Mystery of Mr. Jessop

by E. R. Punshon

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby. “I suppose this means Higson was recognised, too, by whoever it was he recognised, and the idea was to stop his giving evidence. Is he badly hurt, do you think, sir?”

  “Hit twice,” Ulyett answered; “the other shots must have missed. One hit in the back under the ribs and another in the shoulder. I should think it’s a toss-up whether he pulls through or not.” Slowly Ulyett added: “Jacks and Wright seen in the vicinity, and known to possess a pistol.”

  “Small calibre automatic their licence was for, I think, sir,” Bobby reminded him. “I thought what we heard sounded more like a revolver, ’45.”

  Ulyett was looking at him doubtfully.

  “Yes, I remember,” he said. “I see what you mean.

  But then –” He lapsed into deep thought. “Oh, well,” he said. “First thing is to get this poor chap to hospital or a doctor’s, and then we can try to work it out.”

  Their cottager friend was able to direct them to a small local hospital only two or three miles distant. If they turned north along the main road at the foot of the lane and took the first turning they saw on their left, they would get there, he thought, in less than a quarter of an hour. They followed his directions accordingly, Bobby driving very carefully as he tried to strike the happy medium between the high speed desirable to get the injured man to the hospital as quickly as possible, and the necessity for avoiding jolts and jars. Ulyett was holding Higson in as comfortable a position as possible, watching, carefully, too, to see that the hastily applied bandages did not slip. He said to Bobby:

  “What about that parcel you said Higson brought along with him?”

  “The raincoat?” Bobby asked. “At least, I suppose it’s that. If it’s anything else was pawned that night, it’ll knock all my ideas of what happened on the head. Shall I look, sir?”

  “Yes, do,” Ulyett said, lowering the unconscious Higson into the seat and supporting him there with cushions.

  Bobby ripped open the parcel. As he expected, it contained a raincoat, nearly new. A ticket attached gave particulars showing when it had been pledged, and for how much. Putting his hand into one of the pockets, Ulyett brought out a rubber glove from which the thumb had been torn off.

  “Look at that,” he said.

  Bobby looked at it gravely. He remembered the thumb-piece from such a glove caught in the trigger of the pistol that had dealt Jessop his death.

  “Conclusive, sir, isn’t it?” he said.

  “If Higson dies,” Ulyett asked, “shall we be any further forward?”

  Bobby did not answer. A mistake, he supposed, not to have taken Higson’s evidence in full while that had been possible. One could never be sure of the future. It had seemed better, of course, that Higson should make his identification without any name having been mentioned, so that no question of previous prejudice could arise. Now it was doubtful if any identification at all were going to be possible.

  They reached the turning their cottager friend had warned them to look out for. Bobby turned into it, and almost at once they saw a car lying upset half in and half out of the ditch by the roadside.

  “Another accident,” Bobby said. “Not one of our lot this time, I suppose.” And, almost before he had finished speaking, both he and Ulyett were staring blankly, in a kind of dazed bewilderment, as if this time quite unable to believe their own eyes.

  For there in the field just beyond was a bundle – a shapeless bundle, a sack, a parcel, a what you will – performing apparently spontaneous gyrations, standing on one end one moment, the next prostrate again and rolling on the ground, then once more wriggling itself upright.

  “Someone inside,” Ulyett gasped. “What’s up now?”

  Bobby brought the car to a standstill. Both Ulyett and Bobby jumped out, Ulyett still holding the raincoat. Together they raced towards the still gyrating sack.

  They reached it just as once more, after remaining on end for a moment or two, it had toppled over. Bobby had ready in his hand a pocket-knife he had opened as he ran. With it he ripped the thing open, and there appeared the head and shoulders of the Duke of Westhaven.

  “I have been requiring assistance for some moments,” he said with cold rebuke. His eye caught the coat Ulyett, who had just come up, was still holding in one hand. “Ah, my raincoat,” he said, and incontinently fainted.

  CHAPTER 30

  RENEWED PURSUIT

  At the cottage hospital, which was only about a mile and a half further on, the duke and Higson received prompt attention. Higson’s wounds were dangerous, it was said, but there was an excellent chance of recovery unless unexpected complications ensued. The duke’s condition was diagnosed as due to more than a mere faint; shock was the convenient word used, rest and quiet the treatment ordered, and he was at once put to bed in a vacant cot, next, alas! to the bed occupied by Higson; to Ulyett’s shocked remonstrance, when he knew this, the inadequate excuse being tendered that the hospital had no other vacant bed, and that its only private ward was occupied by two jaywalkers suffering due penalty for obstructing the passage of a motorist to whom had been confided by his firm the task of demonstrating the merits of a new car model, by lowering the road record from Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s.

  “There’s an appeal out in the papers for funds to provide another private ward,” said cheerfully the young doctor who told Ulyett this. “Perhaps the old blighter you’ve trotted in will cough up the dough when we’ve got him toddling again.”

  “Better,” suggested Bobby, “charge him a whacking fee – a bill duly delivered is worth a dozen appeals in the Press.”

  Ulyett rebuked sternly so uncalled-for an expression of opinion. Before this he had been busy at the ’phone, calling up the headquarters of every police force anywhere near so that now he hoped the whole country-side had become one huge watching eye. Every car was to be stopped, and its inmates questioned and detained if their identity and innocence were not clearly established. Pedestrians, too, were to be examined, since there was a possibility that cars might be abandoned. On railway stations and ’bus stops the closest watch was to be kept. Over an area of something like a hundred miles from side to side was to be spread, in fact, a kind of enormous drag-net, through which Ulyett observed with complacence only a very slippery fish indeed would have any chance of escaping.

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby, though thinking to himself that the fish they had to deal with were slippery beyond compare.

  “Only,” added Ulyett, with a discontented grunt, “they all want to know what it’s all about – as if,” he grumbled, “anyone could tell what a nightmare was about. What do you think’s been happening, Owen?”

  Fortunately, it was plain he expected no answer, and Bobby therefore, busy at the moment refilling their tank with petrol he had been able to obtain at the hospital, was spared the necessity of replying. It was quite dark now, and Ulyett had decided that they would spend the night at Cheltenham. But he wanted first to go back to the scene of the burning of the van and the shooting of Higson, to await there the police he had asked should be sent to keep ward and watch till daylight permitted a close search of the scene of the accident, of the ashes of the van in case they still concealed the necklace, and of the wood in which it was hoped might be found evidence of the identity of Higson’s assailant.

  The night was dark, only a few stars showing in a cloudy sky. The wind was rising, bringing with it a hint of rain, and Ulyett looked up in a very discontented way.

  “Going to be a storm,” he muttered. “Lots of heavy rain to wash out any footprints or tracks. Just our luck.”

  The dark, unlighted roads – for this was no “built-up” area – imposed care and a certain restraint of speed on Bobby. When they were near the spot where the lane down which they had followed the furniture van joined the main road, they saw the lights of a car drawn up by the roadside a little further on.

  “Wonder who it is?” Ulyett grunted. “None of those we want, I suppose, but we had
better see.”

  Bobby halted accordingly, and, getting down, went across to where the strange car stood on a strip of grass by the roadside under the shadows of the overhanging trees of the little wood behind. By the light of the headlamps he could see a man who had evidently just completed the task of changing a tyre. Near him was a woman engaged in putting away the tools her companion had been using. Bobby, recognising them, exclaimed:

  “Hullo, Mr. Ghenery. Oh, and Miss May, too.”

  He had spoken loudly on purpose. Ulyett, who had been listening, got down at once and came to join them. Denis, wiping his hands on a rag, looked up and said:

  “Oh, it’s you chaps again, is it?”

  “I’ll trouble you to explain –” began Ulyett in his most official voice, and then paused, not quite sure what exactly it was they were to explain.

  “Well, if you want to know, and as I suppose you’re on it, too,” Denis answered, “we’ve been chasing around after the Fellows necklace. Jacks and Wright are after it, too. I expect you know? They got a tip somehow it was packed away in a furniture van.”

  “What’s your interest in the Fellows necklace?” demanded Ulyett.

  “Five thousand pounds reward for it, isn’t there?” Denis retorted. “Five thousand jolly good reasons for anyone to be interested in it, if you ask me. Enough for a good whack each for Miss May, for Miss Ellison, who tipped us off, and for me, too. Worth scooting round a bit for.”

  “The furniture van has been found overturned and burnt not far from here,” Ulyett said. “No trace of the driver or his mate. A man who had given us information has been shot and dangerously wounded. The Duke of Westhaven has been assaulted – shockingly assaulted,” added Ulyett, feeling that a duke deserved an adverb.

  “What?” said Denis, bewildered. “What’s all that?”

  “What do you know about it?” demanded Ulyett.

  “Things been happening,” Denis commented. “We’ve been out of it, though. An old girl way up on the hills told us the van we were hunting had been at her place. But she did us down for some reason. Told us the van had gone down a lane she showed us she said led to the high road. Instead, it led us to an empty farm and a bog, where I’m jolly sure no furniture van ever got through. We got stuck so badly I thought we were there for keeps. When we did get out, I wasn’t going to risk going back the same way. We found a cart-track that looked good, but it led us right in among trees. We foundered on some stumps that finished my front near tyre for good and all. I’ve just been changing it.”

  Ulyett grunted. The story was reasonable enough, and to some extent the condition of the car confirmed it.

  “If you knew where the Fellows necklace was, it was your duty to give information to the police,” he said.

  “Was it?” asked Denis coolly. “For one thing, I didn’t know. All I knew was something Miss Ellison thought something she heard Wright saying might possibly mean. Apparently he had a private detective bloke messing about trying to find out things. It was his business to say anything to you chaps if he wanted to, not mine. What I wanted was to get in ahead of him if I jolly well could.”

  “Mr. Wright,” Ulyett pointed out, with rebuke in every tone, “is in lawful charge of the Fellows necklace.”

  “Then what,” demanded Denis, “was he up to when he nearly did in Hilda? I owe him for that,” said Denis, with deep anger in his voice. “You said yourself another half-hour and Hilda...” He left the sentence unfinished, but there was no mistaking the deep emotion in his tone. “And then you expect me to sweat my innards out getting his necklace back for him. I meant to make him pay all right, if I could.”

  “You are charging Wright with the attack on Miss May?” Ulyett asked. “Have you any evidence?”

  “Your job, isn’t it?” retorted Denis.

  Ulyett turned to Bobby.

  “Wasn’t there a report you made?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Bobby answered, remembering the fragment of steel identified with Wright’s pocket-knife and how Wright had forestalled questions thereon by spontaneously volunteering the information that he had lent it to Denis himself. “There was some evidence, but it was hardly thought sufficient to take action on. Miss May was unable to help us. There was one point that seemed to clear Wright. He was stated to have been at the Yard with Mr. Jacks, reporting to you, sir, the loss of the necklace.”

  “That’s right,” Ulyett answered. “So he was. Better check up on the times, though. It’ll be on record. So far as I remember, Mr. Jacks came up alone first and Wright waited in the car outside. Wright only came up afterwards, to confirm some point or another Mr. Jacks wasn’t quite sure about.”

  “That would probably give him time to get round to Miss May’s flat, as far as that goes,” observed Bobby. “Spoils his alibi, anyhow.” He turned to Denis and said: “We have information that that day, or the day before, you called at the Mayfair Square shop and borrowed a certain article from Mr. Wright?”

  “Rot,” asserted Denis, with swift emphasis. “Who told you that? I was never at the Mayfair Square shop in my life, and the only thing I would borrow from Wright would be his walking-stick to break over his back, blast him.”

  “No good talking like that without evidence,” declared Ulyett.

  “I told Mr. Chenery I thought it was Mr. Wright,” interposed Hilda, who had been listening quietly to all this. “I thought it was like his step. He has a quick, light step. I’m not sure.”

  “I believe he had some sort of cracked idea Hilda had the thing hidden in her flat,” Denis said. “Like his cheek. He’s crooked himself and so he thinks everyone else is. Crooks always do. And Jessop had been telling lies behind Hilda’s back because she told him what she thought of him, the filthy old blackguard. Perhaps that’s what put it into Wright’s head,” said Denis, grudgingly admitting a faint shadow of something resembling a possible excuse. “And I dare say they were all pretty well off their chumps – they were about done in if they didn’t get the necklace back. Good thing, too. Wright ought to get ten years for what he did to Hilda.”

  “Denis,” Hilda said quietly, “I told you I wasn’t sure. And I would rather go through it all again than have to go into a police court and tell everyone, and have everyone asking questions.”

  “Yes,” said Denis bitterly, “you want to let the brute off. Just like a girl.”

  “No, I don’t,” Hilda contradicted him with some heat; “only I don’t want anyone sent to prison, that’s all.”

  “Who burnt the van? And who got shot?” Denis asked Ulyett. “Wasn’t Wright, was it?” he added hopefully.

  “We don’t know yet exactly what happened,” Ulyett answered. “All we know for certain is what I told you.”

  “What about the necklace?”

  “We have no information,” answered Ulyett, “except that we believe it may have been concealed in the van. Anyone may have it now for all we know. It may be anywhere; it might still be in what’s left of the van among the ashes. Not likely, though.”

  “You bet it isn’t likely,” agreed Denis.

  “And,” continued Ulyett, “I must ask you to accompany us to Cheltenham. I shall want you to make a statement there.”

  “Thought that’s what I had been doing,” grumbled Denis. “Besides, I want to get back to London now this is a wash-out. How far’s Cheltenham?”

  Bobby looked up from the map he had been studying by the light of the car lamps.

  “I can’t make out quite where we are,” he said, “or where this road goes to.”

  “Straight on across the Wiltshire downs by Stonehenge,” Denis answered. “At least, a chap in a Hotspur Seven said so. He stopped to see if he could help, and I asked him where this road went to, and that’s what he said.”

  Ulyett had been looking at Denis’s car. He remarked:

  “At your garage your foreman told us you were driving a Bayard Twenty. It’s a Hotspur, isn’t it? He gave us the wrong number, too.”

  “Must
have got mixed somehow,” answered Denis. “Good chap, George. Tactful and all that. Very. Can’t think how he came to make such a bloomer.”

  “I can,’’ said Ulyett severely, but Denis had turned his head. “Someone pushing along in a hurry,” he said.

  That was evident, for now out of the night there came to them the roar of a car – of cars, it seemed, from the volume of sound – rushing with the wind behind as though it were the wind itself they raced. As they listened, as they stood, before they had time to do more than draw a step or two aside, a car came screaming at them from the night that split before its headlights, and then closed again, more darkly even than before. It fled on, the miles as naught before it, and after it there followed another at the same wild, frantic speed that, at every yard almost, played even chances with disaster. Nor was that all, for behind was still a third, travelling at a rate as wild and fierce, and adding to the clamour of their general passage the shrieking of its horn, in angry, unheeded summons. Then from the first car in this lunatic procession, as it went roaring by, those at the roadside saw a stabbing flash of light dart out, like a strong lamp turned on and off, and then another and another and another.

  “What’s that?” Bobby exclaimed, though he knew.

  “Shots,” Denis said. “Pistol. He’s potting at ’em.”

  “It was Wright in the first car,” Bobby said. “He was driving. Our headlights showed him up a minute.”

  “Wynne and T.T. following,” Ulyett said, not moving; “and a police car after them both. Wright was shooting – trying to do in their tyres, most likely. If he does, they’ll somersault, the pace they’re going. They’ll scrag him if they catch him.”

  “Hilda, you stop here. I’ll see what’s happening,” Denis exclaimed.

  “I’m coming, too,” Hilda said.

  Denis was starting the car. Hilda leaped in by his side. He said something. He was plainly telling her to wait. She took no notice. He started the car and followed in the wake of the others.