Writing in Blood
The countryman stared at the sleeve uncomfortably. Then he stared at the insensible girl whose fate, as well as his own, appeared to be at the mercy of that flapping portion of garment. Then he stared back at the man without arms again.
“Are you threatening me?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied the man without arms. “If you’re not satisfied, no more am I.” His tone hardened. “When you called on Ledlow, what did you do—besides finding out what I sent you there to find out?”
“Nothing!”
“You didn’t find that packet of beads?”
“D’you suppose I’d be here, if I had?”
“No, I don’t! Thanks for admitting it! We’re getting things straight now, aren’t we?”
“So much the better!”
“I agree.”
“So much the better! Isn’t it what I began this conversation for? I didn’t do anything when I called on Ledlow but find out what we wanted to find out, and then report to you.”
“You needed my brain?”
“Look here, you want it both ways, don’t you?” retorted the countryman. “If I work on my own, I’m double-crossing you, and if I don’t I’m soft! Your brain, eh? If you call that thing behind your forehead a brain, what’s it led us into? It was your brain sent me back to Ledlow a second time, wasn’t it, after you’d hatched your insane scheme, and told me to tickle him up by telling him where it was to begin.”
“Euston—five a.m.,” murmured the man without arms.
“Yes, Euston, five a.m. And it scared him so much that he went off his nut, and babbled, and the old woman who looked after him got scared herself over his delirium, and wrote to—her!”
He pointed to the insensible girl.
“Well, we’ve got her here, haven’t we?” answered the man without arms. “She’s safe not to babble!”
“Yes—now! And the devil’s own job it’s been!” snapped the countryman. “And who carried the job out? You or me?”
“You did, because I was on duty elsewhere,” replied the man without arms. “That was your luck. But I’d have enjoyed the job, if I could have done them both. Oh, yes! I’d have enjoyed it! First following her to Euston station, eh, and then on to the hotel—by the way, why did she try the station first? Do you suppose ‘Euston’ was all she had to go upon. ‘Euston—five a.m.,’ and the terror of a delirious old man? Anyway, that’s what she did, while I was waiting outside the window for some one to occupy that empty chair. Might have been placed for the purpose, eh? Well, I can only wish that other man had sat in it, and then—”
“Yes, then we shouldn’t have had him on the trail!” interposed the countryman. “Exactly! Your pretty plan brought two unwanted people into the business!”
“Unwanted! I don’t think so. They’ve been useful—as I knew they would be when I told you to tail the girl off, and to keep her on the course. Where the girl went, the man would go. Ruth and Lavine, eh? And if they were kept on the course—the police would be kept off it, eh? Don’t you realise even yet how prettily we’ve diverted the police to a couple of red herrings?”
“Damned inconvenient red herrings! What did you want to leave that sign at her studio for before going to Bristol?”
“I thought it might help you, while you stayed behind. Yes, and why did you stay behind so long? Why didn’t you find some way of bringing the girl after me earlier in the day? It might have saved a gipsy woman’s life.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, she would have made an admirable subject for the second fatality—the second point in the letter I am writing—the letter that will be completed at Whitchurch!” A mad leer flashed into his face for an instant, and was gone the next. “But as I couldn’t lose her at the second, I wanted her with me at the third—”
“And you’d have had her with you,” growled the countryman, “if you’d waited at Charlton till I turned up with her, as we’d planned. Why didn’t you wait? The car was tucked away near the Carpenter’s Arms—”
“Yes, and so were plenty of other people,” came the sharp interruption. “That damned aviator raised the hue and cry too soon. You had your instructions to follow, if things went wrong.”
“And I did follow—”
“How many hours late?”
“Blast you, that wasn’t my fault! Do you think things can only go wrong at your end? I had the devil’s time at mine. That girl was dodging all over the place—you scared her properly with that silly sign you slipped through her letter-box—and she wired to Whitchurch. Ah—that interests you! You didn’t know that!”
“No, I didn’t know that. What did she say in the wire?”
“How do I know?”
“Did she get any reply?”
“She did. And waited for it! Now you know why there was no chance of getting her to Bristol in the morning—unless I used force—which we hadn’t decided on then!” He shot a grim glance at the subject of their conversation. “So I had to use subtlety. Which is more than you’ve ever been capable of!”
“Let’s hear your subtlety!”
“That’s right! Sneer in advance! But it did the trick. I said to myself, ‘She’s worried about her grandfather.’ I’d worked it out. She hears that Ledlow has been babbling about Euston and 5 a.m., as though the time and place were sending him daft, and she goes off to find out what’s the trouble. And some one gets killed. And her grandfather knew that some one was going to get killed. What’s the deduction?”
“That an old man, who can’t leave his bed, has committed the murder?” inquired the man without arms, sarcastically.
“Murder! You’re free with your terms!”
“I’m leaving the subtlety to you.”
“It’s clear you’ve got to! No, that wasn’t the deduction. Her deduction was that Ledlow had something to do with the murder.” The countryman paused abruptly. “Of course,” he went on, slowly, “a girl in her confused state might make all sorts of deductions. Yes—she might even think that a miracle had happened, and that the old man had managed to leave his bed. Still, after all, that’s neither here nor there. The point is—and it’s the point I banked on—she was worried stiff about her grandfather, she was confused, and she couldn’t go for the police.”
“Why not?”
“Why not, bonehead? If Ledlow had wanted the police, he’d have babbled for the police, and the old woman would have gone for the police! But you know he didn’t dare send for the police—that was your whole position, wasn’t it?”
The man without arms nodded.
“Well, then! While he’s babbling about his Euston and his 5 a.m.—”
“You evidently dinned them into him well,” commented the man without arms.
“You told me to,” answered the countryman, “and I do everything well. I can even keep to a story when I’m constantly interrupted! While he’s babbling he also babbles about his fear of the police. Or maybe the old woman asks him if he wants the police, and he tells her he doesn’t. So when the old woman writes in desperation to—to the girl in the corner there—she passes on the injunction that the police mustn’t be consulted. That gets it all straight, doesn’t it?”
The man without arms nodded again.
“Good. So what I do is this. I slip a note in her letter-box. In the afternoon, when she’s gone back to the studio and given those other fools the slip. The note begs her—in printing letters—to be near the Carpenter’s Arms at Charlton at midnight. It’s written in such a way that it might be from her grandfather or from some one interested in him. It repeats the injunction not to go to the police. It implies that something fatal may happen if she does not go. And so—she goes.”
“And you go after her?”
“Yes. And so do some other unwanted people! I tell you, I’ve had a job! If you’d—delayed your plans a little, you could have had her on the spot when you wanted her.”
“You’ve just implied there were too many other people on the spot for that.”
“Quite true. You see, I’m not unreasonable. I can see logic. But why didn’t you nip off in the car we’d tucked away for the purpose?”
The man without arms held up his flapping sleeves.
“Who’s the intelligent one now?” he asked, cynically.
“Yes, yes, of course!” muttered the countryman, annoyed with himself. “You had to have somebody to drive you.”
“Yes. As you weren’t there. And I also had to have somebody to—dispose of—as she wasn’t there!” He flapped a sleeve towards the girl at his side. “The disposal took place in Boston just as you were all leaving Charlton. I seem to have won the race all along the line, don’t I?”
“Yes, but now I’ve caught you up!” grinned the countryman. “Beat the others on the road, and caught you up.”
“And I guessed you would, and came to meet you.”
“That’s right.”
“And turned you round again.”
“That’s right.”
“And, by a little ruse, caught one of the others!”
“Right beside you!”
“Yes—right beside me,” nodded the man without arms. “And now you wonder whether we are going to finish the race or not? Whether we’re going to fall off the final lap to Whitchurch—”
“And make a bee-line straight for the coast,” interposed the countryman, and now his grin vanished, and he looked at the other earnestly. “Yes, that’s what I’m wondering, Pretty-mug! This final lap—we may be caught up in it! Who knows? All the runners aren’t down. And if we are caught up, there’ll be no coast for us! It’ll be—do you know what it’ll be?” He banged his fist suddenly on his knee. “Not a piece of plum-cake for being good boys!”
The man without arms shifted his position slightly. His right sleeve lay in his lap, neatly directed towards the driver’s seat.
“You have mentioned my plain speaking,” he said in his disquieting monotone, and the countryman suddenly became conscious again of the total lack of facial expression. “Here is some more plain speaking. Without fingers, hands, or arms, I am writing a letter across England. The letter Z. The letter on my forehead. The letter that was burned there as a sign that I was finished—the letter I am now writing as a sign that Ledlow is about to be finished. Ledlow knows—Ledlow understands—Ledlow is waiting for the final scratch of the pen.” The sleeve moved slightly. “And you suggest that I should leave the letter unfinished—the letter that began at Euston at 5 a.m., and that he has been told to watch?”
He paused, and swallowed softly.
“You are a fool, my friend. You would try and run away from the Universe. You are not even subtle. Those jewels—those coloured beads Ledlow is supposed to have hidden away somewhere—I invented them.” The countryman’s face twitched. “Yes, invented them, to keep my kind nurse interested all these years. Would you have been quite so devoted without them? Would you have loved me so much if you hadn’t believed that, one day, I would point the way to them?”
He raised his sleeve.
“Turn round, please. I am going to finish my letter. The pen has scratched at London and at Bristol and at Boston. It is now going to scratch at Whitchurch—and, this time, with a double flourish!”
And the expressionless face turned towards the girl in the corner. But the sleeve remained raised towards the man in the driver’s seat.