IN EPPING FOREST
“I think, if you will leave him with me, he will be all right,”
said Benson. He was feeling Clive’s pulse with a professional touch.
“The heart action is normal, and there is nothing to be alarmed about.
If you would prefer that I called a doctor----”
“Indeed I would,” she said emphatically.
He bowed, and presently she heard his voice at the telephone. Until a
neighbouring doctor arrived she did not leave the unconscious Clive.
“It is nothing,” said the medical man. “He hasn’t been smoking
opium?”
She shook her head.
“Has he been smoking at all?” The doctor looked down at the cigarette
ends in the hearth. “Egyptian cigarettes, I see? It often happens that
these cigarettes contain opium in large or small quantities,
introduced, in my opinion, by the makers, to give them flavour…
sometimes through the carelessness of the workpeople an additional
quantity gets into the tobacco.…”
He expounded his theory at length. When Clive was showing some sign of
returning consciousness she left him in the doctor’s charge and drove
home, and, about an hour later, he himself telephoned to say that he
had quite recovered.
“That fool of a doctor thought it was dope in the cigarettes,” he
said, “but I’m perfectly satisfied that my cigarettes are as harmless
as candy; and, what is more, if they’re Egyptian, they’re made in
England.”
“You’re not ill, are you, Clive?” she asked anxiously.
“No, I’m not ill, but I’m infernally suspicious.”
He did not elucidate this cryptic remark, and when she called him
again later in the evening, he was his old, cheerful self, and did not
discuss the queer happening of the afternoon.
“I have Mr. Bullott with me now,” he said, lowering his voice. “You
haven’t seen him, by any chance?”
“No,” she replied.
“I’ve been telling him about the dream you can remember. He doesn’t
seem to be impressed.”
She cared very little whether Mr. Bullott was impressed or not. Her
main grievance against the detective was that there had come a new
lodger to the house that afternoon, and her landlady, in a flutter,
had informed her that the ground floor room, so long empty because of
the extortionate price demanded (the landlady dreamt dreams of
entertaining a wealthy American family) had been let to a man she
knew, through some obscure source of family information,--a detective.
She did not think it necessary to tell Clive this, but a great deal of
her resentment at being treated as somebody who needed watching
disappeared toward bedtime.
Although she was very tired, she did not fall asleep readily, turning
from side to side, her mind a confusion of thoughts and recollections.
Towards one o’clock she remembered, with a sense of dismay, that she
had accepted an invitation to breakfast with her new-found uncle in
Albemarle Street, and by sheer force of will she drove herself into
sleep.
And then she felt the dreams beginning all over again. The movement,
the sensation that somebody had his arm about her shoulder, and that
horrid, burning pain in her right forearm. She struggled more
desperately to regain consciousness than she had on the previous
occasion, flung out her arms wildly, and felt her knuckles bruise
against something hard. Then the creak of a door, footsteps on the
stairs, and the sound of a struggle in the hall. Somebody screamed; it
was the landlady. Then there was a sound like a violent explosion,
which she guessed was the street door slamming, and with trembling
hands she switched on the light.
Her room door was open, and as she stepped out unsteadily on to the
landing the light came on in the hall, and she saw a man in violently
striped pyjamas, struggling into his overcoat.
“It’s all right, Miss,” he called up, and she guessed, rather than
knew, that this was the detective that Bullott had put into the house.
She went back to her room, and after ten minutes there was a gentle
tap. She opened the door to find the detective.
“Did they come into your room? There were two of them,” he said. “I
don’t know what made me sleep. They must have been as silent as
cats.”
“Who was it?” she asked tremulously.
“I don’t know, Miss. There were two of them.” He rubbed his head, and
under his hand she saw a lump like a pigeon’s egg. “They coshed me,”
he said tersely. “Do you mind if I come into your room and have a look
round?”
The shivering landlady had joined the party by now, and stood with
Betty watching the detective conduct his search. He stooped to pick
something from the floor.
“Here’s a hypodermic, half filled with something,” he said, shaking
it. “No, there’s nothing else, as far as I can see. Gosh, that fellow
was a big ’un--the man that hit me! I guess his heart was pure all
right.”
“Why?” she asked innocently.
“Because he had the strength of ten,” said Officer Brown, and
evidently this was a stock jest with him, for he shook with laughter.
“There’s no other trouble? You’ll have to get some bolts on that door
and a chain.”
“Do you think they came after me?” she asked.
“Yes, and I ought to be kicked for letting them get past me. Bullott
told me to shoot, but I’ve got an Englishman’s constitutional
objection to using a gun.”
Apparently he telephoned to Bullott, for later, as she was dropping to
sleep, she heard that officer’s voice in the hall, and, looking at the
phosphorescent dial of her watch, saw that it was a quarter to three.
She heard no more, for she slept steadily till her landlady wakened
her at half-past eight.
“Mr. Brown says you’re not to go by ’bus or train; he has a car
waiting for you,” was her remarkable news, and Betty found that this
was the case. Looking out of the window, she saw a handsome saloon,
obviously hired, and it was in state that she drove up to Albemarle
Court, and Lambert Stone, waiting for her on the tiny balcony of his
study-drawing-room, chuckled to himself.
“You are sensible, after all,” he said, as he took her wrap. “I told
you to spend money----”
“The car doesn’t belong to me,” she interrupted solemnly. “I wouldn’t
have been guilty of such a piece of extravagance! But Mr. Bullott
thinks that, having been abducted once, and a second attempt having
been made, the third time may pay for all.”
He listened with a grave face while she tried to make light of her
second adventure of the night.
“That’s bad,” he said. “Young lady, I’m going to take you off to
America.”
“Not really?”
“Yes,” he nodded. “We’re sailing on the _Escorial_; on Saturday
week--I booked the tickets provisionally last night. You needn’t stay
in America,” he went on hastily. “I promise you that I will not
attempt to make an heiress of you. But you ought to see our great
country, and somehow I think you’ll come often when you’ve seen it
once! And I’m making up a party; I’ve just been on to Lowbridge, and
he has promised to be my guest. I’ll even invite your favourite
reporter----”
“Please don’t,” she asked hastily, “if by ‘favourite reporter’ you
mean Mr. Holbrook.”
He laughed again. “Why, that’s unkind,” he said, “considering William
discovered you--William and his questionable friend. Anyway, you’ll
come?”
“It will be fun. Where do we go--to New York?”
“New York will hardly suit you in July,” he said, with a twinkle in
his eye. “No, we’re going up to my camp in the Adirondacks. That will
be an experience for you, young lady, and I shall be able to look
after you there, with Laffin three thousand five hundred miles away.”
“You still believe Dr. Laffin is the villain of the piece?” she
asked.
“We all believe that--Holbrook, Bullott and I. I haven’t asked
Lowbridge; I guess he’s too loyal to say what he thinks!”
On the following Sunday afternoon Bill Holbrook awoke from his
afternoon doze, struggled sleepily to his feet and filled his pipe
before he went out and filled his bath. His unfinished notes for
Monday’s newspaper lay on his table, and he read them over, his lip
curling at the thought of his own inadequacy.
“Padding,” he growled, “padding and stalling!”
And he was not far from the truth. The Brother John murder had ceased
to fill the important columns of the newspapers, and had been
relegated to ten-line paragraphs on inside pages. Newer matters of
public interest usurped the leading columns, and Bill Holbrook’s
_raison d’être_ was disappearing.
When he had come out of his bath and returned to his room, he found
Bullott in his shirt-sleeves, a pipe between his teeth, a scowl of
misery on his face. He stood glaring out of the window at his garden.
“Cheer up, misery,” grunted Bill. “It is I who am going to be killed
to-night!”
“You’re not going on the Epping Road.”
“Why not?” asked Bill. “It will be broad daylight at nine o’clock;
the road will be alive with cyclists and motor-cars; nobody is going
to kidnap me.”
“I can’t understand this affair. I’m well out of my depth,” he said.
“I suppose I ought really to hand over my job to a real policeman.”
“Real nothing!” snarled Bill. “What’s the matter with you, Cuthbert?
Do you expect things to unfold themselves as quickly as they would in
a short story? You’re nutty! You’re finding out something new every
day!”
“But is it worth finding out?” demanded the other, in a tone of
complete weariness. “I seem to spend my time discovering the roots of
other trees! Do you remember some time ago telling me about an immense
sea captain you’d met--a big man with a voice like a foghorn?”
Bill nodded.
“I saw him to-day,” Bullott went on, “and trailed him--to where do
you think? To a respectable lodging in Bloomsbury, where he goes to
bed at ten every night and gets up at six every morning, and doesn’t
do anything more criminal than smoke cigarettes. So they tell me--yet
if Harvey Hale wasn’t one of the people who tried to lift Miss Carew
last night I’m a lunatic. I told Marsh this, and the poor mysterious
hound got so excited, you might have thought I’d given him information
that the murderer of Brother John was under lock and key!”
“Maybe his excitement was justified,” said Bill. “When are you making
your raid?”
“To-morrow night--unless I get fired from this job before,” said
Bullott.
“You have had no word from Tinker Lane?”
Bullott’s grimace was the answer.
“He has got cold feet,” he said; “possibly one of the Twenty-Third
Degree folk tipped him off that he was running risks--you can easily
scare that kind of fellow. Or, what is more likely, if there is any
sort of illegality in the degree they have paid him to skip.”
Bill shook his head.
“Did they pay Brother John to skip?” he asked, and Bullott did not
reply.
When Bill Holbrook reached the third milestone on the Epping Road, he
found that his prediction was more than fulfilled. As far as he could
see, the long forest road was covered with cyclists and motor-cars,
and the chance of a repetition of the attempt which had been made upon
him was even more remote than he had imagined.
The third milestone was a little difficult to discover; it stood back
from the roadway and was half-covered with undergrowth, but what had
an especial interest for him was the white envelope which must have
been placed there very recently, for the wood was filled with
strolling couples and it was hardly likely that the letter would have
escaped observation had it been in its place any considerable time.
Never doubting that it was for him, he pulled it from the thorny
briars which held it in its place, and, as he had expected, he found
his name written on the cover.
“Follow the red confetti,”
was all that it said.
He looked round; there was no sign of confetti, red or otherwise. And
then, peering into the cool depths of a wood, he thought he saw
something red on the ground, and went nearer. Yes, that was it, a
sprinkle of tiny red paper discs beneath a tree. He went a little
distance farther on, and now the trail was clear.
It led him along a well-worn path, and was so carefully laid that Bill
guessed that the average pleasure-seeker would not notice its
presence. After a while it left the path, branching off to the right,
and threading a way between the trees.
It was clear to him that the part of the wood through which he was now
moving was one which was very seldom visited by picnic parties. Every
few steps he took startled some wild creature in the underbrush. He
had a glimpse of a hare flying to his burrow; he saw a lithe black
shape darting through the grasses in pursuit of his quarry; and once
he disturbed a vixen with her prick-eared litter. And the red confetti
led on and on, until it crossed a small stream on the farther banks of
which his unknown guide had left the paper more thickly strewn that it
might not escape his attention.
He had to climb the bank before he came to a plantation of young
trees, so thick that it was with some difficulty that he made his way
into the depths. He stood and listened; no sound broke the stillness
of the quiet forest; the dusk was coming, the light in the sky had
deepened to a richer and darker blue; the dying sun’s rays shot
slantwise, and when he reached an open space his shadow ran at
incredible length along the grass before him.
The sun gave him his direction; he was travelling south-east, and had
been travelling south-east all the time, but suddenly the trail shot
off at right angles, and he followed cautiously, his hand upon the
round, hard object in his pocket, every sense alert.
Ten minutes’ walking brought him within view of a small lodge hut. It
lay in a clearance at the foot of the slope down which he was moving
when he first sighted the building. Again he stopped, looked and
listened, but saw and heard nothing. Down the gentle hill the trail
led to the rough door of the hut, and there stopped.
His heart was beating a little faster as he walked quickly to the
door, gripped the handle and pulled it wide open. The interior was in
darkness; he heard neither the breathing of men nor movement, and
looked round suspiciously at the darkening forest. He looked again
into the hut; his eyes were now accustomed to the gloom, and he saw
something moving, something that swayed left and right rhythmically.
He struck a match, and stepped back with a gasp of horror.
Hanging from a beam in the roof was the body of a man, and, as he
looked, the distorted face turned towards him. It was the face of the
Tinker!
Alone in that valley of death for a second, his courage deserted him,
and he felt his hands trembling.
“No weakness, Danton,” he quoted mockingly at himself, and, running
across the floor of the vale, mounted the slope, his eyes still
searching for the confetti trail, and went at a jogtrot back the way
he had come.
He had reached the plantation when he felt, rather than saw, the
ambush into which he was falling. Hampered as he was by the closely
growing trees, his progress was slow.
_Plop!_
He had heard that sound before, but this time the bullet missed, and
snicked the bark of a growing beech, and went, whining and humming,
into the wood.
The second shot went even wider, and then he came to a place where the
trees were less thickly planted, where he had had elbow room and a
clear throw. He stopped and took a Mills bomb from his pocket, pulled
out the pin, and as he saw the flash of a third shot, flung it with
all his might in the direction of the hidden assassin. In another
second he was flying like a man demented. He judged his time
perfectly, and flung himself on the ground only the fraction of a
moment before the bomb exploded. From somewhere behind he heard a
shriek, and, rising to his feet, ran swiftly.
He had missed the trail, but he had a rough idea of direction. Once he
stopped to take breath, listening intently, but there was no sign of
pursuit. Ten minutes later he heard voices and footsteps ahead of him,
saw a figure come into view, and was challenged by a familiar voice.
“It’s all right, Bullott--Holbrook speaking.”
“What was that explosion?” asked Bullott.
Bill saw that there were three men with him. It was not necessary to
ask what had brought him here, but the detective volunteered the
information.
“I followed you, of course,” he said, “but I lost you in the wood,
and I didn’t realise that they’d laid a trail for you, until one of my
men showed me the confetti. What was the explosion?” he asked again.
Bill explained briefly, and together they went back the way he had
come.
That somebody had been wounded was clear from the bloodstains. Some of
the dried undergrowth was burning, and this they put out with little
difficulty. But of the assailant there was no sign.
Sending one of his men back for an ambulance, the inspector
accompanied Bill to the hut in the vale. To Bill’s surprise the door
of the hut was locked, and it was an hour before they succeeded, with
the help of a ranger, in getting the door open. Bullott flashed his
lamp inside: it fell upon a loose, hanging rope, newly severed. The
body of Tinker Lane had disappeared!