HE succeeded in reaching his rooms at the Riverside without encountering any curious eyes—a fact upon which he congratulated himself as he inspected his reflection in the privacy of his sitting-room. A trickle of blood had found its way to his collar and tie; another had crept down his temple to his eye. His hat and overcoat were liberally besmeared with an evil-smelling mixture of mud and oil. No wonder the tram-conductor had eyed him curiously as he had climbed to the roof of the car.
To his annoyance, as he absorbed the consolation of a whisky-and-soda, the page entered the sitting-room with his customary precipitation.
‘Beg pardon, Colonel. I wasn’t sure if you’d come in. A man wants to see you, if you’re not engaged.’
For an instant Gore yielded to a wild hope that already Frensham’s nerve had failed him. But the boy’s next words—delayed to permit an exhaustive inspection of the colonel’s person—dispelled that illusion.
‘Name of Thomson, Colonel. He was here before this afternoon to see you. But you was out. He’s waiting in the hall.’
‘Send him along,’ said Gore. ‘I’ll see him here.’
The boy lingered as he departed.
‘Cut your chin, ain’t you, Colonel? You ain’t half got your collar in a mess. My eye, an’ look at your coat.’
Having elicited, however, no explanation of these interesting phenomena, he consented to withdraw, returning some minutes later with the smart-looking chauffeur who had helped to carry Barrington from Melhuish’s car into his own house.
‘I hope you’ll forgive my troubling you, sir,’ the man explained respectfully. ‘I wanted to know if you’d be kind enough to help me. Dr Melhuish’s man has left him—you may remember him, sir, perhaps, an oldish man called Rogers—’
‘Yes, I remember him. Well?’
‘Well, Dr Melhuish is in a hurry to get a man, sir, I hear, and I should like the job. I think I mentioned to you that evening I spoke to you that I was on the look-out for another job if one turned up. I called at Dr Melhuish’s this afternoon, but he was busy with his patients. I’m to go back tonight to interview him. Meanwhile I thought you would forgive my taking the liberty of asking you to recommend me to Dr Melhuish.’
Gore smiled at the keen, capable face, whose habit of impassiveness did not altogether conceal the anxiety with which its owner awaited his reply.
‘Well, Thomson,’ he said frankly, ‘you seem to me a very smart, intelligent sort of chap; but, in the first place, I know nothing whatever about your talents and accomplishments as a shover—and in the second place, my acquaintance with Dr Melhuish is of the slightest. Mr Harry Kinnaird will give you a recommendation, won’t he?’
‘I suppose he would, sir,’ said the man dubiously. ‘But he and Mrs Kinnaird are in the south of France at present. I’ve got his address for Dr Melhuish. But it will take at least four days for the doctor to get a reply from Mr Kinnaird. By that time—well, by that time, sir, someone else will have got the job.’
‘It’s as urgent as that?’
‘Yes, sir. I know that the doctor wants a new man at once. Old Rogers simply put on his hat and coat and walked out of the house last evening without even leaving the car ready to go out this morning. The result was that Dr Melhuish was nearly an hour late getting off on his rounds. I’m pretty certain, sir, that if you could see your way to recommending me, I should get the job at once.’
‘How long have you been driving?’
‘Thirteen or fourteen years, sir. You needn’t have any anxiety about the technical side of the thing, Colonel. I’ve driven pretty well every make of car I’ve ever heard of, and I put in six months in shops at a big garage in Reading before I took on my first driving job.’
‘Who were you with then?’
‘With Mr Arndale, sir, of Holme Park. No doubt you know him.’
‘Oh, you were with Mr Arndale? When was that?’
‘Nineteen-nineteen. I was with him for ten months. I went from him to Mr Kinnaird.’
‘Why did you leave Mr Arndale? Better wages?’
‘No, sir. Not better wages. Mr Arndale paid me four shillings a week more than Mr Kinnaird pays me. No. Mr Arndale was annoyed by something I happened to say one day, quite unintentionally. I happened to make a remark about people who had stayed at home during the war, forgetting that Mr Arndale himself—’
He paused and completed the story by a little movement of his resolute lips.
‘What were you in?’ Gore asked.
‘Surreys to begin with, sir. Then they gave me a commission in the M.G.C. I ended up with three pips.’ He hesitated. ‘D.S.O. in 1917.’
‘What were you before the war?’
‘I was assistant science master at Tenbury Grammar School.’
The Riverside’s gong boomed its first warning of the approach of the dinner-hour. Gore raised a caressing hand to his face abstractedly to ascertain whether by good fortune this was one of the rare occasions upon which a second shave could be safely omitted. The abrupt touch of his fingers revealed to him the fact that blood was still oozing from the cut on his chin, and he took out his stained handkerchief to dab at it cautiously before the mirror over the fireplace.
‘Very well, Thomson,’ he said, observing that the man was watching this proceeding with interest, ‘if an opportunity occurs I shall be delighted to do anything I can to help you. However, I fancy that if you tell Dr Melhuish what you have just told me, he will probably require no further recommendation. Especially if he is in a hurry for a man.’ He nodded pleasantly. ‘Good-afternoon.’
‘Good-afternoon, sir.’
At the door, however, the visitor paused.
‘I don’t know if I ought to mention it, Colonel—but there’s a Mr Frensham who has been making inquiries about you. Perhaps you know him. He was a friend of poor Mr Barrington’s.’
‘I have met Mr Frensham,’ Gore replied curtly. ‘Making inquiries about me? Making them of whom? You?’
‘Yes, sir. He came round to the garage on Saturday morning, while I was doing some vulcanising there. What he said was that he was thinking of making Mrs Barrington an offer for her two-seater, and that he wanted to find out something about it, as I had been keeping it in order for Mr Barrington. But, as a matter of fact, sir, I think he really came to try and pump me for information about you.’
‘Very kind of him, I’m sure,’ smiled Gore. ‘I hope you gave him all you had, Thomson.’
Thomson smiled too, sardonically.
‘I had none to give him, sir. So I concluded there was no harm in letting him have it. However, I thought I’d better mention it to you, sir, as I was here.’
‘Quite. Er … inquiries? What did he want to know?’
‘He asked a lot of questions, sir, until I choked him off and told him I was busier than I looked. He seemed especially anxious to find out whether you were an intimate friend of Mr Arndale’s—and also whether you were an intimate friend of Mrs Barrington’s. I said simply that I knew nothing whatever about you, except that you had just come back from Central Africa.’
‘I see. Right you are, Thomson. I’m afraid I must cut away and change now. I won’t forget about Dr Melhuish.’
‘Thank you, sir. Good-afternoon.’
The second gong went before Gore had succeeded in restoring his chin to something approaching seemliness, and he was still struggling with an unduly starched collar when the page irrupted into his bedroom gleefully to inform him that a gentleman desired to see him.
‘Who is it?’ Gore demanded, and then swore briefly but heartily. The wing of the refractory collar had escaped from the strain of his fingers as he turned towards the boy, and, slipping upwards, had grazed the cut on his chin and set it bleeding again. He rent the defiled collar from about his neck and cast it from him bitterly, as Arndale’s tall figure lurched into view and swept the page from its path.
‘It’s me, Gore,’ he said sullenly and thickly. ‘I want to have a word with you about something. Go on. Go on. I can talk while you’re dressing.’ He dismissed the page with a push and shut the door, and turned to Gore again a face of surly anger. ‘Look here, Gore. There’s just one piece of advice I want to give you, old chap, and that is—mind your own business. That’s what I’ve come here to say to you. Mind your own business. Just that. You understand?’
Gore was not easily shocked; but his visitor’s appearance did shock him severely. It was bad enough that he should be, if not drunk, next door to it—and at that hour. But there was a worse degradation in his face than the mere stupidity of drunkenness; a haggard, weary fear which the blustering truculence of his manner at the moment attempted vainly to conceal. His skin had lost its plump ruddiness and sagged now in muddy unhealthiness with a curious effect of deflation. His bloodshot, shadowed eyes refused to meet Gore’s, and slid away to the knob of the bedstead which, to emphasise his remarks, he prodded with his stick as he spoke.
‘What’s the trouble?’ Gore asked, when he had taken swift stock of his visitor’s pose.
‘The trouble is this. I hear you’ve been making yourself busy about my affairs. Butting in where you’re not wanted. Understand? I hear you’ve been trying to kick up some silly fuss or other about a cheque of mine—threatening people—making an infernal ass of yourself generally. Well … just chuck it, my dear old chap. Understand? I’m quite capable of looking after my own affairs. Understand?’
Gore inspected his chin solicitously in his mirror.
‘Cecil, my lad,’ he said gently, ‘you’re half-screwed, so I won’t throw you out into the corridor, though I should very much like to. If you’ve got anything sensible to say to me, say it, by all manner of means. If not … bung off. I’m just a teeny-tiny bit snappish this evening.’
‘I’ve said all I’ve got to say,’ said Arndale doggedly. ‘Don’t threaten me, Gore. I tell you, I won’t allow anyone to threaten me.’
‘Right, my dear old fellow,’ Gore smiled sweetly. ‘You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble if you don’t, I fancy.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘The most friendly of advice, Cecil.’
‘Well, you can keep your infernal advice to yourself. And your infernal threats, too. Understand?’
Gore’s good-humour was not, as a rule, easily disturbed. But the events of the afternoon had ruffled his normal serenity of mood a good deal; his chin refused persistently to stop bleeding; and Arndale’s manner was deliberately provocative. He realised at that point that the very briefest prolongation of the conversation in the strain in which it had so far proceeded would almost certainly terminate regrettably, and resolved to terminate it there and then. He reached the door in a stride.
‘I hate saying so, Arndale, but I’ve had enough of this. If Frensham can scare you—and you wouldn’t come here to talk to me this way unless he had scared you—he’s not going to scare me. You can tell him so, with my compliments. I’ve no doubt he’s waiting anxiously to know what kind of a reception I’ve given his ambassador. Just tell him again, will you, that if I don’t hear from him before ten o’clock tonight the police will receive full particulars of that interesting little affair that took place this afternoon. I’m sorry for you, Arndale. I believe you’re in a tight place. I’ve no idea why or how. But I can guess anyhow that it’s a tight place. That, however, is your look-out. And now you know.’
He opened the door. Arndale eyed him for a little while heavily.
‘Shut that door,’ he said at length.
‘Not unless you’re going to talk reasonably.’
‘All right, I’ll talk reasonably, as you call it.’
Gore shut the door, but retained his hold of its handle.
‘Well?’ he demanded curtly. ‘Buck up. I’ve got to get some dinner, you know.’
But Arndale appeared unable to find words for the thing he had come to say, simple as Gore knew it to be. He had abandoned now summarily his attempt to work himself into a rage, and stood staring with clouded gaze at the knob of the bedstead.
‘I’m not going to give you any reasons, Gore,’ he said at length, without raising his eyes, ‘but I ask you not to make a fuss about what happened this afternoon—not to go to the police about it. Frensham told me you lost some money—five or six pounds—’
‘I lost a good deal more than that, Cecil. However, don’t worry about what I lost. I shall get it back before I’ve done with Mr Frensham and his pals. I’m sorry to discover that you’re one of them, though.’
‘Oh, don’t be a fool,’ said Arndale wearily. ‘Cut it out, Gore. Leave Frensham alone. You’ll make nothing out of him.’ He made a gesture of weak exasperation. ‘Damn it all. What are you trying to make out of him? That’s what I want to know. Why are you making all this fuss about that cheque of mine? What’s it got to do with you?’
‘Nothing whatever,’ Gore assured him—‘now. But the other things which Frensham took away from Mrs Barrington’s house without her permission must be given back … with my own money … to me … here … before ten o’clock. You can tell Frensham so. Otherwise—’
‘What other things were taken?’ Arndale asked curiously.
‘Barrington’s bank-books, and some other papers and things.’
‘Barrington’s bank-books?’ Arndale repeated. He mused over that for a little while stupidly, then dismissed his speculations with another exasperated little gesture. ‘Don’t bother about them, old chap. There’s no use in threatening Frensham. Leave it alone. You know I shouldn’t ask you to—if I hadn’t a reason. Anyhow, I understand Mrs Barrington asked Frensham to—’
But Gore’s patience was now exhausted.
‘Rot,’ he said curtly. ‘Leave Mr Frensham to do his own dirty work, Arndale.’
He opened the door again and his visitor passed out into the corridor.
‘We’re old friends, Gore,’ he pleaded. ‘I ask you once more not to drag the police into this.’
‘Sorry,’ said Gore inexorably. ‘If you didn’t attach such importance to your new friends, your old ones might be some help to you. Hope you’ll put your head under a pump before you let Mrs Arndale see you. Cheerio.’
But even as he saw Arndale’s broad-shouldered back lurch out of sight round the angle of the corridor, he realised that he had handled him quite wrongly. Instead of taking advantage of an opportunity to discover something definite about Arndale’s relations with Barrington and about the hold which it was clear Frensham possessed over his fears, he had allowed the irritability of a moment to induce him to throw it away. With a little management Arndale could probably have been persuaded to talk—perhaps even enticed into clearing up the whole mystery of Barrington’s death—
There, almost within his grasp, had been that interesting and useful fact to be acquired—the fact which Arndale was afraid of. But it had been allowed to escape … because one didn’t try to inveigle people into giving information they didn’t want to give.
Gore shrugged his shoulders and went to dinner. The head-waiter’s eye met his solicitously as he entered the dining-room twenty minutes later; and presently the man approached his chair.
‘Sorry to hear you’ve had an accident, Colonel. Not serious, I hope?’
‘Nothing,’ Colonel Gore replied chillingly, ‘is serious except brunette hairs in blonde soup.’
The head-waiter inspected the colonel’s soup-plate with horrified eyes, flushed a rosy pink, and bore the plate hastily away with his own hands. It was the first time the colonel had found the slightest of fault with the Riverside’s cuisine; a circumstance which the chef, upon receiving the head-waiter’s report, attributed to the fact that it was the thirteenth of the month.