THE SILENT SHOT
That faithful servitor of Fleet Street, the Law Courts clock, had just
finished striking seven. It boomed out the hour, stroke by stroke,
solemnly, inexorably, like a grim old judge summing up and driving
home, point by point, an irrefutable charge. The heavy strokes broke in
upon the fitful doze into which Robin Greve, stretched out in an
armchair in his living-room, had dropped.
He roused up with a start. There was the click of a key in the lock of
his front door. Bruce Wright burst into the room.
The boy shut the door quickly and locked it. He was rather pale and
seemed perturbed. On seeing Robin he jerked his head in the direction
of the courtyard.
“I suppose you know they’re still outside?” he said.
Robin nodded nonchalantly.
“There are three of them now,” the boy went on. “Robin, I don’t like
it. Something’s going to happen. You’ll want to mind yourself ... if
it’s not too late already!”
He stepped across to the window and bending down, peered cautiously
round the curtain.
Robin Greve laughed.
“Bah!” he said, “they can’t touch me!”
“You’re wrong,” Bruce retorted without changing his position. “They can
and they will. Don’t think Manderton is a fool, Robin. He means
mischief ...”
Robin raised his eyebrows.
“Does he?” he said. “Now I wonder who told you that ...”
“Friends of yours at Harkings asked me to warn you ...” began Bruce
awkwardly.
“My friends are scarcely in the majority there,” retorted Robin. “Whom
do you mean exactly?”
But the boy ignored the question.
“Three men watching the house!” he exclaimed; “don’t you think that
_this_ looks as though Manderton meant business?”
He returned to his post of observation at the curtain.
Robin laughed cynically.
“Manderton doesn’t worry me any,” he said cheerfully. “The man’s the
victim of an _idée fixe_. He believes Parrish killed himself just as
firmly as he believes that I frightened or bullied Parrish into doing
it ...”
“Don’t be too sure about that, Robin,” said the boy, dropping the
curtain and coming back to Robin’s chair. “He may want you to think
that. But how can we tell how much he knows?”
Robin flicked the ash off his cigarette disdainfully.
“These promoted policemen make me tired,” he said.
Bruce Wright shook his head quickly with a little gesture of
exasperation.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “There’s fresh evidence ...”
Robin Greve looked up with real interest in his eyes. His bantering
manner had vanished.
“You’ve got that letter?” he asked eagerly.
Bruce shook his head.
“No, not that,” he said. Then leaning forward he added in a low voice:
“Have you ever heard of the Maxim silencer?”
“I believe I have, vaguely,” replied Robin. “Isn’t it something to do
with a motor engine?”
“No,” said Bruce. “It’s an extraordinary invention which absolutely
suppresses the noise of the discharge of a gun.”
Robin shot a quick glance at the speaker.
“Go on,” he said.
“It’s a marvelous thing, really,” the boy continued, warming to his
theme. “A man at Havre had one when I was at the base there, during the
war. It’s a little cup-shaped steel fitting that goes over the barrel.
You can fire a rifle fitted with one of these silencers in a small room
and it makes no more noise than a fairly loud sneeze ...”
“Ah!”
Robin was listening intently now.
“Parrish had a Maxim silencer,” Bruce went on impressively.
“_Parrish_ had?”
“It was fitted on his automatic pistol, the one he had in his hand when
they found him ...”
“There was no attachment of any kind on the gun Parrish was holding
when he was discovered yesterday afternoon,” declared Robin positively;
“I can vouch for that. I was there almost immediately after they found
him. And if there had been anything of the kind Horace Trevert would
certainly have mentioned it ...”
“I know. Jay, who came in soon after you, was surprised to see that the
silencer was not on the pistol. And he made a point of looking for it
...”
“But how do you know that Parrish had it on the pistol?...”
“Well, we don’t know for certain. But we do know that it was
permanently fitted to his automatic. Jay has often seen it. And if
Parrish did remove it, he didn’t leave it lying around any where. Jay
has looked all through his things without finding it ...”
“When did Jay see it last?”
“On Thursday!”
“But are you sure that this is the same pistol as the one which Jay has
been in the habit of seeing?”
“Jay is absolutely sure. He says that Parrish only had the one
automatic which he always kept in the same drawer in his dressing-room
...”
Robin was silent for a moment. Very deliberately he filled his pipe,
lit it, and drew until it burned comfortably. Then he said slowly:
“This means that Hartley Parrish was murdered, Bruce, old man. All
through I have been puzzling my mind to reconcile the unquestionable
circumstance that two bullets were fired—I told you of the bullet mark
I found on the upright in the rosery—with the undoubted fact that only
one report was heard. We can therefore presume, either that Hartley
Parrish first fired one shot from his pistol with the silencer fitted
and then removed the silencer and fired another shot without it,
thereby killing himself, or that the second shot was fired by the
person whose interest it was to get rid of the silencer. There is no
possible or plausible reason why Parrish should have fired first one
shot with the silencer and then one without. Therefore, I find myself
irresistibly compelled to the conclusion that the shot heard by Mary
Trevert was fired by the person who killed Parrish. Do I make myself
clear?”
“Perfectly,” answered Bruce.
“Now, then,” the barrister proceeded, thoughtfully puffing at his pipe,
“one weak point about my deductions is that they all hang on the
question as to whether, at the time of the tragedy, Parrish actually
had the silencer on his pistol or not. That is really the acid test of
Manderton’s suicide theory. You said, I think, that a rifle fired with
the silencer attachment makes no more noise than the sound of a loud
sneeze!”
“That’s right,” agreed Bruce; “a sort of harsh, spluttering noise. Not
so loud either, Robin. Ph ... t-t-t! Like that!”
“Loud enough to be heard through a door, would you say?”
“Oh, I think so!”
Robin thought intently for a moment.
“Then Mary is the only one who can put us right on that point. Assuming
that two shots were fired—and that bullet mark in the rosery is, I
think, conclusive on that head—and knowing that she heard the loud
report of the one, presumably, if Parrish had the silencer on his
automatic, Mary must have heard the _muffled_ report of the other. What
it comes to is this, Mary heard the shot fired that killed Parrish. Did
she hear the shot he fired at his murderer?”
“By Gad!” exclaimed Bruce Wright impressively, “I believe you’ve got
it, Robin! Parrish fired at somebody at the window—a silent shot—and
the other fellow fired back the shot that Mary Trevert heard, the shot
that killed Parrish. Isn’t that the way you figure it out?”
“Not so fast, young man,” remarked Robin. “Let’s first find out whether
Mary actually heard the muffled shot and, if so, _when ... before_ or
_after_ the loud report.”
He glanced across at the window and then at Bruce,
“I suppose this discovery about the silencer is responsible for the
deputation waiting in the courtyard,” he said drily.
“The police don’t know about it yet,” replied Bruce; “at least they
didn’t when I left.”
Robin shook his head dubiously.
“If the servants know it, Manderton will worm it out of them. Hasn’t he
cross-examined Jay?”
“Yes,” said Bruce. “But he got nothing out of him about this. Manderton
seems to have put everybody’s back up. He gets nothing out of the
servants ...”
“If Parrish had had this silencer for some time, you may be sure that
other people know about it. These silencers must be pretty rare in
England. You see, an average person like myself didn’t know what it
was. By the way, another point which we haven’t yet cleared up is this:
supposing we are right in believing Parrish to have been murdered, how
do you explain the fact that the bullet removed from his body fitted
his pistol?”
“That’s a puzzler, I must say!” said Bruce.
“There’s only one possible explanation, I think,” Robin went on, “and
that is that Parrish was shot by a pistol of exactly the same calibre
as his own. For the murderer to have killed Parrish with his own weapon
would have been difficult without a struggle. But Miss Trevert heard no
struggle. For murderer and his victim to have pistols of the same
calibre argues a rather remarkable coincidence, I grant you. But then
life is full of coincidences! We meet them every day in the law.
Though, I admit, this is a coincidence which requires some explaining
...”
He fell into a brown study which Bruce interrupted by suddenly
remembering that he had had no lunch.
For answer Robin pointed at the sideboard.
“There’s a cloth in there,” he said, “also the whisky, if my laundress
has left any, and a siphon and there should be some claret—Mrs. Bragg
doesn’t care about red wine. Set the table, and I’ll take a root round
in the kitchen and dig up some tinned stuff.”
They supped off a tinned tongue and some _pâté de foie gras_. Over
their meal Bruce told Robin of his adventure in the library at
Harkings.
“Jeekes must have collected that letter,” Bruce said. “Before I came to
you, I went to Lincoln’s Inn Fields to see if he was still at
Bardy’s—Parrish’s solicitor, you know. But the office was closed, and
the place in darkness. I went on to the Junior Pantheon, that’s
Jeekes’s club, but he wasn’t in. He hadn’t been there all day, the
porter told me. So I left a note asking him to ring you up here ...”
“The case reeks of blackmail,” said Robin thoughtfully, “but I am
wondering how much we shall glean from this precious letter when we do
see it. I am glad you asked Jeekes to ring me up, though. He should be
able to tell us something about these mysterious letters on the blue
paper that used to put Parrish in such a stew ... Hullo, who can that
be?”
An electric bell trilled through the flat. It rang once ... twice ...
and then a third time, a long, insistent peal.
“See who’s there, will you, Bruce?” said Robin.
“Suppose it’s the police ...” began the boy.
Robin shrugged his shoulders.
“You can say I’m at home and ask them in,” he said.
He heard the heavy oaken door swing open, a murmur of voices in the
hall. The next moment Detective-Inspector Manderton entered the
sitting-room.