The Complete Four Just Men (64 page)

‘That’s not a great deal,’ said Manfred. ‘What makes you think he is going abroad?’

‘All his trunks are packed and his servants are under notice, that’s how I came to know,’ said the landlady. ‘I don’t think it’s a bad thing. Poor soul, she didn’t have a very happy life.’

The ‘poor soul’ referred to was apparently the doctor’s wife, and when asked to explain, the landlady knew no more than that people had talked, that there was probably nothing in it, and why shouldn’t the doctor go motoring on the moor with pretty girls if he felt that way inclined.

‘He had his fancies,’ said the landlady.

Apparently those ‘fancies’ came and went through the years of his married life.

‘I should like to meet the doctor,’ said Leon, but she shook her head.

‘He won’t see anyone, not even his patients, sir,’ she said.

Nevertheless Leon succeeded in obtaining an interview. He had judged the man’s character correctly thus far, and he knew he would not refuse an interview with a journalist.

The servant took Leon’s name, closing the front door in his face while she went to see the doctor, and when she came back it was to invite him in.

He found the medical gentleman in his study, and the dismantled condition of the room supported Mrs Martin’s statement that he was leaving the town at an early date. He was in fact engaged in destroying old business letters and bills when Leon arrived.

‘Come in,’ grumbled the doctor. ‘I suppose if I didn’t see you, you’d invent something about me. Now what do you want?’

He was a good-looking young man with regular features, a carefully trimmed black moustache and tiny black side-whiskers.

‘Light-blue eyes I do not like,’ said Leon to himself, ‘and I should like to see you without a moustache.’

‘I’ve been sent down from London to ask to what charities you are distributing your wife’s money, Dr Twenden,’ said Leon, with the brisk and even rude directness of a London reporter.

The doctor’s lips curled.

‘The least they can do is to give me a chance to make up my mind,’ he said. ‘The fact is, I’ve got to go abroad on business, and whilst I’m away I shall carefully consider the merits of the various charity organisations of Devon to discover which are the most worthy and how the money is to be distributed.’

‘Suppose you don’t come back again?’ asked Leon cruelly. ‘I mean, anything might happen; the ship may sink or the train smash – what happens to the money then?’

‘That is entirely my affair,’ said the doctor stiffly, and closing his eyes, arched his eyebrows for a second as he spoke. ‘I really don’t wish to reopen this matter. I’ve had some very charming letters from the public, but I’ve had abusive ones too. I had one this morning saying that it was a pity that the Four Just Men were not in existence! The Four just Men!’ he smiled contemptuously, ‘as though I should have cared a snap of my fingers for that kind of cattle!’

Leon smiled too.

‘Perhaps it would be more convenient if I saw you tonight,’ he suggested.

The doctor shook his head.

‘I’m to be the guest-of honour of a few friends of mine,’ he said, with a queer air of importance, ‘and I shan’t be back until half past eleven at the earliest.’

‘Where is the dinner to be held? That might make an interesting item of news,’ said Leon.

‘It’s to be held at the Lion Hôtel. You can say that Sir John Murden is in the chair, and that Lord Tussborough has promised to attend. I can give you the list of the people who’ll be there.’

‘The dinner engagement is a genuine one,’ thought Leon with satisfaction.

The list was forthcoming, and pocketing the paper with due reverence, Gonsalez bowed himself out. From his bedroom window that evening he watched the doctor, splendidly arrayed, enter a taxi and drive away. A quarter of an hour later the servant, whom Leon had seen, came out pulling on her gloves. Gonsalez watched her for a good quarter of an hour, during which time she stood at the corner of the street. She was obviously waiting for something or somebody. What it was he saw. The Torquay bus passed by, stopped, and she mounted it.

After dinner he had a talk with the landlady and brought the conversation back to the doctor’s house.

‘I suppose it requires a lot of servants to keep a big house like that going.’

‘He’s only got one now, sir: Milly Brown, who lives in Torquay. She is leaving on Saturday. The cook left last week. The doctor has all his meals at the hôtel.’

He left Manfred to talk to the landlady – and Manfred could be very entertaining.

Slipping through the garden he reached a little alleyway at the back of the houses. The back gate giving admission to the doctor’s garden was locked, but the wall was not high. He expected that the door of the house would be fastened, and he was not surprised when he found it was locked. A window by the side of the door was, however, wide open: evidently neither the doctor nor his maid expected burglars. He climbed through the window on to the kitchen sink, through the kitchen and into the house, without difficulty. His search of the library into which he had been shown that afternoon was a short one. The desk had no secret drawers, and most of the papers had been burnt. The ashes overflowed the grate on to the tiled hearth. The little laboratory, which had evidently been a creamery when the house was in former occupation, yielded nothing, nor did any of the rooms.

He had not expected that in this one search he would make a discovery, remembering that the police had probably ransacked the house after the doctor’s arrest and had practically been in occupation ever since.

He went systematically and quickly through the pockets of all the doctor’s clothing that he found in the wardrobe of his bedroom, but it produced nothing more interesting than a theatre programme.

‘I’m afraid I shan’t want that key,’ said Leon regretfully, and went downstairs again. He turned on his pocket lamp: there might be other clothing hanging in the hall, but he found the rack was empty.

As he flashed the light around, the beam caught a large tin letter-box fastened to the door. He lifted up the yellow lid and at first saw nothing. The letter-box looked as if it had been home-made. It was, as he had seen at first, of grained and painted tin that had been shaped roughly round a wooden frame; he saw the supports at each corner. One was broken. He put in his hand, and saw that what he thought had been the broken ends of the frame, was a small square packet standing bolt upright: it was now so discoloured by dust that it seemed to be part of the original framework. He pulled it out, tearing the paper cover as he did so; it had been held in its place by the end of a nail which had been driven into the original wood, which explained why it had not fallen over when the door had been slammed. He blew the dust from it; the package was addressed from the Pasteur Laboratory. He had no desire to examine it there, and slipped it into his pocket, getting out of the house by the way he had come in, and rejoining Manfred just when that gentleman was beginning to get seriously worried, for Leon had been three hours in the house.

‘Did you find anything?’ asked Manfred when they were alone.

‘This,’ said Leon. He pulled the packet out of his pocket and explained where he had found it.

‘The Pasteur Institute,’ said Manfred in surprise. ‘Of course,’ he said suddenly, ‘the serum which the doctor used to inject into his wife’s arm. Pasteur are the only people who prepare that. I remember reading as much in the account of the trial.’

‘And which he injected twice a week, if I remember rightly,’ said Leon, ‘on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and the evidence was that he did not inject it on the Wednesday before the murder. It struck me at the time as being rather curious that nobody asked him when he was in the witness box why he had omitted this injection.’

He cut along the paper and pulled it apart: inside was an oblong wooden box, about which was wrapped a letter. It bore the heading of the laboratory, directions, and was in French.

Sir [it began],

We despatch to you immediately the serum Number 47 which you desire, and we regret that through the fault of a subordinate, this was not sent you last week. We received your telegram today that you are entirely without serum, and we will endeavour to expedite the delivery of this.

‘Entirely without serum,’ repeated Gonsalez. He took up the wrapping-paper and examined the stamp. ‘Paris, the 14th September,’ he said, ‘and here’s the receiving stamp, Newton Abbot the 16th September, 7 a.m.’

He frowned.

‘This was pushed through the letter-box on the morning of the 16th,’ he said slowly. ‘Mrs Twenden was injected on the evening of the 15th. The 16th was a Sunday, and there’s an early post. Don’t you see, Manfred?’

Manfred nodded.

‘Obviously he could not have injected serum because he had none to inject, and this arrived when his wife was dying. It is, of course, untouched.’

He took out a tiny tube and tapped the seal.

‘H’m,’ said Leon, ‘I shall want that key after all. Do you remember, Manfred, he did not inject on Wednesday: why? because he had no serum. He was expecting the arrival of this, and it must have gone out of his mind. Probably we shall discover that the postman knocked, and getting no answer on the Sunday morning, pushed the little package through the letter-box, where by accident it must have fallen into the corner where I discovered it.’

He put down the paper and drew a long breath.

‘And now I think I will get to work on that key,’ he said.

Two days later Manfred came in with news.

‘Where is my friend?’

Mrs Martin, the landlady, smiled largely.

‘The gentleman is working in the greenhouse, sir. I thought he was joking the other day when he asked if he could put up a vice on the potting bench, but, lord, he’s been busy ever since!’

‘He’s inventing a new carburettor,’ said Manfred, devoutly hoping that the lady had no knowledge of the internal-combustion engine.

‘He’s working hard, too, sir; he came out to get a breath of air just now, and I never saw a gentleman perspire so! He seems to be working with that file all the day.’

‘You mustn’t interrupt him,’ began Manfred.

‘I shouldn’t dream of doing it,’ said the landlady indignantly.

Manfred made his way to the garden, and his friend, who saw him coming – the greenhouse made an ideal workshop for Leon, for he could watch his landlady’s approach and conceal the key he had been filing for three days – walked to meet him.

‘He is leaving today, or rather tonight,’ said Manfred. ‘He’s going to Plymouth: there he will catch the Holland-American boat to New York.’

‘Tonight?’ said Leon in surprise. ‘That cuts me rather fine. By what train?’

‘That I don’t know,’ said Manfred.

‘You’re sure?’

Manfred nodded.

‘He’s giving it out that he’s leaving tomorrow, and is slipping away tonight. I don’t think he wants people to know of his departure. I discovered it through an indiscretion of the worthy doctor’s. I was in the post office when he was sending a wire. He had his pocket-book open on the counter, and I saw some labels peeping out. I knew they
were steamship labels, and I glimpsed the printed word “Rotterdam”,
looked up the newspapers, and saw that the
Rotterdam
was leaving tomorrow. When I heard that he had told people that he was leaving Newton Abbot tomorrow I was certain.’

‘That’s all to the good,’ said Leon. ‘George, we’re going to achieve the crowning deed of our lives. I say “we”, but I’m afraid I must do this alone – though you have a very important role to play.’

He chuckled softly and rubbed his hands.

‘Like every other clever criminal he has made one of the most stupid of blunders. He has inherited his wife’s money under an old will, which left him all her possessions, with the exception of £2,000 which she had on deposit at the bank, and this went to her nephew, the Plymouth engineer. In his greed Twenden is pretty certain to have forgotten this legacy. He’s got all the money in a Torquay bank. It was transferred from Newton Abbot a few days ago and was the talk of the town. Go to Plymouth, interview young Jacley, see his lawyer, if he has one, or any lawyer if he hasn’t, and if the two thousand pounds has not been paid, get him to apply for a warrant for Twenden’s arrest. He is an absconding trustee under those circumstances, and the Justices will grant the warrant if they know the man is leaving by the
Rotterdam
tomorrow.’

‘If you were an ordinary man, Leon,’ said Manfred, ‘I should think that your revenge was a little inadequate.’

‘It will not be that,’ said Leon quietly.

At nine-thirty, Dr Twenden, with his coat collar turned up and the brim of a felt hat hiding the upper part of his face, was entering a first-class carriage at Newton Abbot, when the local detective-sergeant whom he knew tapped him on the shoulder.

‘I want you, Doctor.’

‘Why, Sergeant?’ demanded the doctor, suddenly white.

‘I have a warrant for your arrest,’ said the officer.

When the charge was read over to the man at the police station he raved like a lunatic.

‘I’ll give you the money now, now! I must go tonight. I’m leaving for America tomorrow.’

‘So I gather,’ said the Inspector dryly. ‘That is why you’re arrested, Doctor.’

And they locked him in the cells for the night.

The next morning he was brought before the Justices. Evidence was taken, the young nephew from Plymouth made his statement, and the Justices conferred.

‘There is
prima facie
evidence here of intention to defraud, Dr Twenden,’ said the chairman at last. ‘You are arrested with a very large sum of money and letters of credit in your possession, and it seems clear that it was your intention to leave the country. Under those circumstances we have no other course to follow, but commit you to take your trial at the forthcoming session.’

‘But I can have bail: I insist upon that,’ said the doctor furiously.

‘There will be no bail,’ was the sharp reply, and that afternoon he was removed by taxi-cab to Baxeter prison.

The Sessions were for the following week, and the doctor again fumed in that very prison from which he had emerged if not with credit, at least without disaster.