Читать книгу Two Bottles of Relish: The Little Tales of Smethers and Other Stories - Lord Dunsany, Lord Dunsany - Страница 8

INSPECTOR Ulton came to see Mr Linley today. I am glad to say that he has got used to me; the inspector, I mean. He just said, ‘You’re Mr Smethers, aren’t you?’ And I said I was. And he said, ‘Well, you’ll understand that all this is strictly private.’ And I said I would. And then he started talking to Mr Linley.

I’d met Inspector Ulton before over the murder at Unge, and the shooting of Constable Slugger. Mr Linley had helped him a lot.

‘I’ve come to you again, Mr Linley,’ were his first words.

‘Is it Steeger again?’ asked Linley.

‘We don’t know who it is,’ said the inspector. ‘We usually know at the Yard who has done a murder. It’s not very difficult. Motive usually points straight at somebody; and we can easily find if he was in the neighbourhood at the time. Proving it is the only difficulty. This time we can’t even find out who it is. We thought you might help us, Mr Linley.’

‘What is it?’ said Linley.

‘It’s a bad case,’ said the inspector; ‘as bad a case as we’ve had for a long time.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said.

He didn’t pay any attention to me, but I somehow saw from his look that I’d said a silly thing. Bad cases were their job. If they stopped, where would Scotland Yard be? I was sorry as soon as I’d said it.

‘We got a letter at Scotland Yard last week,’ he said, ‘threatening that if Mr Cambell went again to his club, or Inspector Island went to watch a billiard-match at Piero’s, or Sergeant Holbuck played football either at the Scramblers Football Ground or the old Sallovians, each one of them that did so would be killed. Holbuck is one of our best football-players, and those are the only two grounds he ever plays on. Watching billiards at Piero’s was what Inspector Island always did when he could.’

‘But wait a moment, Inspector,’ said Linley. ‘That’s a preposterous threat. The man could never carry it out.’

‘Mr Cambell and Inspector Island are dead already,’ said Ulton.

‘Dead?’ said Linley. And I never saw him so flabbergasted.

‘Mr Cambell went to his club, the Meateaters, in Holne Street, the day that we got the letter, and was poisoned. And Inspector Island went to Piero’s next day to watch a game of billiards, and a piece of the wall above the door fell as he went in, and killed him.’

‘A piece of the wall fell?’ exclaimed Linley incredulously.

‘Yes,’ said the inspector. ‘It was in the papers, though very little about it, as they’ve not held the inquest yet. But we are working on the other case first, as we have a clue there.’

‘What is the clue?’ said Linley.

‘We’ve the finger-print of a waiter at the club, who disappeared on the night of the murder, before Mr Cambell was taken ill. Of course he must have given the poison, but we don’t know much about him or who he really is, and we don’t think he was the man who planned it all.’

‘Can I see the finger-print?’ asked Linley.

And Inspector Ulton brought an envelope out of his pocket and took from it a sheet of paper, and on the paper was the finger-print, very completely in ink. It was one of two sheets of papers for members’ bills, and in the middle of it, very black, was the finger-print. Linley looked at it for a long time.

‘And Piero’s?’ he said at last.

‘That baffles us,’ said the inspector. ‘We have found out that the masonry that killed Island was dislodged by a small explosion that took place very effectively at a joint between two big stones. And the explosive was set off by a delicate mechanism that must have been inserted in the wall from the inside. We can find very little of the machine, not only because the explosion took place inside it, but because it was all mixed up with some stuff called thermite, which burns very fiercely, and which destroyed everything except a few small bars. Anyhow there was a machine that fired the explosive that brought down those pieces of masonry, but what we can’t find is any wires controlling it. The fire was soon put out, and the damage only local, and we have searched all round the door; both sides, above and below; but there’s no sign of a wire.’

‘Could one have been pulled away?’ asked Linley.

‘Not across the open without being seen by someone,’ said Ulton, ‘and there were plenty there. And not underground. We’ve searched; and we’ve made sure there’s no wire, or a channel that it could have run in. It must have been a time-fuse.’

‘Was Inspector Island as regular as all that?’ said Linley.

‘Well, he had regular habits,’ said Ulton, ‘and he got off duty at a certain hour and the game began at a certain time.’

‘To the very second?’ asked Linley.

‘Well, not to the very second,’ he said.

‘And it would have to be about half a second,’ went on Linley. ‘No, the time-fuse won’t do.’

‘I don’t suppose it will,’ said Ulton.

And they were both silent awhile.

‘Well,’ said Linley after a bit, ‘I can tell you one thing. Whoever that waiter was …’

‘He called himself Slimmer,’ said Ulton.

‘Whoever he was,’ said Linley, ‘there’s something a bit deep about him. Deeper than you’ve had time to go yet, I mean. That finger-print shows you that. When did he make it?’

‘It was found after he’d gone,’ said Ulton. ‘What’s odd about it? We find thousands of finger-prints.’

‘Simply,’ said Linley, ‘that a man who is committing a murder doesn’t make a finger-print in ink right in the middle of a sheet of paper, quite so neat and tidy as that, and then leave it where the police can find it handily.’

‘What then?’ said Ulton.

‘Why, it’s not his finger-print. It’s some kind of fake. So that you are dealing with very queer people; people clever enough to forge finger-prints, which I have never heard of being done. Have you?’

But Inspector Ulton would not say what they knew at the Yard and what they didn’t know.

‘I might have,’ he said.

‘It might be done on rubber by a good forger, I should think,’ went on Linley. ‘But the people that did that might be capable of carrying out their threats, which at first I hardly thought possible. Now about the explosion at Piero’s. That must have been controlled by someone who could actually see Island coming. He might have had warning that he was coming when he was fifty yards away, or any other distance, but that would never have been exact enough to kill him. He must have seen him go into Piero’s.’

‘And, if he did, how could he make the thing explode?’ said Ulton.

‘That’s what we’ve got to think about,’ said Linley. ‘What houses are there from which he could see the inspector going up to the door?’

‘There’s several,’ said the inspector.

‘And what about the third man?’ said Linley. ‘Holbuck, didn’t you say?’

‘Yes, Sergeant Holbuck,’ said the inspector. ‘He’s going to play football tomorrow. He won’t stop for the threat. None of them would. But we’re going to see that he’s safe. It’s on the Old Sallovians’ ground. Everyone playing on his side will be members of the Force, and we know every man on the other side. They are all right; and the whole front line of the crowd looking on will be our men, and we’ll have a few extra dotted about behind, all the way round the ground, not to mention the ones that will watch every man coming in at the gate. And then we’ll see him safe back when the game is over: we are not telling anybody how we are going to do that, but we shall not let Holbuck take any chances.’

‘Tomorrow,’ said Linley. ‘May I come?’

‘Yes,’ said Inspector Ulton. ‘This ticket will let you in, but you won’t be allowed to stand in the front row.’

Mr Linley saw me looking at him. ‘Could I have a ticket for my friend?’ he asked. ‘You’d like to come and see what happens, Smethers, wouldn’t you?’

Like to see what happened? Of course I would. And Inspector Ulton looked at me. ‘Oh, yes, he can have a ticket,’ said the inspector then. And he gave the ticket to Linley.

‘It’s really very kind of you,’ I said.

‘Not at all,’ said the inspector.

After Inspector Ulton left Linley said nothing for a long time. He stood gazing hard, with the kind of gaze that doesn’t seem to see anything; nothing here, I mean. And I said nothing to interrupt him. And then he said, ‘Come and sit down, Smethers.’

And we sat in front of the fire. It was winter, by the way, and getting on towards tea-time. Linley began filling his pipe.

‘What is it?’ I said.

‘There’s an awful lot of organization nowadays,’ said Linley, ‘on both sides. With all the organization they’ve got at Scotland Yard, a criminal has either to give it up or to be cleverer than the detectives. The fellow who’s done this of course must have been caught by them at one time, probably by Cambell himself: he was practically their chief man, not nominally, but practically. He’s a spiteful fellow, whoever it is that they are looking for. Probably he was brooding for years in a convict-prison, and turning over and over in his rotten mind his grudges against those three men. And it may be interesting to find out on what occasion those three were working together. That may help to find the man who hates them so much. That finger-print shows you that if he is not an absolute fool he must be a pretty subtle devil. So we may look for a pretty crafty scheme, to find out how Island was killed in the doorway of Piero’s.’

‘I don’t see how he could have done it,’ I said.

‘Do you remember what Ulton found when he was looking for wires?’ he answered. ‘And what then?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘You’re too old,’ said Linley, ‘and so is Inspector Ulton.’

‘I’m not old,’ I said. ‘Nor is he.’

‘You were both born before wireless got into its stride,’ said Linley.

‘Wireless?’ I said.

‘Of course,’ said Linley. ‘A school-boy would have told you that. He would have been born into a world familiar with wireless. You weren’t. That explosion was worked for the exact second by something: Ulton looks for wires, and can’t find them, and then he is beaten. Simply wireless. A little set buried in the wall.’

‘That’s all very well,’ I said. ‘A little receiving-set is common enough, and no doubt it could work an explosion; but you don’t have a transmitting plant in every house; that’s a very big thing.’

‘That’s what we’ve got to find,’ said Linley.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘how many houses are there from which Piero’s door can be watched?’

‘A lot,’ said Linley, ‘from the other side of the square, and several more in the street on the righthand side of it if you stand with your back to Piero’s.’

Piero’s stood in a little square with a good many trees in it: starlings lived there by night, and sparrows by day. And all kinds of people sat on its benches, each with his or her history, that far outshone this story, if only you could get at it; and amongst them were several of Ulton’s men, in various kit.

‘But we can probably limit it a good deal,’ Linley went on, ‘by cutting out the houses from which Island could not be seen approaching, as the man would have to be all ready to do his dirty work with precision.’

‘Well, let me go and telephone that to Scotland Yard,’ I said. ‘They’ll soon find out if there’s a transmitting-set in one of those houses. A big thing like that can’t be concealed so easily.’

‘Very well, Smethers,’ he said. ‘But wrap it up so that everyone doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Just say to Inspector Ulton that wireless may have done it, and to have a good look in houses that would have a view of Island’s approach as well as the end of his journey.’

And so I did, in pretty much those words, and Scotland Yard seemed quite pleased.

We had tea then and Linley forgot about it all in the deliberate way that he has; letting it simmer in his mind; but with the lid on, as it were. And we talked of all kinds of other things. But a lot later that night, somewhere about ten or eleven, the telephone bell rang, and Linley went out and answered it and came back and said to me: ‘No transmitting-sets in any of the houses. What do you make of that, Smethers?’

‘Looks as if you were on the wrong track,’ I said.

‘Not while there’s a telephone,’ answered Linley.

And I never made head nor tail of that.

‘I hope it will be all right tomorrow,’ he said. ‘A fellow like that is bound to do something pretty crafty. We are sure to see something.’

‘What shall we see?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Linley. ‘But the fellow reminds me of a weasel. He’s bound to follow Holbuck. Will Ulton be able to catch him?’

‘He ought to,’ I said, ‘with a couple of hundred policemen, or however many he’s going to bring.’

‘It isn’t numbers that do it,’ said Linley, ‘when you have cunning like that.’ And then he added suddenly, ‘Let’s come and have a look at the ground.’

‘At this hour?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Linley, ‘I don’t want to sleep, and we may as well do our thinking there as anywhere else.’

It was kind of him to put it like that, as though I were going to do much thinking. Well, of course I came with him, and we got a bus, and we came to a part of London where they have tramlines. And soon we left the bus and got into one of the trams, all among people going home late.

‘I suppose Sergeant Holbuck is a pretty tough fellow,’ I said, ‘if he plays football against the Old Sallovians.’

‘I don’t know him,’ said Linley, and went on reading his paper. And I noticed that a man on the opposite side, some way further up the tram, turned a little away from me and gazed up at the roof.

We got out soon after that. It was cold, and late, and rather windy. The street we were walking in was nearly empty, except for a man reading an evening paper under a lamp-post. We saw no one else till we came to the next lamp-post, and saw another man reading a newspaper by the light of that. Nothing but cats slipping softly away from their homes, and every now and then a man reading a newspaper. None of these men ever looked at us, but just looked up from their papers and gazed away from us in the direction in which we were going. As we passed each of them the newspaper would give a little flutter, owing to the man turning it over to read on the other side. When I commented on these men to Linley, he said that it was the only time of day that they got for reading, and that they got light from the street-lamps to read by without having to pay for it.

And then the houses stopped, and we came to a big iron paling, and in the paling was the gate of the football-field. One could see dim fields and a winding line of willows, like a crew of gigantic goblins out for a walk. When we came to the gate, one of the men with newspapers coughed at us. And when I called Linley’s attention to that, he said that naturally a man would cough when out reading a paper on such a cold night as this was.

We went all along the paling till it turned, and we turned with it by a little lane with a hedge on the other side. It was nice to see a lane again, after coming through the very middle of London. Then the paling turned once more, and we followed it all round those fields. We could see from the shape of that dark procession of willows, and from a twisty mist, that a stream ran through the fields; and presently we came to where it ran under the paling, and Linley stopped and looked at where it came through, and we saw that it was well wired. It was a very still night, and the mist lying over the stream was motionless, and the twigs of the willows were still as a hand held out to say Hush, and there was no sound in the fields but men coughing, now and again as we passed them. Then Linley drew out a folded copy of a newspaper from his pocket, and carried it in his hand, waving it slightly as he walked, and after a while the coughing stopped.

‘You’ve cured their cough,’ I said.

But he didn’t understand me, so I was quiet again.

We walked away, and came to the streets once more, and went for a long time in silence. Then Linley said: ‘I can’t see how they are going to do it. But I suppose we shall see tomorrow.’

‘I don’t see how they did any of it,’ I said.

‘Well,’ said Linley, ‘the poisoning was easy enough, and the time that that waiter arrived at the Meateaters’ Club probably dates the beginning of it. He had been there ten months. Very likely the crook that is doing all this got out of prison a little while before that. He wouldn’t take long to make his plans; he’d have gone over and over them during his stay in prison, where poor Cambell and Island probably helped to put him. And there wouldn’t be much difficulty in putting the explosive into the wall of Piero’s one night; a mere matter of burglary, and in a house that no one was particularly guarding: Piero’s have some valuable billiard-tables there, but nothing else of any importance, and billiard-tables scarcely lend themselves to burglary.’

‘But how did they send the explosive off?’ I asked.

‘Ah; that was the big job,’ said Linley. ‘And, as it wasn’t done by wires, it must have been done by wireless.’

‘But they found no transmitting-set,’ I pointed out, ‘in any of those houses.’

‘It might have been anywhere,’ said Linley, ‘so long as it was at the other end of a telephone.’

And then the magnitude of the plot began to strike me.

‘But they wouldn’t think of anything as elaborate as that,’ I said.

‘It’s usually the simple things that happen,’ said Linley, ‘and they should all be tried first; but if it isn’t one of them, why then …’

And then we came to our tram, and said no more about that strange plot that had already killed two men and was waiting for yet another.

Next morning Linley told me at breakfast that the game was to begin at 2.30. ‘They had the ground well-watched last night,’ he said, ‘and I don’t see how it could have been possible for anyone to have got in and hidden there, and today everyone who goes in will have to go through the gate with a ticket.’

‘Shall I go and buy a revolver?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Linley. ‘That was all very well in the days of Sherlock Holmes, when you could have dragged a small cannon behind you if you had felt that you wanted one. But the world has got more complicated. More licences needed. It was probably a happier world before it learned to fill in forms. But there it is, and it will probably never go back to those days now. No, no revolvers, Smethers. But keep your eyes open.’

Of course Linley was perfectly right: he always was. But it rather took the excitement out of it to think that we were only going to watch. Well, we should have been able to do no good after all, if we had had revolvers; or machine-guns for that matter.

We didn’t eat much of a lunch. Linley seemed too busy puzzling things over, and I was too excited. Then we went off to the football-ground. We took a taxi this time. We showed our tickets at the gate and were passed in, and no sooner were we inside than we saw an inspector in uniform. ‘Cold night, last night,’ Linley said to him. And the inspector only laughed.

That paling was very strong and high, and spiked at the top: it wouldn’t have been an easy job to get in overnight, to hide there among the willows; and with all those men that there had been coughing in the mist and reading newspapers outside, it would have been impossible. The game had just begun, and we walked along the back of the crowd, looking for Ulton. Most of the men in the crowd seemed to have their hands behind their backs, with walking-sticks or umbrellas in them; and I began to notice that, just as we went by, a stick or umbrella would give a tiny jump. It was a suspicious crowd. It was well organized certainly: the only thing I was a bit uneasy about was whether its suspicions were quite selective enough: if they suspected the right one, whoever he was, when he should come along, or would it be the other way about: that was what I was wondering. And then I thought what cheek it would be if he did come, among all those police, to murder one of them. And cheek was just what he had, or he wouldn’t have sent that threat to Scotland Yard, and carried out already two-thirds of it. Then we saw Inspector Ulton, and Linley went up to him and asked him which was Holbuck. The name of Holbuck excited the crowd near us a good deal, and they began making little signals to watch us, but Ulton gave them a nod to stop them, and pointed out Holbuck to Linley. He was a big fellow, easily recognized, playing full back. I watched the game, especially Holbuck’s part in it; but the ball was away with the forwards, and Holbuck doing nothing as yet. Linley watched the crowd.

After a while Linley turned to me and said in a low voice: ‘They’ll be cleverer than me if they get through.’

‘What? The railings?’ I said.

‘No,’ said Linley; ‘that crowd. Or the railings either for that matter.’

‘Then how will they do it?’ I asked.

‘They won’t do it,’ said Linley.

He was wrong there.

At last the ball came to Holbuck, and he kicked it three-quarter way down the field. It came back and he got it once more. This time he kept it to himself for a few yards, and then one of the other side charged him. Holbuck got the ball again, and dribbled it forward, getting it right past several of them; he went half-way up the field with it, going fast; and then he fell dead.

Well, I needn’t tell you there was some stir. To begin with it was what half the crowd were watching for; and now it had happened before their eyes; and the half of the crowd that weren’t watching for it were not much less surprised. They got a doctor and Holbuck was dead right enough, and they arrested the man that had charged him shortly before. All this time Linley stood perfectly silent.

‘What do you make of it?’ I said after a while.

‘I don’t know,’ said Linley. ‘The people round here are suspecting us.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘We’re strangers to them. Don’t talk,’ he said.

So I shut up.

We saw Inspector Ulton again, hurrying past. Linley went up to him. ‘Well, it’s happened,’ said Linley.

But Ulton was cross, and said little, if anything at all. He had made the most careful plans and had just been defeated, and had lost a good life over it into the bargain.

‘He’ll come and see us,’ said Linley to me.

And then we left with the crowd. I got the impression that we were followed at first, though it’s hard to be sure of that in a crowd. And then I had the impression that someone we passed had conveyed the idea, ‘They’re all right. Leave them alone.’ Both these things were only impressions.

Sure enough Inspector Ulton did come and see us, shortly after we got back. Came to see Linley, I mean.

He looked very worried.

‘What does the doctor say?’ were Linley’s first words to him.

‘That’s what I came to see you about,’ said Ulton.

‘Well?’ said Linley.

‘Snake-bite,’ said Ulton.

‘Bit late in the year for snakes,’ I said. And neither of them paid any attention to me.

‘What kind of snake?’ Linley asked.

‘Russell’s viper,’ said Ulton.

Then they talked about that viper for a while, and there seemed something gorgon-like about it: it kills by coagulating the blood, by turning it solid. Luckily there are no such snakes going about in England.

‘Where was he bitten?’ was Linley’s next question.

‘They’d found no puncture when I came away,’ said the inspector. ‘But of course they’ll examine the body and find out that. We detained the last man that was in contact with him, a man called Ornut, who charged him pretty hard.’

‘Did you search him?’ asked Linley.

‘Yes,’ said the inspector. ‘But we found nothing incriminating on him.’

‘I fancy you’ll have to let him go.’

‘We did,’ the inspector answered. ‘But we have his address.’

And then the telephone rang, and I answered it, and it was someone asking for Inspector Ulton. I told him and he went to it.

‘They’ve found the puncture,’ said Ulton when he came back from the telephone. ‘It’s in the sole of the right foot.’

‘Must have worn thin soles,’ I said.

But Linley got the point at once.

‘That accounts for everything,’ he said. ‘They couldn’t get to the football-ground, with all those men you had there watching. But they got at his boots.’

‘You think that’s it?’ said the inspector.

‘It stands to reason,’ said Linley. ‘You couldn’t stab something through the sole of a football-boot. It must have been inside the sole.’

And Inspector Ulton agreed; and so it turned out; he went away to see. And that evening he came back again and told Linley what it was. They’d got a snake’s fang fixed in the sole of Holbuck’s boot, with a layer of something protecting the foot from the fang until the boot got thoroughly warm and the protecting layer melted; then the action of running would operate the fang. It was placed under the ball of the foot, where the boot bends most when you run. And there was another protection, a sort of safety-catch, like the catch you have on a shot-gun, which prevented the thing working at all while it was in place, but it could be pushed out of place by a good tap on the end of it, which ran under the toe of the boot. Kicking a football would do it, and evidently had done it; and the next time that Holbuck ran, after kicking the ball hard, the fang entered the sole of his foot, and was full of the venom with which Russell’s viper concludes his quarrels in India.

‘No clue to the man?’ said Linley.

‘Not yet,’ said the inspector. ‘We ’phoned to the Zoo, and no one’s got poison from any of the snakes there. It looks like somebody who has travelled in India. It’s not easy to trace poisons that are not got from a chemist, and that don’t have to be signed for.’

‘No,’ said Linley. ‘But we’ll get him the other way; over the other murder. The clues to that will be at the telephone exchange. You know the time of the murder. We want to know what houses, of those that have a view of the door of Piero’s, were using the telephone at that time; those that had a view of the door and a view of a man approaching it for some way, so as to give the murderer time to get everything ready.’

‘And what then?’ asked Ulton.

‘Easy enough then,’ said Linley. ‘Find out who they were talking to, and find out which of the people called up at that time from one of those houses had a wireless transmitting apparatus, of which there are not many in England.’

‘I see,’ said Ulton. ‘And you think it was set off by wireless.’

‘It must have been,’ said Linley.

‘And wireless could do that?’ Ulton asked.

‘Make a spark, or strike a match? Certainly,’ replied Linley. ‘Why, they can steer ships or aeroplanes by it.’

‘And where do you think the transmitter was?’ said Ulton.

‘Wherever the man was telephoning to,’ said Linley, ‘from the house that could see Piero’s door, and some way up the street by which Island was coming.’

‘We’ll get the telephone calls,’ was all that Ulton said, and soon after that he left.

‘A sending apparatus is a large thing, isn’t it?’ I said to Linley.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Not easy to hide it in London,’ I said. ‘So many people about.’

‘It won’t be easy when Ulton gets after it,’ was Linley’s comment on that.

The inspector came round next morning. ‘There was a telephone-call from one of those houses at the time of the murder,’ he said. ‘A man giving the name of Colquist, which can’t be traced, took rooms on the first floor of No. 29 saying he wanted an office. He took the rooms a week before the murder, and left them the evening of the day it took place. He said he was an agent for real estate. He had the telephone going just at the time of the murder, a long-distance call to Yorkshire.’

‘To Yorkshire!’ said Linley.

‘Yes,’ said the inspector.

‘After all,’ said Linley; ‘why not?’

‘Of course he’s disappeared now,’ said Ulton.

‘Has No. 29 a good view of the street by which Island came?’ Linley asked.

‘Yes,’ said the inspector, ‘he could have seen Island coming a long way, from the windows of the first floor.’

‘Then you’ll have to go to Yorkshire,’ said Linley.

‘To Yorkshire?’ said the inspector.

‘Yes,’ said Linley, ‘if that’s where the call was put through to from 29. What part of Yorkshire was it?’

‘Henby, a village among the moors,’ said Ulton.

‘Then that’s where the murder was done,’ said Linley.

For some while Ulton didn’t seem able to credit it. But Linley stuck to his point. ‘If there weren’t any wires,’ he said, ‘it was done by wireless. Chance couldn’t have done it. It does odd things when left to itself, but it won’t send off an explosion for a murderer at exactly the right second, after he has made all those preparations. Preparations like that scare chance away. No, it was done by wireless; and, if by wireless, why not from Yorkshire.’

‘Then we’ve only got to go to the house and find him,’ said Ulton a little doubtfully.

‘Yes,’ said Linley. ‘And you may as well find out who he is before you start. He’ll be someone that Mr Cambell, Inspector Island and Sergeant Holbuck all helped to put away where he was brooding over this revenge. And he was either comfortably off or his crime paid him well, financially I mean; for a transmitting apparatus is not bought for nothing. He shouldn’t be hard to trace.’

‘No,’ said the inspector. ‘That would be Septon, I should think.’

‘What was his crime?’ asked Linley.

‘Selling cocaine,’ said Ulton. ‘He peddled it on a very large scale round the wrong kind of houses. Mr Cambell found him out, and Island and Holbuck were both in it. He’d be out now. They had him at Parkhurst.’

‘Then you’ll find him in Yorkshire,’ said Linley. ‘There’d be another of them watching Piero’s, at the other end of the telephone. But Septon would have been in Yorkshire.’

‘How do you know which was at which end?’ asked Ulton.

‘Because that kind of man is always the furthest away from the crime,’ said Linley. ‘They put up the money for it and keep out of the way, when they can.’

‘I think you’re right there,’ said Ulton, who had known crime all over the British Isles. ‘We must get off to Henby, and the sooner the better. Number 15 Henby is the telephone number: it was the house of a doctor, but he went to Switzerland, and it’s been let for a year to a man giving the name of Brown. He’s been there just over two months.’

‘When did Septon come out of Parkhurst?’ asked Linley.

‘Some while ago,’ said Ulton. ‘And then he had to report at police-stations. That was finished with two and a half months ago.’

‘It shouldn’t be difficult to get him,’ I said, wondering if they’d let me come, too.

‘He shoots,’ said the inspector. ‘We had some difficulty with him last time.’

Well, of course that’s a little bit outside my line of business. I travel in Numnumo, a relish for meats and savouries; and I guarantee to get into any house, though of course I can’t promise to sell a bottle of relish every time. I don’t care how hard they try to keep me out: I get in in the end. But of course shooting would be something a bit new to me. And I don’t pretend that I’d like it. But I still wanted to go.

‘Well, of course, two can play at that game,’ I said.

‘No. We can do better than that,’ said Ulton.

He didn’t tell me any more of his plans, but turned to Linley and said: ‘Would you care to come? We’ll go by the 2.30 tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Earlier, if you like,’ said Linley.

‘No,’ said Ulton; ‘it’s on a hill, and he has too good a view.’

I didn’t see at first how going earlier or later would alter the view. But I soon saw that was silly of me. Linley understood at once. He glanced at me and then at the inspector, and I saw he meant to ask if I could come too. ‘Oh well,’ said Ulton. But I somehow saw that I might, though the words themselves meant nothing.

‘Well, you take that train, and I’ll join you on it,’ said Ulton. ‘We book to Arneth. Better go first-class and we shall probably be by ourselves.’

‘All right,’ said Linley. ‘And I should think he’d have an eye for detectives, with all that experience. It’s their boots they spot them by, isn’t it?’

And he looked at Ulton’s big boots.

‘We’re mostly large men,’ said Ulton, ‘and have to wear large boots.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Linley, seeing him to the door.

When Inspector Ulton had gone Linley came back to me and said, ‘You want to go, Smethers?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

So he went to a drawer and came back with two revolvers. ‘Better take one of these,’ he said. ‘Look out. It’s loaded. Better not tell Ulton you’ve got it. Because he ought to set you filling in forms, or send you to prison, or something like that, if he knew you’d got it.’

‘It’s a bit bulky,’ I said. ‘Won’t he see the bulge in my pocket?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Linley, ‘Ulton’ll see the bulge. But he isn’t the sort of fellow to ask what made it. I’ve another revolver for him. But I won’t offer it him until things begin to look nasty. Because he’d have to notice it if I actually held it out to him in the train.’

‘Won’t he have one of his own?’ I asked.

‘They’re supposed not to,’ he said.

‘Not fair on crime,’ I suggested.

‘That’s about it,’ said Linley.

Well, next day we went to King’s Cross to catch the 2.30; I with one revolver and Linley with two; and, as Linley was buying the tickets to Arneth, the booking-clerk told him that seats had been reserved for us. A porter showed us to the carriage and there we found the labels reserving our seats, and one seat reserved for ‘Mr Ulton’, and two seats reserved for a Mr and Mrs Smyth, and the sixth seat already occupied. It didn’t look like our having it to ourselves.

Well, time went by and no inspector came, and by 2.28 I began to get anxious. What should we do if the train started and we were off to Yorkshire to look for a dangerous criminal, without Ulton?

Linley said, ‘Oh, he’ll turn up.’ But he didn’t turn up.

And then I called out to a porter to ask if he had seen anyone like Ulton get on the train; and of course I had to describe him. And then the other man in the carriage joined in, asking me questions as to what my friend was like. He was a man with queer whiskers, this other man, and a large drooping moustache, and dapper little patent-leather boots. He spoke in a weak high voice. I described the inspector to him fairly well; a burly, clean-shaven, tall man. And then he said: ‘What kind of boots had he?’

‘Boots?’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘They show up on a platform,’ he said. ‘They would help one to recognize anybody.’

‘Oh, very big boots,’ I said.

And so they were, even to me. Doubly so, I should have said, to this little man, huddled up in a corner seat.

‘Ah, I know the kind of man you mean,’ he said in his queer little voice and the trace of some accent that I couldn’t quite place. ‘I’ve seen no one like him near the carriage, but I’ll help you look out for him.’

‘There’s only a minute,’ I said.

‘He might come yet,’ he answered.

Then we were off.

‘What shall we do now?’ I asked Linley.

‘What were you and your friend going to do, if I might ask?’ said the man in the corner, seeing me so put out.

‘Fishing,’ I said.

‘Ah, a pleasant sport,’ said he.

‘But our friend has got all the bait,’ I told him. ‘And now he’s left behind.’

‘What bait were you going to use?’ he asked.

‘Worms,’ said Linley, to my great astonishment.

The man in the corner did not appear surprised. To Linley he said nothing; but to me he said: ‘Haven’t we met before somewhere? I seem to remember your face.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘My name’s Smethers.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘My name’s Ulton.’

‘Ulton?’ I said. ‘Not Inspector Ulton.’

‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Don’t you recognize me by my boots?’

Linley smiled quietly at my astonishment. So he must have got there before me. But not very long before me, I think. I was feeling very foolish, when suddenly I had a downright inspiration. ‘They hurt, don’t they?’ I said.

‘Oh, nothing to speak of,’ he answered.

But though he got the words out, they weren’t true.

‘What about taking them off in the train?’ said Linley.

‘I think I will,’ said the inspector.

And there and then he took off his boots, replacing them with a pair of large slippers that he carried in a despatch-case. He took off his accent at the same time, and his queer voice; and I began to recognize him quite easily then, in spite of his odd whiskers. It’s funny how much larger he seemed to get: he came out of that corner of his like a snail out of its shell. Linley took a revolver out of his pocket and reached over to Ulton. ‘I’ve brought you one of these,’ he said.

‘Got a licence for it?’ asked Ulton.

‘No,’ said Linley. ‘But it will shoot just as straight.’

‘We’re not supposed to carry them, really,’ said the inspector, as he slipped it into his pocket.

‘We have one each,’ said Linley, pointing at me.

‘They’re not very much use,’ said Ulton. ‘He’ll be better armed than we are. We shan’t be able to force our way into the house with these things, and once we get in we shan’t need them.’

‘Why not?’ asked Linley.

And Inspector Ulton brought out of a pocket a glass ball like a tennis ball. He put it into his left hand and produced two pairs of glasses with rubber all round them, that fastened with a strap round the head, and gave us each one. ‘When this ball breaks in a room,’ he said, ‘we shall be able to see and he won’t.’

‘Tear-gas,’ said Linley.

‘That’s it,’ said the inspector.

And it occurred to me that two things in this world are getting pretty complicated, crime and Scotland Yard.

‘The difficulty will be,’ he said, ‘getting into the house.’

Well, they talked that up and down and made lots of plans; and the only thing about them seemed to be that they weren’t any good. Ulton had got a sketch of the house, three or four sketches, that he had had sent down by train from the Henby constable; and I often heard the phrase, ‘But that is commanded by this window.’ There were plenty of ways of breaking into the house, but the best that they seemed able to make of it was that we were quite likely to lose two men by the time a third got in.

‘Then what are you going to do?’ said Linley at last.

‘I shall have to go up to the door and ring the bell,’ said Ulton.

‘But will he open it?’ asked Linley.

‘Well,’ said Ulton, ‘I should say that that kind of man wouldn’t.’

They had got no further than that. So then I thought it was time for me to speak, though they hadn’t been noticing me for quite a while.

‘I can get into any house,’ I said.

‘You?’ said the inspector.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I travel in Numnumo, a relish for meats and savouries.’

‘But how do you get into houses?’ he asked.

‘Oh, different ways,’ I said. ‘But it would be no good my travelling in Numnumo if I couldn’t get in anywhere.’

‘But this fellow’s sure to be armed,’ said Linley, ‘and he won’t want you in his house.’

‘Nobody wants me in their house,’ I said, ‘a perfect stranger, with something to sell that they don’t want. But I get in.’

‘But how?’ said the inspector again.

‘Well, it’s my job,’ I said. ‘Might as well ask a policeman how he gets into his tunic. Just slips it on.’

‘Do you think you could get into this house?’ he asked.

‘Sure I could,’ I replied. ‘Nobody ever keeps me out.’

‘We might try it,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Do you think you could drop one of these glass bombs when you get in?’

‘Easier than pushing Numnumo,’ I said.

‘You might try it,’ he told me. ‘Drop it on something hard. There’s no explosion: it only breaks. He won’t see you any more after you’ve dropped it. You must wear these glasses.’

‘Well, I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘But it makes it all rather difficult. I usually smarten myself up all I can, before getting into a house. With things like that on my face it would make it much harder. But I don’t mind.’

‘Do you think you can explain them away somehow?’ he asked.

‘Explain them!’ said Linley. ‘A man that can explain Numnumo can explain anything.’

Which is not the way I should have put it myself, as it’s a little hard on the proprietors; but it was the right idea, for all that.

‘Of course I can,’ I said.

So he gave me four glass bombs, and told me to drop them about wherever I had the chance.

‘I don’t know who else you’ll find in the house,’ he said. ‘Somebody very deep or very simple.’

In the end we found no one but him.

Well, we got into Arneth and hired a Ford, and drove out four miles to Henby. It was dark by now, and I got the idea in the car that Ulton and Linley were feeling anxious, although neither of them spoke. I was feeling contented enough, because the job before me was just the one thing I could do, getting into houses; and nothing puts a man more at his ease than to be doing his own job among men who are strange to it. It gives him a feeling of superiority over them. Henby went up into the night, all on a hill, and one street straggled away from it out into darkness; and, a hundred yards or so beyond the last house of that street, all by itself was the house that the telephone knew as Henby 15. We stopped the car long before we came to it, and walked the last few hundred yards. Ulton explained to the driver just why we wanted to get out and walk; and to me it sounded all very plausible, but somehow I became sure of two things, that the driver never believed a word of it, and that he never guessed what we were really after.

‘I should put on the mask now,’ said Ulton.

And they helped me to fasten it while we were still out of sight of the house. Ulton gave me a whistle to blow in case I wanted help. ‘We’ll be as close as we can get without being seen,’ he said. Even then, it seemed to me, they’d be a bit late, if I wanted help enough to whistle for it. Perhaps I looked a bit lonely, for Ulton said: ‘It’s no use our coming near enough to be seen, or he’d let nobody in. Very likely he won’t let you in in any case. But do what you can.’

‘I’ll get in all right,’ I said. And off I started.

The night seemed very dark, which was really all to the good, only somehow it didn’t seem so. It seemed lonely too, and all the small gusts of wind that came blowing past me seemed lost in it. I heard a step coming my way, and a man passed me, who I knew must be the village constable going to report to Ulton. That made three people that would come if I whistled, but it didn’t make anything less lonely then. And then I came to the house; a wicket gate and a path through a little garden, and I was at the front door. I rang till a window opened on the first floor, the window of a dark room, and no face showed.

‘What do you want?’ said the voice.

‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘if you don’t want anything.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ said the voice in the dark room.

‘Only,’ I said, ‘that there’s one thing that nearly everyone wants.’

‘Well? What?’ he said.

‘Health,’ I answered. ‘And how are you to have that without food; and good food, with a relish to it?’

‘I don’t want to buy anything,’ he said, and was just going to shut down the window.

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to sell anything. I’ve a wonderful relish for meats and savouries here; but I don’t sell it, I give it.’

It’s a good catch that. You see, they give away one bottle free to whoever buys a dozen. So I catch them by telling them that the bottle is free, and getting them to sign an order for a dozen afterwards; and of course they pay on the nail. That’s the difficult part of it, the order and getting the cash; all that comes later, but that free bottle gets me into the house. And it got me in here.

‘Then what do you make out of it?’ he asked me.

Interested enough to ask questions, you see.

‘Well, the truth is,’ I said, ‘you’ll like it so much that you’ll order more. That’s where I come in.’

The more you think it over, the more you’ll see how that catches them. It looks like business only starting when they are so satisfied that they can’t do without the stuff. Human beings are very gullible. You see, I know. And murderers are only human.

‘Oh, well; let’s have it,’ he said grudgingly.

And in I went with my Numnumo. He opened the door, and seemed all alone in the house. A decent meal, or even the hope of one, probably meant a lot to a man like that.

He brought me into a small room, off the hall, and switched on the light and sat down. ‘Let’s have a look at it,’ he said.

He was a nasty-looking fellow, sitting there. Not a man to play tricks with. I don’t say he could read your thoughts; but he had a quick look in his eyes, as though if you tried to think of anything clever, he’d get there before you. He had an orange-coloured moustache, chopped short; and he sat there looking at me. Ulton and Linley felt a long way away. I didn’t mind playing the Numnumo trick on him, or on any man; because that was second nature to me, and hardly felt like a trick. But I didn’t like playing the trick I was going to play.

‘This is your bottle,’ I said, pulling the Numnumo out of my pocket. And I managed to pull out three of the gas-bombs, too. ‘Samples,’ I said, as they came out.

But he wasn’t looking at what I had in my hands; he was staring at my glasses with the rubber fittings round them. I saw that, and explained in a hurry.

‘The fumes from Numnumo,’ I said, ‘don’t only make your mouth water; they make your eyes water too.’

Not much chance of selling it after that, of course; people don’t want to be weeping into their plates; but selling Num-numo wasn’t what I was after on that day.

He wouldn’t take his eyes off me. And then he put down a hand and slowly covered me with a revolver.

‘Oh! Don’t do that,’ I said.

And I dropped the three bombs full of tear-gas, and the bottle of relish on top. I apologized and stooped down to tidy up all the mess, and then the fumes reached him. So he got up and came groping towards me, meaning to shoot. But it was too late then; he couldn’t see. And I began dodging him quietly. He stopped to listen, following with his revolver any sounds that he heard or thought he heard; till all of a sudden he seemed to change his mind, and shot himself through the head.