Читать книгу The Double - Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

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Dick looked at the thumbprint, hardly believing the evidence of his senses. The Slough murder was one of the classic cases where an unknown man commits a murder in broad daylight, escapes leaving a fingerprint, is not arrested, and disappears as though the earth has opened for him. How many hundreds, how many thousands of new criminals who had fallen into the hands of the police had had their thumbprints taken and compared with the mark on the pistol? He himself had examined the impressions, every whorl, every island—he could have almost drawn it from memory.

“The whole case is rather mysterious, isn’t it? Why should they have gone into Derrick’s house at all? Even the pictures on the walls are hardly worth more than their frames. Yet this is the second attempt that has been made.”

“Third,” corrected Bourke. “There’s one that Derrick doesn’t know about. Do you know what I think? Sit down.” Superintendent Bourke liked his audience to be seated. “Old man Derrick, Walter Derrick’s father, had a hobby——”

“I’ve heard about it,” said Dick. “Curiously enough, his son was telling me last night.”

“About the fingerprints?”

Dick nodded.

“He must have collected thousands,” said Bourke. “We used to call him ‘the amateur record officer.’ He was out to find two fingerprints exactly alike and upset the whole of our organization. Although he was the most miserly man I ever heard about—they say he ran that big house of his on five pounds a week—he went to any amount of expense to collect the prints. He was as fanatical as a stamp fiend. He even paid collectors in big factories to send him specimen prints. The only joy he had in life was to sit over them night and day, comparing, measuring, and classifying. I must say that he knew the subject even better than our man at Scotland Yard—at any rate, as well. If his eyesight hadn’t failed he might have made a discovery of some sort.”

He looked at Dick long and earnestly, and Inspector Staines knew his chief well enough to refrain from stimulating him.

“I’ll tell you what my theory is,” said Bourke at last. “I believe, in the course of his collecting, by some accident he got the thumbprint of the Slough murderer.”

“But the collection has been destroyed,” said Dick.

“Has it?” Bourke was obviously skeptical. “I know that as soon as Walter Derrick got home and got to work he began to clear out the collection. They were bound up in books; there was a whole wall full of ’em. As a matter of fact, I know because I saw them. After the old man died Walter sent to the Yard and asked if we’d like to accept them, but we’ve no use for law-abiding folk, so we turned the offer down. They were afterward destroyed—but were they all destroyed? This bird who is in Walter Derrick’s house at odd moments knows as much about the burning of the collection as anybody else. Why, then, does he take the trouble and risk and spend the money? He or she is looking for a fingerprint. Twice they’ve been after it; once they had the house to themselves—it was when he was in Monte Carlo—that’s why he had the caretaker put in—and not once have they stolen anything valuable.”

Bourke threw out his arms with a dramatic gesture.

“My son, go get this lady and gentleman and you’ll find the man who killed the Slough cashier!”

Dick approached this case as he had approached a dozen others, by forgetting all that he knew about it. But some things were very difficult to forget. Happily the gray-eyed nurse was no longer under suspicion. He was thinking a lot about the gray-eyed nurse; he said very scornful and derisive things about himself, made grimaces of contempt when he was shaving in the morning, and in more charitable moments was slightly amused by his own stupidity, his childishness.

Here was something very beautiful that had swum into his ken and had vanished again—a comet figure of loveliness and grace, visible just so long as it takes to stir a man’s imagination, long enough to throw tiny roots in his heart so that the wrenching out was very painful. He would never see her again.

Tommy, it seemed, was more fortunate. He had seen her at Littlehampton—whither Mr. Cornfort had moved—reading in one of the shelters on the foreshore, Mr. Cornfort sleeping, the shabby and unshaven chairman smoking a surreptitious pipe behind the shelter, having propped the wheels of his Bath chair with large cobbles. All of this Tommy related in a letter.

Naturally, old boy [he wrote], I hopped off my machine and gave her a how-d’you-do. She was most affable, and asked after you. Then the old gent woke up and cracked a couple of good gags about the weather that I seemed to have heard before (I told her this after he’d gone to sleep again, and she was frightfully amused).

Tommy was going on to Petworth, or somewhere near Petworth, where he had most

ferociously boring relations, who live in a sort of moated castle. Fearfully damp and terribly depressing in wet weather, but dear Aunt Martha may pop off any day, and what with these socialists, dear old boy, you can’t afford to chuck away a chance of beating up an honest penny.

Dick read the letter at Scotland Yard and envied this flighty bachelor who had such wonderful opportunities of meeting the gray-eyed nurse, even in Littlehampton. Why hadn’t Tommy stayed in Littlehampton? he thought irritably. Dick could have gone down to see him, to consult him—well, he would probably have seen her. He had half a mind to tell her of the ludicrous double business, of how at first sight he had confounded her with a soulless adventuress. It almost seemed an excuse worthy of the journey to tell her that alone. He told himself that he was getting childish, which was probably true.

The fingerprint found on the beer glass of the caretaker was without question identical with that found nine years before on the jacket of an automatic pistol. From the Scotland Yard records patient men dragged out every particular about the Slough murder and began to prepare a dossier. To bring that record up to date required no very great ingenuity. When they had finished their labours they knew no more about the murder than they had known nine years before.

Dick had an invitation one morning to lunch with Mr. Walter Derrick at his club. The postscript ran:

By the way, did the fingerprint you found on the glass help you?

He had no intention of telling Derrick of the momentous discovery. It is not the business of the police to arouse unnecessary alarm in the bosoms of innocent citizens. He was by no means sure that Superintendent Bourke’s theory was right, and his first step, now that he had been given the case, was to discover all that was possible about the known actors in this little drama. Mr. Derrick’s position was very clear: he was a very rich man, and it was quite likely that he possessed movable property that would reward a burglar. Old Derrick’s wealth had been largely in real estate, and Dick Staines sought out one of the most important agencies in the City of London, and, by great good luck, picked upon the one firm that could inform him.

The partner whom he interviewed had a great deal to say about the miserly father of Walter, and much of it was uncomplimentary.

“The shrewdest old devil that ever bought land!” was his verdict. “He had an instinct for values. He started life as a working builder, and years ago he used to do his own repairs on his properties. He could handle a trowel with the best of bricklayers, and my father once told me that he had seen him slating the roofs of some small cottage property of his in the south of London.”

“He left a lot of property?” asked Dick.

The partner shook his head.

“Not he,” he said emphatically. “He was too wily a bird; he knew just when values were at their highest and sold. About eighteen months before he died we sold four properties for him, the gross value of which was eight hundred thousand pounds. I remember this distinctly, because there was a wrangle about the commission. He sold another block—two office buildings in the City—through Haytors for a hundred and fifty thousand at the same time. He was a queer old devil and invariably insisted upon being paid in hard cash. No checks for old Joshua! I had the satisfaction of seeing him walk down Queen Victoria Street with a valise containing over half a million pounds in banknotes. So far as I know, he never invested a penny.”

“Probably he bought more property?”

The agent shook his head.

“No, but he was on the point of doing so. The market was rising again just before he died, and I had opened personal negotiations with him for the purchase of a big City block for four hundred and twelve thousand pounds.”

“A man like that must have made enemies?” suggested Dick, but this view was contested.

“All business people make enemies, but I shouldn’t think old Joshua aroused any very strong animosity. Even the estate agents, with whom he bargained to the last penny, did not really dislike him. The only thing he would never sell was his house in Lowndes Square, and I happen to know that he had some very good offers for it, even during the property slump—offers which I imagined he would jump at. But I suppose he had some sentimental interest in the house—he built it, or rebuilt it, himself—and he would never listen to the best of offers.”

Mr. Walter Derrick’s club was a large and handsome establishment in Pall Mall, devoted to motorists. Dick found him waiting in the busy vestibule and was greeted with that cheerful grin which Mr. Derrick gave to all and sundry, for he was a very friendly man.

“Got on my nerves, that infernal burglary,” he said, as he bustled Dick into the crowded dining room. “Couldn’t sleep last night. By the way, that stupid caretaker of mine is beginning to recover his memory. He says the girl was as pretty as paint. That’s the worst of being a rich bachelor. They’ll get you, even if they have to break into the house for you!”

He gurgled with laughter at this jest, but was more serious when he came to speak about the inconveniences to which he had been put.

He was going to the country that evening, he said, leaving a double guard at the town house.

“I still don’t know what these people are after,” he said. “Now if it had been in the days of my governor I could have understood. The poor old man kept all his money in a steel box under his bed—he never had dealings with a banker if he could possibly help it. We found in there—or rather, the nurse found it—four hundred and twelve thousand pounds in banknotes.”

Dick looked up sharply.

“How much?”

Mr. Derrick repeated the sum.

“But that wasn’t all you inherited?”

Walter Derrick’s eyes twinkled.

“It seems to me a fairly useful sum,” he said. “Yes, as a matter of fact that was my inheritance. People think I’m a millionaire—well, I feel like one, and so will you when you have the handling of four hundred thousand pounds!”

A light was beginning to dawn on Dick Staines.

“But did you make any inquiries as to any other moneys he might have had?” he asked. “Didn’t his lawyer——”

“The old gentleman never employed a lawyer,” said Derrick. And then curiously: “Why are you so excited about it, Mr. Staines? There was a little house property, but of no great value. The four hundred and twelve thousand pounds was the total I inherited.”

Dick stared at him incredulously.

“Do you mean that you or your lawyer made no inquiries of the people with whom he had dealings, the estate agents, that you found no receipts or memoranda connected with his business?”

“None,” said Walter slowly. “What are you driving at, Staines?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” said Dick. “Tell me this: did your father die suddenly, or was he ill for very long?”

“He died quite suddenly. He took to his bed one day and was dead the next. Until then he was in perfectly good health. Now what is the mystery?”

It was no mystery to Dick Staines now, as he explained.

“The money you found under his bed was the purchase price of a property for which he was negotiating just before he died. I know that from one firm alone he received eight hundred thousand pounds, from another a hundred and fifty thousand, and probably, if you canvassed the estate agents of London, you would discover that he sold property to the value of a million within a year of his death. Therefore, the money you discovered beneath his bed was only a portion of his actual property, and since he seems to have been in the habit of keeping his wealth in hard cash, it is pretty clear that the remainder is somewhere hidden in your house.”

Walter was staring at him; his face had gone a little pale.

“You must think I’m a fool not to have made these inquiries,” he said; “and I probably am. Just tell me, Staines, what you know, and I promise you that if you’ve been instrumental in restoring my property I shall not forget what I owe to you.”

Dick Staines wriggled a little at this: he had never grown hardened to the promises of reward which had come his way from time to time.

“I suggest that you and I go back to your house and that we make a very thorough search. Somewhere in that house is a hiding place that nobody knew but your father. This is all the more likely because, if I understand aright, he was the builder and probably overhauled the plans of the architect.”

While he was talking he saw Walter Derrick’s lips part to ask a question. The words were unspoken, but Staines knew just what the words were and was a little startled.

They finished their lunch quickly, and Derrick drove him back to the house in Lowndes Square. Dick had already made a survey of the building in daylight. It was bigger than any other house in the square, an ugly edifice, and he might well suspect that the elder Derrick had not only assisted and amended the work of the architect but had been responsible in the main for its unsightly additions.

He had remarked before that in appearance it was not unlike a public institution, with its façade of white glazed brick.

Soon after they had arrived at the house in Lowndes Square, Walter Derrick became his old chuckling self.

“Come along and find the treasure house,” he said.

From room to room they went, pulling up carpets, examining and tapping walls, prying into cupboards that had not been opened, according to Walter, since his father’s death. The house had the solidity of a fortress. The walls were thick; but Walter Derrick explained that his father had a weakness for solidity. As a boy he had lived in an old house that had collapsed in the dead of night, and he had narrowly escaped death.

Most of the rooms were so proportioned as to be positively ugly. Everywhere was evidence of the amateur architect’s hands: odd little staircases that seemed to have been put in as an afterthought; inaccessible windows that must have been the despair of a generation of housekeepers. The façade was not altogether unsightly. Old Mr. Derrick had conformed roughly to the general architecture of the square. There was a stone balcony on each floor, which ran continuously along the two fronts of the block.

For two hours they delved and examined and tapped, but found nothing. Eventually they came to the room where Dick had made his entry that stormy night, and Derrick unlocked a cupboard.

“Here’s something that will interest you,” he said.

He stopped and took out a dusty iron box. It was very heavy; the key was still in the lock.

“This is the box which contained the money and a few odds and ends of no great value.”

It was as much as Dick could do to lift the box and swing it onto a table. It was made of solid steel and was deep and wide. He opened the lid and saw inside a curious brass instrument which had the appearance of a syringe. There were two curved grips, and, silver at the end of the piston, a grip rather like the butt of a pistol. Attached to the other end was a large cup of red rubber.

“What is this fearsome weapon?” he asked, examining it curiously.

“I’ve never been able to find out.”

It was strongly made and heavy; the brass cylinder was seven inches in diameter and short. Projecting from the cylinder end on either side were two stout brass grips about four inches long. He puzzled over this for a little while, and then saw what it was; and, wetting the edges of the rubber cup, he pressed the rubber flat upon the polished surface of the steel box and drew back the piston end. Presently he heard a click, and the piston moved no more. Holding the two grips, he lifted the steel box from the table. As he thought, it was a small vacuum machine, and not until he had found the spring that released the pistol grip and allowed it to sink back again was he able to pry loose the rubber cup from the surface of the box.

“Where was this?” he asked.

“It was inside the chest with the money. I think it was on top.”

Dick put back the “sucker” in the box and closed the lid.

Later that afternoon he interviewed a retired builder in the Wandsworth Road: an old man whose memory was a little defective, but who could very well recall the circumstances of his contract with the elder Derrick. He remembered in the course of the building a long, shallow safe coming to the house, but where it was placed he had no knowledge. Mr. Derrick, as Dick suspected, had worked on the building himself, and, to the scandal of the neighbourhood, had even spent his Sundays in an old suit, plying a trowel. More than this: he had stopped all the work for three months and had brought in black workmen. The old builder thought they were Moors, for the only holiday Mr. Derrick permitted himself was an occasional month in Tangier, in the days when living was cheap and it was possible to reach the North Coast of Africa on a fruit boat for a few pounds.