(1929) The Three Just Men (17 page)

Again his host hesitated. “I don’t know. I’m almost afraid that I did,” he confessed. “I remember telling the postmaster that I was going to talk to Mr. Poole about poor Barberton—Mr. Barberton was very well known in this neighbourhood.”

“That is extremely unfortunate,” said Leon.

He was thinking of two things at the same time: the whereabouts of the missing lawyer, and the wonderful cover that the wall between the window and the floor gave to any man who might creep along out of sight until he got back suddenly to send the snake on its errand of death.

“How many men have you got in the grounds, by the way, Meadows?”

“One, and he’s not in the grounds but outside on the road. I pull him in at night, or rather in the evening, to patrol the grounds, and he is armed.” He said this with a certain importance. An armed English policeman is a tremendous phenomenon that few have seen.

“Which means that he has a revolver that he hasn’t fired except at target practice,” said Leon. “Excuse me—I thought I heard a car.”

He got up noiselessly from the table, went round the back of Mr. Lee, and, darting to the window, looked out. A flower-bed ran close to the wall, and beyond that was a broad gravel drive. Between gravel and flowers was a wide strip of turf. The drive continued some fifty feet to the right before it turned under an aich of rambler roses. To the left it extended for less than a dozen feet, and from this point a path parallel the side of the house ran into the drive.

“Do you hear it?” asked Lee.

“No, sir, I was mistaken.”

Leon dipped his hand into his side pocket, took out a handful of something that looked like tiny candles wrapped in coloured paper. Only Meadows saw him scatter them left and right, and he was too discreet to ask why, Leon saw the inquiring lift of his eyebrows as he came back to his seat, but was wilfully dense. Thereafter, he ate his dinner with only an occasional glance towards the window.

“I’m not relying entirely upon my own lawyer’s advice,” I said Mr. Lee. “I have telegraphed to Lisbon to ask Dr. Pinto Caillao to come to England, and he may be of greater service even than Poole, though where—” The butler came in at this moment.

“Mrs. Poole has Just telephoned, sir. Her husband has had a bad accident: his car ran into a tree trunk which was lying across the road near Lawley. It was on the other side of the bend, and he did not see it until too late.”

“Is he very badly hurt?”

“No, sir, but he is in the Cottage Hospital. Mrs. Poole says he is fit to travel home.”

The blind man sat open-mouthed. “What a terrible thing to have happened!” he began. “A very lucky thing for Mr. Poole,” said Leon cheerfully. “I feared worse than that—”

From somewhere outside the window came a “snap!”—the sound that a Christmas cracker makes when it is exploded. Leon got up from the table, walked swiftly to the side of the window and jumped out. As he struck the earth, he trod on one of the little bon-bons he had scattered and it cracked viciously under his foot.

There was nobody in sight. He ran swiftly along the grass-plot, slowing his pace as came to the end of the wall, and then jerked round, gun extended stiffly. Still nobody. Before him was a close-growing box hedge, in which had been cut an opening. He heard the crack of a signal behind him, guessed that it was Meadows, and presently the detective joined him. Leon put his fingers to his lips, leapt the path to the grass on the other side, and dodged behind a tree until he could see straight through the opening in the box hedge. Beyond was a rose-garden, a mass of pink and red and golden blooms.

Leon put his hand in his pocket and took out a black cylinder, fitting it, without taking his eyes from the hedge opening, to the muzzle of his pistol. Meadows heard the dull thud of the explosion before he saw the pistol go up. There was a scatter of leaves and twigs and the sound of hurrying feet. Leon dashed through the opening in time to see a man plunge into a plantation.

“Plop!”

The bullet struck a tree not a foot from the fugitive.

“That’s that!” said Leon, and took off his silencer. “I hope none of the servants heard it, and most of all that Lee, whose hearing is unfortunately most acute, mistook the shot for something else.”

He went back to the window, stopping to pick up such of his crackers as had not exploded.

“They are useful things to put on the floor of your room when you’re expecting to have your throat cut in the middle of the night,” he said pleasantly. “They cost exactly two dollars a hundred, and they’ve saved my life more often than I can count. Have you ever waited in the dark to have your throat cut?” he asked. “It happened to me three times, and I will admit that it is not an experience that I am anxious to repeat. Once in Bohemia, in the city of Prague; once in New Orleans, and once in Ortona.”

“What happened to the assassins?” asked Meadows with a shiver.

“That is a question for the theologian, if you will forgive the well-worn jest,” said Leon. “I think they are in hell, but then I’m prejudiced.”

Mr. Lee had left the dining-table and was standing at the front door, leaning on his stick; and with him an interested Mr. Washington.

“What was the trouble?” asked the old man in a worried voice. “It is a great handicap not being able to see things. But I thought I heard a shot fired.”

“Two,” said Leon promptly. “I hoped you hadn’t heard them. I don’t know who the man was, Mr. Lee, but he certainly had no right in the grounds, and I scared him off.”

“You must have used a silencer: I did not hear the shots fully. Did you catch a view of the man’s face?”

“No, I saw his back,” he said. Leon thought it was unnecessary to add that a man’s back was as familiar to him as his face. For when he studied his enemies, his study was a very thorough and complete one. Moreover, Gurther ran with a peculiar swing of his shoulder.

He turned suddenly to the master of Rath Hall. “May I speak with you privately for a few minutes, Mr. Lee?” he asked. He had taken a sudden resolution.

“Certainly,” said the other courteously, and tapped his way into the hall and into his private study.

For ten minutes Leon was closeted with him. When he came out, Meadows had gone down to his man at the gate, and Washington was standing disconsolately alone. Leon took him by the arm and led him on to the lawn.

“There’s going to be real trouble here to-night,” he said, and told him the arrangement he had made with Mr. Johnson Lee. “I’ve tried to persuade him to let me see the letter which is in his safe, but he is like rock on that matter, and I’d hate to burgle the safe of a friend. Listen.”

Elijah Washington listened and whistled.

“They stopped the lawyer coming,” Gonsalez went on, “and now they’re mortally scared if, in his absence, the old man tells us what he intended keeping for his lawyer.”

“Meadows is going to London, isn’t he?”

Leon nodded slowly.

“Yes, he is going to London—by car. Did you know all the servants were going out to-night?”

Mr. Washington stared at him.

“The women, you mean?”

“The women and the men,” said Leon calmly. “There is an excellent concert at Brightlingsea to-night, and though they will be late for the first half of the performance, they will thoroughly enjoy the latter portion of the programme. The invitation is not mine, but it is one I thoroughly approve.”

“But does Meadows want to go away when the fun is starting?”

Apparently Inspector Meadows was not averse from leaving at this critical moment. He was, in fact, quite happy to go. Mr. Washington’s views on police intelligence underwent a change for the worse.

“But surely he had better stay?” said the American. “If you’re expecting an attack…they are certain to marshal the whole of their forces?”

“Absolutely certain,” said the calm Gonsalez “Here is the car.”

The Rolls came out from the back of the house at that moment and drew up before the door.

“I don’t like leaving you,” said Meadows, as he swung himself up by the driver’s side and put his bag on the seat.

“Tell the driver to avoid Lawley like the plague,” said Leon. “There’s a tree down, unless the local authorities have removed it—which is very unlikely.”

He waited until the tail lights of the machine had disappeared into the gloom, then he went back to the hall.

“Excuse me, sir,” said the butler, struggling into his great-coat as he spoke. “Will you be all right—there is nobody left in the house to look after Mr. Lee. I could stay—”

“It was Mr. Lee’s suggestion you should all go,” said Gonsalez briefly. “Just go outside and tell me when the lights of the char-a-banc come into view. I want to speak to Mr. Lee before you go.”

He went into the library and shut the door behind him. The waiting butler heard the murmur of his voice and had some qualms of conscience. The tickets had come from a local agency; he had never dreamt that, with guests in the house, his employer would allow the staff to go in its entirety.

It was not a char-a-banc but a big closed bus that came lumbering up the apology for a drive, and swept round to the back of the house, to the annoyance of the servants, who were gathered in the hall.

“Don’t bother, I will tell him,” said Leon. He seemed to have taken full charge of the house, an unpardonable offence in the eyes of well-regulated servants.

He disappeared through a long passage leading into the mysterious domestic regions, and returned to announce that the driver had rectified his error and was coming to the front entrance: an unnecessary explanation, since the big vehicle drew up as he was telling the company.

“There goes the most uneasy bunch of festive souls it has ever been my misfortune to see,” he said, as the bus, its brakes squeaking, went down the declivity towards the unimposing gate. “And yet they’ll have the time of their lives. I’ve arranged supper for them at the Beech Hotel, and although they are not aware of it, I am removing them to a place where they’d give a lot of money to be—if they hadn’t gone!”

“That leaves you and me alone,” said Mr. Washington glumly, but brightened up almost at once. “I can’t say that I mind a rough house, with or without gun-play,” he said. He looked round the dark hall a little apprehensively. “What about fastening the doors behind?” he asked.

“They’re all right,” said Leon. “It isn’t from the back that danger will come. Come out and enjoy the night air…it is a little too soon for the real trouble.”

But here, for once, he was mistaken.

Elijah Washington followed him into the park, took two paces, and suddenly Leon saw him stagger. In a second he was by the man’s side, bent and peering, his glasses discarded on the grass.

“Get me inside,” said Washington’s voice. He was leaning heavily upon his companion.

With his arm round his waist, taking half his weight, Leon pushed the man into the hall but did not close the door. Instead, as the American sat down with a thud upon a hall seat, Leon fell to the ground, and peered along the artificial sky-line he had created. There was no movement, no sign of any attacker. Then and only then did he shut the door and drop the bar, and pushing the study door wide, carried the man into the room and switched on the lights.

“I guess something got me then,” muttered Washington.

His right cheek was red and swollen, and Leon saw the tell-tale bite; saw something else. He put his hand to the cheek and examined his finger-tips.

“Get me some whisky, will you?—about a gallon of it.”

He was obviously in great pain and sat rocking himself to and fro.

“Gosh! This is awful!” he groaned. “Never had any snake that bit like this!”

“You’re alive, my friend, and I didn’t believe you when you said you were snake-proof.”

Leon poured out a tumbler of neat whisky and held it to the American’s lips.

“Down with Prohibition!” murmured Washington, and did not take the glass from his lips until it was empty. “You can give me another dose of that—I shan’t get pickled,” he said.

He put his hand up to his face and touched the tiny wound gingerly—“It is wet,” he said in surprise.

“What did it feel like?”

“Like nothing so much as a snake-bite,” confessed the expert.

Already his face was puffed beneath the eyes, and the skin was discoloured black and blue.

Leon crossed to the fire-place and pushed the bell, and Washington watched him in amazement.

“Say, what’s the good of ringing? The servants have gone.”

There was a patter of feet in the hall, the door was flung open and George Manfred came in, and behind him the startled visitor saw Meadows and a dozen men.

“For the Lord’s sake!” he said sleepily.

“They came in the char-a-banc, lying on the floor,” explained Leon, “and the only excuse for bringing a char-a-banc here was to send the servants to that concert.”

“You got Lee away?” asked Manfred.

Leon nodded.

“He was in the car that took friend Meadows, who transferred to the char-a-banc somewhere out of sight of the house.”

Washington had taken a small cardboard box from his pocket and was rubbing a red powder gingerly upon the two white-edged marks, groaning the while.