“How—unusual?” inquired Kendall, as his roving eye paused at the next item.
“It will not waste your time to hear?” asked the commissaire, watching Kendall with interest.
“Do you and I ever waste time?” retorted Kendall.
“I waste time whenever I can, my friend,” smiled the commissaire, “but so rarely I get the opportunity! The aeroplane came down some little way from here. No one saw the accident. It was not discovered at once. The aviator had been dead—how long?”
“Twelve hours or more,” answered the man at the desk. A detective from the sûreté.
“He was curiously mutilated,” went on the commissaire. “That made immediate identification difficult, and there was nothing on him by which to identify him. The aeroplane, also, was curiously mutilated—”
“In fact, what you’re telling me,” interrupted Kendall, “is that neither the man nor the aeroplane crashed, but there was a cumbrous attempt to give the tragedy that appearance?”
“Our minds move in the same grooves,” nodded the commissaire. “Yes, that is our theory, without doubt.”
“Have you now identified the man?”
“We have now identified the aeroplane—”
“Which will lead to the identification of the aeroplane’s owner,” interposed the man from the sûreté. “I expect a telephone message any moment.”
“I wonder whether I can beat your telephone,” said Kendall. “Was the dead man wearing a grey suit?”
“No, a brown suit.”
Kendall looked surprised.
“What is that, next to the handkerchief?”
The French detective turned to the small object.
“A piece of grey cloth,” he said. “It was found near the spot. Torn.”
“I have torn a piece of the same cloth,” replied Kendall, and produced it from his pocket.
The French detective jumped up, and the commissaire came forward.
“This bit of cloth,” went on Kendall, “is from the suit of the man I am looking for—Fenner. Does it seem reasonable to you that, having torn his suit in England, the place where it was torn might be liable to a second tear—say—in France, during a struggle?” He placed the first bit beside the second bit. “I see I was wrong in thinking I could identify your dead aviator—I have no idea who he is—but I am as interested in him as you are, because I can identify his passenger.”
“But—the coincidence!” murmured the commissaire.
“Forgive me, but is that remark worthy of you? When two points in the same pattern converge—”
The commissaire waved him down apologetically.
“If you are right, there is no coincidence,” he admitted, “but perhaps the cloth is a coincidence? It is, after all, a very ordinary grey cloth, of a pattern much worn.”
Kendall smiled, and again put his hand in his pocket.
“Your next exhibit is not so ordinary,” he said. “How would you describe it?”
“False side-whisker,” answered the French detective promptly.
“One. Here is the other.” He drew it from his pocket. “Fenner pulled off one in England, and your dead aviator pulled off the other in France—eh? Please don’t talk to me for a moment! Please don’t talk to each other. If I am rude, I am rude. But in a moment I will tell you something about your aviator—though not who he is!”
He stood still, staring hard at the ground. His companions glanced at each other, with raised eyebrows, but made no attempt to break the productive silence. If their expressions said, “These strange English!” they realised that, sometimes, these strange English got somewhere.
“Listen,” said Kendall, at last. “You’ll soon be hearing a long story, if you’re interested—and it’s pretty plain now that you’ll have to be—but meanwhile you know that I am investigating the deaths of seven people.”
“We were impressed with the number,” the commissaire assured him, “and we are abashed that we ourselves can only produce a paltry one.”
“But your one increases my number to eight, and may help to discover the murderer of the lot and bring him to justice.”
“You are certain it is murder, then?”
“It is risky to be certain of anything in our very uncertain profession. Even a verdict, which technically ends our uncertainty, has been known to be wrong. But for the sake of argument we can assume that this is murder, and for the sake of argument we are going to assume that—the man I am after is the murderer. Assuming so much, we have the following sequence of events to assist us. Our man leaves his house last night, after his first murders, and cycles several miles to a very large field. He hides his bicycle in a clump of bushes. Your aviator meets him. That is to say, your man in a brown suit meets my man in a grey suit. This meeting is not accidental. It has been prearranged. Perhaps hurriedly. My man is disguised. He sheds—accidentally or by design—one false side-whisker. Everything indicates hurry in that field. Your man flies my man over to France. My man drops certain damning evidence into the sea, but not his second side-whisker. He may not know that he still has it on. In due course, there is a safe landing near Boulogne, but in some isolated spot… Was the spot where the aeroplane was found isolated?”
The commissaire nodded.
“Then trouble brews,” went on Kendall. “Or, I should say, more trouble, for enough has been left behind. What sort of trouble is this new trouble? We do not know. But we know that your man must have been thick with my man, to undertake this trip for him. We may even guess—may we?—that he was aware of my man’s predicament. Either was aware when the trip started, or found out during the journey. Well—anything may happen after that, between rogues. Perhaps your man knows too much. Perhaps he threatens. Perhaps he has to be dealt with. Perhaps there is no premeditation here, but just the tragic flaring of a quarrel. Well, after seven murders, what is an eighth? Still, with an aeroplane handy, why waste the chance of a camouflage? So the eighth murder is made to appear like a landing accident at dusk… And your man is found, and mine is not. But mine has got to be found—”
The telephone broke into Kendall’s words. The man from the sûreté jumped up, went to the wall, and held a brief conversation. He laid down the receiver with a grim smile.
“The dead aviator is Dr. Jones, chez Madame Paula, Haute-Ville,” he said. “I suppose, Mr. Kendall, you will be coming with us?”
Chapter XXI
Victim Number Nine
Only one light glimmered from Madame Paula’s pension as they approached the front door from the ramparts path. It came, very faintly, from a small window on the right of the gloomy building, making a feeble glow through a thick curtain, and the atmosphere of the place fitted the grim errand of the four men who paused in the porch. The four men were Kendall, the commissaire, the agent of the sûreté, and a gendarme.
The commissaire knocked. He knocked softly, with a somewhat ironic courtesy to the occasion, holding noise in reserve. As there was no response, he brought out a little of the noise, and knocked again more sharply.
“Do people go to bed early in Boulogne?” inquired Kendall. “Try the bell.”
The commissaire did so, and also knocked a third time. Courtesy went west. The knocking and the bell echoed inside the walls of the house with an ominous insistence for anybody inside—if anybody was inside.
A little pale smudge momentarily broke the blackness of an unlit window. It came and went in a flash. Then quick, faltering steps sounded in the hall. A voice, so weak that it was hardly heard, called:
“Who is it?”
“The police,” the commissaire called back. “Open the door, please, at once!”
The door opened. The men hastened in. It was Kendall who caught the figure that crumpled in the dark hall.
“A light, quick!” he said sharply.
The French detective swi
tched on a torch, while the gendarme groped unsuccessfully for an electric switch. He found a lamp, however, and in a few moments it glowed on the strange scene. The figure in Kendall’s arms was a girl, and he was staring at her intently.
“We’re on the right track,” he muttered. “I think I know who this girl is.”
“So? Who?” exclaimed the commissaire.
“The niece of the man I’m looking for—Fenner. I’ve seen her portrait.” The last portrait he had seen, the one he had found in the empty boat, was in his pocket. “Let’s get her to a couch.”
While they did so, the gendarme and the detective began a tour of exploration. The couch was against a wall, and the girl lay motionless while the two watchers regarded her with sympathetic perplexity.
“Something bad has happened here,” said the commissaire.
“Follow Fenner, and you’ll find something bad all along the trail,” answered Kendall. “There’s no rest for me till we catch that man.”
“We may catch him in a moment or two.”
“I doubt it, but three hounds are better than two. Do you mind if I join in the hunt?”
“I will wait here.”
Kendall darted away. As he ran along a passage, someone sprang at him and seized him. It was the gendarme.
“Pardon!” grinned the man.
“Plasir,” answered Kendall. “Mais, prochaine fois—comme ca!”
Returning the compliment, he seized the gendarme, imprisoning the man’s arm deftly behind his back. The man’s grin changed to momentary alarm, and when Kendall let him go, he regarded the released arm as though astonished that it was still there.
“Carry on,” said Kendall.
The gendarme, who was really quite an intelligent fellow, sprang back to his job, while Kendall continued on his way. At the end of the passage he saw light beyond half a dozen low ascending stairs. He ran into a parlour. The room was in fair order, saving that a cushion and an open book were on the floor.
Overhead he heard hurrying footsteps. After a quick glance round, he ran out again. A few moments later he was trying a door. He had opened other doors, but this door was locked. It had the figure 2 upon it. “Yes, yes, that door!” suddenly sounded the commissaire’s voice behind him. “Two! She keeps murmuring ‘Two.’” As they called through the door and shook the handle, the footsteps above came hurrying down, and they were joined by the other two of their party.
“We’ll have to smash this,” said Kendall.
“Three shoulders should be enough,” answered the commissaire, “but if you need a fourth, let me know. I’m going back to that girl.”
“She’s coming to?”
“Slowly. Poor child—she had been roughly handled. Someone should be by.”
He vanished. His footsteps faded beyond the curtain which separated this room from the way to the hall. Three shoulders attacked the door of Numero Deux.
The lock was stubborn. Kendall seized a chair. A leg fell away as he seized it. It was not the first time the chair had been used violently that evening.
Another minute, and the work was done. The wood of the door split, and the broken panel was shoved inwards. An electric torch played through the aperture, focusing on a bed. On the bed lay a figure. There was something unmistakable in its perfect immobility. It was the figure of a dark-skinned silk merchant.
“Mon Dieu!” gasped the detective of the sûreté, while the gendarme stiffened. “Gustav!”
The ray moved from the figure on the bed to another on the floor.
“And there is the man Gustav was shadowing for me,” said Kendall quietly. “Hell’s been loose here. Come on—we’ll get in.”
Chapter XXII
The Conference in the Parlour
Half an hour later, back in the little parlour of strange memories, two roughly-handled people had recovered sufficiently to tell their stories. They had three eager listeners. The gendarme was on duty outside.
Hazeldean’s story, beyond what is already known, was short. It was, in fact, mere oblivion, until the police had burst into the bedroom and helped him back to consciousness.
“After that old ruffian, Pierre, had smashed me on the head—I suppose, with the chair he was trying to reach when I last saw him—I went out like a candle,” he said. His hand moved up to his bandage as he spoke. “Once or twice, I think, I nearly came to. I seemed to hear a banging—”
“You did,” murmured Dora, from her armchair.
“Was that you?”
“She will tell her story in a moment,” said Kendall. “It may have been us.”
“Perhaps I heard both of you—it’s all pretty confused,” replied Hazeldean.
“Or it may have been neither. It may have been a door slamming.”
“You mean, the front door?” queried the commissaire.
“Yes. Where is this old ruffian, Pierre?” answered Kendall. “He seems to have left in a hurry. The maid, too. You say you spoke to her, Mr. Hazeldean, just before your encounter with Pierre?”
“Yes, I asked her to stay with Miss Fenner till I returned.”
“And you did not return.” He turned to Dora. “Did the maid go to you? We’d like your story now.”
“Yes, and told me Mr. Hazeldean had sent her,” replied Dora.
“And then?”
“We waited. We were both anxious. Mr. Hazeldean was going to tell me something—something terrible that I’ve not heard yet”—Hazeldean caught Kendall’s eye for an instant—“though I don’t think anything could be more terrible than—all this. When he didn’t return, Marie—that’s the maid—Marie said she’d go and see what was happening. I wanted to go, but Marie insisted. It wasn’t like her. I think she just wanted to help, and thought that wisest.”
“I’d told her to look after you,” said Hazeldean.
“Yes. And she was doing her best… But she didn’t return, either. It was horrible! I waited till I couldn’t wait any longer. Then I went after her.”
She paused, and shuddered.
“Take your time, ma’moiselle,” murmured the commissaire.
“Thank you—I’m all right,” she answered. “Only I expect I still feel a little dizzy—and he’ll tell you I’m not very good at telling things.” She glanced at Hazeldean, and he smiled back reassuringly. “Does your head hurt?” she asked, holding on for a moment to the personal contact.
“Less and less,” he replied. “What about you?”
“I’m getting better, too, though I’m still wobbly. Oh, but I must go on. Where was I?” She turned to the others. “I’m sorry I keep on breaking off. When Marie didn’t come back I went after her. That’s where I was, isn’t it? The place was horribly quiet. It was dark, too. Someone had put out the lamp in the hall. I hadn’t a match on me. I suppose I could have got one, only before I did I heard a noise. I remember trying to call, but nothing came. I felt something like I felt when I went back to Haven House, Mr. Hazeldean—you remember, I told you about that—only this was ten times worse. I could never describe it.”
“The noise came from the direction of Numero Deux?” asked Kendall.
“Yes—beyond the curtain.”
“What sort of a noise?”
“Well, I’m going to tell you what it was. It was Marie, only I didn’t know then—that’s why it frightened me. When I went through the curtain I gave her just as big a fright. We both screamed. Then, when we got over it, I asked her what she was doing, and she said she was listening, because she felt sure she had heard something in Madame Paula’s room, and the door was locked. I knew Marie had tried to get into that room, but Pierre wouldn’t let her—she’d told me—and it was after Marie had failed that Mr. Hazeldean had said he was going in.”
“Yes, and now I was in!” murmured Hazeldean, grimly.
“What did you do, Miss Fenner?” asked Ke
ndall.
“We called, and we banged, and we knocked. No one answered us. When we gave up at last, we knew something awful had happened, though we didn’t know what it was. But one by one everybody had gone. ‘Shall I go for the police?’ asked Marie. I’d just been going to suggest it. She said she’d go, and I let her. I’m not quite sure why I didn’t go myself, or why we didn’t both go. I think perhaps I didn’t want to leave the house in case—well, in case Mr. Hazeldean was in it. Anyhow, that’s what happened. Marie went. And as soon as she went I began banging on the door again, and—and suddenly it opened.”
Her shoulders contracted as she tried to suppress another shiver.
“That must have been very unpleasant,” said Kendall, quietly.
“I nearly died of fright,” she admitted, with an ingenuousness that equally touched three different types of men. “You see, I didn’t know what—who—was coming out. I didn’t think it was Mr. Hazeldean, and somehow I didn’t think it was going to be Madame Paula, though she was supposed to be resting in the room. Of course, it wasn’t either. It was Pierre.”
She stopped and gulped.
“Yes, of course, it would be Pierre,” nodded the commissaire. “After knocking Mr. Hazeldean down, he went in to see what damage he had done, and perhaps, even, heard you or Marie coming. We can conclude, I think—and with a certain amount of excusable pleasure—that Pierre must have been quite as frightened as you, Miss Fenner.”
“He was in a terrible state,” she replied.
“He had heard through the door that Marie was going for the police,” said Kendall. “Probably that was why he came out.”
He glanced quickly at the commissaire, who shook his head. The question whether Marie had turned up at the police station was asked and answered mutely.
“What did he do?” inquired the commissaire.
“He told me to be quiet,” answered Dora. “He said Madame Paula was asleep, and that it was wicked of me to risk waking her. I told him I didn’t believe him. Perhaps that was silly. I’m no good at working things out when they’re happening. You see, it gave him an excuse to get angrier still, or to pretend to be, and he said, ‘I know you don’t believe me, and that’s why I can’t trust you to accept what I say and to act sensibly. I’m going to lock the door again, so that Madame will not be disturbed.’ He had the key in his hand. Of course, he’d taken it in with him. I tried to push past him and get into the room, and it was then that he got violent. We had a struggle, and—well, once he must have hit me quite hard. I didn’t remember anything more for a bit.”
Seven Dead Page 15
