It Might Lead Anywhere

by E. R. Punshon

  Langley Long made no answer. Bobby had hoped that his carefully thought out words might produce some sign of weakening, but no such result was apparent. Still, it might come. Nothing like, in his experience, letting doubts and fears do their own work on a troubled conscience. No result as yet though. Langley Long merely continued to look sulky and vicious. Bobby went on:

  “Well, you must make your own choice. I know a good deal already. I may be able to take action at almost any moment. But I’ve got to have my case complete. Fatal to make an arrest and then find a smart lawyer persuading the magistrates there’s no case to answer. Police persecution, if a man is arrested twice on the same charge. Hopeless then to expect a conviction. I thought you might help if you were willing to and felt uneasy in any way.”

  “I know nothing about it. I don’t even know what you’re trying to get at,” Langley Long answered, as sulkily as before.

  “Well, think it over,” Bobby repeated. “I’ve a strong idea there may be more trouble soon. I even think it possible it may be yours.”

  “More likely yours,” the other snarled, and quite evidently that was his ardent hope.

  “Oh, it’s always my trouble,” Bobby told him. “It’s my job. Trouble. Lots of it. That’s why I’m paid a wholly inadequate salary. Do you know Miss Theresa Foote?”

  Langley Long looked startled now, as though he found this sudden question disturbing. He hesitated a little before replying. Then he said, with evident caution:

  “Goodman’s secretary? I’ve met her. Why? What about her? What are you trying to get at now?”

  “A friendly, pleasant little lady,” Bobby remarked. “But dangerous perhaps. Pretty girls are sometimes. The female of the species—You know. That sort of thing. Don’t you think so?”

  Again Langley Long made no answer. Yet there was an odd look now in his eyes that Bobby thought might be a hidden terror, and a quivering momentary trembling at the corners of his mouth that Bobby noted, too. He thought to himself: ‘The man’s scared—and scared of that girl.’ Then he thought: ‘So am I, but what can I do?’ For a moment or less the two of them stayed so, and there was fear between them like a strange, invisible bond. Finally, Bobby said:

  “I’ve got to see it through, for that’s my duty, but need you?”

  Langley Long was still silent, but the fear in his eyes was plainer still, and still was it there when he began to laugh—a high, affected laugh.

  “You’re simply making a fool of yourself,” he said shrilly.

  “Oh, well; nothing new about that,” Bobby agreed. “I daresay I do as often as most people. I wonder if you’ve heard about the joke she played on me? I thought I saw an automatic in her hand. It turned out to be a lighter. Funny, wasn’t it? We had a good laugh.” Langley Long showed no disposition to share in this suggested mirth. He muttered suspiciously:

  “What are you telling me all this for?”

  “To warn you,” Bobby answered, his previously light and pleasant tone changing to a sudden sternness. “I think Miss Foote is dangerous and I don’t mean dangerous in the way in which any pretty girl is dangerous to any man’s peace of mind. Think it over, Mr. Long. Carefully. You can always come to me for a talk any time you like. Shall we go on to the house now? Quite an assembly here to-day, and, you know, I don’t much like that, either.”

  “Go on if you want to,” Langley Long growled. “I’ll wait.”

  “As you like,” Bobby said, and drove on the short remaining distance to the house where, as he alighted from the car, the front door opened and there appeared the huge form of Duke Dell. In a voice a little more subdued, a little less like thunder than usual, he said:

  “I saw you talking. I’ve been watching. Why have you come?”

  “Well, if it comes to that,” Bobby said, “why have you?”

  “I have a work to do.”

  “Same here,” said Bobby cheerfully.

  “My work is the Lord’s.”

  “And mine is the law’s,” retorted Bobby, “and my warrant is clear. I’m not so sure of yours. I have only your word for it and I’m not too fond of accepting unsupported statements. Doesn’t do.”

  Duke Dell seemed puzzled by this. He stood still with his hands clasped before him and was silent at first. Then he said:

  “It is hard to convince the sons of Belial.”

  “Now, now, Mr. Dell,” Bobby protested, “you mustn’t call police that. Hurt our feelings. Hurt them very much. Almost actionable. Once again, Mr. Dell, why are you here?”

  “I was sent,” Dell answered. “Word came to me. For evil things have been done and I think there is evil still to come. I am here to warn and to prevent if that may be.”

  Bobby was beginning to notice something else. The big man seemed, he thought, less vigorous in manner and speech than usual, nor was his eye so bright and clear, his stance so steady, his complexion so ruddy as hitherto. Now, too, he put his hand to his forehead and Bobby said:

  “Feeling all right, Mr. Dell? You don’t look quite up to the mark.”

  “Thank you, it is nothing,” Dell answered. “After my breakfast here this morning, I was in some discomfort,” and, apparently, this fact greatly surprised him.

  “I thought you never took breakfast, except for a slice of dry bread and a cup of tea,” Bobby remarked, remembering what Mrs. Soames had told with such wonder.

  “It is all I need, it is enough,” Dell said. “This morning I drank two cups of tea,” he said, and went away abruptly.

  “Will you tell Mr. Goodman I am here?” Bobby called after him.

  “He knows. I told him it was your car,” Dell said over his shoulder, and was gone.

  In fact Goodman now appeared from his room he called his study at the back of the house. Bobby thought he, too, was looking pale and strained, with restless eyes and nervous, twitching lips; and his voice boomed out with less confidence and volume than usual as he said:

  “I wasn’t expecting you. You shouldn’t have troubled. I phoned you not to.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Bobby answered.

  Goodman did not seem to appreciate the relevance of this remark and looked merely puzzled. He muttered something about there having been no need to bother and Bobby said:

  “Dell looks a bit seedy this morning.”

  Goodman took no notice of this remark which evidently failed to interest him. He went back into his room and Bobby followed. He had apparently forgotten Bobby was there or else was deliberately trying to ignore him. Bobby drew up a chair for himself. Goodman was trying to light a cigarette, but he fumbled awkwardly with the ‘book’ matches he was using and gave up the attempt. Bobby offered his lighter. Goodman took it but did not use it. He said:

  “That was Langley Long you were talking to. What’s he want?”

  “I asked him but he didn’t say,” Bobby answered.

  “Has Dell told you why he’s here? You didn’t ask him, did you?”

  “Some idea of converting me,” Goodman said, and laughed harshly. “A little late in the day,” he commented. “All humbug, anyway.”

  “You never know with these chaps,” Bobby remarked. “Sometimes they are clearly humbugs on the make. We meet lots of that sort in our job. But sometimes they make you think they may be what we call ‘witnesses of truth.’ What do you think of Dell?”

  “Oh, he seems harmless enough,” Goodman said. “He doesn’t seem to want anything. I don’t know.”

  “Have you told him he can stay here?” Bobby asked. Goodman shook his head. “Or told him to go?” Again Goodman shook his head. Slightly puzzled, Bobby asked next: “What does Miss Foote think of him?”

  “Miss Foote thinks he ought to be under restraint,” said a voice from the door that had just been quietly opened. Theresa was standing there, wearing her sweetest smile, her most languishing look, as harmless and empty a little bit of sex consciousness as this world has ever seen. “I know you’ll think I’m a silly but I’m simply ever so awfully frightene
d, the way he stares.” She was looking pathetic and appealing now; and then, when Bobby looked back steadily, she began to fumble in her handbag where Bobby felt as sure no automatic was as he felt sure that it was not far away. She produced a handkerchief, small and dainty and lace-trimmed, and put it to her eye, though the thing was hardly big enough to mop up a single tear. Not that there was any sign of any tear in the hard, bright eye, bead-like and sharp, Bobby could see peering at him through the lace edging of the handkerchief. Then she repeated: “I know you’ll think it’s awfully silly, but he does frighten me. Can’t you do something? I’m sure he might turn violent any moment.”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  UNINVITED GUEST

  There was that in the girl’s soft voice as these words dropped from her raddled lips that sent through Bobby the oddest, strangest thrill of horror and dismay. Nor was that impression altered when now, as she watched him, she quite deliberately began to touch up her lips, her complexion, just like any young, feminine thing, simply thinking of making herself attractive. Bobby had known, often enough, threats and menaces of danger and violence, but never in such a guise as this. The very incongruity of the thing affected him in a way he had never known before, even with a feeling of helplessness as though here were something as new as dreadful; something he did not know how to meet.

  He jumped to his feet, an odd, instinctive gesture as though to ward off an immediate and instant threat with which he must be prepared to grapple on the spot. But in that same moment, before he could make another movement or even speak, Theresa, like an evil flame, vanished from the room; swift, direct and certain she went, as the downward stab of a dagger. He did not attempt to follow. It would have been useless. He turned to Goodman. Goodman was shrinking back in his chair with unsteady hands and lips that trembled. He managed to stammer:

  “That girl … that girl.” Then he said again and more loudly: “That girl.”

  “Yes,” agreed Bobby.

  “Why don’t you do something?” Goodman demanded abruptly.

  Bobby did not answer this. He knew no reply that he could make. He was telling himself that now he was faced with an entirely new position, a new problem to solve, a position, too, of which he knew nothing and a problem of whose terms he was ignorant. Till now his business had been to piece together, laboriously, undramatically, patiently, the evidence needed to convict of murder a culprit of whose guilt he had long since been certain in his mind; even though, he remembered with caution, that in almost every certainty there may still lurk an element of doubt. It had always been his contention that the work of the detective is as unspectacular, as undramatic, as tedious and dull, as that of the scientist in his laboratory, weighing and measuring in endless detail; and more often than not finding at long last that he had followed a wrong trail and reached a dead end. But now into this investigation that he had believed was nearing its end, had flashed a new element; and the question now, he had begun to feel, was no longer how to avenge an old murder but how to prevent a new one. Yet how? When there was nothing to show who was threatened or why. Nor was there any possibility of taking action to ward off the danger at the source. Who was going to believe that any danger threatened from a blue-eyed, round-faced, little girl, whose one interest and purpose seemed to be to enhance what to-day is called her sex appeal? He had no tangible evidence to show; and until he had, and his own uneasy feeling was that she would take good care to provide none, he was helpless.

  He felt it all most strangely resembled one of those nightmares in which the dreamer is conscious only of unseen, unknown, slowly suffocating, all surrounding pressure. He had the impression that events were escaping his control, that he was becoming no more than a spectator. Fiercely he told himself that he must bend them, mould them, see that the guiding will was his and not another’s.

  But still when now he turned to Goodman it was a little hopelessly that he said:

  “Don’t you think it would be wise for you to try to help a little?”

  “It’s your job,” Goodman muttered.

  “What do you know about her?” Bobby asked, no need to mention any name.

  “She’s my secretary,” Goodman answered. “Very efficient. I advertised and she came along and I engaged her.”

  “Did she bring any references?”

  “Oh yes. Not that I bothered. In these days you are only too glad to get anyone.”

  “Has she registered for National Service, do you know? She is within the age limits.”

  “She told me she was born in the Argentine. Her parents were British and she came here when she was a child. But she says she is an Argentine citizen and so she’s exempt. I didn’t check up. It’s what she said.” The story might be true, Bobby supposed. In any case it would take a very long time to prove or disprove; and though he did not know what the danger was he feared, he was sure that it was imminent. He could ask to see her passport, but she could easily answer that she had never thought of getting one and never thought of herself as non-British, until registration was ordered and she was told that her birth abroad made her an alien. No doubt he would be able to get proof in the end that she had broken various regulations, but there was neither time for, nor object in, troubling about such technicalities. Her youth and sex, and that air of girlish innocence she was able to make such effective use of, whatever dark depths they might hide, would certainly be her sure shield and protection in any court in the land. No time to play that card now, he decided, though as well to keep it in reserve and to remember it was there. Abruptly he demanded of Goodman:

  “What was behind it all that time when you were grabbing an ebony ruler and she had her automatic out?”

  Goodman did not answer for a moment or two. He was plainly hesitating, and at first Bobby hoped he was going to explain. Instead he said, and with some sort of an effort to return to his previous manner of a kind of cheerful bluster:

  “Automatic? A pistol, you mean? Nonsense. It was her lighter. She showed it you. What do you mean about my ebony ruler? I suppose I had picked it up. I don’t remember. Why?”

  “You mean you don’t intend to help,” Bobby said. “Well, it’s your decision. But not very prudent. For I rather think you may be in some danger yourself.”

  There was a look in Goodman’s eyes that suggested he knew that well enough, better indeed than Bobby knew it. His voice, too, had lost again, as quickly as it had been re-assumed, its tone of busy, cheerful bluster. It had become thin and uncertain in its pitch as presently, in a kind of squeaky rush, the words came out: “Why don’t you arrest her or something?”

  Bobby did not trouble to answer this. As a lawyer, Goodman must know well enough that the first move is the privilege and advantage of the lawbreaker. Until intention is translated into fact nothing can be done, since, so long as intention remains intention and no more, nothing need be done. Instead Bobby said:

  “I suppose the Brown gold is at the bottom of all this. Don’t you?”

  “I wish to God,” Goodman answered with a sort of groan, “you had never found the beastly stuff. I didn’t want it. I don’t want it. You know yourself I promised it Spencer for charity. It’s nothing to me.”

  He spoke not only with sincerity but with a kind of fear, as if in some way that legacy of the gold seemed to him a disastrous and fatal gift. Bobby said:

  “Is she trying blackmail?” Goodman did not answer and Bobby did not press the point. Often as he had thought of blackmail the explanation seemed inadequate. Blackmail may produce violence but does not use it as an instrument. Nor was it conceivable that Brown had been blackmailing Goodman and met the fate that does sometimes overtake the blackmailer. Not reasonable to suppose that a blackmailer would make a will in favour of his victim or indeed that that victim would have paid in gold. Blackmail, Bobby had long felt, was no explanation here. Presently, he continued: “If it is the Brown gold she’s after, I don’t quite see where she comes in, what claim she can make—that is for herself. Does she intend to ma
ke it for someone else? But that suggests she knew about the gold beforehand; and if there’s the motive for the murder, why wasn’t it touched? The whole thing seems such a jumble of contradictions, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t believe anyone had the faintest knowledge of Brown’s gold,” Goodman said. “Stands to reason. He knew no one knew, or else he would never have gone off and left it in the house where anyone who had any suspicion of its existence could easily have got at it. Anyone with a little common sense can see that.”

  “What was the motive for Brown’s murder, then?” Bobby asked. “If it wasn’t blackmail or greed, what was it? There seems to have been no woman in his life. Some very ancient grudge? From all accounts he was an inoffensive little man, not at all likely to have given anybody such desperate offence as all that. What was the motive?”

  “I suppose you haven’t heard there’s been a lot of trouble at St. Barnabas?” Goodman asked with a faint sneer. “Outside any police line of investigation, I expect. Religion, that is. Well, if you choose to make a few inquiries, you’ll find there have been violent scenes there. Violence breeds violence. Suppose one of the St. Barnabas congregation went to have it out with him? Eh? That’s always been my idea.”

  “No evidence,” Bobby said. “No actual violence reported at St. Barnabas, either. I’m told Brown always walked out at once as soon as he had made what he called his protest. Brawling perhaps, but not violent.”

  “Where there’s religion, there’s always trouble,” Goodman said dogmatically. “Religion breeds it. Bound to. Well, haven’t you any ideas of your own?”