The Deductions of Colonel Gore

by Lynn Brock

  ‘Well … but what about Mr Arndale’s cheque?’ she asked. ‘I’m responsible for it.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said curtly, ‘Arndale is quite capable of looking after his own cheques. He can stop payment if he wants to. At any rate it’s no concern whatever of yours. If Frensham or anyone else gives you any bother about it, send him along to me to the Riverside. I’ll talk to him like a father—if he comes.’

  At heart, however, he was perfectly aware that his heroic attitude was the merest of bluff. Not since Mrs Melhuish had first told him her story on that Tuesday afternoon which appeared now separated from the present by weeks instead of a bare four days, had he felt so uneasy upon her account. By dint of endless repetition, endless retracing of the same ground, endless failure to convince himself absolutely of the correctness of any one theory as to the manner in which Barrington had died, he had reached now a stage of mental weariness in which, so far from knowing clearly what he thought about the matter, he found himself, whenever he attempted to think about it, incapable of following one line of speculation for sixty consecutive seconds without straying off along another, the very postulates of which refused credence to those of its predecessor. On that Saturday morning he was not merely equally prepared to believe that Arndale or Melhuish or Challoner or diseased arteries, or any combination of these, had been responsible for Barrington’s death. By some curious confusion of his mental apparatus he did actually half believe that each of these causes had been responsible for it. And it seemed to him, as he walked back from Hatfield Place towards the Riverside, just as likely that those letters of Mrs Melhuish’s which had been in Barrington’s possession when he had left her on Monday night were now in the possession of Frensham, as that they were in the possession of Arndale or Challoner or Melhuish himself.

  For—for anything he knew to the contrary—Frensham might very well have been the man who had been at Barrington’s house with him from twelve to one on Monday night, talking with him over a whisky-and-soda—discussing, perhaps, the business that lay just before them. He might very well have accompanied Barrington to Aberdeen Place in the car, and have waited outside—eager to hear what was going on inside, impatient for Barrington’s reappearance with the plunder of which he was to have a share. That might very well account for the opening of the hall door. From Aberdeen Place he might very well have accompanied Barrington to some place at which they were in the habit of adjusting the accounts of their partnership—some discreet headquarters of their rascality. It was, evidently, entirely useless to indulge in vague surmise as to the habits and haunts and methods of such people. But if Barrington had had, somewhere, some place of safer keeping for his dangerous merchandise than his own house, it was only too easy to conceive that Frensham, and possibly several other ‘pals’ of ‘dear old Cyril’s,’ knew all about it. If those letters of Pickles’s had been left by Barrington in some such place—well, her troubles were only beginning.

  There was, however, so far as he could see, nothing to be done except to wait and see what happened. He had succeeded, with unexpected ease, in recovering the other lot of letters for her, unobtrusively. With that achievement, he told himself, he could rest content for the present. The whole affair was at once so sordidly unpleasant, so difficult to get hold of, and so insidiously engrossing to the exclusion of ordinary, rational interests, that he almost succeeded in persuading himself that his one desire was to shake it off and have nothing more to do with it.

  The manner in which he had discovered Cecil Arndale’s financial relations with Barrington embarrassed him a good deal.

  ‘Damn it all,’ was his last thought on Saturday night, ‘what should I say if I found some silly, meddlesome ass poking his nose into my business? I’m the remains of a soldier—not an apology for a private detective. I will have nothing more to do with it.’

  And on Sunday he hired a motor-cycle of decayed constitution and rode a hundred miles to deliver Pickles’s letters into her own hands. Pickles, however, was in bed with a bad cold and a temperature, so that he failed to interview her personally, though she sent him down a hastily-scribbled little message of gratitude. In a valiant attempt to ride another hundred miles back to Westmouth in darkness and over roads coated with grease, he snapped a chain at midnight five miles from anywhere. He pushed his mount into Salisbury, slept in one of the George’s excellent beds until nine o’clock, and did not reach his quarters at the Riverside until its lunch-hour had passed.

  He found awaiting him a communication informing him that the secretaryship of the golf club was no longer vacant. The next letter of the little heap on his mantelpiece was of greater interest.

  ‘DEAR WICK,’—Mrs Barrington wrote—‘We are off this morning. Paris—then Vence. The Frensham man rang me up yesterday, and coolly proposed that I should go and see him at some place called the Excelsior Hotel. I think it is somewhere near Broad Street Station. Of course I refused. He said that I should be wise to change my mind about that, and that I was to ring him up there when I did change it. I rang off then. Horrible little beast. I can’t think why I was foolish enough to give him Mr Arndale’s cheque. I thought I had better let you know that he had rung me up. This is written in great haste. My packing is not finished yet. Ever so many thanks for your kindness.—Yrs.—

  ‘ETHEL BARRINGTON.

  ‘P.S.—Will send address when we have one. Will you keep enclosed key, in case I should have to ask you to come here to the house while I am away. Sounds pretty cool. But I hope I shan’t have to trouble you.—E.B.’

  Mr Frensham was preparing to get busy, then, already.

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE Riverside’s page-boy knew all about the Excelsior Hotel. It was in Purley Square, he stated, close to the river—‘not much of a place.’ The shortest way to it—though the boy’s manner conveyed surprise that any guest of the Riverside should require the information—was to descend by the Cliff Railway to Spring Road, take a tram to the corner of Old Cut Road, and ask there for further direction. Shortly before the arrival of afternoon tea Gore solemnly tossed a penny, and, the penny having fallen tails, went to the telephone and rang up Westmouth 1727. The manageress informed him that Mr Frensham was still staying at the Excelsior, but was at the moment out. She undertook to inform him on his return that Colonel Gore would call about half-past four that afternoon in the hope of seeing him.

  It was probably most unwise, Gore admitted to himself, to give the fellow any warning. But he was not quite prepared yet to adapt his methods to those with which it was almost certain Frensham would defend himself from this frontal attack. Nor did he think it prudent to declare an open hostility just yet. The supposition that Pickles’s letters were now in Frensham’s hands was the merest of surmise. They were his real object, he reminded himself. His intended negotiations with regard to Arndale’s cheque were to serve merely as a feeler—a means of getting into touch with the enemy and obtaining some definite information about him. If for no other reason than that Frensham had tricked him so audaciously, he meant to recover, if he could, Arndale’s cheque as well as the other things taken from Mrs Barrington’s house. That, however, was a matter of personal vanity, and of quite secondary importance. He rather regretted now that he had been so peremptory with Frensham at their first meeting. No use in taking a high hand with a chap of that sort. The thing to do was to take him quietly—keep him guessing until you had him where you wanted him—and then let him have it.

  In this mood of admirable prudence he set out after tea in quest of the Excelsior Hotel. He found it without difficulty—a small, rather dingy hostelry at one side of a forlorn, threadbare little square, so close to the river that the funnels and bridge of a big cargo-boat lying just behind it rose over its roof, illuminated by the flares at her hatches. Though darkness had fallen, the riverside was still busy. All around was the fretful clamour of the cranes, the slithering rattle of tackle, the roar of falling coal, the monotonous bawling of stevedores. Gore sniffed the tang of tar
and timber with enjoyment, and smiled because it still had power to catch up his spirit and ship it for the seas of buried treasure in company of Long John Silver.

  A slatternly young woman informed him that Mr Frensham was in the billiard-room. There he found Frensham bent over an evening paper spread upon a billiard-table, smoking a cigar.

  He betrayed no symptoms either of resentment or of embarrassment.

  ‘Found your way here all right, Colonel, I see. Take a pew, won’t you. I got your message when I came in. I’d just been up to see poor old Cyril’s missus. But seems the house is shut up. Least I couldn’t make anyone hear, and I must have knocked for five minutes or more.’

  ‘Mrs Barrington has gone abroad, I believe,’ said Gore agreeably.

  ‘Ow,’ said Mr Frensham, examining the toes of his boots dubiously. ‘She has, has she? Abroad, eh? Ow. That’s a bit awkward. There was one or two things I wanted to have a talk with Mrs Barrington about, you see.’

  He folded up his newspaper regretfully and put it away in a pocket.

  ‘Yes, now. That is a bit awkward. For every one. Abroad, eh? Where’s abroad?’

  ‘The south of France, I understand.’

  ‘Ow.’

  A rather gloomy silence fell. ‘What’s the whisky like here?’ Gore inquired at length.

  ‘All right,’ said Frensham, with conviction, and, indeed, as it proved, with perfect truth.

  When the slatternly young woman had delivered their drinks and departed again, he raised his glass with a sociable ‘Good health, Colonel,’ absorbed the greater portion of its contents, and set it down on the long-suffering cushion of the billiard-table.

  ‘Well, Colonel, what was it you wanted to see me about?’

  ‘Well, Mr Frensham, I’ll be quite frank with you. You mentioned just now that there were one or two little matters you wanted to discuss with Mrs Barrington—and Mrs Barrington herself, I know, regretted very much that she had not seen you about them before she went away.’

  ‘She didn’t seem very anxious to see me when I rang her up yesterday, Colonel. However … well, you were saying—?’

  ‘I was about to say that I have Mrs Barrington’s full authority to discuss with you—in the friendliest manner, of course—any difficulties which … er … may require discussion.’

  But this announcement brought no relief to Mr Frensham’s gloom. His eyes remained lost in a vista of dejected hopelessness.

  ‘That’s all very well, Colonel … if it was a matter of discussing them. But … well, how it is, you see … well, it isn’t.’

  ‘I see,’ said Gore.

  Frensham finished his drink.

  ‘Now, this here cheque of Mr Cecil Arndale’s, for instance—’ he began, and paused to dive a hand into an inner pocket and take forth a corpulent and grubby wallet. ‘I’m in a very awkward position about that cheque.’

  He took a cheque from the wallet, and held it from him at arm’s length to consider it with concern.

  ‘You see, here’s a cheque for two hundred and fifty quid. And two hundred and fifty quid is a big lot of money as things go—’

  The conference was interrupted at this juncture by the entry of two young men of sporting seediness who, after a nod to Frensham, a glance at the cheque in his hands, and a stare at Gore, removed their coats and took possession of the billiard-table. Frensham watched the performance of these intruders for some moments critically, then winked expressively to Gore, and led the way out of the room.

  ‘Those two duds ’ll take from now till tomorrow to play a fifty,’ he explained. ‘That’s the one drawback to a small place like this. You can’t have five minutes private conversation without half a dozen sitting in your lap. We’ll go outside, eh, where we can talk quietly and comfortably.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Gore agreed readily.

  ‘Care for another little one? No? You’re like me. I’m never thirsty when I’m busy. Reminds me—this way, Colonel—reminds me of a thing I heard the skipper of the old Waiataka say one day to a she-missionary who came aboard at Durban. Mind that hawser, Colonel. Ah … pretty, aren’t they, all those lights in the water—yes. The old gal wanted to wash her hair, you see—’

  The story of the lady-missionary was succeeded by others equally edifying while they made their way along a busy and littered quayside, past the clangour of a flaring shipyard, to the comparative peace of an avenue of timber, at the farther end of which they decided upon seats under the shelter of one of the tall, fragrant stacks. A little way beyond them a five-master was unloading a cargo of pine. A big oil-tanker slid slowly past an opening between two stacks, hooting hoarsely on her way downstream.

  ‘Well … about this cheque,’ said Frensham. ‘It’s like this, you see. Mind you, I don’t expect you to look at it the way I do, Colonel. You’re a friend of Mr Arndale’s, I take it, and naturally you’d say, if Mr Arndale says the cheque is his, it is his, and ought to be given back to him. That’s just why I put you off that way on Saturday. I’ll own up to that now. I did put you off, and I admit it. Why? Because I’m not satisfied that that cheque ought to be given back to Mr Arndale. And I’m not satisfied that I’d be justified in giving it back to him. That cheque ought to be dealt with by poor old Cyril’s executors—that’s how it seems to me. You may say, “Well … he’s left no executors.” Well, then, I say it ought to be dealt with by someone who’ll do what an executor ought to do—and that is, look after things in a legal way and see that poor old Cyril’s missus doesn’t get done in the eye. You know yourself, Colonel, what women are. No idea of business. Always in a hurry. Ready to believe any fairy-tale anyone tries to stuff them up with. I don’t mind telling you, Colonel, if I’d advised Mrs Barrington to give up that two hundred and fifty quid—just because Mr Arndale tells us this cock-and-a-bull story of him getting Cyril to cash that cheque for him—well, I’d feel damn silly about it. Yes, damn silly. Poor old Cyril was my pal—that’s the way I got to look at it. It’s my duty—mind you, my duty, I say, Colonel, so far as in me lies, to see that his missus doesn’t get done in the eye. And I’m going to see that she doesn’t. If that two hundred and fifty quid is Mr Arndale’s money, let him stop payment of the cheque—until whoever acts as executor has gone into things.’

  ‘I presume Mr Arndale has stopped payment, Mr Frensham,’ said Gore, beginning to weary a little of this foolery.

  ‘Do you?’ asked Frensham. ‘I don’t.’

  He took another cigar from his bowler hat, bit off its end, and spat the end into the darkness.

  ‘Now, here, Colonel. Did you happen to take a squint at that bank-book that was in that box of Cyril’s?’

  ‘I had a look at it—yes.’

  ‘Notice anything funny about it?’

  ‘No, I can’t say that I did.’

  ‘Didn’t look at it very carefully, perhaps. Well, I may tell you, Colonel, between you and me, I’ve had a good look at it. And what I think about it, there’s a lot more in that cheque of your friend Mr Arndale’s than meets the blooming eye. I’m not going to tell you what I think. I may be right, or I may be wrong. But I don’t mind laying you a fiver to a farthing Arndale doesn’t stop payment of that cheque. I wish he would.’

  ‘You wish he would?’ Gore said patiently.

  ‘I do. Why? Well … it’s an uncrossed cheque—endorsed. I don’t want to carry a cheque of that sort round with me, I needn’t tell you—a cheque for two hundred and fifty quid. Nice business for me if I lost it, or had it pinched from me. There are plenty of folk about these days who wouldn’t mind giving you a crack on the skull, if they knew you had—’

  He stopped and rose to his feet abruptly, staring past Gore at the narrow gulley between the stack which sheltered them and its neighbour. ‘Look out, Colonel,’ he exclaimed in alarm. ‘There’s a beggar there behind you—’

  Gore turned his head quickly and caught a glimpse of a figure which emerged from the narrow passage swiftly and struck at his head silently and viciously with a
short flexible implement whose weight broke through the guard of his upraised arm and caught his chin heavily. An arm came round his neck from behind and throttled him. He heard a muffled oath from Frensham, saw the darkness split into a million stars, and fell down a very, very long tunnel of cotton wool into nothingness.

  CHAPTER XIV

  When he awoke some few minutes later, it was to a world whose whole content and significance had been reduced to a red-hot saw which was splitting his brain slowly but mercilessly into two sections of agonised pulp. After a little time there impinged upon this perception a monotonous babbling murmur which resolved itself at length into the voice of Mr Frensham, blaspheming in the darkness with a lurid fluency. Mr Frensham also was lying on the ground, suffering, he alleged, from a broken collar-bone. Discovering, however, presently, that he was mistaken in this belief, he got to his feet, helped Gore into a sitting position against the corner of the timber-stack, and examined his injuries by the light of a succession of matches.

  ‘Lucky for both of us we got thick skulls, Colonel,’ he grunted. ‘Well … we’re a nice-looking pair of blooming mugs now, aren’t we? Cleaned you out, too, have they? I’ll bet they have.’

  Gore’s head still swam dizzily, but he made the brief examination of his pockets necessary to inform him that the contents of his note-case and some loose silver, the only articles of value which they had contained, had been taken from them. Already he was convinced that he had walked blindly into a carefully-prepared trap, though he was still too confused of thought to conceive the purpose of so elaborate and risky a device. He had recognised the man who had first assailed him as one of the two who had interrupted his conversation with Frensham in the billiard-room at the Excelsior Hotel. Their intrusion, he divined now, had been arranged beforehand to afford Frensham a plausible excuse for enticing him to the darkness of this deserted stretch of quay. He was still speculating stupidly as to the object of the thing when Frensham burst again into vivid profanity.