Bland Beginning (18 page)

“Get out of here,” shrieked the little man. “I’m not going to talk to you. Go back to wherever you came from, and tell them that you got no change out of James Cobb.”

“Look here, Mr Cobb –”

“Get out – get out, and look out for yourself when you’re outside.” He waved the malacca cane threateningly, and his eyes glinted with malice.

There was no help for it. Ruth retreated until she reached the door, opened it, and found herself looking at the mailed fist of the knocker. Disconsolately, with a sense of utter failure she retraced her steps along the stone corridor. The gargoyles grinned at her again, and she was passing the door of the little waiting-room when it opened. Two men stood looking at her without friendliness, and with complete astonishment she saw the dark, greedy eyes of Inspector Wrax, and by his side the waving grey hair of Michael Blackburn. The Inspector and Blackburn seemed equally surprised to see her. As they stood staring at each other they heard three cracks, not loud but distinct, as if somebody were cracking a whip. Anger and surprise showed in the eyes of Inspector Wrax as he began to run along the corridor.

Ruth passed through the next hour in a kind of daze. Cobb lay among his Victorian knick-knacks, staring at the ceiling. He had knocked some of them off a table as he fell, and they were scattered on the floor around him. He had been shot three times, once through the neck and twice in the chest, at point-blank range, and there was a smell of cordite in the air. No gun was visible in the room. Inspector Wrax took in these details, telephoned to Scotland Yard, and then said grimly to Ruth, “Now let’s hear what you have to say.” The sandy man took them to the bibliographer’s study, another Victorian room which contained a great many books, a great deal of mahogany, and some well-varnished pictures. Still in that daze, Ruth told her story. Blackburn listened to it with the air of amiable condescension that he had shown towards her in his own house. The Inspector was less amiable. His manner was a mixture of ice and fire.

“Do you know what you are, Miss Cleverly, you and your friends? You are stupid, blundering, interfering idiots. I came here to get the answers to all your questions – and now perhaps we shall never know them.” He stared at her. “And for God’s sake take off those ridiculous spectacle frames. A child could see they’re fitted with plain glass.” Ruth took them off. “You may be interested to know that your friend Shelton was found in the early hours of this morning, knocked on the head and tied up, in an old warehouse near the docks. He met one of the gang who stole that book from him, and let himself be led down to the warehouse like a lamb to the slaughter, instead of getting in touch with us.”

“Is he badly hurt?” she asked, alarmed.

“His skull’s too thick,” said the Inspector unsympathetically. “But he’s managed to give the gang good warning, so that they’ve now no doubt gone underground. You’ve stuck your nose in to queer our pitch with Cobb. I wonder what the other members of your quartet are doing,” he said grimly.

“How did he die?” she asked timidly.

“Somebody came in through the garden, and shot him three times at close range. He was murdered.”

“Then he didn’t kill Arthur – Jebb?”

“It doesn’t look like it, does it?” the Inspector snapped.

“And he wasn’t the forger?”

The Inspector did not trouble to reply, and it was Blackburn who said in his beautifully modulated voice, “I for one have still to be convinced that any forgeries have been perpetrated, Miss Cleverly.”

“Whoever killed Arthur Jebb apparently didn’t agree with you.”

Blackburn’s broad shoulders were shrugged slightly. “As for the suggestion that poor Cobb was this hypothetical forger, it’s really too ridiculous to contemplate.”

A kind of whirling started in Ruth’s head, and she gripped the sides of the chair to keep herself upright.

“It may interest you to know,” said the Inspector, “that when I telephoned Cobb this morning I hinted that the subject of literary forgeries might be raised, and he told me that he had deposited a full statement regarding them with his lawyer some time ago. Then I asked Mr Blackburn to come along with me, so that I could have the benefit of his advice.” He looked somewhere between Ruth and Blackburn as he said, “The evidence in the statement at Cobb’s lawyers may well give us the name of the forger.”

“If there was any forger,” said Blackburn, and the Inspector agreed politely: “If there was any forger.”

Round and round went the whirlpool in Ruth’s head. She started to say angrily, “Of course there was a forger,” but somehow the words failed her. She seemed to move straight into the whirlpool.

The Inspector was holding a glass of water to her mouth, and looking at her with no particular expression. Blackburn was rather feebly chafing one of her hands, which he relinquished as soon as he saw that her eyes were open. She struggled into a sitting position and saw her own face in a mirror with a shock. She had quite forgotten the hair, which was screwed into a bun on the back of her head. “I’m awfully sorry,” she said. “I don’t know how I could have been so foolish.”

“Mr Blackburn,” said the Inspector, “would you be kind enough to see Miss Cleverly home.”

“That’s not necessary,” she said quickly. “I can move under my own steam.” Somehow the thought of being left alone with Blackburn alarmed her. She got up, and sat down again rather uncertainly.

The Inspector continued as though she had not spoken. “I shall be busy here for the next hour or two, but I should like to see both of you at Scotland Yard this afternoon. Would three o’clock be convenient? Good. And Miss Cleverly, are you likely to be in touch with your friend Mr – ah – Basingstoke?”

“He’s telephoning me,” Ruth said in a small voice.

“Doubtless to discover the success of your masquerade,” the Inspector said with satisfaction. “Tell him that I shall be glad if he will favour us with his presence also.” A man wearing a bowler hat put his head round the door. “Ah, Dr McManus, all ready for you.” He got up. “Three o’clock, then.”

Dutifully, Ruth and Blackburn echoed: “Three o’clock.”

A clock on the wall showed two minutes past three. They sat grouped in a semicircle. Uncle Jack was on the extreme left of it, then Vicky sat next to Basingstoke on one side, with Ruth on the other side of him. Anthony was next to Ruth, with Blackburn on the extreme right. Ruth’s hair was now in its customary state of disorder, but she still looked pale. Anthony’s head was swathed in bandages, and he did not exchange a glance with Vicky. Blackburn looked bored, Uncle Jack impatient, and Basingstoke rather nervous.

Sunlight filtered into the room from a window placed high in the wall, and lent Inspector Wrax a mellow look. He surveyed them all with an air of mild benevolence which had not characterised his previous dealings with them, and when he spoke his voice also seemed to have lost official harshness. A man sat in one corner of the room with a pencil in his hand and a notebook on his knee.

“I should like to say that I appreciate your presence here this afternoon on very short notice. I have asked you to come here because I will admit frankly that I’m puzzled. This case involves specialised knowledge of a kind that isn’t, thank goodness, often needed here. We have our own experts on forgery, but the kind of forgery that we’re considering is such a curious one that it comes into a special field of its own.”

“If there has been any forgery,” said Blackburn.

“I shall be coming to that point, Mr Blackburn.” The Inspector’s voice was as mild as milk. “I have asked you to come along because you are, of course, an expert on literary matters.”

Ruth was something like her usual assertive self. She said sharply, “He’s an essayist, not an authority on the authenticity of texts.”

With overwhelming benevolence, the Inspector said, “You will have a chance to deal with that point, Miss Cleverly, and I need hardly say that you also are present as an expert on literary matters. Mr Basingstoke, too, a simple policeman must regard in that light in view of his ability to discover inaccuracies in publishers’ names. Mr Rawlings and Mr Shelton, who have had books stolen from them, are naturally interested in getting back their property, and Miss Rawlings could hardly be omitted, in view of the detective work in which she has already indulged.”

Detective work, Vicky thought, and a procession of phantoms – beautiful spies, amazingly handsome detectives, oily-skinned but attractive villains – moved across the screen of her mind, so that she forgot temporarily her misery about the quarrel with Anthony. What are you putting into that envelope, Miss Rawlings? And she replied: The cigar ash that proves your guilt. Vicky Rawlings, at the wheel of the great Hispano-Suiza, driving along the gleaming metal road. We’re gaining, Vicky, we’re gaining. Slowly the lights of the other car came back to them. Nearer, nearer, along the narrow mountain road – and then when they were almost level the other car, out of control, hurtled over the cliff, down and down – but not before she had caught sight of the driver’s face. Oblivious to the Inspector’s remarks, Vicky sat with her mouth slightly open and stared at the bare buff wall.

“The activities of you four young people have also proved – if I may say so without offence – embarrassing to us,” said the Inspector amiably. “Yesterday Mr Shelton met one of the members of the gang that had stolen his first edition – I should say alleged first edition,” he added hurriedly. “Instead of getting in touch with us, he preferred to attempt to take on the whole gang single-handed, and got knocked out. This morning, also, when I asked Mr Cobb for an interview he told me that somebody had invented a pretext for seeing him. The somebody turned out to be Miss Cleverly, who, through a plan concocted by the ingenious Mr Basingstoke, was seeking information. Cobb was murdered this morning, shot three times at close quarters by someone who entered his house through the garden.” He picked up a number of photographs from the desk. “Look through these, Mr Shelton, and tell me if you recognise any of them.”

Anthony looked at them. “By Jove, yes. There’s the little man who called himself Flash. And there’s the chap with the moustache who stopped me in the road.”

The Inspector passed this second photograph to Ruth. She nodded. “That’s the man.”

“His real name is Billy Nugent, and he is known as Billy the Toff,” said the Inspector. “The little man uses a number of names, and one of them is Flash Dixon. I recognised them from your description, Mr Shelton, and I already had a search out to pick them up. It is almost needless to say that, having been warned by your visit, they have gone into hiding. It may now be some time before we catch up with them.” He smiled at them with false amiability.

Anthony tapped the photograph of Flash. “Could this gang have committed the murders?”

“No. Billy the Toff handles all sorts of jobs, including particularly smuggling and receiving stolen goods, but while he wouldn’t object to a little strong-arm work, he’d draw the line a long way short of premeditated murder.”

“But you told us Jebb’s murder was unpremeditated,” said Basingstoke.

“You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself,” said the Inspector. “My basis for saying that was that it appeared one of Jebb’s crutches had been used to kill him. That wasn’t in fact the case. Dr McManus tells me that another weapon was certainly used, and probably the crutch was used only to strike blows after death in order to make it appear that the murder was not premeditated. There are faint traces in the wash-basin where the murderer washed the actual weapon – perhaps a walking stick or something like that – and presumably took it away with him.” He looked at them. “If he is wise, he’s probably burnt it.”

Uncle Jack was fidgeting. “Look here, man, you’re talking as if one of
us
might be this criminal.”

“Frankly, that seems to me very probable,” the Inspector said coolly. “Let me trace the course of events, and perhaps add a little to your knowledge. Some time last week a copy of
Passion and Repentance
was stolen from Mr Rawlings’ home. On Tuesday another copy of it was stolen from Mr Shelton. But that is not all. Other copies of this book have been stolen. The number of copies printed is not known, but it must have been small. With the help of Mr Blackburn, and through sales records, we have been able to trace ten of these copies. Of this number seven have been stolen during the past eighteen months. Two others, one of which was Mr Blackburn’s, have been sold.”

There was silence in the room. Ruth looked intently at the Inspector, Uncle Jack’s face was red with suppressed curiosity, Anthony’s face looked vacant below the bandages that swathed his head, Basingstoke’s scar was twitching slightly, Vicky sat open-mouthed. “We have learnt all this in a day and a half,” the Inspector said with an air of mock modesty. “And our researches are far from complete. The copies in question, however, have been stolen in five cases from private owners and in two cases from libraries. It is not, of course, difficult for anybody to walk out of a library with a small book in his pocket, but the thefts from private owners come into a different category. It is almost certain that these thefts were the work of Billy the Toff’s gang.” His voice took on a note of dulcet sweetness. “Perhaps now, Mr Shelton, you will understand why I feel little sympathy for your misadventures. Billy the Toff was certainly acting for somebody, and you have delayed our chance of finding out the name of his client. In the meantime, I commend this fact to your attention. At least nine copies of
Passion and Repentance
have been stolen during the past two years. No copies of the other alleged forgeries have been stolen.”

“How do you know the names of the other books?” Blackburn asked.

“The answer,” said the Inspector, “is to be found in the document which Mr Cobb left with his lawyer.” He smiled round at them, and his eyes were bright.

Anthony’s head was buzzing. Why was there such tenseness in the air? And why was the white-haired man looking at them all so watchfully? Now he was speaking again, softly, and his body was taut like that of a cat about to spring. “This document purports to give the name of the forger.”