up and got seven days’ imprisonment. If the
old fool had only given me a month I shouldn’t have been here. One
night after I came out of prison I was walking through the East End,
down on my luck and starving for a drink, and feeling properly
miserable. To make it worse, I had the toothache----”
Parr met Derrick Yale’s eyes, and Derrick smiled faintly.
“I was loafing along the edge of the pavement looking for cigarette
ends, and thinking of nothing except where I could get a bit of food
and a night’s lodging. It was beginning to rain, too, and it looked as
though I was going to have another night on the streets, when I heard
a voice say, almost in my ear, ‘Jump in.’ I looked round. A motor-car
was standing by the side of the roadway. I couldn’t believe my ears.
Presently the man in the car said ‘Jump in. It’s you I mean!’ and he
mentioned my name. We drove along for a while without his saying
anything, and I noticed that he kept clear of all the streets where
the big lights were.
“After a bit he stopped the car, and began to tell me who I was. I can
assure you I was surprised. He knew the whole of my history. He even
knew about Harry Hobbs--I was tried for that killing and
acquitted--and then he asked me if I’d like to earn a hundred pounds.
I told him I would, and he said there was an old gentleman in the
country who had done him a lot of harm, and he wanted him ‘outed.’ I
didn’t want to take the job on for some time, but he gave me such a
lot of talk about how he could get me hung for Hobbs’s murder, and how
it was safe, and he’d give me a bicycle to get away on, and at last I
agreed.
“He picked me up by arrangement a week later in Steyne Square. Then he
gave me all the final particulars. I got down to Beardmore’s place
soon after it was dark, and hid in the wood. He told me Mr. Beardmore
generally walked through the wood every morning, and that I was to
make myself comfortable for the night. I hadn’t been in the wood an
hour when I had a fright. I heard somebody moving. I think it must
have been a game-keeper. He was a big fellow, and I only just got a
glimpse of him.
“And I think that’s about all, gentlemen, except that the next morning
the old fellow came in the wood and I shot him. I don’t remember much
about it, for I was drunk at the time, having taken a bottle of whisky
into the wood with me. But I was sober enough to get on to the
bicycle, and I rode off. And I should have got away altogether, if it
hadn’t been for the booze.”
“And that is all?” asked Parr, when the confession had been read over
and the man had affixed a rough cross.
“That’s all, guv’nor,” said the sailor.
“And you don’t know who it was who employed you?”
“Not the faintest idea,” said the other cheerfully. “There’s one thing
about him, though, I could tell you,” he said after a pause. “He kept
using a word that I’ve never heard before. I’m not highly educated,
but I’ve noticed that some men have favourite words. We had an old
skipper who always used the word ‘morbid’.”
“What was the word?” asked Parr.
The man scratched his head.
“I’ll remember it and let you know,” he said, and they left him to his
meditations, which were few, and probably not unpleasant.
Four hours after, the jailor took Ambrose Sibly some food. He was
lying on his bed, and the jailor shook him by the shoulder.
“Wake up,” he said, but Ambrose Sibly never woke again.
He was stone dead.
And in the tin dipper, half-filled with water, which stood by his bed,
and with which he had slaked his thirst, they found sufficient
hydrocyanic acid to kill fifty men.
But it was not the poison which interested Inspector Parr so much as
the little circle of crimson paper which was found floating on the top
of the water.