Dictator's Way

by E. R. Punshon

  All that was without interest for him. He thought he might as well look through the rest of the house. If there was still a telephone here and he could find it, he had better, he supposed, ring up the nearest police station, report finding the back door open and ask them to let Mr. Judson know. Mr. Judson ought to be told, too, about those three one-pound notes lying near the back door. He might know to whom they probably belonged.

  Bobby went back to the great lighted hall, his tread echoing heavily through the deserted spaces of the house. He found himself endeavouring to walk more lightly so as to make less noise. The silence, the brooding, patient stillness of the house, must be getting on his nerves, he thought, or why was it that there kept returning to his memory that red stain he had noticed on one of the pound notes. A cut finger, a slip of the razor when shaving, might easily account for it. Why then did it keep returning to his memory as if in some way it made an evil harmony with the silence of an empty house, with the heavy gloom these shuttered windows caused?

  He made his way slowly up the wide, carpeted stairway, though not till once again he had sent a shout echoing before him:

  “Is there anyone there, anyone up there?”

  He expected no answer and none came. The carpet was in good condition and of fine quality, and he noticed that the stair rods were bright and polished. There was dust on the banister rail, and in the corners, and at the sides of the treads, but evidently some cleaning and sweeping was done from time to time.

  At the top of the stairs was a wide landing, so wide that the American use of ‘hall’ for ‘landing’ would here have been fully justified. Opposite were double doors admitting to a fine, large, well-proportioned room, very comfortably and even luxuriously furnished. In the middle stood a long, mahogany table. At one end was a small round table. There were various armchairs, large and small, settees, a big sideboard, a carpet into whose soft pile the foot seemed to sink. A ribbon of light ran all round the walls behind the picture rail, and at intervals panels of frosted glass of different colours helped the general illumination, which, with all the lights on, was as bright and clear as that of direct sunshine. Nor was there any shadow anywhere. Warmth was evidently provided at need by electrically heated panels, and Bobby mused for a moment on this modern luxury by which light and heat lay dormant as it were, ready to be called into being by the pressing of a button, the touching of a switch. This room was, he told himself, the one where Mr. Judson received his guests when he gave parties here, and Bobby noticed that in one corner stood an elaborate radio gramophone. The room was big enough for dancing, since it ran nearly the whole length of that side of the house. The long table in the middle of the room would serve equally well for supper or for baccarat or trente-et-quarante, and the smaller round table for poker or any similar game.

  But in all this there was nothing to interest Bobby, nor could he see any sign of a telephone.

  He began to search the other rooms, going into them all in turn. In all, the electric bulbs were still in position so that he could light up as he entered. One apartment was a bedroom, luxuriously furnished with every imaginable modern fitting. Opening from it was a large dressing-room and a bathroom fitted up in the latest style, with all the complications modern civilization has added to the simple act of washing. Another room was apparently a store-room holding brooms, brushes, crockery, a vacuum cleaner, and so on. Two smaller rooms were more simply furnished with armchairs and small tables, as if for sitting in, and then Bobby entered one, at the end of the passage, with its windows facing east, that was evidently meant for a small dining or breakfast-room. Presumably it was where Mr. Judson took supper and breakfast when he came to spend the night here. There was a small sideboard, a small round table in the middle of the room, comfortable chairs, and in one corner, the telephone for which Bobby had been looking. He moved towards it, and as he did so he saw where there lay behind the table, between it and the electric stove, the body of a man.

  It needed only a glance to tell the man was dead, had been dead some time. There is that about a body whence life has fled that once seen is not easily mistaken. No need for the testimony of the blood that had come from a wound in the head and that had formed a little pool near by.

  For a minute or two Bobby stood very still under the shock of this discovery and yet he knew that ever since he had crossed the threshold of the house, it was something of this kind that he had in part anticipated. Very still he stood, and intently he gazed at the dead body, as intently as the staring, protruding eyes gazed back at him.

  A thousand thoughts raced through Bobby’s mind. Who was it, he wondered? Mr. Judson himself perhaps. Was this why Waveny had wished him, Bobby, to come here, but not now, not to-day?

  Why not now, why not to-day?

  Stepping carefully he went to the telephone and there when he put out his hand to pick up the receiver he drew it back again quickly. On the receiver were stains of blood marks; he thought, of a blood-stained hand.

  Of murderer or of victim, Bobby wondered?

  Using every precaution to avoid touching these stains, he rang up the Yard and reported briefly, asking them too, to let the local people know, since he wished to use the ’phone as little as possible.

  There was nothing more he could do till help arrived. He locked the door of the room behind him and then went down to the back entrance to wait there.

  The three one-pound notes were still where he had left them, to his relief for he had been afraid they might have vanished.

  Help would come quickly, he knew, but all the same it seemed long to wait. His thoughts were busy with many speculations, many questions. Useless, though, to wonder, till more facts were known on which to build some theory of what had happened.

  Names buzzed in his mind. Waveny. Waveny would have to be asked a good many questions. Was Waveny a murderer? That nose of his might contemplate murder perhaps, but would the small round mouth and chin ever carry it out? One never knew, though. Perhaps, in emergency, the nose might win. Or Clarence? Had that shout of his that you might as well swing for two as for one, now taken on a new significance? The pale, thin faced girl, too. What had she been doing here? Good thing he had taken a note of the number of her car. There had been something said, too, about a ‘horrid little man’. Who was he?

  But it was no good asking questions at this stage of the investigation. He did not even know the identity of the dead man. Mr. Judson presumably, since the house was his and he was often there, but it might easily turn out to be someone else.

  He wondered, too, if those ashes he had found in one of the disused dustbins had any significance. After burning, they had plainly been very carefully crushed and destroyed, as if for some reason it was important no possible effort at reconstruction should succeed. And then those three one-pound notes lying by the back door almost as if they had been placed there on purpose. Had they been left for collection by some person expected to come for them? If they had been dropped accidentally, one would hardly expect them to be lying so neatly together. Yet why should a murderer leave three one-pound notes behind? why indeed should anyone leave them lying about like that? Even a millionaire has a certain respect for pound notes. In modern life, pound notes have an extreme significance. But a general significance is one thing; the particular meaning of their presence here in this strange affair of death and violence was more difficult to guess.

  Bobby was still deep in thought when he heard the sound of motor-cars approaching. He had suggested arrival by the back so that the front entrance might remain undisturbed, and now quite a procession swept into view.

  Superintendent Ulyett himself was the first to alight. He had chanced to be still in his office when Bobby’s message came through, and the case had seemed of sufficient importance and interest to require his personal attention. Then there was Inspector Ferris, one or two other of Bobby’s colleagues, a photographer, a fingerprint expert, the Divisional Detective-Inspector, named Rose, and one or two of his assistants, and a
couple of uniform men. From a smaller car alighted the police surgeon, Dr. Andrews, and from a large and imposing car that had brought up the rear of the procession emerged a tall, powerfully built man, smartly dressed, with an air of well being and authority. He came thrusting forward as if he meant to assert himself at once.

  “My name’s Judson,” he announced. “I got a message. What’s it all about?”

  Superintendent Ulyett turned to him.

  “Mr. Judson?” he repeated. “Owner of these premises?”

  “Yes. Well?”

  “From information received,” said Ulyett with professional caution, “we have reason to believe that a dead man has been found here.”

  “A dead man?” repeated Judson with every appearance of astonishment and incredulity. “Nonsense. There couldn’t be. Why should there? Who is it, anyhow?” Bobby moved forward.

  “I made no attempt to examine the body,” he said. “The back door was open and I thought it well to investigate in case of robbery or unauthorized entrance. I found a dead man in one of the rooms upstairs.”

  Mr. Judson stared at him, but Bobby thought there was now a certain uneasiness in his eyes, as though he had not much liked that reference to the rooms upstairs.

  “Well, I don’t understand,” he muttered. “Why was the back door open? it’s never used.”

  “You live here, Mr. Judson?” Ulyett asked.

  “I’ve a flat in town. Park House, Park Lane. Convenient, but a bit cramped. I have a few friends to spend the evening here sometimes. I sleep here too occasionally. It’s hardly living here.”

  “Is there a caretaker?” Ulyett asked.

  Mr. Judson shook his head.

  “I don’t understand about the back door,” he repeated. “It was locked and bolted, no one ever used it.”

  “There are three one-pound notes lying near the entrance,” Bobby said, pointing to them, though he knew they had been already noticed by his colleagues. Mr. Judson went across to stare at them. Bobby said quickly to Ulyett: “Papers have been burnt in that dustbin, the one to the right, lying on its side. I don’t know if that means anything.”

  One of the police chauffeurs was told to keep an eye on the pound notes and the burnt ashes in the dustbin, and the rest of the party entered the house and ascended the stairs. Bobby unlocked the door of the room and then waited outside with the rest of the party while Ulyett, the doctor and Mr. Judson went in. The doctor said at once:

  “Nothing I can do. Rigor’s set in already, look at the neck.”

  “Do you know him, sir?” Ulyett asked Judson.

  Judson had become very pale. He was trembling slightly. He stammered:

  “It’s Macklin. Macklin. One of my staff, manager of the coal export branch. I don’t understand.”

  CHAPTER 6

  INQUIRY BEGINS

  The activity in the house became intense as there began the usual busy routine of an investigation. With it, of course, now that it had passed into the hands of the specialists, Bobby had for the moment little to do.

  The next hour or two in fact he spent patiently doing nothing, in which indeed consists a large share of the work of the C.I.D. Meanwhile the experts and specialists bustled about, arrived, consulted, departed. The photographer photographed; the finger-print expert used up enormous quantities of his grey powder; a famous pathologist strolled in; an eager journalist, forerunner of a host of others, made an excited appearance, though how he had come to hear so soon of what had happened, not even he himself seemed to know. Instinct, perhaps, or the mysterious workings of the unconscious, since that nowadays can be used to explain anything. Or more probably the mere sight of three or four cars in procession with uniformed policemen in one of them. The burnt ash in the overturned dustbin was carefully collected – something for Hendon to try its teeth on, as one man with little faith in science remarked scornfully to Bobby. Of the three one-pound notes the one with the stain upon it was marked for the analyst, in the hope that he might be able to say whether the stain was really blood, and, if so, if it belonged to the same group as that of the victim. The famous medical expert and the police surgeon ended at last their long discussion by arriving at the same conclusions – or rather by arriving at the famous medical expert’s conclusions, since the police surgeon was a prudent man and knew who carried the heavier guns. And in one of the smaller rooms sat Superintendent Ulyett, interviewing everybody in turn, taking reports and statements, issuing instructions.

  It was getting on for the small hours before at last he sent for Bobby who had already written out a full report of the evening’s events as they concerned him. Ulyett asked a few questions on various details and informed Bobby that the doctors seemed fairly certain that death had taken place about, or soon after, five o’clock that evening.

  “They seem more certain about the time than doctors are as a rule,” Ulyett remarked, not quite sure whether to be pleased by, or suspicious of, such unusual dogmatism. “Say there are two or three different pointers they can go by. What’s odd, though, is that they say suffocation was the cause of death.”

  “Suffocation,” repeated Bobby, very surprised. “Not the head injury?”

  “No. They say that was a nasty crack all right and probably knocked the chap out. Fractured the skull, but not necessarily fatal. The way they figure it is that somebody clubbed him and he passed out. But he recovered sufficiently to try to ’phone. He may have been too weak and collapsed or he may even have forgotten what he wanted to do – he must have been in a dazed state – or he may have put his call through. No telling. Anyhow, he must have touched both the receiver and the dial after being knocked out because of blood stains on them that agree with his fingerprints. But when you found the body it was lying some distance away and the doctors are clear death resulted from suffocation. They’ve found a cushion on one of the chairs with marks of blood and sputum on it.”

  Bobby listened gravely. He seemed to see the picture so clearly. A quarrel or dispute of some kind. A blow given with something blunt and heavy – something in the shape of a life-preserver perhaps, or even a heavy walking-stick. There flashed back into Bobby’s memory a recollection of Waveny’s cane – the ‘Penang Lawyer’ with the heavy silver fitting to the handle. Afterwards the injured man recovering to some degree and trying to get to the ’phone to summon help. And his assailant, panic-stricken, dragging him away, completing the dreadful task.

  There seemed thus introduced into the affair an element of fiendish cold-bloodedness. Bobby’s mouth set in grim, hard lines. A blow, even a fatal blow, might be given in sudden passion, without malice or premeditation, but this slow and deliberate completion of the deed was different altogether. To Bobby, too, it seemed that about the method used, suffocation, there was something especially repulsive. Who was guilty of such a deed must not be let go free, must answer for it to the full.

  “No money, no watch, no valuables, no papers, on the body,” Ulyett said abruptly. “Looks like a robbery and murder. Where did the three pound notes come from and what were they doing outside there?”

  Bobby had no answer to make. Ulyett went on:

  “You heard Mr. Judson identify him as one of his staff. Mark Macklin’s the name. Had a good job apparently. Manager of the coal export department. Judson says he was at the office this morning as usual, up to lunch time, anyhow. He’s not sure after that. Says Macklin was often out, hunting business. Doesn’t seem to know much about him out of office hours. We’ve got his address though, a flat in St. John’s Wood. When we go through it, we may get a pointer or two. Judson can’t account for Macklin’s presence here.”

  “I believe Macklin used to see to things when Mr. Judson was asking friends here,” Bobby said.

  “Judson mentioned that,” agreed Ulyett, “but he says nothing of the kind was in prospect at present. Judson gave Macklin the key if there was anything on like that, but Macklin always returned it. I suppose he could easily have had another made.”

  “It se
ems a little unusual,” Bobby remarked, “for the manager of a department to arrange his employer’s private parties. More like a secretary’s job.”

  “Judson mentioned that. Said it was Macklin’s own idea. It was worth an invite to him and then Judson says his secretary at the office is a girl, quite efficient and all that, but he didn’t want to risk shocking her, as he admits the affairs were a bit unconventional. But he won’t have it there is anything in the stories of the films shown being a trifle hot. Says they were generally ‘Mickey Mouse’, only sometimes they were war pictures from Spain or that sort of thing – one of a lynching scene in America, for instance. All right in a way, but not quite the thing for public showing. I put it to him the play was pretty high, and he hummed and ha’d a bit, and said his friends were mostly people used to risking big sums on the Stock Exchange and it wasn’t high for them. He let out Macklin was rather a plunger, but says he generally won. Judson claims there was always a limit to the play but admits it varied.”

  “Did he give the names of any of the people he used to ask?” Bobby inquired.

  “Refused point blank,” Ulyett answered. “Says they are all important people and in good positions and he’s not going to mix them up in a thing like this if he can help it. We’ll have a try to find out on our own, or he may change his mind.”

  “It looks to me as if there must be some connection between Judson’s parties and Macklin coming here to-day,” Bobby mused.

  “I pressed Judson two or three times, but he stuck to it, he can’t account for it at all. I suppose it is just possible Macklin remembered something that needed attention, came along, disturbed a tramp or someone who thought an empty house made a nice, rent-free shelter. Macklin may have threatened to give him in charge and the tramp knocked him out and then when Macklin tried to ’phone for help, finished him off. Only there’s no sign of the presence of any tramp and no sign of forcible entry.”