IN reply to Colonel Gore’s inquiry over the phone next morning—which was the morning of Tuesday, November 14th, Major Whateley, the official who presided over the local branch of the Ministry of Pensions, sent along to the Riverside an ex-sergeant of the Westshires named Stevens—a sturdy, stolid, steady-eyed man of thirty-five or thereabouts, who appeared everything that could reasonably be hoped for for five bob a day.
When Gore had listened to the inevitable story of jobs that could not be got, he explained the nature of the job he had to offer. Stevens listened attentively to his directions, undertook to find out anything that was to be found out about Mr Frensham’s movements, habits, company, and personal character with the utmost discretion, and to report in two days’ time—that is to say, on the afternoon of the following Thursday—such information as he had succeeded in acquiring.
‘You will want some money,’ Gore said. ‘I don’t want you to blue this two quid exactly. But you’ll probably find it useful to pay for other people’s drinks occasionally, and so on. If you should want to talk to me in a hurry about anything, telephone to me here to the Riverside. But don’t use the telephone at the Excelsior. Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut. I fancy you’ll find Mr Frensham is in with a pretty hot lot.’
Stevens departed on his mission with two pounds and many expressions of gratitude. Thursday came and went without any sign from him. On Friday morning Gore received the following communication, written in block capitals on a postcard:
‘Your friend, Bert Stevens, has hopped it to London for his health. Any spare quids you have may be posted to him c/o Sherlock Holmes, Esq., New Scotland Yard, as he is still thirsty and hopeful. Trusting you’re in the pink as this leaves us at present.—From ALL OF US.’
Discomfiting as this communication was, it was in some measure a relief; for the failure of his ally to report on the preceding day had caused Gore some misgivings as to his personal safety. The allaying of that anxiety was, however, no remedy for the fact that Frensham was now thoroughly warned and on his guard. This second humiliating failure to illuminate the dark places wherein that gentleman moved so warily was even more unfortunate than the first. Frensham must have guessed now that the threat to call in the assistance of the law had been mere bluff and that he was quite safe in defying it. If the police had been put on his track, a bungling amateur like Stevens would never have been employed to supplement their professional operations. Frensham would realise that at once. He’d say to himself and to his pals: ‘That’s all right. They’re afraid. Now we know where we are we can carry on with the good work comfortably and happily.’
But happy and comfortable were the last things that Mr Frensham and his friends should be, Gore was now determined, at all events while they remained in Westmouth. And the immediate effect of that derisive postcard was to induce him to set at once about the carrying out of a project which he had been meditating since Stevens’s failure to appear on the preceding day.
He set off shortly after breakfast for Hatfield Place, armed with the latchkey which Mrs Barrington had enclosed in her last letter against some unexplained contingency, and let himself into Number 27 in the confident expectation that the house contained no one to witness the harmless burglary which he had come to commit. His surprise and embarrassment were therefore no less than those of the two people who, at the sound of his entry, emerged from the sitting-room at the end of the hall.
Mrs Barrington—whom he had supposed in Paris at that moment—had been the first to appear, and, upon perceiving him, had half-turned as if to shut the door of the sitting-room behind her. The movement, however, had been too late. Challoner already stood in the aperture, looking extremely sheepish, and, as he recognised the intruder, extremely annoyed.
Mrs Barrington was the first of the three to recover her self-possession. She had been crying, Gore saw, and looked wretchedly ill and worn; but as she came towards him along the hall she mustered up a wan, appealing smile to accompany her calm ‘Good-morning, Wick. How on earth did you know I had come back?’
‘I didn’t,’ he said frankly. ‘You’ve caught me red-handed. Just my luck. I really came here to pinch something out of that tin box of your husband’s. Do you mind very much?’
‘Not in the least. But it’s fortunate that you came along this morning—and so early. I took all the things out of the box before I went away and locked them up in a cupboard upstairs. If you had postponed your visit for another quarter of an hour or so I’m afraid you’d have had some difficulty in finding what you wanted. What do you want, by the way?’
‘Lead me to that cupboard,’ he said solemnly. ‘There you shall see.’
‘How mysterious,’ she laughed. ‘Well, come along. I haven’t much time. I must catch the 11.15 back to London.’
As they went up the stairs she explained that the original programme of her journey to Vence with her mother had been revised, and that they had decided to remain in London until the following Monday. The discovery that in the flurry of her departure she had forgotten a fur-lined travelling coat which had appeared upon consideration indispensable, had induced her to return to Linwood for a night. Gore agreed that a fur-lined travelling coat was absolutely necessary at that time of year, and changed the subject considerately. He had seen Arndale, he told her, about that cheque. Arndale appeared perfectly satisfied about it. There was nothing whatever to worry about so far as it was concerned. The other things he hoped to recover from Frensham in the course of the next few days.
Mrs Barrington smiled vague approval and disappeared to prosecute in a bedroom an apparently complicated and impatient search for the keys of the cupboard before which she had left him standing on the landing. She reappeared at length and opened the door of the cupboard.
‘His things are all together, on the bottom shelf,’ she said carelessly.
The cardboard box of which he was in search lay against the back of the cupboard, and to reach it he was obliged to stoop and thrust an arm sideways into the narrow space between the lowest shelf and that immediately above it. For a moment it eluded his grasp, and, as he groped for it he was aware that, behind him, Mrs Barrington had taken something from the shelf quickly and had stepped back a little from the cupboard—he assumed to examine it. As his fingers closed on a corner of the cardboard box he glanced over his shoulder towards her with a smile.
‘Got it,’ he announced, and then perceived to his horror that the object which she had taken from the shelf was Barrington’s revolver and that she was holding it, with a curious, awkward, lamentable determination, pointed towards her own haggard, tear-stained face. There was no time to do anything save make a sweeping blow at the weapon with his left arm. He heard the heavy explosion as the momentum of his violent movement deprived him of his balance and sent him asprawl on knees and hands to the floor. But he was on his feet again in an instant and snatched the revolver from the hand that had dropped limply to her side.
‘What the hell—?’ he demanded angrily.
She was shivering with fright now, and her teeth chattered as she answered him.
‘I can’t stick it, Wick,’ she said flatly. ‘You … you’ve done me a bad turn.’
Challoner came rushing up the stairs, alarmed to incoherence.
‘Great Scott—what …?’
He put his arm about Mrs Barrington and drew her into a bedroom and shut the door. Almost immediately, however, he reopened the door to say, ‘For God’s sake, Gore, keep your mouth shut about this,’ and slammed the door again. Gore stared at it indignantly for a moment or two, transferred his gaze to an untidy abrasion in the plaster of the wall beside it where the heavy bullet had passed in obliquely, and then went downstairs and out of the house. But he remembered to take the cardboard box with him, and also to leave the latchkey behind.