The Noose

by Philip MacDonald

  ‘Do you agree with your daughter, sir?’

  The bright eyes twinkled. ‘I’d like notice of that question, I think. Go on, Margaret.’

  Miss Brocklebank was not loth. ‘I heard about it from one of the servants. She’d been sent down to the village, early this morning, six-thirty, about some parcel expected off a train. She bicycled. She was just at the bottom of Pedlar’s Hill—there’s a nasty almost right-angled turn there—when a great green car, she says: “swep’ roun’ at a t’riffic speed and all but ’ad me”. But she’s a brightish sort of girl and in spite of the “t’riffic” speed she saw the driver. It was Lake, Captain Lake. He was alone. He was travelling very fast. He was heading London-wards. His luggage—it’s an open car and she could see—was piled up in the back. Not one or two bags but a huge collection …’ Miss Brocklebank paused—for effect and breath.

  ‘Fast,’ said Anthony. ‘Lot of kit. Heading for London. Six-thirty a.m.’ He smiled at Miss Brocklebank. ‘Pretty certain he’s going away. But nothing to prove he’s running.’

  Miss Brocklebank smiled a triumphant smile, again, bringing that soft and musical neigh from her father. She said:

  ‘But I’ve got something else to tell you. I was intrigued by this story …’

  ‘Intrigued!’ groaned her father.

  ‘Intrigued by this story, in view of last night,’ said Miss Brocklebank magnificently. ‘So I took matters into my own hands and I did a little telephoning. I rang up the Carter-Fawcett number—this was at about a quarter to ten, p’r’aps a bit earlier—and I was a Miss Gayley who wanted every so badly to speak, at once, to Captain Lake. I had a pleasant and refaned voice. The butler answered. He was sorry, but Captain Lake was not available. Miss Gayley persisted; it was very, very important. I was in the neighbourhood; would there be any chance of seeing Captain Lake a little later in the day if I were to motor over?… That did it. There would be no chance of seeing Captain Lake a little later in the day if I were to motor over, as Captain Lake had suddenly been called away … No. Very sorry; it was not known where Captain Lake had been called away to. There!’

  Miss Brocklebank ended. Miss Brocklebank waited anxiously. She was not disappointed.

  Anthony looked at her. ‘Watson couldn’t ’ve done that, he wouldn’t ’ve thought of it, and if he had he’d ’ve got the wrong number.’ He smiled at her. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said. ‘And I mean that.’

  Miss Brocklebank turned upon her father, now deep in talk with Lucia. Miss Brocklebank said:

  ‘Did you hear that, Daddy! I was right to come. Again Colonel Gethryn’s told me I’m too good to be a Watson. I’ll believe it soon. You ought to’ve had me on Intelligence with you, Daddy!’

  Anthony turned. To the baronet he said:

  ‘You on Intelligence during the War, sir?’

  Sir Richard nodded. His bright eyes gleamed. ‘And I am intelligent,’ he said. The eyes twinkled. ‘Strange.’

  ‘Home?’ said Anthony. ‘Or overseas? Or both … Hope I don’t seem inquisitive. But I had S.I. III for a bit.’

  ‘I know,’ Sir Richard nodded. ‘No. Matter of fact I was pretty nearly all the time in France. Well, I might say, behind the lines.’

  ‘Daddy!’ said Miss Brocklebank reproachfully, ‘you do fib!’

  Anthony looked at his watch. Sir Richard glanced at his daughter. Who took her cue, though with some reluctance.

  There were goodbyes. Sir Richard raised Lucia’s fingers to his lips. With Anthony, Miss Brocklebank shook hands fervently.

  ‘You will,’ she pleaded, ‘let me know about … about everything. Won’t you?’

  Anthony answered her. ‘I couldn’t,’ he said, ‘do otherwise. Even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to.’

  ‘And if,’ said Miss Brocklebank a moment or so later, her foot on the running-board of her father’s car, ‘there was anything I could do …’

  ‘Of course!’ Anthony smiled. ‘Ring you up at once!’

  ‘And come and see us!’ said Sir Richard out of the car’s window.

  Lucia watched the car out of sight. ‘Nice girl!’ she said.

  Anthony nodded. But his thoughts seemed elsewhere.

  ‘Daddy,’ said Lucia, ‘is a bit of a lady’s man. But a very good one.’

  Anthony grunted. He said absently:

  ‘Old enough to know better.’

  Lucia shook her head. ‘He’s not the kind that age affects. He’d never be gaga. He’ll remain attractive till they bury him.’

  ‘Attractive?’ said Anthony. ‘Well … yes. I suppose I can see it.’

  Lucia nodded. ‘It’s there. With that kind—I admit they’re rare—their age simply doesn’t count with women … What’re you going to do now, dear?’

  They went back into the house.

  VII

  It was half-past twelve when Dyson rang up. Anthony answered the ring. To his ear there came a harsh, grating voice.

  ‘Dyson here.’

  ‘Gethryn,’ said Anthony.

  ‘Any more names for the list?’ said the voice.

  ‘One,’ said Anthony, and gave it. ‘How’re you getting on?’

  ‘Quick,’ said the voice. ‘G’bye.’ There was the click of a replaced receiver.

  Anthony went back to the Smoking Room. He was restless. He smoked pipe after pipe. His tongue began to smart. He smoked cigarettes. He sat down. He stood up. He wandered about the room. His every movement was aimless and hesitant. But his mind worked. It raced. His eyes were blank, their greenness almost startling. But behind their blankness was a furious activity. He was alone. But he spoke once aloud. He came to a halt in one of his wanderings. He said:

  ‘Blast it! It might be wrong.’ The door opened. Lucia came in. He did not hear her. ‘So easily might be wrong!’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said his wife softly.

  He grunted. ‘Theory,’ he said.

  She left him to his silence. She sat mute and relaxed in a chair near the fire. Behind her he went on with that aimless prowling.

  And then, at one-fifteen, came Pike.

  ‘He’s gone, sir,’ said Pike. His voice was hard.

  Anthony nodded. ‘I know. Why?’

  Pike shrugged.

  ‘Where?’ said Anthony.

  Pike’s jaw was out-thrust. ‘Gave out it was London. I got that much. But that probably means it’s anywhere but. Unless he’s a doubler. How did you know he’d gone, sir?’

  ‘People I met last night. They were here just now. Servant had seen him in a car. What’s your full tale?’

  Pike told it. He had gone to the house called Weydings. He had been humble. He had called at the servants’ quarters. He was inquiring for a friend of his—a valet whom he believed was staying in this house with his master. He was disappointed, none knew the valet’s name, nor the master’s. But they were hospitable. Mr Pierce was asked in. Mr Pierce—it says much for Pike’s powers when he set himself to use them—was refreshed. And Mr Pierce, by that inevitably, crushingly tedious and roundabout way which is necessary, had learnt quite a lot about Captain A. D. Featherstone Lake. But nothing (Pike was dismal) worth anything, you might say. He’d got notes of all that stuff. Sat in the car a mile from Weydings (‘My Winkey! That’s a beautiful place, sir!’) and jotted ’em down in his notebook while memory was green. No; so far as he could find out, no telegram or telephone message had come for Captain Lake. He had just left, talking of urgent business. He had tipped all right, but then he always did. Those servants whom, owing to the earliness of his departure, he had not seen he had provided for through their fellows. No; it was impossible to find out where Captain Lake had spent such of the night as came between the return from the dance and this early departure. Captain Lake might’ve been in his own bed, or in someone else’s—or in no bed at all. Mr Pierce’s informant had been a footman, who had said, winking: ‘It don’t do for us to get curious of a night in this house!’ Captain Lake had certainly come back after the dance; but whether he’d
gone out again … well, he might and again he mightn’t …

  Anthony interrupted. ‘How did you camouflage?’

  Pike smiled, a dry, hard smile. ‘I’d been hearing gossip, sir. Something about a girl in one of the villages. Little birds ’d told me Captain Lake was out and about last night.’

  Anthony nodded. ‘And what you’ve told’s about all you’ve got?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Pike’s tone was despondent. ‘That’s all … Except for a queer thing that happened after I’d left the place. I went out by the way I’d come. Walking, because I’d left the car some distance off—not in the main road, that’s a good mile from the house, but tucked away on the road through the park, well out of sight. When I got back to it there was still no one about and I drove off for the gates—that’s the East Lodge entrance. Just as I got up to the gates and pulled up for a chap to open ’em, there was the blazes an’ all of a hooting behind me and along comes a great limousine—biggest car I’ve ever set eyes on. It drew up, as the keeper’d just begun to open the gates, right beside me. There was a chauffeur in it, and a lady. Very handsome she was, if you like that sort of handsome. I don’t myself …’

  ‘Dark?’ said Anthony. ‘Tall?’

  ‘Both, sir. ’Least she seemed tall as she was sitting … Well, sir, there were the two cars side by side. There wasn’t more’n a foot between the wings; the great thing towered above Flood’s car like a battleship. I looked up, casual-like, and saw the lady was looking down at me. Most intent, she was, sir. I said to m’self, “you’ll know me again”, and looked the other way. And then the gates ’re open and I slip into gear and pop out. I swung in to the road and eased up. It’s narrow just there and I made sure the big car’d want to pass. I slowed right down, but nothing happened. I stopped and looked round. The big car was still inside the gates. The lady’d got out and was talking to the lodge-keeper. They both kept looking out into the road at me. I got out, and fiddled about under the bonnet … And presently I heard the gates shut, and by Cripes, when I looked up—very casual—there’s the car goin’ back towards the house. And it was going, too. Well over fifty, I’d say … So I moved on, stopped again, and wrote up my notes, and then came back here.’

  Anthony rubbed at his jaw. ‘Odd!’ he said.

  Pike brightened. ‘That’s what I thought, sir. Nothing queer, o’course, if you look at it one way …’

  ‘The other view,’ said Anthony, ‘is always better.’ He fell silent a moment. After a while he said: ‘And what it all means is that we’re Lakeless, and don’t know where to find him.’

  ‘We could try, sir,’ Pike was urgent. ‘Not so easy to hide yourself when you’re wealthy and a polo-player and all that. If it was an official job now, we’d know where he was before he did himself.’

  Anthony smiled; a brief smile which vanished before it had properly shown itself. He said:

  ‘But it isn’t an official job. And we’ve not got anything, yet, to make it so. But I might have a word with the Chief Constable.’ He dropped into a chair and began, with an abstract air, to fill his pipe.

  Pike looked at him: the eyes of Pike were intent and curious. It did not seem to Pike that Colonel Gethryn was quite himself. Colonel Gethryn seemed … tired, was it? Or dispirited? Or … no, Colonel Gethryn could not, possibly, he bored. But the longer one knew him, the harder it seemed to be to diagnose his moods; sometimes even his words. Had it not been, thought Pike, for a certain indefinable … how should he put it?… H.C.F., he might have thought, taking Colonel Gethryn’s demeanour in the Lines-Bower case as compared with his demeanour from the very beginning of this present business, that here was not Colonel Gethryn at all, but some other man of his voice and seeming and habits.

  But Pike trusted. He stuck out that long jaw a little further and tried to project himself into Colonel Gethryn’s mind. He said:

  ‘Try Colonel Ravenscourt, sir?… That’s an idea. If he didn’t get … er … well, touchy, as you might say. He’s an … he’s got the reputation of being an opinionated gentleman.’

  Anthony put the match to his loaded pipe. ‘I’ve won him, Pike.’ He spoke through a little cloud of silvery blue. ‘He’s on our side now.’

  Pike smiled. But his small brown eyes were anxious behind the smile: he was still endeavouring, without success, to get into Colonel Gethryn’s mind and mood.

  He became aware, quite suddenly, and with something of a shock, that Colonel Gethryn’s gaze was fixed upon him through the film of smoke from Colonel Gethryn’s pipe.

  And Anthony smiled. He said:

  ‘It’s no good, Pike. Not a bit of good! I don’t know where I am myself. That’s honest. I’ve either got a long way or nowhere at all … It’s different, this business. Most of the other jobs I’ve done in this line were like games: in a way, anyhow. I mean, they didn’t affect me very closely, except in a spirit of “damn-it-I-will-do-this-puzzle-and-win-the-big-balloon”. But this one … well, there’s that woman upstairs. And in that prison there’s a clean, decent, bewildered first-class man waiting to have his neck snapped by a rope for something he didn’t do! …’ He got to his feet with a sort of savage jerking of his whole body and began to pace the room.

  Five strides took him from fireplace to door; five strides from door to fireplace. His pipe-smoke hung about his head like an erratic nimbus. He said, suddenly, midway between the two poles of his walking:

  ‘And here am I, sitting on my stern. With the beginnings of a theory and a whole higgler’s parcel of uncoordinated facts. What are we to do if my theory’s tripe and the fact won’t ever coordinate? What am I to do?’ His voice was harsh with self-accusation. His long, lean length seemed to tower inches above its normally great height. His keen face seemed dark with savage thought. And, for once, the lids were lifted fully away from the strange eyes, which blazed now with a fire which changed their greenness almost to yellow.

  Pike was dumb. But his heart bounded. This, although he had not seen it before, was patently a side of the Colonel Gethryn whom he knew.

  Lucia’s voice came suddenly from the chair before the fire. It said softly:

  ‘You’re not fair, dear. Not to yourself, I mean. Look! We came down here—only a few hours ago really—knowing nothing, expecting nothing. And there you are, with a theory in your head and all these facts you talk about. You ought to be glad. And proud of yourself and Mr Pike and the others.’

  Anthony took up his pacing again. He said:

  ‘You’re heartening. And you’re not exactly wrong. But it’s time that’s worrying me. Time!’

  He broke off; stood looking at the door. In the silence came the repetition of the double knock which had interrupted his speech and movement.

  In answer to his call there came that understudy of Annie who now lay up in her small room, feeling every now and then the tender fingers at a bruised throat.

  ‘Pleezir!’ said the understudy. ‘There’s a lady. Outzide. Innacarzir.’ She was very ruddy of cheek, and her speech and manner were flustered out of the common.

  Anthony’s glance went to the window. But the car was not within this field of sight. He said:

  ‘All right. Coming. What name?’

  The crimson cheeks went pale and then flushed again. The girl’s breath laboured. She was much excited. She gasped:

  ‘Pleezir, it’s Mrs Garter-Foorsit, sir.’

  Anthony’s glance met Pike’s. Lucia rose and sauntered, with a quite admirable seeming of casualness, to a window.

  Anthony nodded dismissal. The door closed behind Annie’s understudy. There came a low whistle from Pike’s square mouth. Anthony walked slowly from the room and into the hall. The porch door stood open, and as he went towards it he could see some part of the great car which Pike had said was like a battleship.

  He pushed the porch door fully open and went out into the hard, bright sunlight. His breath made small and instant clouds upon the frosty air. By the limousine’s door stood a chauffeur in a dark-green livery. Thr
ough the window of the car there showed a dark and fierce and lovely profile framed in the black and white of small velvet hat and vast collar of some costly fur.

  At that window, which the chauffeur—an automaton of more than human good-looks—lowered at his coming, Anthony bowed. There was no bow in return; but the profile became a full-face view. A harsh yet somehow pleasing voice came from it. It said, with no pretence at civility:

  ‘We met last night, so we can cut the cackle.’ Thin black brows met over flashing eyes. ‘I want to know,’ said the voice, ‘what the hell you mean by sending your filthy spies to nose about my house.’

  Anthony was suitably astonished. ‘My filthy spies? Nose about your house?’

  Rage broke through and distorted the white mask. The face was beautiful still, but yet not good to look upon. A different voice came from its twitching lips. It said, thickness marring it yet not slurring its words:

  ‘Cut that out! Tell me what you think you’re doing—sending your damned spies!’

  ‘Spies?’ Anthony was all bewilderment still.

  A hand in a glove whose beauty was fit setting for the hand’s beauty came up. It reached through the window. It pointed a finger which trembled at the white, low bulk of the inn.

  ‘Yes, spies!’ she said. ‘The man’s in there. Now!’ In three short sentences she described Pike. A cruel description, untrue in adornment, excellent in essential; a description illuminated by three words in particular, seldom heard even in these times, from a woman’s lips. ‘What,’ she said at the end, ‘d’you mean by sending him? Damn you, how dare you!’

  ‘A man,’ said Anthony, ‘who is staying in this inn, where I too am staying, chooses to visit the servants’ quarters of your house. What’s that to do with me, madam?’ His tone was bland, his speech slow. He waited for what these irritants would bring.

  ‘To do with you!’ Atop of the words came a sudden flurry within the car, and gloved fingers fumbled at the handle. Anthony stood back. The chauffeur came out of nowhere, and his gauntletted hand swung the door wide and held it.

  She came out of the car with a rush which yet did not cost her dignity. The chauffeur vanished again. She came close to Anthony, very close. Almost the great white collar of the beautiful coat brushed against him. She stood straight and tall and trembling with a passionate rage. She said, very low: