The Return Of Bulldog Drummond (7 page)

“Drummond is my name. Captain Drummond.”

“Hardcastle is mine. And my pal is Jake Slingsby. To think that this poor young fellow should be murdered like that: I guess I can’t get over it.”

“The strange thing is that he should have had a premonition of danger,” remarked Drummond. “I saw him this afternoon when he lost his way in the fog.”

“He told us he had called in at the wrong house,” said Hardcastle.

“A call is one way of describing his visit,” murmured Drummond. “I gathered his name was Marton.”

“That’s so. Down on business about the house. Well, well! This is terrible: I don’t know how I shall break the news to his father.”

“Nor do I,” said Drummond. “For, unless I am greatly mistaken, his father was killed last night through a gun accident.”

“What’s that you say?” shouted Hardcastle, and his companion seemed equally perturbed. “Old Marton dead?”

“According to the papers he is,” answered Drummond. “It must be a great shock to you, Mr Hardcastle, to have a firm with whom you are doing business dying off so rapidly.”

The other looked at him suspiciously, but Drummond’s face was expressionless.

“Well, I suppose we ought to ring up the police,” he went on after a pause.

“That would seem to be the thing to do,” remarked Drummond. “And since they will probably take some time coming on a night like this, I think we might wait for them elsewhere, don’t you? You must be very fond of fresh air, Mr Hardcastle,” he continued as they left the room.

“How do you make that out?” demanded the other.

“To go for a stroll on a night like this,” said Drummond. “I should have thought that a book and a whisky and soda would have been preferable.”

“Then why don’t you follow your own advice?”

“Ah! it was different in our case. You see, it is only on foggy nights that the ghost is supposed to walk.”

“What is all this rot about a ghost?” said Hardcastle contemptuously. “I reckon the ghost isn’t made yet that I shall ever see.”

“Do not scoff, Mr Hardcastle, at things beyond your ken,” said Drummond reprovingly. “What would your housekeeper say if she heard you?”

The other paused and stared at him.

“Housekeeper!” he cried. “What fly has stung you this time? If there’s a housekeeper here it’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“Really: you surprise me.”

Drummond stopped suddenly and began to sniff the air.

“By the way, Ted,” he remarked, “which was the room you told me was haunted? The second from the top of the stairs, wasn’t it?”

And before anyone realised what he was going to do, he flung the door open.

“Most extraordinary,” he said blandly. “Do you use scent, Mr Hardcastle? Or is it Mr Slingsby? But I don’t see any ghost, Ted.”

He let the light of his torch travel round the room, until it finally rested on the bed.

“Oh!” he cried, covering his eyes with his hand, “is that your nightie, Mr Hardcastle? Or yours, Mr Slingsby? It makes me go all over goosey.”

But by this time Hardcastle had recovered from his surprise, and there was murder in his eyes.

“How dare you go butting into a lady’s bedroom,” he shouted furiously. “Get out of it, you damned meddling young swine.”

He seized Drummond by the arms, and then for half a minute there ensued a struggle the more intense because neither man moved.

It was just a trial of strength, and the others watched it breathlessly. For to all of them it seemed that far more depended on the result than what happened at the moment. It was the first clash between the two men: the outcome would be an omen for the future.

Their breathing came faster: the sweat stood out on both their foreheads. And then, after what seemed an eternity, Drummond began to smile, and the other to curse. Slowly and inexorably Hardcastle was forced back, and then Drummond relaxed his hold.

“Not this time, Percy,” he remarked quietly. “And I must really apologise for entering the lady’s bedroom. It’s this confounded ghost business that is responsible for it. By the way, where is she? Did you carelessly lose her in the fog?”

“What the hell is that to do with you?” snarled Hardcastle.

“My dear fellow!” Drummond lifted his hands in horror. “As the president of several watch committees, to say nothing of societies for moral uplift, the thought of the owner of that delicious garment wandering forlornly over Dartmoor distresses me beyond words!”

The other looked at him sullenly: the type was a new one to him. Accustomed all his life to being top dog, either by physical strength or through sheer force of will, he found himself confronted by a man who was his match in both.

“You needn’t worry yourself,” he muttered. “My daughter is in Plymouth.”

“And a charming spot it is, too,” boomed Drummond genially. “I must give you the address of the Girls’ Home from Home there: or is it the Decayed Gentlewoman’s Aid Post? Well, well – to think of that now. The jolly old daughter in Plymouth of all places! Happy days we used to have there, didn’t we, Peter, prancing along the Hoe?”

His torch, in apparently a haphazard way, was flashing about the room as he rambled on, and suddenly it picked up a box of cigarettes lying open on the dressing-table.

“But how careless of her, Mr Hardcastle! he cried. “They will all get stale. I must really close it up.”

He crossed the room and shut the box: then he calmly returned and strolled towards the top of the stairs.

“Daughter or no daughter, duty calls us, Mr Hardcastle. We must ring up that fine body of men, the Devon constabulary.”

“A thing that ought to have been done ten minutes ago, but for your infernal impertinence,” said the other furiously.

He crossed the hall to the telephone, and rang up the exchange. He did it again: then a third time, and gradually a smile spread over Drummond’s face.

“Most extraordinary!” he murmured. “I expect the telephone girl is in Plymouth too. Or can it be that you aren’t connected up, Mr Hardcastle?”

“The damned line must be out of order,” grunted the other.

And Drummond began to shake with laughter.

“You sure are out of luck tonight, aren’t you?” he remarked. “A dead man in the house: a daughter painting Plymouth red: a telephone that doesn’t function: and last but not least, three interfering ghost-hunters. However, don’t be despondent: the darkest hour is always just before the dawn.”

He paused for the fraction of a second, and only Darrell saw the look that flashed momentarily into his eyes. He had noticed something, but his voice as he went on was unchanged.

“We’ll do the ringing up for you, Mr Hardcastle, from Merridale Hall, and tell the police all your maidenly secrets. And as your next-door neighbours, welcome to our smiling countryside. Which concludes the national programme for this evening: a depression over Iceland is shortly approaching us: good night. Good night.”

The fog had lifted a little as they left the house, though it was still sufficiently thick to make progress slow. And they had only gone some thirty or forty yards down the drive when a cry came echoing faintly over the moor. They stopped abruptly: it was repeated again and again. It sounded as if someone was calling for help, and then as suddenly as the shouts had started they ceased.

“That’s the direction of Grimstone Mire,” said Jerningham gravely. “Surely no one could be such a damned fool as to go near it on a night like this.”

“Dangerous, is it?” said Drummond.

“Dangerous, old boy! Why, it’s a death trap even by day. And in the dark, and foggy at that, it would be simply suicide. No one who lives round here would go within half a mile of the place.”

“No good going to have a look, I suppose?”

“Not the slightest, Hugh. Whoever it is has either scrambled out by now, or it’s all over, with the odds on the latter.”

“Then let’s get back,” said Drummond. “We’ve got to put on our considering caps, you fellows, but it darned well can’t be done till I’ve lowered some ale. For unless I’m much mistaken we’ve stepped right into one of the biggest things we’ve ever handled. And the first thing to be considered is what we’re going to do about Mr Morris.”

“You think he did in Marton?” said Darrell.

“I’m damned certain he didn’t,” answered Drummond shortly. “But they’ll hang him all the same. It’s one of the most diabolically clever bits of work we’ve ever butted into, comparing quite creditably with the deeds of our late lamented Carl. Thank the Lord! here’s the house. Ale, Ted, in buckets. Then you, as the resident, get on to the police. Tell ’em a man has been murdered at Glensham House, and say that we shall be here to give ’em all the information we can. And one other thing, old lad. Ask the exchange if Glensham House is disconnected or not.”

“What was the sudden brainstorm in the hall, Hugh, just before we left?” said Darrell curiously.

Jerningham was telephoning, and Drummond’s face was buried in a tankard, which he drained before answering.

“A little matter of dust,” he remarked. “But all in good time, Peter: we’ve got to get down to this pretty carefully.”

“The house hasn’t been connected up for two years,” said Jerningham, coming back into the room, and Drummond nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve told the police, who darned near fused the wire in their excitement. They’ll be round as soon as they can.”

“And before they come we’ve got to decide exactly what we are going to say,” remarked Drummond, lighting a cigarette. “I’ll take the chair for the moment: you stop me the instant you disagree with anything. Point one: was the story told us by Morris true? I unhesitatingly maintain that it was, for one very good reason. That man at the best of times hasn’t got the brains to
invent
such a wildly fantastic yarn and stick to it. And half screwed as he was when we found him, the thing is an utter impossibility. No – he was speaking the truth the whole way through; I watched him closely.”

“I agree,” said Jerningham. “Or else he is the most consummate actor.”

Drummond shook his head.

“He wasn’t acting, Ted. What do you say, Peter?”

“I agree with you, old boy. Which brings us to point two: if Morris didn’t murder Marton, who did?”

“Exactly. But let’s go back a bit farther, and see what we can build up on the assumption that Morris’ story is true. Clearly there were people in the house when Morris broke in. There was a woman, young Marton, and another man or men. Right! They hear him come in, or someone – they don’t know who. The woman comes down, sees the glint of the candle and opens the door just enough to see who the visitor is. A convict: must be Morris. And it’s at this point, you fellows, that I maintain we get a line on to what we are up against which gives one pretty furiously to think. Because without the smallest hesitation they seized on a thing that had happened by the merest fluke, and had turned it to advantage with a brutality that is damned near unprecedented. Common or garden murder we know, but they don’t stick at butchery. I’m not often serious, as you know, but, ’pon my soul, this show is a bit over the odds. For some reason we haven’t got, they wanted young Marton out of the way: behold the unsuspecting scapegoat all ready to hand. Morris can be hanged for what they’ve done. But in order to make it doubly sure, they asked themselves the safest way of killing Marton. A revolver? Out of the question: Morris wouldn’t have one. A knife means fingerprints on the shaft, which Morris could prove were not his. And so these beauties, remembering that in the Sydenham case he was reputed to have bashed his victim’s head about, and acting on the well-known truth that a murderer rarely changes his methods, went and did likewise. They deliberately killed young Marton by battering his head in.”

“Sounds OK so far, Hugh,” said Jerningham.

“Hold hard, old boy, for a minute: we’ve got to go a bit farther. Down comes this woman with Marton’s clothes and pitches Morris a yarn which was exactly the kind to impress and frighten an ignorant man. Ghost and foggy night: just the stuff to scare the fellow stiff. And then she disappears, intending in all probability to come back later and get his convict’s uniform, so that there shall be no chance of his not putting on Marton’s clothes. And from that moment Morris would have been a doomed man. Supposing we hadn’t heard his yarn under the circumstances we did, should we have believed it? No: and that is the only point where their plan miscarried. No one was ever intended to hear it under such circumstances. It rang true tonight; it wouldn’t have rung true two or three days from now, when Morris was found wandering about. He would not have had a dog’s chance. The woman would either have disappeared, or she would have denied his story
in
toto
. And then, unfortunately for them, we came barging in, which necessitated a considerable change in their plans. For my own belief is that if we had not arrived, they would merely have left, with the absolute certainty that it was only a question of time before Morris was caught. Our arrival altered matters, and completely forced their hands, so that we were treated to the theatrical performance we’ve just had. They knew we should have to ring up the police, and the instant the police arrived they were in the soup. What were they doing while this wretched boy’s head was being bashed in by Morris? It can’t have been a silent proceeding: why didn’t they hear it? They could only pretend they were out of the house, and if they were going to do that, the sooner they took the bull by the horns the better.”

“You think they were in the house the whole time?” said Darrell.

“My dear old Peter, who goes for a walk on a night like this for fun? Of course they were, though there is no denying that that swine Hardcastle’s acting was damned good. Probably to the police they will say they were walking back from Yelverton, which sounds feasible, because the police won’t be able to get beyond the point that Morris is the murderer.”

“You think those two did it?” said Jerningham.

Drummond shrugged his shoulders.

“There, old boy, we’re getting into the region of guesswork. From what I saw of Hardcastle I should think he’s quite capable of anything. But it was either them or pals of theirs.”