Mystery of Mr. Jessop (36 page)

Then he dropped to the ground and lay still, awaiting results. There were none. Only he heard someone laughing lightly at a little distance. That meant his bluff, obvious enough for that matter, had been a failure. He lay still, listening intently. The rain was less violent now; the wind had fallen a little. He was making rubbing noises with his hand on the wet and slippery turf that he hoped would sound like footsteps, and he thought how lucky Ulyett was to be snug in bed in the hospital. But superintendents always had all the luck; that, in fact, was what it was to be a superintendent or any other kind of boss. Then the luck came to you as naturally as decorations to a staff officer. He got cautiously to his feet. At once a shot rang out, and Bobby screamed and pitched forward on his face. A figure Bobby knew for that of Wynne ran forward from out of the dark, shouting something incoherent. Bobby leaped from the ground in one movement and seized him. That bluff, at least, had worked. But he had leaped a little too soon. His grip was insecure. A moment of fierce struggling, a swift exchange of blows, then Wynne had wrenched himself free and leaped away again.

But he left his pistol behind. Bobby's first aim had been to grip that. A fierce exultation possessed him. He felt safe now, now that he had the other's weapon and so had rendered him comparatively harmless.

“All right, Wynne, all right, all right,” he shouted into the darkness. “No hurry, but we'll pick you up when we've time to spare.”

A furious curse answered him. Bobby, taking no notice, began to walk in the direction where Wright lay. He looked at the automatic and found all the clip had been fired except one shot.

“Hullo, Wright, where are you?” he shouted.

He was feeling happy and excited. Death had been very near. He had felt the coldness of its breath upon his brow. Now it had passed and was far off again. He felt a little drunk.

“Hullo, Wright,” he shouted. “All in order now. I've Wynne's little pet pistol and you've the necklace, so everything in the garden's lovely.”

Wright gave an answering call. Bobby went to meet him. They were standing in the circle of glowing light made by the flames from the still burning car.

“We must find Jacks,” Bobby said, more soberly. “I hope he's all right.”

Once again the darkness behind them was rent by a darting fire, once again above the now quieter wind and rain rang out pistol shots in swift succession. One bullet came so close to Bobby he could feel the wind its passage made, and heard plainly its vicious snarl, a sound once known none ever forget again. Wright yelled and fell down flat. Bobby fired back, and the moment he had done so knew how foolish it had been. For he had fired by instinct, and at random, and it was the only shot the pistol held. Wildly he thought what a fool he had been not to guess that Wynne might have had a second pistol in reserve. A wild-looking figure, a heavy revolver in one hand, was standing just where the circle of light from the fire faded into the darkness of the night. But it was not Wynne who stood there.

“You've the necklace,” the new-comer said hoarsely, a note of hurry, almost of panic, of wrought-up intensity of purpose, in his voice. “Give it me or I'll blow your brains out. Quick now. I'll dump your bodies in the fire there and no one will ever know. Hurry up.”

The tone of half-frantic menace in his voice was daunting in the extreme. It suggested that the speaker had no longer control of himself, that no longer did he fully realise what it was that he was doing. A hysteria of fear and panic had him in its grip. Against the bright light of the flames behind them both Bobby and Wright knew themselves clearly outlined. The thought came to Bobby that it was a little hard thus to be snatched back from safety, much worse than if safety had not a moment before seemed won at last. He also thought he had been a fool to forget so entirely that approaching motor-cycle, chug-chugging its way towards them, and his guess at the identity of its rider. He noticed how the firelight gleamed dully on the barrel of the revolver, threatening them with so deadly an intention. Wright saw it, too, and suddenly his resolution cracked. This new threat was too much.

“All right, take it, take it,” he yelled, and from his pocket he snatched the shining, glittering thing, source of all these woes, and flung it at the feet of the new-comer, who stooped and picked it up but still kept them under the menace of his pistol.

“All right, all right, all right,” he muttered. He said: “All the same... or you'll tell... I let the duke go, but I can't let you.”

There was an odd regret in his muttering voice that made the threat that it conveyed all the more intentional, the purpose so expressed seem all the more inevitable, inescapable. Wright screamed. The strain, so long continued, had been too much for him. He was nothing now but all one quivering fear. Bobby was conscious once again of that unpleasant sinking feeling in his stomach. He made a movement, or rather he began one, and instantly the other moved also, stepping nearer, as if he wished to be quite certain of his aim. He fired, but his bullet passed harmlessly, far to one side, for a clod of earth, thrown from a distance, struck him at that moment on the cheek and deflected his aim.

He swung round, firing again, at a figure that came rushing at him from the night, as though the darkness there had materialised into a man. Twice he fired at that on-rushing figure, but twice he missed in the darkness and confusion, and then Bobby had him round the body, and the new-comer was upon them, too, and all three rolled upon the ground in a hopeless tangle till at last Bobby found himself uppermost.

“That you, Chenery?” he said as the light from the burning car showed him the new-comer's features. “Much obliged. Not hit, are you?”

“Tip of left ear shot away,” said Denis ruefully. “What's up? We got lost. Then we saw a fire – and shooting. What's Dickson been doing?”

“Oh, lots of things,” Bobby answered, fitting handcuffs to Dickson's wrists. “Sacking a duke and making it a general shooting-party all round. Also he'll be charged with the murder of Mr. Jessop.”

Next morning a pale and washed-out Bobby appeared at the hospital sheltering both Superintendent Ulyett and the Duke of Westhaven. Bobby's report had gone in, and various high officials were coming down later in the day to have a look round for themselves, to consult with the local people, and to interview Ulyett, who was not yet, the doctors said, fit to be moved, and to be present when Dickson was brought before the magistrates, when a remand would be asked for. And in far-off California film magnates were already preparing to offer Miss Fay Fellows fresh contracts at the salary of her palmiest days, though only on condition that she wore in every picture the necklace of which all the world would now be talking, to see which all the world would soon be willing to pay those sixpences, shillings, and half-crowns that presently add up to so many millions. For there remains personality, and genius, and beauty, but greater than these is publicity, and with glad tears in his eyes Miss Fay Fellows's publicity agent acknowledged that, even if he had arranged the whole thing himself, it could hardly have been better done.

In the private room of the chairman of the hospital, in the chairman's own special arm-chair, in a dressing-gown provided by the resident medical officer, sat the duke, a little pale, a little wan, slightly displeased with a universe that allowed such incidents to happen even to the best people. On the table by his side lay a cheque he had just signed, his contribution to the hospital funds in recognition of services received. The cheque was for one guinea, but the hospital authorities did not know that yet, and were still optimistic. Opposite to him sat Bobby, summoned to the ducal presence, a presence somewhat more nervously apprehensive than usual with one accustomed from youth to find a world suitably washed and ironed for his acceptance.

“Not,” he said darkly, “that I am surprised to hear – after yesterday – that Dickson is a murderer. When one considers –”

“– the way he treated you, sir,” Bobby completed the sentence – tactless for once, even consciously tactless in fact. “It was a bit thick.”

“It is a subject that need not be referred to again,” said the duke coldly. “I shall be interested to know if there is any valid reason why Dickson was not arrested earlier. At the moment the delay appears to me inexcusable.”

“Have to wait for proof,” explained Bobby. “Got to be sure of your ground before you send your case to the Public Prosecutor's office. They want it complete, trimmings and all, so all counsel have to do is to reel it off. And till we got hold of Higson to identify Dickson as the man who pawned the raincoat the night of the murder, the case wasn't cast iron. Now there's something extra, now we've found in it rubber gloves fitting the thumb-piece torn off by the trigger guard of the pistol that shot Jessop.”

“Why did Dickson pawn the coat?” the duke asked, forgetting for the moment his own grievances. “What made you suspect him in the first place?”

“Well, sir,” Bobby answered slowly, “as to why he pawned the coat, that was largely a case of panic and guilty conscience. He had shot Jessop – panic, too – he had discovered the necklace he did it for was only imitation, he had thrown it away, he was scared, excited, nervy to a degree, and he showed it plainly enough to make a policeman who saw him wonder what the matter was. Our men keep an eye on people in the streets who seem excited and upset. Dickson saw he was being watched; that upset him still more; he knew if he was stopped and questioned it was all up. He tried to dodge up a street turning; he saw the constable start to follow him. Close by there was the door of a pawnbroker's shop – as you know, pawnbrokers generally choose a corner for their shops.”

“Do they?” said the duke, interested. “Why?”

“So that people can slip in without being seen,” explained Bobby, thinking to himself how little dukes and such-like know of the commonplaces of everyday life. “That's what Dickson did. He had to have some excuse for going in, so he pawned his raincoat and asked if they would let him out through the shop into the main street, so that he wouldn't have so far to go to the tube station – he said he wanted the money to pay his fare back to town. He may have thought that getting rid of the coat would help, too; be a kind of disguise. He forgot about the rubber gloves – perhaps he never even noticed that the thumb had been torn off one of them.”

“I thought,” the duke said, looking puzzled, “there was a complete – alibi, I understand it is called.”

“No guilty man can have a complete alibi,” Bobby answered. “That is impossible. But Dickson managed to suggest one – he didn't prove an alibi; he suggested one. As soon as he got back to town he bought some whisky, drank some – he probably needed it – and spilt some on his person and clothing so that he smelt of it pretty thoroughly, and then he got himself run in for being drunk and disorderly. If he had spent the afternoon and evening getting drunk in the West End he couldn't have been committing a murder at Brush Hill. The weak point, of course, was where he got the drink, so he staged his act outside the Cut and Come Again, because he knew the people there always deny anyone has had anything to drink from them except ginger beer and cold tea.”

“Why cold tea?” asked the duke, interested again. “A curious drink, surely.”

“I only meant,” explained Bobby gravely, “cold tea as a generic name for non-intoxicating beverages.”

“Oh, I understand,” said the duke.

“So he hoped,” Bobby continued, “their denial of his having been at the club would be taken as merely routine – as it nearly was. Also, as it happened, we had independent evidence he had been seen there earlier in the day and had announced his intention of having a week-end soak. Perhaps preparing his alibi already.”

“‘What made you suspect him in the first place?”

“We didn't,” Bobby answered. “There was Mr. Chenery. There was Mr. Jacks, the dead man's partner. There was his manager, Mr. Wright. We had soon discovered things were not quite as they should be in the business. There was Wynne, a bad character who was plainly mixed up in it somehow. There was even Mr. Patterson, the American gentleman whose cigar was by the dead body – and who hadn't gone back to New York. Then there was a croupier from Monte Carlo we found had been on the spot that night. It was only by degrees things began to point towards Dickson. For one thing, he had lost a brand-new raincoat that night. Left it in a 'bus. An odd thing to lose in rainy weather. Sometimes clothing is got rid of because there is blood on it. That wasn't the reason in this case, but it did just cross my mind as a possibility. Then next day he had it again, and he was rather careful to explain it had been returned direct by the finder, not from the Baker Street Lost Property Office. I wondered in a vague way if that was because inquiries can be made from the Baker Street office. It's not impossible, of course, for an article left in a 'bus to be returned direct to the owner, but ninety-nine times in a hundred it goes to Baker Street. Then it seemed probable the whole thing began with the rumours circulating in the Gut and Come Again, started by Wynne's drunken boasting, about the big deal T.T. was to be asked to put through. Dickson was a member of the Cut and Come Again. The pistol used was one originally belonging to Mr. Chenery, but his story was that he had given it to Miss May for protection when she was in charge of the duchess's jewels, and apparently she put it away in a drawer in the room she used in the Park Lane flat and forgot it and left it there. Dickson used that room, too, of course, when he took over her job, and so might have come across the pistol there. The cigar, too, he had access to – in fact, he seemed to fill the conditions every time. Then, too, he was connected with the duchess, and it was clear that in some odd way you yourself, sir, and the duchess were concerned. We knew you had inspected the necklace, apparently with a view to purchase.”