by Bruce, Leo
“Quarter to eight,” he said thoughtfully. “Well, that about gives me time…Here,” he suddenly said with decision, “you hang on here for a bit. I’ve just got to slip across the platform.”
This, at least, I had anticipated, and it was with no surprise at all that I saw him disappear into the buffet. I decided that even where I stood I might be noticeable to anyone approaching the ticket-collector, and took my place on a crowded seat from which I could equally well observe, but where, unless I was being actually sought for, I should remain unnoticed.
Ten minutes later Beef emerged, and crossing to me, took a place beside me that scarcely had room for him, and to obtain possession of which he had to do a good deal of pushing and expanding. He pulled up his newspaper again and nudged me too violently with his elbow.
“Won’t half be all right if we have to go across, will it?” he said. “I’ve only been once, and that was to Paris when I was in the Force and under Stute’s orders. He didn’t seem to know how to enjoy himself either. If you and me was on our own I believe we’d see life.”
I felt that a rather prim attitude befitted me here. “I hope we shall see Wilson,” I said curtly; “that, after all, is what we’re being paid to go for. There’s a girl coming across now who looks rather like Rose. Keep your eyes open.”
Beef kept his eyes open in a most conspicuous way, by slumping down into his chair, pulling his hat forward, and peering over the top of his paper like a child playing peep-bo. A little slim man on his left who had been watching him, and feeling the discomfort of his presence for some time, turned and asked him whatever was the matter.
“Investigation,” he whispered, “on a big case.” Whereat the little man looked extremely uncomfortable, got up, and walked away.
The girl came nearer, and it was evident that she was making for our platform.
“Doesn’t look like her to me,” said Beef, and he was quite right. “Ah, well, you never know,” he added, and we sat on there in silence, until there was only five minutes left to the time at which the train was scheduled to leave.
“I told you it would be no good,” I said irritably as the barriers closed and we watched the guard waving.
But Beef was too sanguine to be dismayed yet. “There’s the Dover-Ostend train yet,” he told me. “I don’t say I’d rather go to Belgium than France, but it would be better than nothing. Come on, we’ve got time to go and have one,” and he marched me off the station.
I was thoroughly fatigued when once more we stood waiting for the eleven-o’clock train. And I think that perhaps I dozed off, for I was awakened by a violent nudging from Beef. “Here she comes,” he muttered. “Don’t let her see you. Do your bootlace up.”
“It’s done up,” I returned innocently.
“Hide your face, for God’s sake,” Beef went on rudely, “we don’t want her to see us.”
His paper was crinkling with his excitement, and his eyes popping over the top of it. “Yes, it’s her,” he said. “She’s quite alone and got her suitcase.” His remarks took the form of an American wireless commentary. “She’s coming across. She’s looking round about. Now she’s stopped. She’s looking for her ticket. She’s got it all right. What did I tell you? She’s going to the train. She’s showing the man her ticket. He’s passed it. She’s walking up the platform. I’ll keep an eye on her while you hop back and buy two first-class tickets for Ostend.”
“First class?” I queried dampingly at the end of this monologue. “Why first-class?”
“Well, I’m a first-class detective, aren’t I? I’m not going to do anything by halves.”
“I’m not suggesting half-measures,” I returned, “but you’re spending someone else’s money.”
“Do you think Lord Simon Plimsoll would go third class?” was his scornful reply. “You get the tickets quick while I watch her.”
My last glimpse as I turned to the booking-office was of Beef stalking up the platform with his body slightly crooked and his hat almost meeting his coat-collar.
But I really was impressed. I had to admit that however much one laughed at the old boy it was he and not Stute who had foreseen this, and who was on the track of whatever developments there might be at the end of this journey. His methods seemed ingenuous, but once again I had to admit that they were getting him there.
I walked up the train, peering into the carriages, and almost missed the familiar figure where it crouched in a first-class compartment. As I handed him the ticket, he elaborately destroyed the platform ticket which had admitted him.
“Well, we’re off,” he said unnecessarily as the train steamed out a few minutes later. “And she’s safe and sound in a third-class carriage down the corridor. What do you say to that?”
I said nothing, but I should have respected his achievement more if he had not insisted, every half-hour or so, on walking down the train “to see if she was all right.” His manner of passing her carriage was calculated to draw the attention of anyone far less suspicious than Rose might well have been. But apparently it did no harm, and we had the satisfaction of seeing the girl make her way on board at Dover.
Once he had satisfied himself that the gangway was up with Rose still in the third-class quarters, Beef was prepared to relax. “It’s only on the films, and in the most improbable detective stories, that they disappear in mid-Channel,” he explained as he led me to the bar. “But we must look out for her at Ostend. Can’t tell if she’s staying there or going on to Brussels. Though since Wilson’s sneaked across on an excursion, I should think it’s more than likely they’re staying on the coast. Garçon,” he suddenly shouted to the astonished bar-tender, “two pale ales.” Then turning to me. “See, I know a bit of French,” he said with a wink.
I was relieved to find that it was a smooth crossing, for I remembered that Beef was not a good sailor. But once the lights of Dover had dimmed, I told him that I was going to turn in.
“All right,” he said, “only I think I’d better stay up and keep an eye on things.”
I was too tired to ask what things, and took no further interest in the world until I was awakened on our arrival at Ostend to find Beef standing over my bunk. “Come on,” he said, “we mustn’t lose sight of her.”
“Did you enjoy the crossing?” I asked, as I pulled on my shoes.
“Lovely,” said Beef poetically, “clear moonlight and no licensing hours.”
We once more, as Beef put it, “picked up the trail” in the customs shed, where Rose’s modest suitcase was passed more quickly than our own. But outside in the chill half-light of an autumnal dawn I was disappointed to find no sign of Ed Wilson waiting, and commented on it to Beef.
“What did you expect?” he asked scornfully. “Did you think she was going to send telegrams to tell us where he was? Still, I wouldn’t mind betting she goes straight to his hotel.”
At that moment a taxi came hurrying towards the station and Rose stopped it. She appeared to have some difficulty in explaining to the driver where she wanted to go, and eventually showed him a paper from her bag. Their conversation was out of our earshot, so we could only conclude that she had given him Wilson’s address.
Beef looked round for a taxi, but there was none in sight. “Taxi!” he shouted ineffectually, his voice echoing round the almost silent station. What few passengers from our train were staying in the town appeared to have gone already in the several hotel brakes sent down for them, and we were alone in the empty square. There was no sign of any other vehicle, and Beef grew slightly profane.
“Always the same,” he said. “Never one when you want it. There she goes over the bridge,” and he stood watching the motor-car disappear from sight. “We know she’s in the town,” he consoled himself, “but it may take us days to find them now.” Then brightening a little, “Days!” he added.
Chapter XVII
THE Ostend season was nearly over, but there was still a fair number of English holiday-makers staying in the hotels, and the narrow s
treets were by no means deserted. Beef chose a modest hotel, I was relieved to find, and we both decided to sleep till lunch-time and to meet then.
We came down to a pleasant meal, but not one, it seemed, which suited Beef. “Little bits of things” was his description, and he used an unprintable metaphor for the beer.
“What are we to do this afternoon?” I asked while we were drinking coffee.
“Well, where would you suppose anyone would get to as had a lot of money to spend in the afternoon?” he replied.
“To the races, I suppose. But why do you ask? Do you suppose Ed Wilson has a lot of money to spend?”
Beef did not condescend to answer my questions. “We’ll go to the races,” he announced, and thereupon grew silent.
Just then the carillon sounded, and was plainly audible to us where we sat in the pale sunshine in front of our restaurant.
“Nice bells,” said Beef, “though I never cared much for church bells at home. What’s the idea of playing tunes on them?”
I began to explain to him something of the tradition of the carillon in the Low Countries, but his interest had wandered again, for he was taking advantage of the Continental practice of providing tooth-picks.
We drove to the race-course in a taxi, and Beef was astonished at the cheapness of the price of entry. “Costs you a quid in England,” he reflected as he paid over the modest sum in francs.
We had a most pleasant afternoon, but a totally fruitless one, enlivened only by two false alarms. Once we were standing high on the roof of the grandstand from which the turf and the sea were equally visible, when Beef thought he recognized Wilson approaching the Tote. He made a dive for the stairs, and presently I saw him searching through the crowd for the man he had picked out, then, when he saw his mistake, putting his hands in his pockets and behaving with all the whistling ingenuousness of a Wallace Beery. The second time was more embarrassing, for we were together near the buffet when Beef sprang forward and clapped his hand on the shoulder of another innocent racegoer. The man turned, revealing an astonished English face, and Beef stuttered his apologies. “I thought you were someone else,” he said inevitably.
“Well, I’m not,” returned the man curtly as he walked away, and Beef looked very crestfallen. Finally, his fancy for a horse called Zig-Zag, which came in not only last but several lengths behind its slowest competitor, ended an afternoon which, however unsatisfactory, had at least been healthy and leisurely.
Beef was even more expressively rude about the tea than he had been about the beer, and vowed he would never come abroad again without a couple of pounds of Lipton’s in his suitcase. But he cheered up as evening approached and I conceded that the Casino would be the place most likely for anyone with money to spend.
“I wonder,” I said sarcastically, “that you have not apparently realized the obvious way to find Wilson.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Go to the Belgian police and get their cooperation. They’d run round the hotel registers in no time.”
“Don’t be silly. I can’t ask them that. I’m here in a private capacity and I’ve got to find things out for myself. That’s all very well for Stute with his letters from South America and such, but we’ve got to do this job by ourselves. Come on, where’s this Casino?”
It seemed to me that if Rose and Ed Wilson were at the Casino at all, it was very probable that only the chauffeur would be at the gaming-tables. We might, I thought, have to find them separately.
“Where else might she be, then?” asked Beef.
“Well, at the concert, for instance.”
“What pierrots and that?”
He received my explanation in an impressed silence, and then, when I had finished, “Music,” he said, “I like a bit of a tune sometimes.”
I took Beef first to the little office at the doors of the gaming-rooms to insure our entry into these when the time came. Fortunately I was a member at Monte Carlo and had my carnet in my pocket-case. This enabled me to get six-day tickets for the two of us. There was an uncomfortable moment when the official asked Beef what club he belonged to.
“Club?” he said, “I’ve just joined the Marylebone and Paddington Liberal Club, if that’s what you mean.”
To my relief this was glossed over by the courteous officials and no obstacle was put in our way. But I decided first to visit the concert-hall.
I led Beef to where the orchestra was already playing “a bit of a tune” and we sat down together. Beef folded his arms and sat rapt and silent for about ten minutes. Then he began to refold his arms, shuffle his feet, and out of the comer of my eye I could see his head creeping round trying to see how the people behind were taking it. At last he could contain himself no longer and leaned over towards me. Bringing his mouth close against my ear he said in a hoarse whisper, “When are they going to start?”
“They have started,” I said shortly, and handed him the programme, indicating the Ravel Quartet which they were just then playing. Beef looked at the printed page in silence for a moment, and then suddenly slapped his thigh explosively and looked at me with a huge grin on his face. “Do you know what I thought?” he said.
But although I did not know what he had thought, I did not, at that moment, take the offered opportunity of finding out. If Beef had wanted everybody to look at him so that he could see if Rose were in the hall, he could not have chosen a better method. But he was oblivious of the white shocked faces which stared at us in dismay from every side.
“I thought—” he said, still laughing, but I grasped him firmly by the arms and half guided, half thrust him out into the foyer.
“You idiot,” I said to him violently as soon as we were outside. “That girl will have warned Wilson before we can get to the gaming-tables, and then we shall never be able to catch them.”
“Which girl?” asked Beef, bewildered.
“Rose, of course. She was sitting there listening to the concert until you made a nuisance of yourself,” I fumed, “and then of course she turned round with the rest. Directly she saw you she ran for the door. If we don’t catch them before they get out of this place we probably never shall.”
Beef was still looking dazed as I propelled him along the corridor, but he had quickly recovered by the time we reached the wide doors which opened into the room in which the tables were. Shaking me loose from his arm like Saul recovering from his fit as David played to him, he stood with his legs apart and surveyed the room quickly, his eyes travelling over the backs and faces of all the people there.
“Ah,” he said suddenly, and moved forward quickly. A moment after him I recognized the back of Wilson’s head where he sat, his eyes intent on the table. The pile of counters in front of him seemed evidence that he was playing for high stakes that evening, and Beef stood silently behind him until the wheel had stopped spinning. Then he put his hand on his shoulder as only a policeman can put his hand on a strange man’s shoulder. A firm but weary hand, as if weighted by the search, like the tired grip of a falcon as it returns to its master’s wrist after an unsuccessful flight.
At this moment there was a disturbance near the door, where Rose had pushed her way past the watchful attendants. But when she saw Beef she stopped and her shoulders seemed to droop slightly. Few of the players had noticed the incident, and the attendants were quite discreet as with quiet, uncaring expressions they pulled back the doors to let the four of us out into the corridor again.
“You silly young fool,” said Beef to the chauffeur as soon as we had left the Casino, “whatever possessed you to do a thing like that?”
But Wilson was not to be cowed by this sort of moral lecture from Beef. He was quite as confident now as he had been that day when Beef interviewed him in the library at the Cypresses. “I wanted to see things and get about a bit. Stuck there like a bit of sausage in a toad in the hole. I want to have some fun.”
Beef looked at him severely. “You want to read the illustrated Sunday papers,” he said, �
�to see what happens to people like you. Never come to a good end, they don’t. And then bringing this girl out,” he went on. “Shocking, I call it. What would her people think about it? Living a life of gilded sin. And on the money you took off a dead man too. I don’t know how you sleep at nights.”
At this phrase Rose gave a short giggle, but she suppressed it immediately.
“And what’s more,” Beef went on remorselessly, “you’re coming back with me by the next boat, that’s what you’re going to do.”
Wilson lit a cigarette and thrust his hands in his pockets. “I’ve got answers to nearly all of that,” he said calmly. “Now in the first place you’re not a policeman, so you can’t arrest me, and in the second place we’re on foreign soil, so you couldn’t if you were. I took the money all right. Why not? He didn’t need it any more. I didn’t think anybody would know he had it on him. Nobody saw me take it anyway, but I suppose if you’ve got the numbers of the notes you can prove that against me all right.”
“I can prove it,” said Beef, “don’t you worry.”
“I haven’t finished yet,” went on Wilson. “It’s that other thing you said about Rose and me that I’m thinking of. What right you have to come along and make immoral suggestions to us I don’t know, but let me tell you this. While we’re on the subject of the illustrated Sunday papers, I should say that it’s people with minds like yours that write them. Rose and I have been properly married now for nearly a year, and why we didn’t tell anybody is nobody’s business.”
At this point I interrupted. “What I’d like to know,” I said to Beef, “is what connection this man has with the crime. And what’s all this about money?”
“His connection with the crime,” said Beef, “is that he’s a witness who Inspector Stute may be able to do without, but I can’t. He saw that old man leaving the gates that morning, and he was the second on the scene of the murder.”
This was disheartening. “So you’ve come all the way to Ostend after a minor witness?”
