MRS3 The Velvet Hand (25 page)

"Nothing, 'm. It was always in his room. It was too big to put away."

"Did you wash the kettle?"

"No, 'm. My instructions were never to touch anything that had chemicals in it. And I wasn't anxious to. They washed them theirselves."

That was all we got out of Mrs. Freese that was material to our case, though it was not all she volunteered. We got out as quickly as we could after Mme Storey had presented the cheerful and indigent little woman with a five-pound note, which called down ten thousand blessings on her head. When we got down to the street Bristed had not yet come back with the car, and we stood there talking for a few moments. From behind the closed windows of the second floor issued the sounds of Mrs. Freese's singing, more vociferous than ever but not a bit more tuneful.

"Not a poison gas, but a lethal gas, Bella," said my mistress thoughtfully. "There's a big difference. That coincides with what Sir Egerton Pulford told us. The scattered pieces of our puzzle are beginning to come together. One begins to understand what Sims Hendrie's scheme to end warfare was. Imagine the advantage of possessing a gas which would put the entire opposing army sound to sleep without a struggle! It is magnificent!"

After a moment she added: "Bella, I wonder if you and I didn't get a whiff of that gas in the train night before last?"

"But how could we?" I said helplessly.

"I don't know," she answered simply.

"Very likely Mr. Hendrie may have been carrying a sample of it up to the Royal Society," I agreed, "but he wouldn't have set it off voluntarily in the train; and if it escaped from him by accident, it would have put the young man to sleep as well as the rest of us, and he couldn't have robbed and murdered Mr. Hendrie."

"Oh, quite," she said.

"And if it was a thief who got on our car by accident and found us all asleep, your clothing was far richer than Mr. Hendrie's: there was your watch, your rings—would he not have chosen you for his victim?"

"Surely," she said. "We are not yet at the end of our work."

Bristed came along in the car, reporting that he had reserved the compartment for Mme Storey as requested. "How did you get along with Mrs. Freese?" he asked with his loud laugh. He laughed too much.

"What a woman!" said Mme Storey, humorously holding up her hands.

"I shouldn't think she could tell you anything of value," said Bristed.

"She didn't. I wasted my time."

He looked relieved. "What next?" he asked.

"I've done about all I can do in Banchester," said Mme Storey.

"Come to my house and rest for a while," he said eagerly. "Mrs. Bristed and I would be honoured."

"You are very kind," said my mistress. "We will."

It was now past six o'clock and growing dark. There was an agreeable mildness in the air, and the sunset was beautiful. Particularly lovely at that dusky moment were the great pansies growing around the Bristed cottage. Mrs. Bristed came to the door, as we walked up the path, and, hearing Mme Storey's exclamations of pleasure, came out. The pansies were growing in a narrow bed all around the foundation of the cottage. Their fragrance—for pansies have a fragrance, faintly perfumed the air.

"How exquisite!" exclaimed my mistress. "I must see them all!"

"They are nice," said Mrs. Bristed with her casual air. "I can't do much with flowers, I have so many other things to do, but I always try to have a few."

We strolled slowly around the cottage. "Do you raise them from seed?" asked Mme Storey.

"They may be raised from seed, if you have hot frames; but I have not the time. I buy the clumps from the gardeners."

"In pots?" asked Mme Storey innocently.

"No, they come in little baskets. So much lighter to carry."

"Quite."

At the back of the house several of the clumps were obviously freshly planted. Indeed, the basket and the trowel were lying close by. "I have been putting some in to-day," said Mrs. Bristed. "Some of the first ones died."

When we entered the house Mrs. Bristed said: "I hope that you and Miss Brickley will have a bit of dinner with us before you go to the train. It will not be much, of course."

Mme Storey thanked her heartily and declined. "We could not think of descending on you like that," she said. "You and Mr. Bristed must dine with us at the hotel opposite the station."

Mrs. Bristed looked at her husband, who enthusiastically accepted for both of them.

The interior of the house was sufficiently well furnished but quite lacking in charm. It was odd, the total absence of personality that it exhibited, like one of those completely equipped flats that they set up in furniture stores. Still, I suppose it was what you might have expected to find in the house of a woman who was a chemist first and a housekeeper second.

"Better still," said Mme Storey, with a careless look that suggested to me something important was coming; "perhaps you and Mrs. Bristed would be willing to coöperate with me in a plan that I propose. It will keep you up all night, but you are young; and I know how keen you are to get to the bottom of this terrible affair."

They looked at her questioningly.

"The trainmen have not been able to give us any information," Mme Storey went on, "and it occurred to me if I reproduced the journey of two nights ago in every detail so far as possible, it might strike on some chord in their memories."

So this was her plan! The subtlety of it was characteristic. One for the trainman and two for the Bristeds, I thought. Whatever they may have thought, they made haste to agree.

"Splendid idea!" cried Bristed.

"Miss Brickley and I will play ourselves," Mme Storey continued; "Mr. Bristed may represent Mr. Hendrie, and Mrs. Bristed the lady who sat next to Bella. All we lack is the young man who sat in the other corner, but we can do without him."

"It will be fun!" cried Bristed enthusiastically.

"Fun!" I said involuntarily.

"I mean interesting," he amended, somewhat confused.

"I suppose you haven't anything out of which we could create a disguise for you," suggested Mme Storey.

"I have an old tweed hat such as he used to wear," said Bristed; "there is a pair of his glasses in the laboratory; and my wife has a great cape that I could put on over my overcoat."

"Excellent! We must also have a pot of pansies."

"Won't a basket do?" asked Mrs. Bristed.

"No, I think we ought to have a big pot exactly the same as he carried. If you will give Bella the name of a gardener, she will fetch it in the car while you are getting ready."

This was done. The gardener filled the pot with earth and planted the pansies in it, wondering, I suppose, why I insisted on such a clumsy pot.

"Hm!" said Mme Storey, weighing it when I got back. "How heavy it is! Yet Mr. Hendrie seemed to carry it without difficulty."

"Where on earth could he have got it?" put in Mrs. Bristed.

As we drove through the business part of town the boys were crying the evening papers, and we stopped to buy them. In the local sheet there was fresh matter in the case, new even to Mme Storey and myself. It appeared that an enterprising reporter had discovered the identity of the young man who called himself "George Albert."

"He is Harry Straiker, the second son of a highly respected resident of this place," so the Banchester story ran. "His father is Mr. Edward Straiker, manager of the Banchester branch of the London and Western Counties Bank. This tragic affair comes as the climax to a long series of escapades on the part of young Straiker at school and at Oxford. He was sent down from the University during his third term as the result of a peculiarly outrageous prank, the details of which his family refused to divulge. Since that time his father has made one attempt after another to set him up in a business of some sort, but each attempt ended in disaster. According to a member of the family, he never before exhibited any criminal tendencies in his excesses; they were the result simply of high spirits and an unconquerable levity of disposition.

"As his last attempt to give him a start in life the elder Mr. Straiker set up his son at his own request on a chicken farm in one of the Southern counties. Here for a time things went very well, until young Straiker was run to earth by a party of wild young fellows, his former associates at Oxford. It appears that they wished to emulate the meetings of the Hell Fire Club of unholy memory, and after several days of bacchanalian riot, during which the chicken farm was virtually wrecked and most of the birds escaped, local constables proceeded to the place for the purpose of taking the participators in charge. There were only three constables against five young men, and in the mêlée that resulted, the five succeeded in making good their escape, but without their car.

"They scattered, and two days ago young Straiker turned up at his father's house in Banchester, having walked the whole distance. A painful scene followed between father and son. The elder Mr. Straiker took the stand that his son must return to Cranstoun (the scene of his exploit) to face the music and serve a term in jail, if necessary, hoping that the experience might serve to sober him. The son refused to submit to the humiliation of arrest for what he termed 'a gentleman's private party.' After bitter recriminations on both sides, the son rushed from his father's house swearing that his family should never hear of him again. He must have gone direct to the station and boarded the train for London."

My heart bled when I read this story; it was so exactly what one might have expected after having seen that young man's desperate face. Surely there was nothing mean or crooked in him, but only a mad recklessness which would not submit to English decorum.

When Bristed read the story, he said: "It's lucky this should come out just at this moment. You will be able to question the fellow's father and mother before you leave Banchester."

But Mme Storey shook her head. "Those unhappy people could not tell me anything useful," she said. My heart warmed to her for that speech.

Dinner at the hotel followed. I cannot remember that anything significant transpired during the meal. Bristed talked in his impulsive, rather scatter-brained fashion, while his wife mostly kept her mouth shut and her eyes cast down. Bristed was an interesting study: he was of the blundering, garrulous type, whom one thinks of as being unable to keep anything to themselves; yet he was keeping the secret of the lethal gas very successfully. It reminded me afresh of one of Mme Storey's sayings, that a naturally open man makes the most successful liar when his motive to deceive is strong enough.

We then proceeded to the station. My mistress and I received a bit of a shock on the platform when we perceived standing by the train an almost exact replica of the young man whom we now knew to be Harry Straiker, our travelling companion of two nights before. The same fine eyes and well-chiselled features, and a similar look of despair. To be sure, this one kept his head up, and there was no shame mixed in his despair; also he was a little older. The same sort of soft hat and trench coat emphasized the resemblance.

"Must be a brother," Mme Storey whispered. "Let us speak to him."

We allowed the Bristeds to get into the compartment and then approached the young man. "Is your name Straiker?" asked my mistress.

An expression of pain crossed his face. "Richard Straiker," he said, bowing stiffly.

Mme Storey introduced herself and in a few words explained our business. "Perhaps you can help us," she said.

He looked at us with no friendly eye. "I cannot help you if you expect to prove my brother guilty," he said bitterly.

"I have no opinion," said my mistress mildly. "My business is to follow the clues wherever they may lead."

His face worked painfully. "He
couldn't
have done it!" he burst out involuntarily. "Anything in the nature of brutality was foreign to his entire nature! Why, the sight of brutality in others aroused him to a fearful rage. I know—I know him better than anybody. Oh, I know they're all against him because he was so wild, but it was a natural kind of wildness, not crime. He has a generous heart. We were all against him at home until to-night because he kept us in hot water all the time. But not a criminal! We'll stand by him now. My father sent me off to-night, and he'll follow to London to-morrow."

"If you're convinced of his innocence," said Mme Storey, "you needn't fear the truth. Will you help us?"

"How?" he asked.

"With the object of discovering what really happened on this train two nights ago, I am trying to reconstruct the journey in every particular as far as possible. I want you to play the part of your brother by taking the seat that he occupied."

"And what must I do?"

"Nothing—or, rather, we must all be guided by what happens."

He acquiesced. She had given him no encouragement, but he seemed to apprehend friendliness, to feel that he could trust her.

>Mme Storey showed Richard Straiker the seat he was to occupy, and introduced him to the Bristeds. Husband and wife bowed with sharp glances of inquiry, but said nothing.

The conductor came to the door of the carriage, and Mme Storey explained what she wanted of him and of the guards during the journey. It appeared that it was the guards' duty to go along outside the train to make sure that every door was tightly closed as it left each station.

"What is the first station?" asked Mme Storey.

"Mortlake Road, madam, a suburban station for the convenience of persons coming out from Banchester. Few get on there."

"And the next station?"

"Stotesbury, a good sized town, forty-five minutes from Banchester."

"That is the last station before crossing the viaduct?"

"Yes, madam."

"Then at Stotesbury please have the guard pay particular attention to this compartment. I want him to try to recall just how it looked two nights ago."

He nodded.

"At the following station..."

"Redminster, madam, half an hour from Stotesbury."

"Please come and speak to me there before the train leaves."

"Yes, madam."