The Plague Court Murders hm-1

by John Dickson Carr

  "More tricks?" said Halliday, after a pause. "Yes. It's wire right enough. It goes . . . here, down the side, out through the boards of this window, into the yard. Is this another stunt?"

  "Don't touch it!" said Masters, as the other stretched up his hand. He peered out into the dark. The cool wind brought a smell of mud, and other odors less pleasant. "Don't want to call the attention of our friend out there, but I shall have to risk a flash.... Yes. The wire comes out, down, and runs across the ground towards the little stone house. Hurrum. Well ..."

  With him we stared out. The rain had died to a mutter of splashings, to stirrings along the gutters and a sullen drip-drip dose beside us, but it still made prankish noises in the yard. I could see very little, for the sky was overcast, and shapes of buildings blocked it out round the wall which enclosed the big piece of ground at the rear. The little stone house was about forty yards away from us. Its only light was a flickering gleam that showed, slyly, at the gratings of little embrasures - they were too small to be called windows - set dose under the roof. It stood lonely, with a crooked tree growing near it.

  The light flickered again, curled eerily, with a sort of invitation, and shrank back. That faint spatter and stir of the rain made the muddy yard sound as though it were infested with rats.

  Halliday made a movement like one who is cold.

  "Excuse my ignorance," he said. "This may seem excellent fun, but it isn't sense. Cats with their throats cut. Bells with wire attached to them. Thirty-odd pounds of stone flower-box chucked at you by somebody who, isn't there. I'm like the chap at the Circumlocution Office; I want to know. Besides, there was something in that passage - I could have sworn.... "

  I said: "The wire on the bell probably doesn't mean anything. It's too obvious. Darworth may have arranged it with the rest of them as a sort of alarm-bell, in case "

  "Ah! Just so. In case of what?" Masters muttered. He glanced sharply to the right, as though he had heard something. "Ah, ah, but I wish I'd been prepared. They both need watching, and (excuse me) neither of you gentlemen knows enough of the dodges - Just between ourselves, and confidentially, I'd give a month's pay to lay Darworth by the heels."

  "You're dead-set anti-Darworth, aren't you?" asked Halliday, looking at him curiously. Masters' tone had not been pleasant. "Why? You can't do anything to him, you know. I mean to say, you told me yourself he's no Gerrard Street fortune-teller making the tambourines rattle a guinea at a time. If a man wants to investigate psychical research, or try a seance for his friends in his own home, that's his business. Beyond exposing him- "

  "H'm. That," agreed Masters, "is Mr. Darworth's own copper-bottomed cleverness. You heard what Miss Latimer said. He don't get embroiled. He's only a psychical researcher. He's careful to be only the patron of a tame medium. Then, if anything happens ... why, he was deceived by a fraud, and his honesty isn't questioned any more than the dupes he introduced his medium to. And got money from. Hecould do

  it all over again. Now, as man to man, Mr. Halliday, come! - Lady Benning is a wealthy woman, isn't she?"

  "Yes."

  "And Miss Latimer?"

  "I believe so. If that's what he wants-" Halliday snapped, and then checked himself. He went on, obviously changing what he intended to say, "If that's what he wants, I'd write him a check for five thousand any time he agreed to clear out."

  "He wouldn't do business. Not him. But you can see this is a heaven-sent chance. If he tries anything himself tonight - and, you see, not knowing I'm here-why - huh!" Masters grunted expressively. "What's more, the kid don't know me. I never saw friend Joseph before. Excuse me, gentlemen. I won't be a minute; but I want to - um-reconnoiter. Stop there, and don't move till I get back."

  Before we could speak he had gone down the two or three steps into the yard and disappeared. Though he was a bulky man, he made no noise. He made no noise, that is, until (about ten seconds later) his footstep squelched in the mud; as though he had stopped dead.

  Far over in the right-hand corner of the yard, the beam of a flashlight had appeared. We watched it, silent in the soft-rustling rain: sharp in contrast to the ugly, suggestive reddish glow dancing in the windows of the stone house. It was directed on the ground. It held steady; then it winked off and on three times rapidly, a pause, a longer flash, and disappeared.

  I nudged Halliday as he started to speak. After a brief interval, mysterious with rustlings and splashings, there was a reply. From the spot where I judged Masters to be, Masters' flashlight did the same.

  Then somebody was moving over there in the dark, and Masters' bulk appeared before us on the steps again, breathing heavily.

  "Signal?" I asked.

  "It's one of our people. Yes. I answered him. That's the code; there couldn't be a mistake. Now what," Masters said in a flat voice, "one of our people.... "Evening, sir," somebody whispered, from the foot of the steps. "I thought it was your voice."

  Masters got him up and into the passage. He was, as the light showed, a thin, wiry, nervous young man, with an intelligent face which caught you with its student-like earnestness. His soaked hat hung down grotesquely, and he wiped' his face with a soaked handkerchief.

  "Hul-lo," grunted Masters, "so it's you, Bert? Ha. Gentlemen, this is Detective-Sergeant McDonnell." He became indulgent. "He does the same sort of work I used to. But Bert here's a university man; one of our new kind) and ambitious. You may have seen his name in the paper - he's looking for that lost dagger." He added sharply: "Well, Bert? What is it? You can speak out."

  "Hunch of mine, sir," the other answered respectfully. Continuing to wipe his face, he regarded the inspector through narrowed eyes. "I'll tell you about it in a minute. That rain's filthy, and I've been out there for two hours. I-I suppose I don't have to tell you, sir, that your-your bete noir, Darworth, is out there?"

  "Now, then," Masters said curtly. "Now, then. If you want promotion, my lad, you stick to your superior officers. Eh?" After this somewhat mysterious pronouncement he wheezed a moment, and went on: "Stepley told me you'd been sent to get a line on Darworth months ago, and, when I heard you were looking into that dagger business---"

  "You put two and two together. Yes, Sir."

  Masters peered of him. "Exactly. Exactly. I can use you, my lad. I've got work for you. But first I want facts, and want 'em quick. You've seen the little stone house, eh? What's the lay-out?"

  "One good-sized room. Roughly oblong shape; stone walls, brick floor. Inside of the roof makes the ceiling. There are four of those little grated windows in the middle of each side, high up. The door is under the window you can see from here...."

  "Any way out except the door?"

  "No, sir."

  "I mean, any way the man could get out secretly?"

  "Not a chance, sir. That' is, I don't think.... Besides, he couldn't get out the door, either. They padlocked it. He asked them to padlock it on the outside."

  "Doesn't mean anything. Yes; it means hanky-panky. I wish I could have got a look inside. What about the chimney?"

  "I looked into all that," McDonnell answered. He tried to keep from giving a jerk with the cold. "There's an iron grating in the chimney just over the fireplace. The gratings in the windows are solid in the stone, and you couldn't get a lead-pencil through the openings. Also, I heard Darworth drop the bar inside the door.... Excuse me, sir. Your questions: I suppose your idea is the same as mine?"

  "About Darworth trying to get out?"

  "No, sir," replied McDonnell quietly. "About something or somebody trying to get in."

  Instinctively we all turned in the dark, to look at the ugly little house where the light was changing and writhing and inviting. The cross-barred grating of that little window-scarcely a foot square-was silhouetted in strong outline as the firelight loomed on it inside. And, just for a moment, a head was silhouetted there too. It seemed to be peering out from behind the grating.

  There was no reason for the shock of horror that struck me, and made my muscles watery. Th
ere was no reason why Darworth, if he were a tall man, should not stand on a chair and look out of the window. But the silhouetted head moved slowly, as though it had trouble with its neck....

  I doubt that any of the others saw it, for the fire-glow had died away, and Masters was speaking harshly. I did not hear all of it, but he was giving McDonnell a dressing-down as a weak-kneed something'd something who had got himself impressed by the damned tomfoolery of -

  "Excuse me, sir." McDonnell was still respectful, but I think the tone of his voice had some effect. "Would you like to hear my story? About why I'm here?"

  "Come along," said Masters curtly. "Away from here. I'll take your word for it that he's padlocked in. That is, I'll go and see for myself in a minute. Urn, don't misunderstand, now, lad !"

  He took us a little way down the passage, threw his light into a door at random, and motioned us in. It was part of an ancient kitchen. McDonnell had taken off his shapeless hat and was lighting a cigarette. His sharp greenish eyes glanced at Halliday and me over the match flame.

  "They're all right," said Masters; he did not mention our names.

  "It happened," McDonnell went on, rather jerkily, "just a week ago tonight, and it was the first real progress I'd made. You see, I was sent to get a line on Darworth last July; but I didn't get anything. He might be an impostor, but - "

  "We know all that."

  "Yes, sir." McDonnell stopped a moment. "But the business fascinated me. Especially Darworth. I think you know how it is, Inspector. I spent a good deal of time collecting Darworth information, looking over the house, and even asking for leads from people - people I used to know. But they couldn't help me. Darworth would open his mouth about psychical research only to a small, closed circle. They were all filthily rich people, by the way. And several friends of mine, who knew him and said he was a poisonous blighter, didn't even know he was interested in spiritualism. Well, you can see how it was....

  "I'd almost forgotten the business when I accidentally ran into a fellow I used to know at school; quite a good friend of mine. I hadn't seen him in a long time. We went to lunch, and he immediately began babbling about spiritualism. Latimer, his name is: Ted Latimer.

  "Even at school Ted had been inclined in that direction, though there was nothing much dreamy about him: he was as neat a center-forward as I ever saw. But when he was fifteen he got hold of one of the wrong kind of Conan Doyle books, and used to try to put himself into trances. My hobby was parlor magic, like yours, so maybe that's how. . . . Excuse me. When I met him last week, he pounced on me.

  "He went on telling me about an amazing medium a friend of his had discovered, and Darworth was the friend. Now, I didn't tell him I was in the force. I felt pretty rotten about it afterwards; it was a dirty trick, in a way; but I wanted to see Darworth in action. So I argued with him, and asked whether I could meet this paragon. He said Darworth didn't meet people, ordinarily - didn't like them to know his interests - all that. But Darworth was going to be at a little dinner, next night, given by a friend of Ted's aunt, named Featherton. He thought he might be able to get me invited. So a week ago tonight I went.."

  McDonnell's cigarette glowed and darkened. He seemed oddly hesitant. Masters said:

  "Get on with it. You mean for a demonstration?"

  "Oh, no. Nothing of the kind. The medium wasn't there. Which reminds me, sir. In my opinion, that idiot `Joseph' is only Darworth's - what do theycall it

  ? - front. The little devil gets on my nerves, but I don't believe he knows what goes on. I think his trances are drug-trances, induced by Darworth; that maybe the moron believes he is a medium. He's a sort of dummy to take any blame, while Darworth produces his own phenomena.... Masters nodded heavily. "Ah! That's good, my lad. If that's true, it's something tangible to fasten our man with. I don't believe it, except maybe about the drugs, but if so.... Good! Go on."

  "Just a moment, Sergeant," I put in. "A few minutes ago, out there, anybody would have gathered from what you said that you were convinced there really was something in all this. Something supernatural. At least, the inspector assumed as much."

  McDonnell's cigarette stopped in the gloom. It moved up, pulsed and darkened strongly, and then the sergeant said:

  "That's what I wanted to explain, sir. I didn't say it was supernatural. But I do say that something or somebody is after Darworth. That's as definite as I'd care to make it. And also as vague.”

  "Let me tell you.”

  "This Major Featherton - I suppose you know he's here tonight - has a flat in Piccadilly. Certainly there's nothing ghostly about it; he prides himself on his modernism, but all the time he keeps telling anecdotes about how different, and how much better, it was in King Edward's time. There were six of us present: Darworth, Ted Latimer, Ted's sister Marion, a glucose old party named Lady Benning, the major, and myself. I got the impression-"

  "See here, Bert," interrupted Masters, who seemed outraged; "what kind of reports do you make out, I'd like to know? That's not facts. We don't want your blasted impressions; don't stand there and take up our time in the cold with gibbering away-!"

  "Oh, yes, we do," Halliday said suddenly. (I could hear him breathing). "That's exactly what we do want. Please go on gibbering, Mr. McDonnell."

  After a. silence McDonnell bowed slightly in the gloom. I do not know why it struck me as fantastic, as fantastic as that conference with our flashlights turned on the floor. But McDonnell seemed on his guard.

  "Yes Sir. I got the impression that Darworth was more than a little interested in Miss Latimer, and that everybody else, including Miss Latimer herself, was completely unconscious of it. He never did anything you could call outspoken; it was his air - and there's something about him that can convey an impression better than anyone I ever knew. But the others were too rapt to notice." Here Masters coughed, coughed with a long "Urrrr!" but the young man paid no attention. "They were all polite to me, but they conveyed definitely that I was out of the charmed circle, and Lady Benning kept looking at Ted in a funny way that was worse than merely unpleasant. Then Ted kept blurting things out, sometimes: that's how I put together a lot of hints, piecemeal, that there might be a party here tonight. They shut him up, and afterwards we all went into the drawing-room feeling pretty uncomfortable. Darworth ..."

  But the memory of a silhouette on a red-lit window kept coming at me, so that I could see it all around in the dark; I could not keep it away, and I said:

  "Is Darworth a tall man? What does he look like?"

  "Like - like a swank psychiatrist," McDonnell replied. "Looks and talks like one. . . . God, how I disliked that man! - Excuse me, sir." He checked himself. "You see, he's a positive quantity. Either you fall under his spell, or he puts your back up so much that you want to land one on his jaw. Maybe it's his possessive air towards all the women, the way he touches their hands or leans towards them; and they tell me he's had plenty.... Yes, sir, he's tall. He's got a little brown silky beard, and a sort of aloof smile, and he's pudgy...."

  "I know," said Halliday.

  `But I was telling you. . We went into the other room, and tried to talk, particularly about some Godawful new-school paintings that Lady Benning had persuaded the major to buy. You could see he detested 'em, and was embarrassed; but I gather he's as completely under Lady Benning's thumb as she is under Darworth's. Well, presently they couldn't keep away from spiritualism, despite my presence, and the upshot of all the talk was that they persuaded Darworth to try automatic writing.

  "Now, there's one fake you can't prove a fake; I suppose Darworth wouldn't have touched it otherwise. First he gave them a little lecture to make their minds receptive, and I am willing to admit that if I hadn't kept myself well in hand I should have been almost afraid to have the lights out. No, Sir, I'm not joking!" His head turned towards Masters. "It was all so quiet, so reasonable and persuasive, so deftly tied up in real and sham science....

  "The only light in the room was the fire. We made a circle, and Darworth sat s
ome distance away, at a little round table, with pencil and paper. Miss Latimer played the piano for a while, and then joined the circle. I don't wonder the others were shaken. Darworth had got them into that state; he seemed to take pleasure in it, and the last thing I noticed before the lights went out was his complacent little smirk.

  "I had a seat so that I was facing in his direction. What with only the firelight, our shadows cut him off. All I could see was the top of his head, resting easily against the back of a tall thin chair, and the firelight rising on the wall just behind him. Above him - I could see it well-was a big painting of a nude sprawled out in ghastly sharp angles, and painted green. That was all, wavering by the firelight.

  "We were nervous in the circle. The old lady was moaning, and muttering about somebody named James. Presently it seemed to get colder in the room. I had a wild impulse to get up and shout, for I have attended a good many seances, but never one that made me feel like this. Then I saw Darworth's head shaking over the top of the chair.

  "His pencil began to scratch, and still his head kept shaking. Everything was very quiet; only that horrible motion of his head, and the sound of the pencil now traveling in circles on the paper.

  "It was twenty minutes - thirty - I don't know how long afterwards that Ted got up and put the lights on. It had got unbearable, and somebody had cried out. We looked over at Darworth; and when my eyes had got accustomed to the light I jumped towards him....

  "The little table had been knocked over. Darworth sat back stiffly against the chair, with a paper in his hand; and his face was green.

  "I tell you, sir, that charlatan's face was exactly the soupy color of the damned picture hung over his head. He had himself in hand in a second; but he was shaking. Both Featherton and I had come up to him, to see if we could give any assistance. When he saw us over him he crumpled up the paper in his hand. He got up, walked over stiffly, and threw the paper in the fire. You had to admire him for the way he controlled his voice. He said, 'Absolutely nothing, I regret to say. Only some nonsense on the Louis Playge matter. We shall have to try it again some other time'