The Arsenal Stadium Mystery

by Leonard Gribble

  “I don’t know. I’m puzzled.”

  A roar from the crowd attracted their attention. Bastin had the ball, and was streaking down the wing. Bryn Jones came across to co-operate. A short, accurate pass from Bastin’s racing feet sent the dark-haired Welshman ahead, making for the centre of the field.

  The crowd was on its feet now. The unexpected had happened.

  Bryn Jones swerved, twisted cleverly round Chulley, and sold a perfect dummy to Crieff. He shot low and hard, and the ball was in the corner of the net.

  “Goal!”

  “Up the Gunners!”

  That goal lifted the crowd’s excitement to a higher level. The clapping continued as the teams lined up afresh.

  The two reporters who had been interested in Allison’s earlier departure lit fresh cigarettes.

  “And that’s the end,” said one, a conclusion the other endorsed by nodding his head. “The game, as a game, is finished.”

  “All over,” the other man agreed, folding his notes. “Crayston and Leslie Jones and Joy won’t let them smell the ball any more. How long before time?”

  “Six minutes.”

  Farther along in the East Stand Pat Laruce and Jill Howard were settling a point of play.

  “Phil would never have been tricked as Crieff was,” the latter contended, watching Morring effect a good clearance.

  “I don’t know,” said the blonde girl. “I think Bastin wouldn’t have started the movement if John Doyce had been out there.” Little lines appeared at the sides of her mouth as her lips pursed. “I wonder what happened, Jill. He should be out again.”

  “He should if he wants his team to win—or even draw now. Oh, good!” Jill suddenly exclaimed as Morring robbed Drake of the ball and took it up the centre himself, to send it accurately to Wellock, lying back, waiting for it. “Don’t you feel proud of him, Pat?” she said excitedly, turning to the other girl.

  But the blonde girl could not have heard. She was staring across the field with a fixity of gaze that told the other girl she saw nothing of the play.

  “Why, Pat—what’s wrong?”

  Pat Laruce started. “Nothing, Jill—nothing. I was just thinking. That’s all. I—I—Oh, it’s nothing, I tell you,” she broke off, a note of irritation in her tone.

  Three minutes before the end of the game Allison left his seat and was joined by Kindilett, whose face was glum.

  “I suppose I was hoping for the impossible, George,” he said, with a faint smile. “And I should have known the impossible never happens.”

  “Your boys played marvellously,” Allison assured him. “They’ve got stamina, they know how to shoot, they’re clean, their movements are crisp, and their positioning is—”

  “But they didn’t win, George.”

  Allison glanced at his companion. He had known Francis Kindilett over a number of years, and entertained considerable respect for his insight and abilities as a builder of amateur football teams. Years before there had been the Saxon Rovers. Then tragedy had touched his life, and he had tried to replant his roots afresh. It had been a hard job. No one save Kindilett himself knew how hard. Allison could only guess. But the man had doggedly set to work to build up Britain’s amateur soccer. He had won through. There had been obstacles, many and varied. They had been overcome, and he must have entertained hopes—eventual hopes…

  “No, Francis, they didn’t win, but it was a close thing, and if Doyce hadn’t gone down—” Allison shrugged. “From the way the second half opened, anything could have happened.”

  Kindilett gave him a straight look.

  “Something did.”

  They said no more. In the treatment room the two trainers were still working over the unresponsive right half.

  “It’s got me beat,” Whittaker admitted. “There’s no bruise on him, not a mark. He wasn’t injured on the field. It’s—uncanny.”

  Allison glanced at Raille.

  “You think the same, Raille?”

  Raille was staring at Kindilett. His glance left the Trojan manager’s face reluctantly.

  “You’ll have to get a doctor, Mr Kindilett. It isn’t something… ordinary.”

  Kindilett caught his breath.

  “You mean, Raille?”

  The trainer’s face was stiff. “I don’t know what I mean,” he said. “He doesn’t respond to anything.”

  They stood there for a moment, each occupied with his own thoughts, until a clatter of running feet in the corridor and a bang on the door announced that the game was over and the players were returning to the dressing-rooms. Allison opened the door. Outside stood Chulley, the Trojan captain, his shirt and knickers attesting to the hard struggle he had put up in his team’s defence.

  “How is Doyce?” he asked.

  A head and a half taller than the Arsenal manager, he stood staring at the towel-draped figure on the treatment table.

  “Not so good. Better leave things now, Chulley,” said Kindilett.

  “Sure.” Chulley’s voice was uncertain. “But if there’s anything I can do—I mean—”

  “Thanks, Chulley. I’ll remember. Er—there wasn’t another goal in the last minute?”

  “No.”

  The Trojan captain turned away, trying to hide his disappointment at the result. Allison closed the door and came back to Kindilett.

  “Francis,” he said gravely, “I think I ought to mention it, in case the worst happens, but—”

  “You mean Doyce dies?”

  Allison nodded. “Yes, that’s what I mean.”

  “You think that’s the worst that can happen?”

  Whittaker stooped over the body on the table. Raille frowned at Doyce’s tousled head.

  “I don’t understand, Francis,” said Allison, looking hard at the Trojan manager.

  Kindlilett waved a hand. “Never mind, George. It was just—a thought. I—” He broke off, staring at Whittaker, who was bending very close over Doyce, holding the player’s face. “What is it? What have you found? Is—”

  Whittaker’s dark blue pullover straightened. His face, red, gleaming with moisture, turned to the speaker.

  “I’m afraid it’s all over, Mr Kindilett,” he announced, drawing the towel over Doyce’s head.

  “Good God! Are you sure?” said Allison quickly, moving forward.

  Whittaker nodded, looked at Raille, who stood as though dazed.

  “He never came properly round.”

  The two team managers stared at the towel-shrouded figure, then at each other.

  “There will be an inquest, and a lot of publicity,” murmured Allison. “I think I know now, Francis, what you meant when you said—”

  The Arsenal manager paused, conscious that the two trainers were staring fixedly at him. He had to make a decision, and it was hard.

  “Francis,” he said, “we’ve got to face facts. Doyce is dead. The circumstances of his death are peculiar, to say the least. I’m afraid I’ll have to get in touch with the police.”

  The words fell like pebbles into the quiet of a well. Kindilett stiffened. A look of anguish crossed his face.

  “Then, George”—there was an awed hush to his tones—“you think something—that—”

  He couldn’t put his thought into words. It was too fantastic, too incredible.

  “I think you’d better stay here in case some of the Press boys come along for a statement, Francis. Put them off. I’m going up to my office, and put through a call to the Yard. This is something for them to take care of.”

  For a moment Kindilett stood staring into space, as though he had not heard. He pulled himself together suddenly.

  “Very well, George,” he murmured. “If that’s what you think is best.”

  Allison gave him a quick glance, and went out, making no further comment. Three minutes lat
er the receiver against his ear clicked as a connexion was made and a clear voice said, “Scotland Yard.”

  III

  Inspector Slade Arrives

  The dispersal of seventy thousand spectators is not achieved in a few minutes. At the top of Highbury Hill, foot and mounted police controlled the queues invading the Arsenal Station of the Underground. More mounted police kept the crowd in Avenell Road on the move. All the tributary roads were choked with cars that had been parked throughout the game. A score of taxi-drivers who had seen an opportunity of combining business with pleasure that afternoon now tried to worm their cabs through the throng, which took singularly small notice of honking horns and verbal exasperation. Peanut vendors and newsboys were exercising their lungs and taking a steady flow of coppers for their trouble. Over the crowd hung a pall of tobacco smoke and dust.

  “Come on now. Move along there.”

  The good-humoured invitations of the police produced little apparent result. There is something viscous and sluggish about the mass movements of a football crowd that is homeward bound. Having witnessed a game, it seemingly has only one thought, to know the results of games played in every other corner of the Kingdom.

  “Chelsea again—”

  “See the Wolves got a netful.”

  “What did the Wednesday do?”

  “Another away win for Everton…”

  “Got the Scottish results in your paper? How about the Rangers and Aberdeen?”

  Pencils check the first batch of published results with pool forecasts. Anxious inquiries are answered with almost savage terseness.

  “Draw… won away… lost at home…”

  Slowly the bright possibility of those other match results fades, and interest returns to the game that has been watched. Fresh cigarettes are lit, more peanuts and chewing-gum are bought and munched, and discussion begins, sometimes heated, sometimes very partisan and not sincere, but never disinterested.

  And all the time that shuffling, mooching crowd that has overflowed on to every inch of pavement, gutter, and roadway is slowly pouring into Underground trains, buses, cars, and motor-coaches. There is plenty of shoving with elbows, trampling of less nimble feet, and poking of more prominent ribs. In the trains the corridors and entrance platforms are choked. Cigarettes are knocked from mouths and clothes are singed. Hands press heavily on strangers’ shoulders.

  “Sorry, mate.”

  “That’s all right, old man. We all got to get home, ain’t we?”

  The air is full of expunged breath, smoke, human smells, and heat. But there is plenty of laughter, plenty of Cockney chaff. Whatever happens, however great the discomfort, the crowd keeps its good-temper. This herded homegoing is just part of the afternoon’s entertainment. The bigger the crowd the bigger the crush, and correspondingly the bigger the individual’s satisfaction at being there.

  “Record gate to-day, eh?”

  “Must be.”

  “Glad I didn’t miss it.”

  “Me too.”

  That rib-bruising, foot-crushing scramble is endured with something of pride. It is the final proof that the individual has not been wasting his time, that the game was worth seeing because everybody else wanted to see it. A generalization that holds strangely true throughout the entire soccer season.

  Of course, there are the few who protest at the crush. But the real followers of football, the “regulars,” the “supporters,” who make the Leagues possible and provide Britain with a professional sport in which she is supreme, they have only a tight-lipped contempt for these casual spectators—and occasionally a helpful suggestion.

  But like every other natural tide, the football crowd leaves behind it tiny pools, groups who persist in debating some point of play on a street-corner, and of course at Highbury there is always that bigger pool that remains doggedly at the Stadium entrance.

  These are the hundred per cent. fans, the autograph-hunters, and the admirers of individual players. An hour, two hours after a game is over some of them are still there, unwearied, constant of mind and purpose.

  These are the core of the soccer crowd, professional spectators, as it were. They follow “their” team as a gull follows a ship, unswervingly, persistently. In the large window of present-day social entertainment they find a place with the professional first-nighters of the theatre and the professional clubmen of the West End, those Mayfair troglodytes who emerge into the open once every twenty-four hours, to see if the world still wags—outside the columns of The Times.

  But while the crowd of seventy thousand take more than an hour to disperse a much more animated scene occurs in the dressing-rooms where the players relax.

  Few of the Arsenal players, after that memorable match with the Trojans, noticed the worried look on Tom Whittaker’s face when he joined them. As Whittaker took the cup of tea some one pushed into his hands, Eddie Hapgood was delivering himself as a veteran.

  “They were as good as any First Division side we’ve met this season,” he averred.

  Swindin, warming his bare feet on the heated green tiling of the floor, nodded. “That Doyce has got a kick. I didn’t sniff the ball when he took that penalty.”

  “Bredge was a clever schemer,” called Bernard Joy, pulling his fair, tousled head clear of a muddied shirt. “He held that front line together.”

  “Wonder what happened to Doyce,” put in George Male, crooking an arm round a knee. “He went down like a ninepin.”

  “Anyone want another cup of tea?” called Drake, at the table by the door. He stood statuesque, teapot held over his craning dark head.

  “Hey, Ted,” said Kirchen, “you were near Doyce. What bowled him over?”

  “Haven’t an idea. Far as I could see nobody touched him. Tom”—Drake’s soft Hampshire voice lifted as he addressed the Arsenal trainer—“know what happened to their right half?”

  Whittaker appeared to take no notice. He spoke to Bastin, pouring some embrocation on his hands. He rubbed the Arsenal outside left’s ankle until it shone redly.

  “Tom!” called the persistent centre-forward.

  “Hullo.” Whittaker glanced round, but continued the massaging operation.

  “What happened to Doyce? Heard anything?”

  “He’s still in the treatment room, I understand,” the trainer stalled.

  Players darted into the spacious bathroom. In the large bath heads bobbed like corks into a rolling cloud of steam. Hapgood dived for the soap, finally got it from Jack Crayston, and a free-for-all tussle started. Suddy water rose in a cascade, hit the flooring with a dull smack.

  “Hey!” called Male. “Take it easy! You’re—”

  His complaint ended as a violent splutter when Hapgood jumped on his shoulders.

  “Whoa, horse! Whoa!” cried the irrepressible Arsenal captain.

  Male’s response was to dump the temporary equestrian on his back and fling a bar of yellow soap at his head.

  The room rang with high-spirited shouts. Under a stinging cold shower Kirchen danced round in a high-stepping circle. Suddenly darting from the shower, and snatching up an enormous towel that enfolded his body like a bud in a leaf, he ran into the dressing-room. Behind him padded the others, dripping water, shaking their dank heads, smacking one another’s backs with no pretended heartiness.

  They shrieked and yodelled and towelled their bodies until they glowed. Tom Whittaker, face red and moist, walked among them, pausing to flick an ear or deliver a friendly jab in the ribs as they scrambled into their everyday clothes again.

  There was plenty of routine, after-the-match work for the Arsenal trainer. Swindin’s arm had to be massaged again. The sharp tang of the rubbing liquid quickly filled the room. The sleeves of his shirt rolled up, Whittaker tended his charges with the care that is given only to footballers, boxers, and babies.

  Deft, experienced fingers worked on bru
ises, rubbing out their soreness and discoloration.

  The noise and horseplay stopped. Whittaker looked up. George Allison stood in the room, looking over the half-dressed group.

  Eyes of trainer and manager met in one quick, understanding glance.

  “You did well, boys,” said George Allison, slipping a hand into a trousers pocket. “They’ve said some hard things about you this season, but the stuff you did out there this afternoon was the answer.”

  The players continued with their dressing. There was something else to come. They sensed it.

  “However, I haven’t come to pat you on the back,” said the Arsenal manager. “Something serious has happened.” The loose change in his pocket jingled. He had been fingering his monocle. The black cord now slipped through his fingers. “Doyce, their right half,” he said gravely, “is dead.”

  The players stared at one another and at Allison. Ted Drake shot a glance at Whittaker, but the trainer’s eyes were lowered in a frown. One of the men dropped a shoe. Its clatter was unnoticed.

  Then they were all speaking at once, questioning Allison and gathering round him.

  “All I can tell you,” he said, “is that I have told Scotland Yard, and Inspector Slade is on his way here. He’ll have questions to ask you, and I want you to tell him anything you can. This thing may be more serious than anyone of us realizes. None of you must leave until he has seen you.”

  The commissionaire entered the room, and gave Allison a bundle of paper tape, the results of the afternoon’s League matches. Usually the Arsenal players were keen to know how other teams had fared. But their interest was gone. They listened to Allison reading the results, but their minds were elsewhere.

  “Well,” said the manager, finishing the list of the day’s results, “I guess that’s all for now. But don’t forget. None of you leaves until Inspector Slade’s given you the O.K.”

  Crayston turned to Bernard Joy.

  “Dead. It doesn’t seem possible,” he muttered.

  “I suppose, Jack,” said the schoolmaster, “you’re thinking he—” He paused. “He was a right half, too.”