It can be imagined with what relief the people of London, who retain even under the utmost stress a sense of proportion, and would have been very properly horrified at the burning of an Underground station or a public lavatory, learnt that the fire had destroyed nothing more important than some paintings in a wing of the Tate Gallery. This could have been the work only of alien agitators ignorant of the Englishman’s sterling good sense, whereas of course a native agitator would have destroyed the pitch at the Oval, where a somewhat quarrelsome cricket-match with Australia was at that time being played.
It should be explained that amongst the informed the innocence of Mary Dove was never in doubt, and that the esteem in which she was always held became touched with reverence for a lady so unfairly persecuted. Safe in Dr. Lapwing’s care, poor Mary heard only the distant echoes of the rioting and knew nothing either of the crazy destruction of her home or of the vindictiveness of the mob against her person.
The rioting had no sooner been suppressed than Scotland Yard was subjected both in the House of Commons and the Press to the most severe criticism for not having yet caught the fiend known as Jane the Ripper. The temporary Commissioner of Police, glad of the excuse, instantly resigned and retired to public life, for which his social ambitions and his wife’s toothy tenacity eminently fitted him. In the absence of anyone ready to take on the job at so critical a time, Basil Icelin became Acting Commissioner.
Throughout the days of the rioting neither the C.I.D. nor our friend Colonel Wingless had been idle in their quest of the criminal. And, some few mornings after the last of the disorders, there took place what at first appeared to be a singular coincidence.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Towards noon Wingless was driving his car through the main street of Leatherhead when he saw Icelin and Superintendent Crust in conversation on the pavement with a uniformed Police Sergeant. Icelin raised an eyebrow as his friend drew up.
“And what are you doing here, Wingless?”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” Wingless said, “if we haven’t by some extraordinary fluke hit on the same trail.”
“Sir,” said Superintendent Crust, “we at Scotland Yard can’t afford to make flukes. We are here as a result of certain investigations, and with Mr. Icelin’s permission, sir, I could tell you their nature.”
“By all means,” Icelin said, “since it was you who first gave us the line to take, Wingless. But if you are here after the same man, I’m damned if I know how you managed to get on to him.”
“All this,” said Wingless, “calls for a quick one.” Whereupon the three men entered an inn nearby, the Sergeant promising to attend on them in half an hour’s time.
“Sir,” said Superintendent Crust, looking mournfully into a tankard of ale, “I must tell you first of all that the Secretary of the General Medical Council gave us every assistance in his power, and that as a result of his collaboration we are here to find out all we can about a man called Axaloe. Now this man Axaloe, sir, was a doctor and scientist of exceptional achievements, but what was remarkable about him was that he was also very interested in spiritualism.”
“And why was that remarkable, Crust?”
“Sir, a mind so exact as this man Axaloe’s must naturally abhor the daft delusions and barmy theories on which occult data are based. And if I seem to express myself too strongly about this, it is because my wife’s sister, sir, is very partial to spiritualism——”
“And has she tried, Crust, to convert you?”
“Sir, to an unhinged mind like my wife’s sister’s everything appears possible. Now, some twelve years ago the General Medical Council found itself compelled to investigate certain alleged irregularities in this Dr. Xanthis Axaloe’s professional conduct. These irregularities, which were proved against him without difficulty and for which he was debarred from earning his livelihood as a doctor, were of a singularly unpleasant nature. The husbands of two of Dr. Axaloe’s lady patients indignantly complained that their wives returned home after a consultation in an exhausted, nervous and hysterical condition quite incompatible with a visit to a respectable physician. Sir,” said Superintendent Crust, “I shall not go into the details of the offences which this man had committed upon the minds and persons of these unfortunate ladies—who, to the proper indignation of their husbands, refused to testify against him—except to tell you that he was proved beyond all doubt to be a man more gross and more depraved than any other man you ever heard of.”
“What were these offences, Crust?”
“Sir, I would not sully your ears.”
“You do an injustice to the Colonel’s clubs,” said Icelin. “His ears have been sullied by experts.”
“The man,” said Crust indignantly, “was a sapphist and a nymphomaniac.”
“Must be an acrobat,” said Wingless.
“He means,” said Icelin, “sadist and erotomaniac.”
“Sir,” said Crust warmly, “that’s as may be, but this man Axaloe was a downright shocking chap, that’s what he was. You never heard of such goings on, and what those poor ladies must have suffered—or should have suffered if they had been brought up right—doesn’t bear thinking of. There were police court proceedings and Axaloe was committed to hard labour for eighteen months. Now, sir, his photograph is conclusive evidence that he was the man who addressed her Grace in Jermyn Street and later had the audacity to call at her house.
“The report of the Governor of the prison in which he served his sentence is very interesting. The convict Axaloe, while his conduct throughout was of a kind to earn him the usual remission, remained until his release the most hated and the most feared inmate of the prison amongst both warders and convicts. The Governor could find no definite reason for this fear and hatred, but could only suggest that it must have been due to the very dark, icy and contemptuous stare with which this man Axaloe made for himself a prison within the prison walls. But the Governor dismissed as superstitious nonsense certain remarks in a very popular book recently published by an ex-convict who had served his sentence with Axaloe, to the effect that Xanthis Axaloe—under another name in the book, of course—was an Antichrist with great and virulent powers. Sir,” said Superintendent Crust, “the fact remains that we have at this stage nothing tangible with which to connect this man Axaloe with the Jane the Ripper crimes.”
“Then let me ask you,” said Wingless, “how it comes about that I also have come to Leatherhead for a little chat with Dr. Axaloe?”
“Perhaps,” said Icelin, “you consulted Crust’s wife’s sister.”
“If he had, sir,” said poor Crust, “he would still be listening to her.”
“Only four days ago,” Wingless said, “a point occurred to me which I had quite overlooked——”
“But we hadn’t,” said Icelin. “You are referring to the Duchess’s maid, Monica Snee, who was dismissed by Miss Gool some six weeks ago. She has been traced and interviewed, Wingless. Her character in the neighbourhood where she lives is excellent, she had seen nothing while in service at Grosvenor Square of a suspicious nature, she expressed respectful affection for her former mistress and an understandable resentment against Miss Gool—and, in short, my dear fellow, she was a wash-out.”
“You surprise me,” said Wingless, “but not half as much as little Monica did. My valet and I have been taking it in turns to follow her day and night for several days, and we have also searched her rooms in Camberwell.”
“An illegal act,” said Icelin. “We also found nothing.”
“Exactly. But yesterday afternoon, Crust, my man followed her into a train at Waterloo. She got out here at Leatherhead and walked to a cottage beyond the town, where she stayed for several hours. My man found that this cottage had been owned for some years by a recluse called Champion, who went out very rarely and then only at night, was of presentable appearance, and was understood to be interested in some form of research.”
“Sir,” said Superintendent Crust, “I take
the liberty of asking you to have one on me. You have done very well, sir, very well indeed. You have brought home the bacon, Colonel Wingless.”
“You think it is the same man, Crust?”
“I have already ascertained, sir, that Xanthis Axaloe is passing under the name of Percy Champion. Now, thanks to what you have told us, maybe we shall get him yet. And when we do, sir, only my long training as a police officer will prevent me from twisting his dratted neck—if you will pardon me, sir—with my own hands.”
Icelin said: “You are too optimistic, Crust. As you said before, we haven’t one thing against Axaloe in the Jane case. And how, in the name of all reason, can he be Jane?”
“Sir, this is a very queer case.”
“Are you telling me, Crust? You have suggested that we interview him. May I ask what we can—legally—do if he refuses to be interviewed?”
At this Superintendent Crust looked more than usually despondent, for Icelin’s question had been worrying him for the last twenty-four hours. Colonel Wingless wore a faraway look, but it was impossible to say whether that was due to a plan he had or to the gins-and-bitters he had been drinking.
After a luncheon of those damp cold meats for which England is renowned or infamous according to the lining of your stomach, the three men left the inn and were joined by the Sergeant, who had been patiently waiting for them. Drawn up in front of Wingless’s open car there was an Austin saloon with a beefy-looking man in a bowler hat at the wheel.
“Is that,” Icelin said severely to the Sergeant, “a plain-clothes man?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then tell him,” said Crust, “to go away at once.”
“Leaving the car behind, sir?”
“No, no—I want him away as quickly as may be. Why, I never heard of such a thing. All Leatherhead will be taking us for gangsters in a jiffy.”
Then Crust turned to Icelin. “We haven’t one tittle of authority, sir. This man Axaloe can send us to the dickens or not just as he chooses. Or he can ’phone his lawyer. Or, worse still, a newspaper editor. Now I suggest we drive in the Colonel’s car near the house—the Sergeant will show us the way—and you and Colonel Wingless can call on him as private individuals.”
“And what,” said Wingless, “do we do then? Just ask him his views on birth control and if he doesn’t answer with charm tell him he’s a bastard?”
“Just tell him, sir, that you are Monica Snee’s uncle and guardian and ask him why a gent like him is compromising the poor girl. All we want, sir, is to get you two gentlemen into the house and keep him occupied while I get in at the back and search the place. He keeps no servants, I’m told by the Sergeant here, just because no one will stay with him. If he’s offhand with you, sir,” said Crust to Wingless, “just clip him one good and hard.”
“Would you advise the jaw, Crust, or lower down?”
“The jaw should do very nicely, sir. It’s an illegal assault, of course, but I don’t fancy Axaloe will make any charge. He might ’phone his lawyer when he has recovered, but I’ll have searched the place by then. And, sir, giving him this alleged sock on the jaw will not only be a refreshment to you but a great help to the police, so make it extra special.”
“I shall try, Crust, to deserve your confidence.”
But perhaps Colonel Wingless had lost something of his old swiftness. Perhaps the bottle, that enemy of the human species, particularly when taken regularly between meals, had corrupted his vitality. For Xanthis Axaloe smote him, and he fell to the ground.
Now the house which the Sergeant pointed out to them, when Wingless had stopped the car some distance away, looked a most unsuitable residence for a man of Dr. Axaloe’s sinister reputation. The surroundings were tranquil and charming, and the ripe scents of high summer were heavy in the air. Icelin and Wingless felt their town clothes a burden on them as, leaving Crust and the Sergeant by the car, they walked down the lane. High hedges screened them from the house until they were abreast. The place was as bright as a new pin, very white, and the shutters newly painted green.
“I’ve got an aunt,” said Wingless, “who has a place the sister of this.”
“To hell with your aunt,” said Icelin.
“Right, old chap. I’ll tell her.”
“Wingless, I like this business less and less. There is something about this man that gives me a queasy feeling in the belly. Got a gun with you?”
“Funny you should ask that. I was just thinking that the best way to interview this bloke would be to shoot him first.”
Throughout this interchange they were partly screened from the house by the hedge. Wingless strode to the garden gate, threw it open and, followed by Icelin, marched up the narrow path to the green door. There was a brass knocker and a bell button.
“All together,” said Wingless. “I knock and you ring.”
“But why knock?”
“Because I shall feel a lot better after having made a noise. Now.”
The noise he made with the heavy brass knocker was so very considerable, and the silence that followed so very depressing, that he almost immediately knocked again.
“Feel better?” said Icelin sourly.
At that moment the door was opened, and the two men were so surprised by what they saw that they gaped. For the dark, lean, hairy and handsome man before them was wearing a salmon-pink bathing-costume of a very tight, very modish and decidedly feminine cut. Two dainty straps supported it over the man’s powerful shoulders, and it was cut away at each side to give a splendid if unexpected view of his ribs. What the back was like, they could only imagine. And this salmon-pink frippery, incongruous though it must have been on any man, was fantastic on the one before them, for his tall and sinewy figure, his manly parts, his dark narrow handsome features and the icy smile in his deep eyes, were of a pronouncedly masculine order.
“Mr. Axaloe?” said Wingless.
“Ci-devant,” said the man. “Now Champion.”
“We want,” said Icelin, “to ask you some questions with reference to your alleged intimacy with a Monica Snee.”
“Why ‘alleged’?” said the man coldly. “I have been sleeping with her off and on for months. What about it?”
Nonplussed by this Gallic statement of fact in a matter where insinuation is usually held to be the gentleman’s part, particularly if, like Icelin, he belongs to a really good club, Icelin looked doubtfully at Wingless.
“Not a nice man,” said Wingless.
“Nice?” said Icelin. “He must be a terror with the girls.”
“Sir,” said Wingless to the man, “I am surprised at your speaking in such terms of a respectable girl.”
“I don’t give a curse,” said the man, “whether you are surprised or not. And Monica Snee isn’t a respectable girl. She can take it.”
“It?” said Icelin.
“The girl’s a tart,” said the man.
“Now don’t get cross,” said Wingless.
“Why not?” said the man. “Wouldn’t you be if your girl had played ball with almost every manservant in Grosvenor Square?”
“Look here,” said Wingless with a severity he was far from feeling, for he himself had once had an eye for pretty Monica but had been deceived by her prim expression, “look here, I am here on the girl’s behalf. Let me tell you, Dr. Axaloe or Mr. Champion or whoever you are, that I am the girl’s uncle and——”
“Colonel Wingless,” said the man in the bathing-costume, “you are a damned liar.”
Throughout this conversation the man Axaloe had been standing a yard or so within the doorway. Wingless, who was a good half-head the taller of the two, had managed to edge himself just into the narrow passage, while Icelin had moved a little to one side to give his friend elbow-room for the arranged blow. Now, as the word “liar” cracked across his hearing, Icelin braced himself to push into the house after Wingless. Thus he was unprepared for the impact of a moving body in a contrary direction, and when W
ingless was forced back on him as though he had been hit by a ton of bricks the two men fell ignominiously into a flower bed. The door was closed.
“Damn it,” said Icelin, “can’t you get off my ankle?”
Wingless, tenderly feeling his jaw-bone, got up with a dazed expression.
“Believe it or not,” he said.
Then, very thoughtfully, he walked out of the garden, and Icelin followed him.
Wingless said: “What struck you—now, no jokes—as most odd about our friend?”
Icelin said: “The bathing-costume.”
“But a bathing-costume on a hot day isn’t in itself very odd.”
“No. But it isn’t every man of forty or so who wears a salmon-pink bathing-costume made for a young lady of fashion.”
“That’s just what I think.”
“This business,” said Icelin, “is monkey business.”
“And do you know, Icelin, I am going back to that house to see exactly how queer it is.”
“Without going into training first?”
“We’ll engage in badinage later, shall we?”
“I’m sorry, old man. But this Jane the Ripper case has gotten on my nerves. Now let me tell you that if you go back to that house the police can’t really keep an eye on you. Crust and I can watch out as private citizens. We have nothing against this man. The fact that he served a sentence more than twelve years ago lays him open to suspicion. But that’s all. I tell you frankly, Wingless, that the police can’t afford to antagonise public feeling any further at the moment. Any action against this man which isn’t based on absolute facts must lay us open to the charge of persecuting the individual.”
They were now back beside Wingless’s car. Crust and the Sergeant were not to be seen.
Wingless said: “I gather from that that you are with me in whatever I do.”
Hell! said the Duchess Page 8
