The Man of Dangerous Secrets
Page 7
Robin’s lips grew grim, but he did not think it necessary to enlighten Mrs. Phipps concerning his strange visitor’s real reason for calling.
Her protestations of regret were mercifully interrupted by a tap on the bedroom door. She started violently.
“Mercy on us! Who can that be?” she inquired, and advanced to face the intruder as if she expected burglars at least.
Inspector Jack Whybrow’s friendly, good-humoured face confronted her as she opened the door, however, and with an audible sigh of relief she threw the door open wide.
“I’m sure you can come in, sir,” she said.
“And me too, I hope, Mrs. Phipps. Or do you want to see my warrant?” said a different voice from the background as Inspector Mowbray, Whybrow’s colleague and officer in charge of the investigation of the murder of Tony Bellew, followed his friend into the room.
With a nod to Robin, Mrs. Phipps tactfully withdrew, and the two distinguished members of the C. I. D. stood looking at the young man in bed.
“Hullo, what’s this? An arrest?” Robin grinned at Mowbray as he spoke.
The inspector was a heavily built, florid individual, whose fine black moustache was a relic of the fashion of former days.
“Not yet, my lad,” he said, seating himself on the end of the coverlet without ceremony. “Whybrow here tells me of something you told him in confidence about an incident you witnessed on Waterloo Station.”
Robin frowned. He had not wished to be implicated in the affair, but he also knew his duty as a Yard man too well to refuse information when deliberately asked for it.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll repeat it if you like.”
He went through the story clearly.
Mowbray nodded and smiled at Whybrow.
“Exactly,” he said. “You’re a fine reporter, Jack. Now look here, Robin, I know your reputation where faces are concerned, and I don’t want to put ideas into your head. But are you perfectly sure that the man you saw make an attempt on young Bellew’s life was Sir Ferdinand Shawle?”
Robin shook his head. “No. I told Jack here that it looked like him, that’s all.”
Mowbray shrugged his shoulders. “We all know what that means with you,” he said. “But look here, this is what I’m trying to get at: do you think there is a chance that this man you saw on the station was not Sir Ferdinand but”—he paused, and added softly—“Sir Henry Fern?”
“Sir Henry Fern?” Robin gasped at him. Then he laughed. “No,” he said. “No, I’m sure of that. The man I saw on Waterloo Station was not even faintly like Sir Henry.”
He caught the expression in the inspector’s eyes and laughed abruptly.
“You needn’t worry, Bill,” he said. “I’m not shielding anyone. But I think I deserve an explanation.”
“Sure you do,” said the inspector slowly. “You shall have it.”
It was evident that he was disappointed, however, and, in the silence which followed, Robin climbed out of bed, slipped on a dressing gown, and went over to the safe.
“Look here,” he said. “What do you make of this?”
He brought out the soap dish which still contained its deadly burden and set it down upon the dressing table.
Mowbray looked puzzled, but Whybrow, who recognized the earnestness in Robin’s face, inspected the exhibit cautiously.
Robin unscrewed the metal cap of the tube and squeezed some of the contents out upon the porcelain dish.
Whybrow sniffed, and he and his colleague exchanged swift inquiring glances. Finally Whybrow whistled softly through his teeth.
“Well,” he ejaculated, “well, what do you make of that?”
The question was rhetorical.
Inspector Mowbray picked up the soap dish and peered cautiously at the deadly tube.
“Eh!” he said disgustedly. “That’s as dirty as anything I’ve ever seen in my career. Where did you get it?”
Robin related his experiences of the evening before, omitting only the name of the woman who had warned him.
The two inspectors listened to the recital gravely. They were both men of deep experience, but there had been something about the callousness and ingenuity of the death trap which had shocked them both.
“It might so easily have succeeded,” said Mowbray, taking out a large pocket handkerchief and absent-mindedly wiping his forehead. “It makes you think.”
Inspector Whybrow pulled out an old and battered notebook.
“Now look here, Robin my lad,” he said briskly, “you’re too valuable to run risks of this sort. This kind of thing must be stopped. You must come across with all the information, as if you were an ordinary private individual. Now then, out with it—the whole of it.”
Robin shook his head.
“You’ll have to trust me, Jack,” he said. “I can’t give you the name of the woman who warned me just yet. It’s vitally important to me that she should not be put on her guard by police questioning or anything of the kind. I can tell you one thing, however, and that is that I had a mysterious visitor late last night who spent some time in this suite alone, while my landlady was making her a cup of tea. She gave her name as Hester Branch and represented herself as an old nurse of mine from Somerset. Needless to say, I’ve never heard of her before. Mrs. Phipps was telling me about her when you both came in. Whoever she was, she took in Mrs. Phipps. As far as I can gather she was between sixty-five and seventy, and——” He broke off abruptly. “What’s the matter with you two fellows?” he demanded.
The inspectors were staring at one another, sheer bewilderment upon Mowbray’s face and a species of incredulous amazement on Whybrow’s.
“This is absurd,” said Whybrow at last. “You say your landlady saw this woman?”
“She certainly did. She left her in my sitting room and trotted down to make her a cup of tea. Then, as far as I can gather, she stood and watched the old dear drink it up and showed her out of the house.”
Whybrow turned to Mowbray.
“Can you beat that?” he said and, striding across the suite, put his head out on the landing. His stentorian voice boomed through the house. “Mrs. Phipps! Mrs. Phipps!”
The good lady appeared with an alacrity which suggested that she had been lingering near at hand, and some moments later she was seated in a chair by the bedroom window undergoing a steady cross-examination from the two excited inspectors.
“Yes,” she said defiantly. “I let her in, and I’ve apologized to Mr. Robin for it. But seeing that nothing’s been taken I don’t see——”
“Nothing taken!” ejaculated Whybrow, and would have continued, had not a warning glance from Robin silenced him in time.
“Mrs. Phipps,” cut in Mowbray, “can you describe this stranger?”
Mrs. Phipps tried and floundered.
“She was old,” she said. “She had a browny-black cloak, an old-fashioned pork-pie hat, rather pretty fluffy white hair, and an old lined face with no teeth.”
Inspector Mowbray was flapping over the pages of his notebook.
“Would you say,” he ventured cautiously, “that she was about five foot ten? That’s very tall, you know. About an inch taller than Mr. Robin here. And would you say that she seemed rather vague in manner, and that her glasses were very thick?”
Mrs. Phipps started violently.
“Oh, how did you know? She’s not some well-known thief, I hope? Because, if so, now she knows the way she’ll come back. We shall lose everything—perhaps be murdered in our beds——”
“Don’t worry about that, Phippy,” Robin counselled gently. “Answer Inspector Mowbray’s questions.”
“There aren’t any questions,” said Mrs. Phipps. “He’s described her as if he’d seen her. She was very tall and held herself very straight. She had the thickest glasses I ever saw, although she said her sight was good. And I noticed she hadn’t any teeth. I felt like telling her about it. You can get a set of dentures so cheap nowadays that it really doesn’t seem worthwhile g
oing without.”
The inspector shut his notebook with a snap.
“That’s all for the moment,” he said. “We may have to call on you again, Mrs. Phipps. Thank you very much.”
He showed her courteously out of the room and came back to find Robin staring at him inquiringly.
“What’s the explanation of all this?” Robin demanded. “Who is this mysterious visitor?”
“That’s what we all want to know,” said Mowbray. “Here is our story as far as it goes: We’ve been up half the night investigating the Tony Bellew murder. We’ve taken dozens of statements, and the only one that is of any great use is the story from the furnace and odd-job man in the block of flats where the boy lived. This man has a box in the hall of the block, but as he has to mingle a certain amount of general work with his duties as porter he doesn’t use it very often.
“Yesterday afternoon he had several odd jobs to do—cleaning the windows in one flat, for one thing, re-laying the main stair carpet for another—so that although he was about the building all day he could not swear that he’d seen everybody who’d come into the house.
“Now the curious thing is that in his statement he says that during the afternoon an old woman in a brown-black cloak and well over average height went up the staircase towards Mr. Bellew’s flat. He didn’t see her go in, because he was on the fourth floor and she went up to the fifth, but as Bellew’s flat took up the whole of the fifth floor—which is also the top—it seems reasonable to suppose that she went there.”
He paused and looked at Robin shrewdly beneath his thick eyebrows.
“This janitor was working about all the rest of the afternoon. He does not deny that he was in and out of the lower flats, but thinks that the chance of anyone getting up and down the staircase without him seeing him was remote. However, the fact remains that he did not see the old woman come down, and no one else, as far as we can see, did either. We’ve inquired in every likely quarter. That old woman seems to have vanished into thin air from the time when she was seen going up to Tony Bellew’s flat to the time when Mrs. Phipps admitted her into your room some hours later.”
Robin was still assimilating these remarkable facts when Whybrow broke in softly.
“There’s something else I think you ought to hear, Robin,” he said, “for it affects you, in a way.”
While the boy stared at him, a sick feeling of apprehension clutching at his heart, the older man went on inexorably:
“Included in the janitor’s statement was something else. Half an hour after the old woman was seen going up to the flat, a man was seen coming down from the fifth floor. The janitor was surprised because, not only had he been unaware that he had gone up to the flat, but also, he recognized him. Moreover, he was a very observant fellow, and he noticed that not only was the man about the same height as the old woman, but that he carried a bulky brown-paper parcel, which might easily have contained articles of wearing apparel.”
Robin looked from one to the other of the two men. His mouth was dry, and there was a startled expression in his eyes.
“You say the janitor recognized this man?” he said, and even to himself his words sounded staccato and unnatural.
“Yes. By chance, in the war the janitor had served on the ship of which this man had command.”
“Who was it?” Robin knew the answer before Whybrow spoke.
Mowbray read his thoughts. “Yes,” he said. “You’re right. Sir Henry Fern. Queer thing, isn’t it?”
“Of course it’s not evidence,” said Inspector Whybrow quickly after the pause which had followed his colleague’s sensational announcement. “It’s not evidence. We all know that. The janitor believes he saw Sir Henry coming downstairs from Tony Bellew’s flat late yesterday afternoon. But that doesn’t prove anything.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” said Mowbray, a little nettled. “But at any rate it’s something to go on. Now look here, Robin, we’re going down to Sir Henry’s house now.”
“I’ll come with you. If you’ll wait for me for half a moment I’ll be there.”
Robin began to dress rapidly. His thoughts were busy with the extraordinary story the two inspectors had brought, and his chief concern was for Jennifer. He foresaw a very difficult time ahead for her.
Some minutes later, as they sat in the taxicab speeding towards Regent’s Park, old Whybrow broached the subject again.
“There’s no question of an arrest, of course,” he murmured, eyeing Robin dubiously.
“I should hope not!” said the young man, aghast. “Neither Bill nor you have gone mad, I take it.”
Inspector Mowbray grunted. “If he wasn’t the person he is, he’d be detained,” he said.
Robin shrugged his shoulders. “It is the fact that he is who he is that makes the whole thing preposterous,” he remarked, and silence fell again upon the little company.
Old Williamson, Sir Henry’s butler, admitted them with some surprise. It was evident that he did not approve of such early hours for callers.
Robin touched Whybrow’s arm.
“I think, if you don’t mind,” he said, “you’d better see Sir Henry alone. I’ll stay down here and see if I can’t get a word with Jennifer.”
Something in the inflection of his voice as he spoke the name made the old inspector look at him sharply, an interested expression in his shrewd eyes beneath their shaggy brows.
A deeper colour came into Robin’s face, and the old man nodded to himself confidentially.
“Oh,” he said softly. “So that’s the way the wind blows, is it? Be careful, my boy. You’re on dangerous ground.”
Robin affected not to have heard this warning, for at that moment Williamson returned with the remark that the two gentlemen from Scotland Yard would see Sir Henry in the library.
The little procession moved off at once, Williamson stalking majestically in front, while Robin remained in the hall.
He was staring idly at the magnificent oak staircase, thinking of Jennifer, when she appeared, standing at the top of the flight in a trim blue morning dress, a gaily coloured scarf thrown negligently round her slender shoulders.
She gave a little cry as she saw him and came hurrying down the staircase, her hands outstretched.
He noticed that her face was pale beneath her honey-coloured curls and that there were faint dark shadows beneath her eyes.
“Oh, I’m glad you’ve come,” she said, and then, as though the words had contained more warmth than she had realized or intended, the colour came into her face and she dropped her eyes.
“Look here,” she said, “won’t you come into the morning room? I want to ask you about Tony.”
Robin followed her into the sunny little room, gay with white paint and brilliant chintz. His heart was pounding uncomfortably, and he realized with a sense of dismay that he was soon going to find it impossible to maintain the grave impersonal attitude of a professional man when dealing with this particular client. She made him breathless. He could not trust his voice to keep steady.
“What have they found out about Tony?” She spoke eagerly. “How did it happen? I saw in the paper this morning that he was poisoned. Do they know who did it?”
Robin shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you. I don’t know. Inspector Whybrow and Inspector Mowbray, who are in charge of the case, are here now talking to your father.”
She stared at him, every hint of colour slowly draining out of her face.
“Talking to Daddy? Why? Oh, Robin, he doesn’t know anything about it. Oh, my dear, they don’t think that——”
She broke off and stood looking at him, horror in her vivid eyes.
Robin conquered the impulse to take her in his arms.
“Oh, no, it’s nothing,” he said, turning away from her. “Nothing to be alarmed about at all. They simply want to ask him a few questions. You’ve got to keep very brave and very level-headed. We all have. Then you’ll find everything will come perfectly all right.”
She did not speak for some moments, and, as he was standing with his back to her, he felt rather than saw her sit down wearily in the big leather armchair by the fireside.
Suddenly she spoke, and her voice was very small and childlike.
“Robin,” she said, “this must stop. Daddy was talking to me last night. I think he must have guessed—about—about us, I mean.”
Robin spun round. “What do you mean?” he demanded.
“Well, he questioned me about our engagement. Wanted to know if I loved you, and that sort of thing.”
She was not looking at him now. Her eyes were fixed upon the burning logs in the grate.
“And finally he warned me not to try to find out about this mystery which surrounds me, and on no account to employ anyone to find out. So you see, he’s guessed. I think we’d better call it all off, don’t you? There’s the awful risk that you run to consider, too. You insist on making light of it, but you know it exists. So I think if you don’t mind we really will finish it this time.”
Robin walked over towards her and stood on the hearthrug looking down at her bright head.
“I—I can’t,” he said suddenly.
She looked up at him, a startled expression in her eyes, a half-formed question on her lips.
Robin went on, speaking jerkily and without considered thought.
“I can’t throw it up,” he said. “You can withdraw your confidence from me if you like—you can even refuse to see me—but nothing will make me change my mind. I am going to see this thing through. I am going to see you free from the terrible nightmare which haunts you, and I am going to see your enemies safely under lock and key. I’m afraid there’s no use arguing with me.”
She rose slowly to her feet and stood there, her face raised to his. There was a half-puzzled, half-tremulous happiness in her eyes, and Robin suddenly forgot everything else in the world except her. The mysterious hints of Madame Julie, the sinister death of Tony Bellew, the attack upon his own life which had very nearly proved fatal, and now grave suspicions enveloping Sir Henry, were all wiped from his mind.