Danger Calling

by Patricia Wentworth

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Lindsay. He didn’t know, but he began to want to know rather badly.

  The young man slipped down on to the kerb in a sitting position, put his head in his hands, and burst into tears. They were not loud tears, but rather the sniffling weeping of a bullied schoolboy.

  Lindsay looked up and down the road. It slept—most respectably it slept. He sat down on the kerb beside the weeping young man.

  “After all—a fellow’s a gentleman—what I mean to say is—isn’t he, Froth?”

  Lindsay patted the heaving shoulders.

  “Of course,” he agreed.

  “An’—is it—the act-of-a—gentleman—taking a fellow’s papers—what?”

  “It would depend on the circumstances,” said Lindsay cautiously.

  The young man ceased to sob. He pushed back his hat and sat up.

  “Circum—circum—” After two or three efforts he produced the word very slowly and solemnly—“Cir—cum—stan—ces. Hang it all, Froth, the poor fellow—poor old Ferdinand—poor old fellow—not friend of my childhood or any old rot of that kind—no. Ash a matter of fact—as a marrer-o-fact—yes marrer-o-fact—I never saw the poor old fellow. But all the same when a poor old fellow’s been biffed by a bullet—biffed dead by a bullet—well—I put it to you, Froth, old bird—is it the act-of-a-gentleman to steal his papers? Well, I put it to you.” He tapped Lindsay solemnly on the chest and wagged his head.

  Lindsay tingled from head to foot.

  “Poor old Ferdinand Schreck!” he said.

  The young man shrank away from him.

  “Mustn’t mention names—mustn’t ever mention names! Name of poor old Ferdinand Schreck never passed lips. Not act-of-a—gentleman to mention names.”

  “Only between friends,” said Lindsay. “Did you get the papers all right?”

  “Of course I got papers—English milord—tourist—lotsh and lotsh of money, no one sushpeck—sush—sush—peck—ted. But not act-of-a—gentleman. No!”

  “He shouldn’t have asked you to do it.”

  “Threatened me,” said the young man with an access of misery. “Threatened me—me! And mind you, Froth, my governor’d have cut me off without a brass farthing, sure as my name’s Dilling, he would. What was a fellow to do? Now I put it to you.”

  Dilling. … There flashed into Lindsay’s mind a picture of the large orange-coloured square which from every hoarding in the kingdom proclaimed the virtues of Dilling’s Delightful Doughnuts. He wondered.

  “Governor’s so strict,” moaned Mr Dilling. “Nonconformist consh—consh—conshentious objecshon. What’s a fellow to do? I put it to you.”

  “Who gave you your orders?”

  Lindsay kept his voice casual with an effort. This young fool couldn’t know much; but if he knew something, that something might be pieced on to something else. Ferdinand Schreck had been shot dead in Vienna because he was on the point of giving the Vulture away. Dilling had been sent to collect Schreck’s papers. What papers? Evidently papers that would incriminate the Vulture—papers that the police had missed. He repeated his question:

  “Who gave you your orders?”

  “Who gives you yours?”

  “Drayton,” said Lindsay.

  “Who’s he? Don’t know Drayton—” He stared at Lindsay. “What’ve I been saying? Mustn’t say things—mustn’t talk—doesn’t do to talk—must be getting—along.” He scrambled to his feet and stood swaying a little. “What’ve I been saying, old fellow? Haven’t been talking? Doesn’t do to talk. No names—what? You’re Froth, aren’t you?” He came closer, peering. “Not Froth?”

  He clapped his hat hard down upon his head and ran with surprising swiftness back along the way that he had come.

  Lindsay let him go. Garratt could gather him in easily enough. Dilling’s Delightful Doughnuts was what he sounded like—and once gathered he would talk.

  CHAPTER XXXV

  LINDSAY CAME INTO THE hall of the house in Blenheim Square. The coloured lights in the peacock’s tails shone down upon the green marble pillars and the green marble floor. It was after midnight and only one footman was on duty. He recognized the rosy faced Robert who had showed him the back way into the house and who usually waited on him. The boy looked owlish in his effort to keep awake. Lindsay gave him a friendly smile.

  “Am I the last?” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve kept you up.”

  He went on towards the staircase, and then turned, aware of Robert at his elbow.

  “I beg your pardon, sir—”

  “What is it, Robert?”

  “If I could speak to you for a moment, sir—”

  “Yes—what is it?”

  “Perhaps if I were to take your coat and be giving you a bit of a brush down—”

  He took the coat and produced the brush. A resourceful lad.

  “Well? What is it?” said Lindsay.

  “It’s that Abraham,” said Robert gloomily.

  “Abraham?”

  “Him that looks after Madame’s snakes.”

  “Oh—Ibrahim.”

  “Yes, sir—Abraham.”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, sir, just before I come on duty here I went along to make up your fire, and as I come along the passage I see that Abraham come out of your room.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “No, sir, he didn’t.” Robert hesitated. “I didn’t want any unpleasantness, sir. He’s got the name of being a bad one to get on the wrong side of, so I didn’t want any unpleasantness, but seeing he hadn’t any business where he was, I thought I’d mention it to you on the quiet.”

  “Thank you, Robert,” said Lindsay.

  He went up to his room and subjected it to an intensive search. Everything was there that should have been there, and nothing that should not. He pulled the bed to bits and remade it. And yet he did not fancy the idea of lying down in that bed and going to sleep. He had locked both his bedroom and his sitting-room doors every night since he had come to Blenheim Square. He locked them now, put on dressing-gown and slippers, and then passed into the sitting-room and, leaving the connecting door open, took a book and sat down to read.

  The book might as well have been a Chaldean cylinder. There were characters in rows upon white paper. His eye looked at them, but his mind did not take them in. He shut the book, switched off the light, and sat in the firelight, thinking. Perhaps half an hour passed, perhaps longer. In the dark time loses its accustomed values.

  At last he got up, stretched, and thought of bed with less repugnance. He went back into the bed-room. Through the open connecting door a warm glow of firelight followed him. A log had burned up so brightly that it had not occurred to him to switch on the electric light, but as he stepped out of the warm fire-lit patch, the darkness of the bedroom was unpleasant. He groped towards the switch by the door, and felt the hair on his scalp pringle as he did so. He had searched the room; he knew that there was nothing there. But as he groped for the switch, he could have sworn that something rustled—moved—rustled.

  The switch was placed unusually low. Perhaps long ago the room had been a nursery. Feeling for it, he touched the handle of the door—and as he touched it, it moved.

  It moved by no volition of his. It moved because someone was turning the handle from the other side. In a flash Lindsay knew that the rustlings had come from the other side of the door. The door was locked. The door was opening.

  He could move as silently as a cat. He moved now in the only direction which offered a chance of concealment—behind the opening door.

  It opened a bare inch and stayed. Lindsay stood with his right shoulder against the wall just clear of the jamb which carried the hinges. He felt an agreeable excitement. Here at last was someone who could be seen, touched, grappled with. He would let him get into the room and the
n spring on him from behind when he turned, as he surely would turn, towards the bed.

  The door stayed just that bare inch open.

  Lindsay went on thinking. If the man behind the door was Restow—could he count on overpowering him? He planned the grip which would turn Restow’s bull strength against itself and bring him crashing down. But he did not believe that it was Restow who was there behind the inch-wide crack. He hoped that it was Drayton—his fingers tingled for Drayton—but he feared greatly that it was Ibrahim. What was the good of his throttling Ibrahim? It would be a most complete give-away. It would make it impossible for him to remain at Blenheim Square. It would bring this secret underground struggle with Drayton into the open. Was he ready to fight in the open yet? He said “No” so emphatically as to astonish his own thoughts. They scattered in confusion. He was left with a fixed resolve to wait upon the developing event, to see without being seen, and still remain if possible the unconscious tool.

  The door moved slowly. The crack widened. When it was about a foot wide, the door stopped moving. Lindsay’s eyes, accustomed to the darkness, could see the movement, but the door, swinging towards him, hid the opening. He could judge its width only by the angle in which he now stood. He had before him the length of the room, with the open door connecting with his sitting-room about two thirds of the way up it on the left. To the right was the bed with its head against the right-hand wall. Facing him, the curtained windows. The firelight was fainter now, but it still lighted the open doorway and made a warm diffused twilight at that end of the room.

  Lindsay could see the window curtains dark against the lighter wall. He could distinguish the black shapes of wardrobe, chest of drawers, washstand, and chairs, and he could see quite plainly the white linen and blankets of his bed.

  The door moved again.

  It was now wide enough to let a man pass. The angle just left the bed visible. Lindsay took a half step away from the wall. If he stooped forward now, he could see round the door. He waited, listening intently, and heard a faint, a very faint, dragging would. It was not a footstep, or any sound that a man would naturally make in moving. It was slow, cautious, and only just audible; and it came fitfully, as if something was crawling forward, an inch at a time.

  Lindsay’s heart jumped. He had a sickening recollection of the great python, Typhoon, with his head propped upon coil on patterned coil. He thought that the slow rippling passage of the heavy, supple body would make just such a sound as this that he was straining his ears to catch.

  He bent and leaned as far forward as he could. His heart jumped again. The thing that was coming slowly into the room was not Typhoon. He thought that he would have been able to see the python’s sliding coils; but this thing he could not see at all. It was moving forward a yard from his eyes, but it was only his ears that told him of the movement. And then all at once between him and the white bed he saw the vague rounded outline of a man’s head.

  The head was about two feet above the floor. Behind it, Lindsay guessed at a crawling body supported by hands and knees. He remained bent forward and saw the shape of the head approach the foot of the bed by the slowest of degrees. Sometimes it remained quite still, and then again it moved inch by inch until not only the head but a humped outline of shoulder could be seen against the bedclothes.

  Lindsay was on thorns. When would the man discover that the bed was empty? If it had been turned down in the orthodox way he must have discovered it by now, but Lindsay himself in remaking it had left the bedding in a comfortable huddle all ready to tuck about him. There was even a blackish blur against the pillow, which might have been the head of a sleeper. He puzzled over this, and then remembered throwing down a green silk handkerchief when he stripped off his coat.

  The dark head was close against the side of the bed, low down towards the foot. Two dark hands rose and fumbled at the bedclothes. There was no sound. After a full minute the head dropped below the level of the bed.

  Silence.

  Darkness.

  No movement that could be either heard or seen.

  Lindsay waited, and after some most interminable minutes he saw between one black mound, which was the chest of drawers, and another, which was the dressing-table, a third and smaller blackness which moved.

  He lost it—found it—lost it again—and, waiting there, was seized with an all but uncontrollable desire to yawn. By the dressing-table something was lifted and set down, and then the slow crawling began again, coming imperceptibly nearer.

  Lindsay strained his eyes. The man would avoid the fire-lit patch. Would he? Why should he? It would not be visible to anyone lying in the bed. The shape of a man crawling emerged from the darkness, the lifted head turned for an instant towards the light, and Lindsay saw two little brilliant discs like red-hot sixpences in the middle of the head. Just for that instant the man’s eyes caught the red firelight and reflected it, as an animal’s eyes will catch light and reflect it, in orange, emerald, or red; and just for that instant the shape of the face showed plain.

  “‘That Abraham’,” said Lindsay to himself, quoting Robert.

  Ibrahim crawled on. He was less deliberate now. He made no noise, but he came without stopping to the door and passed out of Lindsay’s sight. The door moved on noiseless hinges—closed and clicked to with the barest sound.

  Lindsay moved back against the wall and stood there. He would give Ibrahim half an hour. The luminous dial of his watch told him that it was half past one. He would wait until two o’clock. Afterwards he thought that half hour one of the worst he had ever spent. It was of a most intolerable length, and it was enlivened by the conviction that somewhere in the room there were a couple of poisonous snakes.

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  THE HALF HOUR PASSED Lindsay opened the door noiselessly and stood looking up and down the corridor. In the ordinary way, a light burned in it all night long; yet when Ibrahim crawled into his room not the faintest glimmer of light had come with him. Now the light burned again and showed the passage empty from end to end.

  Lindsay shut the door, switched on the light, and experimented with the key. It turned easily enough, but it no longer locked the door. He drew it out and looked at it. One of the wards had been filed away. He put the key back and gave his attention to the bed, which he approached stick in hand.

  Ibrahim’s operations having been directed to the foot of the bed, Lindsay came to the head and, taking hold of the bedclothes, peeled them back. When two thirds of the bed was exposed, he saw a small dark head, lifting, thrusting, as the movement disturbed it. He stripped the clothes right back with a jerk and brought his stick down upon the snake with a sharp cut.

  It was one of the Karaits which Ibrahim, showing those white teeth of his, had described as “very bad-tempered snake, master.”

  Lindsay wondered where the other one was. For all he knew, there might be more than another one.

  He went over to the dressing-table and looked about him. The shoes he had taken off were outside the door; the shoes he would put on in the morning stood beneath the table. He picked up the right shoe with his stick, held it dangling, shook it about, and set it down. As he hooked the stick into the other shoe, something moved against it. At the first shake a tiny snake fell out. If it was small, it was exceedingly active. It streaked across the carpet like the flick of a whip lash and disappeared under the wardrobe.

  Lindsay had never seen a snake hustle before. He associated snakes with the slow, dallying movements which they exhibit in a cage. This exhibition of pace filled him with the liveliest dislike. He poked under the wardrobe, and nothing happened. He swept the whole space, and drew a blank. He had certainly got to find that Karait.

  The wardrobe was too heavy to lift—a cumbrous mahogany affair with shelves on one side and a hanging space on the other. He got an electric torch, lay down, and peered underneath it, hoping that the snake would not suddenly decide upon a so
rtie. The space beneath the wardrobe was empty.

  He got up rather quickly. There was a dozen inches of concentrated unpleasantness loose in the room, and he was bound to find it, if it took all night.

  He shifted the chest of drawers. Nothing there. Then, standing on a chair, he shook the long dark curtains. There were four of them, and as he touched the third, the snake shot out. Lindsay flung the stick at it and ran in with the chair. He laid the corpse beside the other one, handling it gingerly.

  The question now was whether Ibrahim had more than two strings to his bow. Lindsay thought not; but for nothing on earth would he have slept in the bedroom, which might or might not contain Ibrahim’s third string.

  He went back into the sitting-room, made up generous fire, and sat down to see the night out in a chair.

  He read for a bit, and then became drowsy. After all, Ibrahim had shot his bolt. He put down his book and turned his attention to the clearance of the door from the bedroom. It fitted so closely to the carpet that it appeared gratifyingly improbable that the most persistent reptile could worm its way underneath it. He shut the door, put his feet up on a second chair, and turned out the reading-lamp at his elbow.

  He had no idea how long afterwards it was that he was awakened by the sound of an opening door. He wakened, and was broad awake in a single flash of time, his mind sufficiently alert to keep his body still and his eyes so far closed that they would appear to be shut. They were not, however, so far closed as to make it impossible for him to, see. What he saw interested him very much. The door between his bedroom and the sitting-room stood wide open. The bedroom was brightly lit, and in the doorway, bulking dark and large against the lighted background, stood Algerius Restow.

  Such a commingling of feelings surged up in Lindsay that no single one of them predominated sufficiently to decide his mood. A sharp disappointment—a keen surprise—a warm wave of relief—a sense of shock—of incongruity—