Chapter Twenty-Six

Main Road

Sybil Lennox told the rest of her story between one and two o’clock.

Then Roger left her at the hotel, with a cordon of Brighton police surrounding it, and went with Peel to his car and headed for London.

The wounded prisoner, the most important of the three, was in hospital with a damaged thigh-bone; so far he had refused to talk. The other two had been taken ahead, to London, and would be at Cannon Row long before Roger.

While at the wheel, Roger thought a lot about the girl’s story. He had been disposed to believe her at first, now he was extremely doubtful. She had known that the Fulham ground was used by the gang, and that some of Perriman’s shops were also used. She said she only knew of the Brighton one, and she didn’t know to what use it was put. Nor did she know whether the ground at Craven Cottage was used for anything else than a meeting-place during matches.

For the first day at Brighton she had been unmolested. Afterwards she had received a telephone call and been told to call at Perriman’s branch, where she had seen the manager, a man named Kortright. He had simply told her she was still under observation by ‘them,’ and warned her not to tell the police more than she had already told them.

On the Saturday morning Kortright had called her again and told her to go to Fulham and give notes – sealed notes – to men who would accost her and show her a programme with the corners all torn off; she had done so.

Kortright lived over the shop, which the Brighton police were watching. Roger had decided not to raid the shop yet.

Mark was staying at the hotel; Roger had a good idea how the land lay there. His friend was unimportant, but why had they used the girl again?

They realised he was on the track of the football ground and the Brighton Perriman’s. They might have sent her to the match and let her give the notes to men with torn programmes, knowing that sooner or later she would tell him about that and – he reasoned – convince him that the secret of the Craven Cottage programmes was in the torn corners. But why the kidnapping? And why had her tormentor kept asking exactly what she had told Mark or the police?

Roger’s thoughts faded when a lorry approached and passed, without dipping its headlights.

Peel sat by his side, dozing.

Here and there a car passed them, coming from the opposite direction; nothing overtook them. There was a thrill to be got out of speed.

There was a set smile on his lips as his foot pressed down – eighty-nine – eighty-nine point five – ninety!

Then he glanced up, and saw in the driving-mirror the headlights of the other car behind him.

They gave him a shock, because he hadn’t passed anything for the last quarter of an hour. This car must have turned out of a side-road, and would soon fall behind. The needle was down to eighty-five now.

He was still travelling at more than eighty miles an hour, and yet the other car was gaining.

He glanced at Peel, who was snoring slightly, and then into the driving-mirror again. No doubt about it, he was being overtaken – and with some ease. Powerful bus, undoubtedly – interesting to see what it was when it passed.

Whoooooosh!

It was past.

Involuntarily, he had slowed down to the middle seventies, but the other car had left him standing; it must be doing nearly a hundred. He hadn’t had time to be certain what it was, but the glimpse had made him guess at a Rolls-Royce.

The Perriman brothers had arrived at Fulham in a Rolls-Royce, but he couldn’t imagine Mr Emanuel or, for that matter, the dyspeptic Mr Samuel, driving a car at nearly a hundred miles an hour on any road or in any circumstances.

The Rolls was well ahead now, but not so far as he might have expected – it had slowed down a little. The number-plate was obscured. Roger frowned. A car was coming in the opposite direction, and its headlamps created a blaze of light. Then the Rolls driver dipped his, so did the approaching car. Roger followed suit, and for a few seconds he couldn’t see far ahead.

Peel grunted and stirred.

The Rolls-Royce was out of sight, round a corner; he probably wouldn’t see it again.

Slower round the corner.

“I’ve been asleep,” muttered Peel.

“Not really,” said Roger sarcastically.

“Just dropped off,” said Peel apologetically, and yawned. “Not so fresh as I was. I think I need a break, sir.”

“Put in for one when this show is over,” said Roger, turning the corner. “I—”

“Look out!” gasped Peel in a screech.

Roger needed no telling.

A man lay in the road ahead of him, an inert figure, lying on his face. He’d been knocked down, that Rolls-Royce – damn the Rolls! There was a little space, which should be just sufficient for Roger to squeeze through without touching the man. Was this a trick? He had just time to glance right and left, to massed trees which grew close to the side of the road. Men could be hiding in there. If he slowed down, it was possible that he would be attacked or fired at.

The man in the road hadn’t moved, and now Roger could see that there was a pool of blood near his head. Roger swung across to the near-side and felt the wheels bumping over the grass verge as he passed the victim. That red splotch wasn’t imagination, and meant only one thing – the man had been run down; there was nothing faked about this. He must stop, although – he couldn’t help wondering … Still, he had no choice. He pulled up on the verge, and found himself sweating freely.

Peel had already opened the car door, but Roger called out: “Wait a minute.”

“Why?”

“Not too happy about the situation,” Roger said quietly, and looked at the dark mass of brooding trees.

“That’s no decoy!” Peel declared.

They got out, and went to the body. There was no doubt at all that the man was dead.

“Here’s another car,” said Roger sharply.

It was some way off, just a blaze of headlights coming from Brighton. The light lent more mystery to the night and more horror to that still figure and the scarlet splash. It grew brighter as the car approached. By now the driver must have seen the body. He swerved to one side and flashed past. The driver didn’t glance at them. They caught a glimpse of him, from their own headlights. As soon as he had passed, Peel said sharply: “See him?”

“Yes, I saw him,” said Roger slowly. “You wouldn’t expect Tommy Clayton to worry about a roadside corpse if he were on a job, would you?” asked Roger, and he gave an odd little laugh. “I didn’t think Clayton would be on the job again so quickly, did you?”

“He ought to be—”

“Never mind what ought to happen to him,” said Roger. “I suppose it was Clayton.”

“You couldn’t mistake him,” said Peel. “I wouldn’t mind betting that the Echo has the whole story of the girl’s kidnapping in the morning. Do you know, sir, I’ve never—”

Peel broke off and coughed.

“Go on,” said Roger.

“I’ve never liked Clayton,” said Peel, rather defiantly. “I wondered almost from the beginning whether that attack on him at the warehouse was faked. After all—” He broke off again and laughed rather uncertainly. “Afraid I’m letting my imagination run riot, and we should have a look at the corpse.”

“Never mind, imagine some more.”

“Well – Clayton could easily have told us how much he knew. We should have been at the job a lot earlier if he’d done that. And then there’s the way he was kidnapped – not very convincing, when you think of it, was it?” Peel waited for no answer, but went on: “And when he escaped, or appeared to, in that warehouse, it struck me that they didn’t try very hard to kill him, or they’d have succeeded. When we picked him up, he wasn’t badly hurt. We’ve never had a really satisfactory explanation of why he was left alive, have we? That’s one of the mysteries which we haven’t been able to answer. And why did they dress the man Maidment up in his clothes, to make it look as if Clayton were dead. If you ask me, Clayton was going to disappear and turn up again under another name, but something went wrong, he was needed as Clayton, so they ‘let’ him go. What I’m really saying is,” Peel went on, again defiantly, “that Clayton might be one of them, sir. But if I told anyone else that I thought he was, I’d be laughed out of court.”

Roger said: “We won’t take it to court yet, old chap. Now let’s have a closer look at the corpse.”

The dead man was quite young; in his early twenties. His head was badly injured, but his face hardly touched. They needed only a few minutes examination to know that he hadn’t been knocked down by a car, but thrown out of one, on his head.

Peel said in a quiet voice: “I’ve a feeling I’ve seen him before, sir.”

“So have I,” said Roger. “I can’t place him, though.”

“I can’t help thinking it’s something to do with Saturday,” said Peel.

Roger exclaimed: “I’ve placed him! It’s that—”

“Programme seller!” cried Peel,

They stared down at the pale, lifeless face; and they could picture the youth, standing near the Bishop’s Park gate, calling ‘programme, ‘ficial programme’ and dishing out the programmes for the twopences, the click of the coins in his little bag, and the bulging sides of his canvas satchel. It was undoubtedly the man they had wanted to question – another link in the chain had broken.

“Now, we must find a telephone,” said Roger quietly. “You take the car and drive on a bit.”

Peel did not have far to go. Roger was bending over the dead youth when he heard Peel shout and, looking round, saw the sergeant getting out of the car and waving to him. Roger hurried up, to find Peel standing on the grass and pointing to something which stood just inside a field gate. It was a London taxi.

They went near, flashing their torches.

The body was painted dark-blue, the chassis black, and the near-side front wing was patched. This was Kirby’s taxi.

“I’ll bet the kid drove it down here, and met his murderers by appointment,” said Peel gruffly.

They were near Redhill, and the local police were soon on the spot.

Roger took everything that was found in the lad’s pockets, left instructions that the body be sent to London, and then drove on, much more slowly than on the early part of the journey.

At Cannon Row, he spent half an hour interrogating the two prisoners there; both said that they received their orders from the third man, whose name was Smith. Roger had already charged them with attempting to cause grievous bodily harm to Sybil Lennox.

He gave instructions for them to be questioned every hour until he came again, and then went to his office. The first thing he did was to have a check made on the movements of the Perrimans’ Rolls-Royce.

Nothing of interest had come in.

He sent Peel home, glanced through the contents of the dead lad’s pockets again, finding two Fulham programmes. The murder, the inhuman treatment planned for Sybil Lennox, all these and other things indicated the ruthlessness of the men he was fighting. The food thefts might only be the forerunners of many others.

He reached Chelsea a little after six o’clock.

And he found himself thinking a great deal about Tommy Clayton.

Janet stirred and woke. He wouldn’t let her get up, but undressed quickly and slipped into bed.

When he woke up, the sun was high and he thought that it must be approaching midday. He stretched out his hand for his watch. Half-past ten – that wasn’t really too bad, he could be at the office by half-past eleven.

Janet came in.

“Ever hear of a policeman who was sacked for being late at the office?” demanded Roger.

“If there’s one thing I’d love to hear, it’s that you’d been given the sack,” retorted Janet. “Tea? The kettle’s on, I usually have a cup about this time of morning.”

“None for Nell Goodwin?”

“She’s gone,” said Janet, and laughed at his surprise. “She said she couldn’t stay on indefinitely. Jack’s out of danger now, and there was a lot that wanted doing at the flat; so she left just after breakfast.” She tossed him a morning paper. He yawned and stretched, felt as if he could conquer the world, and picked up the newspaper.

It was the Echo.

And the headline which screamed along the front page was:

GIRL TORTURED IN BARN
POLICE POUNCE

Immediately beneath it was a large photograph, head and shoulders only, of Sybil Lennox. There followed a story, reasonably accurate in detail, quite sufficient to convince him that Tommy Clayton had been near the barn the previous night; even the scythe was mentioned.