Collected works of j s f.., p.211
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 211
“No one has said anything about murder so far,” interrupted the chief quietly. “But since you suggest it, perhaps we’d better ask who you’d got in the house last night.” He opened the register at the page in which he had kept his finger, and looked at the last entries. “I see that three — no, four — people came in after this young man who called himself Frank Herman. You booked them, I suppose?” he went on, turning to the landlady. “Were they known to you?”
“Only one — that one, Mr. Peter Donaldson, Dundee,” answered the landlady. “He’s the representative of a jute firm — he often comes here. He’s in the house now, or he was, an hour ago — he’ll be here for two or three days. Those two, Mr. and Mrs. Nielsen — they appeared to be foreigners. They were here for the night, had breakfast early, and went away by some boat — our porter carried their things to it. Quiet, elderly folks, they were.”
“And the fourth — John Barcombe, Manchester — you didn’t know him?” asked the chief, pointing to the last entry. “I see you gave him Number 29 — two doors from Herman.”
“Yes,” said the landlady. “No — I didn’t know him. He came in about nine o’clock and had some supper before he went up. He’d his breakfast at eight o’clock this morning, and went away at once. Lots of our customers do that — they’re just in for bed and breakfast, and we scarcely notice them.”
“Did you notice this man — Barcombe?” asked the chief.
“Well, not particularly. But I’ve a fair recollection of him. A rather pale, stiffish-built man, lightish brown hair and moustache, dressed in a dark suit. He’d no luggage, and he paid me for supper, bed, and breakfast when he booked his room,” replied the landlady. “Quite a quiet, respectable man — he said something about being unexpectedly obliged to stop for the night, but I didn’t pay any great attention.”
The chief looked attentively at the open page of the register. Then he drew the attention of those around him to the signature of John Barcombe. It was a big, sprawling signature, all the letters sloping downward from left to right, and being of an unusual size for a man.
“That looks to me like a feigned handwriting,” he said. “However, note this. You see that entry of Frank Herman? Observe his handwriting. Now compare it with the writing on the card which was fixed on the door of 27 — Herman’s room. Look!”
He drew the card out of its envelope as he spoke and laid it beside the entry in the register. And Marshall Allerdyke, bending over his shoulder to look, almost cried out with astonishment, for the writing on the card was certainly the same as that which Chettle had shown him on the post-card found on Lydenberg, and on the back of the photograph of James Allerdyke discovered in Lydenberg’s watch. It was only by a big effort that he checked the exclamation which was springing to his lips, and stopped himself from snatching up the card from the table.
“You observe,” said the chief quietly, “you can’t fail to observe that the writing in the register, is not the writing of the card pinned on the door of Number 27. They are quite different. The writing of Frank Herman in the register is in thick, stunted strokes; the writing on the card is in thin, angular, what are commonly called crabbed strokes. Yet it is supposed that Herman put that card outside his bedroom door. How is it, then, that Herman’s handwriting was thick and stunted when he registered at seven o’clock and slender and a bit shaky when he wrote this card at, say, half-past ten or eleven? Of course, Herman, or whatever his real name is, never wrote the line on that card, and never pinned that card on his door!”
The landlord opened his heavy lips and gasped: the landlady sighed with a gradually awakening interest. Amidst a dead silence the chief went on with his critical inspection of the handwriting.
“But now look at the signature of the man who called himself John Barcombe, of Manchester. You will observe that he signed that name in a great, sprawling hand across the page, and that the letters slope from left to right, downward, instead of in the usually accepted fashion of left to right, upward. Now at first sight there is no great similarity in the writing of that entry in the register and that on the card — one is rounded and sprawling, and the other is thin and precise. But there is one remarkable and striking similarity. In the entry in the register there are two a’s — the a in Barcombe, the a in Manchester. On the one line on the card found pinned to the door there are also two a’s — the a in please; the a in call. Now observe — whether the writing is big, sprawling, thin, precise; feigned, obviously, in one case, natural, I think, in the other, all those four a’s are the same! This man has grown so accustomed to making his a’s after the Greek fashion — a — done in one turn of the pen — that he has made them even in his feigned handwriting! There’s not a doubt, to my mind, that the card found on Herman’s door was written, and put on that door, by the man who registered as John Barcombe. And,” he added in an undertone to Allerdyke, “I’ve no doubt, either, that he’s the man of the Eastbourne Terrace affair.”
The landlord had risen to his feet, and was scowling gloomily at everybody.
“Then you are making it out to be murder?” he exclaimed sulkily. “Just what I expected! Never had police called in yet without ’em making mountains out of molehills! Murder, indeed! — nothing but a case of suicide, that’s what I say. And as this is a temperance hotel, and not a licensed house, I’ll be obliged to you if you’ll have that body taken away to the mortuary — I shall be having the character of my place taken away next, and then where shall I be I should like to know!”
He swung indignantly out of the room, and his wife, murmuring that it was certainly very hard on innocent people that these things went on, followed him. The police, giving no heed to these protests, proceeded to examine the articles taken from the dead man’s clothing. Whatever had been the object of the murderer, it was certainly not robbery. There was a purse and a pocket-book, containing a considerable amount of money in gold and notes; a good watch and chain, and a ring or two of some value.
“Just the same circumstances as in the Eastbourne Terrace affair,” said the chief as he rose. “Well — the thing is to find that man. You’ve no doubt whatever, Mr. Fullaway, that this dead man upstairs is the man you knew as Ebers, a valet at your hotel?”
“None!” answered Fullaway emphatically. “None whatever. Lots of people will be able to identify him.”
“That’s good, at any rate,” remarked the chief. “It’s a long step towards — something. Well, I must go.”
Allerdyke was in more than half a mind to draw the chief aside and tell him about Chettle’s discoveries as regards the handwriting, but while he hesitated Fullaway tugged earnestly at his sleeve.
“Come away!” whispered Fullaway. “Come! We’re going to cut in at this ourselves!”
CHAPTER XXVI
PARTICIPANTS IN THE SECRET
ALLERDYKE WAS SCARCELY prepared for the feverish energy with which Fullaway dragged him out of the hotel, forced him into the first taxi-cab they met, and bade the driver make haste to the Waldorf. He knew by that time that the American was a nervous, excitable individual who now and then took on tremendous fits of work in which he hustled and bustled everybody around him, but he had never seen him quite so excited and eager as now. The discovery at that shabby hotel which they had just quitted seemed to have acted on him like the smell of powder on an old war-horse; he appeared to be positively panting for action.
“Allerdyke!” he almost shouted as the cab moved away, and he himself smote one clenched fist upon the other. “Allerdyke — this thing has got to go through! I resign all claim to that reward. Allerdyke! — this affair is too serious for any hole-and-corner work. I shall tell Van Koon that what we know, or fancy, must be thrown into the common stock of knowledge! The thing is to get at the people who’ve been behind this poor chap Ebers, or Federman, or Herman, or whatever his name is. Allerdyke! — we must go right into things.”
Allerdyke laughed sardonically. When Fullaway developed excitement, he developed coolness, and his voice became as dry and hard as the other’s was fervid and eloquent.
“Aye!” he said in his most phlegmatic tones. “Aye, just so! And where d’ye intend to cut in, now, like? Is it a sort of Gordian knot affair that you’re thinking of? Going to solve this difficulty at one blow?”
“Don’t be sarcastic,” retorted Fullaway. “I’m going to take things clean up from this Federman or Ebers affair. I’m going deep — deep! You’ll see in a few minutes.”
“Willing to see — and to hear — aught,” remarked Allerdyke laconically. “I’ve been doing naught else since I got that wireless telegram.”
Then they relapsed into silence until the Waldorf was reached. There Fullaway raced his companion upstairs to his rooms and burst in upon Mrs. Marlow like a whirlwind. The pretty secretary, busied with her typewriter, looked up, glanced at both men, and calmly resumed her labours.
“Mrs. Marlow!” exclaimed Fullaway. “Just step to Mr. Van Koon’s rooms and beg him to come back here to my sitting-room with you — important business, Mrs. Marlow — I want you, too.”
Allerdyke, closely watching the woman around whom so much mystery centred, saw that she did not move so much as an eyelash. She laid her work aside, left the room, and within a minute returned with Van Koon, who gazed at Fullaway with an air of half-amused inquiry.
“Something happened?” he asked, nodding to Allerdyke. “Town on fire?”
“Van Koon, sit down,” commanded Fullaway, pushing his compatriot into the inner room. “Mrs. Marlow, fasten that outer door and come in here. We’re going to have a stiff conference. Sit down, please, all of you. Now,” he went on, when the other three had ranged themselves about the centre table, “There is news, Van Koon. Allerdyke and I have just come away from an hotel in the Docks where we’ve seen the dead body of a young man who’s been found dead there under precisely similar circumstances to those which attended the death of the French maid in Eastbourne Terrace. We’ve also heard a description of a man who was at this hotel in the Docks last night — it corresponds to that of the fellow who accompanied Lisette Beaurepaire. I, personally, have no doubt that this man, whoever he is, is the murderer of Lisette and of this youngster whose body we’ve just seen. Mrs. Marlow, this dead young fellow, from whose death-chamber we’ve just come, is that valet I used to have here — Ebers. You remember him?”
“Sure!” answered Mrs. Marlow, quite calmly and unconcernedly. “Very well indeed.”
“This Ebers,” continued Fullaway, turning to Van Koon, “was a young fellow, Swiss, German, something of that sort, who acted as valet to me and to some other men here in this hotel for a time. I needn’t go into too many details now, but there’s no doubt that he knew, and was in touch with, Lisette Beaurepaire, and Miss Lennard positively identifies him as the man who met her and Lisette at Hull, and represented himself as Lisette’s brother. Now then, Ebers — we’ll stick to that name for the sake of clearness — was in and out of my rooms a good deal, of course. And what I want to know now, Mrs. Marlow, is — do you think he got access to our letters, papers, books? Could he find out, for instance, that I was engaged in this deal between the Princess Nastirsevitch and Mr. Delkin, and that Miss Lennard had bought the Pinkie Pell pearls? Think!”
Mrs. Marlow had evidently done her thinking; she replied without hesitation.
“If he did, or could, it would be through your own carelessness, Mr. Fullaway,” she said. “You know that I am ridiculously careful about that sort of thing! From the time I come here in the morning — ten-o’clock — until I leave at five, no one has any chance of seeing our papers, or our letter book, or our telegram-copies book. They are always on my desk while I am in the office, and when I go downstairs to lunch I lock them up in the safe. But — you’re not careful! How many times have I come in the morning, and found that you’ve taken these things out of the safe over-night and left them lying about for anybody to see? Dozens of times!”
“I know — I know!” admitted Fullaway with a groan. “I’m frightfully careless — always was. I quite admit it, Mrs. Marlow, quite!”
“Of course,” continued Mrs. Marlow, in precise, even tones, “of course if you left the letter-book lying round, and the book in which the duplicates of all our telegrams and cablegrams are kept, too — why, this Ebers man could easily read what he liked for himself when he was in here of a morning before you got up. He was in and out a great deal, that’s certain. And as regards those two affairs, the documents we have about them are pretty plain, Mr. Fullaway. Anybody of average intelligence could find out in ten minutes from our letter-book and telegram-book that we negotiated the sale of the Pinkie Pell pearls to Miss Lennard, and that Mr. James Allerdyke was bringing here a valuable parcel of jewels from Russia. And,” concluded Mrs. Marlow quietly, “from what I saw of him, Ebers was a smart man.”
Van Koon, who had been listening attentively to all this, turned a half-whimsical, half-reproving glance on Fullaway, who sat in a contrite attitude, drumming his fingers on the polished table.
“I guess you’re a very careless individual, my friend,” he said, shaking his head. “If you will leave your important papers lying about, as this lady says you’re in the habit of doing, what do you expect? Now, you’ve been wondering who got wind of this jewel deal, and here’s the very proof that you gave every chance to this Ebers to acquaint himself with it! And what I’d like to know now, Fullaway, is this — what use do you suppose this young fellow made of the information he acquired? That seems to me to be the point.”
“Yes!” exclaimed Allerdyke suddenly. “That is the point!”
Fullaway smote the table.
“The thing’s obvious!” he cried. “He sold his information to a gang. There must have been — I mean must be — a gang. It’s utterly impossible that all this could have been worked by one man. The man we’ve heard of in connection with the deaths of Lisette Beaurepaire and of Ebers himself is only one of the combination. I’m as sure of that as I am that I see you. But — who are they?”
Nobody answered this question. Allerdyke plunged his hands in his pockets and stared at Fullaway; Mrs. Marlow began to trace imaginary patterns on the surface of the table; Van Koon produced a penknife and began to scrape the edges of his filbert nails with a preoccupied air.
“There’s the thing I’ve insisted on all along, Fullaway, you know,” he said at last, finding that no one seemed inclined to speak. “I’ve insisted on it, but you’ve always put it off. I don’t care what you say — it’ll have to come to it. Let me suggest it, now, to our friends here — they’re both cute enough, I reckon!”
“Oh, as you please, as you please!” replied Fullaway, with a wave of his hands. “Say anything you like, Van Koon — it seems as if too much couldn’t be said at this juncture.”
“All right,” answered Van Koon. He turned to Allerdyke and Mrs. Marlow. “Ever since this affair was brought under my notice,” he said, “I’ve pointed out to Fullaway certain features in connection with it. First — there’s no evidence whatever that this plot originated in or was worked from Russia. Second — there is evidence that it began here in London and was carried out from London. And following on that second proposition comes another. Fullaway knew that these jewels were coming—”
He paused and gave the secretary a keen look. And Allerdyke, watching her just as keenly, saw her face and eyes as calm and inscrutable as ever; it was absolutely evident that nothing could move this woman, no chance word or allusion take her unawares. Van Koon smiled, and leaned nearer.
“But,” he said, tapping the table in emphasis of his words, “there was somebody else who knew of this deal, somebody whose name Fullaway there steadfastly refuses to bring in. Delkin!”
Fullaway suddenly laughed, throwing up his arms.
“Delkin!” he exclaimed satirically. “A millionaire several times over! The thing’s ridiculous, Van Koon! Delkin would kick me out if I went and asked him—”
“Delkin will have to be asked,” interrupted Van Koon. “You will not face the facts, Fullaway. Millionaire, multimillionaire, Delkin was the third person (I’m leaving this valet, Ebers, clean out, though I’ve not the slightest doubt he was one of the pieces of the machine) who knew that James Allerdyke was bringing two hundred and fifty thousand pounds’ worth of jewels for his, Delkin’s approval! That’s a fact, Fullaway, which cannot be got over.”
“Psha!” exclaimed Fullaway. “I suppose you think Delkin, who could buy up the best jeweller’s shop in London or Paris and throw its contents to the street children to play with—”
“What is it that’s in your mind, Mr. Van Koon?” asked Allerdyke, interrupting Fullaway’s eloquence. “You’ve some theory?”
“Well, I don’t know about theory,” answered Van Koon, “but I guess I’ve got some natural common sense. If Fullaway there thinks I’m suggesting that Delkin organized a grand conspiracy to rob James Allerdyke, Fullaway’s wrong — I’m not. What I am suggesting, and have been suggesting this last three days, is that Delkin should be asked a plain and simple question, which is this — did he ever tell anybody of this proposed deal? If so — whom did he tell? And if that isn’t business,” concluded Van Koon, “then I don’t know business when I see it!”
“What’s your objection?” asked Allerdyke, looking across at Fullaway. “What objection can you have?”
Fullaway shook his head.
“Oh, I don’t know!” he said. “Except that it seems immaterial, and that I don’t want to bother Delkin. I’m hoping that these jewels will be found, and that I’ll be able to complete the transaction, and — besides, I don’t believe for one instant that Delkin would tell anybody. I only had two interviews with Delkin — one at his hotel, one here. He understood the affair was an entirely private and secret transaction.”
