Mr. Trevor is somewhat confused in his relation of the course of events
immediately subsequent to Miss Samsonoff’s narrative. During its course
he had time, he says, to study the young lady’s beauty, which, though of
a very superior order, was a little too innocent and insipid for his
taste. His judgment, however, cannot be entirely fair, for such was the
direction of the young lady’s eyes that Mr. Trevor could judge her by
her features only. As to the story itself, Mr. Trevor says that, while
yielding to no one in his liking for a good story, he could not see his
way to considering Miss Samsonoff’s notable either for interest,
entertainment, or that human note of stark realism which makes for
conviction; and while, in the ordinary way, a murderer was to him like a
magnet, he could not rouse himself to feel irresistibly attracted
towards the ghoul of Golders Green. It was therefore with surprise not
unmixed with pain that he heard Mr. Maturin saying:
“Ralph, we are in luck!”
“To what,” Mr. Trevor could not entirely cleanse his voice from the
impurity of sarcasm, “to what do you refer?” But it was not without some
compunction that he heard the young lady sigh miserably to Beau Maturin:
“I am afraid I have wearied your friend. Forgive me.”
“My friend,” said Beau Maturin gently, “is an ass. In point of fact,
Miss Samsonoff, far from wearying us, you have put us under a great
obligation----”
“Ah, you are kind!” the young lady was moved to sob.
“On the contrary,” Mr. Maturin warmly protested, “I am selfish. I gather
you have not been reading the newspapers lately? Had you done so, you
would have read of a murderer who has recently been loose in London and
has so far evaded not only capture but even identification. So far as
the public know through the newspapers this criminal has been
responsible for only two or three murders; but this very night my friend
and I have had private information to the effect that within the last
few weeks twelve mutilated corpses have been found in various parts of
London; to which we must now, no doubt, add a thirteenth, the remains of
your late enemy, Mr. Michaelis. But where _your_ information,” said Mr.
Maturin gallantly, “is especially valuable, is that the police do not
dream that the criminal is of your sex. To my friend and me it is this
original point that invests the pursuit----”
“Pursuit?” Mr. Trevor could not help starting.
“--with,” said Mr. Maturin coldly, “an added charm. And now with your
permission, Miss Samsonoff, we will not only return to you your formula,
as to the financial worth of which I cannot entirely share your late
parent’s optimism, but also----”
“Also,” Mr. Trevor said with restraint, “we will first of all call at
Vine Street and borrow a few policemen.”
“Oh, yes!” the young lady said eagerly. “We will be sure to need some
policemen. Please get some policemen. They will listen to you.”
“I do not find an audience so difficult to find as all that,” said Mr.
Maturin coldly. “The London police, Miss Samsonoff, are delightful, but
rather on the dull side. They are much given to standing in the middle
of crowded roads and dreaming, and in even your short stay in London you
must have observed what a serious, nay intolerable, obstruction they are
to the traffic. No, no, my friend and I will get this murderer
ourselves. Come, Miss Samsonoff.”
“But I dare not come with you!” cried the young lady. “I simply dare not
approach that house again! May I not await your return here?”
“The attacks of ten murderers,” said Mr. Maturin indignantly, “cannot
disfigure your person more violently than being left alone in a
night-club will disfigure your reputation. Bulgarians may be violent,
Miss Samsonoff. But lounge lizards are low dogs.”
Mr. Trevor says that he was so plunged in thought that he did not arise
from the table with his usual agility; and the first notice he had that
Mr. Maturin had risen and was nearly at the door was on hearing him
waive aside a pursuing waiter with the damnable words: “My friend will
pay.”
Without, the taxicab was still waiting. Its driver, says Mr. Trevor, was
one of those stout men of little speech and impatient demeanour: on
which at this moment was plainly written the fact that he had been
disagreeably affected by waiting in the cold for nearly two hours; and
on Mr. Maturin’s sternly giving him a Golders Green direction he just
looked at our two gentlemen and appeared to struggle with an impediment
in his throat.
Golgotha Road was, as the young lady had described it, a genteel street
of tall gloomy houses. Mr. Trevor says that he cannot remember when he
liked the look of a street less. The taxicab had not penetrated far
therein when Miss Samsonoff timidly begged Mr. Maturin to stop its
further progress, pointing out that she could not bear to wait
immediately opposite the house and would indeed have preferred to await
her brave cavaliers in an altogether different part of London. Mr.
Maturin, however, soothed her fears; and, gay as a schoolboy, took the
key of the house from her reluctant fingers and was jumping from the cab
when Miss Samsonoff cried:
“But surely you have weapons!”
Mr. Trevor says that, while yielding to no one in deploring the use of
weapons in daily life, in this particular instance the young lady’s
words struck him as full of a practical grasp of the situation.
“Of course,” said Mr. Trevor nonchalantly, “we must have weapons. How
stupid of us to have forgotten! I will go back to my flat and get some.
I won’t be gone a moment.”
“That’s right,” Mr. Maturin agreed, “because you won’t be gone at all.
My dear Miss Samsonoff, my friend and I do not need weapons. We put our
trust in God and St. George. Come along, Ralph. Miss Samsonoff, we will
be back in a few moments.”
“And wot do I do?” asked the taxi-driver.
“Nothing,” cried Mr. Maturin gaily. “Nothing at all. Aren’t you lucky!”
The house which the young lady had pointed out to them had an air of
even gloomier gentility than the others, and Mr. Trevor says he cannot
remember when he liked the look of a house less, particularly when the
ancient brown door gave to Beau Maturin’s hand before he had put the key
into the lock. Mr. Trevor could not resist a natural exclamation of
surprise. Mr. Maturin begged him not to shout. Mr. Trevor said that he
was not shouting, and, without a thought for his own safety, was rushing
headlong into the house to meet the terror single-handed when he found
that his shoe-lace was untied.
He found Beau Maturin in what, he supposed, would be called a hall when
it was not a pit of darkness. A stealthily lit match revealed that it
was a hall, a narrow one, and it also revealed a closed door to the
right, by Mr. Trevor’s elbow, which he removed. The match went out.
“Quietly,” said Mr. Maturin quite unnecessarily, for Mr. Trevor says he
cannot remember when he felt less noisy. He heard the door to his right
open, softly, softly.
“Is it you opening that door?” he asked, merely from curiosity.
“Ssh!” snapped Beau Maturin. “Hang on to my shoulder-blades.”
Mr. Trevor thought it better to calm Beau Maturin’s fears by acceding to
his whim, and clung close behind him as they entered the room. The moon,
which Mr. Trevor already had reason to dislike, was hanging at a
moderate elevation over Golders Green as though on purpose to reveal the
darkness of that room. Mr. Trevor’s foot then struck a shape on the
floor. The shape was soft and long. Mr. Trevor was surprised. Mr.
Maturin whispered:
“Found anything?”
Mr. Trevor said briefly that his foot had.
“So’s mine,” said Beau Maturin. “What’s yours like? Mine’s rather soft
to the touch.”
“And mine,” said Mr. Trevor.
“They’re corpses, let’s face it,” sighed Mr. Maturin. “Making fifteen in
all. With us, seventeen. Just give yours a kick, Ralph, to see if it’s
alive. I’ve kicked mine.”
“I don’t kick corpses,” Mr. Trevor was muttering when he felt a hard
round thing shoved into the small of his back.
“Ow!” said Mr. Trevor.
“Found anything?” said Mr. Maturin.
Mr. Trevor said briefly that there was something against his back.
“And mine,” sighed Mr. Maturin. “What’s yours like? Mine’s rather hard
on the back.”
“So is mine,” said Mr. Trevor.
“They’re revolvers, let’s face it,” sighed Beau Maturin.
“They are,” said a hard voice behind them. “So don’t move.”
“I’ve got some sense, thank you,” snapped Beau Maturin.
“Sir,” said the harsh voice, and it was a woman’s voice, “I want none of
your lip. I have you each covered with a revolver----”
“Waste,” said Beau Maturin. “One revolver would have been quite enough.
Besides, my friend and I were distinctly given to understand that you
were partial to a razor. Or do you use that for shaving?”
“I use a razor,” said the harsh voice, “only when I want to kill. But I
have a use for you two.”
The light was suddenly switched on, a light so venomous, says Mr.
Trevor, that they had to blink furiously. And that must have been a very
large room, for they could not see into its far corners. The light came
from what must have been a very high-powered lamp directly above a table
in the middle of the room; and it was concentrated by a shade in such a
way as to fall, like a search-light, exactly on the two helpless
gentlemen. Mr. Trevor says that Beau Maturin’s handsome face looked
white and ghastly, so the Lord knows what Mr. Trevor’s must have looked
like. Meanwhile their captor leapt from her station behind them, and
they were privileged to see her for the first time. She was, says Mr.
Trevor, exactly as Miss Samsonoff had described her, grey and gaunt and
dry, and her expression was strangely contemptuous and evil as sin. And
never for a moment did she change the direction of her revolvers, which
was towards our gentlemen’s hearts. Mr. Trevor says he cannot remember
when he saw a woman look less afraid that a revolver might go off in her
hand.
“Look down,” she commanded.
“It’s all right,” said Beau Maturin peaceably; “we’ve already guessed
what they are. Corpses. Nice cold night for them, too. Keep for days in
weather like this.”
Mr. Trevor could not resist looking down to his feet. The corpses were
of two youngish men in dress-clothes.
“They’re cut badly,” said Mr. Maturin.
“They’re not cut at all,” said the woman harshly. “I shot these two for
a change.”
“I meant their clothes,” Mr. Maturin explained. “Death was too good for
them with dress-clothes like that.”
“Well, I can’t stop here all night talking about clothes,” snapped the
woman. “Now then, to business. These bodies have to be buried in the
back-garden. You will each take one. There are spades just behind you. I
shall not have the slightest hesitation in killing you as I have killed
these two, but it will be more convenient for me if you do as you are
told. I may kill you later, and I may not. Now be quick!”
“Lord, what’s that!” cried Mr. Trevor sharply. He had that moment
realised a strange muffled, ticking noise which must, he thought, come
either from somewhere in the room or from a room nearby. And, while he
was never in his life less conscious of feeling fear, he could not help
but be startled by that ticking noise, for he had heard it before, when
timing a dynamite-bomb.
“That is why,” the woman explained with what, Mr. Trevor supposed, was
meant to be a smile, “you will be safer in the garden. Women are but
weak creatures, and so I take the precaution of having a rather large
size in dynamite-bombs so timed that I have but to press a button to
send us all to blazes. It will not be comfortable for the police when,
if ever, they catch me. But pick up those spades and get busy.”
“Now don’t be rude,” begged Beau Maturin. “I can stand anything from
plain women but discourtesy. Ralph, you take the bigger corpse, as you
are smaller than I am, while I take this little fellow on my
shoulder--which will probably be the nearest he will ever get to heaven,
with clothes cut as badly as that.”
“You can come back for the bodies when you’ve dug the graves,” snapped
the woman. “Take the spades and go along that passage. No tricks! I am
just behind you.”
There was a lot of rubbish in that garden. It had never been treated as
a garden, it did not look like a garden, it looked even less like a
garden than did _The Garden of My Grandmother_. High walls enclosed it.
And over it that deplorable moon threw a sheet of dead daylight.
“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers, and they dug.
“Do you mind if we take our coats off?” asked Beau Maturin. Mr. Trevor
says that he was being sarcastic.
“I don’t mind what you take off,” snapped the woman.
“Now don’t say naughty things!” said Mr. Maturin. “Nothing is more
revolting than the naughtiness of plain women.”
“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers, and they dug.
They dug, says Mr. Trevor, for a long time, for a very long time. Not,
however, that it was difficult digging once one had got into the swing
of it, for that garden was mostly dug-up soil. Suddenly Beau Maturin
said:
“Bet you a fiver I dig a grave for my fellow before you.”
“Right!” said Mr. Trevor.
“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers, and they dug.
“_And_,” said the woman, “I don’t allow any betting in this house. So
call that bet off.”
“What?” said Mr. Maturin.
“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers.
Mr. Maturin threw down his spade.
“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers.
Mr. Trevor dug.
Mr. Maturin said: “Dig yourself!”
“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers.
Mr. Trevor brandished his spade from a distance. He noticed for the
first time that they had been digging in the light of the dawn and not
of the moon.
“And who the deuce,” said Mr. Maturin dangerously, “do you think you
are, not to allow any betting? I have stood a lot from you, but I won’t
stand that.”
“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers, but Mr. Maturin advanced upon
the revolvers like a punitive expedition. Mr. Trevor brandished his
spade.
“Another step, and I fire!” cried the woman harshly.
“Go ahead,” said Mr. Maturin. “I’ll teach you to stop me betting! And I
hate your face.”
“Oh, dear; oh, dear!” the woman suddenly cried with a face of fear and,
lowering her revolvers, fled into the house.
Mr. Trevor was so surprised that he could scarcely speak. Mr. Maturin
laughed so much that he could not speak.
“What’s there to laugh about?” Mr. Trevor asked at last.
“It’s funny. They’ve had us, let’s face it. Come on, let’s follow her
in.”
“She may shoot,” Mr. Trevor cautioned.
“Shoot my eye!” sighed Beau Maturin.
Once in the house, Mr. Trevor stopped spellbound. There were voices,
there was laughter--from the room of the two corpses!
“They’re laughing at us!” said Mr. Trevor.
“Who wouldn’t!” laughed Beau Maturin, and, opening the door, said: “Good
morning.”
“You’ve said it,” said the policeman. “Haw-haw!”
“You’ll have some breakfast?” asked the woman with the revolvers.
“Please do!” said Miss Samsonoff.
“You _ought_ to be hungry,” said the taxi-driver with the Homburg hat of
green plush.
“Look here!” gasped Mr. Trevor. “What the blazes----”
“Haw-haw!” laughed the policeman. “’Ave a bit of vealanam-pie?”
“Now, Ted, don’t be rude to the gentlemen!” said the woman with the
revolvers.
“Quite right, mother,” said Miss Samsonoff. “We owe these gentlemen an
explanation and an apology----”
“And if they don’t take it we _are_ in the soup!” miserably said the
man in the Homburg hat of green plush.
“Now, you two, go and get cups and plates for the two gentlemen,” said
the woman with the revolvers to the two corpses in dress-clothes.
“Listen, please,” Miss Samsonoff gravely addressed Mr. Maturin, “my name
isn’t Samsonoff at all but Kettlewell, and that’s my mother and these
are my four brothers----”
“How do you do?” said Mr. Maturin, absently drinking the policeman’s
coffee, but Mr. Trevor is glad that no one heard what he said.
“You see,” said Miss Kettlewell, and she was shy and beautiful, “we are
The Kettlewell Film Company, just us; but of course we haven’t got a lot
of money----”
“A ‘lot’ is good!” said the policeman.
“My brother there,” and Miss Kettlewell pointed to the wretched man with
the Homburg hat of green plush, “was the director of an American company
in Los Angeles, but he got the sack lately and so we thought we would
make some films on our own. You see, we are such a large family! And the
recent murders gave us a really brilliant idea for a film called ‘The
Ghoul of Golders Green,’ which, thanks to you two gentlemen, we have
completed to-night. Oh, I do hope it will be a success, especially as
you have been kind enough to help us in our predicament, for we hadn’t
any money to engage actors--and we did so need two gentlemen, just like
you, who really looked the part, didn’t we, mother?”
“But, my dear child,” cried Beau Maturin, “I’m afraid your film can’t
have come out very well. Trevor and I will look perfectly ghastly, as
we neither of us had any make-up on.”
“But it’s that kind of film!” smiled Miss Kettlewell. “You see, you and
your friend are supposed to be corpses who by some powerful psychic
agency are digging your own graves---- Heavens, what’s that!”
There, at the open door, stood an apparition with a dreadful face. He
appeared, says Mr. Trevor, to have some difficulty in choosing among the
words that his state of mind was suggesting to him.
“And me?” gasped the taxi-driver hoarsely. “Wot abaht me?
‘Angingabahtallnight! ‘Oo’s going to pay me, that’s wot I want to know?
There’s four quid and more on that clock----”
Mr. Maturin swept his empty coffee-cup round to indicate the family
Kettlewell.
“My friends will pay,” sighed Mr. Maturin.