Murder in Piccadilly (23 page)

“For God's sake, don't,” Bobbie cried, shuddering. “You've no right to torture me. You've admitted I'm innocent.”

“But I haven't admitted that you've been lying to protect someone. Yes, lying, and lying deliberately. You're trying to protect Nosey Ruslin, and that means you believe he's behind the conspiracy that resulted in your uncle's death. Of course, he didn't do it—that isn't Nosey's line. He's the thinker, the planner, and by thinking and planning, Mr. Cheldon, he's brought you an income of ten thousand a year about twenty years before you'd have had it in the ordinary way. Isn't that it?”

“No, I swear it isn't. I know nothing about Ruslin. I hope never to see him again. I wish I'd never met him.” The whine revealed to the full the weakness, indecision, supineness of the speaker.

“Someone's ringing and knocking,” said Chief Inspector Wake, picking up his hat. “I'd better be going. It's late enough and I've plenty to do.”

He remained in the doorway of the room as Bobbie went into the hall and ended the impatience of his visitor.

“Mr. Cheldon,” said a voice that the inspector knew better than any other in all the expanse of London, “Italian Charlie's reached Florence.”

Bobbie's state of mind involved slow thinking, and Ruslin's cryptic message sent his thoughts in the direction of the occasional “help.” When, however, Chief Inspector Wake announced his presence with a cordial, “That you, Nosey?” he hastily substituted the Italian city and was angry and afraid.

Chapter Eleven

“Hello, inspector!” Nosey Ruslin was too astute to overdo it by adding to the cordiality of his tone an attempt at handshaking. “You're looking fine in spite of your troubles.”

“Can't say the same of you, Nosey,” was the genial response. “Seems to me you haven't had much sleep lately.”

It was quite true, and the confident rogue visibly resented its exposure, for sleeplessness argued worry, and worry could be due to events arising out of the Piccadilly murder.

“Oh, I'm all right,” he said, as sulkily as his super-optimistic temperament allowed.

“That's fine. Bit of luck seeing you, Nosey. I was going to look you up after you'd taken Miss Curzon to supper. Perhaps you'll let me walk back with you?”

Nosey Ruslin reverted to the roughness that denotes the bully.

“Why not do your business here?” he asked. “Mr. Cheldon won't object. He's a gentleman and—”

“It doesn't require detective ability to spot that, Nosey.” The sly note of banter exasperated one of his hearers and upset the other.

“Come into the room—you may be disturbing my mother,” said Bobbie in a whisper which was meant to be impressive.

Chief Inspector Wake placed his umbrella with meticulous care against the wall under an outsize picture of a herd of faded cows, and as carefully sat down, the only self-possessed person there.

“Perhaps, Nosey,” he said, genially, “you want to have a word or two with Mr. Cheldon about this friend of yours, Abyssinian Charlie?”

He was laughing at them, and Chief Inspector Wake's laughter was never without a reason and a meaning.

“Italian Charlie,” Nosey growled, compelled to come into the open. “A mutual acquaintance Mr. Cheldon was thinking of taking dancing lessons from.”

“Then we can begin our little discussion, Nosey. We're all friendly here without being exactly friends, and I have a question or two that you might try and answer. Mr. Cheldon rather upset me by declaring that you had never met his uncle in his life.”

“That wasn't a lie. I knew him only by sight and then not much.”

“Did you ever write to him?” Nosey hesitated, and the inspector brought into play his powers of subtle suggestion. “That reminds me, I ought to warn you that you needn't answer any of my questions in case they tend to incriminate you and—”

“Incriminate me,” exclaimed Nosey furious with fear. “How could they? Ask me what you like. Haven't I told you that I was willing to help you all I could?”

“Yes, of course. I'd nearly forgotten. But I was asking you just now if you had ever written to the late Massy Cheldon?”

“No.” Nosey was struggling to regain his placidity. “I don't go in for writing letters and if I did I'd write only to my pals.”

“Quite so. But did Mr. Massy Cheldon ever write to you?”

“Never, and that's a fact.” The lie carried conviction.

“Did Mr. Massy Cheldon ever send you a registered parcel?”

Bobbie, watching Nosey Ruslin, could not detect the slightest change of expression or any other indication of unpleasant surprise.

“Yes. Some time in April he returned to me a revolver which I tried to sell him. I'd met Mr. Cheldon here”—he jerked a thumb in Bobbie's direction,—“and I thought it was a good chance to get rid of the weapon for which I hadn't a licence. So I asked Mr. Cheldon to take it with him to his uncle's house and try and do a deal.”

“With the result that the uncle refused to buy it?”

“You know,” said Nosey curtly.

“And Mr. Massy Cheldon was so anxious that you should receive your property intact that he made a parcel of it, took it himself to the local post office and registered it?”

“That's about the strength of it,” said Nosey, humorously.

“It was too precious to entrust to his nephew to take back with him to London, Nosey?” The inspector's voice was too gentle to be genuine.

“That was his business—not mine.” Nosey's verbal skill was astonishing, but the inspector at least knew that in the give and take of a contest of lying he was almost certain to be defeated.

“I can't ask him so I must ask you,” he remarked, purposely ponderous and slow in order to discourage the speed of the other. “If Massy Cheldon returned the revolver direct to you he was unnecessarily particular, Nosey. I suppose you were surprised?”

“Clean knocked off my perch,” said the ex-pugilist with an abandonment of caution which established his lapse into truthfulness.

“But there was no letter?”

“Why should there be? And if there was what would it have mattered?”

Chief Inspector Wake was cornered. Nosey had delivered one in his solar plexus, but he was only slightly winded.

“I wish you'd told me all this sooner,” he said regretfully, but not with any reproach in his voice.

“As it had nothing to do with the murder or with you I didn't,” was the swift reply. “I never met Massy Cheldon and had he lived to a hundred I never would and that's a fact.”

“Still, Nosey, you must admit it was rather queer.”

“What was queer?” The large face was hardening into a sinister and threatening aspect which became more evident to Bobbie when he noticed the clenched fists moving.

“Your sending that revolver to a man you didn't know. Why should the late Massy Cheldon want to buy a revolver? His life wasn't in danger.” Only Bobbie moved. “And I expect he had firearms of his own.”

“Plenty,” said Bobbie, glad of an opportunity to speak. “But Mr. Ruslin wanted to be rid of the revolver and I was spending the weekend at Broadbridge Manor.”

“It all fits in perfectly,” said the inspector.

Nosey Ruslin smiled reassuringly to Bobbie, conscious that he had scored heavily and all along the line.

“Anything more, inspector?”

“Not at the moment.” Wake rose and attached himself to his property. “Where is Billy Bright?” he asked suddenly.

“I don't know,” Nosey barked back, taken unawares.

“Now, now, Nosey,” said the inspector, playfully reproachful. “You really mustn't tell fibs. You know quite well that Billy the Dancer is at Margate, for you walked with him to the station, and there was no reason why you shouldn't have seen him off.”

“You asked me where he was and I don't know his address,” said the ex-pugilist calmly. “It wouldn't have helped you if I'd mentioned Margate. But if you know so much why not answer your own question?”

Chief Inspector Wake nodded.

“I'm lazy, Nosey, very lazy, and I'm fond of letting people think and act for me. I'll get Billy whenever I really want him. At present I don't believe he'd be of much use.”

“None at all,” said Nosey promptly, “but of course, you'll please yourself. I've no use for Billy. Simply because he met Massy Cheldon here he's been upset by the affair in the Underground. A nervous, thin-skinned chap who's frightened by a peeler's uniform, but that's the worst of not being an Englishman.”

“Conscience makes cowards of us all,” the inspector quoted from a repertory strictly limited through force of circumstances. “I hope Billy is enjoying the sea air. I wish I could have a holiday, but I can't even think of one until I've landed the murderer of Massy Cheldon.”

“And when you do you'll have earned it.”

The inspector glanced at him casually.

“That's true, Nosey, very true. How many days have I left? Five? Good.” He brushed his bowler with his sleeve. “I'm always relieved when the end of the chase comes, but sometimes I wish the Underground murder was a little more difficult. There'll be no credit for me when I solve it. It's only hard work and nothing more.”

Nosey Ruslin smiled again at Bobbie.

“I wish you luck, inspector. Pity for your sake there isn't a thumping reward.”

“Such as ten thousand a year?”

Nosey's grin faded into nothingness.

“You'd be rich then!” he said, unable to think of anything less stupid and less banal at a moment when his thoughts were too dangerous for expression.

“But the police are not allowed to accept rewards,” said the inspector cheerfully. “We work for small wages and the love of it. But I must run away. Got a lot to do, Nosey, and hundreds of reports to read. That's an attractive young friend of yours, Mr. Cheldon.”

“Eh?” exclaimed Bobbie from out of the depths of a reverie.

“Miss Sylvia Brand,” the inspector explained. “I took a statement from her last night. Far more sense in her pretty head than Mrs. Carmichael or Mrs. Elmers, and as for Miss Kitty—”

“Good lord, you don't mean to say you've been at all of them?”

“Every little helps.” Really, Chief Inspector Wake was too human to be genuine! Nosey thought that as with the meagre and gaunt resources of his mind he attempted to pierce the armour of cheerfulness and good humour. “Miss Brand was most helpful. Her description of Billy Bright produced the biggest laugh the chief inspectors' room at the Yard has heard for twenty years.” He went to the door and opened it. “Oh, I say, Nosey, don't you join Billy the Dancer at Margate. I may want to see you again, and I can't afford the time for travelling.”

“Good old London is my happy home,” Nosey sang croakingly. “You can have your Margate, your Paris and your Rome.”

“Thanks,” said Chief Inspector Wake, and when the door shut him out it also shut out all the cheerfulness and good humour.

The two men remained as lifeless as statues until the closing of a second door convinced Bobbie that they were really rid of the detective. But Nosey Ruslin was not as easily satisfied, and he crept out on tip-toe and returned to report safety before speaking.

“What do you think of it?” he asked in a conspiratorial whisper which sent a chill of fear through Bobbie's frame and left as an aftermath a feeling of anger at the familiarity and the assumption of this plebeian, this non-member of the house of Cheldon.

“Think of what?” he demanded testily.

Nosey nodded in the direction they could assume the inspector had taken.

“You heard him?” A friendly tap on the arm. “Me and you've got to be slick. He's dangerous when he's in that mood.”

“I'm not afraid of him,” said Bobbie, trying to infuse into his voice the authority of superior rank and wealth.

“Neither am I.” Nosey winked expressively. “That was a little dodge of mine, as you guessed first time.”

“What little dodge? I don't understand.”

His companion winked.

“About Italian Charlie being in Florence.”

The younger man started.

“He must have heard it,” he gasped, and could have kicked himself for departing from his attitude of lofty and dignified contempt for the vulgar society to which Fate had unkindly consigned him.

“He was meant to hear it.” The grin changed to a frown. “I wonder why he didn't show surprise. Never once referred to it. Bluff, eh?” The appeal to immaturity had a pathos of its own.

“A man of the Wake type always bluffs,” said Bobbie, trying not to blink as he spoke. “But, Mr. Ruslin, you are unnecessarily concerned about the movements and notions of Inspector Wake. It may interest you to hear that he admitted to me that if I proved an alibi with your aid you proved an alibi with mine.”

“Oh, did he? Well, that's the sort of thing Wideawake would say.” The frown deepened into brooding fear. “Wake's most dangerous when most talkative—and he's been talking a lot.”

“But how can he be dangerous to you or me, Mr. Ruslin?” Bobbie as he spoke was surveying his flannel trousers and thinking to himself that the cut was extremely poor, worse, in fact, than the ravages time had inflicted on them.

“Don't ask silly questions, me lad, or I'll lose me hair,” was the totally unexpected answer.

The heavy jowl was thrust forward, the bleary eyes distended to their utmost limit, and the large simian lips revealed the aimless ferocity of the savage. Bobbie was having a glimpse of the Nosey Ruslin who had been the terror of the East End ring until drink and the devil had done their work and reduced him to the ranks of the cadgers from which his wits had in the nick of time rescued him.

“Don't ask silly questions, me lad,” Nosey repeated sullenly. “We're alone, you and me, ain't we?”

Physical fear beset Bobbie and the sensation produced a feeling of nausea. He had never come so closely in contact with the primeval brutality of the human brute Nosey Ruslin represented, and he was afraid. He thought he saw murder in the red eyes and protuberant lips, murder more horrible than that which had ended the life of his uncle.

“Why don't you talk? Must I do all the shoutin'?” Nosey inquired. He looked back at the door. “Someone here?”

“Only my mother,” said Bobbie in a faint voice.

“Your mother? That won't do. Look here, Mr. Bobbie Cheldon, of the Manor, Sussex, the whole blooming world, you and me's got to hammer things out right now.”

“I'm afraid it's rather late. We'll be dining—mother.”

“Just you tell the lady mother you're dining with me,” said Nosey, in a threatening whisper. “You needn't say we're going into conference to save our bloomin' necks, but Wake is dangerous and I'll not carry you any longer. You must help me to hold up our corner. I tell you, Mr. Millionaire Cheldon, it's getting on my nerves, and I won't be alone any longer. Wake's watching me day and night.” He laughed because he did not wish to swear. “I'll be waitin' for you outside. Don't be long.”

Nosey the amiable, the tolerant and the philosopher, had gone berserk and did not know it, but ever since the murder of Massy Cheldon he had been in a state of fiery nervousness all the more excruciating because he had been afraid to relieve it by an explosion of temper even when alone. That had been a strain which had threatened to break his spirit, for Nosey was gregarious and his own society disturbed him.