He knocked at Freddie’s door and walked in. Mr. Usher was brushing his teeth. “Even though we are cluttered up in a lousy electrified prison by a nasty little maniac,” said Freddie through a great deal of lather, “there’s no sense in allowing one’s pyorrhoea to get away with it, is there? What are you after?”
“A few cartridges, please. I brought the old gun, as you told me, but I hadn’t any ammunition. And nothing improves a gun so much as ammunition. Thanks, that’s enough. At least, I hope so.”
“Who’s the victim?”
“Just anyone. I don’t feel at all particular at the moment.”
“Can I be of any assistance?”
“No, thanks. Except by keeping out of the way.”
“Thanks very much.”
“You don’t mind if I ruin the engine of your car?”
“Why on earth—?”
“I’m going to do a spot of plug-removing. I’d better do yours as well as Carson’s. I know you wouldn’t like him to go off in your nice clean Rolls. Good night.”
And Jim opened the door and stepped out once again into the corridor. He started to walk to his own room, when the sound of voices from the staircase made him stop. Opposite the door of Freddie Usher’s room was one of Thrackley’s immaculate and up-to-date bathrooms. He stepped in quickly, closed the door, and sat on the floor with his ear to the keyhole. The owners of the voices were on the landing now. The other two members of the Carson beauty chorus—Kenrick and Adams. He heard a door being quietly locked. “That’s ’im, then,” said Kenrick. A few more steps along the corridor and another key turned in another lock. “And little Freddie—that’s the lot, isn’t it?” said the unpleasant baritone of Adams. Jim waited for nearly five minutes after the two pairs of footsteps had gone downstairs again, then stepped out into the corridor. He tried his own door. Locked! Hell!… the cartridges in his pocket were of no great use now. He walked to Freddie’s room and tried the handle of his door. Equally locked. There was this to his advantage, anyway—that Carson and Co. now thought that the entire house-party of Thrackley was safely under lock and key, whereas one member was very much out and about, even with a useless pocket of ammunition and no gun. He knocked lightly on Freddie’s door. “Come in,” said Freddie.
“Sorry, I can’t. You’ve been locked in, old boy. So have I, but I wasn’t in the room when they locked it. Just go to bed like a good fellow, and I’ll tell you all the news in the morning.”
“What about the gun?”
“Have to do without it. Unless you can get yours below the bottom of the door. Have a shot.”
But Mr. Usher’s door was one of those sensible affairs which refuse to allow the slightest draught to come sweeping in below the bottom rail, and the tip of the revolver’s barrel was all that could be wedged through the narrow space. “Hell!” said Jim.
“Quite,” said Freddie from the other side. “Hell!”
“Well, good night, Freddie… sweet dreams.”
When Jim reached the foot of the staircase he was relieved to find two things. The lights in the hall had been left on, and the front door of the house had not been bolted and barred in its usual secure fashion for the night. Mercifully so, he thought; for there seemed no other way of reaching the garage than through the front door of Thrackley. He walked out into the garden, keeping on the grass borders and avoiding any steps on the gravel drive which might give him away. The night was cloudy and windy; there was an incessant swaying and swishing and creaking in the pine-trees all around him. He reached the garage, took a look round, and walked towards the small door at the end of the building. Since he had no keys, there would have to be another lock broken to-night. The thing was becoming quite an epidemic at Thrackley. This was a small, delicate affair, though; one or two good heaves from the shoulder ought to do the trick, provided that they did not attract the attention of anyone inside the house. He gave the first of the one or two heaves. The door gave without the slightest argument and he careered wildly through and into the darkness of the garage, coming to a sudden stop by crashing into the bonnet of Edwin Carson’s Lagonda. Splendid… apart from the bump on his forehead where he had met the Lagonda. The little door must have been unlocked all the time. So far, at any rate, the gods were on the side of the righteous.
He searched up the wall to his left for the electric light switch. Last time he had found that switch he had found also a very unpleasant surprise… he wondered if the limp body of Burroughs, the chauffeur, would still be sprawling across the car’s bonnet… or had Edwin Carson already disposed of that little reminder of his tenancy of Thrackley? He found the switch eventually and turned it on. And another surprise, almost as unpleasant, met his eyes in the glare of the electric light.
He was not alone in the garage. Far from it. Right at his feet, to the side of the Lagonda’s running-board, lay the still figure of Burroughs. And sitting quietly in the driving-seat of the Lagonda was Edwin Carson’s accomplished cook-general, Mr. Adams. Mr. Adams sat quite still at the steering-wheel of the car. He looked as though he might easily drop off to sleep at any moment. But in his right hand he gripped a revolver. And the barrel of that revolver was pointed exactly at that part of Jim’s anatomy where up to the present moment his heart had always beaten with a fine regularity.
“What the hell do you want?” said Adams.
Jim took another look round the garage. He saw that there was not much point in answering Adams’s question. Part of what he had come to the garage to do was already done: the sparking-plugs and a good deal more of the innards of Freddie Usher’s Rolls-Royce lay in disorder on the cement floor. And the possibilities of carrying out the rest of his little de-plugging plan seemed rather remote with Adams and the revolver sitting so snugly in the Lagonda. No… a graceful exit was what was called for at the moment, he decided. If such a thing were possible under the circumstances. He backed gingerly to the little door of the garage.
“Come on—what’s the game, eh?” said Adams.
Still Jim did not answer. Try as he did, he could think of no suitable reply to the persistent queries of friend Adams. And then friend Adams made his big mistake of the evening. He was determined to get something out of this ruddy man, Henderson, and equally determined not to let the ruddy man, Henderson, out of the garage until he had finished with him. He opened the door of the Lagonda and stepped out. As he did so, things began to happen to Mr. Adams with a dreadful suddenness. The first and most important of these things was that what seemed an indecently long leg shot out towards him with the speed of a greyhound who has yet to discover that an electric hare is not at all good for the digestion. For one horrible second Jim thought that his leg had been a few inches inadequate; but the revolver shot out of Adams’s hand, crashed against the corrugated iron roof of the garage, and fell on the floor at the back of the building. And before it had fallen Jim had followed up his leg-theory work with a wholesale plunge at friend Adams. For a moment the garage seemed to be filled entirely with feet, arms and legs all in an advanced state of St. Vitus’s dance. Then Adams lost his balance, and the two men crashed to the floor of the garage. As they rolled on the floor Jim realized that they were fighting actually on top of the dead body of Burroughs’. For a split second his cheek touched the cold back of one of the chauffeur’s hands. It was not a pleasant sensation. The man Adams was small, but wiry, and (so it seemed to Jim) specially oiled for the occasion to make him ten times more elusive than the most slippery eel. He wrenched himself out of Jim’s grip, squirmed between his legs, had himself raised on his knees before Jim could turn round to get hold of him again. Only a second passed before Jim was standing upright and ready to perform another Rugby tackle. But in that second he saw that Adams had managed to get a large and unpleasant-looking spanner into his right hand, and had it raised above his head in what seemed to Jim a very determined way. He jerked himself to one side as the spanner crashed down, grazin
g his right shoulder and arm. And at that Jim saw red. He had kept himself admirably under control, he told himself, during all his weekend at Thrackley, and now the time seemed exactly ripe for letting someone know that he possessed such a thing as a straight left. The straight left flashed out. His fist landed exactly on Adams’s jaw. The crack which it made when it landed was by far the most satisfying sound Jim had heard since he arrived at Thrackley. Adams could not have thought it so. He gave an unhappy little groan, his knees buckled up under him, and he fell—spanner and all—on to the floor beside the dead body of Burroughs. His head bounced smartly on the running-board of the Lagonda as he fell, and a steady trickle of blood oozed out from the gash in the side of his scalp. Jim felt his own hand and attempted to waggle his fingers. He realized with a further sense of satisfaction that at least two of his fingers were broken. He might not have done much good towards stopping Edwin Carson’s exit, but he felt a great deal more contented with life than he had done during the past twenty-four hours. Now for Mary… He picked his way over the bodies of the two men on the floor and crossed to pick up the revolver which he had kicked from Adams’s hand. It seemed exactly the sort of thing that might come in very useful on a night like this. He was just stooping to pick it up when the little door of the garage opened and the hard, unpleasant voice of Edwin Carson rapped out the two words: “Don’t move!”
For a moment Jim stayed absolutely still in his half-stooping position. Then, disobeying Carson’s order, he looked back over his shoulder at the latest arrival in the garage. It was evident that Carson was in no playful mood at the moment. For the second time within a quarter of an hour Jim experienced the unenviable position of having a magnificent view down the barrel of a revolver. He noticed that Edwin Carson wore a heavy overcoat, a scarf and a cap pulled well down on to his thick spectacles. Cue for exit of principal character, apparently. He wished devoutly he had followed the instructions in Mary’s note, “Don’t do anything”… and at that moment it looked as though he had done, and probably undone, everything he possibly could.
“Stand up straight.”
Jim stood up and turned to face Carson. He found himself noticing that Edwin Carson was sweating while he himself was cold—exceedingly cold.
“You’ve been a bit of a damned nuisance to me, Henderson,” said Carson slowly. “I suppose I was a fool to bring you down here. If it was anyone else but you who was standing there just now I’d pull this trigger and put a bullet in their brain. I’m going to pull the trigger, anyway… but seeing it’s you, that’s all you’re getting…”
Jim had a confused impression of a surprisingly quiet report, a sudden shoot of flame, a stinging pain somewhere in his left leg. He would have fallen had he not gripped the edge of the bench which ran along the back wall of the garage. After which he did not see things too clearly. But he realized the astonishing fact that Edwin Carson had crossed over to him, had lifted him bodily on to his back with an ease which was amazing for so little a man, had carried him out of the garage and was now labouring with him through the garden and into the house. With each uncomfortable jolt Jim’s brain became, if anything, a little more foggy… yet he knew that he was being taken up the wide staircase of Thrackley, along the corridor which led to his bedroom, that the man who was carrying him was opening his bedroom door, that he was inside the room now and had been laid more or less carefully upon his bed. The pain in his left leg twitched damnably. He tried to raise himself on the bed… he had a faint recollection of Edwin Carson standing at the door and saying: “Now, I don’t think you’ll be any further trouble. Good-bye.” And an even fainter recollection of the key turning in the keyhole after Edwin Carson had left the room.
It seemed to Jim that he lay without moving for hours after the door closed. Actually it was less than ten minutes. He got up slowly and put his leg down gingerly on the carpet. The pain shot through the leg with the renewed vigour of a rugger team after the half-time lemons, but he managed to limp across the room to the dressing-table. He took a long drink of cold water, filled the wash-basin with a further supply of the same liquid and plunged his head into it. He came up, gurgling and short of breath, but with his brain considerably cleared. He stood and listened for a minute in silence. Had Carson made his getaway while he was lying on his bed? He crossed the room to the windows and listened again.
Behind those trees down there, if his geography had not deserted him at this crucial moment, lay the garage and the block of small outside building beside it. He strained his ears for what seemed an unending length of time without hearing anything more important than the scratching of an itinerant strand of ivy against one of the panes of his window. And then… a nasty, scraping noise, made much nastier and much more scraping because whatever was the cause of the noise was being done slowly and stealthily and in an effort to make as little disturbance as possible. Diagnose that nasty, scraping noise, thought Jim, and what have you? And the only answer to that was that the heavy swing doors of the garage were being heaved open. A very obstinate, annoying set of doors to open, too. It looked as though the principal character was still on the stage.
And in another five minutes a further sound added itself to the swishing of the pine-trees and the scratching of the errant piece of ivy. A low, rich purr… that sort of purr which is in itself one of the best possible advertisements for the very powerful and very expensive variety of car which responds to the slightest touch of the self-starter at any hour of the day or night. Jim waited while the purr continued… a little louder, then a slight pause, then louder again, then back to the first steady note. The trees, though they resembled most Society débutantes in that they were as dense as they were beautiful, might as well not have been planted in their position as far as Jim was concerned. He could see the whole of the manoeuvres through listening to those expensively sounding notes of the long navy-blue saloon car in the garage… the slow backing out between the garage doors, the little run in reverse up the slope to the left of the garage entrance, the changing of gear and then the gradual speeding up of the car as she ran down the drive. In thirty seconds now it would come into view where there was a gap in the trees.
Jim watched it with difficulty as it slid down the drive to the big iron gates. One person alone in it—Edwin Carson, the host of the house-party—and in the back of the car a piled-up mass of cases was just recognizable. Lady Stone’s choker necklace… Raoul’s turquoises… heaven knows how much more precious cargo… all somewhere in the back of that silently moving car. And Edwin Carson making his getaway, calmly and collectedly, just as he had had the effrontery to tell them. Hell!…
The car was within a few feet of the gates now. It stopped, and Edwin Carson got out from the driving-seat. He looked around him, then up at the house… Jim drew back behind the mullion between the two windows… and then, apparently satisfied, the little man walked to the big iron gates to open them and leave his guests and his house to look after themselves.
Even from his viewpoint, where he could see everything in the opening in the trees, Jim hardly realized what happened to Edwin Carson in that next minute. He saw him carefully remove the white gloves he was wearing, place his hands on the heavy upright bars of the gates in an effort to pull them open. And then the back of Edwin Carson twitched suddenly, his arms straightened out like piston-rods, his whole body squirmed in convulsions. He dropped on the gravel path at the foot of the big gates… one hand still clung to the iron bar which it had gripped. He lay quite still.
Jim stood at the window for fully a quarter of an hour before he could take his eyes from the still, cramped figure. Carson’s face was turned towards the house… Jim could just make out the glint of his spectacles in the glare of the car’s headlights. Something had happened to the little man’s mouth… something unpleasant…
The low purr of the Lagonda went steadily on.
XXIV
Mary sat in the darkness of the cellar and stared at wher
e she imagined Jacobson, the butler, to be standing. Neither of them had spoken for some time. The light of Mary’s torch had gradually weakened and she had switched it off at last in case some light on the subject might be needed later on. But without its beam the cellar seemed a great deal darker than anything she had ever known before, and the only bit of furniture left in it—the big oak desk pushed into the far corner—was not the most comfortable thing to sit on for any length of time. She gripped the revolver which she had quietly annexed from Jacobson while he was busy with the switch at the side of the desk. It made her feel a little more comfortable—but not much. She thought… if Jim or somebody doesn’t come down that lift in the next ten minutes I’m going to start screaming… as if I hadn’t had quite enough lying still in the dark already this evening… wonder if Edwin Carson’s tried to get out through the big gates yet… suppose Jim tried to stop him… wish Jacobson would move and let me know he’s still there… can’t stand this silence and the dark much longer… another minute and I’ll switch on this torch just to get my nerve back… come on, Jim… for God’s sake, come on…
Weekend at Thrackley Page 18
