XIII. Enter Dr. Priestly
XIV. The Morlandson Trial
XV. The Bone Counter
XVI. Corfe Castle
XVII. The Clay-pit
XVIII. The Avenger
XIX. A Discovery
XX. Mr. Ludgrove’s Invitation
XXI. An Explanation
XXII. The Death Chamber
XXIII. The Will
Part I
The Crimes
Chapter I
The Street
Praed Street is not at any time one of London’s brighter
thoroughfares. Certainly it ends upon a note of hope, terminating as
it does on the fringe of the unquestioned respectability of Bayswater,
but for the rest of its course it is frankly lamentable. Narrow,
bordered by small and often furtive shops, above which the squalid
looking upper parts are particularly uninviting, it can never have
been designed as more than a humble annexe of its more prosperous
parent, the Edgware Road. And then, for no apparent reason, the Great
Western Railway planted its terminus upon it, and Praed Street found
itself called upon to become a main artery of traffic.
It seems to have done very little to adapt itself to its new rôle.
Beyond an occasional grudging widening, it has left the unending
streams of buses, of heavy railway lorries, of hurrying foot
passengers, to shift for themselves as best they can. It almost seems
as though Praed Street regarded Paddington Station as an intrusion,
and those who throng to and from it as unwelcome strangers. It had its
own interests long before the railway came—one of the termini of the
Grand Junction Canal lies within a few yards of its sombre limits.
Praed Street watches with indifference the thronging crowds which pass
along, and they in turn take little heed of the uninviting
thoroughfare through which their journey leads them.
Not that these philosophic reflections occupied the mind of Mr. James
Tovey, which was far too full of an acute sense of annoyance and
discomfort to find room for any other sensations. Mr. Tovey was not an
inhabitant of Praed Street, although he lived in its neighbourhood.
There was nothing secretive about Mr. Tovey, you could see his name
and occupation painted in bold letters over a shop in Lisson Grove;
James Tovey, Fruit and Vegetable Merchant. He was, in fact, a
greengrocer, and, years ago, when Mr. Tovey had originally employed a
small legacy in the purchase of the business, the sign had read:
Tovey, Greengrocer, etc. But it was Mr. Tovey’s proud boast that he
always moved with the times, and since his neighbours, the butcher and
the grocer, had respectively converted themselves into Meat Purveyors
and Provision Dealers, he had abandoned the vulgar term of greengrocer
for the more high-sounding appellation.
Sunday was a day of strict observance with Mr. Tovey, its presiding
deity his own comfort. One can hardly blame him for this indulgence,
since the rest of the week left him little leisure for repose. His
habit was to rise before six, in order to drive the van to Covent
Garden. The van, a second-hand Ford, was the subject of the ribald
mirth of his acquaintances. Every non-essential part had long since
fallen off, as an aged elm sheds its branches, and the essentials were
held together by odd pieces of rope. But to any suggestion of the
van’s imperfections, Mr. Tovey merely shrugged his shoulders.
“’Tisn’t ’er looks as matters,” he would reply. “So long as she does
’er job she’ll do for me.” And perhaps this phrase, applied to things
at large, was a complete summing up of Mr. Tovey’s philosophy.
He opened the shop as soon as he returned from Covent Garden, and kept
it open, winter and summer, till a late hour. Lisson Grove shops late,
and it was usually ten o’clock before Mr. Tovey could reckon to get
his bit of supper. It was therefore natural that so strenuous a week
should be rewarded by a relaxation on Sunday. It was his invariable
habit to stay in bed till noon, inhaling the savoury smell of the
Sunday joint roasting in the kitchen, and only to rise and put on his
best suit when the clock struck that hour. The afternoon was usually
devoted to the peaceful somnolence of repletion, or sometimes in
summer, if Mrs. Tovey’s legs felt equal to accompanying him, to a walk
in the park. And in the evening there were always the thrilling
columns of the Sunday paper.
Mr. Tovey hated to be disturbed in the evening of this day of rest.
Especially on such an evening as the present. The day had been an
eminently satisfactory one, from his point of view. The sirloin of
beef, carefully selected by Mrs. Tovey from the stock of her friend
the Meat Purveyor, over the way, had been of uncommon succulence; the
Yorkshire pudding crisped to that exact degree of golden delicacy that
Mr. Tovey’s heart desired. True, he had had a slight difference of
opinion with Mrs. Tovey, but that had merely given a zest to a day
which might otherwise have been uneventful. Mr. and Mrs. Tovey never
really quarrelled. For one thing they were neither of them of a
quarrelsome disposition, and for another they were both too fond of
their own comfort to risk its disturbance by domestic rancour. But
sometimes they did not see eye to eye, as in the present case.
It had begun when Mr. Tovey had come down to the kitchen, and noticed
that only two places had been laid at the table. He had raised his
eyebrows and glanced towards the massive form of Mrs. Tovey, bending
over the glowing range.
“Hullo! Where’s Ivy, then?” he asked, in an almost querulous tone.
“Gone out with Ted,” replied Mrs. Tovey quietly, from among the
saucepans. “He’s taken her home to dinner, and they’re going on to the
pictures afterwards.”
Mr. Tovey clicked his tongue, his favourite expression of annoyance.
Of course, Ted and Ivy had known one another since they were children.
Old Sam Copperdock, Ted’s father, was Mr. Tovey’s oldest friend, and
they had been near neighbours ever since the latter, as a newly
married man, had bought the greengrocery business. Still, Mr. Tovey
didn’t altogether like it. Ivy was twenty now, and young Ted
Copperdock only three years older. Just the sort of age when young
folks get the bit between their teeth and go and get married without a
thought of the future. Old Sam was a thorough good chap, and his son
was a very nice lad; Mr. Tovey would not have denied either of these
facts for a moment. But Ted’s only prospects lay in his father’s shop
in Praed Street, and Mr. Tovey had very different views of his only
child’s future, very different.
Yet he had never put these views into words. Perhaps he would have
found it very difficult to do so, for Mr. Tovey’s vocabulary was
strictly limited. But they were there, just the same—had been ever
since Ivy’s prowess at school had discovered her to be a “scholar.”
From that moment Mr. Tovey had been at great pains to educate his
daughter to an entirely different state of life from that which it had
pleased God to call her. That she was by now tall, distinctly pretty,
and extraordinarily self-possessed was not, one supposes, due to the
efforts of Mr. Tovey. But she certainly owed the fact that she was an
extremely competent shorthand typist to the pains he had devoted to
her education.
Mr. Tovey, though naturally he would have been justifiably annoyed at
such a suggestion, had an incurably romantic core to his plodding and
material mind. Of course, in common with most of his class, he firmly
believed that human happiness varied exactly with the social scale.
“As happy as a king” was to him no mere catchword. He was
convinced—and, to do him justice, he drew considerable satisfaction
from the conviction—that the members of the Royal Family were the
happiest persons in the land, and that this happiness descended in
regular gradation through the ranks of the nobility and gentlefolk
until it reached acute misery somewhere in the lower strata of those
who dwelt in slums. From this outlook on life it necessarily followed
that the more he could enable Ivy to better herself, the happier she
must ultimately be.
How this betterment was to take place, Mr. Tovey never explained. But
sometimes he had a vague intangible dream of Ivy, his Ivy, captivating
the heart of some susceptible employer, preferably of the Upper
Classes. His eye, diverted for the moment from the business of
wrapping up a parcel of leeks, often caught sight of the Pictures in
the newspaper which he was using for the purpose. “Lady Mary Mayfair
(right) and the Countess of Piccadilly (left) on the lawn at Ascot.”
Suppose that one day he should proudly open the paper to find Ivy with
a smile like that, gracefully posing under the heading “A leader of
Society in the paddock at Goodwood”? After all, why not?
But it was not until after the second helping of roast beef and
Yorkshire that he made any further remark about his daughter to Mrs.
Tovey. “I wouldn’t encourage young Ted to hang around Ivy too much, if
I was you,” he said, as he pushed aside his plate.
“Encourage? He don’t want no encouraging,” replied Mrs. Tovey briskly.
“He just comes in, cheerful like, nods to me, asks after you, says a
word or two to Ivy, and away they goes together. Things ain’t the same
now as they was when we was their age, Jim.”
“No, it’s a fact they ain’t,” agreed Mr. Tovey darkly.
“But let ’em alone,” continued Mrs. Tovey. “Ivy’s not the girl to make
a fool of herself, you ought to know that by this time. Now you can go
and sit in your chair by the fire. It’s not the sort of day for the
likes of us to be going out.”
Mr. Tovey shook his head, as though unconvinced by his wife’s words,
and looked out of the window. Much as he might disagree with her on
the subject of their daughter, there was no doubt that she was right
about the weather. It was the beginning of November, and the month was
doing its best to live up to its reputation. A thin mist, precursor of
the fog that must surely follow, filled the narrow streets, and
through it filtered a cold raw drizzle, through which a few passing
pedestrians hurried, muffled up to their ears.
Mr. Tovey grunted, and drew his chair up closer towards the fire. The
weather could do what it liked, as long as it cleared up before the
next morning. He certainly was not going out into it. He composed
himself for his afternoon nap, from which he arose refreshed and eager
for the lurid pages of his favourite Sunday paper. He studied this
intently for some minutes, then turned animatedly to Mrs. Tovey.
“That brute what cut up the young woman he was walking out with is
committed for trial at the Old Bailey,” he said.
“I reckoned he would be, the dirty brute,” replied Mrs. Tovey, who was
almost as keen a criminologist as her husband. “And I’d see he didn’t
get off, neither, if I was on the jury.”
Mr. Tovey turned and looked at her gravely. “’Tis all very well for
you to talk like that,” he said reprovingly. “It’s a terrible thing to
be on a jury when a man’s life depends on what you says. Nobody knows
that better than I do, I’m sure.”
“Yes, I remember the state you was in that time,” replied Mrs. Tovey.
“Dear, dear, best part of a week you was at it, and Ivy just born and
all. What was the chap’s name? I remember he was a doctor who’d killed
one of his patients by giving him a dose of something.”
“Morlandson, Dr. Morlandson,” said Mr. Tovey. “Lord, whenever I eats
anything as disagrees with me I dreams of his face a-looking at us
from the dock. Fair gave me the creeps, it did, for a long time after.
We found him guilty, and I couldn’t help looking at him when the judge
put on his black cap and sentenced him. Ugh!”
“But they didn’t ’ang ’im after all,” remarked Mrs. Tovey.
“No, he was reprieved, I don’t rightly know why. Because he’d been a
big pot in his way, I suppose. Twenty years hard he got, though, and
serve ’im right. This bloke I’m telling you about won’t get off so
easy, though.”
Mr. Tovey returned to the perusal of his paper, and the evening wore
on, the silence of the cosy kitchen broken only at intervals by the
voice of Mr. Tovey, reading in a halting voice some more than usually
spicy extract to his wife. Tea-time came and went, and still Ivy made
no appearance. It was nearly nine o’clock when Mr. Tovey referred to
her absence. “I can’t think where that girl’s got to,” he said
irritably. “She’s no call to be out all this time.”
“Ted’ll have taken her home to have a bite of supper,” returned Mrs.
Tovey equably. “His father likes to have her round there, cheers him
up, she does. She’ll be back before long, never you worry.”
The reply which sprang to Mr. Tovey’s lips was checked by the urgent
ringing of the telephone bell in the shop, separated from the kitchen
by a door kept locked on Sundays.
“Hullo! What’s that?” he enquired in a startled tone. Mrs. Tovey had
already moved towards the door. “I’ll go and see,” she replied
shortly. Her husband, listening intently, could hear her steps on the
bare boards, the sudden cessation of the ringing as she took up the
receiver, her voice as she answered, then a pause.
Then he heard her call him from the other room. “Somebody wants to
speak to you, Jim.”
With a muttered objurgation he dragged himself from his chair and went
into the shop. His wife handed him the instrument. “Hullo!” he said
and for a moment stood listening.
“Yes, I’m James Tovey.” A long pause, while Mrs. Tovey vainly tried to
make sense of the faint sounds which reached her ears. “What’s that?
Oh! a man, you say, thank the Lord for that! I thought for the moment
it might be my daughter, she’s out a bit late to-night. Yes! I’ll be
along at once.”
He put back the receiver and turned to his wife. “That’s a rum show!”
he exclaimed, not without a tremor of excitement in his voice. “St.
Martha’s Hospital, that was. There’s a fellow been run over, and they
can’t find out who he is. The only thing in his pocket is a bit of
paper with my name an’ address on. Now, who the dickens can it be?”
“Why, young Alf, as likely as not,” replied Mrs. Tovey unemotionally.
“Why ’e ’asn’t been run over afore, goin’ about as he does with his
’ead in the air, is more than I can make out.”
Alf was the youth employed by Mr. Tovey to deliver the purchases of
such of his customers as did not prefer to carry them home wrapped up
in newspaper. But Mr. Tovey shook his head at the suggestion.
“Not it! Young Alf lives down Camberwell way, and he’s not likely to
be up this way of a Sunday. Give us my coat, missus, and I’ll go along
and see who it is.”
Mr. Tovey struggled into his coat, and turned the collar well up over
his ears. It was a most unpleasant evening to be out in, but, after
all, it was worth it. His mind had been steeped in sensation all the
afternoon, and now he was himself about to take a leading part in some
thrilling tragedy. In imagination he could see the account in the next
issue of the _Paddington Clarion and Marylebone Recorder_. Headlines
first: “Fatal Accident. Man crushed to death by Motor Bus.” Then his
own name: “The body was identified by Mr. Tovey, the well-known Fruit
and Vegetable Merchant of Lisson Grove.” This was fame indeed!
He stood at the corner of Lisson Grove for a moment, eyeing the buses
as they passed him. Through their streaming window panes he could see
that they were all full, a row of dejected looking passengers standing
in each one of them. There was nothing for it, he would have to walk.
It wasn’t very far, anyhow, not more than half a mile at most.
Mr. Tovey stepped out smartly along Chapel Street, across the Edgware
Road, and entered Praed Street. Despite the depressing weather, the
pavements seemed to be full of people, groups of whom overflowed into
the roadway, only to be driven back helterskelter by the menacing
onrush of the motor-buses. Mr. Tovey picked his way through the crowd
with the consciousness of the importance of his mission. So intent was
he upon reaching his goal, and, having played his part, upon regaining
the comfort of his own fireside, that he scarcely spared a glance for
the lighted window above Sam Copperdock’s shop. Ivy was behind that
drawn curtain, no doubt. He might drop in and pick her up on his way
home. He certainly could not stop now.
With a due sense of dignity he climbed the steps of the main entrance
of St. Martha’s, and nodded familiarly to the porter in the hall. “My
name’s Tovey,” he said, “you rang me up just now to come and identify
an accident case.”
The porter looked at him incredulously. “Rang you up? ’Oo rang you up?
First I’ve ’eard of it.”
Mr. Tovey clicked his tongue impatiently. “Why, not more than a
quarter of an hour ago,” he replied. “Man been run over, and you
couldn’t find out who he was.”
“We ain’t ’ad no accidents brought in the ’ole blessed day,” returned
the porter stolidly. “You’ve made a bloomer, you ’ave. Wait ’ere a
moment while I goes and sees if anybody knows anything about it.
Tobey, did you say your name was?”
“Tovey!” replied that individual angrily. The porter turned his back
upon him and disappeared, his boots clattering noisily upon the tiled
floor. Mr. Tovey, with a sudden reaction from his excited imaginings,
stood cold and miserable in the centre of a puddle formed by the drops
from his overcoat.
After what seemed an interminable time the porter returned.
“Somebody’s bin pulling your leg,” he said, with a malicious grin. “We
ain’t ’ad no accidents, and nobody ’ere ain’t ever ’eard of you.
Didn’t get the name of the ’orspital wrong, did you? Wasn’t St.
George’s, was it, or maybe St. Thomas’s?”
Mr. Tovey shook his head. “No, it was St. Martha’s, right enough,” he
replied. A sudden wave of anger at the hoax which had been played upon
him surged through his brain, and without another word he turned and
strode out of the hall. It was monstrous that he, a citizen and a
rate-payer, should be dragged out into the streets on a fool’s errand
like this. With his grievance rankling to the exclusion of every other
thought, he pushed his way along Praed Street, his head down, his
hands crammed into his overcoat pockets. The drizzle had turned to
sleet, and the sting of it on his face added to his ill-humour.
Ahead of him was the Express Train, a public-house which had
presumably been built and named at the time of the coming of the
railway. It was closing time by now, and a stream of gesticulating
figures was being disgorged upon the crowded pavement. Mr. Tovey
looked up as he heard the turmoil. The cold air and comparative
darkness, after the warmth and light of the bar, seemed to have had an
unsteadying effect upon the ejected guests. They lurched about the
pavement singing snatches of ribald songs, arguing heatedly in loud
voices.
Mr. Tovey frowned. Nice way to spend a Sunday evening! Thank God, he
didn’t live in Praed Street, anyhow. He wasn’t going to be barged off
the pavement by a lot of drunken hooligans, not he. Putting his head a
trifle further down, like a bull about to charge, he strode straight
ahead in an undeviating line. One man lurched into him, another
jostled him from behind, and a menacing voice, its effect somewhat
marred by a loud hiccough, called out, “’ere, ’oo the ’ell d’yer think
you’re pushin’?”
And then Mr. Tovey, with a queer strangled cry, suddenly collapsed in
a heap upon the muddy pavement.
Chapter II
The Herbalist
It is the proud boast of our modern educationalists that the process
of forcing knowledge down unwilling throats, known as compulsory
education, has resulted in the triumph of science over superstition.
Alchemy and astrology, the magic of the Middle Ages, have given place
to chemistry and astronomy, the mysteries of which are displayed
before the wondering eyes of the elementary scholar. The Age of
Superstition is commonly supposed to have fled before the progress of
the Age of Materialism.
This supposition is demonstrably false. At no other age in the earth’s
history has superstition owned so many votaries. From the most rapt
spiritualist to the man who refuses to walk under a ladder, the world
is full of people who allow superstition to play an important part in
their lives. In the neighbourhood of Praed Street fortune tellers and
interpreters of dreams are superstition’s most popular ministers,
though it may come as a surprise to many that a brass plate nailed to
the door of a house in the Harrow Road advertises the existence of the
British College of Astrology.
Even Alchemy is not without its devotees, although the alchemist has
forsaken the more picturesque apparatus of his stock-in-trade. He now
owns a small shop, the darker the better, and fills the windows with a
curious assortment of dried herbs, each with a notice affixed to it
describing its virtues. You may go in and buy two pennyworth of some
dried plant with a high-sounding Latin name, the herbalist assuring
you that, mixed with boiling water and drunk as tea, it will cure the
most obscure disease. If you have sufficient faith, it probably will.
But this is the least of the herbalist’s abilities. It is, in fact,
merely the outward sign of an inward and spiritual wisdom. You can
consult him, in the little back parlour behind the shop, upon all
manner of subjects which you do not care to mention to your friends.
And, for a consideration, he will give you advice which you may or may
not follow. At all events, if the herbalist knows his business, he
will contrive to command respect, and, at the same time, earn a
surprising number of shillings.
The establishment of Mr. Elmer Ludgrove, the herbalist of Praed
Street, was almost exactly opposite that of Mr. Samuel Copperdock, who
dealt in another herb, namely tobacco. There was a considerable
contrast between the two shops; that of Mr. Copperdock was always
newly painted, and its windows full of tins and boxes bearing the
brightest labels known to the trade. The herbalist’s window, on the
other hand, was low and frowning, backed by a matchboard partition
which effectually precluded any view into the shop. Between the
partition and the glass were displayed the usual bunches of dried
plants and dishes containing seeds and shrivelled flowers. The door of
the shop closed with a spring, and if you had the curiosity to push
this open you found yourself in a dark little room, across the centre
of which ran a narrow counter. The noise of your entry would bring Mr.
Ludgrove through a second door, shrouded by a heavy curtain, and he
would ask you politely what he could do for you.
Mr. Ludgrove’s appearance was certainly in keeping with his calling.
He was tall and thin, with a pronounced stoop and a deep but not
unpleasant voice. But it was his head that you looked at
instinctively. Above the massive forehead and powerfully-chiselled
features was a wealth of long, snow-white hair, balanced by a flowing
beard of the same colour. His eyes, behind his iron-rimmed spectacles,
looked at you benignly, but they conveyed the impression that they saw
further into your mind than the eyes of the mere casual stranger. If
you were a mere customer for some simple remedy, you came away with
the pleasant feeling of having been treated with unusual courtesy. If
your business was such that Mr. Ludgrove invited you to discuss it
with him in the room behind the curtain, you very soon found out that
behind Mr. Ludgrove’s impressive presence there lay a wealth of wisdom
and experience.
Praed Street, which beneath its squalor possesses a vein of native
shrewdness, had very soon estimated Mr. Ludgrove’s worth. That
neighbourhood had very few secrets, romantic or sordid, which, sooner
or later, were not told in halting whispers behind the sound-defying
curtain. And, whatever the secret might be, the teller of it never
became swallowed up again in the stream of humanity which flowed past
Mr. Ludgrove’s door without some grain of comfort, material or moral,
which as often as not had cost the recipient nothing.
Mr. Samuel Copperdock had from the first taken a great fancy to old
Ludgrove, as he called him. When the name had first appeared over the
shop, which had stood empty for years, almost opposite his own
premises, he had been intrigued at once. Curiosity—or perhaps it was
not mere vulgar curiosity, but a thirst for information—was one of Sam
Copperdock’s chief characteristics. He must have been one of Mr.
Ludgrove’s first customers, if not the very first, for on the very day
the herbalist’s shop was opened he had walked across the road, pushed
open the door, and thumped upon the counter.
He stared quite frankly at Mr. Ludgrove as the latter came into the
shop, and opened the conversation without delay. “Look here, you sell
medicines, don’t you?” he inquired briskly.
Mr. Ludgrove smiled, and with a slight gesture seemed to indicate the
long rows of drawers behind the counter. “Yes, if you like to call
them such,” he replied gently. “What particular medicine do you
require?”
“Well, I’m terrible troubled with rheumatics,” said Mr. Copperdock.
“Mind, I don’t hold with any of them quack mixtures, but I thought I’d
just step across and see if you had anything that was any good.”
Mr. Ludgrove smiled. Certainly Mr. Copperdock, short, red-faced, and
inclined to stoutness, looked the picture of health. “Rheumatism, eh?”
he remarked. “How long have you suffered from it?”
Mr. Copperdock laughed. There was something disarming in the attitude
of this herbalist fellow. Besides, deception in any form was not Mr.
Copperdock’s strong suit.
“Well, to tell the truth, I don’t worry much about them rheumatics,”
he replied. “I came across neighbour-like, mainly to see what sort of
a place you’ve got here.”
“I’m sure you’re very welcome,” replied Mr. Ludgrove courteously. The
two men leant on the opposite sides of the counter, chatting for a
while. At last Mr. Copperdock straightened himself up, half
reluctantly. “Well, I must get back to business, I suppose,” he said.
“Look here, how serious were you about that rheumatism?” interposed
Mr. Ludgrove. “Do you ever feel any twinges of it?”
“Oh, sometimes,” replied Mr. Copperdock nonchalantly. “Can’t say as it
worries me much, though.”
“If you take my advice, you’ll stop it before it gets worse,” said Mr.
Ludgrove, opening a drawer and taking from it a scoopful of some
parched-looking seeds. “If you put a teaspoonful of these into half a
tumbler of boiling water, and drink the liquid twice a day after
meals, you won’t have any further trouble.”
He had poured the seeds into a paper bag as he spoke, and handed them
across to Mr. Copperdock.
“How much?” asked the latter rather awkwardly, putting his hand in his
trouser pocket.
But Mr. Ludgrove waved him away. “Try them first, my dear sir,” he
said. “Then, if you find they do you good and you want some more,
we’ll talk about payment.”
That first introduction had, in the course of years, ripened into
friendship. Nearly every morning Mr. Copperdock was in the habit of
stepping across the road and having a chat with old Ludgrove. Mr.
Copperdock loved somebody to talk to. If you went into his shop to buy
a packet of your favourite cigarettes you were lucky if you got out
after less than five minutes conversation. In the evening, after the
shop was closed, a select company in the saloon bar of the Cambridge
Arms gave Mr. Copperdock the opportunities he sought. Mr. Copperdock,
who had been a widower for many years, always talked of retiring in
favour of his only child Edward.
“Does the lad good to be left in charge of the shop for a bit,” was
his father’s justification for his morning talk with his friend the
herbalist. And Mr. Ludgrove, whose trade was never very brisk in the
mornings, always seemed glad to see him.
Thus, on the Monday following Mr. Tovey’s adventure it was to Mr.
Ludgrove that Sam Copperdock hastened to unbosom himself. He was
simply bursting with news, and he watched impatiently until the
unlocking of Mr. Ludgrove’s shop door indicated that that gentleman
was ready to receive visitors. Then he bustled across the road and
into the shop. “Are you there, Ludgrove?” he called out.
“Come in, come in, Mr. Copperdock,” replied a welcoming voice from
behind the curtain, and the tobacconist, with an air of supreme
importance, passed into the inner room.
The room was half-parlour, half-laboratory. One side of it was
entirely occupied by a long bench, upon which stood a variety of
scientific instruments. At the other side, placed round a cheerful
fire, were two comfortable arm-chairs, in one of which sat the
herbalist himself. With a hospitable gesture he motioned Mr.
Copperdock towards the other, but the tobacconist was too excited to
perceive the invitation.
“I say, have you heard the news about poor Jim Tovey?” he exclaimed,
without preliminary.
“My dear sir, I read my paper pretty thoroughly every morning, as you
know,” replied Mr. Ludgrove with a glance at the sheet which lay on
the table by his side.
But Sam Copperdock merely snorted impatiently. “Newspaper!” he
exclaimed, “why, the newspapers don’t know nothing about it! I tell
you I’ve been up three parts of the night over this affair.”
“Indeed? Then you probably know all the details,” replied the
herbalist. “If you can spare the time, I should be very interested if
you would sit down and tell me all about it.”
This was exactly what Mr. Copperdock had meant to do. He sank heavily
into the chair with a portentous sigh. “Terrible thing, terrible,” he
began, shaking his head. “I’ve known Jim Tovey ever since he first
took that shop in Lisson Grove, and to think that a thing like this
should happen to him! And his poor daughter Ivy spent the best part of
the evening at my place, too.”
Mr. Ludgrove, who knew his friend’s methods of expression, was careful
not to interrupt, and after a short pause the tobacconist resumed his
relation.
“First I knew of it was from my boy Ted. You see, it was like this.
Ted’s very sweet on Ivy, and a nice girl she is, too. None of your
fly-away misses, but a nice steady girl what’ll make her way in the
world. Ted brought her to my place for dinner, then they spends the
afternoon at the pictures, and comes back for supper. About half-past
nine or maybe quarter to ten Ivy says it’s time she was getting home,
and she and Ted goes out together. I was thinking Ted was a long time
a-seeing of her home, since it was a shocking night, and they weren’t
likely to dawdle on the way, when in he comes white as a sheet, and
all of a tremble. ‘Dad,’ he says, ‘Ivy’s father’s been murdered.’
“Well, I thought the boy had gone off his head. ‘Murdered?’ I says.
‘Why, what do you mean? Who’d want to murder Jim Tovey, I’d like to
know?’ Then after a bit I manages to get the whole story out of him.
It seems that when he and Ivy got to Lisson Grove, Jim Tovey was out.
He’d been called to St. Martha’s to identify an accident case. He
stayed there for a bit, when suddenly the door bell rings. Mrs. Tovey
answers it, and in comes a policeman, with a message that Mrs. Tovey
and Ivy were wanted at St. Martha’s at once. Mrs. Tovey goes upstairs
to put her things on, and Ivy goes with her. Then the policeman asks
Ted if he’s a friend of the family, and when he says he is, tells him
that poor Jim has just been murdered in this very street, not a couple
of hundred yards from where we’re sitting now.”
Mr. Ludgrove nodded. “A most extraordinary affair altogether,” he
commented.
“Ah, you may well call it extraordinary,” agreed Mr. Copperdock
significantly, “there’s more in it than meets the eye, that’s what I
says. Well, as soon as I hears this I thinks of those two poor women,
and off I goes to St. Martha’s to see if I could be of any use. There
I finds a police inspector who asks me who I was. When he hears I was
Jim Tovey’s oldest friend he tells me all about it. It seems that a
policeman who had his eye on the lads coming out of the Express
Train—they’re a rough crowd, as you know—saw a man fall down and then
heard a lot of hollering. Thinking there was a scrap he went over and
found Jim Tovey on the ground with a lot of fellows standing round
him. It didn’t take him long to find out that Jim was dead, but nobody
seemed to know how it happened. There was a crowd on the pavement
outside the pub, and it was a foggy sort of night that you couldn’t
see very clearly in.”
“I know,” put in Mr. Ludgrove. “I was out about that time myself. I
always go for a walk after supper, rain or fine; it’s the only chance
of exercise I get.”
“Yes, I know you do,” agreed Mr. Copperdock. “I often wonder you don’t
catch your death of cold. Well, the policeman calls up the ambulance,
and they gets poor Jim round to St. Martha’s. There they very soon
finds out what’s the matter. There’s a great long knife, in shape
rather like a butcher’s skewer, but without a handle, sticking into
him. And the point’s right through his heart.”
Mr. Copperdock paused dramatically. There was no doubt that he was
thoroughly enjoying himself, and Mr. Ludgrove was far too good a
listener to interrupt him.
“I took Mrs. Tovey and Ivy home,” he continued, “and the Inspector
told me he’d come and have a chat with me later. It was past midnight
when he turned up, and then of course he wanted to know all about poor
Jim, and whether I knew of anybody who had a grudge against him. He
couldn’t have come to a better man, for I know a lot about Jim Tovey
that I don’t suppose he ever told anybody else. You’ve heard of the
Express Train gang, I suppose?”
Mr. Ludgrove nodded. “It consists, I believe, of a number of young men
who frequent the racecourses, and who meet in the evenings at the
Express Train,” he replied.
“They were the fellows outside the pub when poor old Jim was
murdered,” continued Mr. Copperdock significantly. “Now the police,
who know a lot more than most people give them credit for, know all
about that gang. They’d had every man jack of them rounded up before
the Inspector came to see me and put them through it. As the Inspector
said, if Jim Tovey had been beaten up with bits of iron pipe, or
something like that, he could have understood it. But the knife trick
didn’t sound like the gang, somehow. None of them had the guts for
deliberate murder like that, and there seemed no reason why they
should have set upon Jim Tovey. He’d nothing to do with racing, and he
wasn’t likely to be carrying a lot of money about with him.”
Again Mr. Ludgrove nodded. “I see the point,” he said.
“Yes, but you don’t know what I know,” replied Mr. Copperdock darkly.
“The leader of the gang is young Wal Snyder. Decent lad he used to be,
I knew his father years ago before he died. He and my Ted used to go
to school together, and I managed to get him a job as errand boy. Then
he got into bad company, run away from his job, and has been hanging
about doing nothing ever since. Now, if you please, this young rip had
the sauce to walk into Tovey’s shop a few weeks ago, and ask if Miss
Ivy was in. Jim asks him what he wants her for, and he says that he
knew her as a child, and as she’d turned out such a fine girl he’d
like to take her out on the spree one fine evening. Jim tole me he
fair lost his temper at that; I don’t know exactly what he said to
young Wal, but he let him know pretty straight that if he found him
hanging round Ivy he’d put the police on his track. The young scamp
cleared out, telling him he’d better look out for himself.”
“Ah, this throws a new light upon the matter!” commented Mr. Ludgrove,
with polite interest.
“Better look out for himself,” repeated Mr. Copperdock with careful
emphasis. “A regular threat, mark you. Jim didn’t say anything about
Wal to Ivy or her mother, you never know how women will take these
things. Of course, I told the Inspector about it, and he took it all
down in his book. He’d already seen Wal, together with the rest of the
gang. It seems they’d had a pretty good week, and most of ’em
confessed they were a bit on, and didn’t remember much after they was
chucked out of the pub. But young Wal said he remembered an old chap
barging into him—he said he didn’t recognize him—and just behind him
was a fellow who looked like a seaman. He couldn’t say much about this
other fellow, except that he had a sort of woollen cap covering his
head, a fierce-looking black beard, and a great scar right across his
cheek. Said he looked like one of them Russian Bolsheviks. Of course,
there was a lot of people on the pavement, but he was the only one he
noticed.”
Mr. Ludgrove smiled. “I am inclined to think that the story does
credit to the young man’s imagination,” he said quietly. “I can’t say
that I’ve ever seen a Bolshevik sailor wandering about Praed Street on
a Sunday evening.”
“Nor hasn’t anybody else,” replied Mr. Copperdock scornfully, “what’s
more, the policeman, who was on the spot pretty sharp, didn’t see
anybody like this man in the crowd. There’s no question but what Wal
Snyder invented this story to cover himself. It’s all plain as
daylight to me—ah, but there’s one thing I haven’t told you. Remember
I said that poor old Jim had been sent for to St. Martha’s to identify
an accident case? Well, that was all my eye. There hadn’t been no
accident and St. Martha’s hadn’t rung him up at all. It was just a
trick to get him out into Praed Street.”
“It ought to be possible for the police to trace where the call came
from,” suggested Mr. Ludgrove.
“Of course. The Inspector told me they’d done that already, but it
didn’t get them much further. The call came from one of the boxes at
Paddington station, one of them automatic contraptions where you press
the button when you’re through. If you’re sharp with the button,
there’s nothing to tell the people you’re speaking to that you’re
speaking from a box. And, of course, at a place like Paddington
there’s no one to see who goes in and out of those boxes.”
“I see. And where was Wal Snyder when the call was made?”
“Oh, in the Express Train all right. He’d got his alibi fixed up, no
fear of that. Put one of his pals on to that job, the cunning young
devil. And then, of course, he’d watch till Jim came past the pub on
his way home, and the rest was easy.”
“And what did your friend the Inspector think of all this?” inquired
Mr. Ludgrove.
“He didn’t say much,” confessed Mr. Copperdock. “But the police ain’t
such fools as you might think. Young Wal Snyder will have to go
through it, you mark my words. Well, I’d best be getting back home.
You never know when I shan’t be wanted to give evidence or something.”
And with that he rose and stalked out of the back room, leaving Mr.
Ludgrove with a thoughtful expression on his face.
Chapter III
The Inquest
The inquest upon Mr. Tovey, although it was reported at length in all
the evening papers, did not throw any further light upon the identity
of his murderer. The knife was produced and handed round for
examination. There was, however, nothing extraordinary about it,
except perhaps its inordinate length and the fact that it had no
handle.
A cutler, called as an expert witness, identified it as the blade of a
paper-cutter’s knife, carefully ground down so as to obliterate the
maker’s name and also to produce an edge all the way up as well as at
the point. Such blades were usually supplied with a wooden handle,
into which they fitted loosely, being secured by means of a set-screw.
This witness agreed that knives of this type were rarely seen in
ordinary use, but that they were made in considerable quantities for
use in certain trades. There would be no difficulty in purchasing one.
Wal Snyder, with a mixture of glibness and injured innocence, gave his
version of the affair. But the atmosphere of the coroner’s court, so
painfully reminiscent of the police court, reduced him in a very short
time to stuttering incoherence. Yes, he had caught sight of somebody
just as the dead man fell. Hadn’t never seen him before, biggish
fellow with a lot of black hair, and an ugly-looking cut across his
cheeks, like as if he’d been slashed with a knife. Asked why he
thought he was a sailor, Wal replied that he wore a woollen cap and a
coat and trousers like the sailors wear. He knew because he had got
pals down the West India Dock Road. Asked again if he had any reason
to suppose that this was the man who stabbed the deceased, Wal became
more confused than ever. Well, then, had he seen him strike the blow?
Wal had not, but incautiously advanced the opinion that he looked just
the sort of cove who’d do a thing like that.
This brought the whole weight of the coroner’s displeasure upon his
unlucky head. He was told to stand down and not talk nonsense. Then
his appalled ear was assailed by an exact and monotonous catalogue of
the misdemeanours committed by himself in particular and the Express
Train gang in general; things which he fondly believed were known only
to himself and a few chosen associates. They ranged from petty larceny
to assault and battery, but the Inspector who recited them seemed to
treat them with contempt. He smiled as he replied to the coroner’s
questions.
“No, sir, I don’t believe any of them have the intelligence or the
pluck to plan a murder like this,” he said, “nor do I think that they
would be likely to play any of their games outside the Express Train,
under the very eyes of the police. In fact, sir, we have no evidence
that any of them was in any way connected with the crime.”
The constable who had been first on the scene proved an excellent
witness, and earned the coroner’s commendation. He had been standing,
at about half-past nine on the previous Sunday evening, on the
pavement opposite the Express Train. There had been complaints of
disorderliness in Praed Street at closing time. There had been a large
number of people passing along the pavement, and the sudden surge of
twenty or thirty men from the door of the public house caused a few
moments confusion. He heard a lot of shouting, then saw a man fall on
the pavement. A group immediately gathered round the fallen man and
hid him from sight until he pushed them aside.
Asked if he could form any estimate of the time which elapsed between
his seeing the man fall and his reaching his side, the constable said,
it could not have been more than fifteen seconds. He did not see
anybody resembling the black haired sailor described by a previous
witness, but had there been such a man he would have had ample time to
disappear in the crowd in the interval. He could not distinguish faces
across the street, it was too foggy. His ambulance training had
convinced him that the deceased was dead when he reached him.
A house-surgeon at St. Martha’s described the wound. It would not
require the exercise of any great force to drive the knife in, but the
location of the blow showed a certain knowledge of anatomy. The knife
had passed right through the outer clothing of the deceased; it was
only when the body was undressed that it was discovered. It seemed
difficult to imagine how a man holding a blade without a handle could
have driven it in so far. Death from such a wound would be practically
instantaneous, but there would be no external hæmorrhage.
The coroner, addressing the jury, made it quite plain that although
there was no doubt how deceased met his death there was no evidence as
to how the blow was delivered. The jury, taking their clue from his
remarks, found that the deceased had been murdered by some persons or
persons unknown, and added a rider expressing their sympathy with his
widow and daughter.
Mr. Samuel Copperdock, who had escorted Mrs. Tovey and Ivy to the
court, brought them back to his place in Praed Street for tea. In Mr.
Copperdock’s mind there still lingered a strong suspicion that Wal
Snyder and the Express Train gang were in some way mixed up in the
affair. His disappointment that someone had not been brought to book
made him unusually silent, and it was not until tea was over, and he
and Mrs. Tovey were ensconced in arm-chairs in his comfortable
parlour, that he resumed his accustomed cheerfulness.
Mrs. Tovey, a voluminous figure in the deepest of black, had taken the
tragedy with her accustomed philosophy. She was not the sort of woman
to give way to despair; and all her life she had faced the ups and
down of fortune with the same outward placidity. Her inner feelings
were her own concern; even her husband had never attempted to probe
their depth. Besides, Mrs. Tovey belonged to a class which cannot
afford to let sentiment interfere with the practical considerations of
the moment.
“I shall keep on the business,” she was saying. “’Tisn’t as though I’d
been left without a penny, in a manner of speaking. Jim had a tidy bit
put away; he always used to say he was saving it up for our old age.
Then there’ll be the insurance money. Ivy’s a good girl, she hasn’t
cost us nothing for the last year or two, and it’s her I’m thinking of
mostly. She’ll want a home yet for a bit, and she couldn’t have a
better one.”
Mr. Copperdock glanced over his shoulder towards the other end of the
room, where Ivy and Ted were holding an earnest conversation in low
tones. It was Thursday afternoon, early closing day, and the shop
below was shut, a circumstance for which Ted appeared devoutly
grateful.
“I shouldn’t wonder if you lost Ivy before very long,” said Mr.
Copperdock slyly. “But she’s a good girl, as you say. But you’ll never
manage the business by yourself, Mrs. Tovey. Who’s going along to do
the bit of buying of a morning?”
“I’ll manage easy enough,” replied Mrs. Tovey confidently. “I shall
take young Alf into the shop, and get another lad to drive the van.
You’ll find I’ll manage to rub along very comfortable, Mr.
Copperdock.”
They entered upon an earnest discussion of the science of
greengrocery, heedless of the equally earnest discussion which was
going on behind their backs.
“No, it’s no use, Ted, not yet,” Ivy was saying. “You none of you seem
to understand quite. It’s different for Mum; she’s got the business to
look after, and she doesn’t think of anything else. I can’t forget how
good Dad always was to me, and we just couldn’t do anything he
wouldn’t have liked.”
“You mean he wouldn’t have liked you to—to walk out with me?” put in
Ted, half resentfully.
Ivy blushed in spite of herself. “It wasn’t that, exactly,” she
replied. “Mind, he never said anything to me, but I’ve got it out of
Mum since. He always wanted me to—to get on in the world, and be a
credit to the education he’s given me. And I feel that even now he’s
dead, I’ve got to try and do what he wanted.”
“It isn’t that there’s anybody else?” he suggested with a note of
anxiety in his voice.
“There isn’t anybody else, Ted,” she replied, looking him straight in
the face. “But I’m not going to promise anything until I’ve got over
the shock of his being killed like that. Oh, Ted, who can have done
it? He hadn’t an enemy in the world, not a real enemy, I mean.”
Ted shook his head helplessly. “I can’t make it out,” he replied. “I
can’t believe Wal Snyder had anything to do with it. After all, if—if
he wanted to be friends with you, it wasn’t the way to go about it.”
“Wal Snyder must have known perfectly well that I’d never have had
anything to do with him,” exclaimed Ivy indignantly. The disclosure of
that episode at the inquest had roused her to a pitch of anger she
rarely displayed. “Besides, he’s too much of a worm to do a thing like
that. I’d like to see him hanged, just the same.”
Ted tactfully disregarded this piece of feminine logic. “It must have
been some lunatic, or perhaps, whoever it was mistook your father for
someone else,” he replied vaguely.
“And sent him that telephone message first,” she struck in, with a
touch of scorn. “No, poor Dad was murdered deliberately. Oh, Ted, if
only I were a man, and could find out who did it!”
Ted, looking at her clenched hands and tear-filled eyes, felt suddenly
the urge of a great resolve. “Ivy, if I were to find out who it was,
would you marry me?” he exclaimed impulsively.
Her eyes dropped before his ardent gaze. “Perhaps,” she murmured.
Their further conversation was interrupted by the stately rising of
Mrs. Tovey from her chair.
“Come along, Ivy,” she said. “It’s time we were getting along home.”
Ivy rose obediently, as Mr. Copperdock helped her mother into her
cloak. “Ted’ll see you home, Mrs. Tovey,” he said. “I don’t like the
thought of your being about the streets alone.”
“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Copperdock,” replied Mrs. Tovey. “I
really don’t know what I should have done if it hadn’t been for all
your goodness. You’ll come back to our place to-morrow and have a bit
of something after the funeral?”
“I’d be very glad to, Mrs. Tovey,” said Mr. Copperdock. He walked with
them as far as the door of the shop, and stood there a few seconds,
until he lost sight of Mrs. Tovey’s ample form among the crowd. Then
he walked slowly up the stairs, and flung himself into his own
particular chair.
“I wonder if she suspects anything?” he muttered, with a reflective
frown. “I’ll have to go cautious-like, I can see that.”
Mr. Copperdock sat for a long time, motionless, his usually cheerful
face furrowed in deep thought. He hated being alone at any time, but
somehow this evening it was doubly distasteful. Ted was a long time
coming back; no doubt Mrs. Tovey, hospitable soul, had asked him to
step in. It was no good stepping across to Elmer Ludgrove’s; Thursday
afternoon was that gentleman’s busiest day of the week. The herbalist
never closed on Thursday. His customers were for the most part people
who were engaged in trade, and the weekly half-holiday was their only
opportunity for consultations. Also it seemed a long time before it
would be his usual hour for going to the Cambridge Arms. Mr.
Copperdock consoled himself with the thought that, as one who had
actually attended the inquest, he would not lack an attentive
audience.
In due course Ted came back, with a suppressed light of excitement in
his eyes. He said very little until they had finished tea, and then,
_à propos_ of nothing in particular, he burst out with the subject
which occupied his mind. “I say, Dad, I would like to find out who
killed poor old Tovey!” he exclaimed.
Mr. Copperdock glanced at him in astonishment. “Would you, my lad?” he
replied sarcastically. “Think you’re a sucking Sherlock Holmes,
perhaps? You take it from me, if the police can’t lay their hands on
the chap, ’tain’t likely you will.”
Ted sighed heavily. In his heart of hearts he was of the same opinion
himself. But the magnificence of the reward had blinded him to the
difficulties which lay in his path. In every thriller which he had
ever read the hero had at least the fragment of a clue to work upon.
But rack his brains as he would, Ted could not hit upon the faintest
idea of how to set about looking for one.
His father continued to look at him with a not unkindly smile. “I
dessay you think that Ivy would give a lot to know, eh?” he said, his
native shrewdness carrying him straight to the point. “Well, I
wouldn’t be disheartened if I was you. Women’s queer folk, and they
often takes the will for the deed, as the saying is. But you stick to
the tobacco trade, my boy, and don’t go trying no detective tricks on
your own, or you’ll find yourself in trouble.”
It was not until the following evening that Mr. Copperdock had a
chance of a word with Mr. Ludgrove. The excitement engendered by Mr.
Tovey’s funeral had kept him busy all the morning, and on his return
from that ceremony he had found the herbalist’s shop full of people.
But as he was coming back from his evening visit to the Cambridge
Arms, he overtook Mr. Ludgrove, who was strolling with a leisurely air
along the pavement of Praed Street.
They were glad to see one another. “I have been hoping for a chance of
a chat with you ever since yesterday,” said Mr. Ludgrove. “Of course,
I read the report of the inquest in the papers, but naturally I should
be interested in a fuller description. As you see, I am on my way home
from my usual evening stroll. Would you care to come in for a few
minutes?”
Mr. Copperdock laid his hand on his friend’s arm. “No, no, you come
over to my place,” he replied hospitably. “Ted’s sure to have a decent
fire going, and there’s a bottle of whiskey in the cupboard. And it’s
rarely enough you find time to come and see me, and that’s a fact.”
Mr. Ludgrove agreed, and for the second time the tobacconist went over
the story of the inquest. His son listened attentively, not so much to
his father’s words as to the comments of the herbalist. He had great
faith in Mr. Ludgrove’s wisdom, and he felt that at any time he might
suggest some clue which could be followed up.
But Mr. Ludgrove disappointed him. “It is really the most remarkable
affair,” he said as his friend came to the end of his recital. “I
confess that I have puzzled over it more than once since last Monday
morning. In fact, I have no doubt that I shall amuse myself by
speculating upon it during the week-end.”
“Going away?” asked Mr. Copperdock incuriously.
Mr. Ludgrove nodded. “I hope to catch the 12.35 from Liverpool Street
to-morrow,” he replied.
“Weed hunting, as usual?” said Mr. Copperdock facetiously.
“If you like to call it so,” answered Mr. Ludgrove. “As you know, I
employ most of my week-ends looking for our rarer English plants. It
has become the custom to sneer at the simple remedies of our
ancestors, but I assure you that there are plants growing in the
hedgerow, if one can only find them, which will cure almost any human
complaint, and it is my favourite practice to seek for them.”
Mr. Copperdock shook his head. “Can’t say as I should find much fun in
it,” he said. “Too lonely a business altogether. I likes to have
someone to talk to when I’m on a holiday. And where might you be going
this time?”
“A little place I know in Suffolk, not very far from Ipswich. Now why
don’t you come with me, Mr. Copperdock? I shall stay at the inn, a
most pleasant little place, and we could go out searching for plants
together.”
But Mr. Copperdock was not to be tempted. “It’s very good of you, I’m
sure,” he replied. “But, as a matter of fact, the country isn’t very
alive, leastways not at this time of the year. Perhaps I’ll come with
you some time in the summer, if you’re going to stay at a decent
little pub. Some of them country pubs ain’t half bad if you’re
thirsty.”
After a little further conversation Mr. Ludgrove took his departure,
and Mr. Copperdock, after a final drink, retired to bed. But it is to
be feared that his thoughts gave him very little rest. He almost
regretted that he had not accepted Ludgrove’s invitation. For it was
being slowly borne in upon him that his agitation would drive him to
confide in the wisdom of the herbalist. Ludgrove could be trusted not
to give him away, and would certainly give him good advice.
Chapter IV
The Poisoned Pipe-stem
Mr. Ludgrove returned from Suffolk by a late train on Sunday night,
burdened with a capacious suit-case, which he laid on the bench in the
inner room. He made himself a cup of cocoa, and then proceeded
leisurely to unpack the case.
It contained a carefully arranged mass of plants, which he laid out in
rows, attaching to each a label upon which he scribbled its name. He
was thus busily engaged, when he was interrupted by a loud knocking
upon the door of the shop, which he had locked behind him.
The herbalist was not a man who allowed himself to be disturbed by
trifles. He merely smiled and glanced at his plants, not a half of
which were yet properly classified. Then he went towards the door. It
had sometimes happened that one of his clients, in urgent need of his
services, had hammered on the door during the hours when the shop was
shut. Mr. Ludgrove, if he happened to be within, made a point of
answering these summonses. At any hour he was prepared to do what he
could to relieve pain or anxiety.
The door opened, disclosing a short, stout figure upon the step. The
rather austere lines of Mr. Ludgrove’s face widened into a smile of
hospitable welcome.
“Come in, Mr. Copperdock!” he exclaimed. “I haven’t been back more
than a few minutes, but there’s a fire in the back room.”
Mr. Copperdock nodded. “Thanks, Ludgrove,” he said, as he came in. “I
know you’re just back, I saw you come in. And I thought to myself that
this was a very good chance of having a few minutes’ chat with you.”
“I’m only too glad you came over,” replied Mr. Ludgrove, leading the
way to the back room. “Bring that chair up closer to the fire. I’ve
just made myself a cup of cocoa. Will you have one, too? the kettle’s
still boiling.”
“Not for me, thank you kindly all the same,” said Mr. Copperdock.
“Cocoa’s not exactly in my line. A man of my age can’t afford to put
on weight, you know.”
His eyes strayed towards a cupboard in the corner of the room, the
door of which his host had already opened. From it appeared a bottle
of whiskey and a siphon, which were placed on the table within reach
of Mr. Copperdock’s hand. At a gesture from Mr. Ludgrove, the
tobacconist poured himself out a drink and held it to his lips. It was
noticeable that his hand trembled slightly as he did so.
For a minute or so Mr. Copperdock sat silently in his chair, glancing
nervously about the room. It was obvious that he had something on his
mind, but could not find the words in which to unburden himself. His
host, skilled in the art of encouraging the tongue-tied, appeared not
to notice his confusion, and strolled over towards the bench upon
which his harvest was laid out.
Mr. Copperdock’s eyes followed him. “Hullo, did you bring that lot
back with you this time?” he enquired in a tone which he endeavoured
to render conversational.
“Yes, they’re rather a good collection,” replied Mr. Ludgrove. “There
are one or two quite scarce plants among them, of which I have been
anxious to secure specimens for a long time. I had a most enjoyable
time. You ought to have come with me, Mr. Copperdock.”
“I wish I had, I’d have been saved a deal of worry,” said Mr.
Copperdock fervently. Then, with scarcely a pause, he added, “Do you
know old Ben Colburn?”
“The baker at the other end of the street?” replied Mr. Ludgrove. “I
always buy my bread at his shop, but I hardly know Ben Colburn
himself, I have seen his son Dick several times. Isn’t Dick a friend
of your lad’s?”
For an instant Mr. Copperdock made no reply. His face grew even redder
than usual, and he picked with his fingers at the arms of his chair.
Mr. Ludgrove, recognising the symptoms, knew that at last he was
approaching the point of this late visit. He walked across the room,
sat down in the chair on the opposite side of the fire, and waited.
“Old Ben Colburn’s dead,” blurted out the tobacconist at last, as
though the words had been torn from his lips.
Mr. Ludgrove raised his eyebrows, “Indeed?” he murmured. “Rather a
sudden end, surely? I was in the shop on Friday, talking to Dick, and
he said nothing of his father being ill.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” said Mr. Copperdock grimly, “He wasn’t taken ill
until about two o’clock yesterday afternoon, and he was dead by
tea-time.”
“The usual story in such cases, I suppose?” suggested Mr. Ludgrove. “A
diseased heart, and a sudden attack ending fatally?”
“Worse than that,” replied Mr. Copperdock slowly. Then suddenly he
raised his eyes and looked fixedly at his host. “What do you know
about young Dick?” he asked.
It was the herbalist’s turn to hesitate, “I might reply that I am a
customer of his,” he said at last. “It would be the truth, but not the
whole truth. To you, I do not mind admitting in the strictest
confidence that he has several times come to me for advice. You will
forgive me if I am unable to tell you anything further.”
Mr. Copperdock nodded. It was well known that Mr. Ludgrove had never
divulged even a hint of the curious stories which had been told him in
hesitating whispers in the privacy of this very room. It was the
certain knowledge that this was so which gave so many of his clients
the courage to confess to him their most secret troubles.
“Well, put it this way,” said Mr. Copperdock. “You know that young
Dick and his father didn’t hit it off quite, don’t you?”
“I may as well confess to that knowledge, since neither of them have
made any secret of the fact,” replied Mr. Ludgrove.
“Old Ben was a bit of a character in his way,” continued Mr.
Copperdock. “He used to drop in sometimes at the Cambridge Arms, and I
got to know him quite well, in an off-hand sort of way. He had the
idea that he was the only man in London who could bake bread, and he
often used to tell me that he spent all day and half the night in the
bakehouse. He said it was the finest one of its size anywhere, and he
used to take me round and look at it sometimes. I couldn’t see
anything wonderful about it, but that don’t matter. Ever been there
yourself?”
“Never into the bakehouse. I have been into the shop at least twice a
week for the last four years,” replied Mr. Ludgrove.
“Well, the bakehouse is away behind, you go up a long passage from the
shop to get to it. Old Ben spent most of his time in the bakehouse,
leaving the shop to the lad. But he was a suspicious old cove, and he
always had it in his mind that Dick was trying to make a bit out of
the business. Couldn’t blame him if he had, the old man kept him short
enough. But Dick hadn’t much chance. There’s a cash register in the
shop, through which every penny of the takings has to pass.”
Mr. Ludgrove nodded. “I know, I’ve often noticed it,” he agreed.
“Every afternoon between two and three, when he’d had his dinner, old
Ben used to come into the shop and sit at the cash register, checking
the takings. And he always smoked a pipe while he was doing it. Queer
thing he never smoked in the bakehouse, only just this one pipe in the
day. He would smoke it through, then refill it and put it on a shelf
in the corner of the shop, ready for the next day. I suppose he done
the same thing every day for a dozen years or more. Now, you remember
that Friday was poor Jim Tovey’s funeral?”
“I do,” replied Mr. Ludgrove. “You remember that I came in to see you
that same evening.”
“So you did. Well, while I was out, Old Ben comes round to my place to
buy a pipe. He only kept one going at a time, and when the old one
cracked he bought a new one. Always came to me for them, he did. Ted
sold him one of the kind he always has, and out he goes.
“Mind you, this is what Ted tells me. The rest of the story, Ted told
me last night, after I got back from the Cambridge Arms. Seems young
Dick had been in when I was over there and told him all about it. Old
Ben goes back to his place, fills his new pipe, and puts it on the
shelf ready for his usual smoke on Saturday afternoon. Dick swears
nobody touched it in the meantime. The old man was very fussy about
his pipe, and it was always left alone.
“On Saturday, yesterday, that is, Ben comes back from his dinner a
little after two, and the first thing he does is to pick up his pipe
and light it. All at once he takes it out of his mouth and cusses.
Dick asks him what’s the matter, and he says that the mouthpiece is
rough and that he’s scratched his tongue on it. They have a look at
the pipe together, and the old man finds a tiny splinter of glass
stuck to the mouthpiece. He scrapes it off with a knife, lights his
pipe again, and Dick goes out to get his dinner, same as he always
does when the old man comes into the shop.”
Mr. Copperdock paused, and the herbalist, who had been listening
attentively, took the opportunity of putting in a question. “Mrs.
Colburn has been dead some little time, I believe?”
“Yes, ten years or more, if my memory serves me right. Dick and his
father lived over the shop, with a charwoman to come in and do for
them in the morning. When Dick comes back from his dinner, a little
before three, the old man was still sitting at the cash register, and
Dick sees at once that something is wrong. The old chap can hardly
speak, says his tongue’s very swollen, and that he feels stiff all
over. Dick slips out sharp and gets a doctor, and between them they
gets Ben upstairs to bed. Doctor, he did what he could, but it wasn’t
any use, and poor old Ben dies in two or three hours.”
“What an extraordinary thing!” exclaimed Mr. Ludgrove.
“That’s what the doctor said. He wanted to find the bit of glass which
had scratched old Ben’s tongue, and he and Dick had a hunt for it, but
it must have fallen on the floor of the shop. It was only a tiny
piece, anyway. Of course they never found it, but the doctor says
there must have been some extraordinary powerful poison on it, and I
can’t see how a bit of glass like that could get stuck on the
mouthpiece of a pipe accidental like.”
“Of course, nicotine acts as a poison if it is injected into the
blood,” suggested Mr. Ludgrove. “It is just possible that the fragment
of glass was harmless enough, but that the nicotine in the pipe found
its way into the scratch.” But Mr. Copperdock shook his head. “It was
a new pipe, what hadn’t ever been smoked before,” he replied. “Bought
at my place the day before, as I told you.”
“Did your son examine the pipe before he gave it to Mr. Colburn?”
asked Mr. Ludgrove quickly.
“That’s just what I asked him, and he says he can’t be sure. Of
course, he didn’t see any glass or he’d have given old Ben another
pipe. We gets them in dozens, each pipe twisted up in a bit of paper.
Ted took the first that came out of the box, tore the paper off it,
and handed it to Ben, who put it straight into his pocket. I’ve looked
at the rest of the box since, and there’s no sign of any glass on any
of them.”
“You say that Mr. Colburn filled the pipe as soon as he got home, and
put it in the usual place,” said Mr. Ludgrove slowly. “It was lying
there until two o’clock on Saturday. Anybody might have tampered with
it in the meanwhile. The cash register, and I suppose the shelf where
the pipe was kept, is within easy reach of anybody coming into the
shop.”
“I’m afraid that won’t work,” replied Mr. Copperdock, shaking his
head. “There’s not one in a thousand as goes into the shop that know’s
the pipe’s there. You didn’t yourself till I told you just now, yet
you say you’re a regular customer. No, if that pipe was tampered with,
it was somebody on the other side of the counter what did it.”
“Then you are quite convinced in your own mind that Mr. Colburn was
deliberately murdered?” suggested Mr. Ludgrove. “But what motive could
anybody have for desiring his death?”
“What motive had anybody for murdering poor old Jim Tovey last week?”
retorted Mr. Copperdock. “There’s only one person who gains anything
by Ben’s death, and who that is you know as well as I do!”
“I can’t help thinking that you are taking too grave a view of the
case,” said Mr. Ludgrove. “I admit that it is difficult to account for
a piece of poisoned glass finding its way on to Mr. Colburn’s pipe by
accident, but murder is a very grave charge, and there is hardly
sufficient evidence at the moment to warrant it.”
Mr. Copperdock braced himself in his chair as though to give himself
the strength to utter his next words. “Ludgrove,” he said
impressively. “I _know_ poor Ben Colburn was murdered, same as I know
Jim Tovey was murdered. And it was the same hand as struck them both
down.”
Mr. Ludgrove sank slowly back into his chair, and a faint smile
twinkled for a moment at the corner of his lips. But before he could
make any remark, Mr. Copperdock, who had been watching him closely,
continued.
“It’s all very well for you to laugh, but neither you nor any other
living soul knows what I do. Now just you listen, and see if I’m not
right. Last Wednesday, I was in the Cambridge Arms in the evening,
same as I almost always am. In comes old Ben Colburn, and comes
straight over to me. He puts his hand in his pocket, and slaps an
ordinary bone counter down on the table in front of me. ‘Now then,
Sam, what’s the meaning of this little joke?’ he says.
“I looks at the counter and I looks at him. ‘What do you mean, what’s
the joke?’ I says.
“Why, didn’t you send me this?” he says, suspicious like.
“I told him I hadn’t, and then he says that it came to him by post
that morning, wrapped up in a bit of blank paper. ‘I made sure it was
one of your jokes, Sam,’ he says. I picked up the counter and looked
at it. On one side it had the figure II drawn on it in red ink. ‘What
does it mean?’ I said. ‘That’s just what I want to know,’ says Ben.
‘You shove it in your pocket, Sam, you’re better at finding out that
sort of thing than I am.’ So I shoved it in my pocket, and here it
is.”
Mr. Ludgrove took the counter which the tobacconist handed him and
looked at it curiously. It was just as Mr. Copperdock had described
it, a white bone counter, about the size of a halfpenny, with the
Roman numeral II, carefully traced upon it in red ink.
“I never thought about it again, until this afternoon,” continued Mr.
Copperdock. “Naturally I didn’t connect it with Ben’s death. Why
should I? But to-day, being Sunday, I went round to see Mrs. Tovey
neighbour-like. You see, it was her first Sunday after Jim’s death,
and I thought that she and Ivy might get brooding over things.”
Mr. Copperdock looked anxiously at his friend as he spoke, but the
expression on the herbalist’s face was one of polite interest only.
“Very thoughtful of you, I’m sure,” he murmured. “I hope that Mrs.
Tovey is not taking her husband’s death too much to heart.”
“She’s bearing up as well as can be expected,” replied Mr. Copperdock.
“She and I got to talking about Jim, and wondering whoever it could
have been that murdered him. She was telling me all about the
telephone call, and she went on to say that this was the second queer
thing that happened just before he died. Naturally I asked her what
the first was, and she told me that on the Friday morning before his
death, a typewritten envelope came addressed to him. He opened it, and
all there was inside was a white counter with the number I drawn on it
in red ink. Now what do you make of that?”
Mr. Ludgrove sat silent for a moment under his friend’s triumphant
gaze, a thoughtful frown upon his face. “This is most extraordinary,”
he said at last. “If your facts are correct—not that I doubt them for
a moment, but I know how fatally easy it is to find presages after the
event—it means that both Mr. Tovey and Mr. Colburn received, a couple
of days or so before their respective deaths, a white counter bearing
a numeral in red ink. It is almost certain that both counters were
sent by the same person, and, if they were intended as a warning, we
may infer, as you said, that both men were murdered by the same hand.”
Mr. Copperdock nodded rather impatiently. “Just what I told you, all
along,” he said.
“But, my dear sir, look at the difficulties which that theory
entails,” objected Mr. Ludgrove. “We are agreed that it is impossible
to think of any motive for the murder of Mr. Tovey, and I at least am
inclined to say the same regarding the murder of Mr. Colburn. Yet now
we are faced with the problem of finding a man who had a motive for
murdering both of them. By the way, do you happen to know if they were
ever associated in any way?”
“Never!” replied Mr. Copperdock emphatically. “Although they’d both
lived in these parts most of their lives, I don’t suppose they even
knew one another by sight.”
“The fact that they had nothing in common makes it all the more
puzzling,” said Mr. Ludgrove reflectively. “But perhaps you have
thought of a way out of the difficulty?”
A cloud came over Mr. Copperdock’s naturally cheerful face, and there
was a marked hesitancy in his tone as he replied. “Aye, I have thought
of something, and it’s that that’s been worrying me. Mind, I don’t
believe it myself, but I’m in mortal fear lest someone else should see
it too.”
“I think I can guess what you mean,” said Mr. Ludgrove gently. “I know
as well as you do that it isn’t true, but we’re both of us too well
aware of the mischief that can be caused by whispering tongues to
treat it as unimportant. You mean that young Colburn was not on good
terms with his father, that he and your son are great friends, and
that your son sold Mr. Colburn the pipe which is supposed to have been
the agency of his death.”
“I do mean that,” replied Mr. Copperdock deliberately. “I mean too
that Ted is very sweet on Ivy Tovey, and that poor old Jim wasn’t very
keen on the idea. Now you see the sort of lying whispers that might
get about if all this was known. And I’m blest if I see what I can do
about it.”
“I think you told me that you had some conversation with a Police
Inspector last week on the subject of Mr. Tovey’s murder?” suggested
Mr. Ludgrove.
“That’s right,” replied Mr. Copperdock. “Very decent sort of chap he
was, too. What about him?”
“Do you know where and how to get hold of him?”
“Yes, he left me his card. I’ve got it at home somewhere.”
“Well, Mr. Copperdock, if you will take my advice you will go and see
him, and tell him everything you know, as you have just told me. It’s
all bound to come out, sooner or later, and if you have already
informed the police, your position will be all the stronger. Don’t you
agree?”
“Yes, I suppose I do,” replied Mr. Copperdock reluctantly. “But it
seems terrible, like giving evidence against my own flesh and blood.”
“On the contrary, you will be doing the very best for your son. A
frank statement of facts is always the best defence of the innocent.
Tell your friend the Inspector everything, not forgetting the curious
incident of the numbered discs. He will know better than I do what
advice to give you in the matter. And, if you feel that I can be of
the slightest assistance to you, do not hesitate to come to me at
once.”
After some further discussion Mr. Copperdock agreed to follow his
friend’s advice, and, after a parting drink, went home, somewhat
comforted. The herbalist, having locked the door behind him, returned
to the interrupted classification of his plants. But, from the slight
frown which passed across his face from time to time, one might have
guessed that he was thinking more of his conversation with Mr.
Copperdock than of the specimens before him.
Chapter V
Inspector Whyland
The death of Mr. Colburn, following so closely upon that of Mr. Tovey,
caused a distinct sensation in Praed Street and its immediate
neighbourhood. Suspicion was, so to speak, in the air, and anybody
known to have been intimate with either of the dead men was looked at
askance, and became the subject of whispered comment when their backs
were turned. Not that this floating suspicion actually settled down
upon any individual head. But Praed Street discovered an uneasy
feeling that the two inexplicable deaths of which it had been the
scene indicated that it harboured a murderer.
On the Wednesday morning following Mr. Ludgrove’s visit to Suffolk, a
man walked into his shop and rapped upon the counter. The herbalist
emerged from the back room at the summons, and, as was his habit,
glanced gravely at his customer. He saw before him a youngish man,
immaculately dressed, who immediately turned towards him
interrogatively. “Mr. Ludgrove?” he said.
The herbalist bowed. “That is my name,” he replied. “Can I be of any
service to you?”
The stranger placed a card upon the counter, with an apologetic
gesture. “I’m Detective Inspector Whyland, attached to the F
Division,” he said. “And if you could spare me a few minutes, I should
be very grateful. I’m awfully sorry to have to intrude in business
hours.”
“Oh, pray do not apologize, I am rarely very busy in the morning,”
replied Mr. Ludgrove courteously. “Perhaps you would not mind coming
through this door. We shall be able to talk more privately.”
Inspector Whyland accepted the invitation, and sat down in the chair
offered him. Mr. Ludgrove having pressed him to smoke, sat down in the
opposite chair, and looked at him enquiringly.
“I daresay that you can guess what I have come to talk about,” began
the Inspector, with a pleasant smile. “I may as well confess at once
that I want your help. We policemen are not the super-men which some
people think we ought to be, and most of us are only too anxious to
ask for assistance wherever we are likely to get it. And I personally
am under a debt of gratitude to you for persuading Mr. Copperdock to
unburden himself to me.”
Mr. Ludgrove smiled. “Oh, he told you, did he?” he replied. “It was
much the best thing he could do. I hope he convinced you, as he
certainly did me, that both he and his son were completely innocent of
any knowledge of these queer happenings.”
It was the Inspector’s turn to smile. “He did. I don’t think that Mr.
Copperdock is of the stuff of which deliberate murderers are made, and
from what I have seen of the son, I fancy the same applies to him. But
may I, since you appear to be pretty intimate with Mr. Copperdock, ask
you one or two questions about him? You needn’t answer them unless you
like.”
“Most certainly I will answer them to the best of my ability,” replied
Mr. Ludgrove gravely.
“Thank you. In the first place, can you suggest why he is so obviously
confused when any reference is made to the Tovey family? I understand
that his son and Tovey’s daughter are—well, great friends, but that
could hardly account for his manner.”
Again Mr. Ludgrove smiled, this time with genuine amusement. “My dear
sir, haven’t you guessed the reason? I did, some days ago. Mrs. Tovey
is, I believe, a very charming woman, and by no means too old to
consider the possibility of marrying again. Mind you, Mr. Copperdock
is convinced that his secret is safely locked in his own breast, and I
should forfeit his friendship if he had any inkling that I shared it.”
Inspector Whyland laughed with an obvious air of relief. “Oh, that’s
the way the wind blows, is it?” he said. “You may rest assured that I
shall be the soul of discretion. I had an uncomfortable feeling that
he knew something that he did not care to tell me. Now, if I may
trouble you with another question, what do you know of the relations
between the Copperdocks and the Colburns?”
This time Mr. Ludgrove shook his head. “Nothing at first hand,” he
replied, “only what Mr. Copperdock has told me, which is doubtless the
same as what he told you.”
“You will forgive my pressing the point, Mr. Ludgrove,” persisted the
Inspector. “But I gather from Mr. Copperdock’s remarks that you are to
some extent in the confidence of young Colburn.”
Mr. Ludgrove looked him straight in the face. “Inspector Whyland,” he
said gravely, “I should like you fully to realize my position. Many of
the inhabitants of this part of London believe, rightly or wrongly,
that my experience of the world is greater than theirs. Consequently
they frequently seek my advice upon the most personal and intimate
matters. I have been the recipient of many confidences, which it has
been my invariable rule never to mention to a third person. Dick
Colburn has consulted me more than once, and it is only because I
believe it to be in his interest that I am prepared to break my rule
in his case.”
“I fully appreciate your motives, Mr. Ludgrove,” replied the
Inspector. “I will make no use of anything you care to tell me without
your permission.”
“Thank you, Inspector,” said Mr. Ludgrove simply. “Dick Colburn
informed me some months ago that he found it very difficult to get on
with his father. His chief complaint was that although he performed
the whole work of the shop, his father treated him as though he were
still a child, and refused to allow him any share of the profits of
the business. I advised him to persuade his father to admit him into
partnership, and if he proved obdurate, to announce his intention of
seeking work elsewhere. I think it is only fair to add that the lad
came to see me yesterday evening, in order to assure me that he had no
share in his father’s death.”
Inspector Whyland shrugged his shoulders. “In spite of appearances I
am inclined to believe him,” he replied wearily. “Frankly, Mr.
Ludgrove, I am completely at a loss. As you know, the jury at the
inquest on Mr. Colburn returned an open verdict, but I think there can
be very little doubt that he was deliberately murdered. We can rule
out suicide, people don’t take such elaborate steps to kill
themselves. And the circumstances seem too remarkable to be
accidental, which brings us back to Mr. Copperdock and his remarkable
story of the numbered discs. What do you make of that, Mr. Ludgrove?”
“Very little, although I have puzzled over it a good deal, since I
heard it,” replied the herbalist. “Of course, it is possible that the
receipt by Mr. Colburn of the one you have doubtless seen had nothing
whatever to do with his death, and that the combined imagination of
Mr. Copperdock and Mrs. Tovey evolved the first out of something
equally harmless. Mrs. Tovey is the only person who claims to have
seen it, I understand.”
“And yet her accounts of it are remarkably consistent,” said the
Inspector. “I went to see her and introduced the subject as tactfully
as I could. She described the incident in almost exactly the same
words as Mr. Copperdock used, and added that her husband, attaching no
importance to it, threw counter, envelope and all into the fire. Her
daughter, Ivy, was not present at the time. And yet, if we apply the
obvious deduction to the sending of these numbered counters, what
possible motive could anybody have for murdering two peaceful and
elderly tradesmen, apparently strangers to one another, or, still
more, for warning them first? It only adds another problem to this
extraordinary business.”
“Are you going to make the story of the numbered counters public?”
asked Mr. Ludgrove.
“One of my reasons for coming to see you was to ask you to say nothing
about it,” replied the Inspector. “We have decided that there is
nothing to be gained by letting it be known. Bone counters of this
size are very common, and we are not likely to learn where these
particular ones originated. On the other hand, the minute the story
becomes known, there will be an epidemic of counters bearing the
number III in red ink. The Post Office will be overwhelmed by
envelopes containing them, and every one of the recipients will come
clamouring to us for protection. You may think this is an
exaggeration. But you have no idea of the effect of crime upon some
people’s mentality.”
Mr. Ludgrove laughed softly. “I think I have,” he replied. “I haven’t
been a sort of confidential adviser to the poorer classes all these
years for nothing. Nearly everybody who has been in this room for the
last week has had definite knowledge of the murderer of Mr. Tovey, for
which knowledge they seem to think it is my duty to pay a large sum of
money. When I tell them to go to the police their enthusiasm
evaporates with amazing rapidity. And since you people offered a
reward for Wal Snyder’s sailor, the whole neighbourhood appears to
have seen him.”
“So I imagine,” said the Inspector. “There is usually a queue at the
police station waiting to claim the reward. But what could we do? I
confess I was very sceptical about the existence of this man; but I’ve
bullied the wretched Wal half a dozen times, drunk and sober, and he
sticks to the story. ‘S’welp me, it’s as true as I’m standing here,’
he says, ‘a big tall bloke, dressed like a sailor, with a black beard,
an ugly gash on his cheek, and a woollen cap.’ We had no option but to
advertise for such a man.”
“Well, I hope you’ll find him, Inspector,” remarked Mr. Ludgrove. “But
you’ll forgive my saying that I have grave doubts about it. Even Mr.
Copperdock, who spends a large part of his time watching the people
who pass his shop, has never seen anybody answering his description.
And again I find it difficult to imagine a black-bearded sailor with a
scar having a grudge against Mr. Tovey. Besides, he doesn’t sound the
sort of person to deliver numbered counters in typewritten envelopes.”
The Inspector rose from his chair with a smile. “It is a maxim of the
police never to admit defeat,” he said. “I am immensely obliged to you
for your courtesy, Mr. Ludgrove. Perhaps if you hear of anything which
has any possible bearing on the case you will send for me?”
The herbalist willingly consenting to this, Inspector Whyland took his
departure. He had scarcely been gone five minutes before Mr. Ludgrove,
who had returned to the back room, heard Mr. Copperdock’s voice in the
shop.
“Come in, Mr. Copperdock,” called the herbalist genially.
The curtain was furtively drawn aside, and Mr. Copperdock came in, a
look of deep anxiety upon his face. “That was Inspector Whyland in
here just now, wasn’t it?” he enquired.
“It was,” replied Mr. Ludgrove. “We had quite a long chat.” Then, with
a sudden change of manner, he laid his hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“Look here, Mr. Copperdock,” he said earnestly, “get out of your head
all idea that the police have any suspicions of you or your son. I can
assure you that they have not, and that your straightforwardness in
going to them and telling them all you know has impressed them greatly
in your favour.”
“Thank God for that!” exclaimed the tobacconist fervently. “I’ve been
terrible worried these last few days. I’ve laid awake at nights and
puzzled over it all again and again. I’ve even given up going to the
Cambridge Arms of an evening. I sort of feel that the fellows there
don’t talk to me quite in the way they did.”
“Oh, nonsense!” exclaimed Mr. Ludgrove. “You mustn’t let this prey on
your mind. We all know as well as you do that you have done nothing to
reproach yourself with. Now I must ask you to excuse me, for I think I
hear a customer in the shop.”
As the days went by, and no further developments took place, Mr.
Copperdock’s face regained its accustomed cheerfulness, and he resumed
his visits to the Cambridge Arms. The newspapers found fresh
sensations with which to fill their columns, and even Praed Street, in
the stimulus to trade furnished by the approach of Christmas, began to
forget the strange occurrences of which it had been the scene. Ted
Copperdock developed a new smartness of appearance and carefulness of
speech, no doubt the results of his frequent enjoyment of Ivy’s
company. It was only natural that on Sundays, when the young people
were out at the Pictures, Mr. Copperdock should walk over to Lisson
Grove to console Mrs. Tovey’s loneliness. Only Mr. Ludgrove, as he
regretfully explained to his friends, found himself too busy to spend
one of those week-ends in the country which he so much enjoyed.
Indeed, it was not until the week-end before Christmas that he found
an opportunity for leaving the shop for more than an hour or two at a
time. He confided his intentions to Mr. Copperdock on the Friday. “I
have just heard that a plant of which I have long been in search is to
be discovered in a spot not far from Wokingham,” he said. “The nearest
Inn appears to be at a village called Penderworth. I propose to go
there to-morrow and spend the afternoon and Sunday searching for the
herb. As I mean to come up by an early train on Monday, I have taken
the liberty of telling Mrs. Cooper, who comes in every week-day to
tidy my place up, that I have left the key with you. I suppose that it
is no use asking you to come with me?”
Mr. Copperdock fidgeted uncomfortably. “Leave the key by all means,”
he replied heartily. “I’ll look after it for you. Sorry I can’t come
with you, but you see about Christmas time I—we—there’s a lot of folk
comes to the shop and I can’t very well leave Ted alone.”
“I quite understand,” said Mr. Ludgrove, without a smile. “I shall
leave Waterloo at 1.30 to-morrow, and reach that station again just
before ten on Monday. If Mrs. Cooper has finished before then, she
will bring you back the key.”
His arrangements thus made, the herbalist closed his shop at noon on
Saturday, and, equipped with a suit-case which he always took with
him, took the Tube to Waterloo station. On arrival at Wokingham, he
hired a car to drive him to the Cross Keys at Penderworth. It was
after three o’clock when he arrived, and after securing a room,
writing his name and address in the register, and arranging for some
supper to be ready for him at half-past seven, he went out again
immediately, a haversack slung over his shoulder, and an ordnance map
in his hand.
It was after seven when he returned, his boots covered with mud, and
his haversack bulging with a miscellaneous collection of plants. A
fine drizzle had come on during the afternoon, and he was very wet.
But trifles like these never dampened his spirits, and he made
remarkable headway with the cold beef and pickles produced for his
delectation. His meal over, he made his way to the smoking-room fire,
and, spreading a newspaper on the table, began to examine the contents
of his haversack.
The rain, which by this time was falling steadily, seemed to have kept
the regular customers of the Cross Keys at home. The smoking-room was
empty, but for Mr. Ludgrove; and the landlord, after leaning idly
against the bar at one end of the room, and staring inquisitively at
his solitary guest, could restrain his curiosity no longer. Lifting
the flap, he walked across the room, with the ostensible object of
making up the fire.
Mr. Ludgrove looked up at his approach. “Good evening,” he said
pleasantly.
“Good evening, sir,” replied the landlord, glancing at the plants laid
out on the newspaper. “You’ve been having a walk round the country
this afternoon, then.”
“Yes, and a very pleasant country it is for one of my interests,” said
Mr. Ludgrove. “I have secured several very interesting specimens, and
I hope to find others to-morrow.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the landlord. “Flowers and that aren’t much in my
line. I’ve got a bit of garden, but it’s mostly vegetables. Pity the
rain came on like it did.”
“Oh, I don’t mind the rain,” replied Mr. Ludgrove. “Walking about the
country as I do, I am compelled to take the weather as it comes. I can
only get away from London during the week-ends.”
“I see you come from London by what you wrote in the book,” said the
landlord slowly. “It’s Praed Street you lives in, isn’t it?”
Mr. Ludgrove smiled. The eagerness in the landlord’s voice was very
transparent. “Won’t you sit down and have a drink with me?” he said.
“Yes, I live in Praed Street. Perhaps you saw in the paper that we had
some very unusual happenings there a few weeks ago.”
“I did, sir, and it was seeing you came from there made me think of
them,” replied the landlord. He went back to the bar and got the
drinks, which he brought to the fire. It immediately appeared that his
interest in crime, as reported in the newspapers, was at least as keen
as that of the late Mr. Tovey. But never before had it been his
fortune to meet one who had personally known the victims of two
unsolved murders.
“It’s a queer thing,” he said, “but a couple of days or so before this
Mr. Tovey was murdered, I was polishing the glasses behind the bar in
this very room, when I looked out of the window and sees a sailor, big
chap he was, walking past. I didn’t rightly catch sight of his face,
but he was carrying a bag and going towards London. Looked as if he
was on the tramp, I thought. I never thought about it again till I
sees the police advertising for this sailor chap, then, of course, I
tells the constable at the Police Station up the village. I never
heard whether they traced him or not.”
“You didn’t notice if he had a black beard or a scar?” suggested Mr.
Ludgrove mildly.
“No, I didn’t see his face,” replied the landlord, with an air of a
man brushing aside an irrelevant detail. “But that’s just like the
police. You give ’em a bit of valuable information, and they hardly
ever says thank you for it.”
The landlord, warming to his work, and finding Mr. Ludgrove an
excellent listener, developed theory after theory, each more
far-fetched than the last. It was not until the clock pointed to
closing time, that he rose from his chair with evident reluctance.
“You mark my words, there’s more in it than meets the eye,” he said
darkly, as he leant over the table, “as my old dad, what kept this
house afore I did, used to say, if there’s anything you can’t rightly
understand, there’s bound to be a woman in it. Look at the things what
you sees in the papers every week. How do you know that these two poor
chaps as were killed wasn’t both running after the same woman? And if
she was married couldn’t ’er ’usband tell you something about why they
was murdered? You think it over, sir, when you gets back to London.”
And the landlord, nodding his head with an air of superlative wisdom,
disappeared in the direction of the tap-room. By the time he returned,
Mr. Ludgrove had collected his belongings and retired to bed.
By the following morning the rain had ceased, and Mr. Ludgrove was
enabled to pursue his explorations in comfort. He went out directly
after breakfast and returned to the Inn in time for lunch. In the
afternoon he followed a different direction, arriving back shortly
after dark. When he repaired to the smoking-room after supper, he
found that his fame as a personal acquaintance of the murdered men had
preceded him. Mr. Ludgrove was before all things a student of human
nature, and he seemed almost to enjoy taking part with the leading men
of Penderworth in an interminable discussion of the unsolved crimes.
Perhaps he reflected that the looker-on sees most of the game, and
that these men, viewing the circumstances from a distance, might have
hit upon some point in the evidence which had escaped the observers on
the spot.
At all events, he went to bed on Sunday night with the remark that he
had thoroughly enjoyed his visit to Penderworth. A car had been
ordered to take him to Wokingham station early on Monday morning. His
first act upon reaching the platform was to buy a paper and open it.
Across the top of the centre page lay spread the ominous headline:
Another tragedy in Praed Street
Chapter VI
A Middle-aged Poet
Mr. Richard Pargent’s public was a very limited one. A few lines of
type, of unequal length, would appear from time to time in one of the
ultra-artistic magazines, and would be hailed by critics of the new
school as yet another deadly blow at the shackles which have hitherto
fettered the feet of the muse of poetry. The general public found them
incomprehensible, which was perhaps a fortunate circumstance for Mr.
Pargent’s reputation.
But, in spite of Mr. Pargent’s extreme literary modernity, his
surroundings and circumstances were typically mid-Victorian. His age
was between fifty and sixty, and he lived with his sister Clara in a
tall, narrow house in Bavaria Square, Bayswater. It was, as a matter
of fact, the house in which he and his two sisters had been born. On
their parents’ death he and Miss Clara Pargent had elected to remain
where they were and keep house together. Miss Margaret, younger and
more adventurous, had taken unto herself a companion—of the female
sex—and migrated to a house in the little town of West Laverhurst, in
Wiltshire.
It will be gathered from this that the Pargent family were not
dependent upon Mr. Richard Pargent’s literary earnings. Each member of
it was comparatively well off, and lived according to the standards of
mid-Victorian comfort. In their own phrase, they knew quite a number
of nice people, and sometimes they found it difficult to make time in
which to perform all their social duties. As a consequence, they had
little opportunity left for doing anything useful.
Although many years had elapsed since Miss Margaret had shaken the
dust of Bayswater off her feet and retired to the intellectual
wilderness of West Laverhurst, her brother and sister had never
completely recovered from the shock of such a revolutionary
proceeding. Never before, within the memory of man, had any member of
the Pargent family done anything but what was expected of them. And
even now, when any of their friends asked after Miss Margaret, they
replied with an almost imperceptible hesitation, with the apologetic
smile we adopt when speaking of anyone who exhibits such remarkable
eccentricity.
Not that Miss Margaret’s departure had entirely broken the bonds which
united the family. She and Miss Clara exchanged letters every day,
although it must exceed the comprehension of ordinary mortals what
they found to write about. Further than this, West Laverhurst was the
object of a regular fortnightly pilgrimage on the part of Richard
Pargent. Every other Saturday he caught the 10:45 at Paddington, which
reached West Laverhurst at 12:25, giving him ample time to lunch with
his sister and catch the 3.10 up, which deposited him at Paddington at
4.55. Miss Clara always had tea ready for him in the drawing-room in
Bavaria Square. A No. 15 bus from Paddington took him almost to his
door.
The Saturday before Christmas happened to be the occasion for one of
these fortnightly visits. It was usual for Mr. Pargent to walk the
short half mile which separated West Laverhurst from his sister’s
house, but, the afternoon being wet and Mr. Pargent very careful of
his health, he asked Miss Margaret to requisition a car to drive him
to the station. He arrived there in plenty of time, and in due course
the 3.10 came in punctually. Mr. Pargent took a corner seat in a
first-class non-smoking carriage, and immediately became immersed in a
book which he had brought with him for the purpose of reading in the
train. He inwardly congratulated himself upon having secured a seat in
an empty carriage.
The 3.10 up from West Laverhurst stops twice before reaching Reading,
and then runs fast up to London. The stop at Reading is a somewhat
long one, owing to the fact that tickets are collected there. On this
particular afternoon, the train had run into the station a minute or
two before time, and the stop was even longer than usual, giving a
tall man in a rather tight-fitting overcoat ample time to walk
leisurely the whole length of the train and select an empty
first-class smoking carriage close to the engine. The train started at
last, Mr. Pargent being left in undisputed possession of his
compartment.
The train arrived at Paddington punctually at five minutes to five.
Mr. Pargent had observed that the rain was falling more heavily than
ever, but, from his long experience of Paddington station, he knew how
to reach the stopping place of the No. 15 bus, keeping under cover
nearly all the way. He had only to follow the subway which leads to
the Underground booking-office, and then climb the stairway which
leads into Praed Street. The No. 15 bus stops nearly opposite on the
further side of the street.
The passenger who had got in at Reading seemed to know his way about
as well as did Mr. Pargent. This man, who somehow vaguely suggested a
retired ship’s officer, had an iron-grey beard and a curious patch of
crimson, such as is popularly known as a port-wine mark, on his left
cheek. He walked slowly down the subway, so slowly that Mr. Pargent
overtook him before he reached the foot of the stairway. The two
ascended it together, only a few steps separating them, Mr. Pargent
leading.
The mouth of the stairway was blocked, as it so often is in wet
weather, by a knot of people unfurling their umbrellas and waiting for
an interval in the traffic to dash across to the refuge in the middle
of the road. Mr. Pargent unfolded his umbrella like the rest, and
seizing his opportunity, ran for the island. The interval was a narrow
one; an almost unceasing stream of buses and taxis was pouring down
Praed Street. Only two or three followed Mr. Pargent’s example, among
them the Reading passenger. In the blinding rain and the flurry of the
traffic nobody noticed a swift movement of the latter’s arm, nor did
they watch him as he left the refuge immediately and gained the far
side of the road.
The clock above the entrance of the station showed it to be exactly
five o’clock. The Reading passenger glanced at it, walked swiftly a
few yards westward up Praed Street, then, seizing his opportunity,
crossed the road again. This brought him to the slope leading to the
departure platform of Paddington station. He hurried through the
booking office on to No. 1 platform, at which stood the 5.5 train for
Bristol, which stops for the first time at Reading. He showed the
ticket collector a third-class single ticket for Reading, and the man
hastily opened a carriage door and pushed him in. “Near shave that,
sir!” he remarked.
The passenger was far too short of breath to do anything but nod his
head in reply. He sank down exhausted upon the seat as the guard blew
his whistle and the train drew out of the station. There were only two
men beside himself in the carriage, and they, with true British
indifference, took no further notice of him. The train had nearly
reached Reading when he walked down the corridor to the lavatory. He
did not return to the carriage, but stepped Straight from the corridor
to the platform as the train came to rest. He mingled unnoticed with
the stream passing the barriers. He noticed that the hands of the
clock pointed to ten minutes to six.
Meanwhile Mr. Pargent had stood for an instant upon the refuge in the
middle of Praed Street, a puzzled expression on his face. An
approaching taxi-driver noticed his swaying form and swerved sharply,
just in time to avoid him as he crashed forward into the road-way. The
taxi-driver’s action caused a sudden check to the traffic, and for an
instant there was a chaos of skidding vehicles, screeching brakes, and
blasphemous language. Then the nearest drivers jumped from their seats
and clustered round the prone form. A majestic policeman, setting a
calm and undeviating course through the tumult, knelt down and turned
the body over. Mr. Pargent was dead.
The newspaper which Mr. Ludgrove bought at Wokingham station and read
carefully during his journey to Waterloo contained nothing more than a
bare statement that the famous poet, Richard Pargent, had fallen dead
in Praed Street, and that, upon the body being conveyed to the
mortuary, a blade was found in it, with the point entering the heart.
Round these facts a formidable structure of conjecture and
reminiscence was built up. There was an obituary notice, in which Mr.
Pargent’s Christian names and the titles of his published works were
incorrectly stated. There was a résumé of the case of Mr. Tovey, and a
photograph of Praed Street, with heavy black crosses marking the
places where the murders had taken place. Finally there was a leading
article, in which the responsibility for the murders was ingeniously
fixed upon the Government, which in consequence came in for severe
criticism. In fact, the murder of Mr. Pargent was evidently the topic
of the day.
Mr. Ludgrove sat with his haversack beside him on the carriage seat,
even his beloved plants unheeded. He read every bit of the paper over
and over again, seeking for some clue which might account for the
crime. The description ended with the words “the police are, however,
in possession of a clue, the nature of which they are not at present
prepared to divulge, but which, they are confident, will lead to
startling developments in the near future.” Mr. Ludgrove smiled rather
cynically as he read them. They seemed to him to have a somewhat
familiar ring.
He had the paper in his hand as he walked into Mr. Copperdock’s shop
to get his key, and his friend caught sight of it. “So you’ve seen the
news, then?” he said excitedly.
Mr. Ludgrove nodded gravely. “I have been reading the account as I
came up in the train,” he replied.
“We didn’t know a thing about it till eight o’clock on Saturday
evening,” continued Mr. Copperdock eagerly. “I was just going across
to the Cambridge Arms when Inspector Whyland came in and asked me
casual-like what I’d been doing all the afternoon. As a matter of fact
neither Ted nor I had hardly left the shop, and so I told him. It
wasn’t till then that he let on that three hours before a gentleman
had been murdered not a hundred yards away, exactly the same as poor
Tovey. Then I remembered that a customer had told me something about
an accident outside Paddington station, but, being busy, I hadn’t
taken any heed of it. And, that reminds me, the Inspector left a
message for you, asking if you would let him know when you got back.
I’ll ring him up from here if you like, I’ve got his number.”
“I wish you would, I have no telephone, as you know,” replied Mr.
Ludgrove. “Has Mrs. Cooper brought my key back yet?”
Mr. Copperdock felt in his pocket and handed the herbalist a Yale key.
“She brought it in ten minutes ago. She was terribly upset, and talked
about our all being murdered in our beds next. It’s a terrible thing
to have happened just before Christmas like this. People will be
afraid to go out of doors after dark.”
Mr. Ludgrove nodded rather absently, and took the key which his friend
offered him. “You’ll let Inspector Whyland know I’m back?” he said,
and, without awaiting Mr. Copperdock’s reply, he left the shop,
crossed the road, and entered his own premises, a thoughtful frown
upon his face.
Inspector Whyland lost no time in acting upon Mr. Copperdock’s
message. The murder of Mr. Richard Pargent, following so soon upon
that of Mr. Tovey, and perpetrated by the same method, had made a
great sensation, not only among the public, but, which was far more
important to the Inspector, at Headquarters. He had been given a
pretty direct hint that unless he could find some clue within the next
few days, the case would be taken out of his hands and given to some
more capable officer. All the machinery at the disposal of the police
had been put into action, but so far without the slightest result. And
in Inspector Whyland’s despair it seemed to him that the only hope
left of gaining any information was through the herbalist, with his
peculiar inner knowledge of the inhabitants of the district.
He arrived to find Mr. Ludgrove busily engaged in writing up
descriptions of his botanical trophies in a large manuscript book. The
herbalist greeted him warmly, and invited him to a seat in the best
chair. The two sat for a moment in silence, until the Inspector spoke
abruptly.
“Look here, Mr. Ludgrove, what do you know about this man who’s been
killed?”
“Richard Pargent?” replied the herbalist quietly. “I know nothing
about him personally. I have seen his name mentioned once or twice as
a writer of verse, but I doubt if I should have remembered it had it
not been recalled to me by what I read in the papers this morning.”
“Do you know anything about this poetry of his?” continued the
Inspector.
Mr. Ludgrove smiled. “I am no judge of poetry,” he replied. “But I can
hardly imagine that it was bad enough to inspire anyone with a desire
to murder him.”
Inspector Whyland shrugged his shoulders impatiently. “That’s just
it!” he exclaimed. “There doesn’t seem to have been anything about the
man to provide a motive for his murder. Look here, Mr. Ludgrove,
you’re not the sort of man to go round spinning yarns to your friends.
I’ll make a bargain with you. You get to know all sorts of things that
never come to our ears. Tell me your honest opinion about these
murders, and I’ll tell you what we’ve found out so far.”
For a moment Mr. Ludgrove made no reply. When at length he spoke it
was with a deep note of earnestness in his voice. “I am honoured by
your confidence, Inspector. As you have guessed, I have been very much
concerned by these murders. I have feared that they would be traced to
one or other of my clients, some of whom, I regret to say, have little
respect for the law. I know much of the inner history of Praed Street
and its neighbourhood, and I regret to say that much of it is almost
incredibly sordid. I refer of course to its underworld, and not to its
respectable inhabitants, who are greatly in the majority. But of two
facts I can assure you. The first is that in all my experience I have
never heard of a crime committed by any of the class to which I refer
except for some specific purpose, either gain or revenge, and the
second is that none of them would resort to murder except perhaps in a
sudden access of passion.”
The Inspector nodded. “That’s very much my own experience of regular
crooks,” he replied. “But you say you’ve thought a lot about this
business. Haven’t you any theory of your own?”
“The only theory I can form is that the murders are the work of some
irresponsible maniac,” said Mr. Ludgrove quietly.
“Would an irresponsible maniac have put a piece of poisoned glass on
the end of Colburn’s pipe?” countered the Inspector quickly. “No, I am
afraid that theory won’t do, Mr. Ludgrove.”
“I think it is the only theory which fits in with the assumption that
these three men were all murdered by the same hand,” replied the
herbalist.
“Yet I don’t think you can get away from that assumption,” said
Inspector Whyland. “I don’t mind telling you something that worries me
a bit, since it’s bound to come out at the inquest. One of the first
things we found when we searched Pargent’s pockets in the mortuary was
this.”
He put his hand in his pocket, then held it out with extended palm
toward Mr. Ludgrove.
The herbalist leant forward with an exclamation of surprise. “Ah, a
white counter with the figure III drawn on it in red ink!” he
exclaimed. “Do you know, Inspector, I wondered if anything of the kind
had been found. That is really interesting.”
“Interesting!” grumbled the Inspector. “Aye, the reporters will find
it interesting enough, you may bet. We couldn’t keep it dark, even if
we wanted to. This fellow Pargent got it by post on Saturday morning.
He told his sister, Miss Clara, that it must be a secret token from
some admirer of his work. He was so pleased about it that he took it
down to Penderworth to show his other sister. It was on his way back
from there that he was killed. Oh yes, it’s interesting enough. We
shall have to say that Tovey and Colburn got counters like this, and
then there’ll be a fearful outcry against us for keeping it dark. ‘Had
the police not displayed this criminal reticence, the victim would
have understood the purport of the warning and adequate measures could
have been taken to protect him.’ Oh yes, I know what’s coming all
right.”
Inspector Whyland gazed savagely at the counter for a few seconds,
then continued abruptly.
“Fortunately the envelope in which this one came had been kept. The
counter was wrapped up in a piece of cheap writing paper, and put in a
square envelope of the same quality. The address was typewritten. Our
people at the Yard are trying to trace the machine it was done with. I
wish them joy of the job. They can tell the make all right; but there
must be thousands of them scattered through London.”
“If you don’t mind my suggesting it, it doesn’t follow that because
Mr. Pargent received a counter he was murdered by the same hand that
killed Mr. Tovey or Mr. Colburn,” said the herbalist quietly.
Inspector Whyland glanced at him quickly. “No, it doesn’t exactly
follow,” he agreed. “But we’ll return to that later. I want to show
you something else first. Look here.”
This time he produced from his pocket a paper packet, which he
proceeded to unroll. From it he withdrew two sinister-looking blades,
each stained a dull brown.
“These are the knives with which Tovey and Pargent were killed,” he
said. “Don’t touch them, but tell me if you can tell one from the
other.”
Mr. Ludgrove adjusted his spectacles, and bent over the knives. They
were exactly similar, thin, with an extremely sharp point, about half
an inch wide and eight inches long. Neither of them showed any sign of
having ever possessed a handle.
“No, I can see no difference between them,” agreed Mr. Ludgrove. “I
admit that they strengthen the supposition that Mr. Tovey and Mr.
Pargent died by the same hand. But, admitting that this was the case,
it only bears out my theory that the murders were the actions of a
maniac. If they were not, if both men were killed with some definite
motive, you have to discover some connection between them. Yet they
moved in entirely distinct orbits, and, I should imagine, had nothing
whatever in common.”
Inspector Whyland shook his head with a tolerant smile. “Theory’s all
very well in its way, Mr. Ludgrove,” he said, as he replaced the
knives in his pocket. “I can’t waste my time establishing connections.
There’s evidence enough here to convince a jury that the same man
killed all three of them. And I don’t fancy it’ll be very long before
I lay hands upon him.”
“I sincerely hope your expectations will be realized, Inspector,”
replied the herbalist, in a tone of faint irony which was lost upon
Whyland. “I suppose it is indiscreet to ask whether you have any
suspicions? I confess that for my part I am entirely at a loss. What
about young Snyder, for instance?”
“Master Wal Snyder is out of this,” returned the Inspector shortly.
“He was pinched a week ago for picking pockets in a tube lift, and is
safely under lock and key. But I don’t mind telling you in confidence,
Mr. Ludgrove, that I know the murderer lives somewhere in this
district.”
Mr. Ludgrove lifted his eyebrows in real or assumed astonishment.
“Indeed?” he exclaimed. “That is indeed a great step forward. Pray,
how did you come to that conclusion?”
If the Inspector perceived the irony in his tone, he paid no heed to
it. “Well, it’s pretty obvious,” he replied. “All three men were
murdered in Praed Street, to begin with. Then, there’s another thing.
The envelope in which the counter was sent to Pargent bore the
post-mark of this district, London, W.2. You can’t get away from it,
everything points to the murderer living somewhere about here.”
Again Inspector Whyland paused. Then suddenly he rose and stood over
the herbalist where he sat in his chair. “There’s another thing, Mr.
Ludgrove,” he said, almost menacingly. “You said just now that it
didn’t follow that because Pargent received a counter he was killed by
the same man that murdered the other two. Do you see where that leads
you? If the third counter was sent by a different hand, it can only
have been sent by one of the very few who knew of the receipt of the
first two. And all of them live in this district, you will remember.”
Mr. Ludgrove gazed up at him in mock alarm. “They do, indeed,” he
replied. “It makes my blood run cold to think that I am one of them.
Really, I am quite relieved to think that I have an alibi in the case
of this last murder, at least.”
Inspector Whyland laughed shortly. “Oh, for that matter, I’m as much
under suspicion as you,” he said. “But, you see, there are some people
we know who couldn’t produce an alibi for the time when any of the
murders were committed.”
And with that he turned abruptly on his heel and strode out of the
room.
Chapter VII
The Black Sailor
That afternoon Inspector Whyland wrote in his report: “I had a long
interview with Ludgrove. He is a shrewd fellow, and not easy to get
anything out of. I am pretty sure that he has no definite knowledge on
this matter, but he admits himself that some of his customers are not
above petty crime, and it seems to me that he is the most likely man
to hear any underground rumours that may be flying about.
“I managed to convey to him a pretty broad hint that I suspected one
of his friends. I did this with a double motive. On the one hand, if
he thinks that Copperdock or one of the others had anything to do with
it, he will probably pass the hint on, and somebody may try to make a
bolt for it, which would give them away. On the other hand, if he is
convinced of their innocence, he will be all the more anxious to pass
on to me any information he may get and which may tend to clear them.
It is just a chance, but it may lead to something useful.”
The inspector’s strategy was indeed that of forlorn hope. Rack his
brains as he would, interrogate as he might everyone who could
possibly throw light upon the murder of Richard Pargent, he found
himself up against a stone wall. Nobody could swear to having seen and
recognized the victim from the time he entered the train at West
Laverhurst until he had been seen to stagger and fall on the refuge in
Praed Street. The ticket collector at Reading was almost positive
about him, but, as he explained, he saw so many passengers in the
course of his day’s work that he could not be sure of any particular
one, unless there was something very remarkable about him or her. All
he knew for sure was that if this was the gentleman, he was alone in
the carriage when the train left Reading.
Nobody at Paddington had noticed him among the streams flowing from
the arrival platforms, and it was impossible to establish whether or
not he had left the station alone. The taxi-driver who had seen him
fall had not seen the blow struck, could not even say whether anyone
else had been standing on the refuge with him or not. It was a nasty,
skiddy evening, and dark at that. He had enough to do to watch the
traffic without worrying about people on refuges. It wasn’t until he
had seen the poor man stagger into the road almost under his front
wheels that he had even noticed him. And then his attention was fully
occupied in pulling up and trying to avoid collisions.
Finally, neither of the Miss Pargents could throw the faintest glimmer
of light upon the affair. Their brother was not the type of man to
have secrets from his family. Both sisters appeared to know the inner
history of every moment of his life since infancy, and insisted upon
dispensing the knowledge at great length. As to his having an enemy in
the world, the thing was absurd. He was a very retiring man, who lived
only for his work, and had never sought adventure beyond the narrow
bounds of the family circle. Inspector Whyland came away from his last
interview with the sisters—for Miss Margaret had been prevailed upon
to come up to London—convinced that it would have been impossible for
the dead man to have embarked upon any clandestine enterprise without
the knowledge of one or other of them.
He was equally unsuccessful in finding any link between Richard
Pargent and any of the inhabitants of Praed Street. Their names were
utterly unfamiliar to either of the sisters, and Mr. Pargent’s only
connection with Praed Street appeared to be that he occasionally
passed along it in a bus. Inspector Whyland was convinced that the
same hand that had struck down Mr. Tovey, had killed Richard Pargent,
and probably Mr. Colburn, though the receipt of the counter was the
only link in the latter case. But what could be the motive for the
murder of these three men, so entirely disconnected from one another?
And, if one adopted the theory of a homicidal maniac, the difficulty
was scarcely diminished. Homicidal maniacs either kill indiscriminately,
or, as in the classic case of Jack the Ripper, they attack a certain
class or type. Yet the receipt of the numbered counters implied some
process of definite selection. Upon what possible grounds could such a
selection be based?
The inquest helped the authorities not at all. Nothing beyond what
Inspector Whyland already knew was elicited, and the only fresh
sensation which it provided was the disclosure of the fact that each
of the three victims had received a numbered counter. Whyland’s
forecast of the results of this were proved to have been only slightly
exaggerated. Most of the newspapers of the day following the inquest
appeared with leading articles discussing the wisdom of official
secrecy upon such a matter. A large number of practical jokers
despatched counters bearing the number IV to their friends, many of
whom arrived hot-foot at Scotland Yard demanding instant police
protection. The fatal counter became for the moment a national symbol.
The Opposition newspapers contained cartoons depicting the Prime
Minister opening an envelope labelled “Public Opinion,” and containing
a numbered counter. An enterprising Insurance Company issued a poster
upon which appeared an enormous representation of the counter, and
under it the words, “You need not fear this if you are insured with
the Gigantic.” To find one in one’s Christmas pudding was an omen of
bad luck for the ensuing year. Then, having played its part as a nine
days’ wonder, the vogue of the numbered counter ceased as suddenly as
it had begun.
Meanwhile, the police had been by no means idle. To Inspector Whyland
it had always seemed that the focus of the whole business had lain in
Mr. Copperdock’s shop. Mr. Copperdock had been an intimate friend of
Mr. Tovey’s; Ted Copperdock was on familiar terms with Dick Colburn.
It had been through Mr. Copperdock that he had first learned of the
receipt of the numbered counters; the pipe which had been responsible
for Mr. Colburn’s death been bought at Mr. Copperdock’s shop.
Inspector Whyland began to regard the three victims as represented by
the extremities of the letter Y, which, although they are not
connected to one another, are each connected to a central point. But
Mr. Copperdock was the central point, this graphic representation was
incomplete until the connection between Richard Pargent and Mr.
Copperdock could be established. And, try as he would, Inspector
Whyland could find absolutely no link between the two.
Nevertheless, Whyland determined to make a very thorough investigation
into Mr. Copperdock’s habits and associates. He was rewarded by the
discovery of two very interesting facts. A representative of Scotland
Yard, announcing himself as an agent of the Planet Typewriter Company,
the manufacturers of the machine owned by Mr. Copperdock, and used by
his son for writing business letters, called at the tobacconist’s
shop, ostensibly for the purpose of inspecting the machine. He
succeeded in carrying away with him a specimen of its work, which was
submitted to experts. They reported that, although there were no
perceptible peculiarities in any of the letters which would enable
them to identify this specimen with the address on the envelope sent
to Richard Pargent, there was, on the other hand no discrepancy
between the two types, and that therefore the envelope might well have
been typed on Mr. Copperdock’s machine.
This, though disappointingly inconclusive, was to Whyland’s ideas a
point to be remembered should any corroborative evidence come to
light. Among the circle in whose actions he found himself interested,
the Copperdocks were the only people who possessed a typewriter at
all. As a matter of fact, Mr. Copperdock had only purchased it quite
recently, at the instance of Ted, who while stoutly maintaining that
no respectable tradesman could be without one, had been suspected by
his shrewd father of less disinterested motives. Certainly it had
seemed only natural that, the machine once purchased, the expert Ivy
should come in of an evening and show Ted how to work it; but Mr.
Copperdock had a way of winking at his son behind her back which made
that ingenuous youth blush most embarrassingly.
The second curious fact was discovered by Inspector Whyland almost by
accident. In his study of Mr. Copperdock and his associates, he had
taken to frequenting the saloon bar of the Cambridge Arms, carefully
choosing such times as Mr. Copperdock was busy in the shop. There was
nothing in any way suspicious about the Cambridge Arms; it lay in one
of the streets which run southwards from Praed Street, and was
consequently almost hidden in a backwater. Its remarkably cosy little
saloon bar was patronized chiefly by the neighbouring small tradesmen,
and its habitués were all well-known to the proprietor, with whom
Whyland soon became on confidential terms.
A couple of days after the inquest on Richard Pargent, Whyland turned
into the Cambridge Arms just as its doors were opened, at five
o’clock. The proprietor met him with a smile, and, having executed his
order, leant over the bar and entered into conversation.
“I never thought, when I opened up last Saturday, that that poor
fellow was being murdered at that very minute,” he began. “Just about
five o’clock, wasn’t it, sir?”
Whyland nodded. “The clock was striking five as they picked him up,”
he replied.
“I remember the evening well,” continued the proprietor. “Though it
wasn’t until nigh upon seven that I heard anything about it. I says to
my wife it was that wet and foggy that even our regulars wouldn’t be
in till later. But there you are, you never can tell. I hadn’t opened
this bar, not more than five minutes, when in comes one of my best
customers, Sam Copperdock, the tobacconist. You may have met him here,
sir?”
Whyland nodded non-committally, and the landlord proceeded.
“I was a bit surprised to see him, sir, because Sam doesn’t usually
come along until eight, unless it happens to be Thursday, when he
closes early. ‘Hullo, Sam, you’re on time to-night,’ I says, jocular
like. ‘Oh, I’ve only come in for a drink,’ he says; ‘The bottle’s
empty at home, and I couldn’t scrounge one from old Ludgrove opposite,
he’s away.’ He has a double, and goes back to his shop. The bar was
pretty nigh empty till about seven, when a fellow comes in and tells
me about the murder.”
Inspector Whyland deftly turned the conversation. He knew that if he
questioned the man his suspicions would be aroused, and this he was
anxious to avoid. Without any appearance of haste he finished his
drink and left the premises. Once round the corner, he walked swiftly
to the spot where Richard Pargent had been murdered, counting his
paces as he went.
Could Mr. Copperdock have committed the murder? It was quite possible.
If he had left his shop a few minutes before five, he would have had
plenty of time to reach the exit from Paddington station, plunge the
knife into his victim, and be at the Cambridge Arms at five minutes
past. But, if he were the criminal, a thousand puzzling questions
presented themselves. How did he know that his victim would be
arriving at Paddington at 4.55 that evening? Above all, why should Mr.
Copperdock, the tobacconist, have any grudge against Mr. Pargent, the
minor poet? And then again, Whyland was convinced that the murderer of
Richard Pargent had been the murderer of James Tovey. But, at the
moment when Tovey had been killed, Mr. Copperdock was in his
sitting-room with his son and the murdered man’s daughter. The riddle
appeared to be insoluble.
Whyland turned abruptly, boarded a bus, and took a ticket to Oxford
Circus. Here he dismounted, and turned into the first picture-house
which presented itself. He had discovered long ago that this was the
surest way of securing freedom from interruption. Here for a couple of
hours he sat motionless, neither seeing the pictures nor attentive to
the strenuous efforts of the orchestra. And as he sat, a new theory
slowly unfolded itself in his brain.
Samuel Copperdock, whom he had studied so carefully, did not appear to
him to be a deliberate criminal. He was not of the type which harbours
revenge, and he did not seem either clever or painstaking enough to
work out the details of a premeditated murder. Although, if it were
true that he had formed a design to marry Mrs. Tovey, the murder of
Mr. Tovey might be said to be advantageous to him, it was
inconceivable that he had had any hand in it. He could not have struck
the blow himself, and, since he was not a rich man, it was difficult
to see what inducement he could offer to a hired assassin. In all
human probability, Mr. Copperdock was innocent of the murder of James
Tovey.
But, on the other hand, this murder, followed so closely by the
mysterious death of his other acquaintance, Colburn, had made a great
impression upon him. He had thought and talked of little else, and, as
it happened, he had known every detail. He had seen the knife with
which James Tovey had been killed; he, in common with very few others,
had known of the receipt of the marked counters. Suppose that the
crimes had had such a powerful effect upon his imagination that he had
felt an irresistible impulse to imitate them? Such things were known,
were in fact a commonplace of the criminal psychologists.
Upon this assumption, the rest was easy. Mr. Copperdock had learnt by
some accident that this man Richard Pargent would arrive at Paddington
at 4.55 on Saturday, and had selected him as a likely victim. His
imitative faculty fully developed, he had sent him the numbered
counter, and had purchased a knife similar to the one which he had
already seen. Then, just before the train was due, he had left his
shop, met his victim, committed the crime, had a drink to steady his
nerves, and then come home.
The theory was plausible, but Inspector Whyland knew well enough that
so far he had not a fragment of real evidence with which to support
it. But, unless he were to adopt the suggestion of Mr. Ludgrove, that
some homicidal maniac was responsible, Whyland could see no
alternative. The lack of motive was so extraordinarily puzzling. The
murders had been utterly purposeless, and the only possible theory
could be one which took full account of this fact. And then again, how
account for the despatch of the numbered counters? If the murders had
been inspired by irresponsible impulse, what had been their object?
Still deep in thought, Inspector Whyland left the picture-house and
walked slowly back to the police station through the less frequented
streets. It was a little past eight on a typical December evening,
with a light wet mist which magnified the outlines of the passers-by
and covered the pavements with a shining dampness. But the weather
never had much effect upon Whyland, and, beyond a passing reflection
that on such an evening murder in the streets of London was not, after
all, an enterprise presenting any great difficulties to a determined
man, he paid no great attention to it.
He reached the police station without adventure, ordered a modest
supper, and sat down to deal with the mass of reports which awaited
him. He was thus engaged when a sergeant entered the room, with the
message that a man giving the name of Copperdock wished to speak to
him on the telephone. He rose, walked to the instrument, and picked up
the receiver. “Inspector Whyland speaking,” he said coldly.
“Is that you, Inspector?” came an excited voice, which Whyland
recognized at once. “Can you come and see me at once? I’ve something
very important to tell you.”
Whyland hesitated for a moment. Whatever it was that Mr. Copperdock
had to say to him, a visit to his house could afford him an excellent
opportunity for keeping his eyes open for some clue in support of his
theory. “Yes, I’ll come along straight away,” he replied. With a word
to the sergeant, he left the station and walked rapidly to Praed
Street.
It was about a quarter to ten when he arrived and rang the bell
outside Mr. Copperdock’s shop. The tobacconist was obviously awaiting
him, and the door was opened immediately. With a brief word of
greeting, Mr. Copperdock led the way upstairs to the sitting-room.
Then, shutting the door carefully behind him, he turned dramatically,
“I’ve seen that there black sailor!” he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper.
Inspector Whyland looked at him sharply. When the reward had
originally been offered, he had been overwhelmed by a flood of people
who had claimed to have seen the “black sailor,” but of late this
elusive figure had ceased to occupy the popular imagination. Was this
a vindication of his theory, showing that Mr. Copperdock’s brain was
completely under the influence of the crime?
“You have seen the black sailor? Sit down and tell me all about it,
Mr. Copperdock,” he replied gravely.
But Mr. Copperdock was far too excited to sit down. “I see him plain
as I see you now,” he exclaimed. “Just after I left the Cambridge
Arms——”
But Inspector Whyland put out his hand and forced him gently into the
nearest chair. “Now, look here, Mr. Copperdock, if your information is
to be of any use to me, you must tell it to me in the proper order.
Begin by telling me how you spent the evening.”
“Soon as I shut up shop at eight o’clock, I goes off to the Cambridge,
same as I always does,” replied the tobacconist protestingly. “Ted
went out too, he’s taking Ivy to the pictures, and they won’t be back
for an hour or so yet. I has a couple there, sitting in front of the
fire, and it wasn’t until nigh on closing time that I left. There
wasn’t anybody there as was coming home my way, so I starts off home
alone. And I hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when I runs slap
into the black sailor!”
“What do you mean when you say you ran into him?” interrupted Whyland.
“Just what I says. I saw someone come round the corner, and before I
could move we ran into one another. He was a great big fellow, and I
could see him perfectly plain, we was right under the lamp. He bent
down and looked straight at me, and you could have knocked me down
with a feather. It was the black sailor, all right. He was muffled up
in a great heavy coat, but I could see his beard, and his woollen cap,
and a great red scar down the right side of his face. He glared at me
as though he were going to hit me, and I hollered out, being sure he
was going to do me in. Then all at once he turns his back and walks
off at a tremendous pace. After a bit I follows him, hoping to meet a
copper. But he suddenly turns in to the Edgware Road, and by the time
I gets there I’d lost him.”
“H’m,” said Inspector Whyland. “That must have been nearly an hour ago
now.” He paused for a moment, then, realizing that in Mr. Copperdock’s
present excited state it would be impossible to get anything coherent
out of him, he rose and took his leave.
“Well, good night, Mr. Copperdock,” he said abruptly. “It’s a pity you
didn’t catch your man. I’d better get back to the station and warn my
people to look out for him.”
As he left the shop, he noticed that Mr. Ludgrove’s door stood open,
and as he crossed the road, the herbalist himself appeared in the
entrance. “Good evening, Inspector,” he said politely.
Obeying a sudden impulse, Whyland stopped and returned the greeting.
“Good evening, Mr. Ludgrove,” he replied. “May I come in for a
moment?”
“By all means, come along,” replied the herbalist, leading the way
into his sanctum. “I do not drink much myself, but perhaps you will
take some refreshment yourself?”
He busied himself with a bottle and a glass, while the Inspector drew
up a chair to the blazing fire. Then, when his host had seated
himself, Whyland glanced at him with a slight smile playing about his
lips.
“Our friend Mr. Copperdock has seen the black sailor,” he remarked.
“Seen the black sailor!” exclaimed the herbalist incredulously. “When
and where—if I may ask?”
“Listen, and I’ll tell you all about it,” replied Whyland. “About an
hour ago outside the Cambridge Arms.”
Mr. Ludgrove laughed softly at something in the tone of the
Inspector’s voice, then suddenly became serious.
“I do not think that I should place too great importance upon this
incident,” he said. “Mr. Copperdock is a most excellent person, and I
have the greatest respect for him. But I have often suspected that his
visits to the Cambridge Arms have—shall I say, a pernicious effect
upon the accuracy of his observations.”
“He seemed a bit excited, certainly,” replied Whyland. “But he was
quite positive that he had seen the man.”
Mr. Ludgrove shook his head. “Now, this is strictly between ourselves,
Inspector,” he said. “I make an invariable practice of taking a walk
every evening, as soon as my clients give me the opportunity. This
evening I went out soon after eight, and walked in the direction of
Hyde Park. As it happened, I was returning past the Cambridge Arms,
when I saw a figure which was unmistakably that of Mr. Copperdock
leave the entrance of that house. I hastened my steps to overtake him,
when suddenly he stopped, shouted, and after a moment or two, set off
in the direction of Edgware Road. I could not imagine what was the
matter, since but for us two the road was deserted as far as one could
see for the mist. I was within twenty or thirty yards of him, and I
certainly saw no black sailor.”
It was Inspector Whyland’s turn to smile significantly. “It does not
altogether surprise me to learn that Mr. Copperdock suffers from
hallucinations,” he said.
Chapter VIII
At No. 407, Praed Street
Although the unexplained murders which had taken place in Praed Street
were soon forgotten by the general public, their shadow hung heavily
over the neighbourhood in which they had been committed. The fact that
the three deaths had taken place within comparatively few hundred
yards of one another could not fail to have its effect upon the local
imagination. A very noticeable change came over the usual cheerful and
careless life of Praed Street. The evening pavements were no longer
blocked by a strolling, noisy crowd. Women and children were rarely to
be seen abroad after dark. Even men, traversing the street upon their
lawful occasions, had a way of keeping close to the inner side of the
pavements, and crossing the road upon the approach of any unfamiliar
form.
Christmas passed in this atmosphere of intangible fear; the old year
died and the new year came in with a welcome spell of clear and frosty
weather. But, in spite of the fact that no further tragedies occurred,
the shadow still lay heavily upon the district. Ludgrove, listening to
the whispered and entangled stories of his clients, became more and
more certain that, even in the hidden depths of the underworld, there
was no knowledge of the agency by which the crimes had been committed.
Had such knowledge existed, it must inevitably have been divulged to
him. The police, under the direction of Inspector Whyland, were
engaged in passing a fine-toothed comb through the Paddington
district, and the minor offenders disturbed in this process were as
concerned as a colony of ants unearthed by a spade. Mr. Ludgrove was
visited furtively late at night by anxious people seeking advice how
to conceal the evidence of their misdemeanours from the prying eyes of
the police. He questioned each of these closely, but the more he did
so the more he became convinced that none of them had the slightest
inkling of the perpetrator of the murders.
Another section of his clients, however, equally furtive and
mysterious, had clues in plenty, which they seemed to think entitled
them to some reward. These, after assuring themselves that no one
could overhear them, would produce an incoherent story of how one of
their neighbours must be the criminal. He had been heard to utter
threats that he would do some one in some day, he had been in Praed
Street on the night when Mr. Tovey was murdered, in the neighbourhood
of Paddington station when Mr. Pargent was killed. Others, again, had
met a muffled figure brandishing a knife, or had seen a dark man with
a beard standing in the shadow thrown by a projecting wall. Two or
three searching questions were always sufficient to prove that their
suspicions were baseless.
The murders in Praed Street were thus peculiar in the annals of crime.
In nearly every case of a crime being committed, there are others
besides the criminal who know all the facts. The police know this, but
their great difficulty is to secure evidence sufficiently convincing
to lead to a conviction. There is a certain _esprit de corps_ in the
constant strife between the professional criminal and the police, and
those who know are careful to keep their knowledge to themselves. But
in this case, had there been any of the inhabitants of the district in
the secret, Mr. Ludgrove would have obtained some hint of it. It
seemed conclusive that the criminal was either working alone and
independently, or came from some other district.
This was the state of affairs towards the end of January. The police
were completely baffled; Inspector Whyland, although he still favoured
the theory he had evolved in the picture-house, had failed to find any
evidence upon which he could act. He hardly knew whether to attribute
Mr. Copperdock’s story of his meeting with the black sailor to pure
hallucination, or to an attempt to divert suspicion from himself. In
either case, it could be made to fit in with the theory that he had
murdered Richard Pargent under the influence of what the psychologists
called an imitative complex. Whyland redoubled his activities, and a
most accurate watch was kept upon Mr. Copperdock’s movements. A month
had elapsed since the murder of Richard Pargent when Mr. Jacob Martin,
the prosperous wine merchant of the Barbican, opening his morning post
in his comfortable office, came upon a typewritten envelope, marked
“Private and Confidential.” He ripped it open with the paper cutter
which lay upon his desk, and unfolded the letter it contained. It also
was typewritten, on plain paper. Only the signature “John Lacey” was
in ink.
Mr. Martin, a portly, grey-haired man of between fifty and sixty, read
the letter through twice, with a gathering frown upon his face. He had
prospered exceedingly since the day when he had first set up in
business for himself as a wine merchant, so much so that his
competitors wondered at his success. There had, from time to time been
rumours, quickly suppressed, to the effect that Mr. Martin had other
means of livelihood than his ostensible business. But Mr. Martin was a
remarkably astute man, and had hitherto managed to avoid undue
inquisitiveness.
And now, like a bolt from the blue, came this extraordinary letter.
Confound John Lacey, and his prying habits, whoever he might be. That
little cellar under the back office! How well he remembered it. It had
been the scene of many most profitable transactions, had harboured
treasures for which the police of two continents had searched in vain.
For Mr. Martin was a receiver of stolen goods, not a mere general
practitioner of the art, but a specialist whose services were utilized
only by the aristocracy of thieves, and whose particular function was
turning into cash only the most valuable jewellery.
With an exclamation of annoyance Mr. Martin turned once more to the
letter. “Dear Sir, I venture to address you upon a subject which will
no doubt interest you,” it ran. “I have recently acquired a lease of
the premises No. 407, Praed Street, which I understand, were in your
occupation up till some fifteen years ago. Since you vacated them,
these premises have been occupied by a clothier, who did not require
the extensive cellarage, which was boarded up. In the course of
certain alterations which I am having made to the premises, the
entrance to the cellars has once again been opened. In the course of
my investigations I have made a most interesting discovery in the
small cellar beneath the back office.
“I should perhaps report this discovery to the authorities, but I have
thought it best to consult you upon the matter before doing so. This
letter should reach you by the first post to-morrow (Saturday)
morning. I should be glad if you could make it convenient to meet me
on the premises at 2 p.m. that day, when the workmen who are at
present employed there will have gone. I can then show you my
discovery, and we can consult upon the most suitable steps to be taken
in the matter. Should you not find this convenient, I shall assume
that the subject does not interest you, and shall report the matter
forthwith to the police. Yours faithfully, John Lacey.”
A blackmailing letter, without a doubt, Mr. Martin could see at a
glance. But what on earth could the fellow have discovered? Fifteen
years ago, when Mr. Martin moved from Praed Street to the Barbican, he
had taken the utmost care to destroy every trace of the purpose to
which that little cellar had been put. He racked his brains to try and
think of anything that could possibly have been overlooked, but
without success. Even those ingeniously contrived recesses in the
walls had been torn out, leaving nothing but the bare brick. Mr.
Martin had done the work with his own hands, not caring to trust
anyone else with so delicate a matter. Yet, after all, in spite of all
his care, he must have left some clue, which this infernal fellow
Lacey had somehow blundered upon.
He brushed aside as absurd the suggestion that “Lacey” could conceal
the identity of one of those with whom he had done business, who knew
the secret of the cellar and had adopted this clumsy plan to blackmail
him. The circle of his secret clients was a very narrow one; he knew
them all and was well aware that blackmail was neither in their line
nor in their interest. The expert in acquiring jewellery concentrated
upon his particular art; he did not descend to blackmail, especially
of the one man through whose agency he was able to dispose of his
spoil. No, there was no doubt about it, a slip had been made, a slip
which had lain undiscovered all these years, through the circumstance
that his successor, the clothier, had found no use for the cellars and
had boarded up the entrance to them.
There was nothing for it but to carry out the suggestion contained in
the letter, and meet the man in Praed Street at two o’clock. He must
find out the nature of this mysterious discovery, and take steps to
ensure that all evidence of it be securely destroyed. Lacey, of
course, would demand some compensation for holding his tongue. The sum
he demanded would depend upon the importance of what he had found.
Well, they would discuss terms, alone in that empty house, in the very
cellar which Mr. Martin remembered so well.
Mr. Martin stroked his chin reflectively. What sort of fellow was this
Lacey, he wondered? He himself was a powerful man, proud of his own
powers of intimidation. It ought to be simple enough for him to
destroy the evidence first then to tell Lacey to go to the devil and
do his worst. He unlocked a drawer of his desk and drew from it a
small automatic pistol, which he slipped into his pocket. It was with
a smile that he remembered that Praed Street had recently acquired a
sinister reputation. Well, if any accident should happen——
Mr. Martin’s office closed at one o’clock on Saturdays. He left a few
minutes before that hour, having put John Lacey’s letter in his pocket
and examined the mechanism of his automatic. Then he consumed a hasty
lunch at a chop-house near-by, and walked down the street to
Aldersgate Metropolitan station, where he took a ticket to Paddington.
He emerged into Praed Street at about five minutes to two, and began
to walk along that thoroughfare in the direction of Number 407.
Praed Street, at this time on a fine afternoon, wore its usual air of
busy activity. The exodus from central London was still at its height,
the crowds still passed along in bus or taxi towards the portals of
Paddington station. On the other hand, the inhabitants of the
neighbourhood, released from work, were beginning their week-end
shopping. The pavement was crowded, and Mr. Martin, who had some
distance to walk to his destination, looked about him curiously. Since
he had put up his shutters for the last time, fifteen years ago, he
had rarely revisited Praed Street, and even then he had only traversed
it in a taxi, going to or from Paddington. The street had changed a
little since he had been an inhabitant of it. Certainly there were
fresh names over many of the shops, and, here and there, there had
been alterations to the buildings he remembered. He glanced at a board
on the opposite side of the street. Elmer Ludgrove. That was new since
his day. The rather musty-looking shop was conspicuous among its
neighbours by being closed. Praed Street, as a rule, does most of its
business on Saturday afternoon.
Mr. Martin walked on a step or two, then hesitated for an instant. So
Sam Copperdock, from whom he bought his cigarettes in those early
days, was still here. Mr. Martin had long ago abandoned cigarettes for
cigars, but he felt a momentary impulse to go in and renew the old
acquaintance. Sam Copperdock had been a good customer of his, he
remembered. Many a bottle of whiskey had he sold him. But on second
thoughts he refrained. Perhaps it would be just as well, in the light
of what might happen during the next half hour or so, that his visit
to Praed Street remained unsuspected.
Mr. Martin walked on, and in a few minutes found himself outside
Number 407. It was much as he remembered it, but that it was lying
empty, and showed signs of being refitted for a new tenant. The
windows were almost obscured with patches of white-wash, but peering
through them he could see trestles, timber, shavings, all the litter
which betrays the presence of the carpenter. So far, then, the letter
was correct. Mr. Martin, after a furtive glance round about him,
walked up to the door and tried it. It was locked.
He drew out his watch and consulted it. It was nearly five minutes
past two, but he remembered that he had noticed that morning that it
was a trifle fast. Lacey, whoever he was, would doubtless be along in
a moment. Mr. Martin hoped he would be quick; he had no wish to be
recognized outside the premises by any of his old acquaintances. A
sudden thought struck him. Perhaps Lacey was already inside, waiting
for him. There was an electric bellpush by the side of the door. Mr.
Martin pressed it firmly, but could hear no answering ring above the
roar of the traffic. Then all at once he became aware that a small
girl was standing by his side, looking up at him with an appraising
expression.
As he turned to look at her, she made up her mind and spoke. “Is your
name Mr. Martin?” she asked.
Mr. Martin frowned down at her. “What’s that got to do with you?” he
replied.
“’Cos if you are, Dad told me to give you the key,” she continued,
quite unabashed. “And there’s a message from Mr. Lacey that you’re to
go in and wait for him, as he’ll be a few minutes late.”
“Oh, I see,” said Mr. Martin with a smile. “Yes, my dear, I am Mr.
Martin. How did your father come to have the key?”
She jerked her head towards a sweet shop two or three doors away. “We
lives there,” she replied curtly. “Mr. Briggs the builder, what’s
working here, leaves it with us because he’s my uncle. His men come
and get it in the morning. And Mr. Lacey, him what’s coming here,
telephoned just now to say you was coming to see the drains and I was
to give you the key.”
“Oh yes, that’s right,” said Mr. Martin, completely reassured. “Thank
you, my dear, I’ll see that either Mr. Lacey or myself brings you back
the key so that your uncle’s men may get in on Monday morning. That’s
the shop, there, isn’t it?”
He waited until the child had disappeared into the shop, then opened
the door of Number 407 with the key which she had given him, walked in
and closed the door behind him. Here he paused for a moment, thinking
rapidly. He felt that he was up against a brain as agile as his own,
and that the coming interview would demand all his skill if he were to
bring it to a favourable issue. This man Lacey had taken steps to
advertise the fact that Mr. Martin had entered the premises, obviously
as a precaution against foul play. His automatic would be of no use to
him, he would have to rely upon his brains instead.
Then suddenly it flashed upon him that he had been given a very
fortunate opportunity. It was not to be supposed that Lacey had left
his discovery, whatever it was, lying about the cellar in full view of
the workmen who had been there that morning. But, if he could have a
quiet look round by himself, he might gain some clue to the nature of
the discovery, and so be prepared to meet Lacey when he arrived.
Mr. Martin was not anxious for Lacey to come upon him unawares while
he was searching the cellar. Fortunately, the possibility of such an
event could easily be guarded against. He bolted the door top and
bottom, and noticed with satisfaction that the bolts were brand new,
evidently part of the alterations which the new tenant was making to
the premises. Then, after glancing round the ground floor, and making
sure that nobody was hidden there, he made his way to the top of the
stairway which led down to the cellars. The upper part of the house
had no connection with the shop, and was approached by a separate
entrance.
He saw at once that the letter had been correct as to the alterations
being made. During his tenancy the cellars had been lighted by gas,
but now electric light was being installed throughout. Mr. Martin
could see the run of the wires and the fittings for the lamps, but he
noticed that the lamps themselves had not yet been inserted. This fact
did not worry him. He had a box full of matches in his pocket, and one
of these he lit as he cautiously descended the stairs. The builders’
litter was here, as everywhere, and he picked his way among it until
he stood in the main vault below the shop. It smelt close and musty,
as though it had only recently been opened up after a long period of
disuse. Mr. Martin, holding a lighted match above his head, glanced
rapidly round. Nothing had been altered here since he remembered it,
except that a new brass switch stood behind the door, and two empty
lamp sockets projected downwards from the ceiling.
The way to the little cellar below the back office lay along a narrow
passage, and this Mr. Martin followed, striking a fresh match as he
went. Every detail came back to him, as though he had last passed this
way yesterday, instead of fifteen years ago. The door of the little
cellar closed with a spring; as he pushed it open the spring creaked
with a note which he remembered so well, and the door closed behind
him with the same muffled bang. Again he raised his match and looked
around him anxiously. The cellar appeared to be the same as he had
left it, even to a mildewed packing case against the wall, which had
sometimes been used as a table. Only here, as in the larger cellar,
the electricians had been at work. There was a lamp holder on the
ceiling, but this time it held a lamp. It was evidently by the light
of this lamp that Lacey had made his discovery. There was no reason
why he should not use it too.
The match had burnt down very near his fingers, but as he dropped it
he caught sight of the switch. Without troubling to light another
match he groped his way towards it and turned it on. There was a flash
and a sharp report, but the cellar remained in complete darkness. Mr.
Martin, with a gasp, leapt for the door in sudden panic. Someone
hidden in the cellar must have fired at him. Then, after a moment, the
absurdity of the idea forced itself upon him. The report had not been
nearly loud enough for a pistol, and the cellar was far too small to
conceal anybody. With a short laugh, but with trembling fingers, he
felt for his matchbox and struck a light.
Then at once he saw what had happened. The globe had burst as he
turned on the current, and only the butt remained in the holder. He
turned to look at the switch, and then for the first time he noticed
that something white was hanging from it by a string. He bent down and
held his match close to it. It was a white counter, bearing the figure
IV in red ink.
With a sudden access of fear he clutched at it, in order to examine it
more closely. The string broke, and he stared at the counter in his
hand, fascinated. He began to realize his position. He had been lured
to this empty house, and the assassin was no doubt even now in the
passage outside, waiting to plunge his deadly knife into him as he
emerged. Thank heaven, he had brought his automatic with him!
Mr. Martin was no coward. His plan of defence was quickly made.
Throwing the match away, he took his stand on the far side of the
cellar, facing the door, his automatic in his hand. If his assailant
came in, he would hear the creak of the spring, and could fire before
the man could reach him.
For a second or two he waited, tense and with ears strained for the
slightest sound. It was very quiet in the cellar; the rumble of the
traffic in Praed Street came to him but faintly. Then, all at once, he
caught his breath as a pungent and unfamiliar smell reached him.
Suddenly he found himself choking, dizzy, his senses leaving him. An
overpowering impulse to escape from the cellar swept through him,
drowning his fear of what might be awaiting him outside. He staggered
towards the door, his hands clawing wildly over its damp surface.
There used to be a string by which one pulled it open, but Mr. Martin
could not find it. Vainly he strove against the awful numbness which
closed in upon him. He must find the string, must——
With a crash Mr. Martin fell down at the foot of the door. The little
cellar resumed its accustomed silence.
Chapter IX
A Strange Affair
It was not until shortly after eight o’clock on Monday morning that
Inspector Whyland, who had arrived early at the police station,
received the startling intelligence that there was a dead man lying in
the cellar of Number 407, Praed Street. He immediately jumped into a
taxi, and was met in the door-way of the empty house by a man who
introduced himself as Mr. Houlder, the builder who was carrying out
certain alterations for the new tenant, Mr. Lacey.
“My men found him when they came in this morning,” he said. “They
telephoned to me and I told them to fetch a policeman. He rang you up,
I understand. I think I can explain how the man got in, and who he
is.”
“Thanks very much, Mr. Houlder,” replied Whyland. “I think we’ll have
a look at him first, if you don’t mind. Will you lead the way?”
They descended to the cellar together, Mr. Houlder leading the way
with an electric torch. As they arrived at the passage leading to the
small cellar, a constable appeared and saluted.
“Ah, you’re in charge here, I suppose?” said the Inspector. “You
haven’t touched anything, I hope?”
“Not since I’ve been here, sir, but I understand that the body was
moved accidentally before I came, I’ve got the man who found him here,
sir.”
A man, who had been hidden in the gloom behind the policeman, came
forward at this. He explained that he was the electrician who had been
wiring the cellars. He had very nearly finished the job on the
previous Saturday, and had left about noon. The carpenters were still
working on the ground floor when he left. He returned just before
eight this very morning, found the carpenters already at work, and
went down to the cellars to put the finishing touches to the job. The
door of the small cellar appeared to be jammed, and he pushed against
it to open it. When he had got it open far enough to squeeze through,
he found the body of a man lying against it. He had immediately run
upstairs and told the foreman, and had waited there till the constable
came and asked him to show him the body.
Inspector Whyland dismissed Mr. Houlder and the electricians, and went
on into the cellar with the constable. “There’s something queer about
this business, sir?” said the latter, as soon as they were alone. “I
had a look round while I was waiting for you, and the first thing I
saw was one of them white counters, same as the others had. There it
lies, sir, I didn’t touch it.”
They were in the cellar by now, and Whyland glanced at the counter,
lying in the beam of light which the constable had thrown upon it.
“With the figure IV on it, I’ll wager,” he muttered. “Yes, I thought
so. We’ll try for finger marks, but I’ll bet it’s no good. Now, let’s
have a look at this dead man.”
The constable turned his lamp on the prostrate form, and Whyland knelt
down and gazed at it intently. The body was lying doubled up as it had
fallen, and was quite cold.
“H’m,” said Whyland, rising to his feet. “We can’t do much more till
the doctor comes. You don’t know who he is, I suppose?”
“Mr. Houlder said he believed his name was Martin, sir,” replied the
constable cautiously.
“Well, you stay here till the doctor comes. I’ll go and have a chat
with Houlder. Just throw your light over the floor for a minute.
Hullo, what’s this?”
He strode across the cellar and carefully picked up a small automatic.
“Hasn’t been fired,” he muttered. “Now I wonder who that belongs to?
Just see if you can spot anything else. Don’t touch it, if you do.”
He went upstairs again, and drew Mr. Houlder aside into a quiet
corner. Mr. Houlder’s story was a very simple one. His foreman had
orders to leave the key to the house with Mr. Briggs, the
confectioner, three doors off. Mr. Briggs was Houlder’s
brother-in-law. The reason for this arrangement was that whoever came
on the scene first could get the key and start work. On Saturday the
key had been left as usual, about 12.30.
On Saturday evening, about nine o’clock, Mr. Briggs had come to his
place and told him that Mr. Lacey, who knew about the key arrangement,
had rung him up to say that a Mr. Martin was coming to inspect the
drains. Mr. Lacey was to have met him at two o’clock, but would be
delayed. Would Mr. Briggs keep a lookout for him and give him the
keys. Mr. Briggs had promised to do so, and his daughter Marjorie had
seen Mr. Martin, who had promised to bring back the keys, but had not
done so. Mr. Briggs had forgotten all about them until the evening,
and then, finding that the door of Number 407 was securely locked, had
supposed that Mr. Martin had gone away with the keys in his pocket.
Mr. Houlder had agreed with this theory, and had given Mr. Briggs a
duplicate key which he happened to have.
The foreman had called on Mr. Briggs, and had been given the duplicate
key. But when he came to try the door, it would not open. He made
several attempts but, finding them unavailing, desisted and made his
way through a window at the back. He then discovered that the door was
bolted on the inside, a circumstance which puzzled him tremendously.
Shortly afterwards the electrician arrived, and his thoughts were
diverted into other channels.
Inspector Whyland spent a few minutes talking to the foreman, who
confirmed the latter part of Houlder’s story, and had barely finished
his enquiries when the doctor arrived. The two went down to the cellar
together, and the doctor, without wasting words, proceeded to examine
the body, Whyland watching him intently.
“Poisoned!” pronounced the doctor, after a short interval. “Prussic
acid, by all signs of it, but I can’t be sure till I’ve made a
post-mortem. You’ll have him taken to the mortuary, of course? Queer
place to choose for suicide. How did he get in here?”
Inspector Whyland shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a case of
suicide, doctor. Look here!”
He pointed to the numbered counter. The doctor glanced at it and
sniffed contemptuously. “You fellows have got counters on the brain
since that business last month,” he said. “How do you know he didn’t
put it there himself to throw you off the scent? It’s not uncommon for
suicides to try and make their deaths look like murder. You’ll find
there’s some question of insurance behind it. Well, I’ll be along at
the mortuary and let you know the result of the p.m.”
The doctor bustled away, and Whyland, having made arrangements for the
removal of the body, made a very careful examination of the cellar.
This done, he sent the constable for the electrician, and asked him to
look round and see if he could find anything which had not been there
when he left on Saturday.
The man looked about him carefully, and suddenly pointed to the
ceiling with an exclamation of astonishment. “Why, there’s the butt of
a broken lamp in that holder, sir,” he said. “I didn’t put no lamps in
before I left. That’s one of the things I came here to do to-day.”
“Well, take it out and put in a fresh lamp,” replied Whyland. “I
didn’t know the current was on. We’ll be able to see what we’re
doing.”
The electrician obeyed him, and no sooner had he put the new lamp in
the holder than the cellar was flooded with light. “Hullo!” he
exclaimed. “The switch is on. I’ll swear I left it off on Saturday.
Why, that’s queer! This isn’t the butt of an ordinary lamp at all.
Looks to me like one of them electric detonator things, made to go
into a lamp-socket. And it’s gone off, too. You can see where it’s
blackened, sir.”
“Was the current on on Saturday?” asked Whyland, quickly.
“Yes, sir, I connected up in the morning,” replied the electrician.
“Somebody must have put that thing in the lamp-holder, then turned the
switch on. Well, that’s a rum go, and no mistake.”
Whyland, having cautioned the man to say nothing until the inquest,
left the house and walked into the confectioner’s shop. Here he
interviewed Mr. Briggs and his daughter Marjorie, and obtained from
them the story of Mr. Martin’s arrival at Number 407, and of the
telephone message from Mr. Lacey. By this time the body had been
conveyed to the mortuary, and Whyland set to work to examine the
contents of the dead man’s pockets. His most interesting discoveries
were the letter which he had received on Saturday morning and the
missing key of Number 407.
The doctor arrived and performed his post-mortem, which confirmed the
suspicions he had already formed. “Prussic acid, right enough, and a
pretty powerful dose by the look of it. The queer thing about it is
that he seems to have died from breathing the vapour rather than from
swallowing the stuff. Looks as if he’d uncorked a bottle of the strong
acid and sniffed at it. You didn’t see anything of the kind lying
about the cellar, I suppose?”
Whyland shook his head. “No, I didn’t,” he replied. “The only thing I
found lying about was a loaded automatic which hadn’t been fired.”
“What did I tell you?” said the doctor triumphantly. “Suicide, without
a doubt. He took a pistol with him in case the stuff didn’t act.
You’re suggesting that anybody murdered a powerful man like that by
making him inhale prussic acid against his will, are you? Why, the
idea’s absurd.”
Inspector Whyland left the mortuary in a very thoughtful frame of
mind, and returned to the police station. Here he set the telephone to
work and invoked the aid of his colleagues. By the middle of the
afternoon he had collected some interesting information respecting
both Martin and Lacey, upon which he began to build up his own
theory as to the former’s death.
Mr. Martin had carried on a wine merchant’s business at 407, Praed
Street, until fifteen years before. He had then moved to the Barbican,
where he employed two clerks and a couple of packers. He had never
married, and lived at a boarding house in Streatham. He had more than
once gone away for the week-end without notice, and his absence had
therefore caused no concern. He was not known to have any enemies,
although more than once there had been some unsavoury rumours in
circulation as to his dealings with girls whom he had engaged as his
secretaries. His movements on Saturday morning were traced from the
time he left his office to his reaching Aldersgate station. Finally,
as a result of the hint contained in the letter signed John Lacey, the
police had searched his office, and had found there certain papers
which threw a flood of light upon a long sequence of jewel robberies
extending back for the last twenty years.
Mr. Lacey was the owner of a group of grocer’s shops scattered about
West London. He had acquired the lease of Number 407, when the
premises were given up by the late tenant, a clothier. He had never
heard of Mr. Martin, and had certainly never written to him. He always
signed himself John R. Lacey, and the signature on the letter found on
Mr. Martin’s body bore no resemblance whatever to his handwriting. He
had only once entered the cellars of Number 407, and had made no
discoveries there of any kind. On Saturday he had left Liverpool
Street at ten o’clock, to stay with his brother in Ipswich, and had
not returned until the first train on Monday morning. He had sent no
telephone message to Mr. Briggs, nor had he made any appointment with
anybody to inspect the drains of Number 407. He had no key of the
premises, having given the only two which so far as he knew existed to
Houlder, the builder. He was utterly unable to throw any light
whatever upon the incident, since more than a week had passed since he
had visited Praed Street.
Two other facts did Inspector Whyland discover. The first, which did
not astonish him, was that the letter signed John Lacey had in all
probability been typed upon the same machine as had been the envelope
in which the numbered counter had been sent to Richard Pargent. The
second, which was distinctly perplexing, was that the call to Mr.
Briggs had been made from a call-box at Aldersgate station, apparently
at the very time when Mr. Martin was known to have been there. Lastly,
the automatic was identified as the property of Mr. Martin, and a
fingermark on the counter corresponded to an imprint taken from the
dead man’s hand.
The significance of the curious butt found by the electrician in the
lamp-holder was not so clear. It seemed reasonable to assume that
nobody but the dead man had entered the premises after they had been
locked by the foreman on Saturday morning. Whyland had examined all
the doors and windows very carefully, and had satisfied himself that
they bore no signs of violence. He could account for both keys, and
although it was possible that a third key existed, it seemed unlikely
that anyone had used it between 12.30 and two. Again, since the door
had been found bolted on Monday morning, it was probable that the dead
man had bolted it behind him, and that he was alone in the house when
he died. The foreman had assured him that he had found the windows
fastened inside, and that it was only by the use of a special tool
that he had been enabled to open the one at the back. It looked very
much as if Martin had himself fixed the butt in the lamp-holder. But
why?
Certainly it looked very like a case of suicide. But against this
theory was the letter found in the dead man’s pocket and the numbered
counter. Martin himself might have deposited the latter, as the doctor
had suggested, but would he have gone so far as to write a letter
which must certainly put the police on the alert when it was found? It
seemed highly improbable. Inspector Whyland felt convinced that the
death of Mr. Martin was merely another link in the mysterious chain of
murders in Praed Street.
The evening papers were, of course, full of it, though naturally
somewhat guarded. “Another tragedy in Praed Street. City man found
poisoned in Empty House”—such was the general trend of their
headlines. And Praed Street, which had begun to breathe again during
the respite of the past month, felt once more the cold touch of almost
superstitious horror. The killer was abroad again, unknown,
unrecognized, and no man could tell when he might feel the dread hand
of death upon his shoulder.
Inspector Whyland, walking through Praed Street that evening about ten
o’clock, heard a cheerful voice bid him good evening, and turned to
find Mr. Ludgrove by his side.
“Hullo, Mr. Ludgrove!” he exclaimed. “I called at your place just now,
and found it shut up. I thought you were away.”
“I have been taking my usual evening stroll,” replied the herbalist.
“Won’t you come in? I’m on my way home now.”
With scarcely a moment’s hesitation, Whyland accepted the invitation.
There was always the chance that the herbalist might make some
suggestion which would throw light on this latest problem. He waited
until they were seated in the familiar back room before he asked the
inevitable question. “You’ve heard what happened here this morning, I
suppose?”
“I have, indeed,” replied Mr. Ludgrove gravely. “The papers contain
little beyond the bare facts, but I gather that this unfortunate Mr.
Martin was undoubtedly murdered?”
“I’m afraid so,” replied the Inspector. “And I fancy by the same hand
which committed the previous murders. We found a typed letter on him,
suggesting that he should call at Number 407, which had been posted in
this district, and there was a counter bearing the number IV lying by
his side. You don’t happen to know anything about this Mr. Martin, I
suppose?”
Mr. Ludgrove shook his head. “I understand that he left Praed Street
fifteen years ago,” he replied. “That was long before I came here. In
those days I was leading a very quiet life in Devonshire.” He paused,
and a curious look of sadness came into his eyes, as of some painful
memory. Then he continued briskly, as if ashamed of his momentary
lapse. “I daresay that Mr. Copperdock remembers him, he has a
wonderful memory for everybody who has ever lived in the
neighbourhood.”
Inspector Whyland’s eyes contracted slightly as he replied. “Yes, he
remembers him all right. They did a certain amount of business
together, he tells me. In fact, Mr. Copperdock is the only person
about here who will admit to knowing anything about this fellow
Martin.”
“Well, I suppose that we are all under suspicion once more,” said Mr.
Ludgrove, with a kindly smile. “No, Inspector, it’s no use protesting;
I know exactly how I should look at the matter if I were in your
place. Until you have some definite clue to the perpetrator of the
crimes, the whole neighbourhood is equally guilty in your eyes. I may
say that I left here about one o’clock on Saturday, caught the 1.55
from Fenchurch, spent the day in Essex, and did not return until after
dark. Not, I gather, that an alibi is much use in this case, since it
appears that this Mr. Martin was alone in the house, in any event.”
“I wish everybody in Praed Street would deal with me as frankly as you
have, Mr. Ludgrove,” replied Whyland. “There seems to be a sort of
dread in the minds of most of them that the police will in some way
take advantage of everything they say. Take Copperdock, for example.
I’ve been talking to him, and he tells me he was at the Cambridge Arms
for half an hour or so some time between one and two. Yet neither he
nor his son will tell me exactly what time he left his shop or
returned to it. They didn’t notice, they say.”
“Mr. Copperdock is not blessed with a very exact mind,” said Mr.
Ludgrove soothingly. “You remember the curious incident of his meeting
with the black sailor some time ago. By the way, I suppose that rather
intangible person has not yet appeared in connection with the present
case, has he? Although nearly everybody whom I have seen this evening
has some theory to account for the facts, I have so far heard no
reference to the black sailor.”
Inspector Whyland smiled as he rose to take his departure. “I’m so
certain that the black sailor will never be found that I would
willingly double the reward out of my own pocket,” he said. “He’s a
myth, originating in the fertile imagination of that young scoundrel
Wal Snyder. Well, good night, Mr. Ludgrove. Let me know if you hear
any useful hint, won’t you?”
It was not until he was some yards down the street that he laughed
shortly to himself. “That old chap suspects Copperdock as much as I
do,” he muttered. “But if it is Copperdock, what the devil is his
game, I wonder?”
Chapter X
At Scotland Yard
The experts to whom the curious device found by the electrician in the
little cellar had been sent duly made their report. In their opinion,
the butt was all that remained of an ingenious poison-bomb. The
original machine consisted of a socket made to fit into an ordinary
lamp-holder, but the place of the filament had been taken by a piece
of fine wire, round which had been wrapped a thread of gun-cotton.
Attached to the socket, and in contact with the gun-cotton, had been a
sealed celluloid bulb containing pure prussic acid.
The action of such a bomb would be perfectly simple. It had only to be
placed in a lamp-holder, and the switch turned on. The current would
heat the fine wire, and so ignite the strand of gun-cotton. This in
turn would set fire to the celluloid bulb, and its contents would be
released in the form of vapour. Although some of this vapour would
become ignited, enough would be available to permeate the atmosphere
of a room far larger than the small cellar. And, of course, the
inhalation of the vapour would rapidly produce death.
This opinion, the report stated, was purely speculative, since only
the socket of the bomb remained for examination. Inspector Whyland,
after consultation with his Chief at Scotland Yard, decided that it
had better not be made public. The idea, though it was probably
correct, was hypothetical, and altogether too vague to be put before a
coroner’s jury. It certainly strengthened Whyland’s conviction that
Mr. Martin had been murdered, for no man would go to the trouble of
constructing an elaborate poison-bomb with which to kill himself when
he might just as easily have inhaled the acid outright. When the
electrician left the cellar on the Saturday the bomb had not been
there. Whyland was convinced that the man was speaking the truth upon
this point. The only two alternatives remaining were that somebody had
entered the house between the departure of the foreman and the arrival
of Mr. Martin, or that Martin had placed the bomb in position himself.
The field of speculation opened by these alternatives was so vast and
barren of any clue that their exploration must be a matter of
considerable time.
As a matter of fact, the Assistant Commissioner was by no means
convinced that Mr. Martin had been murdered. “We all know what a
difficult job you’re up against in trying to trace the murders of
these two fellows, Tovey and Pargent,” he said to Whyland in an
interview to which he had summoned him, “But don’t you think you’re
rather too much inclined to see the hand of the murderer in everything
that happens in that district? Now, honestly, assuming that Martin was
murdered, have you the slightest clue which could possibly lead to the
conviction of the murderer?”
“No, sir, I haven’t,” replied Whyland. “But I’ve got my suspicions of
this man Copperdock, whom I’ve mentioned to you.”
“Suspicions aren’t evidence,” said the Assistant Commissioner shortly.
“Bring home the original murders to him by all means and then perhaps
you’ll be able to link him up with the death of this man Martin. At
present, so far as I can see, you’ll find it difficult to convince a
jury that Martin was murdered. That poison-bomb theory is a bit
far-fetched, you must admit.”
“It is, rather, sir,” agreed Whyland. “Still we’ve got the letter and
the numbered counter——”
“It’s just that letter that worries me,” interrupted the Chief. “It
was through the letter that you discovered that Martin was a receiver
of stolen goods—a very smart piece of work, Whyland, upon which I
congratulate you. But, until we have rounded them all up, we don’t
want the gentlemen with whom Martin dealt to become aware of our
knowledge. If the existence of that letter becomes known, they’ll
tumble to it at once. I should very much prefer the letter to be kept
secret, for the present, at all events.”
The Assistant Commissioner paused, and Whyland glanced at him quickly.
“I see no reason why it should be mentioned at the inquest, sir,” he
said. “Nobody knows of its existence outside of the police.”
“Then I should be inclined to say nothing about it,” remarked the
Assistant Commissioner. “Nor, I imagine, will it be necessary to bring
into prominence the hypothesis of the poison-bomb, or the fact that
you have any suspicions of foul play. I am not suggesting that you
should wilfully mislead the coroner, mind. But it is usually a mistake
to volunteer information when no useful purpose can be served by so
doing.”
So it happened that the doctor’s evidence at the inquest remain
unchallenged. The theory was that Martin, having decided to take his
own life, was attracted to his old premises knowing them to be empty.
In order to obtain access, he telephoned himself from Aldersgate
station to Mr. Briggs, using Mr. Lacey’s name. Having thus secured the
key, he bolted the door behind him to prevent any interruption, then
went into the cellar and inhaled the vapour of prussic acid. The
automatic he had brought with him in the case the poison should prove
ineffective. The numbered counter, which he had also brought with him,
as the finger-marks upon it showed, merely emphasized the morbid state
of mind which had prompted him to the deed.
The jury returned a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity, in
accordance with this theory, and, to all outward appearances the case
of Mr. Martin was disposed of. But Inspector Whyland, although
relieved to feel that yet another unsolved crime had not been added to
his already mounting debit account, knew well enough at heart that
once again his mysterious adversary had scored a point against him.
But again, there was this insoluble riddle of motive. It was possible
to suggest more than one motive for the murder of Mr. Martin. He
might, for instance, have fallen out with one of the jewel thieves
with whom he had such intimate relations. Or again, his dealings with
women might have been at the bottom of it. But, assuming one of these
suppositions to be correct, how was the death of Mr. Martin to be
linked with the previous murders? Or were they indeed all the work of
separate persons, who imitated one another’s methods with a view to
confusing the issue?
Inspector Whyland recalled his mind from such unprofitable
speculations. He felt that the solution of the whole mystery lay close
under his hand, if he could but devise the means to unearth it.
Somehow Mr. Copperdock’s name always came up in connection with these
murders. He had been Tovey’s most intimate friend. The pipe which had
been the cause of Colburn’s death had been bought at his shop. He must
have been within a few yards of the scene when Pargent was murdered.
And Whyland had no doubt that he would discover some point of contact
between Mr. Copperdock and the present case.
He was not disappointed. It came out, in the course of a conversation
between him and Houlder, the builder. It seemed that Houlder, who was
an occasional frequenter of the Cambridge Arms, had mentioned, early
in the month, that a new tenant had taken Number 407, and that he had
got the job of altering the premises for him. Mr. Copperdock had
displayed great interest in this remark, and as a result Houlder had
invited him to come and look over the place. Mr. Copperdock had
accepted, and he and Houlder had been over every inch of it. This
might have been pure curiosity on Mr. Copperdock’s part, but at least
the fact was significant. Inspector Whyland stored it in the mental
pigeon-hole which already contained the note that Martin and
Copperdock had done considerable business together in the past.
Thus, putting the case mathematically, Mr. Copperdock was the highest
common factor of the terms representing the four dead men. Inspector
Whyland had spent much time and care in investigating their histories
and their actions, and he could find no other factor common to them
all. They had been, so far as he had been able to ascertain, complete
strangers to one another, and they could never consciously have met
one another. The only characteristics which they had in common were
that they had all received counters numbered in the order of their
deaths, that they were all males, and that their ages had all been
over fifty.
Naturally, the mind of Praed Street was not greatly relieved by the
verdict on the death of Mr. Martin. Violent death was becoming far too
frequent an incident for any of the local community to feel safe. Men
wondered when it would be their turn to find the fatal counter, and
how they should ward off the death which so swiftly followed. It was
not as though one could tell exactly what one had to guard against.
The knife had been used twice, certainly, but poison in one form or
another had accounted for two of the deaths.
The numbered counters were the characteristic feature of the case
which appealed most strongly to the popular imagination. Inexplicable
murders were common enough, even murders in which no motive or
criminal had ever been found. But a series of murders, each prefixed
by a definite warning, were an entirely novel sensation. The theory of
the counters was publicly discussed from every possible point of view,
without any really satisfactory theory being arrived at. Quite a large
proportion of the population of London opened their morning papers in
expectation of finding news of the delivery of counter number V.
The news, when it came, illustrated the hold which the subject had
upon men’s minds, and the moral effect which it has produced. Mr.
Ludgrove read the story as he consumed his frugal breakfast, and he
was not surprised to hear Mr. Copperdock’s voice in the shop a few
minutes later.
“Come in, Mr. Copperdock,” he called, and the tobacconist, paper in
hand, the light of excitement in his eyes, entered through the
curtained door.
“Have you seen this about this old chap Goodwin?” he enquired, without
preliminary.
“I have indeed,” replied Mr. Ludgrove gravely. “I imagine that the
whole thing was an utterly heartless practical joke. I only hope the
police will be able to trace the sender.”
“Aye, practical joke, maybe, but it killed him all the same,” said Mr.
Copperdock doubtfully. “Fancy an old chap like that, what couldn’t
have had more than a year or two to live! The paper says that he
couldn’t even walk from one room to another, had to be wheeled in a
chair. This daughter of his what was looking after him says here that
the doctor had told her that any shock might be fatal. Wonder if she
sent it herself, being tired of waiting for his money? Listen, this is
what she says: ‘My father’s chief amusement was to read the papers. He
took the keenest interest in every item of news, and often discussed
them with me. We often talked about the murders which have taken place
recently in Praed Street, and my father always maintained that the
curious episode of the numbered counters proved that they were not the
work of a maniac.’”
“Yes. It is easy to understand what a shock the receipt of the counter
must have been to him,” replied Mr. Ludgrove reflectively. “It would
be interesting to know who, besides his daughter, knew of this passion
for news on his part. I see by the account in my paper that three
letters arrived for him by the morning post, and that his daughter
brought them in to him on his breakfast tray. He opened the first one,
and a counter numbered V fell out of it.”
“Then he fell back on his pillow and never spoke again,” put in Mr.
Copperdock excitedly. “The shock killed him right enough, as the
doctors had said it would. I wouldn’t like to be in the shoes of the
person what sent it him.”
Mr. Ludgrove glanced at his friend sharply. “I cannot understand it,
except upon the assumption of a practical joke, and a particularly
cruel one at that,” he said. “Here was this Mr. Goodwin, a retired
manufacturer, who had been living in this house at Highgate for many
years past. All his acquaintances knew that his heart was very
seriously affected, and that he had only a short time to live. Of
course, we know nothing of his past history, but, whatever motive
there may have been, to murder a man in his condition would merely be
to anticipate the course of nature by a few months. And, in our
experience, the receipt of the counter has always been followed by
violent death. I say we know nothing about him; I certainly do not. I
suppose that you have never heard of him before, have you, Mr.
Copperdock?”
Mr. Copperdock shook his head. “Never!” he replied emphatically.
“Seems to me it’s just like that poet chap, Pargent. Somebody sends
him the counter, and his number’s up. Well thank heaven, it didn’t
happen in Praed Street, this time.”
It was not long after Mr. Copperdock’s departure that Inspector
Whyland came in to see the herbalist. He said nothing, but glanced at
Mr. Ludgrove enquiringly.
“Yes, I’ve seen it in the paper,” said Mr. Ludgrove. “As a matter of
fact, I’ve just been discussing it with Mr. Copperdock. He came over
here as soon as he read about it.”
“Oh, he did, did he?” replied Whyland. “And what do you make of it,
may I ask?”
Mr. Ludgrove shrugged his shoulders. “I know no more than what the
paper contains,” he said. “It looks to me like a practical joke. I
shouldn’t wonder if some idiot derives amusement from sending these
counters broadcast. I daresay he gets the names of people to send them
to from the telephone directory.”
“Practical joke? H’m,” said Whyland. “Mind, I’m not denying that a lot
of fools do send out these counters to their friends. The Yard has had
dozens of cases reported to them. I always said that would happen as
soon as people heard about them. But in this case I have seen the
envelope in which the counter was sent. It was typed on the same
machine as the others, and it was posted in this district, exactly as
the others were. Your practical joker has followed his original model
pretty closely, don’t you think?”
The ardent seekers after sensation redoubled their eagerness for news
of the next counter. Although opinion on the whole followed Mr.
Ludgrove in attributing the counter sent to Mr. Goodwin to some
irresponsible practical joker, the fact that death had undoubtedly
followed its receipt caused many to shake their heads knowingly. If
Mr. Martin’s death had been due to suicide, and Mr. Goodwin’s to a
practical joke, how would the original sender of the counters number
his next one? It was not to be supposed that he would claim credit for
these spurious imitations of his work. If the next number were to be
VI, public opinion was quite prepared to credit him with having
compassed the last two deaths. But most people anticipated that it
would bear the number IV.
The fact that such discussion was possible showed clearly that the
theory of the existence of some mysterious assassin had captured the
popular imagination. There was really no reason why any murderer
should not send a numbered counter to his prospective victim, but
people argued, quite correctly, that murders were far more often the
result of sudden impulse than of deliberate intention. It was for this
reason that the “counter deaths” as they were sometimes called,
attracted so much attention. Yet the weeks drew into months, and the
cold winds of spring took the place of the misty drizzle of winter,
without any news of another numbered counter being received. The
arm-chair criminologists gave it as their opinion that the last had
been heard of them, that the mysterious criminal had either fulfilled
his vengeance or had died unrecognized in some lunatic asylum. The
murders in Praed Street were added to the long list of undiscovered
crimes, and slowly they began to be forgotten.
One evening towards the end of April, Mr. Copperdock was sitting in
the herbalist’s back room, enjoying a generous whiskey and soda. He
was on his way home from the Cambridge Arms, and, seeing his friend’s
door still open, had looked in for a chat. The night was warm, one of
those nights which London sometimes experiences in early spring,
conveying the promise, so rarely fulfilled, of a fine summer.
The liquor which he had consumed made Mr. Copperdock even more
communicative than usual. Some reference to his son had led him on to
speak of Ivy, and thus, by a simple association of ideas, to the
murder of Mr. Tovey.
“You know, Ludgrove, that fellow Whyland always suspected me of having
to do with that business,” he said. “I don’t believe he’s satisfied
yet, between ourselves. At one time he was always hanging about,
coming into my place at all hours, and asking all sorts of questions.
I used to see chaps lounging about outside, and sometimes they
followed me when I went out. It was jolly uncomfortable, I can tell
you.”
Mr. Ludgrove smiled. “I don’t suppose you were any more under
suspicion than the rest of us,” he replied. “Whyland had an idea that
somebody in this neighbourhood was responsible, and I don’t know that
I don’t agree with him. He came in here, too, and asked questions, for
that matter. For all I know he may have suspected me.”
But Mr. Copperdock shook his head. “No, Ludgrove, that won’t do,” he
said. “There was something about the way he spoke to me that gave him
away. He still comes in sometimes, and asks me all sorts of questions
about those poor fellows who were killed. Very often they’re the same
things as he’s asked before. Trying to catch me out, I suppose. And
he’s always asking if I’ve ever seen the black sailor again.”
“I suppose you really did see him?” asked Mr. Ludgrove casually.
“See him? I saw him as plain as I see you now,” replied Mr.
Copperdock, with some indignation. “What would I want to say I’d seen
him for if I hadn’t? I wish now I’d never said anything about it. I
wouldn’t have, but I thought it would be doing Whyland a good turn.”
“Well, it’s all over now,” said Mr. Ludgrove soothingly. “We haven’t
had any of these mysterious deaths for nearly three months now. I
don’t expect that Inspector Whyland will worry his head about the
matter much longer.”
“I hope he won’t,” replied Mr. Copperdock truculently. “I’ll give him
a piece of mind if he comes round worrying me much more. I’m as
respectable a man as any in this street, I’d have him know.”
He finished his drink, and rose to go. Mr. Ludgrove saw him off the
premises, then settled himself down once more in his chair to read.
Five minutes later he heard a heavy step hurrying through the shop,
and the form of Mr. Copperdock appeared unceremoniously through the
curtain that covered the door of the inner room. Mr. Ludgrove rose to
his feet in concern. The tobacconist’s face was deathly pale, and his
hands were trembling violently. He staggered across the room, and sank
down into the chair he had so lately quitted.
He held out one shaking hand open towards the herbalist. “Here, look
at this!” he exclaimed in a queer hoarse voice.
The herbalist bent over the outstretched hand. In the palm of it lay a
white counter, upon which the figure VI had been roughly drawn in red
ink.
Chapter XI
The Sixth Counter
Mr. Ludgrove looked at the counter and then raised his eyes to Mr.
Copperdock’s face. The tobacconist was staring at him with an
expression of complete bewilderment and terror, very different from
his truculent demeanour of a few minutes earlier. The herbalist
checked the slow smile which had begun to twitch the corner of his
lips, and sat down quietly opposite Mr. Copperdock.
“Where did you find this?” he asked.
“On my bed, after I left you just now,” replied the tobacconist. “It
wasn’t there when I went out to the Cambridge Arms this evening, I’ll
swear. I always goes upstairs to have a wash before I goes out, and
I’d have been bound to have seen it. It’s that black sailor. I always
thought he’d get me.”
“Well, he hasn’t got you yet,” said Mr. Ludgrove soothingly. “Now that
you have been warned, we can take the proper precautions. How do you
suppose this counter came into your room?”
Mr. Copperdock shook his head helplessly. “It beats me,” he replied.
“I locked the door behind me when I went out, and nobody couldn’t have
got in till I went back just now, seeing as I had the key in my pocket
all the time.”
“You locked the door when you went out? Was Ted out, too, then?”
“Yes, Ted and I went out together, about half-past eight. He was going
to spend the evening with the Toveys. I don’t expect him back till
nigh on eleven. I goes round to the Cambridge Arms, where I stays
until I comes in to you just now. And when I gets back, there was this
counter, right in the middle of my bed. I just picks it up and comes
over to you. I daren’t stay no longer in the house alone.”
“You didn’t notice if anything else in the house had been disturbed, I
suppose?”
“I didn’t stop to look. It gave me such a turn seeing that thing
there, I didn’t hardly know what I was doing.”
“Well, you’d better stay here until your son comes back,” said Mr.
Ludgrove. “It is very nearly eleven now. I suppose you shut the door
behind you when you came over here? How will Ted get in?”
“We both has our keys,” replied Mr. Copperdock. “Ted’s a good boy. I
wouldn’t have minded so much if he’d been there.”
“Well, I’ll go to the door and watch for him,” said Mr. Ludgrove
cheerfully. “You’ll be all right here, Mr. Copperdock.”
“Don’t you go no further than the door!” exclaimed the tobacconist
fearfully. “For all I know that black sailor chap may be on the
lookout, and seen me come across here. He’ll get me, for sure.”
“He won’t get you here, I promise you,” said Mr. Ludgrove
reassuringly. He mixed a strong whiskey and water, and placed it in
the trembling hand of his guest. “You drink this while I go into the
shop and keep an eye open for your son.”
Mr. Ludgrove had not been at his post for many minutes before Ted came
swinging along the opposite pavement. He stopped at the sound of the
herbalist’s voice, and crossed the road towards him. In a few
whispered words Mr. Ludgrove acquainted him with what had happened.
Ted said nothing, but jerked his elbow upwards and winked
suggestively.
“No, I don’t think so,” said Mr. Ludgrove. “But you had better come in
and talk to him.”
The two entered the back room together, and Mr. Copperdock looked up
anxiously as they came in.
“Ah, Ted, my boy, I’m glad to see you,” he said dolefully. “The black
sailor’s on my track, and he’ll get me, for sure.”
“Nonsense, Dad,” replied Ted heartily. “Somebody put that counter on
your bed for a joke; one of your pals at the Cambridge Arms, I’ll be
bound. You come along home with me, and we’ll soon find out who it
was.”
But Mr. Copperdock shook his head. “I wouldn’t go into that house
again not to-night, no, not if you was to pay me,” he replied firmly.
“I’d sooner go and spend the night at the police station.”
“You needn’t do that,” said Mr. Ludgrove. “You can spend the night
here on my bed upstairs. I have no objection to sleeping on the
chair.”
“I daren’t be left alone,” lamented Mr. Copperdock. “Anybody might
have seen me cross the road and come in here. Do you think Inspector
Whyland would send a couple of coppers along if Ted was to ring him
up? I’d feel a lot safer if they was about.”
“I hardly think he would,” replied Mr. Ludgrove. “But if you like we
will spend the night together in this room. You can have one chair,
and I will have the other. I can put a mattress on the floor for Ted
if he cares to join us.”
“Not I, I’m going home to bed,” put in Ted heartily, with a wink at
the herbalist. “Somebody ought to be on guard over at our place in
case the black sailor breaks in, you know, Dad.”
Rather reluctantly Mr. Copperdock agreed to this arrangement. After a
few more minutes’ conversation, Ted went home, and the two settled
themselves down in the chairs. A further strong whiskey and water
produced its effect upon Mr. Copperdock, and he was very soon dozing
restlessly. To Mr. Ludgrove sleep seemed an unnecessary luxury. He
moved quietly over to his bench, and spent the greater part of the
night absorbed in his herbs and his microscope, apparently entirely
oblivious of the presence of his guest. The only sign he manifested of
interest in his affairs was to pick up the counter and examine it very
carefully through a powerful lens.
It was not until seven o’clock in the morning that he gently shook the
sleeping form. Mr. Copperdock woke with a start, and stared about him
with puzzled eyes.
“I’ve got a cup of tea ready for you, Mr. Copperdock,” said the
herbalist. “I thought it was time to wake you, as Mrs. Cooper will be
here presently, and if she found you here she might talk. We don’t
want that, do we?”
The tobacconist rose stiffly to his feet and shook himself. “Very kind
of you, I’m sure, Ludgrove,” he said. “Yes, I remember. What did you
do with that counter?”
“I have it here,” replied the herbalist. “You are still quite sure
that you found it on your bed last night? It wasn’t by any chance
slipped into your pocket by somebody at the Cambridge Arms?”
“As sure as I live. I found it on my bed, same as I told you,”
affirmed Mr. Copperdock earnestly. “I wasn’t tight last night, if
that’s what you’re getting at.”
“No, no, of course not,” replied Mr. Ludgrove soothingly. “Now, shall
we go across and see if your son heard anything during the night?”
Mr. Copperdock agreeing, they crossed the road to the tobacconist’s
shop, and let themselves in. Ted was still asleep, and they had some
difficulty in waking him. When they had done so, he reported that he
had had a good look round the place before he went to bed, and had
found nothing unusual. After that—well, he had gone to sleep, and had
heard nothing until they had awakened him.
The light of morning appeared to have instilled rather more courage
into Mr. Copperdock’s heart. He announced his determination to carry
on business as usual, but insisted that Inspector Whyland should be
communicated with and told of his discovery of the numbered counter.
It was about ten o’clock when Whyland arrived in Praed Street, but
instead of going straight to Copperdock’s shop, he went first to the
herbalist’s.
“What’s this story about Copperdock having found a numbered counter?”
he asked, as soon as they were safely hidden in the back room from
prying ears.
Mr. Ludgrove recounted his experiences of the past night, and as he
came to a conclusion Whyland laughed contemptuously. “Is this another
of Copperdock’s hallucinations, like that meeting of his with the
black sailor?” he enquired.
“Not altogether,” replied Mr. Ludgrove with a smile. “The counter is
real enough, at all events. He left it here last night. Here it is.”
Whyland examined the counter in silence. He had very little doubt that
Mr. Copperdock had staged the whole affair, had written the figure VI
upon it in red ink himself, and had placed it on his bed. But why?
What was his game? Was this a feeble scheme to draw suspicion from
himself? The series of murders appeared to have come to an end. What
was the point of reviving the memory of them like this?
Mr. Ludgrove broke in upon his meditations. “I took the liberty of
examining it under a powerful glass,” he said, nodding his head
towards the bench. “It seems to be an ordinary bone counter and the
figure VI has been drawn upon it with a steel pen and red ink.”
“Just as the others were,” agreed Whyland. “I’ll keep this counter, if
you don’t mind. I want to add it to my collection. Now I suppose I had
better step across and see Copperdock. I should like you to come with
me, if you can spare the time.”
“I think I can risk shutting the shop for a few minutes,” replied the
herbalist. “I get very few customers in the morning. Most of the
people who require my services are at work all day.”
“Dishonest work, I’ll be bound,” said Whyland chaffingly. “Well, come
along, then.”
They went across to Mr. Copperdock’s shop together, and were shown by
the tobacconist into the room behind the shop, which was used as an
office. At one side was a table upon which stood a Planet typewriter,
at the other a desk. Inspector Whyland seated himself at the latter,
selected one of the pens before him, and dipped it into an inkpot,
which happened to contain red ink.
“Now then, Mr. Copperdock,” he said. “Tell me exactly what happened
yesterday evening.”
The tobacconist immediately launched into an account of his adventure.
Whyland listened patiently, occasionally making a brief note with the
pen. “You say that nobody could have entered the house while you were
out?” he asked, as Mr. Copperdock came to the end of his story.
“Quite impossible,” replied Mr. Copperdock emphatically. “There’s only
one door, with a spring lock which catches when you shuts it.”
“H’m. I’d like to have a look round, if you don’t mind,” said the
Inspector.
He examined the house carefully. On the ground floor was the shop, and
behind it the office and a little kitchen containing a gas stove. The
windows of these did not open, and were high up in the wall, and
covered with a stout iron grating. There was no back entrance. From a
narrow passage a staircase ran up to the first floor, upon which were
two bedrooms, occupied respectively by Mr. Copperdock and his son, and
a sitting-room. The bedrooms were over the shop, and looked out upon
Praed Street. The sitting-room was at the back, and looked out over an
enclosed yard, belonging to a transport contractor, and used for
storing vans at night. The windows on the first floor were obviously
inaccessible without the aid of a ladder. Above the first floor were a
couple of attics, lighted only by skylights, which were closed and
padlocked. From the cobwebs which covered them, it was obvious that
they had not been opened for a long time.
Inspector Whyland returned to the first floor. “Were these windows
closed and fastened while you were out last night?” he enquired.
“The sitting-room was,” replied Ted, who had followed them upstairs.
“I looked at it when I came in. It hasn’t been touched since.”
Whyland looked at it, and satisfied himself that it showed no signs of
having been forced. “What about the bedroom windows?” he asked.
“Both Dad’s and mine were open at the top,” replied Ted. “But nobody
could have got in through them, unless they had put up a ladder in the
middle of Praed Street.”
“Even the black sailor isn’t likely to have done that,” observed
Whyland sarcastically. “Well, Mr. Copperdock, the best advice I can
give you is not to go about alone at night too much. I’ll have a man
watch outside the premises for a bit, if that’s any comfort to you.
But, if you ask me, I don’t think you’re in any immediate danger.”
It seemed that the Inspector was right. Several days passed without
anything untoward happening to Mr. Copperdock. The tobacconist resumed
his normal routine, with the modification that he took care never to
be alone. His son walked with him as far as the Cambridge Arms, and
one at least of his cronies there walked back with him to the shop.
Mr. Ludgrove, watching with some amusement, recognized every night the
watcher that Whyland had promised to provide. It struck him that the
man’s instructions were probably to keep an eye on Mr. Copperdock’s
movements rather than to provide for his safety. But upon the
tobacconist, who, now he had got over his fright, appeared to regard
himself as something of a hero, the man’s presence produced an
impression of importance and of security.
The only aspect of the incident which appealed to Whyland was the
counter itself. He had submitted it to the experts at Scotland Yard,
together with the notes which he had made in red ink in Mr.
Copperdock’s office, and they had given it as their opinion that the
figure upon it had been drawn with the same ink as that in which the
notes had been written, and by a similar pen. Further, this pen and
ink corresponded with those which had been used on the previous
counters, in the cases in which they had been preserved. The more the
Inspector considered it, the more convinced he became that Mr.
Copperdock was at the bottom of the business. But how to bring it home
to him? That was the difficulty.
Mr. Copperdock had found the numbered counter on Tuesday evening. On
the following Saturday Ted had arranged to take Ivy to a dance, from
which he was not likely to return until after midnight. It had been
suggested that Mr. Copperdock, in order that he should not be left
alone, should spend the time between the closing of the Cambridge Arms
and the return of his son in Mr. Ludgrove’s sanctum.
But, deriving courage from the fact that four days had elapsed without
anything happening, Mr. Copperdock refused to consider any such
proposal. He must have detected the general scepticism with which his
story of the finding of the counter had been received, and had
resolved to say no more about it. He went to the Cambridge Arms at his
usual hour, stayed there until closing time, and was then accompanied
home by two friends of his, who lived in the Edgware Road, and who had
to pass the door on their way home. He invited these two to come in
and have a last drink with him, and they accepted, on the grounds that
it was a beautiful night, and very thirsty work walking.
The story of the finding of the counter was by this time familiar to
all the clientele of the Cambridge Arms, each individual member of
which suspected some other member of having somehow conveyed it into
Mr. Copperdock’s possession. It was absurd to think, as one of them
remarked in his absence, that anybody could have a grudge against Sam
Copperdock. Somebody must be pulling his leg, that was the only
possible explanation. It was with some considerable interest,
therefore, that his two friends followed the tobacconist as he took
them into his bedroom and showed them the exact place where he found
the counter.
It was not until nearly eleven that Mr. Copperdock’s party broke up.
Inspector Whyland’s deputy, strolling past on the other side of the
road, noticed the parting on the doorstep, and observed that after the
departure of his friends, Mr. Copperdock shut the door of his shop. A
few minutes later he saw a light switched on in one of the front rooms
upstairs. This he knew, from his experience of previous nights, was
the signal that Mr. Copperdock was going to bed.
Mr. Ludgrove, since the tobacconist had refused his offer of
hospitality, spent the evening by himself. The room above his shop was
littered with innumerable boxes containing all manner of dried herbs
and similar items of the stock-in-trade of his calling. He spent
several hours between that room and his sanctum. His work bench became
strewed with specimens to which from time to time he affixed labels
with high-sounding names. The door of his shop was ajar until about
half-past ten, up till which hour an occasional customer interrupted
his labours. After that time it was closed, and he was able to devote
his whole attention to his plants.
He was still working at midnight. He appeared to require very little
sleep, and rarely went to bed before the early hours of the morning.
He had just brewed himself a cup of his favourite cocoa, when suddenly
he heard a violent hammering upon the door of the shop. Instinctively
he glanced at the clock upon the mantelpiece. The hands pointed to
twenty minutes past twelve.
Surely no customer could be seeking admittance at such an hour!
Besides, the knocking was clamorous, insistent, not in the least like
the furtive taps which usually proclaimed the visit of some client,
anxious to hide his errand under the cover of darkness. With a shrug
of his shoulders Mr. Ludgrove put down his cup and went to the door.
He drew back the bolts and put out his head, to find Ted Copperdock
standing on the pavement outside.
The young man gave him no chance to ask questions. He threw out his
hand and caught Mr. Ludgrove by the arm, as though to drag him
forcibly into the street. “For God’s sake come and see Dad!” he
exclaimed.
“Why, what has happened?” enquired Mr. Ludgrove quickly.
“I don’t know, he’s dead, I think,” replied Ted incoherently. “I’ve
just come back and found him. Something terrible’s happened——”
Mr. Ludgrove was not the man to be carried off his feet by a sudden
crisis. “Certainly, Ted, I’ll come over,” he said quietly. “But you
appear to want a doctor rather than me. You probably know that a
detective has been patrolling the streets for the last few nights. I
think I see him coming towards us now. You go and fetch the doctor,
while he and I attend to your father.”
Ted, after a moment’s hesitation, ran off down the road, and Mr.
Ludgrove walked swiftly towards the advancing figure, which he had
already recognized. “Something has happened to Mr. Copperdock,” he
said as he reached him. “I have sent his son for a doctor, and said
that you and I would go in.”
“Something happened, eh?” replied the man, as the two strode swiftly
towards the door of the tobacconist’s shop. “You don’t know what it
is, I suppose? I’ve had my eye on the place all the evening, and
there’s been nobody near it between eleven, when two fellows whom
Copperdock took in came out, and five minutes ago, when his son let
himself in with a key. And there’s been a light in the front window
upstairs all that time.”
“No, I know nothing,” replied Mr. Ludgrove anxiously. They had reached
the shop by this time. The door had been left open by Ted in his haste
to call the herbalist, and they hurried on through the shop and up the
staircase to the first floor. The door of Mr. Copperdock’s bedroom
stood open, and they rushed in together. On the threshold they halted,
moved by a simultaneous impulse. Before them, in the middle of the
floor, lay Mr. Copperdock, stripped to the waist, with an expression
of innocent surprise upon his face.
Chapter XII
A Hypodermic Needle
For a moment the two men stood still, rooted to the ground with
horror. Then Mr. Ludgrove stepped forward and fell on his knees by Mr.
Copperdock’s side. He put his finger on his wrist for a moment, then
slowly rose to his feet and shook his head.
“Dead?” said the detective enquiringly. “By jove, this is a bad
business. Will you stay here for a moment while I go down into the
shop and telephone? I’ll ring up the station and get them to send for
Whyland. Don’t touch anything, whatever you do.”
Mr. Ludgrove nodded. He stood motionless in the door-way when voices
below proclaimed the arrival on the scene of Ted and the doctor. The
detective, who had sent his message, came upstairs with them, and the
three joined Mr. Ludgrove.
The doctor took in the situation at a glance. Mr. Copperdock was lying
on his back, his legs drawn up close to his body. The doctor examined
him in silence for awhile, then beckoned to the detective.
“I don’t understand this at all,” he said. “I shall have to make a
more thorough examination than is possible while he is lying in this
position. I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done. I don’t want to move
him until your Inspector comes. He won’t be long, I suppose?”
“He’s living close to the station,” replied the detective. “They’ve
sent a man with a motor-cycle and side-car round to fetch him and
bring him here. It oughtn’t to take him more than a few minutes. I’d
rather you waited, if you don’t mind.”
The doctor nodded and continued his examination, while the other three
stood where they were, looking keenly about them. It was obvious that
when death overtook Mr. Copperdock he had been preparing for bed. His
coat, waistcoat, shirt and vest lay on a chair, and the basin on the
washing stand was half full of soapy water. A towel lay on the floor
near it.
The minutes seemed to pass with leaden slowness until a faint
throbbing reached their ears, which rapidly grew in intensity until it
resolved itself into the sound of a motor-cycle. The noise ceased
suddenly as it reached the door, and in a few seconds Inspector
Whyland appeared, half dressed, with a stern expression on his face.
“How did this happen, Waters?” he enquired sharply, turning to the
detective.
“I don’t know, sir,” replied the latter. “I’ve been watching the house
all the evening——”
“Well, never mind, you can tell me about that later,” interrupted
Whyland. “Good evening, doctor. Can you tell me what this man died
of?”
“No, I can’t” replied the doctor. “It looks as if he had been bitten
by a snake, or something of that kind. I was waiting till you came to
make a thorough examination.”
“Right. Stand fast a minute while I look round.” He made a swift
survey of the room, then, taking a piece of chalk from his pocket,
marked on the carpet the position in which the body was lying.
“Now then, doctor, I’m ready,” he said. “What do you want to do?”
“I want him laid on his side, if you’ll bear a hand,” replied the
doctor. “That’s right. Hullo, look at that!”
They had moved Mr. Copperdock’s body until his back was visible.
There, just below the left shoulder-blade, was an almost circular
patch, covered with a curious white powdery incrustation. In the
centre of this patch was an angry looking purple spot.
The doctor bent over this and uttered an exclamation of amazement.
Opening the case which he had laid down by his side he took from it a
pair of forceps, and applied them to the spot on Mr. Copperdock’s
back. From this he withdrew something, which he carried over to the
light, and beckoned to Whyland to inspect.
“See that?” he said. “That’s the end of a fine hypodermic needle. I’m
beginning to see what happened, now. He was injected with some
powerful toxic agent by means of a hypodermic syringe, the needle of
which broke off in the process. The nature of the poison we shall be
able to determine by an examination of this fragment. But I don’t
understand that white incrustation. Let me have another look at it.”
He selected a small phial from his case, put the fragment of the
needle into it, and labelled it. Then he turned once more to Mr.
Copperdock’s body, and examined the patch once more with a lens.
Finally he removed some of the white powder and put it in another
phial, which he also sealed and labelled.
Then he beckoned Whyland aside, and the two conversed for a moment in
low whispers.
“This is really most extraordinary,” said the doctor. “This man
undoubtedly died from an injection of poison administered
hypodermically. You remember the case of Colburn, the baker, last
year?”
“Yes, I remember it well,” replied Whyland. “What about it, doctor?”
“Well, of course, I can’t say definitely as yet,” replied the doctor
guardedly. “But it seems to me that the symptoms in the two cases are
remarkably similar. I would go so far as to hazard the opinion that
the same poison was employed in both cases. Now, in the present case,
you, I take it, are chiefly interested in the agency by which the
poison was administered. Well, it is possible that in this case it was
self-administered. One can just manage to run a hypodermic needle into
oneself below the left shoulder-blade. Here’s a syringe. There’s no
needle in it. Hold it in your left hand. That’s right. Now, see if you
can press the nozzle against your back in the place corresponding to
the spot on Mr. Copperdock’s body.”
Whyland obeyed, and after some fumbling contrived to reach the exact
spot. “Yes, it can be done, but it’s precious awkward,” he remarked,
handing the syringe back.
“Exactly,” agreed the doctor. “That may account for the needle having
broken off. Mind, I’m only suggesting a possibility, not laying down a
theory. That’s your job. Now we come to the white incrustation round
the puncture. Unless I’m greatly mistaken, it is potassium carbonate.
Should it prove to be so, the fact would be of considerable
significance.”
“Why?” enquired Whyland. “I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you,
doctor.”
“Potassium carbonate has no particular properties of its own,” replied
the doctor. “But, if a piece of caustic potash had been applied to the
puncture, say an hour or two ago, it would by now have been converted
into potassium carbonate. You see what this suggests. Caustic
substances are employed to burn out poisoned surfaces. In this case,
caustic potash may have been employed in an attempt to counteract the
poison. Of course, it would be ineffectual, as it had been injected
far too deeply. But that it has been so applied I am pretty certain.
You can see for yourself that the skin shows traces of burning under
the incrustation. Whether the same hand that injected the poison
applied this ineffectual antidote, I cannot say.”
Whyland nodded, and then a sudden thought struck him. “But look here,
if he injected the poison himself, the syringe ought to be lying about
somewhere!” he exclaimed. “How long would it take for the poison to
act, doctor?”
The doctor shook his head. “I can’t say, since I do not yet know its
nature,” he replied. “If it was the same as was employed in Colburn’s
case, we can make a rough guess, however. A very small quantity,
applied to a scratch in his tongue, caused death in two hours and a
half. We may assume that very much larger quantity would be contained
in a syringe, and it was driven well into the tissues. Death might
well have occurred within a few minutes. But in any case, there would
have been time to dispose of the syringe.”
The doctor turned and pointed to the window. “That’s open at the top,
as you see, and the curtains do not meet by a couple of feet or more.
He could have thrown it out there without the slightest difficulty.”
Whyland turned to the three men, who had been standing by the door.
“Slip down below, Waters, and search the pavement and roadway outside
this window for a hypodermic syringe,” he said. “Sharp, now! Mr.
Ludgrove, come to this window for a moment; you know this street
better than I do. That’s your place opposite, isn’t it? What’s behind
that window over the shop?”
“A room I use for storing herbs in,” replied Mr. Ludgrove. “As it
happens, I have been in there once or twice this evening.”
“You didn’t see anything of what was happening in here, I suppose?”
asked Whyland quickly.
“No, I did not,” replied Mr. Ludgrove. “I was only in the room for a
moment or two, selecting bundles of herbs to take downstairs. I did
happen to notice about eleven o’clock that there was a light in here,
but that was all.”
“What about the windows to the right and left of your place?”
“I believe that they belong to offices occupied only in the day-time.
I do not think it at all likely that anyone could have overlooked this
room from them at night.”
“No,” agreed Whyland. “We’re not likely to be lucky to find an actual
witness. All right, Mr. Ludgrove, thank you. Now, young man, do you
know if your father possessed a hypodermic syringe?”
Ted Copperdock, thus addressed, shook his head. “I don’t think so,
Inspector,” he replied. “But I shouldn’t know one if I saw it. There’s
a cupboard over there by the washing stand where he kept a lot of
bottles of stuff.”
Whyland strode over to the cupboard and opened it. It contained about
a dozen bottles of various sizes, each half full of some patent
medicine or other. But of a hypodermic syringe, or even any caustic
potash, there was no trace.
“If he did it himself he must have thrown the syringe away,” muttered
Whyland. “Waters ought to find it; there isn’t a lot of traffic along
here at this time of night. Well, doctor, I don’t think we need keep
you out of bed any longer. I’ll have the body taken to the mortuary,
and perhaps you’ll ring me up at the station later in the morning?”
The doctor nodded, picked up his bag, which contained the broken
needle and the sample of the incrustation, and left the house. When he
had gone, Whyland turned once again to Ted.
“Can you suggest any reason why your father should wish to take his
life?” he enquired.
“No, Inspector, I can’t,” replied Ted frankly. “The business is doing
very well, and father was only saying the other day that we’d got a
tidy bit put away in the bank. I keep the books myself, and I know
everything’s all right.”
“I see. No money troubles, in fact. You don’t know of any
disappointment which he may have experienced, or anything like that?”
A faint smile passed across Ted’s face. “I don’t think he had any
disappointment, Inspector,” he replied. “In fact, I should say it was
rather the other way.”
“What do you mean?” said Whyland sharply.
“Why, he always reckoned that nobody knew, but I fancy that we all
guessed sharp enough. He’s hinted to me once or twice lately that he
wasn’t too old to marry again. And——well, from what her daughter lets
drop, Mrs. Tovey wouldn’t mind. He went round there pretty often, and
she always seemed glad to see him.”
Whyland shot a quick glance at Mr. Ludgrove. It was from him that he
had first learnt of this attachment. Ludgrove nodded almost
imperceptibly, and Whyland turned once more to Ted.
“There was nothing preying on his mind, was there?” he asked.
“Well, I’ve thought sometimes that he fair had the wind up about this
black sailor,” replied Ted reluctantly. “I never knew what to make of
that. He told me one day that he’d met him coming out of the Cambridge
Arms, but I never could quite believe it somehow.”
“As it happens, I share your scepticism,” said Whyland. “Mr. Ludgrove
here was in the street at the time, and saw your father come out of
the Cambridge Arms. There was nobody but himself and your father in
sight, he assures me.”
“That is so,” assented Mr. Ludgrove gravely.
“Well, I’m not surprised,” said Ted. “It’s a funny thing, but these
things always happen when he’d been to the Cambridge Arms of an
evening. It was when he came home from there that he found that
counter the other day?”
“Have you ever seen your father definitely under the influence of
liquor?” asked Whyland.
“Why no, not to say actually squiffy. He’d talk freer than usual, and
imagine all sorts of yarns about things that never happened. I think
he got the black sailor on his brain sometimes. When he first got the
counter he made up his mind that the black sailor was going to get
him. But the last day or two he’s been much more cheerful. Of course,
it’s possible that this evening, when he was alone, it got on his mind
again.”
The conversation was interrupted by the return of Waters, the
detective. “I’ve searched as best I can for that syringe, sir, and I
can’t find it,” he reported. “I’ll have another good look as soon as
it gets light, if you like, sir.”
“Yes, do,” replied Whyland. “Now, you were supposed to be watching
this place all the evening. What time did Mr. Copperdock come in?”
“Between nine and ten, sir. Two fellows came with him, and the three
stood talking at the door for a minute or two. Then they all went in,
and the door was shut behind them. It was close on eleven when it
opened again, and the two men came out. Mr. Copperdock came downstairs
with them, I saw him just inside the door talking to them. Then they
went away, and the door was shut again. A few minutes after they had
gone I saw a light come on in this room.”
“You can’t see into the room from the opposite pavement, I suppose?”
“Only a bit of ceiling, sir. I noticed the window was open at the top,
and the curtains not properly drawn, like you see them now, sir.
They’ve never been properly drawn since I’ve been watching the house.
The next thing that happened was that Mr. Copperdock’s son came along
at about a quarter past twelve, and let himself in with a key.”
Inspector Whyland turned to Ted. “What time did you go out?” he asked.
“About eight o’clock. Dad was just getting ready to go round to the
Cambridge Arms.”
“Where were you between eight and a quarter past twelve?”
“With Miss Tovey,” replied Ted, readily enough, but with an awkward
blush. “We went to a dance, then we had some supper. After that I saw
her home, and stayed there a few minutes. I walked home from Lisson
Grove, found Dad like this, and ran straight across to fetch Mr.
Ludgrove.”
“Nobody but you and your father had a key to the premises, I suppose?”
“No. One of us always came down to let the charwoman in in the
morning.”
“You are perfectly certain, Waters, that nobody came to the house
between eleven and a quarter past twelve?” enquired Whyland.
“Certain, sir. I was in the street outside all the time, and never
took my eyes off the place.”
“Very well. You stay here with the body. I’ll arrange for it to be
taken to the mortuary as soon as I can. As for you, young man, you had
better go to bed and try to get some sleep. We shall want you in the
morning. Mr. Ludgrove, if you’ve nothing better to do, I should like
you to come round the house with me. I want to make certain that
nobody can have broken in.”
Mr. Ludgrove nodded, and the two left the room together. Whyland
examined the sitting-room window. It was shut and fastened, and bore
no traces of violence. Then they went downstairs and looked over the
ground floor, without discovering anything in any way out of the
ordinary.
When they reached the office behind the shop, Whyland closed the door
and sank wearily into a chair. “Well, Mr. Ludgrove, what do you make
of it?” he said.
“I couldn’t help overhearing snatches of your conversation with the
doctor,” replied the herbalist. “I confess that I cannot understand
why, if Mr. Copperdock wished to poison himself with a hypodermic
injection, he should select his back for the purpose, unless he had
some confused idea of a lumbar puncture. Yet, on the other hand, he is
not likely to have let someone else drive a needle into him without a
struggle, and of that there is no trace, so far as I could see.”
“And how did that person get in?” put in Whyland quickly. “That is, if
both Waters and young Ted are telling the truth. Waters is a good man,
and I haven’t the least reason to suspect him. But it’s just possible
that he was dozing somewhere between eleven and twelve, and that Ted
came home before he said he did. His father wouldn’t be surprised to
see him, and he might have walked up behind him and jabbed the needle
in. Then, when his father found out what he’d done, he got a bit of
caustic potash from somewhere and clapped it on. I know there are lots
of difficulties, but at least it’s possible. At all events, I can’t
think of another alternative to the suicide theory.”
“The case is extraordinarily puzzling,” said Mr. Ludgrove
sympathetically. “If you feel disposed to discuss it, Inspector, I
suggest that you do so in comfort over at my place. I can make you a
cup of cocoa, or, if you prefer it, I can supply you with something
stronger. I always kept a bottle of whiskey in reserve for poor Mr.
Copperdock.”
“Well, it’s very good of you, Mr. Ludgrove,” replied Whyland
gratefully. “What’s the time? After two? I want to stay about here
until it’s light. I’ll just tell Waters where I’m to be found in case
he wants me. Then I shall be very glad to accept your kind
hospitality.”
He left the room and returned after an absence of a couple of minutes.
“I can’t make it out,” he said. “Waters swears he never had his eyes
off the place. Still, it won’t do any harm to make enquiries into
young Ted’s movements and verify his statement. It beats me, but then
everything Copperdock did was a puzzle. His name seemed to crop up in
connection with each of these deaths, somehow. Then there was that
yarn about the black sailor, the counter which he said he found on his
bed, and now his amazing death. Well, I’m ready to go across if you
are, Mr. Ludgrove.”
The two passed through the shop into the road. As they crossed it, Mr.
Ludgrove uttered an exclamation of surprise. “Why, the door of my shop
is open!” he said. “I must have forgotten to shut it in my haste when
Ted Copperdock came over for me.”
“Let’s hope no inquisitive visitor has been in to have a look round
while we’ve been over the way,” replied Whyland.
Mr. Ludgrove smiled. “He will have found very little of value to
reward him if he has,” he said. “No, I’m not afraid of burglars. In
any case, it’s a very old-fashioned lock which anyone could force
without any difficulty.”
They had reached the door by now, and Mr. Ludgrove pushed it open.
“Come along, Inspector, we’ll go into the back room,” he said, leading
the way.
At the door of the inner room he paused, and switched on the light. At
a first glance, the room appeared to be exactly as he had left it to
answer Ted’s urgent summons. Then suddenly he clutched Whyland’s arm,
and pointed straight in front of him with a shaking finger.
On the mantelpiece, propped conspicuously against the clock so that it
could not fail to attract attention, was a white bone counter, upon
which the figure VII had been carefully traced.
Part II
The Criminal