Читать книгу The Amazing Martin Brett - Ernest Dudley - Страница 5

THE CASE OF THE BURIED HATCHET

I opened the door with MARTIN BRETT on the frosted-glass panel and went in. He was standing by the window looking down at the street, and as I crossed over I caught a glimpse below of the tall, plump figure that was Farringdon Tisdall get into a sleek limousine and drive off. The great financier had just left after half-an-hour’s interview with Mr. Brett, and the aroma of cigar hung expensively all over the office. He had also left a retaining-fee of mouth-watering magnitude, his personal cheque for which I placed on the desk.

“What it must be like to be filthy rich,” I said. I was thinking of how the money could set me up cosily in the way of frothy frillies and other girlish fancies.

“They tell me you can still sleep badly for all the cash in Farringdon Tindall’s coffers,” Mr. Brett said over his shoulder.

I said: “If you had that amount to spend, who’d worry about wasting time in bed.”

Still without turning his gaze from the direction the car had gone, Mr. Brett said; “Perhaps you’ll be intrigued to know you won’t be climbing into your cot early tonight, anyway.”

Which brought from me a look of interest plus surprise, plus slight apprehension. What job were we going on this time after office-hours? I said: “Mr. Brett? Someone we know throwing a party?”

He came away from the window, moved slowly to his desk, tapped the ash off his cigarette. “Farringdon Tisdall is,” he said. “We’re invited.”

“How awfully jolly of him,” I said as casually as I could. Though, of course, I was rather thrilled. I’d got a cunning little white number I hadn’t worn since I bought it, and this promised to be the sort of occasion where it should be put to the test. There’d be a really smart crowd there, I knew. I’d heard of the kind of parties Farringdon Tisdall put on. Everything regardless. But inside that new gown and a hair-do—if my hairdresser could fit it in—I felt I could cope. I asked:

“What are we there for, to keep an eye on the silver?”

He handed me a small piece of paper. It had been torn from an ordinary writing pad and on it were gummed in letters cut from a newspaper:

‘DEAR SIR—SOMEONE WILL BE AFTER

THE CRIMSON LAKE TONIGHT. THIS IS

A WARNING FROM A

WELL-WISHER.’

Mr. Brett explained; “The Crimson Lake is a ruby, quite an expensive piece.” He nodded towards the bit of paper. “He received it this morning.”

“Has he got anyone in mind?”

“Nobody in particular. But after he brushed off my suggestion, mightn’t it merely be a hoax, he pointed out there’ll be two or three hundred guests stamping around tonight. Among them possibly one who simply can’t wait to get his hands on the ruby.”

“I should have thought if he’d locked the thing away somewhere good and safe, he’d have nothing to worry about.”

He eyed the tip of his cigarette and said slowly: “That did occur to me, too.”

There was a faintly derisive note in his voice, which made me glance at him sharply. But he only grinned at me enigmatically and bunged into the chair and put his feet up on the desk. I studied the warning message again in case I’d missed anything significant about it. I noticed the letters were neatly cut out and showed up with a pinkish edge to them against the white paper on which they’d been gummed. Nothing startling in all that though, and I looked inquiringly at Mr. Brett. His long face was as full of expression as a poker-playing mandarin—if mandarins play poker, which is something I’ve never asked about.

“I’m a girl of simple ideas,” I shrugged. “So whatever it is goes on, goes on way over my head.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“It’s what you’re thinking.”

“Something tells me you evidently suspect more in this than meets the eye.” He indicated Farringdon Tisdall’s cheque. “Personally, only thing of any importance meets my eye is that. Which offers me the greatest inducement, so far, for taking on the job.” He paused. “And yet somehow, Beautiful,” he went on—and I gave him the chill stare I always handed him when he used that familiar tone with me—“I’m getting the idea there night be another interesting attraction to the case after all. Apart from this,” picking up the cheque and carefully putting it in his wallet.

I didn’t get his drift at all. But something had caused him to reach the conclusion he was going to have to work harder on the job this evening than merely prop up Farringdon Tisdell’s buffet-bar. I had the smart idea the cheque had something to do with it. I’d never known him act like that over one before, tucking it away as if it were a vital clue or something. Always cheques were just put aside until I paid them into his account in the routine way. But this one was obviously more important than that. How or why exactly I couldn’t guess, so I waited for him to tell me more.

His eyes were narrowed as he said: “I’ll need all the dope on Tisdall pronto. Bill Foster will fix you up. You’ll have to see him personally, so better organize it soon’s you had your lunch.”

“Yes, Mr. Brett.” I glanced at my wristwatch. “If that’ll be all for now, I’ll start moving. It’s about time to put on the nose-bag.”

He nodded. “Dig up everything you can from the Tisdall files, and flutter your long eyelashes at Bill. When it comes to knowing the inside stuff on people, his big ear’s closer to the ground than anyone in Fleet Street. Especially if it’s dirty ground.”

I resented his suggestion as being uncalled for, and unnecessary I switched on the old eye-work business with men. After all, I can’t help it if my eyelashes are long. But Mr. Brett always likes to get in a dig at my face or figure, just because I don’t happen to look like the back of a cab, and my curves happen in the right places. As I’ve probably mentioned before, I have the notion he sounds off that way on account of some secret sorrow, some woman in his past. Which is a pity; plenty fall for him who could help him forget that yesterday’s memory if he’d give them the chance. But all they ever get from him is the sort of encouragement you’d give a cobra without its fangs drawn.

However, I just pretended not to notice he’d said anything I didn’t like, and said: “I gather you think Mr. Tisdall may have a skeleton in his cupboard?”

“Now you come to mention it,” he said, “I fancy I did catch the echo of something rattling back of his mind during our little chat. Or it may only have been the mice.”

And with a sardonic grin Mr. Brett stubbed out his cigarette and left it at that. I manhandled a sandwich and two cups of coffee at a cafeteria and grabbed a taxi for Fleet Street. As I paid it off outside the Daily Courier office, I was just in time to catch Bill Foster coming through the swing doors. He was looking bigger and untidier than ever and whooped like a Red Indian when he saw me. He was going for a drink and a bite, but when I told him what I was after, he took my arm in his dear old breezy way and we went up in the lift to the newsroom. It was pretty quiet as newsrooms went, and I parked myself on my desk and smiled graciously at a passing copy-boy who ogled my legs, while Bill got me the file on Farringdon Tisdall.

It was a fat file, all right. Tisdall had stamped his dynamic personality on the world of finance in no uncertain way. With the cuttings on his meteoric business career went all the trimmings of his social climb. His yacht, his racing-stable, his country houses, villa on the Mediterranean, all the rest. Plenty about the Blue Lake Sapphire too. While I was working my way through it, scribbling notes of any stuff that looked particularly interesting for Mr. Brett, Bill ambled off and returned with another file, which he slapped down beside the other.

He watched my face as I stared at It, a bit puzzled. The name on the file was LYDIA DELMAR. Which didn’t mean anything to me at all. Except made me think of a name for some ice cream or something.

“Getting your names a bit mixed, Bill, aren’t you?” I said.

He shook his head, his smile broader.

“You want the inside stuff as well, you said.”

I tapped the Delmar file. “But where does she—?”

“He was nuts about her,” Bill said.

Lydia Delmar’s press-clippings were mostly photographs. Photos of an extremely delectable-looking blonde. The earlier captions underneath told you she was the well-known mannequin, and I began to remember I’d seen her in the smart fashion magazines. Then came some later photos of her smiling dreamily at a nice-looking dark young man with a sprinkle of confetti around his ears. The captions included his name, Raymond Ward. Bill Foster jabbed at him with his pipe-stem.

“He used to be Tisdall’s private secretary.”

“Like that was it?” I said.

“Like that,” Bill said. “Chucked the big man, she did, for the other one.”

“What’s happened to them now?”

“Lydia’s in New York working for some advertising firm, I believe. The boy’s still around London, trying to scrape enough money to go out and join her.”

“Not much of a marriage, that.”

“Oh, I expect they write each other. Often think marriages would work out better if the husband lived in one country and the wife in another.”

“You have the dearest ideas,” I told him.

He grinned back at me. Then he said reflectively. “It knocked Tisdall all of a doodah. Some say he’s never forgiven either of ’em. Hardly credit it, eh? Fact. All that dough, power couldn’t buy him that little doll.” He jabbed Lydia Delmar’s photo with his pipe. “’Course, Tisdall kicked out young Ward on the spot. Real vicious, he was. S’pose it hit his pride and all that.”

“Quite the dramatic stuff,” I said, taking a cigarette from my case. Bill held a match to it, then applied it to his pipe. He puffed away thoughtfully for a moment, until the match he’d forgotten to blow out burned his fingers. Idly he turned some of the cuttings from the big file and picked out a photo of Tisdall.

“Talking of dramatics,” he said slowly, “I always have the feeling one of these days I’ll see that dial over a caption of quite a different kind.”

I looked at him curiously. “How different?”

“I dunno,” he muttered. “Something—unpleasant.”

I studied the face again with fresh interest. It wasn’t a nice face, I thought, and remembered that was the reaction I had when he’d come into the office that morning. It was puffy and the eyes were small and lidless. But staring at it now, it didn’t give me any reason to guess just how soon Bill Foster’s prophetic words would be coming home like birds of ill-omen to roost.

When I got back, Mr. Brett was in, looking very much the same as when I’d left him, with his feet still up on the desk. Just as if he’d never been out of the office. Automatically I expected to see the whisky-bottle at his elbow—he often stayed behind and took his lunch from that. But it was nowhere around. Instead, there were several newspapers draped over everything, which weren’t there before, so I knew he had in fact been out. I looked in again presently with the Farringdon Tisdall dope, and he was staring at the anonymous message through a magnifying glass. Apparently he was comparing it with something in one of the newspapers. Then I noticed ail the papers were financial sheets. The Financial Market, Daily Finance, and so on.

After a while it seemed to sink in I was in the same room with him, and he turned and gave me a grin. “How’s it feel to watch the Great Sleuth at work?” He said, with that sarcastic jeer which was his own particular brand. “Give you a thrill?”

“From where I’m standing, you look more like someone playing the Stock Market, in a crazy sort of way,” I said. “Here’s the stuff on Farringdon Tisdall.”

And I went back to my office to get on with the job of dealing with the mailing, the filing—the routine stuff which Mr. Brett apparently fondly imagines is done by a troupe of tender-hearted pixies after I’ve locked up for the day.

After a while the speaking-machine on my desk crackled, and his voice came at me like water sizzling over hot coals. “Leave your lipstick and compact for now, Gorgeous, you’re wanted.”

“Yes, Mr. Brett,” I said back into the box even more icily if possible than ever, and pulling a face at the darned thing. It would happen his jibe in the dark would catch me coincidentally just at the moment I’d paused to fix my make-up. I made an irritable grab for my notebook and went on in. He was by the window moodily contemplating the street. On a chair beside him was one of the newspapers, the warning letter, and the magnifying glass. He turned to me and passed on the newspaper, which was of a pinky shade.

“Take a look at that.”

I saw at once part of a column he’d marked off with pencil. I puzzled at it, doing my best to appear as if it was making sense. Seemingly it was an extract from some company report, jam full of technical terms and references whose meaning was clear to me as mud. If it had been written in Aztec, it couldn’t have told me more.

“Very interesting,” I said.

“If you find that improving to the mind,” he grinned, “this should kill you.” And handed me the letter. “Take a peek at it, through this,” giving me the glass.

And then, bingo! I got what he was getting at.

The letters forming the warning message had obviously been cut out from an issue of the newspaper I’d just been looking at. Comparison proved that the type was identical with that of the pencilled column. Under the magnifying glass, the pink edge I’d only half-noticed earlier on round each letter so neatly gummed to the writing paper was the exact shade of the newsheet.

Mr. Brett saw by my face that the penny had dropped. “Came a great light,” he murmured sardonically:

“And what does it add up to?” I said.

He lit a cigarette and idly watched a puff of smoke curl ceilingwards, before he said slowly:

“It adds up to the possibility that the sender of the note warning Farringdon Tisdall his pet ruby was in danger of being pinched was himself a reader of the financial press. From which hypothesis—” Mr. Brett cleared his larynx and his manner became almost expansive, sure sign he was beginning to enjoy listening to the sound of his own voice, “—could evolve a logical sequence of questions. For example, what persons most interested in the ruby are also interested followers of newspapers devoted solely to finance? Having answered that one, you could by a narrowing-down process proceed inevitably to put your finger on the party who sent the letter.”

“And when will you be taking that rabbit out of the hat?” I said. He regarded me with that derisive grin of his through another cloud of cigarette smoke.

“I’ll do nay utmost, Dream Girl,” he said, “to show you the trick tonight.”

* * * * * * *

Farringdon Tisdall’s house in Highgate was a whacking great white mansion place standing in its own grounds screened from the road by trees, with a wide drive curving up to it. Mr. Brett didn’t habitually claim the power of sixth sense, but on this occasion he seemed to have the idea nothing sensational would happen at the party before we appeared, so on our arrival the drive was already packed with opulent-looking cars, and I caught the sound of a dance-orchestra giving out as we went. up the steps.

Coming back to the hall to find Mr. Brett after dumping my cape, I caught sight of a face that made me stop in my tracks. I’m pretty good at recognizing people and it was him all right. I must have been staring pretty hard. Anyhow he turned his head and stared back, finally giving me a tentative half-smile. I didn’t reciprocate, however, not with the idea of snubbing him, but because I was too preoccupied. I hurried on my way and found Mr. Brett standing somewhat aloof from the crowd milling round.

“Guess who I’ve just seen?” I said a trifle breathlessly.

“I’ll buy it. Who?”

“Raymond Ward, the ex-secretary who pinched his girlfriend. Remember?” Well, not unnaturally I expected him to show some sign of surprise or even a mild interest, but all he did was to go a little bleak round the mouth and gaze past my left ear with a faraway expression.

“Wonder which way the bar is?” he said.

But before he could make a move, a character with receding hair had come up and eyed him expectantly.

“Mr. Martin Brett?”

Mr. Brett nodded.

“My name is Selby. Mr. Tisdall’s secretary.”

“Good,” Mr. Brett said, without any enthusiasm whatsoever.

Farringdon Tisdall had certainly taken no chances over the man he’d hired to take the place of young Ward.

Selby was a weedy-looking individual with thick-lensed spectacles and about as much appeal as a jellyfish.

I calculated there was practically no risk at all of him running off with anybody’s girlfriend, except maybe another jellyfish. And she’d have to be frantically hard up. He coughed apologetically, looked as if he was washing his hands without any soap, and said;

“Mr. Tisdall asked me to look out for you soon as you arrived. He would like to see you in the library.”

Mr. Brett said abruptly: “Has he got any drink there?”

The secretary looked slightly startled, but recovered himself to smile thinly. “I’m sure Mr. Tisdall will be able to offer you some refreshment.”

Mr. Brett threw him a nod and we trailed off to the library. Farringdon Tisdall greeted us with quite a show of affability, and with a cigar which looked about three feet long stuck in his face, began pouring out the drinks. As he handed them to us, he said:

“I thought we might have a chat and if there’s anything you’d like to know that would be useful....” He left the rest of the sentence suspended on the cigar smoke and looked helpful.

Mr. Brett let his gaze take in the surroundings over the rum of his glass. And Farringdon Tisdall’s library was something that you really had to take in. Luxury literally leered at you from every side. Rich oak panelling from floor to ceiling, curtains and tapestries that glowed with gorgeous colour, and a carpet so thick you felt you were walking in velvet up to your ankles,

After a moment Mr. Brett said: “Where’s the ruby tucked away?”

The other crossed obediently to the wide fireplace, and then pressed somewhere underneath the massive ornately carved mantelpiece. At his touch a section of the woodwork about nine inches square sprang open to reveal a small wall safe. “Neat isn’t it?” Mr. Tisdall said over his shoulder. He went on; “Needless to say, we in this room are the only people who know if its existence.”

Mr. Brett glanced casually at Selby who’d remained unobtrusively in the background, making no contribution to the conversation, and doing precious little to improve the scenery either. Now, however, he ventured to put his oar in with:

“And my predecessor.”

“Ah, yes,” Farringdon Tisdall murmured as if reminded of the fact. His face took on an abstract expression, then he seemed to dismiss whatever it was he’d been thinking, and bent slightly in an attitude of concentration before the safe.

There was a sharp metallic click and the safe-door swung back. Mr. Tisdall rummaged inside and after a moment held the Crimson Lake under the light for our inspection. It was beautiful, glowing up at us like something alive. I cooed the usual assortment of appropriately admiring remarks while Mr. Brett, his thoughts for all I knew wandering round the wilds of Tibet or somewhere, gazed at it as if it was a bit of coloured glass.

Then Farringdon Tisdall looked up and said conversationally: “By the way, Mr. Selby’s—er—predecessor already referred to happens to be one of my guests tonight.” He smiled slowly. but it seemed to me it didn’t quite match up with his lidless eyes. “Yes,” he went on smoothly, “the circumstances of his leaving were somewhat painful to me at the time, but I hope all that’s forgotten now. And forgiven. His presence here is in fact an attempt on my part to persuade him to let bygones be bygones. Ward his name is, Raymond Ward. Charming and very able young man.” He considered a moment while Mr. Brett and I didn’t bat an eyelash, though what we were hearing hardly added up to the inside-story tipped off to me by Bill Foster. Mr. Tisdall was continuing: “I feel I was perhaps too harsh on him. After all, one shouldn’t forget the time when one’s self was young—” He broke off and turned to Selby: “Mr. Ward has arrived?”

“Er—yes,” the other nodded.

“Perhaps you’d find him presently and say I’d be glad for him to join me over a drink?”

“Very well.” He hesitated for a moment and then muttered: “If you’ll excuse me, there are one or two other matters I have to attend to.”

After he’d gone, Mr, Brett said: “Presumably your secretary has some idea why we’re here?”

“He knows who you are, yes. No one else does, of course.”

“And the letter?”

“I told him about that—I saw no reason why I shouldn’t. Why?”

“No reason at all,” Mr. Brett agreed amiably.

He began to wander apparently aimlessly round the room drawing abstractedly at his cigarette. I had worn out all the superlatives I could think up over the ruby, and there was a little silence. Mr. Tisdall glanced at Mr. Brett over his cigar, shot a glance of inquiry at me, which I answered with a beaming smile, leaving him to make what he liked of it, and he crossed over to the safe with the ruby. As he bent to close it up, he said over his shoulder: “Of course, as an added precaution I switch the combination every two or three days. Only Selby and I know what it is.”

The remark was intended for Mr. Brett, who, however, appeared to have lost what little interest he’d ever had in the jewel and was, I saw from the corner of my eye glancing idly through some magazines and newspapers on a table. I covered up his unresponsiveness by blathering something about what a smart idea it was for Mr. Tisdall to take the extra precaution.

And then Mr. Brett spoke from the other side of the room, very quietly. “No risk of either of you jotting down the combination and leaving it about for anyone else to see?” he asked, which just shows what a mistake it is to kid yourself he ever lets a darn thing get past him, no matter how much you think his mind’s on something else at the time.

The other replied that the combination was simple enough to remember, no need to write it down, you just kept it in your head. A few minutes later we left Farringdon Tisdall in the library, and Mr. Brett complaining he was still thirsty, was pushing off in the direction of what he hoped was a bar. On our way we saw Selby talking to Raymond Ward, and they passed us, presumably going to the library. The secretary peered at us shortsightedly with a nod of acknowledgement, while the other looked at me as if he’d liked to give me that tentative half-smile again.

Mr. Brett leant against the bar for a surprisingly short time and I trailed after him back to the hall. He lit a cigarette for me, then his own, and I listened to the dance-music watching the celebrities, and those who thought they were, passing to and fro, while he fixed his eyes in a basilisk stare on the passage leading to the library. Presently he relaxed somewhat and Raymond Ward appeared.

Mr. Brett went purposefully over to him.

“Mr. Ward?”

The other said; “Yes,” saw me, and definitely brightened. Mr. Brett cut out the fancy work, said straight away who he was.

“Think a quiet little chat is indicated,” he said, while Ward was recovering from his surprise, and led the way over to a secluded corner behind the wide staircase. There was a sudden air of urgency about him which made me give him a sideways glance.

“First,” he said briskly, “hasn’t it struck you as slightly incongruous your being here tonight?”

Ward caught the unmistakable implication behind the question. “You mean him inviting me—of all people?” And went on: “Well he phoned and said he was prepared to forget what happened, let bygones be bygones and all that, if I felt the same way about it. He wanted to bury the hatchet, he said, and would I come to this party and we’d shake hands over a drink. So—well—I don’t go in for bearing malice and here I am.”

“You didn’t think this idea might be to bury the hatchet in you?” Mr. Brett said, and the other looked at him sharply.

“What d’you mean?”

“Never mind,” Mr. Brett waved the idea aside. “So you’ve been having a drink and Farringdon Tisdall’s been magnanimous all over the library. Quite like old times, eh?”

Ward grinned. “Roughly that,” he said. “He asked after Lydia—my wife you know.” He hesitated and said: “He and Lydia were—”

“I know,” cut in Mr. Brett.

“Matter of fact, it was quite like old times.” And he laughed, as if something had amused him. “He even asked me to show him an old handkerchief trick that used to peeve him because he could never do it.”

“What handkerchief trick?”

“Tie it so it looks like a rabbit. He always made a hash of it. Even when he tried it just now.”

I noticed the handkerchief protruding from his breast pocket looked a little crumpled.

Mr. Brett’s face suddenly froze. Then:

“I’m interested in tricks,” he said softly. “Show.”

Raymond Ward smiled and proceeded to oblige. As he pulled the handkerchief out something slipped from its folds and lay in the palm of his hand. He stared at it stupidly.

“Some trick,” murmured Mr. Brett as the Crimson Lake ruby gleamed up at us. He grabbed it. “Wait here,” he snapped at the other, who was still glassy-eyed as if he’d been kicked smartly in the stomach by a recalcitrant mule, and was gone.

I managed to catch up with him as he reached the library and followed him in, to be brought up with a sickening shock. Farringdon Tisdall hadn’t in my opinion made a particularly pretty picture before, but now slumped over his writing desk with his head bashed in, he was a ghastly sight. Mr. Brett had already crossed to him.

“Is he dead?” I asked, my voice sounding as if it belonged to someone else.

He nodded grimly, glanced at a hefty-looking ornament—which could have done the job—sprawled on the desk amongst scattered papers and capsized inkstand from which green ink had spilled and was staining the gorgeous carpet. He jabbed a bell push, and then I followed his look across to where the wall safe gaped wide-open. My brain was spinning round in crazy circles as I tried to make sense of what must have happened. It seemed fantastic to believe Raymond Ward could have done this terrible thing, yet— My bewilderment was momentarily interrupted as Selby hurried into the room. He stared unbelievingly at the figure at the desk, then swayed and seemed as if he was about to collapse, only Mr. Brett brought him up with a jerk.

“Get the police,” he said curtly.

“But—but a doctor?” the secretary gasped as he moved like a sleepwalker to the phone.

“Needn’t worry about that for the moment. Police.”

Selby mumbled incoherently and lifted the receiver. Mr. Brett stared across at him through a puff of cigarette smoke and said slowly: “I’ll talk to ’em. And you’d better make it good.”

My heart seemed to stop in that dreadful silence as Selby blinked over the receiver and mouthed: “What—what d’you mean?”

“Only you knew that combination beside Tisdall. Trouble was, when you opened the safe you were too late. He’d already planted it on young Ward.” He thrust his hand into his pocket and brought out the Crimson Lake. “That’s what you were after, wasn’t it?”

Selby’s face was drained putty-colour. “I—I haven’t been in here since Ward,” he rasped.

“That won’t do either,” Mr. Brett smiled bleakly. “Look at your shirt cuff.”

The other sucked in his breath and peered short-sightedly at his hand clutching the phone. The cuff showing above it was stained with ink bright green.

* * * * * * *

“Of course,” said Mr. Brett in the taxi later, “Selby planned the whole thing with the idea suspicion would fall on Ward. The mere fact Ward hadn’t the ruby on him wouldn’t necessarily clear him—police could argue he’d hidden it to collect later. But what Selby didn’t know was Tisdall had invited his ex-secretary for sole purpose of planting the ruby on him, then accusing him of theft.”

“Motive: revenge?”

“Just that. Tisdall himself concocted an anonymous warning as excuse to have me on the spot when his scheme went into operation. I confirmed my earlier hunch on that score when I took a peek at his papers in the library. Remember the financial sheet, type identical with gummed letters of note? Tisdall had an issue of that paper, with bits cut out of it.”

I murmured something appropriately appreciative of Mr. Brett’s talents. Mr. Brett, who was beginning to wallow in the sounds from his own vocal chords again, went on: “He planted the stone when Ward was doing his handkerchief trick. Selby, the moment the boy goes, pops into library, socks Tisdall, and then discovers he’s done the dirty deed for nothing. No ruby. So he beats it. The rest....” And he allowed the rest to melt into cigarette smoke.

I remembered something. “What about your cheque?” I asked. “Now Farringdon Tisdall’s no longer with us?”

Mr. Brett smiled at me derisively from the darkness of the taxi. “Cashed it this morning. When I went out to get the papers. Just an idea I had something inconvenient might happen to my client.”