“Thanks, Clara lass. You can trust me. Ah’ll see you come to no harm.”
“Ah know that, cousin Will. You’re a proper caution! What are you up-to again? Ah thought you’d finished snoopin’ thirty years since.”
“Them that asks no questions, gets told no lies, lass. Be good.”
“Be good, cousin Will, and take care o’ yourself.”
On his way to the police-station, Entwistle called at the chemist’s mentioned on the bottle, and obtained the formula of the sleeping-tablets. Barbiturate group and tallying with that found in the rum bottle.
“Well. That’s my share,” said the Emeritus Inspector. “And ah hope it hangs him.”
“We’re very grateful indeed, Inspector, for your help. This is an invaluable contribution. In fact, this is going to finish Sir Caleb, I’m thinking.”
Littlejohn nodded. “We’d better be seeing that gentleman and ask him a few questions again, I think…”
“And ah’ll be gettin’ along home,” said Entwistle. “Ah’ve a lot to do in th’ hen-pen. This cold weather keeps ’em indoors, and plays Old Harry with their layin’. Let me know what happens, won’t you?”
“We certainly will, Inspector, and again very many thanks. We’re going your way to the foundry. We’d better call right away on Sir Caleb, so we’ll see you that far,” said Haworth, slipping-on his great-coat. They bundled-up the aged one in his scarves and cap and coat again, and turned-out. The wind was in the east and cut like a whip. There were about four inches of snow on the ground. The air was crisp and clear, the snowfall had ceased, but the sky foretold more to come. The distant moors and hills looked like a vast white counterpane which some giant had heaved about on rising. Already men were abroad in the streets, shovelling the snow from the pavements and piling it up in the gutters, whence carts picked it up and bore it off to heaven knew where. Other workmen were throwing salt in the roadway. Footsteps were deadened and an eerie silence hung over the place. Passers-by, their heads down to the wind, bustled past, intent on getting indoors again.
Emeritus led his little party to the foundry gates. Beyond, a scattered lot of buildings, some new, some ramshackle. No order about the construction of the place. It had apparently started with a small nucleus, and additions had been flung round it as required. Inside, bedlam seemed to reign. Above all other sounds, the dull, metallic thud-thud of some great machine, beating rhythmically, and shaking the whole neighbourhood. Then a subsidiary racket, composed of innumerable ingredients, the howling of drills, the whine of lathes, the click of ratchets, the hum of gears, the steady blows of hammers of all sizes, the monotone of dynamos, the bark of riveting machines, and the hiss of steam. Two great chimney stacks and a battery of smaller chimneys vomited forth smoke. The air reeked with chemicals. In the yard beyond the gates, lorries were being loaded with great packing-cases filled with munitions of war. Crate after crate in endless succession. This was the hive which Sir Caleb Haythornthwaite had built-up almost from scratch. And probably his drunken son would pull it down in half the time, when the old man went.
There was a small gatehouse at the entrance to the yard. The lower halves of the windows were covered with gauze screens, marked “Cross and Haythornthwaite, Ltd.,” in gilt lettering, but the door was panelled in plain glass. Through this could be seen a man, who looked like the traditional Chinaman, with a yellow face, slanting almond eyes, and a drooping black moustache. One almost expected that he was concealing a pigtail under the greasy cloth cap he wore. He was telephoning, and seemed to be browbeating someone. He was standing aggressively pawing the air, thumping the desk, and grimacing as though the person at the other end of the line were in his very presence. His eyes bulged and his putty-like cheeks grew red. The conversation ended, the Chinaman groped for the telephone stand, missed it a time or two, and then hung-up. He was still muttering to himself when Entwistle rapped on the glass panel. The man came to the door and immediately shed his bad temper.
“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Entwistle,” he said with a grin, which made his slits of eyes vanish completely into his head. “Ah were just havin’ a row with a bookie about a football pool he’s bin runnin’. We don’t think we’re gettin’ enough for our brass…Eeh, Superintendent Haworth. Ah didn’t see thee. Ah’d better be keepin’ me mouth shut about bettin’ and such like. What can ah do for you, Mr. Entwistle?”
“These two gentlemen want to see Sir Caleb, John Willie. Is he in?”
“Aye, go straight through. You know wheer th’ offices are, doan’t you, Mr. Haworth?” The Superintendent nodded. They bade the ex-Inspector good-bye, and he went on his way home.
They passed through the yard and entered the offices. There was a general office first, with rows of desks, walls filled with box-files, with a large staff busily writing and rooting among them. Then came the drawing-office. Desks, blue-prints, green-shaded lights, drawing-boards, T-squares, and men in their shirt-sleeves and wearing eye-shades. Somewhere in the vicinity was a typists’-room, emitting the sharp, crackling, machine-gun noises of batteries of typewriters going like mad, the tinkling of little bells, and the thud-thud of carriages being hurled back. Nobody interfered with the progress of the officers. Once past the keen scrutiny of the man at the gatehouse, their path to the managing-director’s suite was clear. Curious eyes followed them, and now and then, someone who knew Haworth would greet him.
The private offices consisted of an entrance-hall, with the doors of Sir Caleb’s room and that of his secretary to right and to left, and the board-room straight ahead. The door of the latter stood open, revealing a sumptuous carpet and a small board-table with four chairs, which testified to the limited control of the establishment. The waiting-room was opulently furnished, too. Mahogany easy-chairs, a round table, and a Wilton carpet on the floor. Hanging on one wall, a photograph of the works, apparently taken from the air. Over the fireplace, a heavy portrait in oils of a stern-looking, elderly man with a heavy face, clear blue eyes, and mutton-chop whiskers, and a very high white collar, over which he appeared to be straining to see. “Luke Cross, Esq., 1858-1924,” said a plaque screwed to the frame…
Haworth sent in their names by the typist who, patting her blonde permanent waves, approached them leisurely from her room and asked them their business. They were admitted to the presence of Sir Caleb almost at once.
The cold weather had not improved the appearance of the ironmaster. His long nose was red, his complexion was like dough, and he looked as if he had been up all night.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “What do you want with me? I’m surprised at this second visit, and haven’t much time to spare. Can you be brief?”
He bade them be seated, and sitting down at his own desk, began to shuffle his papers. He was obviously nervous, not knowing the purpose of the call, but was trying to behave like a cock in his own barn-yard.
“Sorry to intrude, Sir Caleb, but Inspector Littlejohn has another urgent question or two to ask you, and I came with him to pilot him safely into your presence,” said Haworth.
“Well, what is it, then?”
Littlejohn took up the cudgels. He went straight in to the attack.
“Sir Caleb, I understand that on the day of his death, the tramp known locally as Three-Fingers, called on you at your home. What was the purpose of that visit?”
Two bright pink spots appeared on the cheeks of Sir Caleb and slowly grew until they suffused his whole head and neck.
“He…he…called begging…I showed him the door,” he said at length. “I can’t help you. I don’t know where he went after that.”
“But you gave him a bottle of rum as he left…”
“Where did you get that tale from? I’ve something better to do than give every tramp that calls my liquor.”
“Please don’t try to deny it, Sir Caleb. Although you gave Three-Fingers the rum in a plain bottle, you forget that it was a
special brand which has been traced to you.”
The blood drained from Sir Caleb’s face, leaving his complexion a greenish hue, like that of one who has had a bad channel-crossing. He looked wildly round, and then seemed to gather his thoughts again.
“Well. If I did give him the rum, what of it? I’m free to do what I like with my own, aren’t I?”
“Funny behaviour towards a tramp to whom you’re showing the door, isn’t it? Do you recognize this?”
Littlejohn took from his pocket the bottle of sleeping-tablets and put it on the table before the foundry-master.
“Where d’you get those?”
“They’re yours, Sir Caleb. A dose of the same medicine was found in the dregs of Three-Fingers’ rum bottle…”
That ought to have taken the wind out of Sir Caleb’s sails, but he still showed fight.
“Pah! Anybody can get that stuff from the chemist’s. If Three-Fingers wanted to commit suicide, he could have got it.”
“Not without a prescription. Besides, tramps with tendencies to suicide aren’t, as a rule, so pettifogging in their way of taking their lives. Three-Fingers called on you shortly before his death; you saw him and gave him a bottle of rum; you were then in possession of sleeping-tablets identical with the drug which killed him. You were upstairs for a time before giving him the bottle, and these tablets were found upstairs. Now, what have you to say, Sir Caleb?”
The knight licked his dry, blue lips, opened his mouth as though to speak, and then Littlejohn spoke again.
“I suggest that Three-Fingers knew something about your movements on the day—more than twenty years ago—when Sykes was killed. On hearing that the case had re-opened by the discovery of Sykes’s body, he came to blackmail you. So you had to get rid of him…”
“All lies, all lies!” yelled Sir Caleb, rising to his feet. There was foam on his lips and his face twitched with emotion.
“Let me continue, Sir Caleb,” said Littlejohn relentlessly. “Before Mrs. Myles died, she told me everything that happened on that fatal evening. After you’d killed Sykes, you heard someone coming, you didn’t know who, so you bolted. You thought later, that it was Three-Fingers. Actually, it was Mrs. Myles, and she saw everything. She was in at the death of Trickett, however, and that sealed her lips. Now, why did you kill Sykes?”
The last question came like the shot from a gun. For years, waking and sleeping, Caleb Haythornthwaite had imagined such a situation as this. Faced by the police, driven into a corner, he was asked, why did you kill Sykes? In nightmares, he saw the body which he had seen dead at his feet and which had strangely disappeared, suddenly brought to the light of day, and then the question. Why? He had turned it over and over and fled from it. It had pursued him to the verge of madness, and in the throes of nervous terror, he had confessed to his wife, rather than bear the burden alone. Then, in a saner moment, he had threatened what he would do if she breathed a word of it. Since then, they had lived separate lives. She was terrified of him!
As Littlejohn was speaking, Sir Caleb’s brain was active and, in a strange detached way, he reproached himself for a fool. If he’d only kept his head when Three-Fingers called with his oily threats! The tramp couldn’t have proved a thing. The word of a vagrant against that of Sir Caleb Haythornthwaite! But the incessant nagging of his conscience, and his fears had carried him away into a mad act. Murder will out! Your sins will find you out! Bury them deep or throw them into the depths of the sea, they’ll rise to accuse you! Thus said his conscience. Like a gramophone in his brain. Only when at work among the noise and turmoil of his great machines, could he stifle the voices, and forget. Over twenty years all his resistance had been worn away, his restraint had been slowly undermined.
“Why did you kill Sykes?” asked Littlejohn.
And like an automaton Sir Caleb spoke the words which, in imagination, he had so long uttered as his excuse…
“It was self-defence…”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth, than he realized what he had said. His hand flew to his lips, as if to capture their fatal message and replace it before it reached other ears. His eyes sought those of Littlejohn, fear deeply in them, like those of a rabbit faced by a stoat.
Haworth’s voice broke-in.
“In that case, Sir Caleb, perhaps you’d care to make a statement, but I must warn you that anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence later.”
“There’s not much to tell,” replied the distressed man, now resigned to his fate. “I met Sykes on the moor. He’d been getting above himself at the works, and I wanted a quiet word with him. I was passing in my car on the way home from the shoot, when I saw him.”
“He’d been blackmailing you?” interposed Haworth, his pencil poised, for he was taking down the statement in shorthand.
“When he left Myles’s, he took with him some secret designs and patterns, which he said were his own. I bought them from him. It turned out they were young Myles’s work. After I’d paid him, Sykes never left me alone. Said I’d not finished paying him his dues, and if I didn’t make it worth his while, he’d go back to Mrs. Myles and tell her the tale. I hadn’t covered myself properly over the deal, and it looked as if I’d stolen the designs myself. The old lady was out for my blood, and I couldn’t afford to let Sykes go into the enemy’s camp. He knew several other things, too.”
Haythornthwaite placed his hands to his temples as though trying to still the pulses hammering there. Outside, in the yard, the noises of loading and the hoarse shouts of men could be heard. Somewhere in the neighbouring offices a telephone rang rhythmically…Sir Caleb looked over his glasses at Haworth. His eyes told of the dirty work that had gone-on when he changed horses and left Mrs. Myles to fend for herself.
“Yes?” said Littlejohn.
“I intended to sack Sykes and be done with it. I couldn’t stand it any longer. When I saw him on the moor, I was going to tell him I’d done with him, and he could do his damnedest. He threatened me with his gun. Mine was loaded and in my hand, and before I knew what I was doing, I’d fired and killed him. Then, I heard somebody coming, and I ran off in panic. I didn’t know who it was. I never knew it was Mrs. Myles. I thought it was Three-Fingers. I’d seen him about before that day. I was utterly bewildered when I heard that Trickett and not Sykes, was found. I didn’t know what to make of it. So I kept quiet…”
“So you killed Three-Fingers after Sykes’s remains were found, because he said he knew?”
“No…no…”
He persisted in denying it in spite of the evidence. Haworth rose.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to accompany us to the police-station, Sir Caleb…In other words, I’m arresting you in connection with the deaths of Enoch Sykes and William Peters, known as Three-Fingers, and I must warn you that anything you say will be taken down and used in evidence…”
Sir Caleb Haythornthwaite tottered to his feet. To be tried in the summary court where he had been accustomed to preside! And to be led off under arrest through rows of watching workpeople, past the works he’d built-up, out through the gates never to come back…He clutched the desk.
“I…I…I…” he gasped and then fell to the ground.
His face was the colour of lead, his lips were mauve and drawn back in a hideous grimace. His eyes bulged and were full of frantic appeal. He fought for breath and feebly pawed at his watch pocket. Littlejohn knelt beside him, raised his head and thrust his fingers in the pocket, producing a pillbox full of small glass ampules, such as are broken and inhaled by sufferers from angina pectoris. He smashed one and thrust it under the twitching nostrils, but it was too late. The rigid body grew slack, the eyes rolled, grew glassy and remained staring at the ceiling. The hands flopped limply to the floor.
Haworth was busily telephoning for a doctor. When at length the surgeon arrived, he could do nothing but close the glazed eyes,
and order the removal of the great man to the public morgue.
Chapter XIX
The End of Many Things
And those who husbanded the golden Grain,
And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turned,
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.
—Omar Khayyam
Although he deserves no more of our consideration, we cannot leave Sir Caleb Haythornthwaite on the cold slab of the Hatterworth mortuary. Mr. Simeon Mills is waiting for him, and then, the undertakers.
The coroner thoroughly enjoyed a double event, in the form of consecutive inquests on the ironmaster and his victim, Three-Fingers, the tramp. In pursuance of the powers vested in him, Mr. Mills transferred the proceedings connected with the latter from the country pub to the larger urban centre, greatly to the disgust of old Seth Wigley, who talked of being on his feet and about for the replay, as he called it.
Lady Haythornthwaite was by far the most dramatic of the witnesses called. She was a little, shrivelled woman, who had shared none of her husband’s public life. She had been almost as much a recluse as the late Mrs. Myles, whom Mr. Mills had found, on the day before the greater double event, committed suicide whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed. Her Ladyship had long ago divorced herself from Sir Caleb in her heart, and had, for many years, resorted to very eccentric behaviour as a result. This had principally been manifest in the form of scuttering from shop to shop in the town, armed with a string bag, buying-in the following day’s dinner. In the humbler days of her dear father, Lady Haythornthwaite, then Deborah Cross, had been entrusted with his entire domestic economy. For a time after her marriage to Sir Caleb, she had abandoned her shopping, but later resumed it, endeavouring to live the happy past over again. She made no bones about telling Mr. Simeon Mills that for the past twenty years, she had known who killed Sykes. Her late husband had, during a brain-storm, insisted on sharing with her his awful secret. Later, on recovering his poise, he had enumerated all the horrible things he would do to her if she breathed a word of what he had said, and he had clinched the argument by stating that a wife could not bear witness against her husband.
The Dead Shall be Raised and The Murder of a Quack Page 16
