WEAVING THE NET
That evening Triffitt got Burchill's address from Carver, and next day
he drew a hundred pounds from the cashier of the _Argus_ and went off to
Calengrove Mansions. In his mind there was a clear and definite notion.
It might result in something; it might come to nothing, but he was going
to try it. Briefly, it was that if he wished--as he unfeignedly did
wish--to find out anything about Burchill, he must be near him; so near,
indeed, that he could keep an eye on him, acquaint himself with his
goings and comings, observe his visitors, watch for possible openings,
make himself familiar with Burchill's daily life. It might be a
difficult task; it might be an easy task--in any case, it was a task
that must be attempted. With Markledew's full consent and approval
behind him and Markledew's money-bags to draw upon, Triffitt felt equal
to attempting anything.
The first thing was to take a quiet look at Burchill's immediate
environment. Calengrove Mansions turned out to be one of the smaller of
the many blocks of residential flats which have of late years arisen in
such numbers in the neighbourhood of Maida Vale and St. John's Wood. It
was an affair of some five or six floors, and judging from what Triffitt
could see of it from two sides, it was not fully occupied at that time,
for many of its windows were uncurtained, and there was a certain air of
emptiness about the upper storeys. This fact was not unpleasing to
Triffitt; it argued that he would have small difficulty in finding a
lodgment within the walls which sheltered the man he wanted to watch.
And in pursuance of his scheme, which, as a beginning, was to find out
exactly where Burchill was located, he walked into the main entrance and
looked about him, hoping to find an address-board. Such a board
immediately caught his eye, affixed to the wall near the main staircase.
Then Triffitt saw that the building was divided into five floors, each
floor having some three or four flats. Those on the bottom floors
appeared to be pretty well taken; the names of their occupants were
neatly painted in small compartments on the board. Right at the top was
the name Mr. Frank Burchill--and on that floor, which evidently
possessed three flats, there were presumably no other occupants, for the
remaining two spaces relating to it were blank.
Triffitt took all this in at a glance; another glance showed him a door
close by on which was painted the word "Office." He pushed this open and
walked inside, to confront a clerk who was the sole occupant. To him,
Triffitt, plunging straight into business, gently intimated that he was
searching for a convenient flat. The clerk immediately began to pull out
some coloured plans, labelled first, second, third floors.
"About what sized flat do you require?" he asked. He had already looked
Triffitt well over, and as Triffitt, in honour of the occasion, had put
on his smartest suit and a new overcoat, he decided that this was a
young man who was either just married or about to be married. "Do you
want a family flat, or one for a couple without family, or----"
"What I want," answered Triffitt readily, "is a bachelor flat--for
myself. And--if possible--furnished."
"Oh!" said the clerk. "Just so. I happen to have something that will
suit you exactly--that is, if you don't want to take it for longer than
three or four months." He pulled forward another plan, labelled "Fifth
Floor," and pointed to certain portions, shaded off in light colours.
"One of our tenants, Mr. Stillwater," he continued, "has gone abroad for
four months, and he'd be glad to let his flat, furnished, in his
absence. That's it--it contains, you see, a nice sitting-room, a
bedroom, a bathroom, and a small kitchen--all contained within the flat,
of course. It is well and comfortably furnished, and available at once."
Triffitt bent over the plan. But he was not looking at the shaded
portion over which the clerk's pencil was straying; instead he was
regarding the fact that across the corresponding portion of the plan was
written in red ink the words, "Mr. Frank Burchill." The third portion
was blank; it, apparently, was unlet.
"That is really about the size of flat I want," said Triffitt, musingly.
"What's the rent of that, now?"
"I can let that to you for fifty shillings a week," answered the clerk.
"That includes everything--there's plate, linen, glass, china, anything
you want. Slight attendance can be arranged for with our caretaker's
wife--that is, she can cook breakfast, and make beds, and do more, if
necessary. Perhaps you would like to see this flat?"
Triffitt followed the clerk to the top of the house. The absent Mr.
Stillwater's rooms were comfortable and pleasant; one glance around them
decided Triffitt.
"This place will suit me very well," he said. "Now I'll give you
satisfactory references about myself, and pay you a month's rent in
advance, and if that's all right to you, I'll come in today. You can
ring up my references on your 'phone, and then, if you're satisfied,
we'll settle the rent, and I'll see the caretaker's wife about airing
that bed."
Within half an hour Triffitt was occupant of the flat, the cashier of
the _Argus_ having duly telephoned that he was a thoroughly dependable
and much-respected member of its staff, and Triffitt himself having
handed over ten pounds as rent for the coming month, he interviewed the
caretaker's wife, went to a neighbouring grocer's shop and ordered a
stock of necessaries wherewith to fill his larder, repaired to his own
lodgings and brought away all that he wanted in the way of luggage,
books, and papers, and by the middle of the afternoon was fairly settled
in his new quarters. He spent an hour in putting himself and his
belongings straight--and then came the question what next?
He was there for a special purpose--that special purpose was to
acquaint himself as thoroughly as possible with the doings of Frank
Burchill. Burchill was there--he was almost on the point of saying, in
the next cell!--there, in the flat across the corridor; figuratively,
within touch, if it were not for sundry divisions of brick, mortar, and
the like. Burchill's door was precisely opposite his own; there was an
advantage in that fact. And in Triffitt's outer door (all these flats,
he discovered--that is, if they were all like his own, possessed double
doors) there was a convenient letter slit, by manipulating which he
could, if he chose, keep a perpetual observation on the other opposite.
But Triffitt did not propose to sit with his eye glued to that letter
slit all day--it might be useful at times, and for some special purpose,
but he had wider views. And the first thing to do was to make an
examination, geographical and exhaustive, of his own surroundings:
Triffitt had learnt, during his journalistic training, that attention to
details is one of the most important things in life.
The first thing that had struck Triffitt in this respect was that there
was no lift in this building. He had remarked on that to the clerk, and
the clerk had answered with a shrug of the shoulders that it was a
mistake and one for which the proprietor was already having to pay.
However, Triffitt, bearing in mind what job he was on, was not
displeased that the lift had been omitted--it is sometimes an advantage
to be able to hang over the top rail of a staircase and watch people
coming up from below. He stored that fact in his mental reservoirs. And
now that he had got into his rooms, he proceeded to seek for more
facts. First, as to the rooms themselves--he wanted to know all about
them, because he had carefully noticed, while looking at the plan of
that floor in the office downstairs, that Burchill's flat was arranged
exactly like his own. And Triffitt's flat was like this--you entered
through a double door into a good-sized sitting-room, out of which two
other rooms led--one went into a small kitchen and pantry; the other
into the bedroom, at the side of which was a little bathroom. The
windows of the bedroom opened on to a view of the street below; those of
the sitting-room on to a square of garden, on the lawn of which tenants
might disport themselves, more or less sadly, with tennis or croquet in
summer.
Triffitt looked out of his sitting-room windows last of all. He then
perceived with great joy that in front of them was a balcony, and that
this balcony stretched across the entire front of the house. There were,
in fact, balconies to all five floors--the notion being, of course, that
occupants could whenever they pleased sit out there in such sunlight as
struggled between their own roof and the tall buildings opposite. It
immediately occurred to Triffitt that here was an easy way of making a
call upon your next door neighbour; instead of crossing the corridor and
knocking at his door, you had nothing to do but walk along the balcony
and tap at his window. Filled with this thought Triffitt immediately
stepped out on his balcony and inspected the windows of his own and the
next flat. He immediately saw something which filled him with a great
idea. Both windows were fitted with patent ventilators, let into the top
panes. Now, supposing one of these ventilators was fully open, and two
people were talking within the room in even the ordinary tones of
conversation--would it not be possible for an eavesdropper outside to
hear a good deal, if not everything, of what was said? The idea was
worth thinking over, anyway, and Triffitt retired indoors to ruminate
over it and over much else.
For two or three days nothing happened. Twice Triffitt met Burchill on
the stairs--Burchill, of course, did not know him from Adam, and gave
him no more than the mere glance he would have thrown at any other
ordinary young man. Triffitt, however, gave Burchill more than a passing
look--unobtrusively. Certainly he was the man whom he had seen in the
dock nine years before in that far-off Scottish town--there was little
appreciable alteration in his appearance, except that he was now very
smartly dressed. There were peculiarities about the fellow, said
Triffitt, which you couldn't forget--certainly, Frank Burchill was
Francis Bentham.
But on the third day, two things happened--one connected directly with
Triffitt's new venture, the other not. The first was that as Triffitt
was going down the stairs that afternoon, on his way to the office, at
which he kept looking in now and then, although he was relieved from
regular attendance and duty, he met Barthorpe Herapath coming up.
Triffitt thanked his lucky stars that the staircase was badly lighted,
and that this was an unusually gloomy November day. True, Barthorpe had
only once seen him, that he knew of--that morning at the estate office,
when he, Triffitt, had asked Selwood for information--but then, some men
have sharp memories for faces, and Barthorpe might recognize him and
wonder what an _Argus_ man was doing there in Calengrove Mansions. So
Triffitt quickly pulled the flap of the Trilby hat about his nose, and
sank his chin lower into the turned-up collar of his overcoat, and
hurried past the tall figure. And Barthorpe on his part never looked at
the reporter--or if he did, took no more heed of him than of the
balustrade at his side.
"That's one thing established, anyway!" mused Triffitt as he went his
way. "Barthorpe Herapath is in touch with Burchill. The dead man's
nephew and the dead man's ex-secretary--um! Putting their heads
together--about what?"
He was still pondering this question when he reached the office and
found a note from Carver who wanted to see him at once. Triffitt went
round to the _Magnet_ and got speech with Carver in a quiet corner.
Carver went straight to his point.
"I've got him," he said, eyeing his fellow-conspirator triumphantly.
"Got--who?" demanded Triffitt.
"That taxi-cab chap--you know who I mean," answered Carver. "Ran him
down at noon today."
"No!" exclaimed Triffitt. "Gad! Are you sure, though?--is it certain
he's the man you were after?"
"He's the chap who drove a gentleman from near Portman Square to just by
St. Mary Abbot church at two o'clock on the morning of the Herapath
murder," replied Carver. "That's a dead certainty! I risked five pounds
on it, anyway, for which I'll trouble you. I went on the lines of
rounding up all the cabbies I could find who were as a rule on night
duty round about that quarter, and bit by bit I got on to this fellow,
and, as I say, I gave him a fiver for just telling me a mere bit. And
it's here--he's already given some information to that old Mr.
Tertius--you know--and Tertius commanded him to keep absolutely quiet
until the moment came for a move. Well, that moment has not come yet,
evidently--the chap hasn't been called on since, anyhow--and when I
mentioned money he began to prick his ears. He's willing to tell--for
money--if we keep dark what he tells us. The truth is, he's out to get
what he can out of anybody. If you make it worth his while, he'll tell."
"Aye!" said Triffitt. "But the question is, what has he got to tell?
What does he know?--actually know?"
"He knows," replied Carver, "he actually knows who the man was that he
drove that morning! He didn't know who he was when he first gave
information to Tertius, but he knows now, and, as I say, he's willing to
sell his knowledge--in private."