“It would be a grand thing now in a Government department,” observed Mr. O’Rourke, “if one could keep the right hand from knowing what the left hand was doing.”
“Can you use both hands?”
“No, indeed. I’m the most right-handed person that ever was.”
“But you deal cards with your left hand,” said the observant Bateman. “I noticed the other night.”
“Oh, but that’s different entirely,” said Mr. O’Rourke easily.
A gong with a sombre note pealed out and everyone went upstairs to dress for dinner.
After dinner Sir Oswald and Lady Coote, Mr. Bateman and Mr. O’Rourke played bridge and Jimmy passed a flirtatious evening with Socks. The last words Jimmy heard as he retreated up the staircase that night were Sir Oswald saying to his wife:
“You’ll never make a bridge player, Maria.”
And her reply:
“I know, dear. So you always say. You owe Mr. O’Rourke another pound, Oswald. That’s right.”
It was some two hours later that Jimmy crept noiselessly (or so he hoped) down the stairs. He made one brief visit to the dining room and then found his way to Sir Oswald’s study. There, after listening intently for a minute or two, he set to work. Most of the drawers of the desk were locked, but a curiously shaped bit of wire in Jimmy’s hand soon saw to that. One by one the drawers yielded to his manipulations.
Drawer by drawer he sorted through methodically, being careful to replace everything in the same order. Once or twice he stopped to listen, fancying he heard some distant sound. But he remained undisturbed.
The last drawer was looked through. Jimmy now knew—or could have known had he been paying attention—many interesting details relating to steel; but he had found nothing of what he wanted—a reference to Herr Eberhard’s invention or anything that could give him a clue to the identity of the mysterious No 7. He had, perhaps, hardly hoped that he would. It was an off chance and he had taken it—but he had not expected much result—except by sheer luck.
He tested the drawers to make sure that he had relocked them securely. He knew Rupert Bateman’s powers of minute observation and glanced round the room to make sure that he had left no incriminating trace of his presence.
“That’s that,” he muttered to himself softly. “Nothing there. Well, perhaps I’ll have better luck tomorrow morning—if the girls only play up.”
He came out of the study, closing the door behind him and locking it. For a moment he thought he heard a sound quite near him, but decided he had been mistaken. He felt his way noiselessly along the great hall. Just enough light came from the high-vaulted windows to enable him to pick his way without stumbling into anything.
Again he heard a soft sound—he heard it quite certainly this time and without the possibility of making a mistake. He was not alone in the hall. Somebody else was there, moving as stealthily as he was. His heart beat suddenly very fast.
With a sudden spring he jumped to the electric switch and turned on the lights. The sudden glare made him blink—but he saw plainly enough. Not four feet away stood Rupert Bateman.
“My goodness, Pongo,” cried Jimmy, “you did give me a start. Slinking about like that in the dark.”
“I heard a noise,” explained Mr. Bateman severely. “I thought burglars had got in and I came down to see.”
Jimmy looked thoughtfully at Mr. Bateman’s rubbersoled feet.
“You think of everything, Pongo,” he said genially. “Even a lethal weapon.”
His eye rested on the bulge in the other’s pocket.
“It’s as well to be armed. One never knows whom one may meet.”
“I am glad you didn’t shoot,” said Jimmy. “I’m a bit tired of being shot at.”
“I might easily have done so,” said Mr. Bateman.
“It would be dead against the law if you did,” said Jimmy. “You’ve got to make quite sure the beggar’s housebreaking, you know, before you pot at him. You mustn’t jump to conclusions. Otherwise you’d have to explain why you shot a guest on a perfectly innocent errand like mine.”
“By the way what did you come down for?”
“I was hungry,” said Jimmy. “I rather fancied a dry biscuit.”
“There are some biscuits in a tin by your bed,” said Rupert Bateman.
He was staring at Jimmy very intently through his horn-rimmed spectacles.
“Ah! That’s where the staff work has gone wrong, old boy. There’s a tin there with “Biscuits for Starving Visitors” on it. But when the starving visitor opened it—nothing inside. So I just toddled down to the dining room.”
And with a sweet, ingenuous smile, Jimmy produced from his dressing gown pocket a handful of biscuits.
There was a moment’s pause.
“And now I think I’ll toddle back to bed,” said Jimmy. “Night-night, Pongo.”
With an affectation of nonchalance, he mounted the staircase. Rupert Bateman followed him. At the doorway of his room, Jimmy paused as if to say good night once more.
“It’s an extraordinary thing about these biscuits,” said Mr. Bateman. “Do you mind if I just—?”
“Certainly, laddie, look for yourself.”
Mr. Bateman strode across the room, opened the biscuit box and stared at its emptiness.
“Very remiss,” he murmured. “Well, good night.”
He withdrew. Jimmy sat on the edge of his bed listening for a minute.
“That was a narrow shave,” he murmured to himself. “Suspicious sort of chap, Pongo. Never seems to sleep. Nasty habit of his, prowling around with a revolver.”
He got up and opened one of the drawers of the dressing table. Beneath an assortment of ties lay a pile of biscuits.
“There’s nothing for it,” said Jimmy. “I shall have to eat the damned things. Ten to one, Pongo will come prowling round in the morning.”
With a sigh, he settled down to a meal of biscuits for which he had no inclination whatever.
Twenty-eight
SUSPICIONS
It was just on the appointed hour of twelve o’clock that Bundle and Loraine entered the park gates, having left the Hispano at an adjacent garage.
Lady Coote greeted the two girls with surprise, but distinct pleasure, and immediately pressed them to stay to lunch.
O’Rourke, who had been reclining in an immense armchair, began at once to talk with great animation to Loraine, who was listening with half an ear to Bundle’s highly technical explanation of the mechanical trouble which had affected the Hispano.
“And we said,” ended Bundle, “how marvellous that the brute should have broken down just here! Last time it happened was on a Sunday at a place called Little Speddlington under the Hill. And it lived up to its name, I can tell you.”
“That would be a grand name on the films,” remarked O’Rourke.
“Birthplace of the simple country maiden,” suggested Socks.
“I wonder now,” said Lady Coote, “where Mr. Thesiger is?”
“He’s in the billiard room, I think,” said Socks. “I’ll fetch him.”
She went off, but had hardly gone a minute when Rupert Bateman appeared upon the scene, with the harassed and serious air usual to him.
“Yes, Lady Coote? Thesiger said you were asking for me. How do you do, Lady Eileen—”
He broke off to greet the two girls, and Loraine immediately took the field.
“Oh, Mr. Bateman! I’ve been wanting to see you. Wasn’t it you who was telling me what to do for a dog when he is continually getting sore paws?”
The secretary shook his head.
“It must have been someone else, Miss Wade. Though, as a matter of fact, I do happen to know—”
“What a wonderful man you are,” interrupted Loraine. “You know about everything.”
“One should keep abreast of modern knowledge,” said Mr. Bateman seriously. “Now about your dog’s paws—”
Terence O’Rourke murmured sotto voce to Bundle:
> “ ’Tis a man like that writes all those little paragraphs in the weekly papers. ‘It is not generally known that to keep a brass fender uniformly bright, etc;’ ‘The dorper beetle is one of the most interesting characters in the insect world;’ ‘The marriage customs of the Fingalese Indian;’ and so on.”
“General information, in fact.”
“And what more horrible two words could you have?” said Mr. O’Rourke, and added piously: “Thank the heavens above I’m an educated man and know nothing whatever upon any subject at all.”
“I see you’ve got clock golf here,” said Bundle to Lady Coote.
“I’ll take you on it, Lady Eileen,” said O’Rourke.
“Let’s challenge those two,” said Bundle. “Loraine, Mr. O’Rourke and I want to take you and Mr. Bateman on at clock golf.”
“Do play, Mr. Bateman,” said Lady Coote, as the secretary showed a momentary hesitation. “I’m sure Sir Oswald doesn’t want you.”
The four went out on the lawn.
“Very cleverly managed, what?” whispered Bundle to Loraine. “Congratulations on our girlish tact.”
The round ended just before one o’clock, victory going to Bateman and Loraine.
“But I think you’ll agree with me, partner,” said Mr. O’Rourke, “that we played a more sporting game.”
He lagged a little behind with Bundle.
“Old Pongo’s a cautious player—and takes no risks. Now, with me it’s neck or nothing. And a fine motto through life, don’t you agree, Lady Eileen?”
“Hasn’t it ever landed you in trouble?” asked Bundle laughing.
“To be sure it has. Millions of times. But I’m still going strong. Sure, it’ll take the hangman’s noose to defeat Terence O’Rourke.”
Just then Jimmy Thesiger strolled round the corner of the house.
“Bundle, by all that’s wonderful!” he exclaimed.
“You’ve missed competing in the Autumn Meeting,” said O’Rourke.
“I’d gone for a stroll,” said Jimmy. “Where did these girls drop from?”
“We came on our flat feet,” said Bundle. “The Hispano let us down.”
And she narrated the circumstances of the breakdown.
Jimmy listened with sympathetic attention.
“Hard luck,” he vouchsafed. “If it’s going to take some time, I’ll run you back in my car after lunch.”
A gong sounded at that moment and they all went in. Bundle observed Jimmy covertly. She thought she had noticed an unusual note of exultance in his voice. She had the feeling that things had gone well.
After lunch they took a polite leave of Lady Coote, and Jimmy volunteered to run them down to the garage in his car. As soon as they had started the same words burst simultaneously from both girls’ lips:
“Well?”
Jimmy chose to be provoking.
“Well?”
“Oh, pretty hearty, thanks. Slight indigestion owing to overindulgence in dry biscuits.”
“But what has happened?”
“I tell you. Devotion to the cause made me eat too many dry biscuits. But did our hero flinch? No, he did not.”
“Oh, Jimmy,” said Loraine reproachfully, and he softened.
“What do you really want to know?”
“Oh, everything. Didn’t we do it well? I mean, the way we kept Pongo and Terence O’Rourke in play.”
“I congratulate you on the handling of Pongo. O’Rourke was probably a sitter—but Pongo is made of other stuff. There’s only one word for that lad—it was in the Sunday Newsbag crossword last week. Word of ten letters meaning everywhere at once. Ubiquitous. That described Pongo down to the ground. You can’t go anywhere without running into him—and the worst of it is you never hear him coming.”
“You think he’s dangerous?”
“Dangerous? Of course he’s not dangerous. Fancy Pongo being dangerous. He’s an ass. But, as I said just now, he’s an ubiquitous ass. He doesn’t even seem to need sleep like ordinary mortals. In fact, to put it bluntly, the fellow’s a damned nuisance.”
And, in a somewhat aggrieved manner, Jimmy described the events of the previous evening.
Bundle was not very sympathetic.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing anyway, mooching around here.”
“No 7,” said Jimmy crisply. “That’s what I’m after. No 7.”
“And you think you’ll find him in this house?”
“I thought I might find a clue.”
“And you didn’t?”
“Not last night—no.”
“But this morning,” said Loraine, breaking in suddenly. “Jimmy, you did find something this morning. I can see it by your face.”
“Well, I don’t know if it is anything. But during the course of my stroll—”
“Which stroll didn’t take you far from the house, I imagine.”
“Strangely enough, it didn’t. Round trip of the interior, we might call it. Well, as I say, I don’t know whether there’s anything in it or not. But I found this.”
With the celerity of a conjurer he produced a small bottle and tossed it over to the girls. It was half full of a white powder.
“What do you think it is?” asked Bundle.
“A white crystalline powder, that’s what it is,” said Jimmy. “And to any reader of detective fiction those words are both familiar and suggestive. Of course, if it turns out to be a new kind of patent tooth powder, I shall be chagrined and annoyed.”
“Where did you find it?” asked Bundle sharply.
“Ah!” said Jimmy, “that’s my secret.”
And from that point he would not budge in spite of cajolery and insult.
“Here we are at the garage,” he said. “Let’s hope the high-mettled Hispano has not been subjected to any indignities.”
The gentleman at the garage presented a bill for five shillings and made a few vague remarks about loose nuts. Bundle paid him with a sweet smile.
“It’s nice to know we all get money for nothing sometimes,” she murmured to Jimmy.
The three stood together in the road, silent for the moment as they each pondered the situation.
“I know,” said Bundle suddenly.
“Know what?”
“Something I meant to ask you—and nearly forgot. Do you remember that glove Superintendent Battle found—the half-burnt one?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you say that he tried it on your hand?”
“Yes—it was a shade big. That fits in with the idea of its being a big, hefty man who wore it.”
“That’s not at all what I’m bothering about. Never mind the size of it. George and Sir Oswald were both there too, weren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“He could have given it to either of them to fit on?”
“Yes, of course—”
“But he didn’t. He chose you. Jimmy, don’t you see what that means?”
Mr. Thesiger stared at her.
“I’m sorry, Bundle. Possibly the jolly old brain isn’t functioning as well as usual, but I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you see, Loraine?”
Loraine looked at her curiously, but shook her head.
“Does it mean anything in particular?”
“Of course it does. Don’t you see—Jimmy had his right hand in a sling.”
“By Jove, Bundle,” said Jimmy slowly. “It was rather odd now I come to think of it; it’s being a left-hand glove, I mean. Battle never said anything.”
“He wasn’t going to draw attention to it. By trying it on you it might pass without notice being drawn to it, and he talked about the size just to put everybody off. But surely it must mean that the man who shot at you held the pistol in his left hand.”
“So we’ve got to look for a left-handed man,” said Loraine thoughtfully.
“Yes, and I’ll tell you another thing. That was what Battle was doing looking through the golf clubs.
He was looking for a left-handed man’s.”
“By Jove,” said Jimmy suddenly.
“What is it?”
“Well, I don’t suppose there’s anything in it, but it’s rather curious.”
He retailed the conversation at tea the day before.
“So Sir Oswald Coote is ambidexterous?” said Bundle.
“Yes. And I remember now on that night at Chimneys—you know, the night Gerry Wade died—I was watching the bridge and thinking idly how awkwardly someone was dealing—and then realizing that it was because they were dealing with the left hand. Of course, it must have been Sir Oswald.”
They all three looked at each other. Loraine shook her head.
“A man like Sir Oswald Coote! It’s impossible. What could he have to gain by it?”
“It seems absurd,” said Jimmy. “And yet—”
“No 7 has his own ways of working,” quoted Bundle softly. “Supposing this is the way Sir Oswald has really made his fortune?”
“But why stage all that comedy at the Abbey when he’d had the formula at his own works?”
“There might be ways of explaining that,” said Loraine. “The same line of argument you used about Mr. O’Rourke. Suspicion had to be diverted from him and placed in another quarter.”
Bundle nodded eagerly.
“It all fits in. Suspicion is to fall on Bauer and the Countess. Who on earth would ever dream of suspecting Sir Oswald Coote?”
“I wonder if Battle does,” said Jimmy slowly.
Some chord of memory vibrated in Bundle’s mind. Superintendent Battle plucking an ivy leaf off the millionaire’s coat.
Had Battle suspected all the time?
Twenty-nine
SINGULAR BEHAVIOUR OF GEORGE LOMAX
“Mr. Lomax is here, my lord.”
Lord Caterham started violently, for, absorbed in the intricacies of what not to do with the left wrist, he had not heard the butler approach over the soft turf. He looked at Tredwell more in sorrow than in anger.
“I told you at breakfast, Tredwell, that I should be particularly engaged this morning.”
“Yes, my lord, but—”
“Go and tell Mr. Lomax that you have made a mistake, that I am out in the village, that I am laid up with the gout, or, if all else fails, that I am dead.”
The Seven Dials Mystery Page 19
