by Sapper
“I should rather think I am,” said MacIver grimly. “Open this door, you perishing fool…”
“I will, sir, at once. It’s all a mistake.”
“Damn your mistakes! Open the door.”
“But I haven’t got the key. Wait a bit, sir, I’ll get a screwdriver.”
“Hurry,” roared MacIver. “May Heaven help that man when I get at him.”
“I wouldn’t be too hasty if I was you, Mac,” said Drummond quietly. “Better men than he have been caught napping.”
It was a quarter of an hour before the door was opened and we trooped upstairs, followed by the trembling Fosdick.
“Now, you fool,” said MacIver, “will you kindly explain this little jest of yours?”
“Well, sir,” answered the man. “I’m very sorry, I’m sure – but I acted for the best.”
“Get on with it,” stormed the Inspector. “I was on duty outside Number 10, when I saw you come out of the house.”
“You saw me come out of this house? Why, you blithering idiot, I’ve been locked up in the cellar all the morning.”
“I know that now, sir, but at the time I thought it was you. You passed me, sir – at least the man did – and you said to me, ‘We’ve got the whole bunch.’ It was your voice, sir; your voice exactly. ‘They’re in the cellar in Number 12 – locked in, and I’ve got the key. I’m going round to the Yard now, and I’ll send a van up for ’em. They can’t get out, but they may make a row.’ And then you went on – or rather the other man did – ‘By Jove! this is a big thing. I’ve got one of ’em in there that the police of Europe and America are looking for. I had him once before – and do you know how he got away? Why, by imitating my voice over the telephone so well that my man thought it was me!’”
“How perfectly gorgeous,” said Drummond ecstatically.
“And then you see, sir, when I heard your voice in that there cellar I thought it was this other bloke imitating you.”
“I see.” Despite himself MacIver’s lips were beginning to twitch. “And what finally made you decide that I wasn’t imitating my own voice?”
“Well, sir, I waited and waited and the van never came – and then I went upstairs. They’ve knocked out Bexton, sir; I found him unconscious on the floor in the room above. So then I rang up the Yard: nothing had been heard of you. And then I knew I’d been hoaxed. But I swear, sir, that bloke would have deceived Mrs MacIver herself.”
“He certainly put it across you all right,” said MacIver grimly. “I’d give quite a lot to meet the gentleman.”
“I wonder what the inducement was,” said Drummond. “No man was going to run such an infernal risk for fun.”
“By Jove!” cried MacIver, “that cistern is gone. It’s lucky I had the handkerchief in my pocket.”
“He was carrying a tin with straps on it when he spoke to me,” said Fosdick, and MacIver groaned.
“Literally through our fingers,” he said. “However, we’ve got the other three cisterns. Though I’d much sooner have had the man.”
“Anyway that’s a point cleared up,” remarked Drummond cheerfully. “We know why he came here–”
“We don’t,” snapped MacIver. “The fact that he took the blamed thing is no proof that he came for that purpose.”
“True, my dear old policeman,” said Drummond. “But it is, as they say, a possible hypothesis. And, as I remarked before, he didn’t come here for fun, so in default of further information we may as well assume that he came for the cistern. In the hurry of their departure last night they forgot these little fellows down in the cellar, so someone came back to get them. He found one nicely put out for him on the table, and a personally conducted Cook’s party in the cellar inspecting the others. So in addition to taking his property he locked the cellar door. Easy, laddie: easy.”
“Yes; isn’t it?” said MacIver sarcastically. “And perhaps you’ll explain what he’d have done if we hadn’t been in the cellar.”
“My dear Mac, what’s the good of making it harder? I haven’t the faintest idea what he’d have done. Stood on his head and given an imitation of a flower-pot. He did find us in the cellar, and that’s all we’re concerned with. He took a chance – and a darned sporting chance – and it came off. You’re up against something pretty warm, old lad. I don’t pretend to be a blinking genius, but if my reconstruction of what has happened up to date is right, I take off my hat to ’em for their nerve.”
“‘What is your reconstruction?” said MacIver quietly, and I noticed his look of keen attention. Whatever may have been his official opinion of our interference, it was pretty clear that unofficially he was under no delusions with regard to Drummond. In fact, as he told me many months later, there was no one he knew who had such an uncanny faculty for hitting the nail on the head.
“Well, this is how I see it,” said Drummond. “Their first jolt was the fact that Gaunt managed to get through on the telephone to Stockton. Had that not happened they’d have been in clover. It might have been a couple of days before the Australian was found dead in that house. The old woman is deaf, and probably the first thing she’d have known about it was when she showed a prospective lodger a dead man in her best bedroom and a dead dog across the passage. But Gaunt getting through on the phone started it all, and everything that has happened since is due, I’m certain, to their endeavour to fit in their previous arrangements with this unexpected development. They brought Gaunt here: that’s obvious. Why did they bring Gaunt here particularly? Well – why not? They had to take him somewhere. They couldn’t leave him lying about in Piccadilly Circus.
“They brought him here, and then for reasons best known to themselves they decided to murder Stockton. Well, we all know what happened then, and it was another unexpected development for them. The last thing they wanted was your arrival on the scene. And you wouldn’t have arrived, Mac – unless you’d followed Stockton. That’s what huffed ’em: old Stockton giving his celebrated rendering of a mechanic at the Three Cows. Naturally you suspected him at once: it was without exception the most appalling exhibition of futility I’ve ever seen.”
“Thanks so much,” I murmured.
“That’s all right, old bean,” he said affably. “I expect you’re the hell of a lawyer. However, to continue. You arrived, Mac, with most of the police force of London next door – and you can bet your life the people in here began to sweat some. Why didn’t they go away at once, you say? I don’t know. Instead of their quiet little backwater the whole glare of Scotland Yard was beating on the next-door house. And what was even worse for them was, that not only had they failed to murder Stockton before you came, but one of their own men was dead. Inquests: newspaper publicity. All the more reason for them to go at once. Why didn’t they? What was their reason for stopping on when they must have realised their danger? I don’t know; but it must have been a pretty strong one. Anyway they chanced it – and, by Jove! they’ve pulled it off. That’s why I take off my hat to ’em. They were ready to go last night, and they went last night, and the last twenty-four hours they spent in this house must have been pretty nerve-racking.”
“May I ask what you are doing in my house?” came in an infuriated female voice from the door.
A tall, thin, acidulated woman was standing there regarding us balefully, and MacIver swung round.
“May I ask your name, madam?”
“Simpson is my name, sir. And who may you be?”
“I’m Inspector MacIver from Scotland Yard, and I must ask you to answer a few questions.”
“Scotland Yard!” cried Miss Simpson shrilly. “Then you’re the very man I want to see. I have been the victim of a monstrous outrage.”
“Indeed,” remarked MacIver. “I’m sorry about that. What has happened?”
“Three weeks ago a female person called to see me in this house. She wished to know if I would let it furnished for a month. I refused, and told her that I considered her request very surprising, as I had not told any house
-agent that I wanted to let. I further asked her why she had picked on my house particularly. She told me that she had just returned from Australia, and was spending a month in London. She further said that before going to Australia she had lived with her father in this house, and that since he was now dead she wished to spend the month under the old roof for remembrance’ sake. However, I told her it was impossible, and she went away. Two days afterwards occurred the outrage. Outrage, sir – abominable outrage, and if there is any justice in England the miscreants should be brought to justice. I was kidnapped, sir – abducted by a man.”
“Is that so?” said MacIver gravely. “How did it happen, Miss Simpson?”
“In a way, sir, that reflects the gravest discredit on the police. I was returning from the Tube station late in the evening – I had been to a theatre – and as I reached the end of the road a taxi drew up beside me. At the time the road was deserted: as usual no adequate protection by the police was available against gangs of footpads and robbers. From the taxi stepped a man, and before I had time to scream, or even guess their fell intention, I was bundled inside by him and the driver – a handkerchief was bound round my mouth and another round my eyes and we were off.”
“You have no idea, of course, who the men were?” said MacIver.
“Absolutely none,” she remarked indignantly. “Do you imagine, sir, that I should number among my acquaintances men capable of such a dastardly act?”
“No one who knew you would ever be likely to abduct you,” agreed Drummond soothingly. “Er – that is, in such a violent manner, don’t you know. What I was going to say” – he went on hurriedly – “is what about the servants? Didn’t they start running round in circles when you failed to roll up?”
“That is one of the very points I wish to clear up,” she said. “Jane – I keep only one maid – had received a telegram only that morning stating that her mother in Devonshire was ill. So she had gone off, and there was therefore no one in the house. But that was three weeks ago. Surely she must have returned in that time, and if so, when she failed to find me here, why did she say nothing to the police?”
“An interesting point, Miss Simpson,” said MacIver, “and one that we will endeavour to clear up. However, let’s get on now with what happened to you. I hope these men used no unnecessary violence.”
“Beyond forcibly placing me in the car,” she conceded, “they did not. And I may say that during the whole period of my imprisonment I was treated very well.”
“Where did they take you? “demanded MacIver eagerly.
“I don’t know: I can’t tell you. It was a house in the country: that’s all I can say. It stood by itself amongst some trees – but I was blindfolded the whole way there. And when they brought me back this morning I was again blindfolded. They brought me as far as the Euston Road: whipped off the handkerchief from my eyes, pushed me out on the pavement, and then drove off at a furious rate. Now, sir, what is the meaning of this inconceivable treatment?”
“If you’ll come upstairs, Miss Simpson, you’ll understand,” answered MacIver. “The meaning of the whole thing is that you happened to be living in this house. And it wasn’t you they wanted: it was the house. Had you agreed to let it to that woman who called to see you, none of this would have happened.”
“But why did they want the house?”
“That’s why.”
MacIver stepped into the room where Drummond and I had interviewed the bogus invalid, and pointed to an opening in the wall.
“You knew nothing of that, of course?”
“Good Heavens! no.” She was staring at it in amazement. “What’s through on the other side?”
“The next house: Number 10.”
“And that’s been there all these years. Why! I might have been murdered in my bed.”
“It’s a carefully done job, MacIver,” said Drummond, and the detective nodded.
The wall of each room consisted of imitation oak boarding, and the opening was made by means of two sliding panels. The brickwork between them had been removed to form the passage, and the opening thus made crowned with a small iron girder. The two panels moved in grooves which had been recently oiled, and when closed it was impossible to notice anything unusual.
“A bolt-hole, Miss Simpson,” explained MacIver. “A bolt-hole, the existence of which was known to the gang that abducted you. And a bolt-hole is very useful at times. That’s why they wanted your house.”
“Do you mean to say that a gang of criminals has been living in my house?”
“That is just what I do mean,” said MacIver. “But I don’t think they are likely to return. If they intended to do so they wouldn’t have let you go. They lived here and they used the empty house next door. The thing I’m going to find out now is the name of your predecessor. Can you tell me the agent through whom you got this house?”
“Paul & Paul in the Euston Road.”
“Good. That saves time.”
“And now I shall be glad, sir, if you would kindly go,” she said. “I presume I may expect to hear in time that the police have a clue to account for my treatment. It would be too much to expect any more. But at the moment my house resembles a bear garden, and I would like to start putting it into some semblance of order–”
And then occurred a most embarrassing incident. It was so sudden and unexpected that it took us all by surprise, and it was over before anyone could intervene.
Drummond became light-headed. We heard a dreadful noise from an adjoining room: he had burst into song. And the next moment – to our horror – he came dancing through the door, and made a bee-line for Miss Simpson.
“My Tootles,” he cried jovially. “My little flower of the east.”
Miss Simpson screamed: Ted Jerningham gave an uncontrollable guffaw.
“Dance with me, my poppet,” chanted Drummond, seizing her firmly round the waist.
Protesting shrilly, the unfortunate woman was dragged round the room, until between us we managed to get hold of Drummond. The poor chap was completely delirious, but fortunately for all concerned not violent. We explained to the almost hysterical woman that he had had a very bad blow on the head the preceding night, from one of the same gang of scoundrels who had abducted her – and that, of course, he was suffering from concussion. And then we got him downstairs and into a taxi. He was still humming gently to himself, and playing with a piece of string, but he offered no resistance.
“Extraordinary thing his going like that so suddenly,” I said to Darrell, who was sitting opposite.
“Frightfully so,” agreed Drummond. “Just hold that end of the string.”
“Good Lord!” I stammered. “Do you mean to say…”
“Hold the end,” he said tersely. “I want to see something.”
With his fingers outstretched he measured the distance between my end and the point he was holding, whilst I still stared at him in amazement.
“I thought as much,” he said quietly. “Tell the taxi to stop at the first small hotel we come to. You go back, Peter, and bring MacIver along there at once. Tell him it’s urgent, but don’t let that woman hear you.”
“Who – Miss Simpson?”
“She’s no more Miss Simpson than I am.”
The car pulled up, and we all got out.
“Go back in it, Peter: make any old excuse. Say I left my hat – but get MacIver quickly. Now, Stockton – let’s have a drink, and think things over.”
“I say, Drummond,” I said weakly, “do you mind explaining?”
“All in good time, old man – all in good time. I refuse to utter until I’ve got outside a pint.”
“What on earth is the meaning of this?” said MacIver a few minutes later as he came into the room where we were sitting.
“Only that you apologised for my attack of insanity so convincingly that I think the lady believed it. I sincerely hope so at any rate. While you were holding forth, Mac, about the secret opening I went on a little voyage of exploration.
And I found a cupboard full of female clothes. They were all marked A. Simpson, and right in front three or four skirts were hanging. I don’t know why exactly, but it suddenly occurred to me that the skirts seemed singularly short for the lady. So I took one down and measured it round the waist-band. And allowing the span of my hand to be about ten inches I found that Miss Simpson’s waist was approximately forty inches. Now that woman is thinner than my wife – but I thought I’d make sure. I took her measurement with this bit of string when I was dancing with her, and if that is Amelia Simpson she’s shrunk thirteen inches round the tum-tum. Laddie – it can’t be done. But, by Jove, it was a fine piece of acting. She’s got every man jack of us out of the house as easily as peeling a banana.”
MacIver rose and walked towards the door.
“What are you going to do?” said Drummond.
“Have that woman identified by somebody,” answered the detective. “Ask her some more questions, and if the answers aren’t satisfactory, clap her under lock and key at once.”
“Far be it from me to call you an ass, dear boy, but that doesn’t alter the fact that you are one. At least you will be if you arrest that woman.”
“Well, what do you suggest? We’ll have got one of them anyway.”
“And if you give her sufficient rope, we may get a lot more. Think, man, just think. What did that fellow who impersonated you run his head into a noose for this morning? Not for the pleasure of locking us into a cellar. What has that woman turned up for so quickly, pretending she is the rightful owner? If those garments belong to Miss Simpson – as they surely must do – the two women must be utterly unlike. True, they would assume – and rightly so as it happened – that none of us had ever seen Miss Simpson. All the same, if they hadn’t been in a tearing hurry they would surely have sent someone a little less dissimilar. They are in a tearing hurry – but what for? There’s something in that house that they want – and want quickly: something they forgot last night when they all flitted. And when that woman finds it – or if she finds it – she’ll go with it – to them. And we shall follow her. Do you get me, Steve? We can watch the house in front from Number 10. We can watch it from behind from Number 13 Jersey Street, in which six respectable divinity students have taken rooms for the week. We are the noble half-dozen. Let’s get rid of the young army that we’ve had tracking around up to date, and be nice and matey. But we insist, Mac, on seeing the fun. Out of the kindness of my heart I’ve put you wise as to what I discovered, and you’ve got to play the game. You and I and Stockton will go to Number 10; Ted, Peter and Algy to Jersey Street. Toby, you trot back and tell Phyllis what is happening – and tell her to put up some sandwiches and half a dozen Mumm ’13. Then come back to Jersey Street, and tell the old geyser there that it’s a new form of Apenta Water. And send all the rest of your birds home to bed, Mac.”
