“Well, if he didn’t do it, he has only to come out and say so. If he did do it. . . .”
His voice died away into silence. Then he added:
“I promised myself to square up for Sylvia, and I’ll do that, no matter who the man is.”
He dropped his rifle to the order and waited patiently for the next move, keeping his eyes fixed on the impenetrable hedges of the Maze.
Sir Clinton waited for a few minutes longer. Then he seemed to have exhausted the limit which he had set for himself.
“You see the situation?” he demanded, turning to the others. “He’s in there. He refuses to come out. We’ve got to get him.”
“I suppose you’re going to starve him out?” Wendover inquired, as Sir Clinton stopped short.
“Too risky. He might get away in the dark when night comes on. I don’t say he could; but I’m going to take no risks.”
“Then I suppose we’ll need to go into the Maze and dig him out,” Wendover suggested, philosophically. Sir Clinton dissented with a nod.
“I’m responsible for the lives of my constables,” he said. “I can take some brands of responsibility quick enough; but I won’t shoulder the liability of sending good men to hunt armed vermin through a maze like that. They know nothing about its paths. He knows every inch of it. It would be sheer murder if I gave orders of that sort. No, there’s a better way. But bear in mind that I gave him the chance of surrender, first of all.”
Arthur fidgeted with his rifle.
“I know the Maze as well as he does,” he pointed out. “I could get him easily enough if you’d let me take on the job.”
Sir Clinton negatived the suggestion curtly:
“I’ve got a better ferret than you, my boy. If he gets driven out into the open and looks like escaping, I’ll let you wing him. But that’s all you’re to do.”
He wetted his finger and held it up in the air.
“Couldn’t be better. There’s just a faint drift in the air. You’ve got the stuff over by the boat-house?” he added, turning to the constable. “Right. We’ll go across, then. But keep well away from the Maze as we go; for the beast may be hiding behind the outermost hedge trying to draw a bead on us as we pass.”
Considerably mystified, Wendover followed Sir Clinton towards the riverbank. When they reached the neighbourhood of the boat-house, he was still more astonished to find a number of sacks lying on the grass, evidently filled with some material. Three spades were grouped close by. Again Sir Clinton held up his moistened finger and gauged the direction of the light airs that were blowing. Then, seeing the surprised faces of his companions, he pointed to the sacks:
“My ferret!”
Ardsley had gone over and inspected one of the bags. He rubbed his finger on the outside of one and then inspected the skin with interest. Then, suddenly, he laughed grimly:
“Sulphur! That’s a cute notion. A ferret!”
Sir Clinton acknowledged the discovery with a smile that had more than a touch of the sinister in it. “Simple, isn’t it?”
“Quite the Mikado touch,” Ardsley commented.
Sir Clinton said no more, but busied himself with giving orders to his subordinates. Wendover had grasped the meaning of the interchange between Ardsley and the Chief Constable. Sir Clinton meant to use the simplest poison gas of all—the fumes of burning sulphur. The light air-currents would drift them over the Maze; and Ernest Shandon would soon find his fastness converted into a death-trap. He would have to come out into the open; and by that time he would be in such a state that he could be easily captured.
Sir Clinton had issued his directions, posting his constables at points from which they could converge on the various entrances to the Maze if necessary.
“Take no risks,” he added, finally. “I don’t want any fancy exploits to-day. The man who gets Shandon and suffers no damage in getting him, will be the man who gets a good mark from me. I’ll not have anyone hurt, understand!”
He dismissed the constables to carry his orders to their comrades, and then swung round to the rest of the group.
“You can get over yonder, to that clump of rhododendrons, Hawkhurst. If he shows up anywhere within your zone of fire, you’re to wing him. You’re not to kill him. I’m trusting you to play the game, remember.”
Arthur nodded, and betook himself to his post.
“Two more guns will cover all but this side of the Maze,” Sir Clinton went on. “You go over to the road, Wendover. From there,” he pointed, “you can cover young Hawkhurst’s dead ground. I’ll do the same on the other side. But first of all, we’ve got to get this stuff spread around a bit.”
He cut the twine at the mouths of the sacks, tilted out the sulphur, and began to distribute it with a spade. The others hurried to assist him, and spread the yellow lumps under his directions.
“Now we can light up,” Sir Clinton said, at last, when things had been completed to his satisfaction. “These fireworks will give the thing a good start if you spray the sparks to and fro over the surface of the stuff!”
He produced some fireworks from a paper parcel as he spoke and set an example to his companions. Soon the sulphur caught fire; and Wendover, incautiously working on the leeward side, began to cough violently.
“Keep to the windward of the stuff,” Sir Clinton advised. “Get it alight here and there. The flame will soon spread over the whole surface. Now, I’m off.”
He picked up his shot-gun and skirted the Maze at a respectful distance as he made his way to his post. For a minute or two Wendover stolidly continued to tend the “ferret”; but he could not help wondering whether this method of criminal-hunting really came within permitted bounds. His mind inclined more readily to active measures; and this devil’s cookery was, as he phrased it to Ardsley, “hardly the game.”
The toxicologist showed no sympathy with his point of view.
“Driffield’s quite right. Suppose to-night found him with a dead constable on his hands—perhaps a widow and some fatherless children to face? Would you care to be in his shoes? I wouldn’t! Play the game? Bosh! It’s not playing the game to chuck away your men’s lives unnecessarily.”
He dug up some burning sulphur and distributed it over an unkindled patch.
“Whew! This is a suffocating job! If it’s like this now it’ll be fairly stifling on the lee side in half an hour.”
Stenness said nothing. Wendover, who was not in the secret of the secretary’s love affairs, could not understand why Stenness looked almost as grim as Sir Clinton. The Squire woke up all at once to the fact that he ought to be elsewhere; and he made his way to his appointed post.
As he reached it, the report of the sporting rifle came from the clump of rhododendrons.
“It’s all right,” he heard Arthur’s voice raised in a shouted explanation. “I saw him at the gate, trying to climb over; so I let him have it above his head. That scared him. He’s gone away now, back into the Maze. He’s got a pistol in his hand.”
Almost at once they heard Sir Clinton’s shot-gun fired.
“Trying the entrances one by one to see if he can slip out,” commented Arthur, with a certain malicious glee in his tone.
Some minutes passed, then, to Wendover’s astonishment, he heard the crack of the automatic pistol, and a bullet sang past him.
“Not much sign of surrender about that,” he admitted, as he got hurriedly under cover. “The beggar must have marked me down and tried a long shot through the hedge.”
Time flowed slowly on. Occasionally, with a slight change in the faint wind, some of the sulphur fumes drifted down to Wendover and caught his lungs.
“It must be pretty thick in the Maze, if a mere whiff of it gives one gyp like that,” he reflected. “The beggar must be half-dead with the fumes by this time, for he gets the full blast of it.”
Another interval of quietness gave Wendover time to think over the situation. Up to that point, he had gone through the business almost without trying to bring the m
orning’s work into touch with normal life. The whole affair had had an impersonal quality; for from start to finish he had not set eyes on the man they were hunting. But that peculiarity had enhanced the rather unreal character of the adventure, lending it a touch of the fantastic in his mind. And the extraordinarily methodical procedure which had governed the transactions helped in some way to accentuate his feelings. It had all been as logical as a nightmare seems to be while one lives through it.
Yet another shot-gun report—from the sulphur station this time—showed that the murderer was still making attempts to slip away. After that, another period elapsed without any further alarms. The sulphur fumes were now so dense that Wendover, though out of the main line of drift, was becoming seriously troubled by them. He could hear Arthur coughing continuously in the rhododendron clump; but the muzzle of the rifle was never lowered even in the worst paroxysm. Quite obviously Arthur meant to miss no chance of squaring the account for Sylvia.
As that thought crossed his mind, Wendover seemed to see the whole Whistlefield case in a fresh light. Instead of the mysterious murderer lurking behind the green walls of the Maze, his mental vision threw up a picture of the real personality, Ernest Shandon. He could see him with his mind’s eye wandering along the paths of the Maze, choking, desperate, seeking for some outlet to safety and beaten back each time by the warning of the guns. And minute by minute the poison-cloud was growing denser over his place of refuge, bringing nearer the inevitable end of the drama.
And as this picture forced itself upon Wendover, he began to feel the nightmare growing more intense. It seemed almost incredible that Ernest Shandon, a creature despised by every one for his shiftlessness and futility, could have planned and carried through this murderous work. Wendover, since he had been brought into intimate contact with Ernest, had felt nothing but boredom and derision. The man’s dullness, his cowardice, his selfishness, had all impressed themselves strongly on the Squire; and had produced a definite feeling of repulsion and contempt. Now he had to readjust his ideas. The dullness must have been merely an exaggeration; the cowardice had been a sham, since the murderer had no reason to fear anything for his own skin; and the selfishness—why, that was only a manifestation of the callousness without which no planned murder could be carried through. Instead of the insignificant figure which he had hitherto encountered, Wendover began to see instead a fresh personality hidden behind the mask; something going coldly to its deadly work, unrestrained by any normal feelings of humanity or even kinship, a modern Minotaur in the labyrinth of the Maze.
Almost appalled by the vividness of the portrait which his mind had conjured up, Wendover stared across the grass at the wall of greenery which concealed from his eyes the actual form of the murderer. Then, as he gazed, there came once more the report of the automatic pistol—a single shot.
And once more the waiting recommenced, unbroken by any incident.
At last Sir Clinton appeared, with his gun at the trail, round the corner of the Maze. He signalled to Wendover and Arthur to rejoin him.
“I think that’s the end of the business,” he said with stern satisfaction, as they came up. “If I’m not much mistaken, that last shot was for himself. The game was up; and he must have been half-dead with the fumes by now.”
He turned to Arthur.
“Do you see now why I wouldn’t let you touch him? If you had, then we’d have had all the bother of a trial for manslaughter at the least; and I won’t guarantee that things would have gone smoothly in it. As it is, he’s suicided; and no one’s to blame but himself. And if you wanted to put the screw on him, could you have given it a harder turn than this?”
He pointed towards the sulphur station.
Arthur saw the point.
“I expect you’re right,” he admitted, coughing as a fresh cloud of fumes drifted down upon them. “He must have had his dose before he gave in. You think that there’s no doubt that he’s shot himself?”
Sir Clinton’s face showed what he thought.
“Well, I tell you what,” Arthur proposed. “There’s a tree near the river bank which overlooks part of the Maze if one gets high enough in it. Suppose I swarm up it and see if I can spot anything? Now that he’s out of action, it’s safe enough.”
Sir Clinton welcomed the idea.
“That’s a good scheme. He might be shamming, after all; and I won’t take any risks by sending anyone into the Maze till I’m sure. If you keep well inside the leaves you’ll be safe enough in any case. And if you find he’s dead, it’ll save us a long wait.”
Arthur dropped his rifle and went off to put his project into execution. After he had gone Sir Clinton turned to Wendover.
“Not much family affection left in the Whistlefield circle, Squire. But can you wonder, after all. Friend Ernest wasn’t the sort of man who’d attract much liking at the best; and that boy was very keen on his sister, undoubtedly. I have a certain sympathy with his feelings. And I can tell you I’ve been on pins and needles for some time back lest young Hawkhurst should find out who the murderer really was and take the law into his own hands at once. He wouldn’t have been hanged, of course; that mental instability of his would have saved him. But it would have been a case for Broadmoor; and that’s not much better than the drop in his state. It’s relief to get it all over as easily as we have done.”
In a few minutes, Arthur came back with his report.
“He’s lying on the ground in Helen’s Bower. I couldn’t see very clearly; but from the way he’s lying, I think he’s done for.”
“Well,” said Sir Clinton, “I’d better get into the Maze and make sure of things.”
He reflected for a moment, then added:
“I think perhaps it would be as well if all of us went in together. It’s quite safe; I’m pretty sure of that. And there’s something there, I suspect, that I shall want witnesses for.”
He summoned Ardsley and Stenness and explained the state of affairs to them.
“If we dowse the sulphur, the wind will clear away the fumes fairly soon. We can get water from the river and put it out. There’s sure to be something in the boat-house which we can use for bringing water—a bucket or a bailer of some sort!”
When it seemed safe, they entered the Maze and soon reached Helen’s Bower. No danger awaited them. Ernest’s body lay sprawling on the grass with a bullet wound in the head and the automatic pistol still clutched in the hand. Sir Clinton crossed over and knelt down beside the corpse.
“We’d better search the body now and be done with it,” he said, beginning the task as he spoke.
“Here’s something bulky in the breast-pocket,” he explained as he extracted it. “H’m! An envelope with your name written on it, Stenness. Your property, perhaps?”
Stenness glanced at the paper, and a look of intelligence passed between him and Sir Clinton.
“That’s mine,” he confirmed. “It ought to have notes in it!”
The Chief Constable thrust his fingers into the envelope and, pulling out some of the contents, exhibited them to the company.
“It’s full of notes—must be a fair sum. I’ll keep this for the present, Stenness. You don’t mind? It’s best to do things formally; and you can always have it later on when you want it.”
“Oh, keep it, certainly,” Stenness agreed, with a certain dull indifference.
Sir Clinton continued his search; but the only thing of interest was a tin box which he opened carefully and held out for inspection.
“More of these darts, you see?”
He counted them rapidly.
“Yes, that’s right. This represents the balance of the lot after deducting the ones he used in the attack on Miss Hawkhurst and last night.”
He replaced the cover on the box and transferred the thing to his pocket.
“That’s all we need do. You’d better have a look at the body, Ardsley. We’ll need your evidence at the inquest. I’ll send a constable in here to look after things until we can get t
he body removed.”
When Ardsley had finished his examination, they left the Maze.
“Go back to the house now,” Sir Clinton directed, as they emerged from the entrance gate. “I’ll have to pilot my men in to the centre, you know. You can send the car down to meet me if you like.”
He turned back with the constables, while the rest of the party got into the motor. No one seemed inclined to talk, as they made their way up to the house. The events of the morning had been too bizarre to merge easily into everyday affairs. To Wendover, it seemed as though he had spent the last hour or two in some world lying far beyond the normal bounds of probability—already the siege of the Maze was passing into the realm of the unreal in his mind; and he had difficulty in forcing himself to remember that it had cost the life of a man.
But even while he reflected on this, a fresh surprise came upon him. As the car swept round in sight of the main entrance to Whistlefield, he heard a sharp intake of breath from Stenness and a suppressed exclamation from Arthur.
He raised his eyes, and for a moment could hardly believe what he saw. There, at the top of the steps stood Torrance and Vera Forrest, while between them was Sylvia, safe and sound except for the sling which supported her right arm.
“Rather a surprise, I suppose,” said Ardsley drily, as he pulled up the car at the front door.
Chapter Eighteen
The Truth of the Matter
Wendover brought out cigars and cigarettes, and endeavoured to make his guests as comfortable as possible without too much fuss. It was some days after the affair at the Maze which had ended in Ernest Shandon’s suicide; and Sir Clinton had asked his host to invite Stenness and Ardsley to dinner. The Squire had at first objected to the toxicologist, for his prejudices were quite unabated; but Sir Clinton had made it clear that Ardsley’s presence was essential from his point of view, and Wendover had given way without too much argument. Dinner had passed off without any friction, for the Squire was not the sort of person to abuse his position as a host.
Murder in the Maze (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 23
