The Crime at Black Dudley (11 page)

He stopped and looked at Abbershaw steadily.

‘It doesn't seem to be of any negotiable value,' he said, ‘and as far as I can see, the only people who are interested in it are my client and Dawlish, but I can tell you one thing. It does interest them very much, and to get hold of it I don't believe they'd stick at anything.'

‘But what was it?' persisted Prenderby, who was more puzzled than ever by these explanations.

Campion shook his head.

‘I don't know,' he said, ‘unless it was the Chart of the Buried Treasure, don't you know.'

Abbershaw got up from his chair and paced slowly up and down the room.

‘There's only one weak spot in your story, Campion,' he said suddenly. ‘It sounds like Gospel apart from that. But there is one thing I don't understand. It's this: Why didn't you have a revolver on you when you came out into the garage?'

‘Answered in one,' said Mr Campion. ‘Because I hadn't one: I never carry guns.'

‘Do you mean to say that you set out on an infernally dangerous game like this without one?' Abbershaw's voice was incredulous.

Mr Campion became momentarily grave.

‘It's a fact,' he said simply. ‘I'm afraid of them. Horrible things – guns. Always feel they might go off in a fit of temper and I should be left with the body. And no bag to put it in either. Then poor little Albert would be in the soup.' He shuddered slightly.

‘Let's talk about something else,' he said. ‘I can keep up my pecker in the face of anything else but a corpse.'

Prenderby and Abbershaw exchanged glances, and Abbershaw turned to where the young man with the tow-coloured hair and the unintelligent smile sat beaming at them through his glasses.

‘Campion,' he said, ‘you know, of course, that Colonel Coombe died last night? Do you know how he died?'

Mr Campion looked surprised.

‘Heart, wasn't it?' he said. ‘I thought the old bird had been scratching round the grave for the last year or so.'

Abbershaw's expression did not change.

‘Oh,' he said, ‘if that is all you know it may surprise you to hear that he was murdered – while the Dagger Ritual was going on.'

‘Murdered!'

Every trace of frivolity had vanished from Albert Campion's face. There was no mistaking the fact that the news had appalled him, and he looked at Abbershaw with undisguised horror in his pale eyes.

‘Murdered?' he repeated. ‘How do you know?'

‘I saw him,' said Abbershaw simply. ‘They wanted a signature on the cremation certificate, and got me in for it. They wouldn't let me examine the body, but I saw the face and neck and I also saw his invalid chair.' His eyes were fixed on Campion the whole time he was speaking. ‘Then there was the dagger itself,' he said. ‘There was blood on the dagger, and blood on the cushions of the chair, but even if I had not known of these, the body, though I saw so little of it, would have convinced me that he had been murdered. As perhaps you know,' he went on, ‘it is my job to explain how men die, and as soon as I saw that dead grey face with the
depleted veins I knew that he had died of some wound. Something that would bleed very freely. I should say it was a stab in the back, myself.'

The change in Mr Campion was extraordinary; he pulled himself together with an effort.

‘This is horrible,' he said. ‘I suppose they got him when they discovered that he had parted with the package. Pretty quick work,' he added thoughtfully. ‘I wonder how they rumbled him so soon.'

There was silence, for a moment or two after he had spoken, then Prenderby looked up.

‘The store they set by that package must be enormous, on the face of it,' he said. ‘Clearly they'll do anything for it. I wonder what their next move will be?'

‘He's searched our rooms,' said Abbershaw, ‘and I believe he intended to lock us in the dining-room and search us immediately after, but his experiences in the bedrooms taught him the utter impossibility of ever making a thorough search of a house like this. It couldn't be done in the time he had at his disposal. I think he realizes that his only chance of getting hold of what he wants is to terrorize us until someone hands it over.'

‘Then I hope to goodness whoever has got it gets the wind up soon,' said Prenderby.

Campion nodded and sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed. ‘I expect he'll have you people up one at a time and bully the truth out of you until he gets what he wants,' he said.

‘For a great crook he hasn't proved very methodical, so far,' said Abbershaw. ‘He might have known from the first that there'd be no point in churning everybody's clothes up.'

Albert Campion leaned forward. ‘You know, you fellows don't understand this bright specimen of German culture,' he said, with more gravity than was usual in his falsetto voice. ‘He's not used to little details of this sort. He's the laddie at the top – the big fellow. He just chooses his men carefully and then says, “You do this”, and they do it. He
doesn't go chasing round the country opening safes or pinching motor-cars. I don't believe he even plans the
coups
himself. He just buys criminal brains, supplies the finance, and takes, the profits. That's why I can't understand him being here. There must have been something pretty big afoot, or he'd have had a minion in for it. Gosh! I wish I was well out of it.'

Abbershaw and Prenderby echoed his wish devoutly in their hearts, and Prenderby was the first to speak.

‘I wonder whom he'll start on first,' he said thoughtfully.

Campion's pale eyes flickered.

‘I fancy I could tell you that,' he said. ‘You see, when they couldn't get anything out of me, except banalities, they decided that I was about the fool I looked, and just before a couple of thugs, armed to the teeth, bundled me off to the box-room, I heard a certain amount of what they said. Jesse Gideon had apparently gone carefully over the crowd, and prepared a dossier about each one of us. I came first on the list of people about which nothing was known, and the next was a girl. She wasn't a friend of Petrie's apparently, and the enemy couldn't place her at all.'

‘Who – who was that?'

Abbershaw was staring at the speaker, his eyes grown suddenly hard. A terrible apprehension had sent the colour to his face. Campion glanced at him curiously.

‘That red-haired girl who met us in the passage when we came back from the garage. What's her name – Oliphant, isn't it? Meggie Oliphant. She's the next to be for it, I believe.'

‘My God, Abbershaw, he was right! They've got her!'

Ten minutes after Mr Campion had first suggested that Meggie might be the next victim, Prenderby ran into Abbershaw in the corridor outside the girl's room. ‘I've been all
over the house,' he said. ‘The girls say that she went up to her room an hour ago to lie down. Now there's not a sign of her about.'

Abbershaw did not speak.

In the last few minutes his face had lost much of its cherubic calm. An entirely new emotion had taken possession of him. He was wildly, unimaginably angry.

Never, in all his life before, had he experienced anything that could compare with it, and even as Prenderby watched him he saw the last traces of the cautious methodical expert vanish and the new, impulsive, pugnacious fighter come into being.

‘Michael,' he said suddenly, ‘keep an eye on Campion. His story may be absolutely true – it sounds like it – but we can't afford to risk anything. Keep him up in my room so that he can hide in the passage if need be. You'll have to smuggle food up to him somehow. Cheer the others up if you can.' Prenderby looked at him anxiously.

‘What are you going to do?' he said.

Abbershaw set his teeth.

‘I'm going to see them,' he said. ‘There's been enough of this mucking about. There is going to be some sort of understanding, anyway. Damn it all! They've got my girl!' Turning on his heel he strode off down the passage.

A green-baize door cut off that portion of the house where Dawlish had established his headquarters. He passed through it without any interruption, and reached the door of the room that had once been Colonel Coombe's bedchamber.

He tapped on it loudly, and it was opened immediately by a man he had never seen before, a heavy bull of a fellow whom he guessed to be one of the servants.

‘What do you want?' he demanded suspiciously.

‘Mr Dawlish,' said Abbershaw, and attempted to push past him.

A single blow, violent as a mule kick, sent him flying back against the opposite wall of the corridor, and the giant glowered at him.

‘Nobody comes in 'ere,' he said. ‘Mr Dawlish isn't seeing anybody for another hour at least,' he added with a laugh that sent Abbershaw cold as he grasped its inference.

‘Look here,' he said, ‘this is very important. I must get in to Mr Dawlish. Does this interest you?'

He drew a notecase from his pocket as he spoke. The man advanced towards him and stood glaring down at him, his heavy red face darker than ever with anger.

Suddenly his hand shot out and Abbershaw's throat was encased in a band of steel.

‘You just 'aven't realized, you and your lot downstairs, what you're playing about wiv,' he said. ‘This 'ere isn't no Sunday School hunt-the-thimble-set-out. There's nine of us, we're armed, and
he
isn't jokin'.' The hand round Abbershaw's throat tightened as the thug thrust his face close against his victim's.

‘'E ain't ordered about by nobody. Makes 'is own laws, 'e does.
As
you'll soon find out. At the moment 'e's busy – talking to a lady. And when 'e's done wiv 'er I'll take your message in to 'im and not before. Now get out – if I 'aven't killed yer.'

On the last words he flung the half-strangled Abbershaw away from him as if he had been a terrier, and, re-entering the room, slammed the door behind him, shooting home the bolts.

Abbershaw scrambled to his feet, flung himself against the door, beating it with his hands, in a paroxysm of fury.

At last he paused in despair: the heavy oak would have withstood a battering ram. He stood back, helpless and half-maddened with apprehension for Meggie's safety.

Then from somewhere far away he fancied he heard a muffled cry.

The effect upon him was instantaneous. His impotent fury vanished and he became once more cold and reasoning. His one chance of saving her was to get round the other way: to break in upon Dawlish's inquisition from an unguarded point, and, once there, declare all he knew about the red wallet and the fate of its contents, regardless of the revenge the German would inevitably take.

Campion had been imprisoned conceivably somewhere near the room where Dawlish had dealt with him. It was just possible, therefore, that the passage through the cupboard would lead him to Meggie.

He turned quickly: there was no time to be lost; even now Dawlish might be trying some of the same methods of urging a confession as he had employed upon Campion earlier in the day. The thought sickened him and he dashed down the passage into his own room.

Brushing the as finished Campion aside, he threw open the cupboard door and pressed against the back of the shelf steadily.

It gave before his weight and swung open, revealing a dark cavity behind.

He took out his pocket torch and flashed it in front of him. The passage was wood-lined and very dusty. Doubtless it had not been used for years before Campion stumbled upon it by chance that afternoon.

It was narrow also, admitting only just enough space for a man to pass along it, crawling on his hands and knees. But Abbershaw set off down it eagerly.

The air was almost unbearably musty, and there was a scuttling of rats in front of him as he crawled on, shining the torch ahead of him as he went. At length he reached the steps of which Campion had spoken. They were steep and solid, leading straight up into the darkness which had opened above his head.

He mounted them cautiously, and a moment later found himself cut off by an apparently solid floor over him.

A closer examination, however, showed a catch, which, upon being released, allowed the trap to drop slowly open, so that he had to retreat some steps in order to avoid its catching him.

The machinery which Campion had referred to as a ‘piece of old bicycle' was in fact an ancient iron device, worked with a pedal, for opening the trap. As soon as he had lifted this hatch, Abbershaw hauled himself into the open space above it which he knew must be the chest itself. The
lid was down, and he waited for some moments, breathless, listening. He could hear nothing, however, save the scuffling of the rats behind him, and at length, very cautiously, he put his hands above his head, pressed the lid up an inch or two, and peered out.

No one appeared to be about, and he climbed silently out of the box. He was in a longish vaulted room, one of the relics of the days when Black Dudley had been a monastery. Its stone walls were unpanelled, and a small window high up was closely barred. It was, as Campion had said, used as a box-room, and filled with lumber of every description.

Abbershaw looked round eagerly for a door, and saw it built almost next door to the fire-place in the wall opposite him.

It was small, iron, hinged, and very heavy.

He tried it cautiously, and found to his relief that it was unlocked. So Campion's escape had been discovered, he reflected, and went warily. He let himself out cautiously; he had no desire to be apprehended before he reached Dawlish himself.

The door opened out on to a small stone landing in which were two similar doors. A steep spiral staircase descended almost at his feet.

He listened attentively, but there was no sound, and he decided that Dawlish's inquisition could not be taking place on that floor. He turned down the steps, therefore, treading softly and hugging the wall. Once round the first bend, he heard a sound which made him stiffen and catch his breath – the muffled murmur of voices somewhere quite close. He went on eagerly, his ears strained to catch the first recognizable word.