‘You know, Mr French,’ said Speedwell, ‘about my being called in by the manager of the Edgecombe in Plymouth when Mr Cheyne was drugged? Mr Cheyne has told you about that, sir?’ French nodded and the other went on: ‘Then I need only tell you what Mr Cheyne presumably does not know. I may just explain before beginning that I came into contact with Mr Jesse, the manager, over some diamonds which were lost by a visitor to the hotel and which I had the good fortune to recover.
‘The first point that struck me about Mr Cheyne’s little affair was, How did the unknown man know Mr Cheyne was going to lunch at that hotel on that day? I found out from Mr Cheyne that he hadn’t mentioned his visit to Plymouth to anyone outside of his own household, and I found out from Mrs and Miss Cheyne that they hadn’t either. But Miss Cheyne said it had been discussed at lunch, and that gave me the tip. If these statements were all O.K. it followed that the leakage must have been through the servants and I had a chat with both, just to see what they were like. The two were quite different. The cook was good-humoured and stupid and easy-going, and wouldn’t have the sense to run a conspiracy with anyone, but the parlour-maid was an able young woman as well up as any I’ve met. So it looked as if it must be her.
‘Then I thought over the burglary, and it seemed to me that the burglars must have got inside help, and if so, there again Susan was the girl. Of course there was the tying up, but that would be the natural way to work a blind. I noticed that the cook’s wrists were swollen, but Susan’s weren’t marked at all, so I questioned the cook, and I got a bit of information out of her that pretty well proved the thing. She said she heard the burglars ring and heard Susan go to the door. But she said it was three or four minutes before Susan screamed. Now if Susan’s story was true she would have screamed far sooner than that, for, according to her, the men had only asked could they write a letter when they seized her. So that again looked like Susan. You follow me, sir?’
Again French nodded, while Cheyne broke in: ‘You never told me anything of that.’
Speedwell smiled once more his crafty smile.
‘Well, no, Mr Cheyne, I didn’t mention it certainly. It was only a theory, you understand. I thought I’d wait till I was sure.
‘Well, gentlemen, there it was. Someone wanted some paper that Mr Cheyne had—it was almost certainly a paper, as they searched his pocket-book—and Susan was involved. I hung about Warren Lodge, and all the time I was watching Susan. I found she wrote frequent letters and always posted them herself: so that was suspicious too. Then one day when she was out I slipped up to her room and searched around. I found a writing-case in her box of much too good a kind for a servant, and a blotting-paper pad with a lot of ink marks. When I put the pad before a mirror I made out an address written several times: “Mr J. Dangle, Laurel Lodge, Hopefield Avenue, Hendon.” So that was that.’
Speedwell paused and glanced at his auditors in turn, but neither replying, he resumed:
‘I generally try to make a friend when I’m on a case: they’re often useful if you want some special information. So I chummed up with the housemaid at Mrs Hazelton’s—friends of Mr Cheyne’s—live quite close by. I told this girl I was on the burglary job, and that there would be big money in it if the thieves were caught, and that if she helped me she should get her share. I told her I had my suspicions of Susan, said I was going to London, and asked her would she watch Susan and keep me advised of how things went on. She said yes, and I gave her a couple of pounds on account, just to keep her eager, while I came back to town to look after Dangle.’
In spite of the keen interest with which he was listening to these revelations, Cheyne felt himself seething with indignant anger. How he had been hoodwinked by this sneaking scoundrel, with his mean ingratiating smile and his assumption of melancholy! He could have kicked himself as he remembered how he had tried to cheer and encourage the mock pessimist. He wondered which was the more hateful, the man’s deceit or the cynical way he was now telling of it. But, apparently unconscious of the antagonism which he had aroused, Speedwell calmly and, Cheyne thought disgustedly, a trifle proudly, continued his narrative.
‘I soon found that James Dangle lived at Laurel Lodge. He was alone except for a daily char, but up till a short while earlier his sister had kept house for him. When I learnt that his sister had left Laurel Lodge on the same day that Susan took up her place at Warren Lodge, I soon guessed who Susan really was.
‘I thought that when these two would go to so much trouble, the thing they were after must be pretty well worth while, and I thought it might pay me if I could find out what it was. So I shadowed Dangle, and learnt a good deal about him. I learnt that he was constantly meeting two other men, so I shadowed them and learnt they were Blessington and Sime. Blessington I guessed first time I saw him was the man who had drugged you, Mr Cheyne, for he exactly covered your and the manager’s descriptions. It seemed clear then that these three and Susan Dangle—if her real name was Susan—were in the conspiracy to get whatever you had.’
‘But what I would like to have explained,’ Cheyne burst in, ‘was why you didn’t tell me what you had discovered. You were paid to do it. What did you think you were taking that hotel manager’s money for?’
Speedwell made a gesture of deferential disagreement.
‘I scarcely think that you can find fault with me there, Mr Cheyne,’ he answered with his ingratiating smile. ‘I was investigating: I had not reached the end of my investigation. As you will see, sir, my investigation took a somewhat unexpected turn—a very unexpected turn, I might almost say, which left me in a bit of doubt as to how to act. But you’ll hear.’
Inspector French had been sitting quite still at his desk, but now he stretched out his hand, took a cigar from the box, and as he lit it, murmured: ‘Go on, Speedwell. Sounds like a novel. I’m enjoying it. Aren’t you, Mr Cheyne?’
Cheyne made non-committal noises, and Speedwell, looking pleased, continued:
‘One evening, nearly two months ago, I got back late from another job and I found a wire waiting for me. It was from Mrs Hazelton’s housemaid and it said: “Maxwell Cheyne disappeared and Susan left Warren Lodge for London.” I thought to myself: “Bully for you, Jane,” and then I thought: “Susan will be returning to Brother James. I’ll go out to Hopefield Avenue and see if I can pick anything up.” So I went out. It was about half-past ten when I arrived. I found the front of the house in darkness, but an upper window at the back was lighted up. There was a lane along behind the houses, you understand, Mr French, and a bit of garden between them and the lane. The gate into the garden was open, and I slipped in and began to tiptoe towards the house. Then I heard soft steps coming in after me, and I turned aside and hid behind a large shrub to see what would happen. And then I saw something that interested me very much. A man came in very quietly and I saw in the faint moonlight that he was carrying a ladder.’ There was an exclamation from Cheyne. ‘He put the ladder to the lighted window and climbed up, and then I saw who it was. I needn’t tell you, Mr Cheyne, I was surprised to see you, and I waited behind the bush for what would happen. I saw and heard the whole thing: the party coming down to supper, your getting in, Sime coming out and seeing the ladder, the alarm, your coming out, and them getting you on the head in the garden. You’ll perhaps think, Mr Cheyne, that I should have come out and lent you a hand, but after all, sir, I don’t know that you could claim that you had the right of it altogether, and besides, it all happened so quickly I had no chance to interfere. Well, anyhow they knocked you out and then they searched you and took a folded paper from your pocket. “Thank goodness, we’ve got the tracing at all events,” Dangle said, speaking very softly, “but now we’re in the soup and no mistake. What are we going to do with the confounded fool’s body?” They examined the ladder and saw from the contractor’s name that it had been brought from the new house, then they whispered together and I couldn’t hear what was said, but at last Sime said: “Right, we’ll fix it so that it will look as if he fell off the ladder.” Then the three men picked you up, Mr Cheyne, and carried you out down the lane. Susan stood in the garden waiting, and I had to sit tight behind the bush. In about ten minutes the men came back and then Sime took the ladder and carried it away down the lane. The others whispered together and then Dangle said something to Susan, ending up: “It’s in the second left-hand drawer.” She went indoors, but came out again in a moment with a powerful electric torch. Blessington and Dangle then searched for traces of your little affair, Mr Cheyne. They found the marks of the ladder butts in the soft grass and smoothed them out, and they looked everywhere, I suppose, for footprints or something that you might have dropped when you fell. Then Sime came back and they all went in and shut the door.’
Cheyne snorted angrily.
‘It didn’t occur to you, I suppose, to make any effort to help me or even find out if I was alive or dead? You weren’t going to have any trouble, even if you did become an accessory after the fact?’
‘I’m coming to that, Mr Cheyne. All in good time, sir.’ Speedwell rubbed his hands unctuously. ‘You will understand that as long as the garden was occupied I couldn’t come out from behind the bush. But directly the coast was clear I got out of the garden and turned along the lane where they had carried you. I wondered where they could have hidden you, and I started searching. I remembered what Sime had said about the ladder, so I went to the half-built house and had a look round, but I couldn’t find you in it. Then I saw you lying back of the road fence, but just at that minute I heard footsteps, and I stopped behind a pile of bricks till the party would pass. But you called out and the lady stopped, and once again I couldn’t interfere. I heard the arrangements about the taxi, and when the lady went away to get it I slipped out and hid where I could see it. In that way I got its number. Next day I saw the driver and got out of him where he had taken you, and I kept my eye on you and when you got better, trailed you to Miss Merrill’s. From other people living in the flats I found out about her.’ After a pause he concluded: ‘And I think, gentlemen, that’s about all I have to tell you.’
Inspector French slowly expelled a cloud of gray cigar smoke from his mouth.
‘Really, Speedwell, you have surpassed yourself,’ he murmured. ‘Your story, as I told you, sounds like a novel. A pity though, that having gone so far you did not go a little farther. You did not find out, for example, what business this mysterious quartet were plotting?’
‘I did not, Mr French,’ the man returned earnestly. ‘I gathered that it was connected with “the tracing” that Dangle spoke of, and I imagined the tracing was what they had been wanting from Mr Cheyne, and evidently had got, but I didn’t get a sight of it, and I have no idea of their game.’
‘And did you find out nothing that might be a help? Where did those three men spend their time? What did they do in the day-time?’
‘Just what I told Mr Cheyne, sir. I gave him perfectly correct information in everything. Dangle is a town sharp and helps run a gambling room in Knightsbridge. Sime is another of the same—collects pigeons in the night clubs for the others to pluck. Blessington, I got the hint, lived by blackmail, but I’ve no proof of this.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No, Mr French, not that I know. Unless’—he hesitated—‘unless one thing. It may or may not be important; I don’t know. It’s this: Dangle, during these last three or four weeks, has been away nearly half the time from London—on the Continent. I don’t know to what country, but it must be France or Belgium or Holland, I should think—or maybe Ireland—because he has crossed over one night and crossed back the next. I know that because of a remark I overheard him make to Sime in a tube lift where I was standing just behind him. It was a Wednesday and he said: “I’m crossing tonight, but I’ll be back on Friday morning.”’
This seemed to be the sum total of Speedwell’s knowledge, or at least all he would divulge, and he presently, departed, apparently cheered by French’s somewhat cryptic declaration that he would not forget the part the other had played in the affair. He perhaps would not have been so pleased had he heard French’s subsequent comments to Cheyne. ‘A dangerous man, Mr Cheyne, for an amateur to deal with, though he’s too much afraid of the Yard to try any monkeying with me. I may tell you in confidence that he was dismissed from the force on suspicion of taking bribes to let a burglar get away—I needn’t say the thing couldn’t be proved, or he would have seen the inside of a convict prison, but there was no doubt at all that he was guilty. Since that he has been caught sailing rather close to the wind, but again he just managed to keep himself safe. But the result is, he would do anything to curry favour here, and indeed once or twice he has been quite useful. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he has been blackmailing Blessington & Co., in connection with your attempted murder.’
‘Ugh!’ Cheyne made a gesture of disgust. ‘The very sight of the man makes me sick:’ Then, his look of anxious eagerness returning, he went on: ‘But, Inspector, his story is all very well and interesting and all that, but I don’t see that it helps us to find Miss Merrill, and that is the only thing that matters.’
‘The only thing to you, perhaps,’ French returned, ‘but not the only thing to me. This whole business looks uncommonly like conspiracy for criminal purposes, and if so, it automatically concerns the Yard.’ He glanced at the clock on the wall before his desk. ‘Let’s see now, it’s just five o’clock. Before giving up for the day I should like to have a look over Miss Merrill’s room to settle that little question of the fur coat, and I should like you to come with me. Shall we go now?’
Cheyne sprang to his feet eagerly. Action was what he wanted, and his heart beat more rapidly at the prospect of visiting a place where every object would remind him of the girl he loved, and whom, in spite of himself, he feared he had lost. Impatiently he waited while French put on his hat and left word where he could be found in case of need.
Some fifteen minutes later the two men were ascending the stairs of the house in Horne Terrace. The door of No. 12 was shut, and to Cheyne’s knock there was no response.
‘I’m afraid you needn’t expect Miss Merrill to have got back,’ French commented. ‘I had better open the door.’
He worked at it for a few moments, first with his bunch of skeleton keys, then with a bent wire, until the bolt shot back, and pushing open the door, they entered the room.
It was just as Cheyne had last seen it except that the kettle and tea equipage had been tidied away. French stood in the middle of the floor, glancing keenly round on the contents. Then he moved to the other door.
‘This her bedroom?’ he inquired, as he pushed it open and looked in.
As Cheyne followed him into the tiny apartment, he felt as a devout Mohammedan might, who through stress of circumstances entered fully shod into one of the holy places of his religion. It seemed nothing short of profanation for himself and this commonplace inspector of police to intrude into a place so hallowed by association with Her. In a kind of reverent awe he looked about him. There was the bed in which She slept, the table at which She dressed, the wardrobe in which Her dresses hung, and there—what were those? He stood, stricken motionless by surprise, staring at a tiny pair of rather high-heeled brown shoes which were lying on their sides on the floor in front of a chair.
French noted his expression.
‘What is it?’ he queried, following the direction of the other’s eyes.
‘Her shoes!’ Cheyne said in a tone of wonder, as he might have said: ‘Her diamond coronet.’
French frowned.
‘Well, what’s wonderful about that?’ he asked with the nearest approach to sharpness in his tone that Cheyne had yet heard.
‘Her shoes,’ Cheyne repeated. ‘Her shoes that she wore last night.’
It was now French’s turn to look interested.
‘Sure of that?’ he asked, picking up the shoes.
‘Certain. I saw them on her in the train to Wembley Park. Unless she has two absolutely identical pairs, she was wearing those.’
French had been turning the shoes over in his hand.
‘You said you saw a mark of where someone had slipped on the bank behind the wall you threw the tracing over,’ he went on. ‘You might describe that mark.’
‘It was just a kind of scrape on the sloping ground, with the footprint below it. Her foot had evidently slipped down till it came to a firmer place.’
‘Right foot or left?’
‘Right.’
‘And which way was the toe pointing: towards the bank or parallel with it?’
‘Parallel. She had evidently climbed up diagonally.’
‘Quite so. Now another question. If you were standing in the field looking towards the bank, did she climb towards the right hand or the left?’
‘The left.’
‘And the soil where the mark was; you might describe that.’
‘It was rather light in colour, a yellowish brown. It was clayey, and the print showed clearly, like as it would in stiff putty.’
French nodded.
‘Then, Mr Cheyne, if all your data is right, and if the footprint was made by Miss Merrill when she was wearing these shoes, I should expect to find a mark of yellowish clay on the outside of the right shoe. Isn’t that correct?’
Cheyne thought for a moment, then signified his assent.
‘I turn up this shoe,’ French continued, suiting the action to the word, ‘and I find here the very mark I was expecting. See for yourself. I think we may take it then, not only that Miss Merrill made the mark on the bank, and of course made it last night, but also that she was wearing these shoes when she made it. And that would coincide with your observation.’
‘But,’ cried Cheyne, ‘I don’t understand. How did the shoes get here? Miss Merrill wasn’t here since we left to go to Wembley Park.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Well, there’s what Dangle said. I don’t mean of course that I believe Dangle. Everything else he’s said to me has turned out to be a lie. But in this case the circumstances seem to prove this story. If he didn’t see Miss Merrill how did he know of her getting over the wall for the tracing? And if he didn’t capture her then why did she not return here. Or rather, suppose she did return, why should she go away again without leaving a note or sending me a message?’
French shook his head.
‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘I merely asked the question and your answer certainly seems sound: But now let us look about the coat.’ He opened the wardrobe door. ‘Is the cloth coat she was wearing last night here?’
A glance showed Cheyne the brown cloth, fur-trimmed coat Joan had worn on the previous evening.
‘And you will see further,’ went on French when he had been satisfied on this point, ‘that there is no coat here of musquash fur. You say she had one?’
‘Yes. I have seen her wearing it several times.’
‘Then I think Mrs Sproule saw her wearing it today. We may take it, I think, either that she returned here last night and changed her clothes, or else that someone brought in her coat and shoes, left them here and took her out others.’
‘The latter, I should think,’ Cheyne declared.
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t think she would come, here of her own free will and leave again without sending me some message.’
French did not reply. He had rather taken the view that if the girl was the prisoner of the gang the garments would not have been changed, and the more he thought over it the more probable this seemed. Rather he was inclined to believe that she had reached her rooms after the episode at Earlswood, possibly even with the tracing; that she had been followed there and by some trick induced to leave again, when in all probability she had been kidnapped and the tracing recovered by the gang. But he felt there was no use in discussing this theory with Cheyne, whose anxiety as to the girl’s welfare had rendered his critical faculty almost useless. He turned back to the young man.
‘I have no doubt that that shoe of Miss Merrill’s made the mark you saw,’ he observed. ‘At the same time I want definite evidence. It won’t take very long to run out to Wembley and try. Let us go now, and that will finish us for tonight.’
They took a taxi and were soon at the place in question. The print was not so clear as when Cheyne had seen it first, but in spite of this French had no difficulty in satisfying himself. The shoe fitted it exactly.
That night after supper, as French stretched himself in his easy-chair, he decided he would have a preliminary look at the tracing. He recognised that the mere fact that it had been handed to Cheyne by Dangle involved the probability that it was not the genuine document but a faked copy. At the same time he was bound to make what he could of it, and it was with very keen interest he unfolded and began to study it.
It was neatly drawn, though evidently not by a professional draughtsman. The lettering of the words, ‘England expects every man to do his duty’ was amateurish. He wondered what the phrase could mean. It did not seem to ring quite true. In his mind the words ran ‘England expects that every man this day will do his duty,’ but he rather thought this was the version in the song, and if so, the wording might have been altered from the original for metrical reasons. He determined to look up the quotation on the first opportunity. On the other hand it might have been condensed into eight words in order to fit round the sheet. It was spaced in a large circle among the smaller circles like the figures of a clock. It conveyed to him no idea whatever, except the obvious suggestion of Nelson. Could Nelson, he wondered, or Trafalgar, be the key word in some form of cipher?
As he studied the sheet he noted some points which Cheyne appeared to have missed, or which at all events he had not mentioned. While the circles were spaced without any apparent plan—absolutely irregularly, it seemed to French—there was some evidence of arrangement in their contents. Those nearer the edges of the tracing contained letters, while those more centrally situated bore numbers. There was no hard and fast line, between the two, as letters and numbers appeared, so to speak, to overlap each other’s territory, but broadly speaking the arrangement held. He noticed also a few circles which contained neither numbers or letters, but instead tiny irregular lines. There were only some half dozen of these, but all of them so far as he could see occurred on the neutral territory between the number zone and the letter zone. These irregular lines represented nothing that he could imagine, and no two appeared of the same shape.
That the document was a cipher he could not but conclude, and in vain he puzzled over it until long past his usual bed-time. Finally, locking it away in his desk, he decided that when he had completed the obvious investigations which still remained, he would have another go at it, working through all the possibilities that occurred to him systematically and thoroughly.
But before French had another opportunity to examine it, further news had come in which had led him a dance of several hundred miles, and left him hot on the track of the conspirators.