Trent Intervenes

by E. C. Bentley

  ‘It was a silly thing to do,’ Trent remarked.

  ‘He was in a tight place,’ explained the detective. ‘It came out afterward that he was deeply in debt and had just dropped a good sum on the Stock Exchange. He wanted money desperately.’

  ‘He had one resource,’ suggested Trent. ‘I have heard it described as tapping the ancestor.’

  ‘The ancestor,’ said Mr Muirhead with a hard smile, ‘was away on his travels, looking into some East African mining proposition, and apparently couldn’t be got at. Besides, as you’ll see, tapping him might not have been much good; and James no doubt knew that, for their relations were always very close and confidential. But as I was saying: The two witnesses told their story about the finding of the pendant. An hour afterward I was out after James with a warrant in my pocket. About nine o’clock I arrested him as he walked into the hotel where he lived. He denied the charge with a show of astonishment and indignation, but he made no resistance. The pendant was not on him then, and it was never found. I took him away in a taxicab. In Panton Street he gave me a blow on the jaw that knocked me out, jumped from the cab, and darted round the corner into Whitcomb Street. There he ran into the arms of a constable, who held him; he fought savagely, and was only secured by the help of two men. He didn’t get away again.’

  ‘Until yesterday,’ Trent observed. ‘Where had he been between leaving Danbury House and returning to his hotel?’

  ‘Apparently at a club in the Adelphi, where he played billiards for an hour and then dined. His story was that he’d walked there straight from Danbury House and gone straight from there to his hotel. It couldn’t be shown that he’d been anywhere else; but nobody knew exactly when he had left Danbury House. His line at the trial was that he knew absolutely nothing of the pendant and that it was a plot to ruin him. The case against him was unanswerable, and the assaults on the police, of course, made the matter much worse. He was sent to penal servitude.’

  ‘Then you think he has his booty hidden somewhere, waiting for him to take it when he comes out?’

  ‘Sure of it,’ the detective replied. ‘Doesn’t it stand to reason? He was ruined anyway, and the assaults which his temper had led him into made a heavy sentence certain. He might as well have something to show for it when it was all over.’

  ‘Just so. Well, then, Inspector, where do I come in?’

  Mr Muirhead drew out a pocketbook.

  ‘Three weeks before his escape James Rudmore, who had been a model prisoner from the first, was allowed the privilege of writing a letter, in accordance with the regulations. He wrote to his father. Now it so happened that old Rudmore had then been himself in jail six months or more. I had arrested him, too. The charge was fraudulent bankruptcy, and it was as clever a piece of crooked work as ever came into court, I should think. I took him at his rooms, and he went like a lamb; pleaded guilty and took his dose without any fuss.’

  ‘A philosopher,’ said Trent. ‘So he never got the letter from James.’

  ‘Certainly not. James Rudmore was informed, in accordance with the regulations, that his letter could not be forwarded, the reason being withheld. He then asked to have it back; and that was a mistake, for the governor of Dartmoor had already taken it into his head that there was something more than met the eye in the letter, and that made him certain of it. He believed it contained a secret message telling old Rudmore where the pendant was. Why he thought so I don’t myself know; but it was likely enough, of course. The letter was forwarded to Scotland Yard and has been gone over carefully by the experts. They can make nothing of it.’

  ‘That is probably just because they are experts,’ Trent commented. ‘You want a really scatter-brained man—or shall we call him a man of tropically luxuriant mental gifts?—such as myself, for example, to deal with the little dodges of people like the Rudmores. I know now what it is your people want of me. They think the hiding-place of the jewel is described in that letter, and that if they can discover it, and mount guard over it, they will soon get James. I am to give an opinion on the letter. There is nothing I should like better. Where is it?’

  The inspector, without reply, drew a folded paper from his pocketbook and handed it to Trent. He read the following, written in a firm and legible handwriting:

  My dear Dad:

  I am writing to you, the first time I am allowed, to say how sorry I am for all the misery my disgrace must have caused you. When I was made a scapegoat, it was the thought of how you would feel the dishonour to our name that hurt me most.

  I wish I could have seen you just once before I was put away here. But you, at least, will never have doubted my innocence, I know. It would be the end for me, indeed, if when I were free again I should find even your door closed against me.

  I am strong and well; in better health than I have been for years. Most of the time I have been set to what is really navvy’s work in the open air, reclaiming waste land. At first it was fearfully hard work, and I used to wish I had a hinge in my back, and as many arms as the idol, whose name I forget, on your mantelshelf. But I soon got hardened. I have not lived an out-of-door life regularly for some years, and it has made me a new man. I feel trained to a hair. I did have one bad bout of fever, though, before I got fit. I fancy the climate here is rather hard on one if one has malaria in one’s system, and isn’t up to the mark; the country looks and smells rather like the Gelderland country round Apeldjik, where you remember I was laid up three years ago. But this was a much worse attack. I was light-headed for days, and felt like dying. Isn’t it somebody in Shakespeare who talks about ‘the wretch whose fever-weakened joints buckle under life?’ I felt exactly like that.

  I would like to tell you about the life we lead here, and my opinion of the system, but all I write has to pass under the officials’ eyes, and ‘sie würden das nicht so hingehen lassen,’ as old Schraube used to say.

  I send this to the old rooms in Jermyn Street, trusting it will reach you. Good-bye.

  Your loving son,

  Jim.

  Trent read this through carefully once. Then he looked at Inspector Muirhead with a meditative eye. ‘Well?’ demanded that officer.

  ‘This,’ said Trent, ‘is what judges in lawsuits call a very proper letter; meaning, usually, a letter with a faint flavour of humbugging artificiality about it. I don’t like the note of its pathos and I think there’s some hanky-panky about it somewhere. It contains one passage which must be an absolute lie, I should say.’

  ‘I don’t know which you mean,’ the inspector replied, ‘but all the statements about himself in prison are true enough. He did have a bad illness—’

  ‘Yes, naturally all those are true; he knew the letter would be read by the authorities, of course. I didn’t mean anything of that sort. Look here, I should like to spend some time with this in a reference library. Will you meet me outside the British Museum one hour from now?’

  ‘Right, Mr Trent!’ The detective rose quickly. ‘You’ll find me waiting. There may be no time to lose.’

  But it was the inspector who found Trent awaiting him fifty minutes later, with a taxicab in attendance.

  ‘Jump in,’ said Trent. ‘The man knows where to go. I didn’t take very long after all. I even had time to dash up into Holborn and buy this.’ He produced a stout screwdriver from his pocket.

  ‘What on earth for?’ inquired Mr Muirhead blankly as the cab rushed westward. ‘Where are we going? What have you made of the letter?’

  ‘Inquisitive!’ Trent murmured, shaking his finger at him gravely. His eyes were shining with suppressed elation and expectancy.

  ‘What is the screwdriver for? Well, you surely will admit that it is prudent to be armed when going after a dangerous man. I got it off Lake and Company, so I am going to call it Excalibur. Come, Inspector, I ask you as a reasonable man, what else could one call it? Then, as to where we are going—we are going to Jermyn Street.’

  ‘Jermyn Street!’ Mr Muirhead was staring at his companion as at some
strange animal. ‘You think the stuff is there?’

  ‘I think the letter says it is—or was—hidden in old Rudmore’s rooms.’

  ‘But I told you, Mr Trent, old Rudmore was hundreds of miles away when the theft took place. His rooms were locked up.’

  ‘Yes, but isn’t it likely James had a key to them? You told me they were on terms of great mutual confidence. The father was quite likely to leave a key with his son, in case it should prove useful—and a latch-key to the front door, too, I dare say.’

  The inspector nodded gloomily. ‘Yes—it’s quite likely. Then I suppose your idea is, he just walked round to Jermyn Street with the pendant, let himself in, went upstairs to his father’s rooms, tucked the thing away, and then strolled on to the club … Certainly it’s possible. Only nobody happened to think of it.’

  ‘I don’t know that anything would have been found if anybody had, with all regard and reverence to you and your friends, Inspector, I doubt if anything could have been done without the indications in this letter.’

  ‘Well, what does—’

  ‘No! Here we are in Jermyn Street. What number, Inspector? 230—right!’ Trent leaned out of the window and instructed the driver. The cab drew up before a shoemaker’s shop of such supreme distinction that only three unostentatious pairs were placed, as if they had been left there by accident, in the window. To the left of the shop was a closed private door for the use of those living in the chambers above.

  The inspector’s ring was answered by an extremely corpulent, mulberry-faced man with snowy side-whiskers and smooth, white hair. His precision of dress and manner, with a certain carriage of the body, proclaimed the retired butler.

  ‘Well, Hudson, have you forgotten me?’ asked the detective pleasantly, stepping into the well-kept but gloomy little hall. The stout man hesitated, then said, ‘Bless my soul! It’s the officer who came to take Mr Rudmore.’ His face lost something of its over-ripe appearance, and he added, as he closed the door, ‘I do hope it’s not another business of that sort. My house will be getting the name of—’

  ‘Now don’t you worry yourself,’ the man of authority advised him. ‘I’m not after anybody in your house. I only want to know if the rooms that old Rudmore had are occupied at present.’

  ‘They are, Inspector. They were taken, shortly after that unfortunate affair, by Captain Ainger, who has them still—a military gentleman, invalided home from India, I believe; a very pleasant, quiet gentleman—’

  ‘Is he at home now?’

  ‘Captain Ainger never goes out until luncheon time.’

  ‘Then we want to see him. Don’t you trouble to come up, Hudson; stairs don’t agree with you, I can see that. It’s the second floor, I remember.’

  ‘Second floor, and the door on the left. And I do hope, gentlemen—’ Hudson withdrew, murmuring vague apprehension, and ponderously descended to the basement floor as Mr Muirhead, followed by Trent, went up the narrow stairs.

  ‘I thought it better,’ said the inspector, pausing on a stair, ‘to go up unannounced. He can’t say he won’t see us if we just walk in and make ourselves pleasant.’

  As the two men reached the first landing they heard the sound of a door closed gently on the one above and of light-stepping feet. A tall girl, in neat and obviously expensive tailor made clothes, appeared at the head of the short stairway and, apparently not seeing them, stood for a moment adjusting her hat and veil. Mr Muirhead uttered a growling cough from below, at the noise of which the young lady started slightly and hurried down the stairs. In the half light on the landing, they received, as she passed them, an impression of shining dark hair and barely perceptible perfume. Trent looked after her meditatively as she went swiftly along the ground-floor passage and let herself out.

  ‘Smart woman,’ observed the inspector appreciatively, as the front door slammed.

  ‘A fine example of healthy modern girlhood,’ Trent agreed. ‘Did you see the stride and swing as she went to the door? From the cut of her clothes I should say she was American.’

  There was a note in his voice which made the other look at him sharply.

  ‘And,’ pursued Trent, returning his gaze with an innocent eye, ‘I suppose you noticed her feet and ankles as she stood up there and as she came downstairs.’

  ‘I did not,’ returned Mr Muirhead gruffly. ‘What was there to notice?’

  ‘Only the size,’ said Trent. ‘The size—and the fact that she was wearing a man’s shoes.’

  For an instant the inspector glared at him wild-eyed; then turned and plunged without a word down the stairway. He reached the door and tore at the handle.

  ‘It’s locked! Double-locked from outside! Here, Hudson!’ he bellowed, and swore loud and savagely as the fat man was heard shuffling across the passage in the basement below and labouring heavily up the stairs. ‘Give me your latch-key!’ he commanded, as Hudson, with a staring housemaid in his wake, appeared, trembling and gasping. For a few moments, filled with vivid language by the enraged officer, the man fumbled at a trousers pocket. At last he produced his key. Mr Muirhead seized it and endeavoured to thrust it into the keyhole. After half a dozen vain attempts he resigned the key to Hudson, who grasped the situation at the first try.

  ‘I’m afraid whoever double-locked it has left the key in on the other side,’ he panted. ‘This’ll never go in till the other’s taken out.’

  Mr Muirhead suddenly recovered his calm and stuck his hands in his pockets. ‘He’s done us,’ he announced. ‘He could reach Piccadilly in fifteen seconds from here, without hurrying. It’s a clean getaway. Probably he’s bowling off in a taxi by now. Hudson, why the devil didn’t you say there was a lady with the captain? I’d never have let him pass me if I’d known he was coming from these rooms.’

  ‘I never knew there was anyone with him, indeed, Inspector,’ quavered the old man, his mind wrestling feebly with the confusion of genders. ‘I expect it was this girl let her in.’

  ‘How was I to know there was anything wrong?’ cried the domestic, bursting into tears. ‘She spoke like a perfect lady and sent me up with her card and all. I never thought till this minute—’

  ‘All right, all right, my girl,’ said the inspector brusquely. ‘You’ll get into no trouble if you’re straight. Hudson, I want your telephone. In the back room here? Right! And you’d better hail somebody next door and get your door opened.’

  The detective disappeared into the room and Hudson shuffled down the passage to the back of the building, still in a dazed condition. ‘What, I don’t see,’ he mumbled, ‘is where she, or he, or whoever it was, got the key from.’ And as he said it, Trent, who had been leaning against the wall with a face of great contentment, suddenly turned and fled lightly up the stairs.

  Captain Ainger’s door opened easily. Captain Ainger himself, a small, crop-headed man, lay upon a sofa near the window of his tastefully furnished sitting-room. As Trent burst in a look of relief came into the captain’s bewildered eyes. The rest of his face below them was covered by an improvised gag made out of a tobacco pouch and a tightly-knotted silk scarf. His ankles were tied together and his arms lashed to his sides with box cord.

  He looked wretchedly uncomfortable.

  Five minutes later, in answer to a call from Trent, Mr Muirhead closed his conversation with Scotland Yard and came upstairs. He found Captain Ainger sitting in an armchair, restoring his physical tone with a deep glass of whisky and soda. To Trent’s account of how he had found that ill-used officer the detective answered only with a grim nod. Then, ‘I suppose it was your latch-key, sir,’ he said to the victim.

  ‘Yes,’ replied the little captain, ‘she took my latch-key—he did, I mean. Tell you just how it was. She sent up her card—his, I should say—well, it was a woman’s card, anyhow. I put it up here.’ He rose and took a card from the mantelshelf.

  Mr Muirhead glanced at it with curiosity. ‘Of course!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Mrs Van Sommeren’s card, is it?’ asked Trent fr
om his chair by the window.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And Mrs Van Sommeren’s clothes and hat, and Mrs Van Sommeren’s little bag, and Mrs Van Sommeren’s own particular perfume—they all went by us just now,’ Trent remarked, ‘in company with (I expect) Mr Van Sommeren’s shoes and Mr James Rudmore’s wig. Probably he was a little excited at seeing you, Inspector, awaiting him at the bottom of the stairs. It needed some nerve for him to stand there fixing his veil without a quiver, and to trip downstairs right into your yearning embrace, as one may say.’

  Annoyance, self-reproach, menacing resolve, and appreciation of the comic side of the episode—all these things were in the inspector’s eloquent answering grunt.

  ‘If only he had remembered to walk along the lower passage like a lady, instead of like a champion lightweight,’ Trent resumed, ‘I don’t believe the meaning of the shoes would have burst upon me as it did. I dare say his hold on himself began to go when he saw the street door and safety six steps in front of him. Yet that latch-key business was pretty coolly done. Jim is certainly a gifted amateur. But you were telling us’—he turned to the obviously mystified captain—‘how she made her appearance.’

  ‘The message with the card,’ resumed Captain Ainger who still preserved his pained expression, ‘was that she would be obliged if I would answer an inquiry on a family matter. It made me feel curious, so I said I would see her. She had on a very thick veil—he had, I mean.’

  ‘Why not stick to “she”, Captain,’ Trent suggested. ‘We should get on quicker, I think.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the veteran gratefully, ‘I believe we should. The whole thing is so confusing, because she talked just like a woman from beginning to end. Where was I? Ah yes! I couldn’t see her face very well, but her voice and style were those of a well-bred woman. She told me that a year ago she had lost a brother who was very dear to her, and that in his deathbed he had laid what she called a sacred charge upon her. It seemed he had been befriended at some critical time, when he was in India, by an English officer of my name, of whom he had lost sight for many years. He wished her, if possible, to find out that officer and place in his hands a memento, something which had belonged to himself, in token of his undying gratitude. She had made inquiries and had found me in the first place, but understood there were others of my name in the army list.’