“Need to drink, you know,” he said morosely. “Have a partner I couldn’t stand sober.” He suddenly blushed. “Sorry,” he added contritely. “No problem of yours. Don’t usually talk to people here. Don’t usually have the time. Too busy drinking, as a matter of fact.” He demonstrated his usual occupation and then set the mug once more upon the table. “Wake up every morning with a head like a tumor. Teeth feel like they’re wearing little sweaters. Terrible.” He lifted the mug again and quaffed. “This partner. Suspicious chap. Checks expense accounts and things of that nature. Awful.” He was about to raise his mug again when he remembered something. “Oh, yes. The pills. Here’s how.” And, slipping the pellet into his mouth, he immediately washed it down with another draught of his drink.
Years before, when Mr. Simpson had obtained this particular preparation from his doctor, the latter had warned him to dissolve it in plenty of water before applying it to some stubborn warts he wished to remove. “And,” added his doctor, “don’t leave them lying about where someone might pick them up, because, believe me, they’re powerful.” But, even remembering this warning, Mr. Simpson was scarcely prepared for the rapidity with which the tiny pellet went to work. Mr. Lynch did not have time to do more than raise a finger to indicate reciprocity; he barely had time to cast a reproachful glance toward his seatmate. He half rose in his chair, leaned lightly against the table a moment in the manner of one indecisive about leaving, and then tumbled heavily to the floor. It was, perhaps, unfortunate that Mr. Lynch was right-handed. Had he been left-handed, his drink might well have been discharged on the floor, or on one of the noisy threesome at the next table engaged in a violent discussion of the relative merits of Nottingham and Newcastle. As it was, it flew neatly across the enclosed space and drenched Mr. Simpson from head to foot.
The babble of the bar slowly faded as more and more people suddenly realized that tragedy had struck in their midst; when the last of them had swung about to stare at the sprawled figure, dead silence reigned. The barman came hustling from behind his counter with the shocked air of a maintenance man faced with the inexplicable stoppage of an apparatus that had functioned faithfully for years and years. His eyes traveled from the still corpse on the floor to the ashen complexion of Mr. Simpson, still dripping foamy suds.
“What happened?” demanded the barman.
“Haven’t the slightest,” said Mr. Simpson, his mind racing in search of a proper attitude to assume, and his problem further complicated by the dampness which was beginning to seep down his collar. “Was sitting here, minding my own business, when this chap suddenly turned to me, started to say something about his partner, and then pitched over.” His ever imaginative brain suddenly saw a possible benefit in his dousing, and he continued, “Chap sprayed me with his drink, too, he did. And who’ll pay to have my suit cleaned, I’d like to know!”
The barman dismissed this as being of minimum importance. “I suppose we’ll have to have the police in,” he said glumly, staring down at the body of his ex-customer resentfully. But before he could kick it (if that was what he was contemplating) he found himself shoved aside by the police themselves in the person of one P. C. Winters, who had been on point duty nearby, and who had been called by one of the quicker thinkers among the bar’s custom.
“Here, now!” said P. C. Winters, his small eyes sweeping the silent crowd accusingly. “What’s all this?” He unholstered a notebook and pencil and glared about. Everyone seemed reluctant to answer. “I said, what’s all this?”
“Man dead,” someone answered, and there was a nervous snicker from somewhere behind the crowd of faces.
“Ah!” said P. C. Winters, happy that the first step of the inevitable ritual was over. He had been taught to say “Here-now-what’s-all-this” in police school, but he must have been dozing when they explained why. “Now, then, what the devil happened?”
“I was sitting here,” Simpson began modestly, “when this chap sitting beside me suddenly up and chucked his drink all over me. Well, of course I started to remonstrate with him, because one doesn’t do that sort of thing, and then I noticed he wasn’t even paying any attention. As a matter of fact, he was down on the floor, still as could be, and I shouldn’t be surprised if he were dead right then.”
“Ah!” said P. C. Winters. He had also been taught this important ploy in police school, and that day he had been awake. It was to give him time to think. He had often felt they might have picked a more time-consuming phrase. “Now, sir, if you’ll just let me have your name and—”
“And dead or not,” Simpson continued, impervious to the constable’s furrowed brow, tongue between teeth, or extended pencil, “what I want to know is, who’s going to pay to have my suit cleaned?”
“Your name, if you please, sir. We’ll need it for—”
“I don’t claim the suit as being new,” said Simpson reasonably, appealing to the crowd. “Nor am I asking for a new suit in return. Although,” he added pensively, “I’m not so sure I couldn’t collect if I made an issue of it. Have to look into that with my solicitors. Depends, I suppose, on the ease of removing stains from this type of material. Beer stains, that is.”
“I was saying, sir—”
“You were saying what?” Simpson asked querulously. “I’m not asking the police for anything. I’m not blaming them. Certainly I’m a fair man, and I’d never claim it was their fault. But it does seem to me that the pub here ought to have some responsibility in the matter. After all, if a man is injured in an airplane, or a tram, the company has to compensate. So why not in a pub?”
“You can scarcely call having some beer spilled on you an injury,” P. C. Winters pointed out, drawn into the argument despite himself. The crowd held its breath for the answer.
“No?” said Simpson triumphantly. “You get your uniforms given, don’t you? It’s easy for you to talk! Well, I don’t get my suits given, and that’s the fact!”
“Well, now, about our uniforms,” P. C. Winters returned hotly, relieving an old, old irritation, “it just goes to show that you don’t know, because as a matter of fact we have to furnish them ourselves!”
“Hah!” said Simpson, pouncing, while the breathless crowd watched this exchange with all of the excitement of tick-tocking heads at a tennis match. “Then how would you feel if some utter stranger decanted gallons of liquid over you, and you had to pay for having your uniform cleaned out of your own pocket? Eh?”
P. C. Winters shook his head as if to clear it. Had Mr. Wallingford Lynch been able to note the gesture instead of lying dead (and unnoticed) upon the floor, it is certain that he would have classified it as definitely being caused by either headache or the twitch.
“Look, sir—”
Simpson rose regally. “I am leaving,” he announced. “But do not for one moment make the fatal mistake of thinking I shall not return. First with the bill from my cleaners, and if this is not given the respect it merits, I shall be back a second time with my solicitors. It is high time,” he added, in a ringing voice that nearly had the entranced crowd cheering, “that public houses take their rightful place with companies of transport and other franchised services in assuming their just responsibilities in matters affecting their public!”
P. C. Winters was torn between the desire to strike this idiot with his billy and the desire to get enough facts on paper to satisfy his sergeant when report time came.
“But, sir,” he cried, beseechingly, desperately. “Your name?”
“Samson,” said Simpson grandly. “Of Samson, Griggs, and Crowther, Swan’s Park!” He stalked from the room amidst the admiring sigh of the throng, leaving behind both a sweating P. C. Winters, scribbling busily, and a very dead corpse.
“Sometimes,” Simpson remarked thoughtfully, sipping his brandy and champagne, “I have the feeling that we are killing the wrong people. This Lynch chap, for example. Seemed to be a rather nice fellow. However…”
He took Mr. Lynch’s pill from his pocket idly and toss
ed it upon the table. It rattled about a bit, finally coming to a stop against Mr. Carruthers’ restraining finger. Mr. Carruthers picked it up and examined it carefully, smelled it, and then with great caution placed the tip of his tongue in contact with it.
“I am no expert,” he said modestly, “but I should judge this is what our American cousins call a mickey.” He coughed delicately. “I should imagine that had you taken this you would have presented the very authentic picture of an extremely ill person, and that our friend Lynch would have exhibited the responsibility of aiding you to some fresh air.” His finger came up. “I do not say you would not have received this fresh air—I’m sure you would have. But I think it is safe to say you would have awakened with both a headache and a twitch, not to mention empty pockets.”
Simpson stared at him with shocked eyes. Mr. Carruthers shrugged.
“Let us be shoemakers that stick to our last,” he continued. “It takes some eight years of training to become a respectable psychiatrist; let us not attempt any shortcuts and arrive at an analysis of a person’s character in five minutes.”
He cleared his throat and smiled at his two friends. “Let our motto be,” he said gently, “’Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and—well, make people die.’”
His smile remained, but his eyes were quite serious as they passed over the two thoughtful faces before him. “Then, if we are agreed, tea. And after tea, a slight discussion of another most interesting letter we have received…”
“Strange Seizure in Pub,” said the small headline.
“Ah!” said Sir Percival Pugh, and he reached for his scissors.
5
And so the days flew by, happy summer days and busy: mornings and afternoons spent in careful planning and at least once a week in flawless execution; evenings spent in celebrating successes with brandy and champagne. For the first time in years the three members of the Murder League felt the heady satisfaction of being active, of being necessary—in short, of contributing. Gone was the depressing sensation of being too old, of being a drag on a working world. A new youthfulness seemed to possess them. The northeast corner of the Club now rang with more laughter than any other section, and it was satisfied laughter. For, in addition to the scintillating feeling of utility, there was, of course, the pleasant fact that they were earning money once again.
“A new suit!” Potter told his confreres of the southeast bastion, his face wreathed in puzzlement. “Carruthers! I tell you, that suit he has on this very minute is new! If you wish you can go over and see for yourselves. No egg stain on it at all. New, I tell you!”
“And Briggs must have new teeth,” a second observed thoughtfully. “Have you noticed that he doesn’t clack any more?”
“As a matter of fact,” said a third, nodding his profound agreement, “I should say you are quite right. Actually, I don’t believe I’ve noticed any one of them clacking recently.”
“As for Simpson,” interjected a fourth, a bit abashed that his contribution was so slight, “I happened to drift past their table a few moments ago—oh, quite naturally, I assure you—and there on the table was the paper band from a Corona-Corona.” He shrugged elaborately. “A bit different from those pieces of tarred rope he used to smoke. You can smell the difference from here.”
“Ah, well, now,” said the third, trying hard to be charitable, “someone may have given it to him.”
“More likely picked the smoking stub from the gutter,” snickered the second.
“Complete with paper band?” Member number four of the southeast corner had a tendency to take statements literally. “No, he bought it. They’ve come into money, I tell you.”
“Do you imagine,” said the second, his twitching body leaning forward as if dragged down by the sheer weight of his idea, “that they could be writing again?”
“Writing?” asked the third. The ridiculousness of this proposition caused smiles among the group. “Writing? What on earth would they write?”
Potter made his contribution to the humor of the occasion. “Obituaries in the local press, do you suppose?” General laughter greeted this sally.
It is, perhaps, a bit sad that the members of the southeast corner were never to know that for once in his life Mr. Potter had been reasonably accurate.
Stop-press item from the August 6 Daily Blare:
ODD SUICIDE IN PICCADILLY
Odd Weapon, Too
People lined up in queue awaiting the Knightsbridge omnibus at the Piccadilly exit of the Green Park Station of the underground yesterday afternoon were surprised when one of their members, a Mr. Lester Quigley, bachelor, age 44, momentarily put aside the evening journal he was perusing and plunged a sharpened fish-slice to the hilt in his throat. He was quite dead when police arrived.
His brother, Wilbur Quigley, of 643B Hyde Park South, with whom Lester shared quarters, had to be put under sedation from the shock of the news, but before falling into a coma he said tearfully:
“I’ve begged my brother time and again to stop carrying that fish-slice about with him, but he insisted. I’ve known for some time that his conscience was bothering because he forged Papa’s will to become the family heir, even though I was the elder, but I never dreamed he would take this means of resolving his problem.
“Oh, Lester, why did you do it?”
(Pictures: Page 16)
Well, what had actually happened was this:
Carruthers, exploiting his prerogative to call the next turn his own, was determined to test their original thesis that Person A could easily kill Person B in broad daylight in Piccadilly without Person C taking undue notice. His associates, albeit the founders of the theory, felt that something less dramatic might be not only more in keeping, but also considerably safer. Mr. Billy-boy Carruthers, however, was feeling his oats at the moment, and, getting stubborn, he insisted.
Having been informed by their client, a certain Mr. Wilbur Quigley, that his brother, Lester, was habituated to taking the Knightsbridge omnibus from the Green Park Station in Piccadilly each afternoon at 5:28 sharp, Carruthers proceeded to lay his plans. It took him three days of the most boring bus travel to track down the Knightsbridge double-decker to its source, and to determine which omnibus, leaving Russell Square at which hour, would arrive at Green Park Station a few moments before the 5:28. Knowing Englishmen, he felt certain that Mr. Quigley would be patiently queued up at least one vehicle early, and it was precisely this earlier omnibus that Mr. Carruthers intended to ride.
By arriving at Russell Square in ample time, and inviting potential passengers behind him to take his place on earlier-leaving buses, he was able to finally assure himself a window seat on the lower level on the proper omnibus, which was the one leaving Russell Square by means of Southampton Row at exactly 4:39. And this he did for four consecutive and dull days before opportunity presented him with the chance to prove his partners, despite themselves, quite correct.
The first afternoon the bus on which Mr. Carruthers traveled was much less crowded than usual, largely due to a strike of drapers’ assistants in the posh shops along Kingsway. As a result, the entire queue at Green Park Station were able to hop happily aboard, Mr. Quigley among them, and that was that. The second day the omnibus stopped a good three feet from the curb because some idiot had left his motorbike parked there, and Mr. Carruthers was forced to fume helplessly as he saw his quarry quietly reading his journal beyond reach on the sidewalk.
On the third afternoon conditions seemed ripe, but again fate intervened in the form of a garrulous and sleeve-clutching friend of Mr. Quigley, who delayed him sufficiently to place him number twelve in the queue when the bus arrived, and hopelessly out of reach. As they pulled away into the stream of traffic that day, heading toward Hyde Park Corner, Mr. Carruthers was almost tempted to heed the advice of his friends and arrange some more assured means of dispatching the elusive Lester; but some inner sense of omnipotence must have had him in its toils, for he determined to persist for one more da
y. It proved to be a wise decision, for it was on the fourth day that his cards fell right.
The omnibus slid to a smooth stop beside the curbstone, and Mr. Carruthers found himself facing a straggling line of men, all completely engrossed in their journals. He was not aware of it, but the picture presented to his view might well have served as an advertisement for the Philadelphia Bulletin. Still, despite the barriers of newsprint, the easily recognizable features of Mr. Lester Quigley were exactly opposite him. As the vehicle began to move forward, Mr. Carruthers leaned out of the window and neatly thrust his fish slice, honed to a razor’s edge, skillfully into Mr. Quigley’s throat.
He leaned back as the driver changed gears and the bus gathered speed, and then received what was undoubtedly the worst fright of his life; for his seat partner was peering at him fiercely over rimless spectacles, his pale eyes frozen with horrified knowledge.
“I seen yer!” said this creature, scowling blackly.
Mr. Carruthers blanched. His brow burst into a waterfall of perspiration; his fingers suddenly seemed too large for his hands. His voice caught in his throat. “I … I … I beg your pardon?”
“I seen yer!” The harsh voice was deeply accusative. His spectacles, perched on the very brink of his generous nose like a hesitating ski jumper, fairly quivered with indignation. “I seen yer! Frowin’ fings from a bus winder! Litterin’ the streets! Fine fing!”
The cold and vicious fury that swept Mr. Carruthers probably owed as much to his overwhelming relief as to his natural tendency to resent any persecution from any source, particularly from small grubby men who almost frightened him to death. “And just what bloody business is it of yours?” he asked in a tight, hard voice.
“What business?” cried the little man beside him. “I like that! What business? Didjer ever ‘appen to think that somebody ‘as to ‘ave the blinkin’ job of cleanin’ up these blinkin’ streets? And didjer ever ‘appen to think that that somebody might just ‘appen to be me?” He was seething. His fury made him bounce up and down on his seat like a toy on a tight spring. “Yer wouldn’t take that ‘igh an’ mighty air if it was yer out there every day wiv a broom an’ baskit, an’ people like yer droppin’ figs all about the blinkin’ place when they got rubbish bins on every corner for just that sort of fing!”
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