MR. MANDERTON LAYS HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE
The detective’s manner had undergone some subtle change which Robin,
watching him closely as he came into the room, was quick to note. Mr.
Manderton made an effort to retain his old air of rather patronizing
swagger; but he seemed less sure of himself than was his wont. In fact,
he appeared to be a little anxious.
He walked briskly into the sitting-room and looked quickly from Bruce
to Robin.
“Mr. Greve,” he said, “you can help me if you will by answering a few
questions ...”
With another glance at Bruce Wright he added:
“... in private.”
Bruce, obedient to a sign from Robin, said he would ring up in the
morning and prepared to take his leave. Robin turned to the detective.
“There are some of your men, I believe,” he said coldly, “watching this
house. Would it be asking too much to request that my friend here might
be permitted to return home unescorted?”
“He needn’t worry,” replied Manderton with a significant smile.
“There’s no one outside now!...”
They watched Bruce Wright pass into the hall and collect his hat and
coat. As the front door slammed behind him, the detective added:
“I took ’em off myself soon after seven o’clock!”
“Why?” asked Robin bluntly.
Mr. Manderton dropped his heavy form into a chair.
“I’m a plain man, Mr. Greve,” he said, “and I’m not above owning to it,
I hope, when I’m wrong. For some little time now it has struck me that
our lines of investigation run parallel ...”
“Instead of crossing!”
“Instead of crossing—exactly!”
“It’s a pity you did not grasp that very obvious fact earlier,”
observed Robin pointedly.
Mr. Manderton crossed one leg over the other and, his finger-tips
pressed together, looked at Robin.
“Will you help me?” he asked simply.
“Do you want my help?”
Mr. Manderton nodded.
“Allies, then?”
“Allies it is!”
Robin pointed to the table.
“It’s dry work talking,” he said. “Won’t you take a drink?”
“Thanks, I don’t drink. But I’ll have a cigar if I may. Thank you!”
The detective helped himself to a cheroot from a box on the table and
lit up. Then, affecting to scan the end of his cigar with great
attention, he asked abruptly:
“What do you know of the woman calling herself Madame de Malpas?”
Robin pursed up his lips rather disdainfully.
“One of the late Mr. Parrish’s lady friends,” he replied. “I expect you
know that!”
“Do you know where she lives?” pursued the detective, ignoring the
implied question.
“She’s dead.”
A flicker of interest appeared for an instant in Mr. Manderton’s keen
eyes.
“You’re sure of that?”
“Certainly,” answered Robin.
“Who told you?”
“Le Hagen—the solicitor, you know. He acted for this Malpas woman on
one or two occasions.”
“When did she die?”
“Six or seven months ago ...”
“Did Jeekes know about it?”
“Jeekes? Do you mean Parrish’s secretary?
“It’s funny your asking that. As a matter of fact, it was through
Jeekes that I heard the lady was dead. I was in Le Hagen’s office one
day when Jeekes came in, and Le Hagen told me Jeekes had come to pay in
a cheque for the cost of the funeral and the transport of the body to
France.”
“This was six or seven months ago, you say? I take it, then, that any
allowance that Parrish was in the habit of making to this woman has
ceased?”
“I tell you the lady is dead!”
“Then what would you say if I informed you that Mr. Jeekes had declared
that these payments were still going on ...”
Robin shrugged his shoulders.
“I should say he was lying ...”
“I agree. But why?”
“Whom did he tell this to?”
“Miss Trevert!”
“Miss Trevert?”
Robin repeated the name in amazement.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why on earth should Jeekes blacken his
employer’s character to Miss Trevert? What conceivable motive could he
have had? Did she tell you this?”
“No,” said Manderton; “I heard him tell her myself.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” protested Robin, growing more and more
puzzled, “that Jeekes told Miss Trevert this offensive and deliberate
lie in your presence!”
“Well,” remarked Mr. Manderton slowly, “I don’t know about his saying
this in my presence exactly. But I heard him tell her for all that.
Walls have ears, you know—particularly if the door is ajar!”
He looked shrewdly at Robin, then dropped his eyes to the floor.
“He also told her that Le Hagen and you were in business relations ...”
Robin sat up at this.
“Ah!” he said shortly. “I see what you’re getting at now. Our friend
has been trying to set Miss Trevert against me, eh? But why? I don’t
even know this man Jeekes except to have nodded ‘Good-morning’ to him a
few times. Why on earth should he of all men go out of his way to
slander me to Miss Trevert, to throw suspicion ...”
He broke off short and looked at the detective.
Mr. Manderton caressed his big black moustache.
“Yes,” he repeated suavely, “you were saying ‘to cast suspicion’ ...”
The eyes of the two men met. Then the detective leaned back in his
chair and, blowing a cloud of smoke from his lips, said:
“Mr. Greve, you’ve been thinking ahead of me on this case. What you’ve
told me so far I’ve checked. And you’re right. Dead right. And since
you’re, in a manner of speaking, one of the parties interested in
getting things cleared up, I’d like you to tell me just simply what
idea you’ve formed about it ...”
“Gladly,” answered the barrister. “And to start with let me tell you
that the case stinks of blackmail ...”
“Steady on,” interposed the detective. “I thought so, too, at first.
I’ve been into all that. Mr. Parrish made a clean break with the last
of his lady friends about two months since; and, as far as our
investigations go, there has been no blackmail in connection with any
of his women pals. Vine Street knows all about Master Parrish. There
were complaints about some of his little parties up in town. But I
don’t believe there’s a woman in this case ...”
“I didn’t say there was,” retorted Robin. “The blackmail is probably
being levied from Holland. A threat of violence was finally carried
into effect on Saturday evening between 5 and 5.15 P.M. by some one
conversant with the lie of the land at Harkings. This individual, armed
with an automatic Browning of the same calibre as Mr. Parrish’s, shot
at Parrish through the open window of the library and killed
him—probably in self-defence, after Parrish had had a shot at him ...”
“Steady there, whoa!” said Mr. Manderton in a jocular way clearly
expressive of his incredulity; “there was only one shot ...”
“There were _two_,” was Robin’s dispassionate reply. “Though maybe only
one was heard. Parrish had a Maxim silencer on his gun ...”
Mr. Manderton was now thoroughly alert.
“How did you find that out?” he asked.
“Jay, Parrish’s man, came forward and volunteered this evidence ...”
“He said nothing about it when I questioned him,” grumbled the
detective.
Robin laughed.
“You’re a terror to the confirmed criminal, they tell me, Manderton,”
he said, “but you obviously don’t understand that complicated mechanism
known as the domestic servant. No servant at Harkings will voluntarily
tell _you_ anything ...”
Mr. Manderton, who had stood up, shook his big frame impatiently.
“Explain the rest of your theories,” he said harshly. “What’s all this
about blackmail being levied from Holland?”
Then Robin Greve told him of the letters written on the slatey-blue
paper and of their effect upon Parrish, and of the letter headed,
“Elias van der Spyck & Co., General Importers, Rotterdam,” which had
lain on the desk in the library when Parrish’s dead body had been
found.
Manderton nodded gloomily.
“It was there right enough,” he remarked. “I saw it. A letter about
steel shipments and the dockers’ strike, wasn’t it? As there seemed
nothing to it, I left it with the other papers for Jeekes, the
secretary chap. But what evidence is there that this was blackmail?”
“This,” said Robin, and showed the detective the sheet of blue paper
with its series of slits. “Manderton,” he said, “these letters written
on this blue paper were in code, I feel sure. Why should not this be
the key? You see it bears a date—‘Nov. 25.’ May it not refer to that
letter? I found it by Parrish’s body on the carpet in the library. I
would have given it to you at Harkings, but I shoved it in my pocket
and forgot all about it until I was in the train coming up to town this
morning.”
Mr. Manderton took the sheet of paper, turned it over, and held it up
to the light. Then, without comment, he put it away in the pocket of
his jacket.
“If Parrish killed himself,” Robin went on earnestly, “that letter
drove him to it. If, on the other hand, he was murdered, may not that
letter have contained a warning?”
“I should prefer to suspend judgment until we’ve seen the letter, Mr.
Greve,” said the detective bluntly. “We must get it from Jeekes. In the
meantime, what makes you think that the murderer (to follow up your
theory) was conversant with the lay of the land at Harkings?”
“Because,” answered Robin, “the murderer left no tracks on the grass or
flower-beds. He stuck to the hard gravel path throughout. That path,
which runs from the drive through the rosery to the gravel path round
the house just under the library window, is precious hard to find in
the dark, especially where it leaves the drive, as at the outset it is
a mere thread between the rhododendron bushes. And, as I know from
experience, unless you are acquainted with the turns in the path, it is
very easy to get off it in the dark, especially in the rosery, and go
blundering on to the flower-beds. And I’ll tell you something else
about the murderer. He—or she—was of small stature—not much above five
foot six in height. The upward diagonal course of the bullet through
Parrish’s heart shows that ...”
Mr. Manderton shook his head dubiously.
“Very ingenious,” he commented. “But you go rather fast, Mr. Greve. We
must test your theory link by link. There may be an explanation for
Jeekes’s apparently inexplicable lie to the young lady. Let’s see him
and hear what he says. The grounds at Harkings must be searched for
this second bullet, if second bullet there is, the mark on the tree
examined by an expert. And since two bullets argue two pistols in this
case, let us see what result we get from our enquiries as to where Mr.
Parrish bought his pistol. He may have had two pistols ...”
“If Parrish used a silencer,” remarked Robin, quite undisconcerted by
the other’s lack of enthusiasm, “and my theory that two shots were
fired is correct, there must have been two reports, a loud one and a
muffled one. Miss Trevert heard one report, as we know. Did she hear a
second?”
“She said nothing about it,” remarked the detective.
“She was probably asked nothing about it. But we can get this point
cleared up at once. There’s the telephone. Ring up Harkings and ask her
now.”
“Why not?” said Mr. Manderton and moved to the telephone.
There is little delay on the long-distance lines on a Sunday evening,
and the call to Harkins came through almost at once. Bude answered the
telephone at Harkings. Manderton asked for Miss Trevert. The butler
replied that Miss Trevert was no longer at Harkings. She had gone to
the Continent for a few days.
This plain statement, retailed in the fortissimo voice which Bude
reserved for use on the telephone, produced a remarkable effect on the
detective. He grew red in the face.
“What’s that?” he cried assertively. “Gone to the Continent? I should
have been told about this. Why wasn’t I informed? What part of the
Continent has she gone to?”
Mr. Manderton’s questions, rapped out with a rasping vigour that
recalled a machine-gun firing, brought Robin to his feet in an instant.
He crossed over to the desk on which the telephone stood.
Manderton placed one big palm over the transmitter and turned to Robin.
“She’s gone to the Continent and left no address,” he said quickly.
“Ask him if Lady Margaret is there,” suggested Robin.
Mr. Manderton spoke into the telephone again. Lady Margaret had gone to
bed, Bude answered, and her ladyship was much put out by Miss Trevert
gallivanting off like that by herself with only a scribbled note left
to say that she had gone.
Had Bude got the note?
No, Mr. Manderton, sir, he had not. But Lady Margaret had shown it to
him. It had simply stated that Miss Trevert had gone off to the
Continent and would be back in a few days.
Again the detective turned to Robin at his elbow.
“These country bumpkins!” he said savagely. “I must go to the Yard and
get Humphries on the ’phone. He may have telegraphed me about it. You
stay here and I’ll ring you later if there’s any news. What do you make
of it, Mr. Greve?”
“It beats me,” was Robin’s rueful comment. “And what about the inquest?
It’s for Tuesday, isn’t it? Miss Trevert will have to give evidence, I
take it?...”
“Oh,” said Mr. Manderton, picking up his hat and speaking in an offhand
way, “I’m getting _that_ adjourned for a week!”
“The inquest adjourned! Why?”
There was a twinkle in the detective’s eye as he replied.
“I thought, maybe, I might get further evidence ...”
Robin caught the expression and smiled.
“And when did you come to this decision, may I ask?”
“After our little experiment in the garden this morning,” was the
detective’s prompt reply.
Robin looked at him fixedly.
“But, see here,” he said, “apparently it was to the deductions you
formed from the result of that experiment that I owe the attentions of
your colleagues who have been hanging round the house all day. And yet
you now come to me and invite my assistance. Mr. Manderton, I don’t get
it at all!”
“Mr. Greve,” replied the detective, “Miss Trevert tried to shield you.
That made me suspicious. You tried to force my investigations into an
entirely new path. That deepened my suspicions. I believed it to be my
duty to ascertain your movements after leaving Harkings. But then I
heard Jeekes make an apparently gratuitously false statement to Miss
Trevert with an implication against you. That, to some extent, cleared
you in my eyes. I say ‘to some extent’ because I will not deny that I
thought I might be taking a risk in coming to you like this. You see I
am frank!...”
The smile had left Greve’s face and he looked rather grim.
“You’re pretty deep, aren’t you?” was his brief comment.