by Cyril Hare
“Stolen? How?”
“On the way home. I had it in my hand at Dover, of that I’m sure, because I remember passing it to the man in the office place and he never looked at it but just pushed it back to me. And then by the time we got to the train—my hands were full of things—tickets and parcels and a penny for an evening paper—you know how it is—anyhow, when I came to look for it, it wasn’t there.”
“Did you make any complaint at the time?”
“No. I looked for it on the platform, you know, just casually. I remember I said to my daughter: ‘My passport’s gone’, and she said: ‘You ought to tell the police’, but I said: ‘Nonsense, I shan’t want the thing again as long as I live—you’re not going to drag me abroad to face that dreadful cooking any more, you can be sure of that,’ I said——”
“All this on the platform, where anyone could hear you, I suppose?”
“Just so, sir, I suppose anyone could, though I never thought of that at the time.”
“You could hardly be expected to think that someone would pick it up, borrow your name and appearance, live under that name for a month and then use the passport to escape from justice after committing murder, certainly,” said Mallett.
“Good heavens, is that what the rascal did?” exclaimed Mr. James.
“It looks very much like it.”
“God bless my soul, I didn’t know there were such people in the world—I didn’t really. It gives me quite a turn to think of it.”
“Well, you’ve given us something to think about,” answered the inspector, “and we are much obliged to you. Now, Mr. James, to make everything regular, I’ll ask you to wait here for a few moments while Sergeant Frant puts your story into writing, and then you can go back to nurse your cold at Easington. One other thing you can do for us,” he added. “Do you mind if we take your photograph before you go? It may be valuable for our purposes.”
“Not in the least,” Mr. James assured him.
“See that that is done,” he said to Frant. “I have an important appointment outside now. When you have taken this gentleman’s statement, telephone to the police station at Easington and verify what he has told us about himself. Good day, Mr. James.”
He departed to his lunch, leaving the sergeant, whose meal-times were not considered of importance, gloomily manipulating a fountain-pen.
16
FANSHAWE SPEAKS
* * *
* * *
Friday, November 20th
It was afternoon. The Easington police had vouched for the bona fides of Colin James, and he had returned to his corn and seeds. Another visitor was now awaited, and for him the stage was set with more than ordinary care. A comfortable low chair was provided for him, for the inspector had found by experience that men talk with greater fluency when they are at ease, and at the same time the questioner has an advantage if he is sitting above the person he is interrogating. “If they put witnesses down in the well of the court instead of sticking them up in a box level with the judge, there’d be much less perjury,” he used to say. This chair was arranged so that it faced the light, and at the same time an open box of good cigarettes was placed within easy reach on the corner of the inspector’s desk. At the other end of the room a shorthand writer was in unobtrusive attendance.
When all was settled to Mallett’s satisfaction there was still some time to wait. An uneasy air of expectancy descended on the room. Frant, whose nerves were less under control than his superior’s, found the silence hard to bear.
“What do you think he’s coming here to tell us?” he said.
“I haven’t the least idea,” was the answer. “I shouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be something completely unimportant after all. There are so many loose ends in this case that I’m beginning to wonder if we are ever going to find a thread that will lead us anywhere.” He was silent for a moment, and then, as if feeling that the sergeant was finding the tension oppressive, began on another subject.
“What did you make of James’s story?” he asked.
“I think we’ve learned something very valuable from it,” Frant answered. “That name, description, passport—it can’t be all coincidence.”
“No, I agree, it’s wildly unlikely that it should be. But you see what that leads us to. We have simply pushed back the beginning of the story a month or more further. It means that as early as August someone had made up his mind to impersonate Mr. James.”
“He can’t have known beforehand that he was going to pick up the passport,” objected Frant.
“No, he couldn’t. But having had the luck to find it, he must have seen at once the sort of use he could put to it—or why didn’t he return it, or hand it to the police as any honest man would have done? More and more I’m becoming convinced that we have to deal with a very dangerous and intelligent man. You see, he is not only a careful plotter with a long view, but a man who can take a chance when it comes his way, and build it into his plans.”
“Of course, we can’t be sure that it was the same man who stole the passport and who afterwards used it,” put in the sergeant. “Any crook might be glad of the chance to sneak such a thing, especially when he had reason to think it wouldn’t be enquired after.”
“And then to sell it to someone who saw what he could do with it? You may be right, Frant. But whichever way you look at it, it leaves us in the same miserable vagueness as ever. The fellow wanted a disguise—he took the easiest one that offered. A false beard is easy—a false stomach isn’t much harder, if you come to think of it, especially if you want to impersonate a man with a thin face and a big body. Then in just the same way, he wants himself introduced to a bank by the company, and he so arranged it that any director out of half a dozen might sign the letter. We started off with two bits of positive evidence—that he called himself Colin James and that he was recommended by Lord Henry Gaveston, and neither the real James nor Gaveston can help us in the very least.”
“And I don’t see that he,” Frant nodded to the door, “can possibly help us in that direction, either.”
“Even supposing he wants to, which I somehow doubt,” added Mallett. “What earthly knowledge can Fanshawe have of James?”
“The real one or the sham one, do you mean?”
“The sham one, of course. Call him James the Second, if you like.”
“I think the Old Pretender would be more appropriate,” said the sergeant.
Mallett wrinkled his nose, a sure sign that he was vexed. His schooling had not included much history, and he felt obscurely that his subordinate was showing off. But before he could think of a rejoinder, the door was thrown open, and Fanshawe was announced.
Four years of prison life had left but little mark upon the former chairman of Fanshawe’s Bank. His complexion, always pale, was perhaps a shade whiter, his lean face just a trifle thinner still; otherwise Mallett could observe no change in the man he had last seen in the dock at the Old Bailey. The voice, too, when he spoke, was the same—quiet and cultured, always with a cynical undertone beneath the smooth surface, a hint of hidden fires kept resolutely under control. John Fanshawe was a very different type of man from the financier with whom his name had so often been coupled. A man of taste and refinement, he had lived in his days of prosperity aloof from the world. He had been able to enjoy riches without arrogance, just as he had met ruin and disgrace without whining. In good times and bad alike, he had been as if sustained by some hidden source of fortitude, an innate pride which never deserted him.
Mallett felt oddly abashed before this calm proud man, but Fanshawe put him at his ease at once.
“Good afternoon, Inspector,” he began. “I think you have been promoted since we last met?”
“I have—yes,” answered Mallett. “Good afternoon, Mr. Fanshawe.”
Fanshawe lowered himself into the arm-chair and took a cigarette. “Mr. Fanshawe!” he murmured. “You have no idea how refreshing it is to recover one’s individuality again! I wonde
r whether anybody who has not experienced it can know what it feels like to be a mere number. That is the real horror of prison life, Mallett, the sinking of one’s identity in a herd of indistinguishable fellow creatures. ‘He that filches from me my good name’,” he quoted. “Well, thank heavens that is over, at all events!” He glanced round the room. “Forgive me,” he went on, “but have not rather elaborate preparations been made to receive me? I mean——” he waved his hand at the stenographer in the corner—“it almost looks as though something in the nature of a public utterance was expected of me. I’m afraid you are likely to be disappointed.”
“Perhaps it would save us both trouble if you said exactly what you have come here for,” said Mallett severely.
“I apologize, Inspector,” said Fanshawe, the irony in his voice making itself felt. “Your time is valuable I know. I shall waste very little of it. I have merely come to make a complaint. I want to know why I, a week after my release from jail, should still be subjected to the indignity and inconvenience of being shadowed by detectives.”
Mallett found it hard to suppress a smile. It was a somewhat ludicrous coincidence that this request should follow so hard on Du Pine’s plea for police protection. Aloud he said:
“You will understand, Mr. Fanshawe, that the circumstances are a little unusual.”
“The only unusual aspect of the circumstances, as I understand them,” answered Fanshawe, “is that on leaving prison I was expressly exempted from the ordinary regulations about reporting to the police and so forth. I presume that you are aware of that?”
“Certainly. I am given to understand that the order was made on the direct instructions of the Home Secretary. It was most exceptional.”
“Personally, I think it is the least he could have done,” said Fanshawe with a touch of hauteur. “I always treated him very decently when he was my fag at school.”
“You must know perfectly well”, said Mallett impatiently, “that the supervision you are complaining of has nothing whatever to do with anything that happened before you were released from prison.”
“I understand you. I read the papers, like everyone else. I am to gather, then, that this inquisition has to do with the events of last week-end?”
“If you read the papers,” answered the inspector, “you will have seen your own name mentioned in the reports of the inquest on Lionel Ballantine.”
A strange smile lit up Fanshawe’s lean face. “In that little rat Du Pine’s evidence? I did indeed.” He turned suddenly and looked the inspector full in the eyes. “May I ask whether you suspect me of this crime?” he asked.
“Nobody is free from suspicion in a case of this kind,” replied Mallett gravely. “Now, Mr. Fanshawe, don’t you think you could assist us by answering a few questions?”
“And if I refuse, as I have a perfect right to do?”
“Then I am afraid you will have to go to the Home Secretary and ask him to relieve you of police supervision, for I shall not take the responsibility myself.”
Fanshawe blew a long jet of smoke from his mouth and very deliberately crushed the stub of his cigarette in an ashtray.
“Very well,” he said at last. “I have no objection to telling you. Du Pine’s statement is substantially true. I did call on Ballantine”—an involuntary spasm contracted his features as he pronounced the name—“last Friday morning. I contrived to get in by using a false name, and as soon as he saw who I was he had me turned out of the office. Not before I had told him just a little of what I thought of him, though.”
“Yes?”
Fanshawe smiled. He had a delightful, even brilliant smile, though now it seemed to hold a hint of malice. “My dear Inspector,” he said, “that was what you wished to know, was it not? I really don’t see how I can help you any further.”
Mallett folded his large hands and put them squarely on the desk in front of him. Looming over the figure that reclined in the easy chair he seemed strangely impressive, and his voice when it came had an urgency, a vibrant appeal that was rare in it.
“Don’t let us beat about the bush any longer,” he said. “I am going to be perfectly frank with you, and I want you to be frank with me. You are of all men alive the one who had the greatest motive for hating Ballantine. The day you were sentenced you threatened his life publicly. The day after you were released he was murdered. In the face of that you complain that you are watched by the police, while all the time you refuse to be frank with us.”
“You must allow me to point out, Inspector,” came the cold comment from the chair, “that this is the first opportunity I have had to ‘be frank with you’, as you put it.”
Mallett felt that his impressive period had somehow missed fire. “I can’t interview everyone at once,” he muttered.
“Quite so, though no doubt you have able assistants to help you. Now, since I am here, entirely of my own volition, am I to understand that if I answer your questions the detectives will be withdrawn?”
“I can make no promises,” Mallett answered. “That must depend on the extent to which you are able to satisfy us. But I should have thought that for an innocent man it would be natural to want to assist justice——”
“If by assisting justice you mean arresting the man who killed Ballantine”—again that curious spasm—“I shall do no such thing. He did a splendid thing which badly needed doing, and which I should have been only too glad to do myself.”
The inspector tried another tack.
“Then in your own interest it is desirable that you should convince us that you had no hand in it,” he said.
Fanshawe laughed aloud. “In the sacred name of self-interest, then!” he cried. “What do you want to know?”
“We will begin at the beginning,” said Mallett. “Why did you go to see Ballantine on Friday morning?”
“Because he had ruined me—and not only me but a large number of people who had trusted me. It was through supporting him and his schemes that my bank was destroyed. He got out in time—very neatly—and I was left, as the phrase goes, to carry the baby.”
“And you went to see him in the hope of getting some repayment from him?”
“You might put it that way—yes.”
“Very well. Now as to your movements during the rest of the day.”
“What are the movements of a newly liberated prisoner in London, without friends or prospects? Mine were mostly on the tops of motor omnibuses. I drifted aimlessly round London all day, simply enjoying the sensation of being my own master again, and noticing all the changes since I had seen it last. And you have no idea how the place has changed in the last four years, Inspector. You could write a book on it.”
“And then?”
“Then I went home to tea.”
“What do you mean by home?”
Fanshawe winced. “That is rather crude, Inspector,” he murmured. “Yes, you are right, of course. I have no home now. I mean my sister’s flat.”
“In Daylesford Court Mansions?”
“Yes. I know what you are going to say next. Within a couple of hundred yards of Daylesford Gardens. Odd, isn’t it?” He smiled as though in pure enjoyment at the coincidence.
“And then?”
“Oh, then I packed my bag and went abroad.”
“You went abroad that same day?”
“Certainly. That night, rather. By the Newhaven boat to Paris. My daughter is living there.”
Mallett took this piece of information in complete calm, but Frant, unable to contain himself, let his breath escape in a prolonged whistle. Fanshawe turned his head in his direction and stared at him for a moment with raised eyebrows, but said nothing.
The inspector recalled his attention by asking quietly: “What class did you travel?”
“I bought a third-class return ticket in the City before I went to see—the person we have been discussing,” was the answer. “Disgustingly uncomfortable, but beggars can’t be choosers!”
“Did you notice anybody i
n particular travelling first-class?”
Fanshawe sat up abruptly. “Now look here,” he said in a hard tone quite unlike his usual voice, “I have already told you that I am not interested in the ends of justice, if those ends are to avenge the killing of—Ballantine.” He spat out the name with concentrated fury. “If anything I could say would help you to find the gentleman who called himself Colin James, I should not say it. If I could have shaken him by the hand for what he did, I should have done so.”
It was Mallett’s turn to be calm. “Very well,” he said smoothly. “If that is your attitude, I shall not press you. You can tell me where you bought your ticket, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, Rawson’s in Cornhill. They know me there.”
“Thank you. And while you were in Paris, I take it you stayed with your daughter?”
“Yes. She lives out at Passy.” He gave the address.
“You went there at once on arriving in Paris?”
“No, of course I didn’t. You get there at such an unearthly hour you couldn’t possibly go to anyone’s place, particularly if you weren’t expected. I spent what was left of the night at a hotel close to the station—a vile place, the best I could afford. I’ve forgotten the name.”
“Not the Hotel Du Plessis, by any chance?”
“Certainly not—I’ve never heard of the place.”
Mallett paused for a full half-minute. Then he said: “And that is all you mean to tell us, Mr. Fanshawe?”
“That is all I have to tell you, Inspector Mallett.”
“Good afternoon, then.”
“Good afternoon. And will the detectives be withdrawn?”
“I can make no promises.”
There was silence in the room for a space after he had gone. The shorthand writer took his notes and went out to prepare a transcript of the interview. Mallett sat staring at the blotter on his desk, mechanically pulling at his moustache, deep in thought. Finally he turned to Frant.
“Well, and what did you make of him?” he asked.
