Furneaux Makes a Successful Bid
The lawn front of _The Hollies_ was not visible from the upper story of
the Hare and Hounds owing to a clump of pines which had found foothold
on the cliff, but, through the gap formed by the end of the post office
garden, the entrance to the house from the Knoleworth road was
discernible.
Furneaux’s dramatic announcement brought the other two to the window.
By this time Peters, gifted with a nose for news like a well-trained
setter’s for partridges, had begun to associate the quiet-mannered,
gentle-spoken chemist with the inner circle of the crime, so waited and
watched with the detectives for Siddle’s reappearance.
At any rate the visitor must have been admitted, because a long quarter
of an hour elapsed before he came in sight again. He walked out slowly
into the roadway, thrust his hands into his trousers pockets, and
glanced to right and left. Then, turning abruptly, he stared at the
dwelling he had just quitted. What this slight but peculiar action
signified was not hard to guess. Furneaux, indeed, put it into words.
“Having warned Grant off Miss Doris Martin, and been cursed for his
pains, the foreman of the jury does not trouble to await further
evidence, but arrives at a true and lawful verdict straight off,”
announced the little man.
“We ought to hear things to-night,” said Peters.
“We?” inquired Winter.
“Yes. Didn’t I make it clear that I shared in the dinner invitation?”
“No, and I’m—”
“Don’t say it!” pleaded the journalist. “If I fell from grace to-day,
remember my unswerving loyalty since the hour we met on the platform at
Knoleworth! Haven’t I kept close as an oyster? And would any
consideration on earth move me to publish an accurate and entertaining
account of the roasting of Chief Inspector Winter by Wally Hart? Think
what I’m sacrificing—a column of the best.”
Winter bent a weighing look on the speaker. There was treason in the
thought, as King James remarked to the barber who tried to prove his
loyalty by pointing out how easily he might cut his majesty’s throat
any morning. But Peters maintained the expression of a sphinx, and the
big man relaxed.
“The conditions are that not a word about this business appears in
print, either now or in the future until we have a criminal in the
dock,” he said.
“Accepted,” said Peters.
Furneaux laughed shrilly, even derisively, but him his colleague
treated with majestic disdain. Then, the chemist having reentered the
village, the group broke up, Peters to search his brains for “copy”
which should be readable yet contain no hint of the new trail, Winter
to take train to Knoleworth, and Furneaux to tackle Fred Elkin, who, he
had ascertained earlier, would drive home from a neighboring hamlet
about five o’clock.
Elkin had returned when the detective reached the house, a somewhat
pretentious place, half farm, half villa, and altogether horsey. The
entrance hall bristled with fox masks and brushes. A useful collection
of burnished bits and snaffles hung on a side wall. A couple of stuffed
badgers held two wicker stands for sticks and umbrellas, and whips and
hunting-crops were ranged on hooks beneath a 12-bore and a rook rifle.
A pert maid-servant took Furneaux’s card, blanched when she read it,
and forgot to close the door of the dining-room. Hence, the detective
heard Elkin’s gruff comments:
“What? _That_ chap? Wants to see me? Not more than I want to see him.
Show him in.”
Furneaux, looking very meek and mild, entered an apartment of the
carpet-bag upholstery period. A set of six exceedingly good and rare
sporting prints caught his eye.
“Good day,” he said, finding Elkin drinking tea, and eating a boiled
egg. “You’re feeling better, I’m glad to see.”
Now, no matter how ungracious a man may be, a courteous solicitude as
to his health demands a certain note of civility in return.
“Yes,” he said. “Sit down. Will you join me?”
“I’ll have a cup of tea, with pleasure,” said Furneaux.
“Right-o! Just touch that bell, will you?”
The other obeyed, and took a closer look at one of the prints. Yes, the
date was right, 1841, and the stippling admirable.
“Nice lot of pictures, those,” he said cheerfully, when the frightened
maid, much to her relief, had been told to bring another cup and a
fresh supply of toast.
“Are they?” Elkin had taken them and some kitchen furniture for a bad
debt.
“Yes. Will you sell them?”
“Well, I haven’t thought about it. What’ll you give?”
Furneaux hesitated.
“I can’t resist anything in the art line that takes my fancy,” he said,
after a pause of indecision. “What do you say to ten bob each?”
Elkin valued the lot at that figure, but Furneaux was a fool, and
should be treated as such.
“Oh, come now!” he cried roguishly. “They’re worth more than that.”
Furneaux reflected again.
“Three pounds is a good deal for six prints,” he murmured, “but, to get
it off my mind, I’ll spring to guineas.”
“Make it three-ten and they’re yours.”
“Three guineas is my absolute limit,” said Furneaux.
“Done!” cried Elkin. The original debt was under two pounds, so he had
cleared more than fifty per cent. on the transaction, and was plus a
number of chairs and a table.
Furneaux counted out the money, wrote a receipt on a leaf torn from his
pocket-book, and stamped it.
“Sign that,” he said, “pocket the cash, send the set to the Hare and
Hounds for me in a dog-cart now, and the deal is through.”
Leaving the table, he went and lifted down each picture carefully.
Somewhat wonderingly, Elkin rang the bell once more, gave the necessary
instructions, and the room was cleared of its art. He was quite sure
now that Furneaux was, as he put it, “dotty.” The latter, however, sat
and enjoyed his tea as though well pleased with his bargain.
“And how are things going in the murder at _The Hollies_?” inquired the
horse-dealer, by way of a polite leading up to the visitor’s
unexplained business.
“Fairly well,” said the detective. “My chief difficulty was to convince
certain important people that you didn’t kill Miss Melhuish. Once I—”
“Me!” roared Elkin, his pale blue eyes assuming a fiery tint. “_Me!_”
“Once I established that fact,” went on the other severely, “a real
stumbling-block was removed. You see, Elkin, you have behaved
throughout like a perfect fool, and thus lent a sort of credibility to
an otherwise absurd notion. Your furious hatred of Mr. Grant, for
instance, born of an equally fatuous—or, shall I say? fat-headed—belief
that Miss Martin would marry you for the mere asking, led you into deep
waters. It was a mistake, too, when you lied to P. C. Robinson as to
the time you came home on that Monday night. You told him you walked
straight here from the Hare and Hounds at ten o’clock. You know you
didn’t—that it was nearer half past eleven when you reached this house.
Consider what that discrepancy alone might have meant if Scotland Yard
failed to take your measure correctly. Then add the fact that the
murderer wore the hat, wig, and whiskers in which you made a guy of
yourself while filling the rôle of Svengali last winter. Now, I ask
you, Elkin, where would you have stood with the average British jury
when the prosecution established those three things: Motive, your
jealousy of Grant; time, your unaccounted-for disappearance during the
hour when the crime was committed; and disguise, a clumsy suggestion of
Owd Ben’s ghost? Really, I have known men brought to the scaffold on
circumstantial evidence little stronger than that. Instead of glaring
at me like a cornered rat you ought to drop on your knees and thank
providence, as manifested through the intelligence of the ‘Yard,’ that
you are not now in a cell at Knoleworth, ruminating on your own
stupidity, and in no small jeopardy of your life.”
Many emotions chased each other across Fred Elkin’s somewhat mean and
cruel face while Furneaux rated him in this extraordinary manner.
Surprise, wrath, even fear, had their phases. But, dominating all other
sensations, was an overpowering indignation at the implied hopelessness
of his pursuit of Doris Martin.
He literally howled an oath at his torturer. Furneaux was shocked.
“No, no,” he protested in a horrified tone. “Don’t swear at your best
friend.”
“Friend! By—, I’ll make you pay for what you’ve said. There’s a law to
stop that sort of thing.”
“But the law requires witnesses. A slander isn’t a slander unless it’s
uttered to your detriment before a third party. How different would be
Mr. Grant’s action against you! Your well-wishers simply couldn’t
muzzle you. Whether before your pot-house cronies or mere strangers,
you charged him openly with being a murderer. I’m sorry for you, Elkin,
if ever you come before a judge. He’ll rattle more than my three
guineas out of you. Even now, you don’t grasp the extent of your folly.
Instead of telling me how you spent that hour and a half on the night
of the crime you have the incredible audacity to threaten me, _me_, the
man who has saved you from jail. One more word, you miserable swab, and
I’ll let Robinson arrest you. You’ll be set free, of course, when I
stage the actual villain, but a few remands of a week each in custody
will thin your hot blood. You were with Peggy Smith after leaving the
Hare and Hounds, making a fool of an honest girl who thinks you mean to
wed her. Yet you blather about being ‘practically engaged’ to Doris
Martin, a girl who wouldn’t let you tie her shoe-lace. You’re an
impudent pup, Fred, and you know it. But you stock decent tea, so I’ll
take another cup. If you’re wise, you’ll take a second one yourself.
It’s better for you than whiskey.”
Elkin, despite all his faults, was endowed with the shrewdness
inseparable from his business, because no man devoid of brains ever yet
throve as a horse-dealer. He smothered his rage, thinking he might
learn more from this strange-mannered detective by seeming
complaisance.
“You’re a bit rough on a fellow,” he growled sulkily, pouring out the
tea.
“For your good, my boy, solely for your good. Now, own up about Peggy.”
“Yes. That’s right. She’d prove an alibi, so your tom-fool case breaks
down when the flag falls.”
“Does it? A girl may say anything to save her supposed lover. How will
the twelve good men and true view Doris Martin’s evidence on Wednesday?
What did _you_ mean, for instance, by your question to the coroner at
the first hearing?”
“I thought Grant was guilty, and I think so still,” came the savage
retort.
“A nice juryman you are, I must say! May I trouble you to pass the
sugar?”
“Look here! What are you gettin’ at? Damme if I can see through your
game. What is it?”
“I didn’t want to worry poor Peggy. And her father might set about you
if he knew the facts, so I’m probably saving you a hiding as well as a
period in jail. The only reliable witness we had as to events in
Tomlin’s place was a commercial traveler, and he is positive that the
house closed at ten o’clock. However, that’s all right. How do you
account for the marvelous improvement in your health? Dr. Foxton cannot
understand your illness. He says you are wiry, and have a strong
constitution.”
“Dr. Foxton jolly near knocked me up,” said Elkin. “I took his medicine
till I was sick as a cat.”
“But you took spirits, too.”
“That’s nothing fresh. Anyhow, I’ve dropped both, and am picking up
every hour.”
“Since when?”
“Since yesterday morning, if you want to know.”
“I do. I’m most interested. Dr. Foxton doesn’t compound his own
prescriptions, does he?”
“No. I get ’em made up at Siddle’s.”
“Ah. These country chemists often keep drugs in stock till they
deteriorate, or even set up chemical changes. Have you the bottles?”
“Yes. But what the—”
“Anything left in them?”
“The last two are half full. Still—”
“What a cross-grained chap you are? I buy your pictures, drink your
tea, rescue you from a positively dangerous position, warn you against
carrying any farther a most serious libel, yet you won’t let me help
you in a matter affecting your health!”
“Help me? How?”
“Even you, I suppose, realize that Scotland Yard employs skilled
analysts. Give me your bottles, in strict confidence, of course, and
I’ll tell you what they really contain. Then you can compare the
analyses with the doctor’s prescriptions. The knowledge should be
useful, to say the least. Siddle’s reputation needn’t suffer, but,
unless I am greatly mistaken, you will have the whip hand of him in
future.”
The prospect was alluring. Elkin would enjoy showing up the chemist,
who had treated him rather as a precocious infant of late.
“By jing!” he cried, “I’m on that. Bet you a quid—But, no. You’d hardly
lay against your own opinion. Just wait a tick. I’ll bring ’em.”
Furneaux stared fixedly at the table while his host was absent. His
conscience was not pricking him with regard to an unmerited slur on the
country chemists of Great Britain. All is fair in love and the
detection of crime, and he simply had to get hold of those bottles by
some daring yet plausible ruse.
“Now—I wonder!” he muttered, as Elkin’s step sounded on the stairs.
“There you are!” grinned the horse-dealer. “Take a dose of the last
one. It’ll stir your liver to some tune.”
Furneaux drew the corks out of both bottles, and sniffed the contents.
Then he tasted, with much tongue-smacking.
“Um!” he said. “Stale laudanum, for a start. I expected as much. Bought
by the gallon and sold by the drop. Is that the dogcart with my
pictures?”
“Yes.”
“Hail your man. He can give me a lift.”
“But there’s lots of things I want to ask you—”
“Probably. I’m here to put questions, not to give information. I’ve
gone a long way beyond the official tether already. If you’ve a grain
of sense, and I think you’re not altogether lacking in that respect,
you’ll keep a close tongue, and act on the tips thrown out. You’ll find
pearls of price among the rubbish-heap of my remarks generally.
Good-by. See you on Wednesday.”
And Furneaux climbed into the cart, holding the pictures so that they
would not rattle, and perhaps loosen the old gilded frames.
“Drive me to the chemist’s” he said to the groom; within five minutes,
he was explaining his purchase to Siddle, and requesting, as a favor,
that the latter should wrap the set of prints in brown paper, making
two parcels, and tying each securely, so that they might be dispatched
by train.
Siddle examined one, the first of the series, which depicted the
Aylesbury Steeplechase.
“Rather good,” he said. “Where did you pick them up?”
“At Elkin’s.”
“Indeed. What an unexpected place!”
“That’s the only way a poor man can get hold of a decent thing
nowadays. The dealers grab everything, and sell them as collections.”
“Art is not in my line, though anyone can see that these are
excellent.”
“Yes. But you’re looking at ‘The Start.’ Have a peep at this one, ‘The
Finish.’ The artist _would_ have his joke. You see that the dark horse
wins.”
“How did you persuade Elkin to part with them?”
“By paying him a tempting price, of course. I’m a weak-minded ass in
such matters.”
The chemist busied himself to oblige the detective, wrapping and tying
the packages neatly. Furneaux insisted on paying sixpence for the
paper, string, and labor. There was quite a friendly argument, but he
carried his point.
The dog-cart then brought him to the station, where he tipped and
dismissed the man; a little later, he caught a London-bound train.
At half past seven precisely, Winter turned in through the
Knoleworth-side gate of _The Hollies_ (there were two, the approach to
the house being semi-circular) and pushed the door open, as it was
standing ajar.
Grant was waiting in the hall, and greeted him pleasantly.
“Here’s a telegram which is meant for you, I fancy,” he said.
Winter read:
_“Sorry to spoil your party. Compelled to travel to London. Returning
early to-morrow. F.”_
“That’s pretty Fanny’s way,” smiled the Chief Inspector. “But there’s
something in the wind, or he would never have hurried off in this
fashion. He tells me that the only pleasant evening he spent in
Steynholme was under your roof, Mr. Grant.”
“Come along in, Don Jaime!” drawled Hart’s voice from the “den,” which
had been cleared of its litter, the lawn being deemed somewhat
unsuitable for the purposes of a drawing-room on that occasion. It was
overlooked from too many quarters.
“Ah, we meet now under less uneven conditions, Mr. Hart,” said Winter.
“Do you know that Enrico Suarez is in London?”
Hart, startled for once in his life, gazed at the detective fixedly.
“Since when?” he cried.
“He crossed from Lisbon last week.”
Hart took a revolver from his hip pocket, and opened it, apparently
making sure that it was properly loaded.
“What’s the law in England?” he inquired. “Can I shoot first, or must I
wait till the other fellow has had a pop?”
Winter laughed.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Suarez is in Holloway, awaiting
extradition. But I owed you one for the rise you took out of me
to-day.”
A bell sounded, and Peters came in. He glanced around.
“Where’s Furneaux?” he demanded.
“Gone to London. Why this keen interest?” said Winter.
“There’s something up. Elkin dropped in at the Hare and Hounds. He was
simply bursting with curiosity, and had to talk to somebody. So he
chose me.”
“He would,” was the dry comment.
“Fact, ’pon me honor. I didn’t lead him on an inch. It seems that
Furneaux bought some prints which caught his eye in Elkin’s house, and
Tomlin says that that hexplains hit.”
“Explains what?”
“Furneaux’s visit to Siddle, and certain bulky parcels brought in and
brought out again.”
“Queer little duck, Furneaux,” said Hart. “Now that my mind is at ease
about the immediate future of the biggest rascal in Venezuela I can
take an active part in Steynholme affairs once more. When it’s all
through I’ll make a novel of it, dashed if I don’t, with the
postmaster’s daughter in the three-color process as a frontispiece.”
“But who will be the villain?” said Peters.
Hart waved the negro-head pipe at the other three.
“Draw lots. I am indifferent,” he said.