The Rynox Mystery

by Philip MacDonald

  ‘If this,’ said Woolrich, ‘wasn’t faintly humorous, it would be quite impossible.’

  ‘If you,’ said Captain James, ‘would get a large canvas bag and push it right down your neck, that’d be better. I want to see Mr Benedik and I’m going to see Mr Benedik, and when I have seen Mr Benedik you’ll laugh the other side of that pussy face of yours. Just look at me a minute.’

  Woolrich looked at Captain James. Suddenly it was borne in upon Woolrich that Captain James was in earnest.

  ‘All I can do,’ said Woolrich, ‘is to mention your visit to Mr Benedik. Whether he sees you or not is his own affair. If you’d tell me something of your business I might be able to be more useful. As it is, I can’t.’

  Captain James got to his feet, a process which looked as if it ought to take, by reason of his amazing solidity, much longer than actually it did.

  ‘I am,’ said Captain James with a leer, ‘much obliged to you, Mr Woolsack. I shall be more obliged to you when I’ve seen this Benedik. My address, at the moment, is Croft’s Hotel, Milady Street, Strand. ’Phone number … that’s right, Mister, write it down … ’phone number, Strand 1234. And don’t forget, Mister, that see him I’ve got to or …’

  Woolrich was pale. Woolrich was not used to this sort of thing. But Woolrich did his best. He said:

  ‘I can hardly think that that tone will do you any good. If I might give you a warning, it certainly wouldn’t pay with Mr Benedik himself.’

  Captain James smiled. His small and bloodshot eyes were not touched by the smile.

  Woolrich pressed one of the row of bells upon his desk and in answer there came, not Charles, who was elsewhere, but Harris the clerk …

  Woolrich, alone, stood by the window staring out over the tops of many houses …

  Down the corridor towards the outer office and the lift Captain James rolled in the wake of Harris. Harris arrived at the end of the passage and held open the swing door which let out on the corridor and stairs. But Captain James did not pass through the swing door. Captain James halted and eyed Harris up and down in a way which made Harris acutely discomfortable.

  ‘Suppose,’ said Captain James, ‘you were to tell me something, Sonny!’

  Harris had never struck, in all his two years of Rynox, a similar situation. Harris boggled.

  ‘I … I beg your pardon …’ said Harris.

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ said Captain James. ‘Waste of time, Sonny. Haven’t got one …’ Here Captain James advanced a step further until Harris became acutely aware, not only of the hard stare of Captain James’s little eyes, but also of the miasma.

  Harris stood his ground. He could not do anything else because he was backed up against the jamb of the swing doors.

  ‘I … I … I beg your pardon,’ said Harris again.

  ‘What I was sayin’,’ said Captain James, ‘was this—I’ll say it very slow to match your intelligence! I suppose you couldn’t tell me something? That something, Sonny, is: does Mr Benedik happen to be in the office?’

  Harris began to get angry. Harris said:

  ‘If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a hundred times that Mr Benedik isn’t here today.’

  Captain James staggered back a step in exaggerated dismay. Captain James stared. ‘The little fire-eater!’ said Captain James. He took a step forward and then another. Now, actually, his chest was touching Harris. He said:

  ‘I didn’t ask what you said. I was asking for the truth. Is or is not Mr Beautiful Benedik in this office at this moment?’

  ‘Don’t you,’ said Harris in fine defiance, ‘talk to me like that!’

  ‘I shall talk,’ said Captain James, ‘to you, Fanny, just exactly how I please. However, I’ll take your word for it that Mr Benedik isn’t in the damn’d office. That being so, I think I can dispense with you. Suppose, Bunny, you pop back into your box.’

  ‘I … I … I …’ said Harris. ‘How … how dare you!’

  ‘You make me,’ said Captain James, raising an arm of quite abnormal length in proportion to his height, ‘vomit.’ The fingers at the end of the arm closed, rather in the manner of a steel vice only more painfully, upon the right ear of Harris. It was a large ear and most suitably adapted …

  Miss Pagan, busy with luncheon-time toilet, was amazed to see in her mirror the entrance, head very much first, of Harris …

  Harris did not fall. He was saved from this final debasement by the corner of Miss Pagan’s table.

  Miss Pagan came nearer to showing astonishment than ever before within these walls. She looked suddenly at the door through which Harris had shot. In it was framed the square, thick person and vilely grinning face of Captain James. Upon this face the door closed. Harris was rubbing at his right ear and drawing sobbing breaths of mingled pain and rage.

  ‘What on earth?’ said Miss Pagan.

  ‘If I get hold of that blighter,’ said Harris, ‘I’ll … I’ll … I’ll …’ In his right hand he grasped a round, heavy ruler from Miss Pagan’s desk. ‘I’ll show him!’ said Harris.

  Miss Pagan had recovered composure. ‘You’d better hurry,’ she said.

  Harris threw down the ruler with appalling clatter.

  ‘What’s the use?’ he said. ‘Don’t want to get myself the sack.’

  Miss Pagan smiled.

  2

  Tony reached Rynox House at four-thirty that afternoon. To him, reading the mail which a day of City visiting had prevented him from seeing before, came Miss Pagan.

  ‘This,’ said Miss Pagan, laying down a sheet upon his table, ‘is from Mr Woolrich, Mr Benedik.’

  Tony looked up. ‘I was just going to have a talk with him.’

  Miss Pagan shook her head. ‘I’m afraid you can’t do that, Mr Benedik. Mr Woolrich has gone.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Tony sharply. ‘Gone?’ He looked at his watch; then shrugged. He picked up the typewritten memorandum and read:

  ‘A man called James (Captain James) called here this afternoon and could not be moved until he had seen me. Unpleasant customer. Would not tell me his business. Insisted on seeing you. I have an idea that you probably will have to see him in the long run and would advise your doing so, therefore, as soon as you can. His address is Croft’s Hotel, Strand, WC1. Telephone number: Strand 1234.

  ‘Sorry could not wait but am going into the country this evening. Will be back, if possible, on Monday. Have left telephone number with clerk if you want me.

  B. WOOLRICH.

  ‘2nd Oct., 193—.’

  ‘And who the devil,’ said Tony, looking at Miss Pagan, ‘may Captain James be? And what does he want?’

  Miss Pagan shook her blonde head. ‘I’m afraid I can’t answer either question, Mr Benedik. I can tell you, though, that when Mr Woolrich writes that Captain James is unpleasant he is, if anything, understating the case. For one thing, he very roughly handled one of the clerks.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Tony. ‘Very roughly handled one of the clerks?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Benedik.’

  ‘Which one?’ said Tony.

  Miss Pagan permitted something very much like a smile to crease the corners of her severely lovely mouth.

  ‘Harris,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he did him any harm beyond pulling his ear.’

  Tony stared at her and saw the instantly repressed beginnings of the smile and began to smile himself. But the smile as he pondered turned into a frown.

  ‘If,’ he said, ‘Harris’s ear wants pulling, I think someone in Rynox ought to do it … Yes, I think I’d better see Captain James. What time have I got tomorrow morning, Miss Pagan?’

  Miss Pagan consulted her notebook. ‘Unless you have fixed anything else, Mr Benedik, I think from eleven to eleven-thirty tomorrow morning is free.’

  ‘Right,’ said Tony. ‘Ring up that number’—he tapped Woolrich’s note—‘and tell this ear-puller that I’ll see him at eleven-fifteen. And I hope,’ he said, ‘that he’ll try and pull mine. Life, Miss Pagan, is too soft and easy. Ear-pullers welco
me!’

  ‘Certainly, Mr Benedik …’ said Miss Pagan. ‘Have you anything to dictate?’

  Tony had, and began it.

  3

  ‘Have you ever,’ said Captain James, ‘seen this one?’ He put the red ball half an inch from the centre pocket, the white ball half an inch from the top pocket and Spot half an inch from the mouth of the bottom pocket. All three balls were in a dead straight line. Captain James chalked his cue with care. Captain James straddled his columnar legs and, without seeming to take particular trouble, played Spot. The compact of cue upon ball was hard but the spin was so great that Spot seemed to trickle stickily along the cloth. Just as its collision with red seemed inevitable, it curved outwards past red with a quarter of an inch to spare and rolled lazily on to pot white into the top pocket and follow itself.

  ‘Koo!’ said Mr Titchfield. ‘That’s a one!’

  ‘There’s a fellow,’ said Mr Bertram, ‘down at the Golden Bull does that any time.’

  ‘Ay’m sure Ay don’t know,’ said Mr Fawcett. ‘But Ay think that’s just too marvellous!’

  ‘BOY!’ roared Captain James, slamming his cue back into the rack, ‘BOY!’

  ‘You know,’ said Mr Bertram into the ear of Mr Titchfield, ‘what that means. Doncher?’

  ‘Blessed if I do, except he wants a drink.’

  ‘R!’ said Mr Bertram, ‘but who’s going to pay for it?’ He made this remark a little more loudly than he had intended.

  Captain James heard the remark. Captain James turned and, playfully, with the flat of his enormous hand, struck Mr Bertram what appeared, at least from the effort behind it, to be a pat upon the fourth of the buttons on Mr Bertram’s soup-stained waistcoat.

  ‘I,’ said Captain James, ‘am going to pay for it! And strangely enough, you lugworm, for yours—if you can drink it.’

  It seemed, indeed, very doubtful that Mr Bertram would be able to drink it. Mr Bertram was sitting upon the worn settee which has stood at the side of Croft’s billiard saloon for thirty-five years and looks it. Mr Bertram had one hand clasped to the pit of his stomach and the other to his forehead. Mr Bertram was coughing and gasping.

  ‘Oh, now!’ said Mr Fawcett. ‘Too marvellously brutal!’

  Captain James turned his small head so that the small eyes in the large face glared straight at Mr Fawcett. Mr Fawcett quailed in delicious horror.

  The door leading from the Saloon Bar swung open; crashed against the wall to make yet deeper the hole which its handle, over the last ten years, had worn in the plaster. Through this sudden aperture came Albert.

  ‘Did edywud call?’ said Albert.

  ‘For the love of God,’ said Captain James, ‘take this’—he held out a shilling—‘and go and buy yourself a handkerchief. But before you do that, take an order.’

  ‘Yessir,’ said Albert, ‘certeddly.’

  ‘Mother Siegel,’ said Captain James, clapping the nearly recovered Mr Bertram upon the back with such force that once again he began his coughing, ‘what’s yours?’

  Through his gasps, Mr Bertram got out a word.

  ‘And yours?’ Captain James’s eyes glanced towards Mr Titchfield.

  ‘Well … er … Very good of you I’m sure,’ said Mr Titchfield. ‘I think a nice creamy bass …’

  Captain James turned now to Mr Fawcett. ‘Mary,’ said Captain James, ‘what about a cup of cocoa?’

  ‘If Ay might,’ said Mr Fawcett, ‘join you in a crame de mong, it would be too marvellous!’

  ‘My God!’ said Captain James. ‘Albert!’

  ‘Yessir,’ said Albert, sniffing.

  ‘One double scotch, one guinness, one bass and a Starboard Light for Gwyneth.’

  ‘Wud large scodje, wud guiddess, wud bass, wud cream de menth … Yessir …’ Once more the door handle crashed into the wall and Albert was gone.

  ‘I am going,’ said Captain James, looking round upon his victims, ‘to buy you all such a lot of drink that you’ll all damn well get tight. I wouldn’t, mind you, do this if I could find any men to drink with. But as it is, there it is.’

  ‘You must,’ said Mr Bertram sourly—he was now leaning rather limply against the corner of the settee—‘have come into money.’

  The laughter of Captain James set the billiard lamps rocking.

  ‘I have not,’ said Captain James, ‘but I’m going to.’

  COMMENT THE SECOND

  CAPTAIN JAMES, so well accustomed to looking after Captain James, seems sure that life is to be easy for him. His certainty has, it appears, come to him after that most inconclusive interview with Mr Basil Woolrich.

  SEQUENCE THE THIRD

  3rd October 193— 11.30—.

  1

  CHARLES, who is small and has his torso completely divided by small brass buttons, opened the door of Tony’s outer office. Charles piped:

  ‘’E’s in the waitin’ room, Miss Pygan.’

  Miss Pagan turned her blonde, almost too perfect head. ‘Thank you, Charles,’ said Miss Pagan.

  From his table at the other side of the room Harris spoke. ‘Who’s that?’ he said.

  Miss Pagan twitched an impatient shoulder. ‘Captain James.’

  ‘Him!’ said Harris, and then again, ‘Him! Oh, is it!’ His tone for these five monosyllables told more than the words themselves. It told of what George Ferdinand Harris, Vice-Captain and Treasurer of the Pimlico Road Cyclists’ Club would like to do to Captain James if he, George Ferdinand Harris, could only get the chance.

  Miss Pagan closed the file upon which she had been working; swung round in her swivel chair; looked at George Ferdinand Harris with that beautiful and utterly impersonal stare which for the first six months of his acquaintance with it had almost reduced George Ferdinand Harris to gibbering idiocy, but to which George Ferdinand Harris was now accustomed.

  ‘Why don’t you,’ said Miss Pagan, ‘just drop in to the waiting room? You might have time …’

  But Harris once more was busy with ledger and pen and ink. The tips of his ears showed a dark purple, most unbecoming.

  Miss Pagan lifted the desk telephone at her side and spoke into it softly …

  At the other end of that telephone Tony said: ‘Have him sent along please.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Benedik.’ Miss Pagan hung up the telephone. Miss Pagan pressed a bell, and Charles came running. ‘Charles,’ said Miss Pagan, ‘will you take Captain James, please, along to Mr Benedik at once.’

  ‘Sure will,’ piped Charles, who was in the habit of listening to talking pictures. He paused at the door. ‘That is,’ he said, ‘if Mr ’Arris don’t want to.’ The door opened … and shut. Charles was no longer with them.

  Miss Pagan laughed; a silvery sound, deliberate, like everything about her. Harris muttered under his breath. Even the lobes of his ears were now that curious dull purple colour.

  Charles opened the door of Tony’s room. ‘Capting James, sir,’ said Charles.

  Tony had been standing by the window. He came forward as Captain James rolled into the room. He looked hard at Captain James. The small eyes of Captain James met, coolly, the hard grey stare.

  Captain James held out a hand. ‘Real pleased,’ said Captain James, ‘to make your acquaintance.’

  Tony did not see the hand. Tony said:

  ‘Sit down, will you?’

  ‘I might,’ said Captain James, and sat.

  The room was silent save for the subdued roar, hushed by height, of the traffic in New Bond Street.

  ‘Well,’ said Tony at last.

  ‘Well, well!’ said Captain James. ‘And that’s three holes in the ground … See here, Mr Benedik, am I to understand you’ve seen that partner of yours, what’s his name—Woolsack? Tall fellow, about your size, fair hair, bit fratefully Haw-haw?—You seen him since I saw him?’ Captain James crossed one short, thick column of a leg over the other. Captain James chewed ruminatively upon that mysterious object which always he seemed to carry in his left cheek. Captain James with his le
ft eye, which seemed smaller and more piglike than its fellow, sent a roving glance over the floor.

  ‘We don’t,’ said Tony, ‘keep them, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Captain James. ‘Whassat?’

  ‘Spittoons,’ said Tony. ‘If you’d like to move your chair nearer to the window, however …’

  Captain James smiled, showing those irregular fawn-coloured teeth. Not a nice smile. The small eyes glared, balefully almost, up at Tony’s.

  ‘Getting fresh?’ said Captain James.

  Tony shook his head. ‘Always am,’ he said. ‘Same like the daisies.’

  ‘What are we?’ said Captain James. ‘A cross talk turn?’

  Tony shrugged. He walked over from the window and sat, behind the big desk, facing his visitor. Clear grey eyes stared into blood-shot eyes of glazed and faded blue. Neither pair wavered.

  ‘What’s this?’ said Captain James, ‘Hypnotism?’ Again the craggy mouth split to show the brown, uneven teeth.

  ‘I understand from my partner,’ said Tony, ‘that you’ve got something of great importance to show me. Something that you want money for.’

  ‘Mr Woolsack,’ said Captain James, ‘seems to have got the right idea.’ He put one fur-backed, terrific hand to a pocket; brought it away bearing a soiled and greasy and crumpled envelope. ‘Just run your eye,’ said Captain James, ‘over that.’

  Tony stared at this stain upon the virgin whiteness of his blotting-pad; took at last from the envelope several sheets of irregularly folded, flimsy and greyish coloured paper. With this wad in his hand Tony looked at Captain James.

  Captain James was smiling, broadly this time. A repulsive spectacle.

  ‘You want me,’ said Tony, ‘to read this?’

  ‘The folks in this place,’ said Captain James, ‘certainly do seem to have the brains. That, my boy, is the idea.’

  Tony turned his chair so that the light from the window fell comfortably over his shoulder. He unfolded the sheets …

  There was silence in the room for five minutes; ten; twenty … At last Tony laid the papers, now neatly folded, face downwards upon his table. Again he looked at Captain James …