BUYING A NURSING HOME
The building in which Colonel Boundary had his beautiful home was of a
type not uncommonly met with in the West End of London. The street floor
was taken up entirely with shops, the first floor with offices and the
remainder of the building was practically given over to the colonel. One
by one he had ousted every tenant from the building, and practically the
whole of the fourteen sets of apartments which constituted the
residential portion of the building was held by him in one name or
another. Some he had obtained by the payment of heavy premiums, some he
had secured when the lease of the former tenant had lapsed, some he had
gathered in by sub-hiring. He had tried to buy the building, since it
served his purpose well, but came against a deed of trust and the Court
of Chancery, and had wisely refrained from going any further into a
matter which must bring him vis-à-vis with a Master in Chancery, with
all the publicity which such a transaction entailed.
Nor had he been successful in acquiring any of the premises on the first
floor. They were held by three very old established businesses--an
estate agent, a firm of land surveyors and the offices of a valuer. He
missed his opportunity, at any rate, of securing the business of Lee and
Hol, the surveyors, and did not know it was in the market until after it
had been transferred to a new owner. But they were quiet, sober tenants,
who closed their offices between five and six every night and did not
open them until between nine or ten on the following morning, and their
very respectability gave him a certain privacy.
The new proprietor of Lee and Hol was a short-sighted, elderly man of no
great conversational power, and apparently of no fixed purpose in life
except to say "no" to the very handsome offers which the colonel's
agents made when they discovered there was a chance of re-purchasing the
business. Boundary had personally inspected all the offices. He had
found an excuse to visit them several times, duly noted the arrangement
of the furniture, the sizes of the staffs and the general character of
the business which was being carried on. This was a necessary precaution
because these offices were immediately under his own flat. But just now
they had a special value, because it was a practice during the daytime
for the three firms to employ a commissionaire, who occupied a little
glass-partitioned office on the landing and attended impartially to the
needs of all three tenants to the best of his ability.
Boundary descended the stairs and found the elderly man in his office,
leisurely and laboriously affixing stamps to a pile of letters. He
called him from his task.
"Judson," he said, "have you seen anybody go up to my rooms this
afternoon?"
The man thought.
"No, sir, I haven't," he replied.
"Have you been here all the time?"
"Yes, since one o'clock I have been in my office," said the
commissionaire. "None of our young gentlemen wanted anything."
"You didn't go out to go to the post?"
"No, sir," said the man. "I've not stirred from this office except for
one minute when I went into Mr. Lee's office to get these letters."
"And you've seen nobody go upstairs?"
"Not since Mr. Silva came down, sir. He came down after you, if you
remember."
"Nobody's been up?" insisted the other.
"Not a soul. Your servant came down before you, sir."
"That's true," said the colonel remembering that he had sent the man on
a special journey to Huddersfield with a letter to the bigamous Mr.
Crotin. "You haven't seen a lady go up at all?" he asked suddenly.
"Nobody has gone up them stairs," said the commissionaire emphatically.
"I hope you haven't lost anything, sir?"
The colonel shook his head.
"No, I haven't lost anything. Rather, I've found something," he said
grimly.
He slipped half-a crown into the man's hand.
"You needn't mention the fact that I've been making inquiries," he said
and went slowly up the stairs again.
The card had been put there that day. He would swear it. The ink on the
card had not had time to darken and when he made a further search of his
room, this view was confirmed by the appearance of his blotting-pad. The
card had been dried there, and the pen, which had been left on the
table, was still damp.
The colonel passed into his bedroom and took off his coat and vest. He
searched his drawer and found what looked to be like a pair of braces
made of light fabric. These he slipped over his shoulder, adjusting them
so that beneath his left arm hung a canvas holster. From another drawer
he took an automatic pistol, pulled the magazine from the butt and
examined it before he returned it, and forced a cartridge into the
breach by drawing back the cover. This he carefully oiled, and then,
pressing up the safety catch, he slipped the pistol into the holster and
resumed his coat and vest.
It was a long time since the colonel had carried a gun under his arm,
but his old efficiency was unimpaired. He practised before a mirror and
was satisfied with his celerity. He loaded a spare magazine, and dropped
it into the capacious pocket of his waistcoat. Then, putting the
remainder of the cartridges away tidily, he closed the box, shut the
drawer and went back to his room. If all the commissioner had hinted
were true, if this mysterious visitor was laying for him because of the
'Snow' Gregory affair, he should have what was coming to him.
The colonel was no coward and if this eerie experience had got a little
on his nerves, it was not to be wondered at. He drew up a chair to the
table, sitting in such a position that he could see the door, took a
pencil and a sheet of paper and began to write rapidly.
The man's knowledge was encyclopædic. Not once did he pause or refer to
a catalogue, and he was still writing when Crewe came in. The colonel
looked up.
"You're the man I want," he said.
He handed the other three sheets of paper, closely covered with writing.
"What's this?" asked Crewe and read:
"Twenty-three iron bedsteads, twenty-three mattresses, twenty-three----"
"Why, what's all this, colonel?"
"You can go down to Tottenham Court Road and you can order all that
furniture to be taken into No. 3, Washburn Avenue."
"Are you furnishing a children's orphanage or something?" asked the
other in surprise.
"I am furnishing a nursing home, to be exact," said the colonel slowly.
"I bought it this morning, and I'm going to furnish it to-morrow. Send
Lollie Marsh to me. Tell her I want her to get three women of the right
sort to take charge of a mental case which is coming to my nursing home.
By the way, you had better telegraph to old Boyton, or better still, go
in a cab and get him. He'll probably be drunk but he's still on the
medical register and he's the man I want. Take him straight away to
Washburn Avenue, and don't forget that it's his nursing home and not
mine. My name doesn't occur in this matter and you'd better get a dummy
to do the buying for you from the furniture people."
"Who is the mental case?" asked the other.
"Maisie White," snapped the colonel, and Crewe stared.
"Mad?" he said incredulously. "Is Maisie mad?"
"She may not be at present," said Boundary, "but----"
He did not finish his sentence, and Crewe, who was once a gentleman and
was now a thief, swallowed something--but he had swallowed too much to
choke at the threat to a girl in whom he had not the slightest interest.