Murder in the Museum, A British Library Crime Classic (14 page)

Chapter XVIII

Northward Ho!

“This is all very mysterious, Mr. Moss,” said Shelley, slowly recovering from his astonishment that the young Jew did not even know the man who had presumably sent him the note.

“I'll say it is,” Moss agreed.

“I'd give a lot, Mr. Moss,” added Shelley, “to know precisely who it is that is holding Miss Arnell prisoner—or who has, at any rate, kidnapped her and taken her off to the north of England in this cavalier fashion. It would be interesting to know who he is.”

“Sorry I can't help you there, sir,” said Moss. “But it looks as if catching that man is your pigeon. Don't think I can be much use to you, really. Guess I'll get home to bed—that is, if you don't want me to stay here. I presume I'm not under suspicion; or under arrest; or anything like that.” And he laughed, though the laugh was not a particularly impres-sive effort; it spoke bewilderment, fear, and—so Shelley thought—hostility.

“No, I don't think we want you to stay in attendance any longer, Mr. Moss,” said Shelley. “You've been perfectly frank with us, as far as we know; and I see no reason why you should not go home to your bed. Only don't leave London without letting us know.”

“Thank you, sir,” replied Moss with every indication of profound gratitude.

“That's all right. Don't thank me. Thank the lucky stars that made you keep that letter and its envelope. If it hadn't been for that we might well have suspected you,” Shelley told him and then, holding out his hand in a friendly manner, wished him good night.

As soon as the young man was gone, however, his manner changed instantly. From the quiet, almost languid friend, Shelley became the detective on duty, alert, active, and without scruple when pursuing his quarry. He picked up a telephone from his desk, and spoke a few incisive words into its receiver.

“Jim?” he asked. “Good. A young man has just left my office—handsome young Jew—and I want him shadowed night and day. Two best men you have, put on his track. Don't let him budge an inch without a shadow.”

A question came from the other end of the wire—a question Shelley had expected—and he answered. “Dangerous? No; I shouldn't really think so; but you never know. And there's just an outside chance that he may be a murderer. See? So put the best men you have on his trail; and tell them to report back immediately if he attempts to leave London; and to arrest him on suspicion if it looks like flight, and they haven't time to get through to headquarters. Got that? Good.” And he slammed the receiver down, and wheeled round in his chair to face a thoughtful-looking Cunningham.

“Well, Cunningham? What do you think of our Mr. Moss?”

Cunningham shrugged his shoulders non-committally.

“Very difficult to say, sir,” he replied.

“I agree. That's why I'm taking no chances. I don't know the identity of the lunatic whom we're shortly going to chase in the north of England,” added Shelley, “but, as there is at any rate a possibility that he's an accomplice of Moses Moss, I'm taking no chances with that gentleman. I don't want him—if he is in on this—to slip through our fingers while we're chasing the other fellow. See?”

Cunningham saw.

“Now,” added Shelley briskly. “Sheffield. I fear that Mr. Moss has taken up rather more time than I intended. So we shall have to find other trains. What ones are there?”

Again Cunningham scanned the time-table. “There's one at twelve-fifteen, sir,” he announced at length. “Reaches Sheffield at four-thirty a.m. How will that do?”

“Have to do, I suppose,” Shelley grumbled. “One of these days, Cunningham, I am going to get a decent job, where I don't have to miss sleep. Thank Heaven I'm not married, anyway. What does your wife think of your spending so much time away from home?” Then, without waiting for a reply to this purely rhetorical question, he swept on: “Anyhow, we must try to get a spot of sleep in the train if we can. I guess we shan't get much tomorrow.”

Cunningham made for the door and hurried out, preparing to get the car which he knew would be demanded to get them to St. Pancras.

Shelley followed in more leisurely fashion, stopping at the finger-print department to get a photograph, now developed, fixed, and dried, of the prints of J. K. Wallace, the ex-criminal who had so mysteriously appeared in this case at such a late stage, and whom, even yet, they were totally unable to identify.

At the door of the car he was stopped by an excited figure, bowler hat all awry, pince-nez absurdly on the tip of his nose.

“Hullo, Mr. Fairhurst,” he said. “Sorry I can't stop now. In a hurry. We're on the track of Miss Arnell, and we have to catch a train.”

“But, Mr. Shelley,” panted the little man, who had obviously been hurrying, “I want to talk to you about this case.”

“Sorry, Mr. Fairhurst,” snapped Shelley. “Any other time. At the moment I'm busy.”

“It is important!”

“Sure?”

“Yes, Mr. Shelley.”

Shelley paused for a moment, thinking of some way out of this difficulty. True, Fairhurst had brought them information of some importance previously, and it was possible that he had some sort of material clue which he was now trying to put before them. Then he saw the solution.

“If you think this information is vital, Mr. Fairhurst,” he said, “jump in.” He indicated the waiting car, at the wheel of which a policeman sat impassively.

“Come with you?” Mr. Fairhurst was very excited at the prospect.

“If you think you can be any help to us in this case.” Shelley was carefully non-committal.

“Yes!” Mr. Fairhurst's eyes shone, his pince-nez slipped a degree nearer the tip of his nose, and the tilt of his hat became more unconsciously rakish than ever. “Yes!” he repeated. “I will come with you to wherever you are going, Mr. Shelley; and I hope that I may be of some assistance in bringing this rascal to heel.”

Speedily, silently, and efficiently the police car sped along the Strand, up deserted Kingsway, and so to St. Pancras. Soon they were comfortably tucked away in the seclusion of a first-class compartment; speeding through the sleeping suburbs towards the north.

Shelley produced his old briar pipe, filled it with rank tobacco, and lit up. Then he turned to the little man who had thus unexpectedly joined their party, and asked him what was the important information which he had to give them.

“Moses Moss,” announced Mr. Fairhurst in dramatic tones, “is in London!”

Cunningham emitted a disgusted grunt. “Is that all you have to tell us, Mr. Fairhurst?” he asked in tones of bitter contempt.

“Isn't that enough?” asked Henry. “I was walking along the Strand when I saw him. You could have knocked me down with a feather. There he was, as bold as brass, just marching along the Strand as if he owned the place.”

“I suppose,” remarked Shelley, “that you didn't see a shortish, middle-aged man with a tweed coat and a black Homburg hat, a few yards behind him?”

“No,” said Mr. Fairhurst. “Who was he?”

“Detective-Sergeant Pinto, of the Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard,” answered Shelley with a superior smile.

“One of your men?” Henry Fairhurst looked completely bewildered.

“One of our men.”

“Then you knew all about it?”

“We knew all about it.”

“But why am I coming to Sheffield with you?”

“Why, indeed?”

Henry was worried at the thought that he had mulcted the tax-payers of Great Britain of the price of one first-class return ticket from St. Pancras to Sheffield; and Shelley was vaguely annoyed that he had somehow managed to burden himself with an outsider at this vital stage of his investigation. Still, it couldn't be helped; and he would have to send him back to London at the first opportunity, on the first available train.

“I suppose,” he asked, thinking that he could, after all, be sensible, and try if Henry had any information on the subject which was uppermost in his mind, “that you never chanced to come across a man called J. K. Wallace?”

“Why,” was the surprising answer, “what has old J. K. been doing now?”

“Mr. Fairhurst,” Shelley burst out, “you are a gift from the gods. Again and again you have brought me some information, and this time you have the best of the lot. You actually
knew
Mr. J. K. Wallace?”

“Of course I did. It was many years ago. He was…” Henry hesitated, as if in some embarrassment; and then went on bravely, taking his courage firmly in both hands: “He was at one time one of my best friends; but I disapproved of his way of life and we quarrelled, so that in recent years I have not met him.”

Shelley and Cunningham exchanged significant glances. This, they told each other, was the greatest stroke of luck that they had managed to secure.

“Tell me,” said Mr. Shelley, “how did you meet the man in the first instance?”

“It was,” answered Henry, “in the Reading Room of the British Museum, some eight or nine years ago.”

“H'm,” commented Shelley. “Not long after he was released from Dartmoor.”

“Yes. He told me all about that,” said Henry; and Shelley laughed.

“I doubt if he told you all,” the detective remarked. “Did he tell you, for instance, that he was sent to prison for complicity in a most ingenious fraud, perpetrated jointly on a bank and an insurance company?”

“I must say,” Henry admitted, “that when I found out a little about his way of life I began to wonder if there might be something of that sort. He swore that he was innocent, of course. He said that he was ‘framed-up'—at least, I think that was the phrase—by a gang who wanted to get rid of him. I suppose it was a complete untruth; was it not?”

Shelley inclined his head gravely. “I'm afraid he seriously deceived you, Mr. Fairhurst,” he admitted.

“I suppose it was my own fault for succumbing so easily to the blandishments of a stranger in the British Museum Library that day,” Henry said. “But you see so many interesting people meet there that one somehow feels there is a sort of freemasonry of learning there.”

Shelley looked thoughtful. “Yes; I suppose there is something of that kind of feeling,” he said. “Just the same way as I feel a fellow-feeling for a policeman anywhere. Yes; I see that.”

“But it was not so, Mr. Shelley,” complained Henry. “You see, to begin with we used to have occasional meals together; and he used to tell me all about the dreadful times he had at Dartmoor; and what wicked men there were there; and all that sort of thing.”

Shelley nodded. “I understand,” he said.

“Well,” Henry continued. “That was how it began; but after it had been going on for a month or two I realised that I always paid for those meals. And, if I happened to suggest a drink, it always happened, after I had paid for one, that he had some highly important business elsewhere, and so was not able to stay to pay for his. All little things, but they began to get on my nerves.”

Shelley again nodded sympathetically.

“And then,” Henry went on, conscious of an attentive audience, “he began to borrow money from me. Only small sums, you understand. A shilling now, and half a crown next week.”

The train roared on through the night; and Henry paused as it passed into a tunnel, the reverberations being too loud to allow easy conversation. Shelley seized the opportunity to refill his pipe, and to get it going again, disregarding the coughs of Henry Fairhurst as the rank smoke puffed out into the compartment.

“This borrowing business,” Henry resumed as soon as the tunnel was past, “continued for a long time. At first he paid the money back regularly, then there were occasions when I had to remind him that he had not paid me back. It was a most disagreeable affair, I can assure you, Mr. Shelley.”

Shelley made sympathetic noises once more, and said: “Go on, Mr. Fairhurst. All this is most interesting; and you will understand its value in the present case when I tell you some-thing later on. For the moment I want all the information about Mr. Wallace that I can conveniently lay my hands on.”

Henry almost purred with pleasure. “The present case, did I understand you to say, Mr. Shelley?” he asked. “Well, all this is very gratifying; very gratifying indeed. I hope that I shall be able to tell you something which will be of real assistance in this case.”

“I am sure you will, sir,” answered Shelley gravely. “Do go on with your story. I am sure that Cunningham is just as eager as I am to hear the rest of it; and how the unfortunate affair ended.”

“Well,” said Henry and paused irresolutely for a moment. “He went on borrowing more and more money from me, still paying it back with—shall I say a little pressure from time to time? I didn't like to refuse the poor chap. He always had such a good excuse for wanting a little cash, just to tide him over a difficult time.”

“He would,” said Shelley grimly.

“This went on, as I said,” continued Henry, “for some months. One week he would pay me back half a crown and borrow five shillings. The next week he would borrow another five shillings; and, after asking him several times, I should recover the ten shillings a month later. I trust that I make myself perfectly clear, Inspector?”

“Perfectly clear, Mr. Fairhurst,” returned Shelley. “I only wish that all the witnesses we had to deal with could express themselves half as clearly.”

Again Henry preened himself with satisfaction. Such praise from the great men of Scotland Yard, he told himself, did not come everyone's way.

“Once, however, he borrowed five pounds from me. He was, he informed me, on the point of being thrown out of his lodgings, as he owed several weeks' rent.” Henry paused, and looked at his listeners to see if they had any remarks to make with regard to this somewhat surprising proceeding on the part of Mr. Wallace.