“I have a present for you,” said Hanaud, smiling.
“There is only one present,” Maltby grumbled.
“And here it is,” said Hanaud. Slowly he brought out from the inner pocket of his jacket an oilskin wrapper fastened with a button, He offered it to Maltby with a bow. For a moment Maltby stared at it. Then he raised his eyes to Hanaud’s face. Then he pounced upon the present. He carried it to a small table farther back from the fire, and the group of three was formed again about it.
Maltby unbuttoned the wrapper and took from it a folder of morocco leather, which might hold perhaps a button-hook, a penknife, a nail file, a pair of tweezers, such as a woman travelling light might take in her suit case. This he unwrapped and disclosed, folded length wise on the washleather lining, a letter in an envelope, so folded that the seal was not cracked.
With a little cry Maltby tossed the morocco case aside and flattened the letter upon the table under the palm of his hand. It seemed that he was afraid to reveal even to himself the name of him to whom the letter was written, so long he looked from one face to another, so firmly he held the envelope flat upon the table. At last lie lifted up his hand sharply and there was the name for all three of them to read ‘Septimus Crottle, Esq.,’ and the address in Portman Square.
On a writing-table by the window a tortoiseshell paper-knife with a silver handle was gleaming. Maltby fetched it and pulled up a chair.
“Let us see where we are.” he said, tapping the letter with the tortoiseshell blade. “This is presumably the letter which Horbury took away from his office on the afternoon of Thursday, August the twenty-sixth.”
“With the chart,” cried Hanaud.
“Yes,” Maltby agreed.
“Which we found this afternoon in the office of the younger Crottles.” said Hanaud.
Again Maltby agreed. He took the paperknife and slit the top of the envelope.
“It ought to have gone to Mr. Septimus before I opened it,” he said remorsefully.
“But since you have opened it,” Hanaud suggested, and he had no twinges of conscience.
“We might as well read—” said Maltby doubtfully.
“What that old rogue Daniel Horbury had to say to him. Yes, yes!” cried Hanaud, and he turned to Ricardo. “You agree, my friend? To be sure. Yes.”
“I think,” said Ricardo, “that you are the most lawless person in the world. Still, I agree.”
And Maltby, with his forefinger and his thumb, slipped out of the envelope a letter with two enclosures folded within it. He flattened his hand upon the enclosures as they dropped on to the table.
“Horbury’s letter first, I think.”
“Yes, yes,” said Hanaud, and though he sat upright at the table, his feet were dancing with impatience upon the carpet.
Maltby read it through without the omission of a word. It was written in Horbury’s dutiful style. He was a public man and a Member of Parliament. His first thought was that his obligations demanded in no uncertain manner that he should communicate the enclosures at once to the Crown Prosecutor for such action as he deemed fit. On the other hand, he could not shut his eyes to the high prestige of the Dagger Line and its importance as a commercial asset to the country. On the whole, then, he had determined, though with some heavy doubts, that the patriotic thing to do was send the two documents straight to Mr. Septimus Crottle as Chairman of the Line, and leave them in his hand. He remained Mr. Crottle’s obedient servant.
“Send them straight, to be sure,” said Maltby with grunt. “So he keeps them in the secret drawer of his desk. The damned old blackmailer!”
He dropped the letter with disgust upon the table and took up the two enclosures. As he read them his face grew very grave, and he nodded his head twice or three times to Hanaud.
“Yes, these are enough,” he said.
The first was a receipt for three thousand pounds made out to Kapitan von Kluckner, Military Attaché, and signed George Crottle. The second was an undertaking that SS Harold, a freight carrier of the Dagger Line, would call at a certain port in the Adriatic Sea and take on board two hundred kilogrammes of hashish and five hundred grammes of heroin from Sofia for Egypt.
And this undertaking, too, was addressed to Kapitan von Kluckner and signed by George Crottle.
Of the three, Ricardo alone was plunged in confusion George? George Crottle, drug-runner in the pay of a foreign Embassy? The kidnapper, then, of old Septimus? George, with his charm and his slim figure and his bright fair hair. It was not possible! But Hanaud and Maltby kept exchanging glances as though they met at last on friendly ground. Maltby packed Horbury’s letter and enclosures away in his pocket-book; and Thompson at the door announced that dinner was served.
It was a meal taken in haste and seasoned with little conversation. The presence of Thompson prevented all discussion but that of world affairs, and nobody at the table was for the moment interested in them. Coffee was served in the dining-room. An extraordinary habit, Mr. Ricardo reflected, that of drinking black coffee and liqueurs after meals when obviously there was work waiting to be done. Cigars were on the way round, too. Then we shall never get off! A small fellow for Maltby—that was sensible. Hanaud only ate his own black cigarettes. Well, he might as well smoke a small cigar himself and, like Maltby and his friend, sip this very seductive yellow Chartreuse. Even Mr. Ricardo realised that there was no need for hurry, and he was inclined to resent the strokes of a nearby clock. Maltby counted the strokes.
“Nine,” said he.
Hanaud looked at his watch.
“Nine,” said he.
For both men the search was ended, conclusions had been reached, action was now to be taken, peace of mind had come. They might be wrong, but the question was for others to decide, not for them.
Thompson entered.
“Sergeant Hughes is in the hall, sir.”
“Sergeant Hughes!” Ricardo repeated. For some vague reason the name was familiar.
“We wanted a young man,” said Maltby. “I got him moved up to the Yard.”
He remembered now the young officer in uniform who took notes at White Barn. “Why?” he asked.
“I liked his cheek,” Maltby replied with a grin “Shall we go?”
Sergeant Hughes saluted as the three men descended the stairs.
“All quiet, Sergeant?
“Up till I left, sir. There’s a journey proposed for to-night.”
“So I supposed,” said Maltby.
“But,” and Sergeant Hughes looked puzzled, “it’s a short journey with no luggage.”
“Just as far as White Barn and back,” Hanaud suggested, and Maltby smiled.
“Yes, that criminal stays and fights,” and Ricardo had reason afterwards to reflect how wrong these great men could sometimes be.
A small black police car stood in front of the Rolls Royce.
“Hadn’t I better give you and Sergeant Hughes a lift? We shall otherwise leave you behind,” said Mr Ricardo grandly.
Hanaud sniggered—a malicious snigger. Maltby answered.
“We don’t look much to be sure, by the side of your elephant, Mr. Ricardo. But we can go—I don’t say faster than the wind, for the wind’s quite out of date as a comparison, but faster than an empty army lorry in a crowded street”; and he doubled himself up into the black car with Sergeant Hughes, whilst Hanaud and Ricardo climbed into the elephant. There was a man in plain clothes by the driver and no address was given. The cars started, kept their distance like ships in line ahead, and they did, to Hanaud’s delight, pass an empty army lorry in the Brompton Road.
In a quieter road the cars stopped; and as the occupants alighted, a uniformed constable saluted Maltby and spoke a few words to him. Maltby beckoned to the rest of his party and went forward. On the right-hand side of the road a crescent of small and attractive Regency houses curved about a garden. The houses were lit up for the most part and the blinds drawn. But in front of one of them a small car stood with its lamps unlit.
Suddenly there was a cluster of the uniformed police about a gate which led through the garden to a front-door. The room to the right of the round white stone arch of the portico was lit. Maltby walked up to the door and rang the bell. The shrill sound of it rang through the house, but there was no answer, no movement at all in that lighted room. Ricardo had in his mind the picture of a man there suddenly stricken by that bell as by a stroke of paralysis. There was not a lift of the blind, not the shifting of a chair.
Maltby rang a second time with a louder insistence. From inside the room a shadow was cast upon the blind. A man stood with the light behind him. Then he moved somewhere to the back of the room so that no shadow was any longer shown. Even then a few unnecessary seconds passed before a door into the passage was opened and steps approached. The front door was unlatched. There was no light in the passage except the panel which glowed from the open doorway. The young man had withdrawn into the darkness behind it.
“My servants are away for the evening. Will you kindly come to-morrow?”
“Mr. George Crottle.” said Maltby.
“I, too, have an appointment. I shall be obliged . . . ”
“I am Superintendent Maltby. My business won’t wait,” Maltby stated.
There followed a few seconds of silence.
“You will make it, please, as short as you can.” George Crottle replied pleasantly. “Will you come in?”
He led the way into a sitting-room, furnished with comfort and elegance. It was brightly lit and a writing. bureau from which the chair had been thrust back filled a corner of the room. Maltby was followed by Hanaud, Ricardo and Sergeant Hughes. Crottle, as he closed the door, saw two uniformed constables in the porch.
“Rather a large escort, Superintendent, haven’t you?” he said coolly. His face was pale, but his voice was composed, and the only sign of disturbance which he showed was that only now, for the first time, did he recognise Hanaud and Ricardo.
“Oh!” he exclaimed, nodding at them with a smile; and some wariness was now audible in his tones. “I the pleasure of meeting you, I think, in Portman Square. Will you sit down?”
Maltby, in a formal voice, cut across these politenesses. “Mr. George Crottle, I must ask you some questions. You need not answer them unless you wish to. But I must warn you that if you do, your answers will be written down and may be used in evidence.”
In fact, Sergeant Hughes had already a large notebook open and a pencil in his hand.
“You may sit down if you wish,” Maltby continued.
“Of course,” Crottle answered, but he remained standing.
“You are George Crottle, employed by your uncle, Mr. Septimus Crottle, in the service of the Dagger Line of steamships?”
“No,” cried George Crottle, and it was only now, when all was relaxed, that those present realised under how much tension George Crottle had preserved his calm. He had seemed at ease before, he was at ease now.
“No, no, Superintendent, that won’t do. I am a director and a partner. The old boy was in a fairly black rage when he turned up this afternoon and found that my stepbrother and myself had annexed his office. I thought that he would pay us out in some way. But, my word, it’s pretty hot to suggest that I had anything to do with his disappearance.”
George must have been either completely innocent of any share in the abduction of Septimus, or completely sure that the Barnishes were safe from the police.
“For I suppose that’s what the patriarch has been doing?” he added. And now he did sit down and took at random a small cigar from a box on a table at his side, pinched the end and reached out his left hand for a box of wooden matches lying on a sofa.
“No, sir,” said Maltby solidly, “we have no charge from Mr. Septimus. I must ask you what you were doing on the night of Thursday, August the twenty-sixth?”
George Crottle sat with the match-box still in his extended hand.
“August the twenty-sixth? That’s a long time ago, Superintendent. I can’t remember off-hand. But there’s a day-book on the desk in the corner which might tell us.”
He pointed with the matches towards the bureau where he had been sitting. Maltby turned his head towards it, and during that glance George Crottle put the cigar between his teeth. Hughes found the book upon the flat surface of the bureau and flipped back the pages to the month of August.
“There is no entry on that date.”
George Crottle shrugged his shoulders.
“It was the day before the steamship Sheriff sailed from Southampton,” said Maltby.
Crottle frowned, looked at Maltby as though the answer were to be discovered in his face, and shook his head.
“No,” he said between his teeth, “No.”
Maltby took a step nearer to him and, taking his letter-case from his pocket-book, showed to Crottle an empty envelope sealed with a black seal, but slit open at the top.
“You know this envelope?”
“I have never seen it.”
“But you know the handwriting?”
Crottle leaned back in his chair.
“Yes.’’
“It is Daniel Horbury’s?”
“Yes.’’
These monosyllables were uttered with a most convincing perplexity. He closed his hand over the matchbox and with a sly smile began to draw it to his chest, But whilst his hand was still moving, Maltby struck his arm with a swift and violent blow and snatched the matchbox from his hand.
“George Crottle,” he said, “I arrest you for the murder of Daniel Horbury at his house of White barn on the night of the twenty-sixth of August.”
Mr. Ricardo felt the floor turning underneath him. He was prepared for George Crottle’s arrest for the abduction of Septimus, or for conspiring with the Kapitan von Kluckner, but on a charge of murder, no. If, however, Mr. Ricardo did not know where he stood, George Crottle certainly did. With a backward jerk of his head, he drew the whole length of that small cigar between his teeth. He crushed it with a snap of his jaws. A tiny tinkle of glass was heard, for a fraction of a second his face was convulsed with all the agony of the world, and then he fell dead into the arms of Maltby and Hughes.
In Crottle’s pocket was found a flat black silk cord with a slip-knot which ran very easily and smoothly; and in a locked drawer of the bureau a manuscript.