CHAPTER XXI
YOU told me to wait at the station-house for you. I've been hanging around for an hour."
They called at the station house before going on to Meister's, for Alan had remembered that he had asked the Ringer's wife to meet him there. She was sitting on a form, a disconsolate, broken figure of a woman, when he came in, and leapt up with a startled face at the sound of his footsteps.
"You haven't taken him—haven't caught him?" she asked eagerly.
He shook his head.
"No, not yet. I suppose it's useless to ask you to help us, Cora?"
"To catch him?" She smiled wearily. "Yes, that's a pretty foolish proposition, isn't it? No, I feel I ought to be somewhere around—in the danger zone. I suppose you'll be pinching me if I give you any trouble, and maybe if I don't! Only—I promised Arthur something years ago. And I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it!"
"What did you promise him?"
She only answered:
"Something . I only hope he won't need it, though."
"He won't need the help you've planned, Cora," said Wembury. "That's why I asked you to come. You've got a taxi airplane waiting day and night for you at Croydon—you needn't deny it because we've traced it. We've known all about it for days. But if you go to the Continent, you go alone—understand that! You drive a car, don't you?"
She did not answer.
"There's a big sports car garaged at Bennett's in Deptford. You've had it out once or twice for practice runs. When you make your last trip you'll carry no passenger—is that clear?"
"I hear you," she said.
"I respect you up to a point for wanting to help him, for wishing to keep your promise. But you're not going to have the chance, Cora."
"That wasn't the promise I made," she said sullenly, without raising her eyes from the ground. "It was something else, and you can ask me all night, Wembury, and I wouldn't tell you. Arthur hasn't finished yet."
"I know that," he said quietly.
"He'll get you."
"I know that, too," Alan interrupted. "He may get a whole lot of people, but this you can gamble on, Cora Milton! In the end we will get him! The law is greater than the man—in this country at any rate. And the law isn't represented by a policeman, high or low—the law is the conscience of the people."
She rose and stretched herself painfully. He saw that she was wet through and offered the obvious suggestion.
"No, I'm all right," she said gruffly. "And if I wasn't, I shouldn't want you to mother me! Let up on Arthur, Wembury. I warned Meister, and the fool thought I was bluffing. I'm not bluffing you, and you know it!"
He nodded.
"Let up on Arthur. Give him a clear road. Let him know that he's got a clear road—I'll find ways of reaching him. Meister wasn't worth a decent man's life—not yours, anyway. Open the door and save yourself a whole lot of trouble."
"I wouldn't open the door to save myself from hell," said Wembury, and meant it. "I'll get your Arthur, never fear! And as for the something you're going to do, forget it," he said, and she went out into the rain, past the two-seater which held a very impatient doctor, and Alan guessed that she, too, was making for Flanders Lane.
"Who is the interesting female?" asked Lomond as he sent the machine flying towards the Broadway.
"That was Mrs. Ringer."
"Mrs. Milton? Good Lord!" gasped the doctor. "I should like to have had a talk with her. I rather flatter myself that the law was my true vocation. The art of cross-examination belongs entirely to the psychologist. Now, when I was in Allahabad"
Alan listened and dozed. He had hardly closed his eyes before the car stopped, and the doctor jumped down. Police Constable Harrap concealed the pipe he had been surreptitiously smoking at the front door of the house, and went ponderously up to the room before them.
"Has Sergeant Atkins finished the search?"
"No, sir," said P. C. Harrap, with great respect. "He's just taken a lot of silver to the station—you must have passed him. He found it in a cupboard under those back stairs, and he said he was coming back later. Oh, I'd forgotten, sir," he said suddenly. He reached down from a shelf a small wooden box. "Sergeant Atkins has just telephoned through and asked me to give you this the moment you arrive."
Alan opened the box; it was full of papers, seemingly of little importance as he turned them over; but presently he stopped, took out a letter and began to read. As he read, he whistled.
"This is rather a find."
"What is it?" asked Lomond. He had his tape measure in his hand and was preparing to go over again the measurements, particulars of which he seemed to have mislaid.
"Here's a letter from the gentleman himself."
"From the Ringer? Is that a literary curiosity?"
Alan nodded.
"Why?"
"Because it's the only specimen of his handwriting we have. Usually the Ringer spent his time signing other people's names and using other people's handwriting. Listen to this; it's dated 'His Majesty's Prison, Dartmoor,' and must have been written soon after he got there:
- "'My dear Meister, I am here, as you know. When I come out I should like to see you. Lenley is here in thesame hall. Did he come for the same reason? Have a good time whilst you can.'"
He looked at the doctor.
"How is that for a threat?"
Doctor Lomond took the letter and examined it.
"He writes an educated hand," he said. "What is the exact value of the letter?"
"The value of this," replied Wembury slowly, "is that, if we can trace any other letters in this handwriting and written since his return to England, we shall be in a fair way to identifying him."
Lomond pushed the letter across the table.
"It sounds very unscientific and haphazard," he said. "A few hours' work with the measuring tape will perhaps be more useful in the long run."
Thump!
There was no mistaking it this time. Harrap had gone downstairs to resume his watch and his illicit pipe. The two men looked up at the ceiling simultaneously.
"What was that?" asked the doctor. "Did it come from up above?"
Alan seemed doubtful.
"It was the same noise that I heard an hour ago."
Alan went to the door and called Harrap into the room.
"Did you make any kind of noise out there?"
"No, sir," said the man in surprise.
"Just wait here."
He ran up to Meister's room, whence the sound had emanated, and was gone five minutes. When he came back the doctor thought he looked a little paler. It may have been imagination; possibly Wembury was tired.
"It was nothing. The wind had blown over a small table."
He went into Mary's little room and lingered a second or two. Mary was alone in her flat; that was the thought which flashed upon him when he was in the room above and had brought the pallor to his cheeks. The Ringer might be working single-handed; on the other hand, he might have a friend or two. He imparted his fears to the doctor when he returned.
"If he's single-handed, then the danger is in this house."
"Here?" asked Lomond, in a startled voice.
"Here," said Alan curtly. "Don't forget this: if the only possible way the Ringer could escape justice was by destroying half the people of London, they would be dead!"
Thump!
The two men looked at one another. There was nobody in this house except the officer. Again Constable Harrap's quiet pipe was interrupted; he was called into the room.
"Stay here, Harrap; I'm going on a little tour."
He disappeared, and presently they heard his footfalls in the room overhead.
"Are you on duty in this house all the time?" asked the doctor nervously.
"Yes, sir," said Harrap, "till to-morrow morning."
"A very nasty sort of job, eh?"
It was unlike him to feel the impression which had crept over him since his return to the house; less like him to experience a desire for human speech and human association, if a police constable could be so described.
"Why, yes, sir," said Harrap. "I've had worse. This place is a palace compared with some of the houses I've been in, especially in Flanders Lane."
"It doesn't worry you to know that there's been a murder committed here to-night?" asked Lomond curiously.
Mr. Harrap wasn't worried at all. If he had any regret, it was that the murder had not been committed in a saloon. He said so pathetically.
"Where are you stationed?"
"Downstairs, sir, in the passage near the front door."
Lomond nodded.
"If you hear any unusual noise—er—you'll come up, won't you?"
Constable Harrap licked very dry lips.
"I'd like to hear a bottle of beer being opened, sir," he said. "That'd bring me up quickly enough."
Lomond looked nervously round.
"One constable doesn't seem to be enough in a lawless neighbourhood like that. Is there any kind of danger, do you think?"
The large red face of Mr. Harrap drooped.
"I shouldn't say so. I've never seen Mr. Wembury drink beer. Bless your life, sir, one policeman's enough. Who's going to break into this house to-night—why, there ain't a man outside of a lunatic asylum who'd attempt to come here. The man who killed Mr. Meister's miles away by now."
"Do you think so?" The doctor seemed comforted by this official assurance.
Wembury came in soon after and sent Harrap down to the door.
"Another table turned over. I've shut the window. Possibly a cat may have got in."
His eyes went again to the mystery door, and it required a conscious effort on his part to open it and search the little room beneath.
"The garden door was locked," he said when he returned and thrust the bolts into their sockets. "There was no sign of any intruder."
"What the devil are you looking for?" asked Lomond irritably.
Wembury laughed.
"For the life of me I couldn't tell you. Have you got your measurements?"
"Yes, I've got them and forgotten them!" He took up the tape from the table, and pursued his useless task. In the midst of his calculations there was a tap at the door and the constable came in.
"Excuse me, sir," he said.
"Come in, Harrap. What is it?"
"As I was standing at the street door I saw somebody getting over the garden wall," was the startling intelligence.
"Into the garden?"
"I don't know, sir, whether he dropped in or out of the garden—if I hadn't been on this duty I'd have gone after him."
"Perhaps he's been hiding in the garden all the time, and got out through the stable gate."
"No, sir," said the constable, "that's impossible. One of the Scotland Yard gentlemen who came down plugged the keyhole."
Wembury's eyes narrowed. He was beginning to understand something which up till then had been inexplicable.
"Was that your cat?" asked Doctor Lomond, sarcastically.
"You didn't see him?" asked Wembury.
"No, sir."
"All right, constable. Be on hand."
"Was that your cat?" demanded Lomond again.
"It may have been a reporter. They'd sit on a grave to get a story," said Alan.
The supper table had been removed, but the settee remained with its back to the door, and he sat down wearily.
"Theorize, doctor, for heaven's sake, but theorize interestingly, or I shall go to sleep."
Lomond wound up his tape.
"My theory is a simple one," he said. "When the girl came into the room, she intended, for some reason or other, to rob Meister. You caught her, and she thought that she was in the hands of Meister. I believe you staggered back towards the table—you hit your knee or something?"
Alan nodded.
"She followed and stabbed at random. She wasn't used to handling knives."
"Why do you think that?" asked the interested detective.
"I'll show you."
The doctor opened his bag on the table, took out a long knife and balanced it on the palm of his hand.
"In India, where the knife is a popular instrument of destruction, an experienced assassin can tell at a glance whether the holder of a knife is an amateur or a professional. I don't profess to be an experienced assassin, but I've learnt enough from these people to enable me to judge from the direction of the stroke whether the blow was intentional or accidental. There is no doubt"—he seated himself beside Alan—"there is no doubt whatever that the blow that killed Peter the Nose was designed. It was a clean stroke, well aimed and effective in every respect."
The mystery door was moving! Not only the door, but the doorposts. Frame and door were slipping slowly round on a central pivot.
The men on the settee neither heard nor saw. The doctor, intent upon his theorizing; Alan listening, seemingly with absorbed attention. An inch, two inches, the mystery door swung; a long hand showed at its edge. Presently the gaunt, hungry face of the shadow peered round the opening.
"Now I'll tell you," the doctor was saying, "why I think it was a woman's hand that struck the blow. I'm speaking as a doctor who understands something about woman's psychology..."
The gaunt man was in the room now; his hand crept to his side pocket and was presently withdrawn, holding something that glittered.
"As she moved towards Meister she must have held the knife rather like a sword—somehow like this. And then"
"Put up your hands!"
The two men came to their feet, but the automatic was pointed at the doctor.
"I want you," said the gaunt man, "Henry Arthur Milton!"
Behind the haggard stranger were Atkins and two detectives from headquarters. Lomond's hands went up with a slow smile, and as the handcuffs snapped on his wrists he turned to the waiting Alan.
"Who is your unpleasant-looking friend!" he asked easily.
"Sergeant Wills, of headquarters. He's been trailing you ever since you arrived in this country. Search him!"
Under "Lomond's" armpits they found an automatic. Strapped to his right calf was a smaller but almost as efficient.
"Is Miss Lenley all right?"
The gaunt man looked up from his work and nodded.
"Yes, but he doctored her coffee, as you thought he would, when he was leaning over to help himself to sugar. I spotted that. I'm afraid I gave her a bit of a fright, but I had to stop her drinking it. She's all right now, though."
Wembury nodded.
"She'll get over it. She knows about the Ringer?"
"Yes, I had to tell her," said Sergeant Wills. "And she knew how the door worked, too. I only learnt it the day I caught Haggitt's hand in the dark—gosh! I was scared!"
He stood up and examined the "doctor" with a proprietorial air.
"Let's have a look at you," he said, and peeled off the gray wig, revealing a head covered with close-cut brown hair.
"Whiskers natural, I suppose? Grew them on the boat, I'll bet!"
"Don't let us have too many personal details," said the other.
"You're Henry Arthur Milton?" said Wembury.
"That is my name."
"You know me?"
"I'm sorry to say I do," smiled the man.
"I am Detective-Inspector Wembury, of the Criminal Investigation Department," said Alan, "and I am taking you into custody on the charge of wilfully murdering Lewis Meister by stabbing him with a knife. Another charge of murder will be preferred. I caution you that what you now may say may be used in evidence against you."
The "doctor" listened with closed eyes.
"I knew you had me, Wembury, when I saw you in the station reading the medical directory of Australia. And of course the cable you got that night at the station house had nothing whatever to do with the Ringer being caught. It was confirmation of your suspicions, I suppose? You found the real Doctor Lomond? I'll tell you the truth: I bought his diploma; the real Lomond is a drunken down-and-out that I met in a doss house at Ballarat. And as doctoring has always been a hobby of mine, I borrowed his name, and by the greatest good luck got the temporary job of police surgeon."
"You saw the advertisement for a locum tenens in the Lancet, I suppose?" said Alan, and the man nodded. "Why did you kill Peter?"
The Ringer shrugged his shoulders.
"He spotted me—at least, I think he did. Meister was easy: I was only waiting my chance. It came when your young lady put the lights out. I'd have had you just now, but the noise overhead rattled me. It was one of your men, of course? I suppose the house is full of busies?"
Alan nodded."They were hidden in the next room—it was locked."
"What is the betting I shan't escape again?"
The gaunt man guffawed.
"Don't make me laugh. The hangman's a personal friend of mine! I'd never look him up the face again if I let you go!"
"You've been watching me all this time?"
"I haven't been far away," said the pallid Wills complacently. "Look a bit sick, don't I? I used to be in this division years ago: they called me 'The Bogey Man.' Not a bad name, as names go."
The door opened at that moment and Mary came in. She stopped dead when she saw the handcuffed "doctor" in the custody of the gaunt stranger.
"Which reminds me," said Sergeant Wills, a talkative man when duty was done. "That story of Johnny Lenley's is true. I heard Meister send him along after the swag. I came to the station, through the window of your room, to tell you this, but I couldn't wait."
Wembury was holding the girl's two hands.
"Why did you come here?"
"I had a feeling you were in danger," she said breathlessly.
"And he was," said "Lomond."
He made a sudden dive for the door, but the hands that gripped him were not to be shaken. He went down the stairs laughing, and laughing came out into the dark street, where they stood for a moment whilst the police car was signalled. There was another machine there, a long, black-bodied sports car, and this moved across slowly towards the waiting group. The woman driver bent forward as she came abreast and stopped the car.
"Is that you, Arthur?"
"That's me, honey," said the "doctor." "Haven't forgotten anything, have you?"
There was a sob from the car.
"Good luck, boy!" she said, and raised her hand.
There was a deafening report, the "flick" of a white flame, and Henry Arthur Milton dropped into the detective's hands, dead. Before they could spring on the running board, the big car was roaring up the street.
Alan heard the shot and came flying down. One glimpse of the Ringer lying on the pavement told him all.
"So that is the 'something' she would do for him! Quick! There's an aeroplane waiting to take her to the Continent, and we gave them instructions there was no objection to her leaving alone."
There was a 'phone in the lower part of the house but the aerodrome was disconnected. A tree blown down in the gale had disorganized the Purley service.
"Get after her—if she makes it first you'll lose her. I hope she does!" The last sentence was under his breath.
He went back to the terrified girl and soothed her with a story of a burst tire. Then he sent for Atkins.
"Get Miss Lenley away by the back—open the big gates. That fool man from the Yard plugged up the keyhole and nearly prevented Wills from getting into the house. They took away the only key of the garden door, too. If the men on the top floor hadn't signalled me and attracted my attention, there might have been a tragedy."
He sent the girl down through the mystery door, which still stood open on its central pivot, and after she had gone he stopped awhile to examine the perfect mechanism. There were two doors in one: the posts, made of solid oak, were suspended by a steel pivot from an overhead beam, so that when the spring was pressed and a catch released, the whole structure turned. He closed the door carefully, picked up the knife that "Lomond" had dropped, and put it into the "doctor's" bag.
"Oh, by the way, Harrap."
"Yes, sir?" said the waiting constable.
"You'll find a pantry along that passage, and several bottles of beer. I seem to have overheard some reference to that pernicious beverage. Pour yourself out a glass. One glass," he added.
"Very good, sir."
Alan had taken a final look round and was buttoning his raincoat when the constable came back. He had a glass in his hand: it was the largest glass he could find.
"Good work, sir," he smiled.
"Yes," said Alan, "good police work."
"Ah!" said Constable Harrap, shaking his head in an ecstasy of self-admiration. "They can't beat us! Good luck, sir!"
He raised the glass to his lips and did not put it down until the enormous quantity had disappeared, and Alan watched him, fascinated.
THE END