“Oh, just routine work and putting two and two together.”
But the truth was McDonald had taken a long shot in the dark, and no one knew it better than he did.
“Good God!” said Colonel Marton helplessly. “Good God! Who’d have thought it? Drask!…Good God!…”
“It’s a secret which has been very well kept for many years,” said the Master. “I hope that it may remain a secret.”
“I see no reason why it shouldn’t,” said McDonald.
A silence fell on them, while each man was busy with his thoughts. Then the Master said, looking at McDonald: “I should like you to tell me, when you were staying at Wellende lately I suppose you were really there in an official capacity?”
It was not a question McDonald wished to answer, but he didn’t much care about lying deliberately to an old bishop, so he grunted an affirmative, wondering what was coming.
“I thought as much, and when I got your telephone message I sent for Francis Temple. I can’t make out quite who is suspected of what, but I think he should tell you his tale.”
Chapter XXXI
Next morning rumours were flying about Cambridge, and tongues wagged fast and furious. Those who knew nothing talked most: those who knew little, a very little, said little; but the half-dozen who could really have provided some information were hardly seen and never heard.
One tale was that Professor Temple had murdered the Master. This, though repeated freely, did not gain much credence. What had really happened was, Temple had committed suicide, and Drask, the magnificent College porter, had died of a broken heart at the scandal that had come upon the College, and that if the Master would tell all he knew, some very horrid stuff would come out. Certain it was, however, that the police were in charge of Prince’s College.
“In charge” in this case meant that the great gate was shut and a uniformed policeman was standing in front of it. Temple had not been seen for several days, and nor, for the matter of that, had the Master. Those who were bold enough to go to the Lodge and ask for Miss Pinsent, were told that she was “not at home.” No information could be extracted from the large blue policeman at the gate; and those members of the College who were thought to be likely to have information and were asked for it severally and individually, replied that they had none to give. This, as it happened, was the simple truth, but it was not believed.
It was through an atmosphere of this kind that McDonald slipped quietly into the College and up to his friend’s rooms. He found Maryon making no pretence even at work; he looked as if he hadn’t slept. McDonald looked whimsically at his tired, anxious face, and said solemnly:
“If I understand you rightly, you have formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to—Dear Maryon, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained.”
“Blast you,” said Maryon, his face relaxing somewhat.
“What have you been judging from?” went on McDonald. “Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians, consult your own understanding, your own sense—”
“If you don’t stop that blether and tell me the truth, I’ll—I’ll…”
“If you think Temple killed his cousin, you’re wrong,” said McDonald, in a different tone of voice; “though I give you my word, twelve hours ago I thought it myself.”
“Thank God!” said Maryon, sitting down rather suddenly. “Thank God! Then what is wrong?”
“There’s much that is wrong, but not as bad as might well be. I say, old chap, put ‘Not at Home,’ or ‘Out,’ or whatever it is on your door; we don’t want to be interrupted.”
Maryon complied with the request, and then, like McDonald, began filling his pipe.
“There is one thing I would like to say first of all,” continued the detective. “I would like to express my sincere admiration of your unfaltering faith in Temple’s integrity. I felt a beast making you take me in that boat.”
“But, you see, I never believed he was drug-trafficking.”
“I know you didn’t, and you proved it by taking me.”
“I’ve had an awful time since,” said Maryon, leaning back in his chair. “When news came of Lord Wellende’s death, it came back to me what you said about a sudden death, and how you would know they were in the drug business if such a thing occurred, and then I had noticed something else at Wellende which worried me.”
“What was that?”
“It can’t matter telling you, and I should like it explained. Why, when Skipwith blurted out that you were a C.I.D. man, should Miss Pinsent have looked horrified for a moment, and then concealed it?”
“Oh, she did, did she?” said McDonald; “then she must have been in it too.”
“In what?” asked Maryon sharply.
“I’ll explain all if you have patience. I always found it hard to believe the Professor was a wrong ’un, but I was being forced by facts and circumstantial evidence into that belief, though always against my better judgment. We knew the drug was coming into Cambridge. We knew the Professor was handling more of it than he could buy legitimately. There had been one or two curious Dutch barges hanging about the coast of Suffolk, and the conduct of the Inspector of Coast-guards there was not above suspicion. When I met Lord Wellende, I knew he was straight. Indeed, so firmly did I believe in him, that even when I discovered that he and Dr. Heale between them had poisoned me, to get me out of the way, and sent me off with reputed scarlet fever—”
“They didn’t…I’ll never believe it!” interrupted Maryon.
“They did, though,” laughed McDonald. “Those two innocents did in an old hand like me! But something I happened to have seen up here in Prince’s College, put together with something I chanced to observe in Lord Wellende’s smoking-room the night I slept there, gave me a new line of conjecture…After all, if you think it was outrageous of me to suspect Temple, what do you think of Sir Boris Buckthorne, who was suspecting the aristocratic Miss Pinsent?”
“God bless my soul! Do you really mean that seriously?”
“I do indeed. It was always quite possible, though I didn’t think it myself. It isn’t that I would put it past her altogether,” added McDonald, who did not like Miss Pinsent, “but I just didn’t think it was her. Sir Boris angled for an Honorary Degree, then asked his old school friend to put him up, mentioning at the same time what a pleasure it would be to make his daughter’s acquaintance. So the good Master, all unsuspicious, tells his daughter she must come home and do the entertaining! When Lord Wellende died in his cousin’s rooms (from natural causes, as I haven’t a doubt now), I really did believe Temple had done him in. Then, just when I was wanting it most, a fresh tool came to hand, and I was able to go to your Master and tell him I was dissatisfied as to the cause of Lord Wellende’s death, and he—he’s a wise old bird—he saw the only course to take, and he used his influence with Temple and made him come down with the whole tale.”
“Look here, McDonald, are you trying to tell me that you have actually found the drug distributor in Cambridge?”
“Yes, I am, and it’s going to be a bit of a shock to you, I’m afraid.” A pause, then Maryon said in a curious little voice: “Are you trying to tell me it’s the Master?”
“Good God, man, no! It’s not quite as bad as that. It’s Drask, your Head Porter.”
There was a few minutes’ silence, then Maryon said quietly: “I suppose you’ve proved it beyond doubt?”
“Yes,” replied McDonald, soberly enough, “and the poor fellow has acknowledged it. He took his own life early this morning; hence the police in the Gateway.”
There was a long silence, then Maryon said: “Tell me, when you came to me first of all and said you suspected Temple, did you really?”
“Yes, in conjunction with Lord Wellende, and then, as I was saying before, after meeting and tal
king to his lordship, I discarded all idea of his being a drug-trafficker; but against that you must bear in mind that I was sure Lord Wellende was getting something secretly up to his house. That first night we dined there, do you remember? He took me into his own den, and I noticed he had an unusually good library on veterinary surgery.”
“Yes, I remember you went off with him. It was then that Skipwith let out to Miss Pinsent that you were a C.I.D. man.”
“Then, later on, you’ll remember they put up a bed for me in the study, when I was supposed to have scarlet fever?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, that night I spent some time in examining his lordship’s library. One or two of the books were very advanced, not the sort of thing an average Master of Hounds would be reading at all, and they all had been read. All the pages were cut and one or two were marked. That gave me to think. Then I heard what the household were pleased to call rats, under the floor. Lord Wellende said to me himself that he hoped I shouldn’t be disturbed by them, but they sounded rather heavy for rats, I thought. I looked round, and found one or two loose boards, and I pulled them up, and I punched a little plaster, and then I put out the lights and waited. I heard them but I could see nothing, so after a bit I put my head down and smelt; and then—as I’m a living sinner—it was foxes I smelt, not rats!…I put back the boards, and covered up any traces of what I had done, and thought. Curiously enough, one dark evening when I was walking through your College, I saw something fall out of a window. I concluded it was an animal of some kind, and went to see. There’d been a light fall of snow, and there, quite plain and unmistakable, was the line of a four-footed animal across the snow, the four pads all going in one straight line, and a fox is the only animal in England that runs like that.”
“I don’t understand,” interrupted Maryon.
“If you take a horse or a dog, you can see where its hind feet have come together, and its forefeet; but with a fox, ‘he tracks the line,’ don’t they call it, in sport?”
“I see.”
“Well, I asked at the gate whose window it was, and was told it was Professor Temple’s. Now here we have one cousin keeping foxes in his College rooms, and the other in his cellars—surely an unusual proceeding in either case! And a common interest between them—one being, as you may remember Mrs. Heale saying, the ‘best vet. in England,’ and the other the greatest toxicologist. With this in mind, I began to think Lord Wellende had a secret of his own with foxes, though why a secret at all, I could not make out. Then when Lord Wellende died in Temple’s rooms, I thought again it must be murder.”
McDonald knocked out his pipe, and while refilling it told Maryon about Mary’s interview at the police station, and their further interview with the Master of Prince’s.
“I don’t know but for the Master Temple would have spoken at all. He is very loyal to his cousin. It seems Temple has discovered a drug himself for which he claims all the power of X.Y.X. He is working on one special line—injections—and he is anxious to increase human strength with injections of this drug. He wanted to experiment first of all with one of the cat tribe, though for some obscure reason a cat itself would not do, and with extraordinary difficulty he persuaded Lord Wellende to let him have a fox. Then they went on and found that it not only made the foxes much stronger but increased their scent, and the two combined made hunting ten times better. Temple says all the time he had difficulty with Lord Wellende, who, he said, had old-fashioned ideas about foxes, and thought that if one was killed in any way except hunting it was little better than murder. I just can’t understand that.”
“I can,” said Maryon; “a fox is sacrosanct to plenty of people still.”
“However it was, Temple was glad of secrecy for his work, and Wellende was more so. They did their injecting in the cellars at Wellende, and when they moved the animals, did so in the wood barges. It was a load of this sort that Studde lighted on, and not the drug! No wonder the poor chap turned round and said nothing; it was no business of his. They were going to move a load of foxes just when we were there, and Wellende said I must be got rid of. He must have rather lost his head, for of course I shouldn’t have interfered; and then he came up to Cambridge to tell Temple he was fed up with the whole thing and was going to chuck it. Temple was furious, left him in an awful temper, and came back to find him dead. He’s terribly cut up about it.”
“And you say Temple has never had X.Y.X. at all?”
“No. He tells us he meant to get some, but has not had it yet. When Sir Boris was staying here, Miss Pinsent took him for a walk, and during it she called his attention to what she thought was a rocketing pheasant. Sir Boris saw that it was a pigeon, and a moment later they met Drask with a pigeon-basket under his arm. It was very evident Miss Pinsent knew nothing about it. Do you know anything of training carriers?”
“No, I don’t think I do.”
“They take them certain distances from their cote, increasing the distances, in specially made baskets, and as the bird is let out it goes up in a spiral, taking its bearings before making off. Sir Boris knew all this, and there before him lay a possible means of getting that stuff into Cambridge. Then, next day, he stepped on a piece of rock-salt in the street, just outside the gate of Prince’s; and that and crushed mortar is what they always keep on the floor of pigeon-cotes.”
“He had some luck,” said Maryon; “still, he had the knowledge to turn his luck to good account.”
“Yes,” agreed McDonald, “he had great luck. Well, since then we’ve had someone outside your gate watching. We’ve also had a keen ornithologist on a boat off the coast of Suffolk, and yesterday afternoon he wired to say he had seen a bird leave a barge he had been watching. Our watcher here thought she had seen a pigeon go into the cote above the gate, and heard a bell ring. We redoubled our watchers, and an hour later we had seen two go in. Then we searched the Head Porter’s lodge, and found the stuff.”
“You mean to say,” said Maryon slowly, “that Drask—Drask has been training and keeping carrier pigeons among the College pigeons?”
“That’s it; right under everyone’s nose”; and then McDonald told Maryon the story of Drask’s birth. “He may always have had a grudge against society as it is at present constituted, or, which I am more inclined to believe, it was in his blood to smuggle, and heredity is a very strong factor.”
After Colonel Marton and the detective had taken their departure from Prince’s Lodge, the Master went to look for his daughter. “Francis wishes to speak to you,” he said. “You will find him in my study. He is terribly cut up at having lost his temper with Ben. Be kind to him, my dear.”
When Prudence entered the room, Temple, who had been striding up and down, stopped; he pulled out a chair for her, and in his most awkward and abrupt manner said:
“I want you to hear the story of these doings from myself, if you will be so good as to listen.”
Prudence murmured something and sat down.
“You know that for some time past, the C.I.D. have been on the track of a certain venomous drug, which they had reason to believe was being brought in illicitly from the East Coast, and distributed here in Cambridge?”
“Yes,” said Prudence, “I know all about that.”
“And that they have been proved perfectly correct in their deductions,” went on the Professor; “and you know the nature of the private business that Ben and I were engaged in?”
Prudence nodded.
“The police got track of that, and thought, not unnaturally, that we were in the drug business.”
Prudence made as though to interrupt.
“No,” said Temple; “they were justified in their suspicions in the circumstances. What I want you to realize is, that I assume all responsibility for that concern. It was I who persuaded Ben into it; he was always rather dubious, but it made the hunting so much better that he consented to go on. For me
,” said Temple, turning and looking out of the window, “for me it was a means to a much greater end.”
He seemed lost in thought for a moment; and Prudence experienced the novel and not unwholesome sensation of feeling very small. Then he turned.
“Is there anything about it all that you don’t understand, and would like to ask me?”
“Yes—yes, there is,” said Prudence thoughtfully. “Have they found the distributing centre in Cambridge?”
“Ah,” replied Temple without a pause, “that you must ask Mr. McDonald; I can tell you nothing there.”
“Another thing I want to know which you can tell me: Is there a secret stair in that buttress which comes up past the library to the floor above? And were you using it that last night we were at Wellende?”
“Yes,” replied Temple, “it is there, and I was using it. We had some animals in the cellars that required attention.”
“You frightened me horribly that night,” said Prudence.
“I was afraid I had…dear.”
Then after a little pause Prudence said:
“What was it that made Ben sick after each visit of yours? It made Mary very anxious; she told me about it.”
“He was helping me with a certain injection, and until you get used to it, it always has that effect.” Temple smiled grimly as he went on. “It was that, I understand, combined with the knowledge of our old quarrel, that made the faithful Mary really think I was trying to do Ben in.”
“Yes,” said Prudence, “it was.”
Temple turned quickly.
“Did she come to you with her suspicions?” he asked sharply.
“Yes, she did.”
“When?”
“When I first went there in the autumn; and I had found out then that something queer was going on.”
“Did you believe her?” asked Temple carelessly.
“Not for a moment,” answered Prudence quietly, without looking at him.
A slow colour rose in the Professor’s face, and then after a pause, with a short laugh, he said:
The Incredible Crime Page 21
