Man with the Dark Beard (4 page)

“Anybody could come in here, burgle the house and leave you very little the wiser,” she remarked with a glance at Wilton.

“Yes; but it isn't generally left open like this,” he said as he closed it behind them. “It is always kept locked by Dr. Bastow's orders unless anything is wanted for the garden – coal for the greenhouse, or manure.”

But Miss Lavinia was not attending to him. She broke into a run as they emerged from the little shrubbery and began to cross the narrow strip of grass that lay between it and the house. On the farther side of this, immediately under the windows, there was a broad gravel path.

Miss Lavinia hurried across it, and placing her hands on the window-sill moved her head up and down.

“Well, how that young woman saw into this room puzzles me! The blind is drawn as close as wax!”

“On that side perhaps.” Wilton had come up behind her, and now drew her across.

Here the blind seemed to have been pushed or caught aside, and any tall person standing outside could see right into the room; since much to Miss Lavinia's amazement the curtain inside was also caught up.

“Why, it's a regular spy-hole!” she said as, putting her hands on the window-sill and raising herself on tiptoe, she applied her eyes to the glass.

A moment later she dropped down with a groan.

“She is right enough. John is there, and I don't like the way he sits huddled up in his chair. Mr. Wilton, you had better get in as soon as you can.”

Wilton needed no second bidding. One blow shattered the pane nearest him, and putting his arm through he raised the catch, then the sash, and then vaulted into the room. Miss Lavinia waited, one arm round Hilary, who had joined her.

It seemed a long time before Wilton came back, but it was not in reality more than a minute or two before he parted the curtains again; and stood carefully holding them so that Hilary could not see into the room.

“I fear the doctor is very ill,” he said gravely. “I have the key. We will go round.”

Hilary threw off her aunt's arm.

“Go back to Dad, Basil. What do you mean by leaving him? I can get in this way too.”

She put her hands on the window-sill, and would have scrambled in, but Wilton held her back at arm's length.

“You don't understand, Hilary. You can do no good here. Your father is –”

“Dead – no, no – not dead!” Hilary said wildly.

Wilton's eyes sought Miss Lavinia's as he bent his head in grave assent.

“Murdered? God bless my soul! I never heard such nonsense in my life!” Miss Lavinia Priestley was the speaker.

Basil Wilton was facing her and beside him was a short, rather stout man. Dr. James Greig was an old friend of Dr. Bastow's and a telephone summons had brought him on the scene. A third person at whom Miss Lavinia had scarcely glanced as yet stood behind the other two.

As a matter of fact, very few people did glance a second time at William Stoddart, which fact formed a by no means inconsiderable asset in Stoddart's career in the C.I.D. For William Stoddart was a detective, and one of the best known in the service too, in spite of his undistinguished exterior.

Neither particularly short nor particularly tall, neither particularly stout nor particularly thin, he seemed to be made up of negatives. His small, thin, colourless face was the counterpart of many others that might have been seen in London streets, though in reality Stoddart hailed from the pleasant Midland country. His eyes were grey, not large. He had a trick of making them appear smaller by keeping them half closed; yet a look from those same grey eyes had been known to be dreaded by certain criminal classes more than anything on earth. For it was an acknowledged fact that Detective-Inspector Stoddart had brought more of his cases to a successful conclusion than any other officer in the force.

That he should have come this morning on the matter of Dr. John Bastow's death showed that in the opinion of the Scotland Yard authorities there were some mysterious circumstances connected with that death.

So far, since with the two doctors he had entered the morning-room to confront Miss Lavinia and her niece, he had not spoken, nor did he break the silence now. Dr. James Greig took upon himself the office of spokesman.

He answered Miss Lavinia, to whom he was slightly known.

“I am very sorry, Miss Priestley, that there can be no doubt on the point. Dr. Bastow was shot through the head – the shot entered at the back. It is quite certain that the pistol was fired at close quarters and was probably held just behind the ear.”

“My God!” The exclamation came from Miss Lavinia.

Hilary shivered from head to foot. The twentieth-century girl does not faint – she merely turned a few degrees whiter as she glanced from Dr. Greig's face to Basil's, from his again to that of the great detective.

“But what do you mean? He couldn't have been murdered. Nobody would have murdered him,” Miss Lavinia cried, too much staggered to be quite coherent now. “Everybody liked John!”

“I'm afraid it is evident that some one did not,” Dr Greig said firmly. “The murderer must have been some one the doctor knew too. You see he had allowed him to come quite close.”

“Allowed him or her?” a dry voice interposed at this juncture.

Sir Felix Skrine had entered the morning-room by the door immediately behind Miss Lavinia and Hilary. He grasped Miss Lavinia's hand with a word of sympathy and touched Hilary's arm with a mute, fatherly gesture, as he went on addressing himself to Dr. Greig.

“There is nothing to show the sex of a person who fires an automatic revolver, you know, doctor.” Then he looked across at the detective and nodded. “Glad to see you here, Stoddart. I would sooner have you in charge of a case of this kind than any man I know.”

The detective looked gratified.

“You are very kind, Sir Felix. But we all have our failures.”

“Very few in your case,” Skrine assured him. “But I want a little talk with you as soon as I can have it, Stoddart. Miss Lavinia, I am going to take you and Hilary up to the drawingroom for the present. Later every one in the house will have to give their account of last night's happenings, to the inspector. For the present I take it you and Hilary have nothing to say.”

“Nothing,” Miss Lavinia assured him. “We were waiting for my brother-in-law to come in for a few last words, as he always did, you know, Sir Felix.”

“I know,” Skrine assented.

“Well, we waited and waited, for he had promised me his advice in rather a difficult matter,” Miss Lavinia went on. *“And he didn't come. At last the parlourmaid told us they couldn't make him hear. I said he must have been called out, but she said he hadn't. We went down and –found out what had happened. I mean – found that John was dead. Of course I thought he had had a fit, or something. I could not guess –”

In spite of her iron self-control her voice gave way. Now Inspector Stoddart for the first time took command of the situation.

“I think if you would allow us just to see the scene of the tragedy and to make a few inquiries while the matter is fresh, it will be better, madam,” he said politely. “You shall hear everything later.”

Up in the drawing-room Sir Felix drew forward two big easy chairs to the fire that had been hastily lighted and put Miss Lavinia and Hilary into them.

“I will come back as soon as I can,” he said sympathetically.

Then he and the detective went to the scene of the tragedy. A policeman was stationed at the door of the consulting-room. He saluted respectfully.

Sir Felix paused with a shiver of distaste.

“He – it has been taken away, I presume?”

The detective nodded.

“Of course, Sir Felix. Nothing else has been touched, but after the police surgeon had made his examination the body was taken to the doctor's bedroom.” He opened the door as he spoke and stood back for Sir Felix.

The lawyer motioned to him to go in.

“I cannot treat this as an ordinary case,” he said brokenly. “He was my lifelong friend.”

The two men glanced at him sympathetically. Then the inspector pushed the door wider and went in softly. Over his shoulder Skrine looked in.

Everything was as usual except that the revolving chair before the big writing-table was empty. For the rest, the curtains had been drawn over the window, but the room looked exactly as it had done when Wilton sprang in.

The inspector went straight to the vacant chair, and Skrine followed him.

“It was easy enough to see the hole by which the bullet had entered,” the inspector remarked. “A stream of blood had trickled down the neck and on to his collar and shirt. All round the wound the flesh was blackened and discoloured.”

It seemed to Skrine as he stood with his hand on the writing-table that his friend was still there, watching him with the same faintly detached air of amusement that had so often greeted him. In spite of his self-control Skrine's lips trembled. 

“Brute and fiend! To murder a man like John Bastow! He – hanging is too good for him, Stoddart.”

“Or her? As you said just now,” the detective reminded him.

“Or her,” Skrine assented. “The fiend must have come right up to him, Stoddart. You have the pistol?”

The detective shook his head.

“Not a sign of it, Sir Felix.”

Skrine turned away, blowing his nose noisily.

“He – he wasn't alarmed in any way, you say, Stoddart,” he said after a pause. “Then the fiend must have come through the garden door and stolen up behind him silently.”

“Or been some one he was accustomed to see and with whom he regarded himself as perfectly safe,” the detective suggested.

Skrine turned and looked at him.

“You mean – you suspect some one?”

“No, I don't,” the detective said bluntly. “I beg your pardon, Sir Felix. I mean what I said – no more. To my mind it is self-evident that the murderer was some one known to Dr. Bastow – some one with whom he was sufficiently at home to go on with his work while the other was moving about the room. To me it hardly seems possible that anyone strange could have got into the room and shot Dr. Bastow without his knowing there was anyone there. Still one cannot rule out the possibility –”

“No,” said Sir Felix. “No, of course one cannot.” Then he stood absolutely motionless, his eyes fixed on the paper that was spread before the dead man's place. There were a few lines of writing and then the pen lay with a long zigzagging mark across the whiteness beneath, just as it must have fallen from the stiffening fingers.

The detective drew a small leather case from his pocket, and proceeded to take out a strong magnifying-glass, a pill-box full of fine grey powder and a tiny pair of tweezers. Then he changed his pince-nez for spectacles and turned to the window by which Wilton had entered and began to examine the curtains and blind with meticulous care. It occupied a good deal of time and seemed unproductive of any result.

Meanwhile Skrine, still looking at the paper, uttered a sharp exclamation. The detective looked up.

“This letter he was writing was to me,” the lawyer said pointing downwards.

“Ah, I was coming to that.” Stoddart did not turn.

The lawyer read aloud the few words the dead man had written:

Then death had stepped in and the sentence remained unfinished for ever. Skrine's voice trembled as he read it aloud.

The detective was now prowling about near the door leading into the garden. He picked up some tiny fragments of what looked like mud with his tweezers and, after examining them through the magnifying-glass, laid them carefully in the little box in his hand. Then he came over to Skrine.

“You know to what those words refer, I take it, Sir Felix?”

Skrine nodded.

“As is self-evident, to a conversation that we had had that very afternoon.”

“Do you think that conversation could in any way help us now?”

“I scarcely think so. It was all so vague really. But you shall judge for yourself. It has appeared to me for some time that Dr. Bastow was not in the best of health. So far, however, he had always evaded the subject when I mentioned it, but yesterday I taxed him with it directly. After beating about the bush for some time he admitted that his sickness was more of the mind than the body. In the course of his professional career he had discovered something connected with a crime that had been committed, and he was undecided what to do about it. He had a very sensitive nature, and it was preying upon his mind. He wanted my advice. I gave it to the best of my ability, not knowing any of the details of the affair, and he seemed inclined to accept it, but said he would see me again before deciding. He is absolutely wrong when he says he thinks I know what he meant. I should imagine from this letter” – tapping it as it lay on the table – “that he had made his decision before consulting me any further.”

The detective looked at the paper then back again at Skrine standing behind the vacant chair. 

“What does he mean by his Chinese box? We had better have that.”

Skrine looked round vaguely.

“I take it he meant a box that generally used to stand on the table before him with gold dragons sprinkled over a red lacquer background – that sort of thing, don't you know. I don't see it now.”

“It isn't here,” said the detective quickly. “But perhaps he put it in some place of safety. How big a box was it?”

Sir Felix looked doubtful.

“Oh, about so big, I should say,” holding his hands about a foot apart.