by Zenith Brown
Bull groaned inwardly as he took the water-soaked heap that the attendant handed him. He put it on the table and unwrapped it. It was the black satchel, and it was empty. Steiner or no Steiner, there was no doubt left in Bull’s mind that the lifeless creature in the next room was James Gates.
He pointed to the small gold initials that were almost illegible with age and use and made more so by their recent soaking. “G. B. C.” George Bartholomew Colton.
“This is the satchel that had the diamonds in it,” he said. “I think Gates got it when he held them up that night.”
“Wonder what happened, Bull? Did he get the wind up and jump in?”
Bull shook his head.
“Why take this with him?”
A young, efficient and very busy police surgeon came in.
“Hello! What’s up?”
They went in with him to where the motionless figure lay.
“Picked him up this morning by Blackfriars,” said Voorhees. “How long’s he been drowned?”
Dr. Montague-Paul looked cheerfully at the figure.
“Your man, Bull?” he asked. “Dryden said you’d never get him. Jolly old Dryden.”
“I don’t know if I have, yet,” Bull said gloomily. “This is one of them, I guess.”
Dr. Montague-Paul dropped some of his callous cheerfulness and bent closer.
“You want to know how long ago this fellow was drowned?” he asked.
“Right.”
“Well, that’s easy. He wasn’t drowned at all.”
Voorhees looked at Bull. They both looked at the surgeon.
“Have to have the lungs gone into, of course,” he said critically. “But I’ll lay you a fiver he was dead before he hit the water.”
He made a swift examination.
“Here you are.”
He pointed to a faint discoloration at the base of the brain.
“Nothing broken, but that’s it. He got a blow just here. That’s a heavy blow with a blunt, softish instrument—sandbag. Killed him instantly. Have to have an autopsy, Bull, but that’s it. I’m going to bed—so long!”
“Well,” said Voorhees. “Your case’s getting on, Bull. Another murder. Cheer up—the more they get rid of the easier they are to find.”
“So they say,” Bull said without enthusiasm. “Look here: get hold of Colton’s chauffeur for me, will you? Here’s the number. Tell him to get down here as quick as he can. I want to use the other line.”
He learned that Scotland Yard had just found out that Mr. Steiner was not on board the midnight boat from Southampton to Le Havre.
“Operator can’t get him,” Voorhees said.
Bull frowned.
“Then I’ll go out and get him myself,” he said. “If Ames has let him get away. . . .”
“I’ll come along,” Voorhees said.
Neither spoke until Bull pulled up in front of the Colton garage in Cadogan-square. Bull looked around. No one was in sight.
“Maybe they’re both out somewhere, Bull.”
“Maybe,” Bull grunted.
Then he saw a surprising sight
“Good Lord!” he said. “There’s Pinkerton! What’s he doing here?”
The little grey man was peering around the corner of the garage. His face was white. As he saw Bull he came stumbling forward.
“Upstairs!” he gasped. “Something’s happened! Quick!”
Bull ran into the open garage and up the steps. The door was wide open, the light was on. Bull took one look and sprang forward. Peskett was lying on the floor, a blackened bullet wound in his forehead. Beside him on the floor a few inches from his hand lay a revolver, and on the table was a Utile pile of diamonds set in old-fashioned mountings.
Bull knelt down beside the man.
“Give Monty a ring, will you?” he said to Voorhees.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Bull motioned the two men to stay where they were in the doorway. He got up and moved back to get a wider view of the scene of the third episode of the Colnbrook Outrage.
The chauffeur was lying near the window at the far end of the room. He was in shirt-sleeves and had removed his collar, tie and shoes. A chair was overturned at sharp right angle to the table, as if, Bull thought, he had got up suddenly from examining the jewels spread out there.
Bull said nothing. His mild blue eyes travelled placidly from jewels to table, to chair, to bed, to wardrobe, to each window in turn; and rested at last on the door frame.
“Hmm!” he said then, and looked back at the dead man lying on the floor. Then after a close examination of the floor between the table at which Peskett had been sitting and the open door, he crossed the room and called Scotland Yard.
“Send Bates out. I want some photographs of the place. White to do finger-prints. Be sure to tell the Commissioner as soon as he gets in. I’ll be able to be there around noon and I’d like to see him then if he can manage. That’s right.”
He put down the receiver and turned to Voorhees.
“Will you see if you can find Ames out there anywhere, Ben? Tell him to keep an eye on the house. Nobody is to leave. If he’s not there will you stand by?”
Only then did he turn to Mr. Pinkerton. “And what have you been up to?” he demanded.
Mr. Pinkerton had recovered from his agitation, but he did not seem wholly pleased with himself.
“Was that Ames out front?” he asked tentatively.
Bull gave a severe nod. Mr. Pinkerton shifted his feet.
“Well, you see, I heard you say over the phone that you’d be down at once. And I heard you mention Gates and Voorhees. As I knew Voorhees was with the River police I decided they had picked up Gates drowned in the Thames.”
“Something of the sort,” Bull grunted.
“So I thought there’d ought to be somebody over here to see if Peskett was at home, so I came.”
Mr. Pinkerton hurried on without looking at Bull’s stony expression.
“I didn’t see anybody around but I thought I heard somebody come in the door downstairs. It was dark, but I thought I saw the door move—the shadow, you know. So I crept up and tried it. Just then I heard a noise. I looked around. There was a man creeping up on me behind the hedge. I cut and ran around behind the garage and climbed over the wall. The man was after me. I got into somebody’s back garden and had to climb another fence.”
Mr. Pinkerton cleared his throat and looked up timidly at Inspector Bull’s set face.
“I thought I could go faster than he, but I saw he was gaining on me, so I threw a stone over in the next garden and hid myself behind a holly tree until he’d climbed over that fence. Then I circled back to see what was happening here.”
He paused.
“What was?” said Bull, downing his annoyance.
“Well, I’d just got onto the wall when I saw a flash of light. It looked as if it came from a pocket lamp. It was from the Colton’s kitchen. I could hardly get over that wall. It wasn’t as easy as it was when that man was after me. When I did get over, I thought I heard him in front. I was rather alarmed, because he had blood in his eye when he passed me behind the holly tree. But what I heard in front was you.”
Bull took a deep breath and inwardly groaned.
“Yes, it was me,” he said simply. “And I suppose you know who the other man was, don’t you?”
“I’m afraid it was Mr. Ames,” said Pinkerton, with a blush.
“It was,” said Inspector Bull. “You’ve been a great help, Pinkerton.”
It was just his luck, he thought, to have such an affair occur while Peskett’s murderer got away. For there was not the slightest doubt in Bull’s mind that it was murder, although he had not even examined Peskett’s revolver to see if it had been fired. It was murder; from the moment Inspector Bull’s eyes had rested on the door of the dead man’s room he had known it. The bolt that Peskett had put on his door that very morning had been neatly removed.
Ames came up the stairs.
“Nearly got him, sir,” he said. “I chased that devil all over the square. But he got away.”
He looked at the dead body of the chauffeur and shook his head.
“God!” he said. “I don’t see when he did that. I didn’t hear a shot. I saw the fellow come out of the door downstairs. He saw me and lit out the back. He was a little fellow but he could run, Inspector! Knows the place too. I’m sorry!”
“All right,” said Bull. “Just sets us back is all. Not your fault. You say you didn’t hear a shot?”
“No, sir.”
“What about earlier? Before that damned man came?”
Ames failed to notice the glance Bull gave his former landlord and closest friend.
“No, I didn’t, Inspector.”
“All right. See where a bolt has been here? It’s gone. Have a look around down in the garage, and in the dust bin, and see if you can find it. Be careful of finger-prints on it if you do. As soon as some of those other people come from the Yard, go along home and get to bed. You look dead to the world.”
“Not me. I’m sore as hell, though” Ames muttered. “If I get my hands on that little shrimp I’ll break his neck. My shins are raw and I cracked my head on somebody’s pergola.”
Mr. Pinkerton made an involuntary gesture of dismay.
“You have my permission,” said Inspector Bull icily.
Mr. Pinkerton forgot his feelings when he was allowed, for a minute or two, the overwhelming privilege of viewing the Homicide Squad actually at work. They moved in, and moved out again in a quarter of an hour; Mr. Pinkerton, standing timidly in the doorway, could have sworn that nothing in the room had escaped expert attention.
“Have everything ready for you at noon, Bull,” said Inspector Bates.
“But you won’t get anything off this,” said Detective-Sergeant White, motioning to the revolver and wrapping up his finger-printing paraphernalia in an oilskin bag. “Nobody’s touched it but him. I can tell you that already. How many shots were fired?”
“One, I guess,” Bull said.
“Not out of this,” White replied. “Hasn’t been fired. Didn’t get time, I suppose?”
“He had time enough,” Bull said.
Mr. Pinkerton looked eagerly at him.
“That means . . .”
“He was shot by somebody he knew, and by somebody he didn’t suspect,” said Bull calmly. “And that opens up a lot of fields. Think back to the five possibilities, Pinkerton.”
The Homicide Squad departed, Bull stood looking for a minute at the hammer and screw-driver that had been turned up in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe. Then he took the screw-driver over to the door and tried it in the tiny new cuts on the wood trim. They were gouges rather than cuts. Bull put the screw-driver back in the drawer and went over to the day bed in the corner.
“He was lying down,” he said to Mr. Pinkerton. “I should say he was ready for something. He had his gun out, anyway. I wonder . . .”
“Hello!” called a cheerful though sleepy voice.
“Right upstairs, Monty,” Bull said.
The police surgeon took a quick look around.
“These are busy days, Bull,” he said. “Or busy nights, rather. Too damn busy. Suicide?”
“Murder,” said Bull.
Montague-Paul knelt down by the chauffeur. He shook his head.
“I can’t tell you when this was done,” he said, “except that it wasn’t a long time ago. Which you already know.”
“Was it three hours, or eight hours?” Bull demanded.
“Three or four. That’s my guess. The bullet went straight through the right temple. Now wait a minute! This is interesting.”
He got up and surveyed the scene.
“He was sitting down here, wasn’t he?”
“Looks like it.”
“Admiring the pretty baubles here. Well, Bull, he was shot while he was sitting.”
Bull looked calmly at him. Mr. Pinkerton eagerly moved up a little, in order to miss nothing. Mr. Pinkerton was just reflecting that this was almost the finest day—or night—of his existence.
“Yes, Inspector,” the surgeon went on blandly. “He was shot while he was sitting down—unless by a giant. The bullet was sent down into the lower brain from above. The course, as far as one can tell by a delicate preliminary experiment, diverges noticeably from the horizontal. The bullet enters here, at the lower point of the right temple, and goes down possibly into the cerebellum. That’s the part of the brain at the top of your spine.”
“So I’ve heard,” said Bull.
Montague-Paul grinned.
“AD right. There you are. The assailant was standing about three to two feet away—in other words, close. By the way—I got interested in that fellow Gates, if that’s who he is. I didn’t go home after all. My diagnosis was right as usual. He was struck a violent blow with a heavy blunt soft instrument at the base of the brain. The brain’s clotted and the top of the spine’s knocked every which way. He was as dead as Marley when he went into the river. In fact I should say he was deader. Now if you could arrange, Bull, to have no more vi olence this evening . . . In other words, now I am going to retire.”
“Just a minute,” said Bull. “This man was shot while he was sitting down.”
“Or by an eight-footer.”
“Why isn’t he still sitting down there then?”
The surgeon grinned again.
“Because, my good Bull, he was annoyed. It angered him, it distressed him—in short, he was displeased, he didn’t want to be shot in the right temple. So—I’m putting this in the simplest possible way—when shot he arose, he got up, he planned to do something about it.”
The surgeon caught Mr, Pinkerton’s look of open incredulity and laughed.
“It’s quite possible—in fact it’s what happened. In getting up he knocked his chair over backwards, to the spot it now occupies. But at that point the motor system failed, naturally. Then the respiratory system failed. Then the heart, some time—not long—afterwards, ceased to function. Just before then he was dead. See?”
“Thanks,” said Bull. “I’ll try not to call you out again. Tonight, anyway.”
They filed down the stairs. At the foot they met Ames.
“Find anything?”
“No luck, sir. Inspector Voorhees said to tell you the people in the house are up, or some of them. In the kitchen, anyway. He said he was getting along. Shall I stay?”
“Get some sleep and come back tonight.”
Bull and Mr. Pinkerton continued across the court, passing on their way two men with a stretcher, and went on towards the kitchen. Mrs. Coggins, pale faced and with shaking hands, saw them coming.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“You’re making your rounds early, Inspector,” Mrs. Coggins said, stepping aside for Bull to enter.
“You know about the early bird, Mrs. Coggins,” Bull replied. He hoped he looked less washed-out than he felt.
“And there’s many a truth spoke in jest.” Mrs. Coggins looked with some meaning at him.
“That’s right, Mrs. Coggins.” Then Bull added without changing his tone, “Peskett was shot to death last night.”
She stared stupidly at him.
“Peskett?” she said slowly. “Shot to death! Mother of God preserve us!”
She crossed herself hurriedly, then went quickly to the window.
“Is that what those men are busy about out there?” she asked hoarsely. “I thought they’d come because he’d killed the master, God forgive me!”
Bull shook his head.
“He didn’t kill your master,” he said gentry.
“He knew about it,” Mrs. Coggins said. She turned quickly away from the window with a shudder, and Bull knew why.
“Only last night at supper it was, Inspector, that he was as cocky as you please, and I said to him, ‘Young man, there’s many a fool thinks he’s a wise man.’ ”
“What did he say?”
“He said nothi
ng at all. He looked at me queer.”
“Who is last to bed in this house, Mrs. Coggins?”
“Usually the mistress.”
“Does she lock up?”
“She sees to the front of the house. I do the back.”
“Why didn’t you lock the kitchen door last night?”
Mrs. Coggins paled.
“I did, sir,” she said.
“Who unlocked it, then?”
“Nobody. Not that I know of.”
“It was locked when you came down this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Think again, Mrs. Coggins,” Bull said soberly. “A man’s been murdered out there, in cold blood. Shot through the head. Somebody did it. I’m not saying who it was, because I don’t know. But I’m going to find out. Now, tell me again. Did you lock the door last night?”
Mrs. Coggins nodded. “Yes, I did,” she said.
“But it was not locked this morning—just now—when you came down.”
She shook her head weakly.
“How did you know, Inspector?”
“When you let me in just now,” Bull explained patiently, “you had to turn the key twice. You locked the door the first time, instead of unlocking it. You had to unlock it then. Do you know who was in the kitchen last night?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who was in the house?”
“The mistress, Miss Agatha, me, and the parlour maid. Lucy is her name.”
“Where are they now?”
“The mistress and Miss Agatha don’t get up till nine. That wretched girl should have been down here half an hour ago.”
Bull glanced at the little kitchen clock.
“It’s eight now,” he said. “Wake Mrs. Colton and Miss Agatha Colton and tell them what’s happened. Tell them I want to speak to them as soon as possible.”
Mrs. Coggins looked intently at him.
“Inspector!” she said. “They didn’t have anything to do with it. It’s not right, there’s nobody to protect them!”
“I only want to talk with them,” Bull said patiently. “As soon as possible.”
The old woman went out. Bull took the opportunity to make a hasty inspection of the room. He looked in a dozen drawers, and opened the cupboards. When Mrs. Coggins came back he was just where she had left him.
