He passed his tongue over his dry lips. He would have given a lot for a drink but he daren’t risk it. He had no wish to be seen.
The rain was increasing and the wind whistled round him, seeking every means to penetrate the protection of his overcoat and probe with icy fingers his already shivering body.
A clock struck the hour.
Harry Bates counted the ten strokes and thought with dismay that he had another three-quarters of an hour to wait.
His feet were getting numb with the cold and damp and he tried to warm them, but it did little good. However, the result of this night’s work might prove to be profitable. He didn’t relish the job, but it would soon be over.
The clock struck the quarter.
Half an hour more. He began to walk up and down in front of the gate. It was too early yet to make his way inside the grounds of Marbury Court to the little summer house. He might be seen.
At half past ten he decided to risk it. It would be something to get in the shelter, away from the rain and the wind.
He pushed open the gate and slipped inside. It was very dark here, and he wasn’t quite sure of his way. There was a path that led through a shrubbery of rhododendron bushes and came out at the end of a lawn. From here he could see, a good way away, the dim bulk of the house. There were lights in one or two of the windows but the majority were dark. . . .
Ah, there was the summer house—over to the right of the oblong lawn. Harry changed his direction and made his way towards it. It was only a small place of rustic wood with a couple of garden chairs and a wooden table, but it was shelter from the increasing rain and the wind.
Harry went inside and breathed a little sigh of relief. He thought of hot coffee and the warmth of “Spotties” or the tingle of neat whisky. Well, he’d be able to enjoy either or both of these comforts when this night’s work was over.
There was no sound but the wind in the trees and the pattering of the falling rain on the leaves and on the roof. Somewhere, far away in the distance, he heard the faint sound of a train whistle, but that was all. Otherwise there was complete silence.
And then the clock struck the three-quarters.
A quarter to eleven. It was time.
Harry felt his nerves tighten to meet the ordeal he was facing. In a few seconds now the person he was here to meet would arrive. Tense in the darkness of the summer house, he waited.
There was nothing to warn him of anyone’s approach. The first he knew that he was no longer alone was when he heard the sound of quick breathing from the direction of the door.
“Are you there?” inquired a voice from the darkness.
“Yes,” said Harry Bates.
“I came,” went on the voice, “though I quite fail to understand the meaning of your letter.”
“It was plain enough,” said Harry.
“What it said was plain enough,” corrected the newcomer. “But I don’t understand your implication. . . .”
“Look here,” interrupted Harry Bates, “it’s no good you adopting that attitude. I’m not going to stop here all night arguing. If you want me to keep quiet about a certain thing, you’ve got to pay me—and pay me well. Otherwise I’m going to the police, see?”
“I hear what you say,” replied the voice. “I’d like to remind you that blackmail is dangerous. . . .”
“You can cut out the threats,” broke in Harry roughly. “I’m not scared by ’em. You can’t murder me like you murdered Francis Conyers.”
Out of the darkness came a sudden hissing breath.
“You can’t prove that,” said the voice sharply.
“Can’t I?” retorted Harry, “You refuse to do what I tell you and you’ll soon see whether I can prove it or not.”
There was a moments silence but he still heard the other breathing.
“What is it you want?” came the question at last.
“I want five thousand pounds,” answered Harry Bates promptly.
“I haven’t anything near such a sum,” said the voice.
“But you will have,” snapped Harry. “I’ll wait.”
“Supposing I refuse?”
“I’ve told you the alternative,” said Harry.
“There is another,” said the voice and now it held a sharper note. Something, a sixth sense or a movement that reached him in time, warned Harry Bates. Springing sideways he caught an arm as it was descending and the knife it held cut his wrist. He felt the warm blood trickling over his hand as he fought off his attacker.
And then there was a shout and a sudden blaze of light. The ray of a powerful electric torch lit up the inside of the summer house as Mr. Budd, Sergeant Leek and Inspector Crutchley burst out from the concealment of the nearby bushes.
“Grab ’er,” shouted Mr. Budd, and Crutchley leapt forward and caught Mrs. Mortlock’s arm just as she had wrested free from Harry’s grip and was raising her arm to bring down the knife. . . .
*
Harry Bates gulped down the greater portion of a double scotch, and took a deep breath.
“Cor blind old Riley!” he ejaculated with intense feeling, “I wouldn’t go through that again for all the gold in the Bank of England.”
“I’ll bet you would, Harry,” said Mr. Budd. “Not that anyone’s likely to try you.”
“Honestly,” said Harry Bates, “my heart was playing such acrobatic tricks I thought it was going to jump clean out of me mouth. What a Tarter, eh?”
“You did very well, Harry,” said the stout superintendent. “Maybe one day, I’ll be able to do you a good turn. It was the only way to get at her, you see.”
Harry swallowed the remainder of his whisky and looked meaningly at the bottle on the table. Mr. Budd reached forward and refilled his glass.
They were sitting in the warm sitting-room at Kenwiddy’s Farm. Mrs. Mortlock had been taken to Greystock police station and charged with the murder of her step-brother, Francis Conyers, and the attempted murder of Harry Bates. She had protested all the way but nobody had taken any notice of her. During their ambush in the bushes near the summer house, they had both seen and heard enough to convince them of her guilt.
Mr. Budd had arranged it all with Harry Bates, a reluctant assistant who under the persuasive tongue of the stout superintendent, and the promise of certain emoluments, had at last agreed to help. The big man had been certain that the only person who had had any motive for killing Francis was Mrs. Mortlock, but he had no proof of her guilt. The only possibility of getting proof was to arrange with Harry to pretend that he knew she had committed the murder and try to blackmail her. Harry had written her, hinting what he knew and arranging the appointment in the summer house. Mr. Budd had been afraid that she might bluff. If she had and stuck to it they would have been helpless. But he had gauged her nature fairly well. She had adopted the attitude he hoped she would and her attack on Harry with murderous intentions. coupled with the fact that she alone benefited from the death of Francis would prove sufficient to convict her.
“It’s a queer thing, you know,” remarked Mr. Budd, helping himself to a small whisky and lighting one of his black, evil-smelling cigars, “but there’ve been remarkably few facts to help in this business. I’d call it a case without any practical clues. It was all a question of thinkin’ an’ ponderin’.”
“You’re a downy old bird,” said Harry. “The boys always say there ain’t much hope when you start getting busy.”
*
“A very nice piece of work,” said Colonel Blair, leaning back in his chair and smoothing his neat grey head with an immaculate hand. “I should call it one of your most successful cases, Budd. You had practically nothing to go on and you’ve succeeded in bringing the matter to a satisfactory conclusion.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Budd.
“There was so much,” went on the assistant commissioner, “to fog the real issue. All that business of the nursery rhyme. . . .”
“An’ the spy dropped by parachute,” interpolated the
stout man. “He had nothing at all to do with it.”
“He may have had quite a lot to do with Francis Conyers,” said Colonel Blair quietly, and Mr. Budd opened his sleepy eyes suddenly very wide.
“I’ve been talking to the man who was in charge of M.I.5 at that period,” went on Colonel Blair. “They knew there was a ‘contact’ somewhere in that particular district, but they’d never been lucky enough to find out who it was. The man Panting caught, his name was Khoner, by the way, refused to tell them anything. . . .”
“You think the ‘contact’ was Francis Conyers, sir?” asked Mr. Budd.
“I should say it was more than likely,” answered Colonel Blair. “He was a pretty bad hat all through and I should think it was quite possible that he was in the pay of the German Secret Service. They probably got hold of him while he was in Switzerland.”
“I should say you’re probably right, sir,” agreed the big man. “In my opinion Francis Conyers was capable of anythin’.”
“I suppose Roger Marsden comes into his sister’s money now?” remarked Colonel Blair.
“I think he gets the whole estate,” said Mr. Budd. “He’s the next of kin. There are no other livin’ Conyers—or there won’t be soon.”
“I wonder if they’ll hang her?” murmured the assistant commissioner thoughtfully. “Juries are funny with women, you know.”
“It was a particularly brutal crime, sir,” said Mr. Budd. “An’ cold-blooded. She killed him that way so’d we’d think it was the same person that killed Sam Sprigot.”
“She ought to hang,” said Colonel Blair. “In my opinion, all murderers should hang. There’s far too much fuss made over ’em these days. Nobody ever seems to think about the unfortunate victim.”
“I agree with you, sir,” said Mr. Budd, “although in this case the victim deserved to hang as well.”
*
The trial of Mrs. Mortlock filled the newspapers for the two days that it lasted and then, like others like it, it was forgotten in a fresh sensation.
For some reason, perhaps it was the sheer brutality of the killing, or perhaps because of her attitude in the dock, which was callous and contemptuous, the jury took a dislike to her from the start. In spite of everything her counsel could do, they brought in a verdict of guilty after only being out for an hour and a half.
She was sentenced to death and, although a reprieve was attempted, it was refused.
Three clear Sundays after the sentence was passed on her, Mrs. Mortlock was hanged.
In Marbury the news was received without much comment. The main excitement was over and the actual carrying out of the sentence was almost an anti-climax.
“Well,” remarked Major Panting to the Reverend Oswald Hornbeam one frosty afternoon a week later, “the whole thing’s over. Settle down again to our previous dullness, eh?”
“I prefer the dullness, Panting,” said the rector. He sniffed the keen air. “It seems to me that something has passed away leaving the whole village washed clean.”
“I know what you mean,” said Panting. “Felt something of the sort myself.”
Mr. Budd, coming into his cheerless office one morning, found the lugubrious Sergeant Leek writing busily in his exercise book.
“Still writing your reminiscences?” he demanded.
“I’m making notes on that business at Marbury,” said the lean sergeant, looking up. “I’m callin’ it ‘The Nursery Rhyme Murders’. I think that sounds excitin’.”
“It ’ud be all right for a book of fairy tales,” said Mr. Budd.
“I’m usin’ it for me reminiscences,” said Leek.
“That’s what I meant,” said Mr. Budd.
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