by Bruce, Leo
Once again Peter and I stayed in the car while Beef entered the office of the bookmaker, and we were chatting pleasantly when, after about ten minutes, the Sergeant returned.
“Well, that’s that,” he said as he reseated himself next to me.
“What did you find out?” asked Peter.
“Those remarkable sums your brother’s been throwing away on the horses,” said Beef, “don’t ever add up to more than three or four pounds in a year, that’s what.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, all the bets were registered under Duncan’s name, and in the first place it was easy to see that it was mostly in half-crowns and such, which was what Duncan and his wife would want on for themselves. Every now and again there was a bet of ten bob, and once or twice one for a quid, but even if we took all those as being Stewart Ferrers’s it doesn’t come to more than a fiver at the most.”
“That’s not very helpful,” I commented.
“It’s helpful for the prosecution,” said Peter soberly. “If he wasn’t using the money for betting, what else could it be but blackmail?”
“Don’t you jump to conclusions,” said Beef slowly. “We haven’t got to the bottom of this by a long chalk. There’s a lot of things I don’t quite understand yet. But it’s only a question of time, you’ll see.”
“I hope so,” I muttered, and Beef gave me a hurt look.
We dropped Peter at his flat on the way back to Paddington, but by the time I drew the car into the side of the kerb in Lilac Crescent, Beef seemed to have shaken off his gloom, and it was in his familiar manner that he said:
“Well, you’ll come in for a cup of tea now you’re here, won’t you? Mrs. Beef 11 get some for us in two ticks.”
I accepted his invitation, and in a short time we were all three seated round the table in his small back room eating the food which Mrs. Beef had prepared for us.
Beef had a habit, which I well knew, of reciting the day’s events to his wife every evening when he returned home. This he proceeded to do now while his wife knitted imperturbably at a length of sock, occasionally interrupting Beefs dramatic monologue with such remarks as, “Did he really? Well, don’t let your tea get cold, then,” or more simply, “Don’t talk with your mouth full, dear.”
It was while Beef was in the middle of a description of Stewart in gaol that the telephone bell rang, and he stopped in mid-sentence with his mouth slightly open.
“Whoever can that be?” said Mrs. Beef placidly. “I expect it’s only a wrong number.”
But Beef brushed her remarks aside, and was out in the little hall almost before the bell had rung three times. The muffled sound of his voice came to us through the door, but we could not hear the words. It was quite a lengthy conversation, and when at last Beef returned his face was flushed with exertion and his eyes sparkled.
“Who do you think that was?” he asked pregnantly. “It was that antique-dealer’s wife. You know, where we bought the dart-board.”
“Dart-board?” I queried. “Oh—where we found the swordstick, you mean.”
“That’s right,” said Beef. “Well, she says she’s got on to that old man what sold them the stick. She’s followed him round, just like I thought she would, and now all we’ve got to do is to go down there straight away and see what he’s got to say for himself.”
Chapter XXIII
LOOK here, Beef,” I said, “I think you’d better go down to Sydenham alone this time. I really don’t think I could face that suburb again tonight.”
“Now then, none of that,” Beef returned, though quite good-humouredly. “You know very well I can’t go trapezing down there in buses. Besides, if things turn out as I think they will, I can promise you this will be the last time. What’s wrong with Sydenham, anyway?”
“Oh, I daresay it’s all right,” I conceded, “but I’m tired of it, Beef, and I’m tired of this case. You seem to keep fidgeting about with little bits of evidence, and you don’t give me any idea where it’s leading.”
“Still,” said Beef with irrepressible optimism, “you must admit that this is promising. That old chap might be the murderer himself,” he chuckled.
“Don’t be silly,” I snapped. “You may be able to lead other people up all sorts of garden paths of suspicion, but don’t try it on me. You know very well you don’t think this old man had anything to do with it.”
“I shouldn’t go so far as to say that,” said Beef, “but we’ll see what he has to say.”
“Oh, all right,” and once again I got into the driving seat of my car, and we set out on the familiar road to the south-eastern suburb.
We did not need to enter the shop, for the antique-dealer’s wife was standing in the doorway scanning the road as we drove up. Her round eager face was flushed, and a small black hat tottered precariously on her untidy hair. She grasped an umbrella in her hand, and when she saw us drawing up she waved vigorously.
Beef, however, stepped down with leisure and decorum from the car, and brushed his overcoat with his hand before turning to her. “Good evening,” he said.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come,” she exploded. “I’ve been waiting for you nearly an hour. I’ve got him all right. Found out where his place is, and everything about him. I can tell you his name, and his reputation. I tried to get a photograph of him, but the light was too bad.”
“If there’s any photographing to be done,” said Beef, “I’ll arrange for it. All I asked you to do was to find out where the man lived.”
“Yes, and I’ve found out. It was quite by chance, in a way; at least, that was, my seeing him again at all. I went down to do a bit of shopping just after lunch, and at two o’clock, when the public-houses shut, I saw him come rolling out as drunk as you please. I was with another lady, and I turned round to her and said, ‘Who’s that?’ I said. She said, ‘That’s old Fryer. What about it?’ I told her it was a matter of life and death, and set off after him. It took nearly an hour and a half for him to get the little way down to his yard. He kept stopping, and once he sat down on the pavement for half an hour with his head against a lamp-post, until a policeman moved him on. He’s known in these parts-well, everybody seems to have heard of him. He’s always on the booze, and when he’s not he deals in rags and bones and that. They say he’s got a lot of money put away, but there’s no telling. Anyway, from what I’ve heard of him, I should say he was capable of anything—even murder.”
“Whatever he’s capable of,” said Beef crushingly, “all I want to see him about is if he’s picked up a swordstick which maybe didn’t belong to him.”
“Well,” said the woman, looking at Beef as though she’d been tricked, “I thought this was a real crime you were investigating. If I’d have known that’s all you was after, I wouldn’t have soiled my mind with finding out about a dirty old drunken rag-and-bone man.”
“I must say,” Beef amended quickly, “that you’ve been a great help to me. It’s the little things what count in a case like this, you know. Now, where did you say this man Fryer lived?”
“You could hardly call it living,” said the woman, with a quick return of interest. “He’s got a sort of a dirty old yard where he keeps his barrow and things, and sometimes he sleeps there.”
“Where else does he sleep, then?” asked Beef.
“From what they tell me, almost anywhere. He’s been found in almost every corner you can imagine. When he’s out on the booze, he’s likely to stop anywhere and sleep it off. Why, he was even found in the church once. And the times he’s been run in for the night, you wouldn’t believe.”
Beef grunted understandingly. “I’ve known people like him before,” he said.
“But, Beef,” I interrupted, “how will you know if this man Fryer is the same man Wilson saw coming out of the front gates of the Cypresses that morning? They might be two different people altogether. And the stick may be just a coincidence.”
“I’d thought of that,” said Beef calmly. “Before we
go along to see him we’re going to pick up young Wilson. If we take him along with us he can identify him, can’t he?”
Rose and Ed Wilson were living in the little flat over the garage. They both seemed pleased to see us, and as we sat talking for a few minutes I felt that it was genuine enough. In Ed Wilson himself I sensed a change, a certain steadying of character since I had last seen him. He was still self-confident, and as sure of his new plans as he had been of his old. But there was something less selfish about him now.
“We’ve been talking it over, haven’t we, Rose?” he said. “You were awfully decent about that Ostend business, Sergeant. We’ve put almost all of that two hundred and twenty pounds in the bank. It’s going to come in useful.”
“Almost all of it?” queried Beef severely.
Rose made a grimace at him. “We had a bit of an outing the other night,” she said, “but we only spent a pound or two, honest.”
The antique-dealer’s wife, who had been sitting in a rather foreboding silence on the settee all this time, now rose to her feet. “I thought,” she said icily, “that we were going to capture a criminal. I must say this seems a very strange way of doing it.”
Hurriedly Beef told Ed Wilson what had brought us to see him, and Wilson agreed immediately to come with us and see the old man. At the last minute Rose, who refused to be left behind, had to be squeezed into the back of the car, and then, with the antique-dealer’s wife sitting somewhat grimly forward on the edge of her seat in order to direct me, we started off again.
The yard in which Fryer lived had at one time been a fairly large mews, but though it may once have housed horses, it had progressed no further, and was now dark and disused, except for the casual occupation of the old man whose headquarters it was. I drew the car a little way past its entrance and we got out and walked back.
“That’s it,” said the woman. “And that’s where he sleeps,” she added, pointing with her umbrella to the far end of the yard, where a door hung permanently open on one hinge.
The only light at the entrance showed a cobbled yard some twenty yards long. On either side the entrances to the stables were dark as caves. With the exception of the one at the end of the yard, all the doors had long since been taken away or simply fallen to pieces on their hinges, and the heaps of junk stacked on every available space of the yard increased the effect of some prehistoric cave-dwelling with the kitchen-midden at each entrance. Dirty trodden straw which had spilled over from the packing-cases lay in wet smelling patches, and a dark trickle of rich brown liquid ran down the centre-way of the court.
Rose gave a shudder and drew closer to her husband. “Have we got to go down there?” she asked.
Beef peered down the yard without answering. “Are you sure he’s here?” he asked the antique-dealer’s wife at last. “Doesn’t look like it to me.”
The woman nodded vigorously. “This is the place,” she said decisively; “I followed him to this very spot. I didn’t think it was safe to go any farther, but I watched him as he went into that door at the end. That’s where he sleeps, they told me.”
Gingerly we began to move forward, following Beef, who was looking cautiously behind each heap of rubbish before taking another step. Every now and again there would be a hurried rustling on either side of us, and then an abrupt silence until we moved again. Strangely enough, the least perturbed of us was the antique-dealer’s wife herself. There was a gleam in her eye as she walked forward, keeping close behind Beef. In one hand she clutched her umbrella determinedly, the other held a handful of coat and skirt closely against her as if there were a danger of them falling off.
Nearly half-way down the yard rose a huge mountain of junk, each succeeding piece having been stacked precariously on the last until it resembled a rough and dilapidated sphinx-like figure. The light behind us gleamed on twisted pipes, old carpets, wheels, and numerous fat porcelain shapes.
Beef began to negotiate it carefully, when suddenly he stopped and held up his hand. At the base of the heap we saw a slight movement, and then with slow dignity a lean black cat walked out into the light. Unable to run from sheer inanition, it stood back and unblinkingly watched us file past as quickly as we could. We stopped in a relatively open space in the center of the yard waiting for Beef to make the next move. He was breathing noisily, and took out his handkerchief to wipe his face.
“I think we might try calling him, don’t you?” he said in a hoarse whisper. Nobody answered him, but I think I nodded.
“Mr. Fryer,” he called. “Mr. Fryer.” There was no answer. Beef looked at us in bewilderment.
“If he’s still as drunk as what he was,” said the woman, “he won’t never hear you.”
Beef called again, and this time there was the sound of movement from the end of the yard. The dilapidated door shook slightly as if someone had leaned against it for a moment, and then the figure of a man emerged and stood blinking at the dim light from under his tangled eyebrows before he began to shuffle slowly towards us.
I had never seen anybody who had so completely abdicated the bearing and appearance of a human being as this man. It was not that he looked inhuman in any Frankenstein way but rather that he seemed to have assumed so many of the properties of inanimate matter. He might have been an old tree-stump which, after having rotted comfortably in a swamp for many years, had been stood on end and clothed in a strange medley of coats and trousers in pure parody of a man. Now he wandered slowly towards us with uneven and uncontrolled steps, fumbling with one bony hand in the recesses of his tattered jacket, and mumbling continually to himself all the time.
Beef turned to Ed Wilson. “Well?” he said. “Do you recognize him?”
Ed Wilson did not need to take another look at the man. “That’s him,” he said confidently.
Chapter XXIV
“IS your name Fryer?” asked Beef.
The old man gave a non-committal grunt.
“I want to ask you some questions in connection with the Sydenham murder.” Beef brought out the words as though he were enunciating a death sentence, but they had little or no effect on the person to whom they were directed. The old man continued to stare placidly into Beefs face.
“On the morning after that murder you were seen to leave the garden of the Cypresses carrying a walking-stick. Later on you sold that stick in a local second-hand shop for seven shillings and sixpence. What’s more, here it is,” ended Beef, pulling from behind him his treasured weapon and displaying it to the old man’s indifferent gaze.
There was a long silence, then Beef, growing irritated, said, “Well, what have you got to say for yourself?”
When the old man did speak it was disappointing. “How much do you want for it?” he asked.
Beef grew irate. “I’m not trying to sell it to you,” he said.
“Oh, I thought you had something to sell,” mumbled the old man.
Beef turned to the antique-dealer’s wife. “Is he dippy?” he asked.
Her reply was made in a hoarse whisper. “I don’t know, I’m sure. Perhaps there’s method in his madness. He looks cunning enough.”
Whatever cunning the old man may have had seemed to me to be concentrated in the buying and selling of junk. His only interest in the swordstick was a commercial one. Beef pulled the blade out. “Have you ever seen this before?” he asked.
“When I was with Lord Roberts,” began the old fellow, and his voice trailed away into a murmur in which was audible such words as “Bloomfontein” and “De Wet.”
“They say he’s never been out of London,” said the antique-dealer’s wife. “He’s always talking about foreign places. He gets them off the wireless.”
Beef seemed certain that bullying was the best method. “Now then,’ he said, “that’s enough of that. You tell us the truth. What were you doing in the garden of the Cypresses that morning?”
“I was out in the Klondike,” said Mr. Fryer calmly.
Beef looked round with exasperation, then tried
a new method. “Look here,” he said, “I shouldn’t be surprised if we was to buy you a pint or two if you was to tell us anything.” It needed an optimist to perceive any greater animation in the old face, even on this suggestion. “Where did you get this stick?”
“I’ll give you a shilling for it,” the old man volunteered.
“Try taking him down to the pub,” said Ed Wilson.
Nobody had any serious objections to the scheme, and the old man himself started walking steadily towards the roadway.
“Don’t you think you ought to have a look round this yard?” I suggested to Beef. “Surely there might be further evidence.”
Beef shook his head impatiently as he turned to follow Mr. Fryer, and I realized that I might have known that after Wilson had made that suggestion Beef would not delay, even if by doing so he might help his investigations. Or was Beef, I wondered cynically, a sort of modern Drake who could both finish his game of darts and arrest the criminal.
We indicated to Mr. Fryer that he should get into the car, but he slowly shook his head. “Wallamaloo,” was all he said, or all we could hear of his next sentence as he moved off along the pavement. And the best we could do was to drive slowly near the kerb, keeping him in sight.
The antique-dealer’s wife was in ecstasies. “Isn’t it thrilling?’ she said, nudging me altogether too vigorously. “I never thought I’d be sitting in a high-powered car chasing a criminal.”
“You ought to have met Beef before,” I said; “you’ve got so much in common.” On which the Sergeant gave me a reproving glance and Ed Wilson smiled. We must have made an extraordinary quintette driving along there; Rose looking rather frail and silent but quite happy with her husband’s arm lightly around her shoulders, the antique-dealer’s wife flushed and shining with enthusiasm, Beef solemn and thoughtful, and I incongruously conducting the whole manage.
