Remembering that London teemed with Indians, Bream subdued his elation. This “native” might not be his Indian at all; but after a little adroit questioning he was convinced it was the same. Mrs. Eales had noticed the gold teeth.
“Maybe,” he ventured, “he was acquainted with your Mrs. Dixon, and heard from her that she was going away.”
“Not a bit of it!” retorted the landlady contemptuously. “He never mentioned her name, and I don’t know why he was so set on having this particular room. He even tried to persuade me to put him up for a day or two while he was hunting another; but as I tell you, there was a look about him I just didn’t fancy.”
Over a cup of tea in the corner bakery, Bream considered his new fact and tried to fit it into some plausible scheme. Although it gave him definite encouragement he could make nothing of it. Where lay the connection between Elsie Dilworth and the Indian student? Were they in league in some way, and did the Indian fear he was being double-crossed? All he felt sure of was that the latter was anxious to inspect the room to which the secretary might return, and that he had known almost immediately when the room was unoccupied. How had he known? Not from Diana Lake’s conversation, for his visit had been paid the day before. It was still hard to think of him as acting in another person’s behalf; who would select such a distinctive-looking as well as clumsy amateur for delicate missions? Yet it was even more difficult to conceive of him as a principal. His manner to-day had shown such total lack of concern.
“Principal or agent, there’s something in that room he wants to get at—maybe to destroy. Or he thinks there is. Is it in the trunk? It must be. I wonder what his next move will be?”
Cat-burglary, perhaps. There was a rear window on the landing with a short drop to the ground. Come to think of it, he might risk a go at it himself. . . .
Recalling the dirt filched from the golf bag, he took out his envelope and tipped its contents on to a clean plate. Careful examination showed him only a bit of dried grass, no leaves or stems indicative of monkshood. He sighed, wondering whether Mrs. Eales knew more than she professed, and whether Mrs. Dixon, so-called, would return to lie low and watch the turn of events. It all depended, he thought, on the real reason for her absence. Find that, and it was quite possible the entire problem would be solved. It was odd that already he was dwelling on one suspect to the complete exclusion of the other two.
“Two? Why not three? Why am I paying no attention to this solicitor chap, who was also on the spot, did the carving, in fact, had as good or better an opportunity for poisoning food than any one else? Oh, yes, I’m remembering! He drew up this will; he doesn’t benefit one farthing; and as far as we know he and the victim were on splendid terms.”
As far as they knew . . .
Pensively Bream wondered if, at any time, Rose Somervell and her solicitor had indulged in warmer relations. There might have been some burdensome, even dangerous, hold over Blundell. Just as well make sure, but for the moment it was a matter which could wait, mainly because the Indian seemed to promise a short cut straight to the heart of things.
“Unfortunately,” said the bursar of the School of Economics, “our enrolment of Indians is enormous. I’m afraid I don’t recognise the description, but I’ll do my best. You’ve come rather late, and our lectures are over for the day. Just possibly, though, there may be an Indian or two left in the building.”
Bream waited in the lobby, and was presently rewarded by the return of the bursar in company with a slender young Indian of well-bred appearance. It was not at all what Bream wanted, for this student, introduced as Mr. Mirza Ahmed, would in all probability hand on a warning to his fellow-countryman. However, the damage was done, and the bursar’s next words removed his fears. Mr. Ahmed did know the young man Bream had described, and had his own reasons for wishing to corner him.
“He says Mr. Haji owes him ten pounds, and has been dodging payment for some time. I’ll leave the two of you to talk matters over.”
When they were alone, Ahmed said with amusement in his dark eyes, “So you’re after him too, are you? I wish you luck; but this much I can tell you. Haji’s in funds now. Not a doubt of it. Where’s he got money from is a mystery, but I’m told he spends it like water.”
“So his name is Haji, is it?”
“Abdulmajid Haji—and perhaps you don’t need me to tell you he’s as slippery as an eel. He borrowed left and right from every one here who was fool enough to lend, and now he’s flush he’s stopped turning up for lectures. It’s possible his father’s forked up again, but I doubt it, after the mess he got into.”
“I hadn’t heard about it. What kind of a mess?”
“Oh, a nasty affair—or might have been.” Ahmed hesitated. “Some girl he was running with died in his rooms. It looked for a bit as though Haji might be arrested.”
“But he wasn’t, I take it?”
“No, it was a natural death. It caused scandal, though, and I expect for his people it was the last straw. Haji’s father’s a highly respectable government official in Bombay. No, I scarcely see Haji now. I can’t tell you his present address, though I could probably get it for you from some of his friends. I suppose you’d like me to try?”
“I would, very much,” answered Bream, “provided you can do it without letting him guess I’m after him.”
“I’ll keep your name out of it,” Ahmed promised, and Bream, hoping his ally could be trusted to keep his word, handed him his telephone number.
Returning to Bloomsbury Street, Bream conducted two more interviews, one with Mr. Lampson, just home for dinner, the other with Miss Walsover. Lampson, a bald, brittle man with a prim slit of a mouth, described with almost legal precision what he had witnessed on the night of October fifteenth. There was nothing new in his account. Miss Dilworth, he said, had evidently parted with every vestige of self-control, the doctor was beside himself with suppressed rage and had resolutely declined to discuss the situation.
“Very suitably. Oh, yes, at that period I liked the man, what I knew of him. We sometimes chatted at meals, but he was rather uncommunicative, entirely wrapped up in his work—or so I believed.”
Miss Walsover proved to be a shrewd, good-looking young woman, whose sympathies had been wholly with Doctor Somervell. Now, quite naturally, she was shocked and revolted, but she still declared her belief that Miss Dilworth had thrown herself at the doctor’s head.
“If certain things did happen,” she added, “I assure you they were just a flash in the pan. Once they were over any one could see Dilworth was just repulsive to him.”
“And you’ve not seen her at all since she went away?”
“Not one of us has. I dare say she’s some pride left.”
Here matters rested, most unsatisfactorily. Bream had failed to discover any attempt on Miss Dilworth’s part to get hold of Somervell before the hospital encounter, and his chief fear now was that the more deeply he probed the less desirable facts he would unearth. Again he brooded on the Indian’s determination to get into the abandoned room, and his ill-concealed eavesdropping in the restaurant.
“I can’t make sense of it,” he grumbled. “Is this Haji linked up with Dilworth and afraid she’ll blow the gaff to save Somervell’s neck? Too thin . . . or is it? Anyhow, I’ve first got to prove those two are acquainted. Then there’s the business of the girl who pegged out in his lodgings. Does she come into it?”
One step at a time, he reminded himself. For this evening he had formed a project, and on its success much of his future movements would depend. Till a late hour, therefore, he tabulated his facts and dates, and then made his way back to Floyd’s Square, now silent as the tomb, ill-lighted, eerily damp. There was a passage leading southward from the corner near Mrs. Eales’s house. As he had hoped it joined at right angles an alley on which the whole row of cramped gardens backed. Brick walls enclosed it, with inset gates. No light showed except one dim street lamp at the passage end, and a second at the other extremity. In the gloom between he found a gate he could open. He stationed himself just inside and prepared for a tedious and perhaps fruitless vigil.
Presently he was yawning. A distant clock struck two, his legs ached with fatigue, and a thin rain was soaking him to the skin. Then, as he was about to give up, a faint footstep fell on his ear. A late wayfarer was coming along the passage. The sound ceased rather than receded, and a moment later his nerves vibrated as, close at hand, he heard a slight, metallic clang. With extreme caution he peered forth into the alley. By all the powers, he was right! There, by the locked gate of seventeen, Abdulmajid Haji was mounting a dust-bin and grasping the top of the wall for a spring!
Amateur once more shot through the agent’s mind. Hadn’t the fool wit enough to put on dark clothing? His new, fawn overcoat made a pale splash in the night. He had not even stopped to make certain the partly open gate behind him contained no watcher. However, one tweed-clad leg was just rising aloft when Bream’s scorn was transferred to himself. Flower-pots!
Startled by the clatter in the rear, the Indian leapt to earth with terror written on his swarthy face. Bream pinioned him by the collar, and found a small, pearl-handled revolver thrust into the pit of his stomach. In the utter confusion which followed the detective’s one thought was that he had got hold of an eel. His own revolver, hurtled from his hand, fell ten feet away, his prey wriggled free, and melted into the darkness. Bream collected his weapon, shouted, and made a frantic dash.
Far along the turnings which descended towards King’s Cross the steps hot-footed it, pursued but uncaught. It was a deeply mortified private agent who some ten minutes later approached a young constable calmly pacing his beat and described the attempted burglary.
“Give an eye to the back premises of seventeen, Floyd’s Square? Right-o, sir, just as you say; but there won’t be another try to-night. Not half there won’t!”
Bream bitterly agreed. At home, in his rooms in Great Smith Street, Westminster, he morosely imbibed hot whisky and tried to think how—barring unseen flower-pots—he could have conducted matters to better advantage. It would not have served his purpose to advise the police beforehand that a burglary might be attempted on a certain house. With a policeman patrolling the alley, Haji would have kept away. As it was, it had at least been proved that Haji did want to get into the room.
“Which is all to the good . . . or is it?” The horizon clouded again. “I’m hanged if I know. Suppose this blighter turns out to be not Dilworth’s pal, but Somervell’s?”
The same dread troubled him next morning when, as he dressed, the telephone rang and a man’s voice, with a trace of foreign accent, imparted information.
“What’s that?” he barked. “How the hell do you know?”
“From his landlady. You see, I got his address last evening.”
For a full minute Bream stood silent, torn with indecision. Then he clamped down the receiver, snatched his bowler hat, and plunged into the street.