by Cyril Hare
“Very right and proper,” grunted Mallett, “but that won’t help us to a sight of James’s handwriting.” He resumed his reading.
One had served breakfast to the aforesaid individual at 10.30 hours in his room, it appeared, whereafter he had immediately descended to the street and after regulating his account departed on foot carrying his suitcase. The undersigned had given formal instruction for his pursuit and detention, but so far one had found nobody of his description. The staff of the hotel declared him to be to all indications a serious individual——
“What does that mean?” asked Frant.
“Simply that he didn’t look like a crook,” said Mallett.
——and of appearance and accent markedly Britannic. They pretended to be able to recognize him even without his beard, of which, without doubt, the suspect would seek without delay to disembarrass himself. Considering the measures in force in France for the control of strangers, it was not probable that the assassin would long escape the hands of Justice, unless indeed he had already returned to his own country.
“That sounds rather a doubtful compliment to us,” was the inspector’s comment.
The undersigned awaited with lively anticipation further particulars of the individual aforesaid and requested his collaborator to accept the expression of his most distinguished sentiments.
“And that’s all,” said Mallett, laying down the flimsy typed sheets. “Except for the signature, and that’s completely illegible anyway.”
“But it’s a lot, isn’t it?” put in Frant eagerly. “It lets us out, anyway.”
“It does not let us out,” Mallett answered emphatically. “In the first place, we’ve got to establish that James is the murderer. It looks like it, I agree, but we haven’t proved it yet. In the second place, we must find out who he is, and what is his connection with Ballantine. Luckily that letter to the bank gives us a pretty good line on that.”
“When we find Lord Henry Gaveston,” objected Frant.
“You ought to read The Times more carefully,” replied the inspector. “Especially the social columns. Look here.”
He indicated a paragraph with his finger, and Frant, following his direction, read:
“Arrivals at the Riviera Hotel, Brighton, include Sir John and Lady Bulpit, the Bishop of Foxbury and Mrs. Escott, and Lord Henry Gaveston.”
“Not much concealment there,” said Frant.
“No. Which makes me think. . . . However, it’s no use building theories until we get the facts. Where was I? Oh, yes. In the third place, we don’t know for certain whether James stopped in France or whether he doubled home again. This trip to Paris may have been simply to throw us off the scent, and I dare say he would find his markedly Britannic accent rather a handicap if he wanted to go into hiding on the Continent. In any case there’s a lot of work to be done at this end. If we can find out how Ballantine came to go to Daylesford Gardens, we shall have done something. We shall have to go pretty deep into his private life—find out where he’d been living and who with—you remember his wife’s evidence—who had a motive for killing him, and so on. Meanwhile a trip to Brighton seems indicated.”
The telephone bell rang. Mallett took off the receiver and found himself speaking to Mr. Benjamin Browne.
“It’s about that young man, Harper,” said Mr. Browne’s voice. “You asked me yesterday, Inspector, if you remember——”
“Yes, yes,” said Mallett. “Of course I remember. What about him?”
“He has just come in here,” went on Mr. Browne in deliberate tones.
“Well, ask him to be good enough to come up to Scotland Yard at once.”
“But he isn’t here now,” said Mr. Browne peevishly. “He just looked in—just poked his head into my room, Inspector, and said he was resigning his position. And then he walked out—simply walked out without any further notice. After all I had done for him, too! It’s really very——”
“Very galling, no doubt,” agreed Mallett. “Did you tell him I wanted to see him?”
“I didn’t have the chance. I was so flabbergasted by his behaviour. And he didn’t tell me where he was going or what he was going to do. He was so cool about it, it quite took my breath away. It is, as you say, most ga——”
Mallett rang off.
* * *
The inspector’s trip to Brighton was postponed to a later hour than he had intended. The afternoon was spent in close conference with Renshaw, the officer in charge of the investigation of the affairs of the London and Imperial Estates Company and its associated concerns. Renshaw was supported by a couple of dour accountants and an enormous sheaf of documents, the first fruits of his enquiries into the ramifications of what the newspapers were already openly calling “the great Ballantine swindle”. Mallett was fond of representing himself as a simple man—which he was not—and as having a horror for complicated figures—which he had. But under the skilful guidance of the experts he found himself being led, fascinated, through endless labyrinths of crooked finance. The details were complicated, as they must always be where every action taken has to be accompanied by half a dozen others whose sole intent is to hide the real meaning of the transaction; but the general effect of the story revealed was plain enough. Ballantine had been practising, with extreme cleverness and several variations of his own devising, a very familiar form of swindle. With a number of companies to play off one against the others, and the means and the ability to rig the market in the shares of any or all of them, he had pursued the old game of robbing Peter to pay Paul and borrowing from Paul when Peter’s balance sheet had to be presented. That was how Mallett, with his usual bluntness of phrase, put the position, and the accountants, though shocked at his unscientific way of expressing it, agreed that roughly—very roughly—that might be said to be the method.
“Only, of course,” Renshaw remarked, “it wasn’t a case of Peter and Paul only, but a whole lot more. In fact, in the City, Ballantine’s companies were known as the Twelve Apostles. One or two of them never seem to have functioned at all. I fancy he just had them registered to make up the round dozen.”
“And all of them, I suppose, with their offices at the same address?” asked the inspector.
“Yes; though oddly enough among his private papers we found a reference to another one—the Anglo-Dutch Rubber and General Trading Syndicate—with an address in Bramston’s Inn, off Fetter Lane. Ballantine paid the rent for the offices monthly, but it never seems to have done any business, and when I went there the place was completely empty and had been for some time, apparently.”
Mallett nodded, mechanically taking a note of the address. Once he had established the general crookedness of the late financier, the details of his devices did not interest him greatly. As to the eventual aim of all his dealings, that became clear enough as the enquiry proceeded. It was simply to divert money through one channel or another from the pockets of the investing public into those of Ballantine, and equally clearly it had been remarkably successful. Then quite suddenly, during the last few days of his life, things had gone against him. He had been unexpectedly attacked by a leading financial newspaper, and the shareholders in his principal concern, with the annual general meeting on the horizon, had lost confidence. The market quotations had fallen catastrophically, and on the very day of his death his enemies were in full cry.
“The game was up, and he knew it,” said Renshaw. “Now if he had committed suicide one could have understood it.”
“He would certainly have saved us a lot of trouble if he had,” remarked Mallett. “Instead of which, he let someone else do the job, and left us with the business of avenging his worthless self. But I don’t think he was the man to take his own life. Why didn’t he run for it, like Aliss and Hartigan?”
“So far as we can make out, that’s just what he did.”
“Yes—as far as Daylesford Gardens.”
“I think he meant to go farther than that,” answered Renshaw.
He went on t
o explain the result of his researches into Ballantine’s conduct on his last day of business. For some time previously he had been apparently unusually erratic in his behaviour, arriving late and leaving early, but on this day he had been almost continuously in his private room at the office. What he did there could only be surmised from the state of his belongings afterwards, but it seemed clear that he had spent a good deal of time in destroying papers. His private safe was almost empty, and Mallett was disappointed to learn that nothing connecting him with Fanshawe had survived. He had withdrawn from his private banking account the sum standing to his credit, and his passport was missing from the drawer where it was usually kept.
“Altogether,” Renshaw concluded, “it seems pretty clear that he had a longer journey in mind than to Kensington.”
“It also seems pretty clear,” rejoined Mallett, “that he must have had a good deal of money on him when he was killed. How much, do you think?”
Renshaw shook his head.
“That we shall never know exactly, I am afraid,” he answered. “There was only a hundred pounds or so in cash in his private account when it was closed, but there had been some very big sums passing through it during the last few months. Where it all went to, it is difficult to say. If, as I guess, he was afraid to face the shareholders at the meeting, and meant to run away, no doubt he had put away a little nest-egg somewhere—abroad, probably. Of the actual payments we can trace, many were to women.”
“Including his wife?” asked Mallett, remembering Mrs. Ballantine’s evidence at the inquest.
“No. She had been clever or lucky enough to get a handsome settlement out of him some time ago. So far as she was concerned, it was the other way about. From what we can gather, it seems that just before he went he was trying to get her to consent to raise money on the settlement, but she refused.”
“Of course—she would. Then these other women are——”
“All sorts. He seems to have been generous in an odd sort of way, and kept up quite big allowances to discarded mistresses. Then he’s been supporting the Italian dancer, Fonticelli—but that affair came to an end some time ago. The largest payments recently were all to Mrs. Eales.”
“I think I have heard of her,” said Mallett. “Was she the reigning favourite?”
“Yes. Ballantine has been living with her, except when it suited him to turn up at Belgrave Square, quite regularly for over a year now. He set her up in rather a nice flat in Mount Street. It was quite an open affair. Everybody knew about it in the office.”
Mallett was silent for a moment.
“Mount Street is a long way from Daylesford Gardens,” he said at last. “All the same, I think I must put Mrs. Eales next on my list to be visited. As I see my problem, Renshaw, apart from yours, there are two lines to work on. One is to take James from where he first appears as a tenant of Miss Penrose’s house, and trace him backwards until he meets Ballantine. The other is to work on Ballantine and trace him forwards, so to speak, until he meets James. Both are worth following up, and it seems to me that if anyone can help me to some knowledge of Ballantine’s private life it will be Mrs. Eales.”
“One other person could give you a good deal of information if he wanted to,” said Renshaw.
“You mean Du Pine?” Mallett said at once.
Renshaw nodded. “He and the two missing directors were the only people who were privy to Ballantine’s frauds,” he added. “Du Pine was in it up to the neck. We’ve got quite enough to arrest him on now.”
“I hope you’ll do nothing of the sort,” interposed the inspector. “A prisoner under arrest can’t be questioned, and I think that Du Pine free will be more useful to me than under lock and key. We’ll have him kept under observation, though.”
“He practically begged me to arrest him this morning when we were at the office with him,” said Renshaw. “Do you think he knows the Judges’ Rules and feels he would be safer that way?”
“I dare say he knows a lot,” replied Mallett, “but not so much as I shall know by this evening, I hope.”
13
MOTHER AND SON
* * *
* * *
Thursday, November 19th
Frank Harper was packing. The flimsy floors and walls of the little house echoed to the crash of drawers opening and shutting and to his loud shouts of annoyance as he pursued his elusive belongings up and down his untidy bedroom. Mrs. Harper heard him as she came in, her arms full of the fruits of an afternoon’s arduous shopping. Characteristically, she dropped them all where she stood in the shabby passage that did duty for a hall, and ran upstairs at once to her son’s room.
“Frank!” she exclaimed, pushing her untidy grey hair back from her eyes. “Whatever are you doing?”
“Packing,” he answered briefly. “Haven’t I got a clean evening shirt anywhere?”
“In the linen cupboard, dear. I’ll get it for you. But why? Where are you off to?”
“To Lewes. And I haven’t too much time to catch my train, either. Do get that shirt, Mother, there’s a darling.”
Mrs. Harper obediently trotted away, a puzzled frown on her kindly, stupid face, and returned almost immediately.
“Here it is, dear,” she said. “I had to darn the neck, but it really doesn’t show when you’ve got it on.”
“Thanks, Mother.” He examined the darn disdainfully. “Oh well, I suppose it will have to do.” He crammed the shirt on to the top of the overflowing suitcase. “Now I think that’s everything.”
“You’ve forgotten your sponge-bag, haven’t you, darling?”
“Good lord, yes! Now how the devil am I to get that in?”
“Shall I do it for you?” Mrs. Harper was on her knees, coaxing recalcitrant objects into place with her toil-worn fingers. “But why to Lewes, dear?”
“I’m staying the night with the Jenkinsons. You know. I’ve told you about her—about them, I mean.”
“Oh, yes, of course. I’m so silly nowadays, I forget people’s names. I hope you enjoy yourself.” Then she paused in her work and looked up at him. “But Frank, how is it that you’re not at work?”
Frank laughed.
“I’ve left that place,” he said. “For good.”
“Left it? Oh Frank, you don’t mean that Mr. Browne has——”
“Given me the sack? No. Though, bless his innocent little heart, he’s had cause enough to. No, Mother, I have resigned. Place didn’t suit, as the servants say. Behold in your son a gentleman of leisure.”
“Left—left Inglewood, Browne’s? I don’t understand. Of course, I’m glad, if you didn’t like the place. And I shall love to have you at home. Only—only I’m afraid you’ll find it very dull here with nothing to do. And—and what about your pocket money? You’ve always been able to keep yourself in clothes and things out of what you’ve earned. I can help you a little perhaps, but it’s not much. And, you know, my money is only an annuity. If anything should happen to me——”
She bent her head over the suitcase to hide her confusion.
“There, Mother, that’s splendid. I can shut it myself. Let me give you an arm to help you up. Oops!”
He pulled her to her feet, and bending down, kissed her with unexpected tenderness.
“You’re not to worry about me,” he said. “I’m not going to come back here and hang about the house all day. Quite the contrary. Once more, in the language of the servants’ hall, I’ve left to better myself.”
“You’ve got another post, then? A better one? What is it? Another house agent?”
Frank smiled happily.
“No, not a house agent,” he said. “I’m going away, Mother, a long way away—that is, if Susan is still of the same mind as she was last Sunday. And you, relieved of the burden of your worthless child, are going to live at that cottage in Berks or Bucks or wherever it is you’ve always wanted to go, until such time as I return, rich with all the spoils of Africa——”
“Africa! Frank, you’re talking
nonsense!”
“I am not! Africa I said, and to Africa I mean to go.”
“But how are you going to get to Africa?” persisted the perplexed old lady.
“Oh, by train and boat, I expect. That is the usual way, isn’t it? Unless I fly. Which reminds me, unless I do fly, now, I’m not going to get to Victoria in time.”
He fastened the suitcase with an effort.
“Good-bye, Mother, and don’t forget about the cottage. I mean it.”
He laughed down at her bewilderment, and kissed her again. “Back tomorrow, I expect,” he said. “I shall have a lot to do.
”For there are great things to be done,
And fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise——“
“Frank!” She called him back as he was in the doorway, the suitcase swinging in his hand.
“Yes, what is it?”
“I had forgotten to tell you. Someone was asking about you today.”
“About me? Who?”
“A policeman.”
“A policeman?”
The suitcase fell from his hand to the floor with a crash. The shock sprung the catch and the lid flew open. The carefully packed contents strewed the floor.
“Damned clumsy of me,” muttered Frank. “No, don’t you bother, Mother, I’ll do it.”
He crammed the things back into place and forced down the lid with a savage jerk. Then he straightened himself, his face red with exertion.
“What did he want?”
“Who? Oh, the policeman. It was only the sergeant from the police station round the corner. Quite a nice man, I see him often. Nothing to worry about, dear.”
“Who said there was anything to worry about?” asked her son defiantly.
Mrs. Harper took no notice of the interruption and went on:
