HOLDRON tapped his desk peremptorily with a lean forefinger. He was a hard-eyed man with prominent cheek-bones, and his voice rasped.
‘That’s nothing to do with you,’ he said brusquely. ‘I only want you to recover the papers or to indicate the man who stole them, and I will do the rest. That’s why I’m paying you a big fee instead of calling in the official police.’
Weir Menzies shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s asking me to work in the dark,’ he grumbled. ‘If you were ill you’d expect to tell your doctor all your symptoms. You’d confide in your lawyer if you had any legal business.’
‘I’m not going to argue about it,’ said Holdron sharply. ‘I hire you on my terms or not at all.’
There was an atmosphere of ponderous placidity about Weir Menzies which was apt to deceive those who were not familiar with him. Portly, prosperous looking, with a heavy black moustache and a ruddy genial face, he was obviously of the middle classes. One might have considered him a tradesman of moderate business astuteness—certainly not a man of specially subtle brain or resource. Yet Menzies, senior partner in the private inquiry firm of Menzies & Spink, had a reputation as well earned as the pension he enjoyed as chief inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department. A hard man and a tenacious man, in spite of the fact that he was a churchwarden at Tooting and spoken of in municipal circles as a coming borough councillor.
‘I’d take it easy if I were you,’ he warned icily. ‘I’m not that kind of private inquiry agent. If you want to rush me into something blindfold, I’ve got to be careful. I’m not dirtying my fingers. And remember, Mr Man, I’m not a junior clerk in your city offices.’
The other abruptly twisted round his padded chair, and his harsh, astonished gaze met the level eyes of the detective.
Suddenly he gave a short laugh. ‘You’re right, Mr Menzies. I apologise. I forgot you were in a way my guest. I am rather worried over this business and it’s got on my nerves,’
The detective nodded imperturbably. ‘I only want to be treated right,’ he went on mildly. ‘You’ve dragged me fifty miles down here by motor-car leaving me to name my own fee, so that whatever you’ve got on is pretty urgent. I know now that your safe’—he jerked his head to a big steel vault built into the wall—‘was opened between ten and midnight by someone who had evidently got the combination. I know that some papers have been taken, and you say it’s not necessary that I should know what they are. Now you suppose burglary, because there are footprints leading from beneath this window to and from the stables, where there was a ladder. I don’t say you’re not right, but if you don’t give me a hint of what was taken, how can I guess at any motive?’
Holdron stroked one eyebrow with a penholder. ‘There’s the footprints,’ he suggested. ‘There’s a start.’
A flicker of irritability passed across the detective’s face. ‘I don’t keep a pocket-register of footprints,’ he retorted. ‘You’ve a dozen guests in your house-party and a score of servants in the house besides outsiders. Do you want me to collect all their boots? Give me a reason why someone should want those papers, and I’ll be that much nearer to saying who it was.’
He was getting annoyed at the way the point was continually parried. He knew nothing about Alfred Holdron save that he had some kind of financial and export business in the City, and was apparently a wealthy man, to judge by the style in which he was entertaining at his country house. But even wealthy City men have skeletons in cupboards, and Menzies was wary. Private inquiry agents have more than once been engaged to find out exactly what their employers have arranged they should find out.
‘How did you know that I suspect someone in the house?’ demanded Holdron.
‘Since the combination was used you could hardly avoid it,’ said Menzies dryly. ‘Perhaps it would be as well if we went into the question of these papers.’
His client let his gaze wander thoughtfully through the broad windows on to the trim grounds. He had completely dropped his arrogant, curt air.
‘No outsider knew I had those documents,’ he said at last, ‘and to the ordinary person they would be a meaningless string of letters and figures. They were in cipher, and I had intended to decode them this morning.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘They were of supreme importance in certain business negotiations in which I am concerned.’
He rose and paced the room uneasily, his feet making no sound on the thick carpet.
‘There was a number of bank-notes in that safe laying with the papers. That must have been the real object of the theft. As you say, there was obvious collusion.’
‘Let’s be clear about this, then,’ said Menzies speaking with precision. ‘I can’t act in leading-strings. You must give me a free hand.’
‘Certainly. So long as you point out the thief to me and keep your mouth shut I don’t care how you do it.’
Weir Menzies wore a frown when he emerged from the library. Somehow he distrusted Holdron, and yet beyond his first lack of candour about the contents of the missing ciphers there was no tangible reason why he should do so. That suspicion that he was being used as a tool for a crooked purpose would persist at the back of his mind. Yet, after all, if he were to refuse lucrative commissions on instinctive prejudice he might as well give up his profession.
For the time being Holdron was his employer and he had to earn his pay. He resolutely bent his thoughts on the definite problem. All that Holdron could tell, or would tell, about his guests or servants had been reduced to a few Greek notes on the back of an envelope. It was a long-standing habit with Menzies to make his notes in Greek. In case of loss, the odds were against the finder being able to understand them.
He had refused Holdron’s company while he inspected the footprints and he stood for a while looking thoughtfully down on the flower border in which the first two or three were embedded—heavy, obviously men’s tracks showing as distinctly in the soft earth as though picked out in plaster of Paris. Slowly he followed their course round to the stables—a matter of twenty yards—and then again he came to a halt, tilting his bowler hat and scratching his head with the brim.
Then a slow grin overspread his face. He knelt and took some measurements, and was entering them on his inevitable envelope when he became conscious of an onlooker.
A woman—she might fairly have been described as a girl—was watching him with frank curiosity. He saw a slim grey figure with smiling, ingenuous eyes and a glory of fair hair. He raised his hat, and he caught a flash of white teeth.
‘You are the detective from London, are you not?’ she said. ‘Mr Holdron told me you had arrived. I am Lady Malchester. Have I caught you in the act of detecting something? Have you’—she breathed the words with an expression of mock awe—‘got a clue?’
Now Weir Menzies was a business man and he liked his business taken seriously. Not that he had no sense of humour. He could stand ridicule as a part of the game, but he was thin-skinned with outsiders. He bowed stiffly.
‘I am pleased if my antics afford you any entertainment, madam,’ he said with frigidity.
Her big grey eyes opened widely in hurt astonishment, like those of a child who has been sternly checked in an innocent amusement. Then the sunshine flashed into her face again.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said. ‘It was silly of me to question you, wasn’t it?—only, you see, I’m so frightfully fascinated. I’ve read a lot about detectives, but I’ve never seen one at work before. Mr Holdron was telling us at breakfast that he had sent for a man with a most tremendous reputation and I guessed it was you directly I saw you looking at those footprints. You are Mr Weir Menzies, aren’t you?’
He had stood moodily with downcast gaze while she spoke, as though constrained only by politeness to listen to irrevelant chatter. Now he looked up and laughed.
‘That’s me,’ he agreed. ‘It’s rather a disillusionment, eh? I not in disguise, and I’m afraid I don’t carry either a microscope or a revolver. In fact, Lady Malchester, practically the only tool I carry around with me is plain horse sense.’
An idea had come to him that this ingenuous young lady was not quite so verdant as she seemed. He knew that Holdron had told his guests that the safe had been robbed—there had been no particular reason for keeping the disappearance of the bank-notes secret—and that he had sent for Menzies. He had mentioned Lady Malchester’s name to the detective in describing his guests—a society beauty, a young widow of a baronet with plenty of money, who spent a good deal of her time looking for new amusements.
‘Not even handcuffs?’ she said wistfully.
He shook his head. ‘Not even handcuffs. They’d be a frightful nuisance.’
‘But the footprints,’ she persisted. ‘Don’t tell me the footprints aren’t a clue. You’ll destroy my faith in fiction for ever and ever if you say that.’
His face was solemn. ‘I’ll let you into a secret,’ he said portentously. ‘They are a clue. Men’s boots, size 9, according to the tracks. You’ll observe that the quality of the earth round this side of the house is different to anywhere else in the grounds. I have taken a sample of it, and I bribed the man who cleans the boots to scrape the mud off all the size 9’s and put each sample in separate envelopes. Later, I shall send them all to an analyst to find the thief. I have already decided that he weighs 190 lb., and has black hair which he parts on the left. He has six buttons to his vest, and he is fond of lager.’
‘I believe you’re making fun of me,’ she said doubtfully.
‘I wouldn’t dare,’ he declared. ‘Now, if you really would like to do me a favour, Lady Malchester, I want to measure how far it is from this ladder to that flower bed. Thank you so much.’
He tied a knot in the string at a point which indicated the distance and, coiling it, placed it in his pocket. ‘I have to go in to the village now,’ he added. ‘I shall no doubt have the privilege of seeing you at lunch—if I can manage to get back in time.’
She murmured an assent, and he strode away. Lady Malchester remained for a little while watching his retreating figure, and her grey eyes were more hard and less childlike.
‘He’s not altogether a fool,’ she murmured. Then with a philosophic shake of the head: ‘A fool would be less easy to manipulate than a fairly clever man—and less fun.’
There is a newspaper motto, much more closely observed in detective circles than in journalistic life—always verify your facts. Truth is a necessity for the detective, a handicap for the journalist. The foundations of a successful inquiry need more than a brilliant flash of inspiration or deduction. Though Weir Menzies believed he had got a glimmering of the truth, he was too old a hand to expect it to immediately unravel itself. It was probable that a good deal of heavy inquiry work would have to be done before he became clear about the case.
Certain crimes, as all criminologists know, fall into grooves. It is comparatively easy to eliminate those who, either through lack of motive or lack of opportunity, could not have committed them. One can usually ignore a millionaire when investigating a case of pocket picking. An East End loafer would not be capable of a skilled forgery. Most classes of crime show in themselves a particular group among whom to look for the perpetrator.
Here, however, Weir Menzies, on the facts as he knew them, had no very definite arena of search. Holdron’s theory, that the robber had only accidentally taken the cipher documents, might be perfectly sound. In that case most members of the house-party were probably above suspicion. On the other hand—and Menzies felt that it was strongly possible—the bank-notes might have been taken merely as a blind. There are varying standards of honesty, and if the papers dealt with some big projected financial coup, the thief might just as likely be a peer of impeccable reputation as a professional burglar.
At a tiny village post-office, Menzies wrote a comprehensive wire to his partner in London. There was plenty of material in it to test the singularly complete organisation of their office, for it included a list of every one of Holdron’s guests, with a request that as much detailed information as possible might be gathered about each one. It might have seemed superfluous that the detective laid some stress upon the name of his own employer.
As he emerged from the post-office a bronzed little man with a tooth-brush moustache and square shoulders met him in the doorway. He came to an abrupt halt.
‘What the blazes are you doing in a hole like this, Mr Menzies?’
Menzies grinned as he shook hands. ‘I’m a freelance now, Captain Lackett. Able to pick and choose my jobs a little. If it comes to that, you are about the last man I should have expected to find here.’
‘Meaning I’m to mind my own business,’ grinned Lackett. ‘I’m doing a bit of fishing—got a bit run down, you know, so I thought I’d take a holiday.’
‘Queer time to take a holiday, isn’t it? War and all that, you know.’
It was Lackett’s turn to grin. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Look me up if you’re staying in the neighbourhood. I’m at the Dolphin.’
‘I certainly will if I get a chance. So long for now.’
The detective strode out in the roadway with new food for thought. The presence of one of the keenest brains in the Intelligence Service in an obscure Hampshire village, while the greatest war in history was being waged, might be accounted for by a passion for fishing, but on the whole Menzies thought not. He wondered if it had anything to do with Holdron’s case, whether the deal this client had mentioned had anything to do with the war. It was a possibility not to be lost sight of.
He reached the house half an hour before lunch and the butler found in him a congenial spirit. Menzies had a faculty for friendliness when he cared to exert it, and he pressed into service an utterly fictitious relative who was bailiff to an earl. Many pumps work on the reciprocal principle. You must pour water down them first. Menzies made no attempt to conceal his identity, and poured a number of reminiscences confidentially into appreciative ears. In return he received a tolerable amount of gossip and scandal concerning Holdron and his friends—for an upper servant knows many things gathered from valets, maids, and keepers. The butler had no conception that he was being made a victim of Menzies’s painless method of extracting information.
‘There’s the first lunch bell, Mr Menzies.’ The butler felt himself justified in the subtle avoidance of ‘sir’. Hadn’t the detective practically admitted that they were on the same social level! ‘I suppose you’ll be lunching upstairs?’
‘I suppose so,’ agreed Menzies. ‘Just one moment, though, Mr Wringley. I don’t want to worry Mr Holdron about this. I want to know exactly where every one slept last night. Can you draw a rough plan for me, marking each room with the name of the occupant?’
Wringley agreed, and five minutes later Menzies, with the plan in his waistcoat pocket, was walking sedately upstairs. He met Holdron on the landing.
‘Any luck?’ demanded his client.
He shook his head. ‘I can’t tell yet. I may be closer up tonight. By the way, I may be a little late for lunch or I may not come down at all. I hope you won’t mind?’
‘Not at all,’ snapped Holdron, and with a curt nod resumed his descent.
Lady Malchester gave a gasp that resolved itself into a stifled cry, and her hand went to her heart. Menzies gave her credit for being genuinely startled—almost as startled as he was. He had just taken a pipe from one of the drawers of her dressing-table—a common, straight-stemmed, silver-mounted briar pipe, and so quiet had been her entry that her cry was the first indication he had received of her presence.
He looked up quietly. So far from being disconcerted was he, that one might have imagined him engaged in a most commonplace act instead of being caught red-handed ransacking a lady’s room.
‘You—you blackguard!’ she said tensely.
‘Quite so,’ he agreed mildly. ‘I should come in and close the door if I were you. One cannot tell who may pass.’
She pulled the door savagely open and stood defiantly with fists clenched, a dainty figure of wrath. ‘I hope they will,’ she flamed. ‘You will perhaps be able to explain what you are doing here.’
Impulsively she crossed the room, sweeping disdainfully by him, and laid one hand on the bell. He wheeled to continue to face her, and smiled benevolently.
‘You will find that bell act ever so much better if you press the push instead of the moulding,’ he commented dryly.
For an instant he thought she was going to strike him. Then she dropped her hand, and her face lost its passion. Her whole attitude changed.
Re-crossing the room she slowly closed the door and answered his smile. ‘Really, Mr Menzies, it is difficult to lose one’s temper with you. I ought really to call the servants and have you thrown out, and I can’t tell why I don’t, except that I’m curious. I may do it yet. Meanwhile, you might gratify my curiosity a little. I suppose I am what you would call a suspected person?’
He liked this attitude of hers somewhat less than that of lofty indignation. He prepared himself for more subtle tactics on her part than a crude bluff of anger. He toyed mechanically with the pipe.
‘Undoubtedly,’ he said bluntly.
There was an open bureau to which he had already directed his attention. She stood with her back to it, placed both hands upon its surface, and swung lightly to a seat, her satin-shod feet dangling. Laughing lightly she picked a scented cigarette from a box at her side, applied a light, and tried unsuccessfully to blow a smoke ring.
‘So I’m a burglar, Mr Menzies—a sort of Lady Raffles.’ Her gay eyes met his austere ruddy face in mocking challenge. ‘Do you know I’m frightfully interested. What is the right thing to do? You must have had such a lot of experience in these cases. Do I go on my knees and beg you to spare me, or do you snap the handcuffs swiftly upon my wrists and hale me forthwith to the deepest dungeon of the village police station? Or does the village police station keep a dungeon? Perhaps the constable there uses a woodshed. I hope it isn’t damp.’
Her badinage embarrassed him more palpably than her unexpected entrance had done. She was something beyond his experience, and she was giving proof of a consummate nerve whether she was innocent or guilty. He had few doubts in his own mind upon the question. She must have suspected a possible search of her room or she would not have returned so unexpectedly ten minutes after lunch had commenced. Nor would she have so calmly acquiesced in his presence there had she no sense of guilt.
‘I shall put the facts before Mr Holdron,’ he said stiffly. ‘It will be for him to decide what steps to take.’
She laughed again. ‘It will be a horrible scandal in high life, won’t it? Only, of course’—she perched her head on one side like a bird—‘you are quite certain about me. Do you know, in every detective novel I have ever read the hero—that’s you—explains the steps by which he exposed the villain—that’s me. I’d love to hear how you penetrated my subtle machinations.’
He frowned at her. After all, she was not a professional criminal. As a churchwarden and one of the pillars of a suburban constitutional club, Weir Menzies was a staunch believer that the upper classes were the salt of the nation. It pained him, it revolted his sense of womanliness, that she should meet the situation with flippancy. That was almost worse than being a thief. The scent of her cigarette irritated him.
‘If you want to know,’ he said grudgingly, ‘it can’t do any harm, as the rest of the facts are bound to come out. I know that you laid that trail of footsteps—you probably wore men’s boots over your own.’
She gurgled delightedly. ‘How clever of you. How on earth did you get to know that?’
‘It was plain enough for a child to see. The size of the tracks did not correspond to the length of the paces. That is where you make a mistake, Lady Malchester. You should have taken longer strides. It was quite clear that the trail had been faked for the purpose of a false scent. Then, again, you were altogether too interested when I was examining them. I had an idea then, and I got you to walk alongside the trail. The length of your stride corresponded exactly to that of the burglar.’
‘Wonderful!’ she ejaculated. ‘I didn’t expect to be run to earth so quickly and cleverly. But after all, Mr Menzies, though I don’t mind admitting to you that you’re right—because I shall deny this conversation later on, and you’ve got no corroboration—it will be difficult to bring anything against me merely because my stride happens to be the same length as that of a supposed burglar.’ She shook a white forefinger at him. ‘If you say a word against me there’s such a thing as an action for slander, you know.’
‘That is silly,’ he observed. ‘You must give me credit for a little common sense. For instance, this pipe.’ He held it up and tapped the stem lightly.
He thought he had scored a point. For a moment the mocking light deserted the grey eyes.
‘I—I picked it up on the stairs this morning and pushed it in the drawer, intending to give it to one of the servants to find the owner.’
‘I can save you that trouble. It bears the initials W. C. The owner is Mr Walden Concord, a young gentleman whose official salary as a government clerk by no means covers his expenditure. He is a guest of Mr Holdron’s, I believe, and a friend of yours. He arrived about ten o’clock last night and was supposed to have retired shortly afterwards. As a matter of fact, he never went to bed at all.’
The woman’s self-confidence was rapidly vanishing. ‘How do you know that?’ she demanded.
He stuck his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat and beamed complacently. ‘There’s no Sherlock Holmes about that, Lady Malchester. I have been talking to the servants. One of them, the butler, tells me he happened to see a figure prowling about the grounds, and investigated. He got near enough to recognise Mr Concord, and, concluding that if any of his master’s guests chose to walk about late on a damp night it was no business of his, he was withdrawing when he saw a woman steal out of the house. He recognised her.’
Her cheeks were scarlet. ‘Well?’ she said.
‘Well!’ he drawled. ‘This morning Mr Concord sent his man out for his pipe, which he had, he said, left overnight in the summer-house where he had gone for a solitary breath of air.’
There were great gaps in the structure Menzies had so elaborately reared on the facts he had gained, and no one was better aware of its weakness than himself. But he judged that Lady Malchester’s logical strength was breaking down, and he was determined to press his advantages.
She slid down from the bureau and passed a hand in a weary gesture across her brow. Very pretty and very helpless she looked, and if Menzies had not held very rigid ideas of duty he might have felt compunctious.
‘That proves nothing,’ she declared faintly.
‘Mr Holdron will form his own opinion,’ he retorted. ‘It will probably be the same as mine by the time I have searched your room.’
A flash of spirit seemed to return to her. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ she exclaimed.
‘I’m going to,’ he returned doggedly, ‘with your permission or without it.’
Something glinted in her hand, and with a swiftness of which his bulk gave no promise he sprang forward and wrenched away a small pistol. He stepped back and dropped it in his pocket. ‘This is mere foolishness,’ he said severely.
Her slender form was shaking and her hands were in front of her face. ‘You—you—forced me to do it,’ she exclaimed brokenly. ‘I can’t stand exposure.’ Suddenly she was on the floor at his feet. ‘You can’t understand what it means. If I give back everything—everything—that’s all you want—all Mr Holdron wants. You needn’t tell him—’
He raised her gently to her feet and pulled a chair under her. Her emotion seemed genuine enough, and although he was inclined to believe in it he was too wary to be deceived by a new feint.
‘I’m afraid I can make no promises. I am acting for Mr Holdron, and he is entitled to know everything I learn. I have no discretion in that way.’
‘But if I give up everything—’
He shook his head. ‘You must do that in any event.’
But he had pushed his advantage too far. The scarlet lips became doggedly pursed, and her bent figure straightened. ‘You can either ruin me by exposure to Mr Holdron or you can recover the papers. You will never find them unless I choose to tell you.’
‘We will see,’ he said grimly.
He resumed his methodical search of the room as calmly as though she were not present. Yet he felt that it was hopeless. Even under the best conditions no man, however skilled, can hope to thoroughly search the smallest room when time is limited. It is largely a matter of luck if he finds an article, even if it has not been hidden. And Lady Malchester seemed very confident. Once, while he was rummaging the papers in the bureau, out of the tail of his eye he caught a glimpse of her in the mirror. He could have sworn she was smiling. Yet when he wheeled swiftly she was still sitting meekly, hands folded in her lap, with downcast eyes and despondent face. He closed the bureau with a snap that showed he was a little irritated, and thrust his hands into his trousers pockets.
‘Mr Menzies,’ she said tremulously.
‘Yes.’
‘If I return the money and the papers, will you give me one day’s grace before you tell Mr Holdron?’ Her voice was very low. ‘That can’t hurt you much. I could not stand—the—the disgrace if I were here. Give me a day to get away and I shall not mind so much. Surely a single day can’t be very important?’
There were tears in her voice and in her big, childlike, grey eyes. He gnawed his moustache while he considered her appeal. It was not so unreasonable. He had scarcely hoped to clear up the affair so completely even in two days. If he refused he might get the documents before the next day or he might not get them at all. The compromise seemed the wisest policy.
‘That is outside my instructions,’ he said, ‘but I will do it.’
The criss-cross of lines that marred her white forehead disappeared. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘Will you turn your head for a moment?’
He obeyed. There was a rustle of garments and then a crackle of papers. It was obvious that the things had been concealed in her stocking. The hiding-place had all the merit of simplicity and accessibility. She held out the papers.
‘I am very much obliged, Lady Malchester,’ he said formally.
Holdron paced impatiently to and fro across the library, and Menzies noticed that his fingers were twitching. He was quite clearly in a high state of nervous tension. His eyes dwelt malevolently on the detective as though he meditated wresting the secret from him by force.
‘When you’re satisfied with this melodramatic nonsense perhaps you will condescend to tell me what you mean,’ he snarled. ‘If this is a trick to enhance your fee it doesn’t go down with me.’
‘It is unusual,’ admitted Menzies. ‘But you’re a reasonable man, Mr Holdron, and you’ll see the difficulty of my position. I have got the papers and have solved the mystery, but I could have done neither if I had not passed my word that you should not receive my report till tomorrow.’
The other came to an abrupt halt. ‘The papers, man! You have the papers? Give them to me.’ His hand fell on a bronzed elephant used as a paper weight.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Menzies with determination. ‘I will post them on from town tonight.’
So unexpected was Holdron’s next movement that the detective was almost taken unawares. He saw the hand with the bronze elephant flicker upwards, and divined the other’s intention as the missile left his hand. He sprawled sideways, chair and all, and so saved his face. But a numbing shock in the right shoulder told him that his assailant had not entirely missed. The next moment Holdron was upon him, fighting with a dynamic energy that more than made up for the difference in weight and muscle.
In any ordinary encounter the city man would not have lasted a second against the burly detective, but Menzies was on the ground and still entangled with his chair. Moreover, his right arm was for the moment useless.
It was all over in five seconds. Strong, lean hands twined about his throat. He jerked his elbow up into the other man’s stomach and heard a groan. Then his head was thrown violently backwards against one of the legs of the chair and a red mist swam before his eyes. Thereafter he lost consciousness.
He awoke with a sharp tang of spirit in his throat, and at once all his senses were keenly alert. A bronzed face with a toothbrush moustache was near his own and Captain Lackett’s arm was supporting his head. He sat up abruptly and met the composed, smiling face of Lady Malchester. She was comfortably tucked up in a big arm-chair, her knees crossed and one foot rhythmically swaying.
‘You come to life like a Jack-in-the-box,’ observed Lackett, straightening himself. ‘How d’you feel? Here, let me give you a hand up.’
‘I’ll be all right in half a minute,’ said Menzies. His eyes lighted with inquiry on Lady Malchester. She was smiling whimsically at him as she had done when she had first come across him examining the footprints. He tried to resolve the problem, but his brain was clear enough to show him the impossibility. ‘Where is Holdron?’ he asked.
‘Sitting in a cell by now wondering whether he is going to be tried by court-martial or by the civil power,’ said Lackett.
Menzies rubbed his eyebrows and took a long breath. A swift and appalling foreboding that he—sometime chief inspector of the C.I.D.—had been used as a tool by the unscrupulous intelligence officer flashed across his mind. The details were hazy, but he had no doubts of the main facts. There was evidence in the vibrant grey eyes of Lady Malchester, in the lurking smile under Lackett’s tooth-brush moustache.
‘That so?’ he remarked blandly. ‘Well, you had better luck than I did.’
Lady Malchester giggled. ‘Stung!’ said Lackett.
‘The old war-horse smells the battle and won’t admit that he’s lame in the off foreleg. Now, Menzies, be a sport. Admit that you’ve been done down for once and we’ll admit you into the secret. You earned that, anyhow.’
‘I seem to have broken in on you somehow,’ said the detective. ‘I’ll own that I’m guessing. The secret service is on top this time. Now then. And I apologise to you, Lady Malchester. You stung me neatly. You’re a credit to the service, if you don’t mind me saying so. Still, if I’d been given a hint—’
‘Lady Malchester is not in the service,’ said Lackett. ‘She assisted me for—’
‘Love,’ interjected Menzies, and had his reward. A crimson tinge crept under the tan of Lackett’s countenance. Lady Malchester was unmoved.
‘If I had known what Captain Lackett has since told me,’ she said, ‘I might have taken you into my confidence. But I didn’t know you, and it was simpler to take no risks—the more especially as I took good care to see you did all you were wanted to.’
‘I seem to remember you on your knees begging me not to expose you.’
‘That was the transpontine touch,’ she smiled. ‘Do you know, I wouldn’t have had you go away without those papers for anything. I wanted you to think you forced them from me.’
Menzies pushed his hands widely, palms outward. ‘Am I drunk or is the room only standing on its head? Things seem to be spinning round. All I know is that Holdron is a spy, and that you are the lady who was so naÏvely interested in detective work. I never associated you with Captain Lackett.’
‘These are the facts,’ said Lackett. ‘Holdron, of course, was a spy, or as good as a spy. His financial interests have been largely bound up in Germany, and it’s only lately that I ran on to his tracks. During the last few years he’s been making many friends in official circles—not the very biggest men, but people with access to confidential information—this man Concord, for instance.
‘There had been leakages which could only have come from someone inside, and once I was on the case it was easy to suspect Concord, who was spending a deal more than his small private income and smaller salary. I wanted to get at the man behind, so I waited before jumping on Concord. I had had him closely watched, and naturally there wasn’t a letter he mailed or received that didn’t come under my eye. The only correspondent he had who was at all doubtful was Holdron—but there was nothing to take hold of, you understand. Holdron was too clever for that. That was where Lady Malchester came in. She found mutual friends and got an introduction. She even managed—she has her own methods—to secure an invitation to this dinner-party, which, though we didn’t know it then, had been arranged for a definite purpose.
‘Mark the cunning of the man. Yesterday Concord was to take copies of certain cipher documents which showed a strategic plan to be put in execution next week. It was essential that they should be passed over to Holdron as quickly as possible, yet suspicion might have been aroused should it be observed that a Government clerk had been in definite communication with him, and they, of course, daren’t trust them to the post. But a house-party to which Concord had been invited long before—you get me?
‘Anyway, there we were—Lady Malchester watchng our friend Holdron, I keeping an eye on Concord. When Concord caught a train down here last night, I was behind him. You see, I didn’t want any accident to happen to him while he had those papers.’
‘You knew he had them, and yet—’
Lackett leaned forward and emphasised his point with a forefinger. ‘Yes, it wasn’t quite so simple as merely getting them back. You see, it had been arranged that information—of a kind—should reach the enemy—I had duplicate documents which I wished to transfer for the genuine ones unbeknown to our young friend.’
Menzies smacked his thigh. ‘That’s the point that’s been worrying me. Of course you want the scheme to be carried out so that you would know its workings. By gum, why didn’t I think of it!’ He was seriously annoyed with himself.
‘Because it was no more likely to occur to you than a million other hypotheses, I suppose. Anyway, I failed. Mr Man had a motor waiting for him at the station, and I hoofed it in to the village. I knew that Lady Malchester would pick up the end without any help from me, and I didn’t want to risk being seen fussing about the house.’
Lady Malchester took up the story.
‘That was where I took the stage. My maid—you’re not the only one who knows the value of servants as agents for collecting information—had become rather friendly with the chauffeur here, and consequently I knew the exact time of Concord’s arrival, but in case of accidents I had the combination of the safe—Holdron keeps it on a slip of paper at the back of his watch, and I arranged that he should sleep soundly the night before last.’
‘You drugged him and entered his bedroom? Well, you’ve sure got a nerve.’
There was a gleam of mischief in the childish face. ‘Something had to be done,’ she said, as though that settled the matter. ‘It was only just the tiniest little drop in his wine. So you see I was all ready for emergencies. I and my maid between us kept a close eye on Concord after he arrived, and when he went out into the grounds I followed. You rather jumped to conclusions about that, Mr Menzies.’
‘You didn’t disillusion me.’
‘That would scarcely have been policy,’ she smiled. ‘Anyway, I shadowed him—that’s the technical term, isn’t it?—to the summer-house, where Holdron was already waiting. I suppose the rendezvous had been arranged beforehand. I heard all I wanted to, and the papers passed over. Concord left his pipe and I was silly enough to pick it up. I got back to the house, unseen as far as I know, and found Holdron with his guests. Then I made an excuse, slipped into the library and opened the safe, collared all the papers I could see, and walked out quite openly. At the worst the papers wouldn’t reach the enemy.’
‘She had no duplicates to replace them,’ explained Lackett. ‘I had not seen her then.’
‘No,’ said Lady Malchester. ‘Well, it was sometime after midnight that the car started out, and I heard from my maid there had been a robbery, and that Holdron had sent a car to London to fetch a well-known private detective. I didn’t learn your name till next day. It seemed a pity that you shouldn’t have a clue to work on, so at four this morning I borrowed a pair of boots—there were plenty outside the bedroom doors—and laid a trail. I must say you used it rather cleverly.
‘Naturally I surmised that Captain Lackett would not be far away from Concord. They had been accustomed to my taking a solitary walk before breakfast during the few days I have been here, and today was no exception. He, as a matter of fact, was looking for me, and we had a chat.’
‘I was rather chagrined,’ said Lackett. ‘Luck seemed to have been against us for, though it was important to recover the documents, we seemed to have lost all chance of following up the means that were to be used to get them away. Then it was that Lady Malchester thought of you—of allowing you to recover the false papers.’
‘I do think,’ grumbled Menzies, ‘that it would have been more simple to have taken me into your confidence.’
‘Now don’t be peevish, Mr Menzies,’ said Lady Malchester, with a little grimace. ‘You were a stranger to me. It was so much more convincing for you to run the criminal to earth yourself. If you had been at fault I was prepared to make the clues plainer—but you seemed to have picked up the right scent at once. It would have been harder to stage-manage with a duller man. You will remember that I never pledged you not to return the papers to Holdron at once, but only not to disclose the identity of the thief. I didn’t want him to have any suspicion that I was helping the secret service till he’d passed the bogus information on. He’d have known at once, of course, that I was in no need of money.’
‘That’s where you jumped the rails,’ observed Menzies. ‘I misunderstand my pledge and refused to give him the papers. That’s how he came to lay me out.’
‘All to the good,’ grinned Lackett. ‘He couldn’t have had any suspicion of the papers when you were so anxious to delay his re-possession of them. Well, the result has been this. He’d got a regular pigeon-loft in a derelict lodge among some shooting covers he rents at Stoner, ten miles away. We followed him there. He made six copies of the cipher on tracing papers and turned loose half a dozen pigeons before we collared him. Concord, by the way, was captured on his way back to town.’
‘And the result?’ said Menzies.
Lackett rubbed a finger along his stubby moustache.
‘Germany,’ he observed, ‘will mass troops to meet our reinforcements some ninety miles from where the real attack will take place. By the way, I hope you got your fee from Holdron?’
‘Oh, blast the fee,’ said Menzies. ‘I really beg your pardon, Lady Malchester.’