Wallace of the Secret Service (Wallace of the Secret Service Series)

by Alexander Wilson

  ‘Do you think you’ll be able to recover the formula?’ asked Brien eagerly.

  ‘I hope so. Do you want to see the body right away, Hastings?’

  ‘Please. Where is it?’

  Sir Leonard led the way up the stairs and, entering the professor’s bedroom, removed the sheet that covered all that remained of a famous scientist. Deftly, quickly, the police surgeon conducted his examination, while Wallace and Brien stood by watching him. Five minutes passed; then he straightened himself, and looked at Sir Leonard.

  ‘He was drugged before he was shot,’ he announced sharply,

  ‘Exactly what I thought,’ returned Wallace. ‘That is why I brought you down. The local doctor quite failed to notice that the pupils of the eyes were dilated.’

  ‘He must be a fool,’ commented Dr Hastings.

  ‘He is,’ agreed Wallace with feeling. ‘What drug do you think was used?’

  ‘Some preparation of opium,’ was the prompt reply.

  ‘Laudanum?’

  ‘Yes; very likely laudanum.’

  Wallace produced the small bottle from his pocket, and held it out to the doctor.

  ‘This is where it was taken from,’ he said quietly. ‘A few drops were poured from this bottle into either the coffee pot or milk jug that Mason took into the laboratory with him last night.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ blurted out Brien. ‘Do you mean to say that Mrs Holdsworth was the murderess?’

  ‘S’sh!’ warned Wallace.

  He had caught the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and presently the housekeeper passed by the open door. He went out to the corridor, and looked after her. She entered her own room farther along, and shut herself in.

  ‘Well, I’m damned!’ swore Billy softly, as his colleague came back to the bed. ‘She is about the last person one would have suspected. I suppose the agent of some foreign power got at her. But still I don’t understand how she got in and out of the laboratory.’

  ‘What is more puzzling to my mind,’ observed the doctor, ‘is why Professor Mason was drugged.’

  ‘That is easily explained,’ asserted Sir Leonard. ‘In the first place there was no intention of murdering him, but the dose of laudanum was not of sufficient strength, and he was probably beginning to regain consciousness while the criminal was searching for the formula. The latter then shot him while he lay on the floor to which he had slipped under the effects of the drug. If you examine the back of his head, Hastings, you will find no bruise of any kind there. He was lying flat on his back and, if he had been standing when shot, he would have fallen with such force that his head would have struck the hard floor violently, and certainly been bruised. Am I not right?’

  After an examination of the back of the dead man’s head, the police surgeon nodded.

  ‘There’s not a doubt of it,’ he agreed. ‘In slipping to the floor under the effects of the laudanum he went down too gently to hurt himself. Probably he first sank to his knees, all the time making an effort to fight against the drug; then rolled over onto his back as it overcame him.’

  ‘What a dastardly crime!’ ejaculated Brien. ‘Great Scott!’ he added. ‘I see now why you were puzzled by the fact that the keys had not been left in the open door of the safe. It wasn’t opened by the professor’s keys at all, but by the duplicate set which the Holdsworth woman must have obtained somehow or other. Probably—’ He stopped suddenly. ‘I am going a bit too far,’ he said in rather a sheepish voice.

  ‘You were going to say,’ interposed Sir Leonard, ‘that probably the loss of the original keys was contrived in the hope that a duplicate set would be sent for. You are quite right. That is exactly what happened. Then, in order to still any suspicion that may have been roused, the originals were found in the pyjama jacket in the soiled linen bag. Of course they had been put there first.’

  ‘Good Heavens, what a woman!’ exclaimed Doctor Hastings in a tone of horror. ‘How were the duplicates obtained do you think?’

  ‘The professor was watched. He had apparently locked them away in this drawer.’ He walked across to the dressing-table, and indicated a drawer half pulled out. ‘You see the lock has been forced. I discovered that on my second visit to this room. Anybody looking through the keyhole of the door would have had a view of this drawer, and seen the professor locking away the keys.’

  ‘It’s a wonder she didn’t contrive that the keys of the laboratory door were lost also, so that duplicates of those would have been available,’ commented Billy. ‘But I suppose that would have caused too much suspicion.’

  ‘It would have been impossible,’ Sir Leonard informed him. ‘Mason carried the keys of the safe in his pocket, but the keys of the doors were on a chain round his neck and only detached when he wanted them. Look!’ He undid the clothing at the dead man’s neck, and disclosed a silver chain to view.

  ‘Besides,’ declared Brien, ‘it would have been out of the question to have entered that way, as Brookfield always sat there when the professor was in the laboratory, unless—’ He paused suddenly, and a gleam came into his eyes. ‘Of course,’ he exulted; ‘I see it all now. She did have duplicate keys and, like Professor Mason, Brookfield was drugged.’

  ‘By Jove!’ exclaimed Dr Hastings. ‘She seems to be a woman who stops at nothing to gain her ends.’

  ‘The sooner she is arrested the better,’ suggested Billy. ‘She must surely know that you suspect her, since you questioned her about that bottle.’

  ‘She’s in her room,’ returned Sir Leonard, ‘and there’s no need to trouble her for the present.’

  ‘But, man alive, she may escape through a window. It’s not far to the ground and—’

  ‘She won’t do anything like that,’ Wallace replied with quiet confidence.

  Brien smiled.

  ‘It was damn cheek on my part to make suggestions,’ he chuckled. ‘I might have known that you had prepared for all eventualities.’

  A trim little maid with frightened eyes knocked at the door.

  ‘Please, sir,’ she said. ‘Mr Brookfield told me to tell you that him and the other gentleman have returned.’

  ‘Thank you,’ acknowledged Wallace. ‘Coming down, doctor? I may ask you to find that bullet in the professor’s head later on, but I don’t think it will be necessary.’

  He suddenly looked older, and Billy wondered if he were feeling unwell. He was about to ask, but Wallace passed him abruptly, and ran down the stairs. The other two followed more leisurely. He took Cousins and Brookfield into the laboratory and, as Brien and the doctor followed, he told the former to close the doors.

  ‘I don’t want the servants listening to us,’ he added by way of explanation. ‘Discover anything?’ he demanded of his two agents.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ replied Cousins. ‘The only strangers seen in these parts during the last three weeks were a clergyman, his wife and two children, and we were able to establish beyond doubt that they were quite innocent. This is the wrong time of the year for visitors, and that made our job easier. As Henry Vaughan so beautifully expresses it, “They are all gone into—”’

  ‘Be quiet!’ snapped Wallace angrily.

  His three colleagues looked at him in dismay. Seldom before had he displayed such irritation, never at Cousins’ everlasting quotations. Abruptly he swept the little man aside, and confronted Brookfield.

  ‘Hand over that formula!’ he commanded harshly.

  A hiss of indrawn breath from the three men behind him was the only sound for a dramatic moment. Brookfield’s eyes glared into his unbelievingly, and gradually every vestige of colour drained from the man’s face.

  ‘What – what do you mean, sir?’ he gasped.

  ‘I mean what I say – hand over the papers which you stole from that safe after murdering Professor Mason!’

  The ensuing silence lasted upwards of twenty seconds, during which every man in that room stood rigid, three overcome by sheer amazement, one by stark horror and fear, the fifth watching with strained con
centration the man he had accused. Then, with almost an animal-like cry, his face now distorted with hatred, Brookfield threw himself forward at his chief, quite forgetting that by his action he was confessing his crime. With his usual rapidity, Sir Leonard drew his revolver, pointing it at his would-be assailant.

  ‘Back!’ he snapped in the tone he might have used to a mad dog.

  Brookfield hesitated before the grim muzzle aimed at his head, but not for long. Possibly he welcomed death in such a manner now that he had been unmasked; possibly he was too overcome with rage to care whether he lived or died, his only desire being to get at Sir Leonard Wallace. Whatever was in his mind he launched himself with passionate ferocity at his chief, to be brought up with a cry of pain as the revolver was dashed into his face with all the power of Wallace’s arm behind it. With hands clasped to his bleeding countenance he stood swaying before the other, then reeled against one of the tables half-stunned. Sir Leonard turned to Cousins.

  ‘Search him!’ he ordered sharply. ‘Take everything from his pockets, and put it on the table.’

  Brookfield made no resistance; he was too badly injured. Cousins went about his job thoroughly, and brought to light several articles of no interest to anyone but their owner. Then came a pocket-book in which were two sheets of paper folded together – the formula for Veronite! Cousins’ features creased into an expression of pain as he announced his discovery. Up to that moment he had been hoping against hope that Sir Leonard had made a mistake, that Brookfield would prove to be innocent. Brien had felt the same. The honour of a great service was at stake, a service that, as far as they knew, had never before been discredited. Suddenly Billy realised why his friend had appeared to look old, understood the distress he had seen in the steel-grey eyes. The discovery of Brookfield’s treachery and recreancy must have been a terrible shock to the man who was so proud of the honour of the British Secret Service and the devotion and altruism of the men and women under his authority.

  ‘That is all, sir,’ announced Cousins quietly.

  ‘Bathe his face,’ ordered Wallace. ‘There’s a tap and towels over there.’

  Not another word was spoken until Cousins led his one-time colleague back to Sir Leonard; then:

  ‘You have committed the worst crime it is possible for man to commit,’ declared the latter in harsh tones to the subordinate in whom he had trusted. ‘You have prostituted the trust placed in you, and brought shame and dishonour on a service that prides itself on its glory and integrity. You have murdered a man in cold blood and stolen something of the utmost importance to the country which gave you birth, with a view to enriching yourself and betraying that country. You came to us with the highest reputation from Scotland Yard, and have been entrusted with secret commissions of importance. I suppose most of them have been sold to other nations and—’

  ‘Stop!’ cried Brookfield in an anguished voice. He had been standing with bowed head leaning against a table, now he stood upright, and tried hard to meet his accuser’s eyes. ‘I have never before betrayed my trust,’ he declared, ‘and wouldn’t have done so now only – only I had been for a long time in the hands of moneylenders, and the temptation was too great.’

  ‘And you actually intended selling Great Britain; perhaps cause the world to suffer the greatest calamity that has ever befallen it, to get yourself out of personal difficulties, which a man with your responsibilities should have avoided like a plague!’ Sir Leonard’s voice vibrated with the utter loathing and repugnance that filled him. ‘Upstairs,’ he went on, ‘lies the victim of your perfidy, murdered by the man who was sent to guard him and his secret, murdered in cold blood while he was lying under the effect of a drug administered to him by you.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to kill him – I swear it!’ cried the distracted scoundrel, endeavouring desperately to find excuses where no excuses could be. ‘He began to recover his senses when I was in the room – I lost my head and shot him. It was the—’

  ‘It was I who sent you here,’ went on Sir Leonard coldly, mercilessly, and as if Brookfield had not spoken. ‘And all my life I will feel that I was partially responsible for Professor Mason’s death, because I trusted and believed in the fiend I sent to protect him. May God forgive you – no man ever can!’

  ‘It’s done now,’ muttered Brookfield sullenly, ‘and I shall expiate it. There’s no reason for you to—’

  ‘You can never expiate such a crime,’ snapped Wallace. ‘No blacker transgressions have ever been perpetrated in history than yours. Execution to a thing like you is no expiation, it is far too merciful.’

  Brookfield, shaking like a leaf, looked hungrily at the three faces beyond that of Sir Leonard, possibly hoping to find in one, at least, a certain measure of pity. But each was a replica, in its intense abhorrence, of the chief ’s. Each was pale with the cold fury engendered by feelings of utter repugnance. Whatever he might forgive, no true member of the Secret Service could ever pardon a betrayal of trust, and such a betrayal of trust, in one who had been a comrade. Brookfield read in those faces nothing but pitiless aversion, and his base soul revolted.

  ‘Damn you!’ he snarled at Wallace. ‘Who are you to judge a man? You have never had the experience of being screwed and twisted and bled by ghouls under the names of money-lenders. You have never known what it is to be tempted – you might have been the first to fall if you had.’

  ‘Enough of this!’ returned Sir Leonard sternly. ‘It nauseates me to talk to you. You cannot even meet disclosure like a man. Such a thought as the possibility of being found out never occurred to you, did it? Your greatest mistake was in taking it for granted that you would not be suspected.’

  ‘I should like to know how you found out, you devil,’ jerked out the fellow, his curiosity getting the better of him.

  ‘You shall know. I first suspected you because of two things, both connected with that steel door there. Cousins, when he reported to me in Whitehall this morning, said that, when you and he had succeeded in cutting out the lock of that door, you both stood at the entrance, while he bound up your hand, which had been badly cut in the process. Now when I was examining the lock I remembered what Cousins had said, and, in a detached sort of way, wondered why there was no sign of blood on the jagged edges round the lock or on the floor, as there should have been if you had in reality cut your hand there. You thought that by declaring the accident to have happened there and then, you would save a lot of questions, while Cousins no doubt was too engrossed in other things to wonder at the lack of blood.’

  ‘I never saw the cut, sir,’ put in Cousins. ‘He had already started to bind up his hand, when he asked me to complete it for him.’

  ‘Just so. I guessed something like that had happened. The second thing that roused my suspicions was that on both keys were several marks, which at first puzzled me. Then I recognised them as having been made by steel tweezers. Obviously somebody had attempted to turn the keys from the outside. The first lock must have responded, as the key of the second also shows the marks, but the second lock proved obstinate, otherwise there would have been no necessity to attempt other methods. You, Brookfield, were in the habit of sitting outside the laboratory door when the professor was working inside. Naturally, therefore, I was forced against my own inclinations to suspect you. How could anyone have passed you, and attempted to turn the keys of the door with tweezers, without your being aware of the fact? You may have been drugged, but that was hardly possible to anyone outside the house, while inside were only three women, Mrs Holdsworth and the two maids. Now only expert criminals or people like ourselves, who have made a study of opening doors when the keys are in the inside of the locks, would have thought of using tweezers. Mrs Holdsworth has been in the professor’s service for twelve years, the maids three and five. None of them could have been expert crooks.

  ‘From that time I worked on the theory that you were the criminal, and I proved correct. I had noticed that the professor had been drugged, and came to the conclusion that
it was with some preparation of opium. I went upstairs to look, knowing very well that he would hardly have been likely to drug himself in the laboratory. Before going into your room, Brookfield, I looked round the professor’s. In the medicine cupboard was a small bottle of laudanum, but it had Mrs Holdsworth’s name on it, and was not labelled by the professor, but by a firm of chemists in Sittingbourne. I wondered what it was doing there – it is certain the professor would not have borrowed it. I learnt from Mrs Holdsworth that she had purchased the stuff for toothache, and that the bottle disappeared from her room two days ago. I also found out that the professor was in the habit of taking a tray containing sandwiches or coffee into the laboratory when he worked at night. I might have thought that Mrs Holdsworth was working in collusion with you, but inquiries showed that last night she was out when the tray was prepared for the professor. It was left on the dining-room table while he smoked a pipe after dinner in the garden. I’ve no doubt the coffee was then doped by you with a few drops of laudanum from the bottle taken from Mrs Holdsworth’s bedroom. Afterwards you were unable to return the bottle to the place from where you had taken it, for the simple reason that Mrs Holdsworth was in her room. You, therefore, put it in the professor’s medicine cupboard, which you had already probably searched for the drug you wanted, convinced that it would never be noticed there.’

  ‘All this is very interesting,’ sneered Brookfield. ‘It is only supposition though, and doesn’t convict me.’

  ‘When connected with facts it does,’ retorted Wallace sternly. ‘After interviewing Mrs Holdsworth I returned upstairs, went into your bedroom, and opened the locked suitcase under your bed. It was an easy enough task. Hidden under various articles of clothing I found this, this, and this.’

  He took from his pocket a small revolver, a pair of fine steel tweezers, and a ball of string. ‘The revolver is fully loaded except for one cartridge,’ he said significantly ‘the tweezers you used on the keys of the laboratory door; the ball of string puzzled me for a time until I remembered that I had noticed a small but powerful magnet in the professor’s medicine cupboard. I went back and examined it. There was a smear of blood on it. The string also, I might add, was in several places smudged with blood.