Chapter IX.
How Whom the Cap Fits—
Several minutes had elapsed between the two unexpected visits. During those minutes a somewhat acrimonious discussion broke out in the dining-room. Bates went to reassure his wife, and Hart sauntered back from the kitchen. He was received by Furneaux and Grant more in sorrow than in anger, a pose on their part which he blandly disregarded. He helped himself to the remains of the decanter of port.
“The next point of vital interest in the narrative is to establish, by such evidence as is available, who Owd Ben is, or was,” he said. “I presume, since he had attained local celebrity as a ghost, he has passed over, as the spiritists say.”
“Sit down!” cried Furneaux savagely.
Hart sat down, and began filling that portentous pipe.
“You fellows merely ran into each other outside, I take it,” he said, apparently by way of a chatty remark. “The crack of the pistol-shot and the supposed resurrection of Owd Ben threw Mrs. Bates temporarily off her balance, so I helped in reviving her. Between such a cook and such a ghost, who would hesitate?”
When Furneaux was really irritated, he swore in French.
“Nom d’un bon petit homme gris!” he almost squealed, “why did you whip out that infernal revolver? You spoiled everything, everything! Have you no sense in that picturesque head of yours? Your skull is big enough to hold brains, not soap-bubbles.”
“Did your French father marry a Jap?” inquired Hart, with sudden interest.
“And now you’re insulting my mother,” yelped the detective.
“Not I. You know nothing about the finest race of little women in the world, or you would not even imagine such rubbish.”
“But why, why, didn’t you tell me that you saw someone outside?”
“You wouldn’t have believed me. The goblin was disappearing. I had to shoot quick.”
“Why shoot at all?”
“Sir, there are certain manifestations I object to on principle. What self-respecting ghost ever wore whiskers?”
“This was no ghost. You shot the man’s hat off.”
“Then what the blazes are you growling at? Had I, in blood-curdling whisper, told you that once again there was a face at the window, you would have scoffed at me. The ill-looking scamp caught my eye after his first glance at Grant. He was mizzling when I fired. You would have sat there and argued about hypnosis, with our worthy author’s skilled support. And there would have been no hat! I do an admirable bit of trick shooting, yet I am only reviled for my dexterity. Really, Charles François!”
“Ah! You remember, at last,” and the detective smiled sourly.
“Parfaitement! as they say in Paris, where you and I met once, though ’twas in a crowd. But I didn’t steal the blessed pearl. I believe it was that blatant patriot, Domengo Suarez.”
“You’ve got some brains, then. Why not use them? Don’t you see what a fix we three would have found ourselves in had you shot the man?”
“But, consider, Carlo mio! A spook with whiskers! What court would find me guilty? Let me produce the authentic record of Owd Ben, and I have no doubt but that the Lord Chief Justice himself would have potted his representative. He’d be bound to confess it.”
Furneaux was cooling down.
“You’ve shaken my confidence,” he said. “Unless I have your promise that you will never do such a thing again while in my company, I shall ban you from this inquiry with bell, book, and candle.”
“Very well. It’s a bargain. Now let us ponder Exhibit A.”
He stretched a long arm over the table, and took the hat.
“Put it on!” commanded the detective.
Hart did so, and scowled frightfully. Furneaux bent forward and squinted.
“Notice the line of those bullet-holes,” he said to Grant.
“Any man wearing that hat must have had his scalp ploughed up,” said Grant instantly.
“Well, we know that nothing of the kind happened. Why?”
“It was perched on top of a wig,” drawled Hart.
Furneaux was slightly disappointed—there was no denying it. Being a vain little person, he liked to show off in a minor matter such as this.
“Yes,” he admitted, “and what’s the corollary?”
“That the wearer is probably a clean-shaven person with thin hair, a daring scoundrel who is well posted in the leading characteristics of Owd Ben. Charles le Petit, time is now ripe for details of that hairy goblin.”
“Where did you dig him up from, anyhow?” said the detective testily.
“Mrs. Bates recognized him from my vivid description.”
“Her husband can tell us the story,” put in Grant. “I’ll fetch him.”
He had not moved ere the front door bell rang a second time.
“Here is Owd Ben himself, I expect,” said Hart.
“If it’s that Robinson—” growled Furneaux vexedly, hastening to forestall Minnie.
But it was Doris Martin, and very pretty she looked as she entered the room, her high color being the joint outcome of a rapid walk and a very natural embarrassment at finding the frankly admiring eyes of a stranger fixed on her.
“I don’t quite know why I’m here,” she said, with a nervous laugh, addressing Grant directly. “You will think I am always gazing in the direction of The Hollies, but my room commands this house so fully that I cannot help seeing or hearing anything unusual. A few minutes ago I heard what I thought was a muffled gunshot. I looked out, and saw your window thrown open, though the light was dim, and only a candle was showing in the smaller window. I was alarmed, so came to inquire what had happened. You’ll pardon me, I’m sure.”
“Say you don’t, Jack, I implore you, and let me apologize for you,” pleaded Hart.
“Doris, this is my good friend, Wally Hart,” smiled Grant. “Won’t you sit down? We have an exciting story for you.”
“Father will be horribly anxious if he knows I have gone out.”
Nevertheless, there was sufficient spice of Mother Eve in Doris that she should take the proffered chair.
“Sorry to interrupt,” broke in Furneaux. “Did you meet P. C. Robinson!”
“No.”
“You came by way of the bridge?”
“There is no other way, unless one makes a detour by Bush Walk.”
The detective whirled round on Grant.
“What room is over this one?”
“Minnie’s.”
“She’s in the kitchen, with her mother. See that she doesn’t come upstairs while I’m absent. You three keep on talking.”
“Thanks,” said Hart.
Doris, more self-possessed now, read the meaning of the quip promptly.
“Mr. Grant has often spoken of you,” she said. “You talk, and we’ll listen.”
“Not so, divinity,” came the retort. “I may be a parrot, but I don’t want my neck wrung when you’ve gone.”
“Don’t encourage him, Doris,” said Grant, “or you’ll be here till midnight.”
“If that’s the best you can do, you had better leave the recital to me,” laughed Hart.
Meanwhile, Furneaux had stolen noiselessly to the bedroom overhead. The casement window was open—he had noted that fact while in the garden. He peeped out, and was just in time to see Robinson emulating a Sioux Indian on the war-path. The policeman removed his helmet, and was about to peer cautiously through the small window. The detective’s blood ran cold. What if Hart discovered yet another ghost?
“Robinson—go home!” he said, in sepulchral tones.
The constable positively jumped. He gaped on all sides in real terror. He, too, had heard hair-raising tales of Owd Ben.
“Go home!” hissed Furneaux, leaning out.
Then the other looked up.
“Oh, it’s you, sir!” he gasped, sighing with relief.
“Man, you’ve had the closest shave of your life! There’s a fellow below there who shoots at sight.”
“But I’m on duty, sir.”
“You’ll be in Kingdom Come if you gaze in at that window. Be off!”
“I—”
“Robinson, you and I will quarrel if you don’t do as I bid you. And that would be a pity, because I want to inform Mr. Fowler that he has a particularly smart man in Steynholme.”
“Very well, sir, if you’re satisfied, I must be.”
And away went the eavesdropper, crushed, still tingling with that fear of the supernatural latent in every heart, but far from convinced.
Furneaux tripped downstairs. The routing of Robinson had put him into a real good humor. He found the three in the dining-room gazing spell-bound at the felt hat.
“Now, young lady, you’re coming with me,” he said, grinning amiably. “The Sussex constabulary is quelled for the hour.”
“But, Mr. Furneaux, I recognize that hat!” said Doris, and it was notable that even Hart remained silent.
The detective looked at her strangely, but put no question.
“I am almost sure it belongs to our local Amateur Dramatic Society,” went on the girl. “It was worn by Mr. Elkin last November. He played a burlesque of Svengali. I was Trilby, and caught a horrid cold from walking about without shoes or stockings.”
“Don’t tell me any more,” was Furneaux’s surprising comment. “I’ll do the rest. But let me remark, Miss Martin, that I experienced great difficulty, not so long ago, in persuading friend Grant that you were the only important witness this case has provided thus far. Playing in a burlesque, were you? We’ve been similarly engaged to-night. The farce must stop now. It makes way for grim tragedy. Not one word of to-night’s events to anyone, please.... Are you ready?”
Doris stood up. Hart thrust the negro’s head at the detective.
“Fouché,” he said, “do you honestly mean slinging your hook without making any inquiry as to Owd Ben?”
“Oh, the ghost!” said Doris eagerly. “The Bateses would think of him, of course. An old farmer named Ben Robson used to live in this house about the time of Napoleon. He was suspected by the authorities to be an agent of the smugglers, and the story goes that his own daughter quarreled with him and betrayed him. He narrowly escaped hanging, owing to his age, I believe, and was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. At last he was released, being then a very old man, and he came straight here and strangled his daughter. It is quite a terrible story. He was found dead by her side. Then people remembered that she had spoken of someone scaring her by looking in through that small window some nights previously. Naturally, a ghost was soon manufactured. I really wonder why the man who rebuilt and renamed the place in the middle of last century didn’t have the window removed altogether.”
“Glad I began the work of demolition tonight,” said Hart, and, for once, his tone was serious.
“Why did you never tell me that scrap of history, Doris?” inquired Grant.
“You liked the place so much that father and I agreed not to mar your enthusiasm by recalling an unpleasant legend,” she said frankly. “Not that what I’ve related isn’t true. The record appears in a Sussex Miscellany of those years.... Oh, my goodness, can it be eleven o’clock!”
The hall clock had no doubt on the point. Furneaux pocketed the written notes regarding Ingerman, and grabbed the hat off the table. Grant, for some reason, was aware that the detective repressed an obvious reference to the last occasion on which the girl had heard that same clock announce the hour.
Furneaux would allow no other escort. He and Doris made off immediately.
When they were gone, Hart stared fixedly at an empty decanter.
“My dim recollection of your port, Jack, is that it was a wine of many virtues and few vices,” he mused aloud.
Grant took the hint, and went to a cellar. Returning, he found his crony poring over the book which, singularly enough, figured prominently on each occasion when the specter-producing window was markedly in evidence. Hart glanced up at his host, and nodded cheerfully at a dust-laden bottle.
“What is there in ‘The Talisman’ which needed so much research?” he asked.
“Some lines by Sir David Lindsay, quoted by Scott,” was the answer.
“Are these they?” And Hart read:
One thing is certain in our Northern land;
Allow that birth, or valor, wealth, or wit,
Give each precedence to their possessor,
Envy, that follows on such eminence,
As comes the lyme-hound on the roebuck’s trace,
Shall pull them down each one.
“Yes,” said Grant.
“Love isn’t mentioned. The fair Doris will be true. You’re in luck, my boy. But somebody is out for your blood, and here is clear warning. Gee whizz! If I remain in Steynholme a week I shall become an occultist. What is a lyme-hound?”
“‘Lyme,’ or ‘leam,’ is the old-time word for ‘leash.’”
“Good!” said Hart. “That will appeal to Furneaux. Have him in to dinner every day, Jack. He’s a tonic!”
Furneaux, for some reason known only to himself, did not accompany Doris to the post office. Once they were across the bridge, and the broad village street, more green than roadway, was seen to be empty, he tapped her on the shoulder and said pleasantly:
“Run away home now, little girl. Sleep well, and don’t worry. The tangle will right itself in time.”
“Poor Mr. Grant is suffering,” she ventured to murmur.
“And a good thing, too. It will steady him. Hurry, please. I’ll wait here till you are behind a locked door.”
“No one in Steynholme will hurt me,” she said.
“You never can tell. I’m not taking any chances to-night, however.”
So Doris sped swiftly up the hill. Arrived at her house, she waved a hand to the detective, who flourished his straw hat in response. A fine June night in England is never really dark, so the two could not only see each other but, when Doris disappeared, Furneaux, turning sharply on his heel, was able to make out the sudden straightening of a pucker in the blind of a ground-floor room in P. C. Robinson’s abode.
The detective walked straight there, and tapped lightly on the window. Robinson, after an affected delay, came to the door.
“Who’s there?” he demanded.
“As if you didn’t know,” laughed Furneaux.
Robinson turned a key, and looked out.
“Oh, it’s you, sir?” he cried.
“You’ll get tired of saying that before I quit Steynholme,” said the detective. “May I come in? No, don’t show a light here. Let’s chat in the back kitchen.”
“I was just going to have a bite of supper, sir,” began Robinson apologetically. “It’s laid in the kitchen. On’y bread and cheese an’ a glass of beer. Will you join me?”
“With pleasure, if I hadn’t stuffed myself at Grant’s place. Nice fellow, Grant. Pity you and he don’t seem to get on together. Of course, we policemen cannot allow friendship to interfere with duty, but, between you and me, Robinson—strictly in confidence—Grant had no more to do with the actual murder of Miss Melhuish than either of us two.”
Robinson had turned up a lamp, and hospitably installed Furneaux in his own easy-chair.
“The ‘actual murder,’ you said, sir?” he repeated.
“Yes. It was his presence at The Hollies which brought an infatuated woman there, and thus directly led to her death. That is all. Grant is telling the truth. I assure you, Robinson, I never allow myself to break bread with a man whom I may have to convict. So, I’ll change my mind, and take a snack of your bread and cheese.”
The village constable, by no means a fool, grinned at the implied tribute. What he did not appreciate so readily was the fact that his somewhat massive form was being twiddled round the detective’s little finger.
“Right you are, sir,” he cried cheerily. “But, if Mr. Grant didn’t kill Miss Melhuish, who did!”
“In all probability, the man who wore that hat,” chirped Furneaux, taking a nondescript bundle from a coat pocket, and throwing it on the table.
Robinson started. This June night was full of weird surprises. He set down a jug of beer with a bang—his intent being to fill two glasses already in position, from which circumstance even the least observant visitor might deduce a Mrs. Robinson, en negligé, hastily flown upstairs.
He examined the hat as though it were a new form of bomb.
“By gum!” he muttered. “Are these bullet-holes?”
“They are.”
“An’ is this what someone fired at?”
“Yes.”
“But how in thunder—”
He checked himself in time. He did not want to admit that he had been watching the only recognized road to Grant’s house all the evening.
“Quite so!” chortled Furneaux, with admirable misunderstanding. “You’re quick on the trigger, Robinson—almost as quick as that friend of Grant’s who arrived by the 5.30 from London. You perceive at once that no ordinary head could have worn that hat without having its hair combed by the same bullet. It was stuck on to a thick wig. Now, tell me the man, or woman, in Steynholme, who wears a wig and a hat like that, and you and I will guess who killed Miss Melhuish.”
Robinson suspected that, as he himself would have put it, his leg was being pulled rather violently. Furneaux read his face like a printed page. Chewing, much against his will, a mouthful of bread and cheese, he mumbled in solemn, broken tones:
“Think—Robinson. Don’t—answer—offhand. Has—anybody—ever worn—such things—in a play?”
Then the policeman was convinced, galvanized by memory, as it were.
“By gum!” he cried again. “Fred Elkin—in a charity performance last winter.”
Furneaux choked with excitement.
“A horsey-looking chap, on to-day’s jury,” he gurgled.
“That’s him!”
“The scoundrel!”
“No wonder he looked ill.”
“No wonder, indeed. How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!”
“But, sir—”
Robinson was flabbergasted. He could only murmur “Fred Elkin!” in a dazed way.
“Have a drink,” said Furneaux sympathetically. “I’ll wet my whistle, too. Only half a glass, please. Now, we mustn’t jump to conclusions. This Elkin looks a villain, but may not be one. That is to say, his villainy may be confined to dealings in nags. But you see, Robinson, what a queer turn this affair is taking. We must get rid of preconceived notions. Superintendent Fowler and you and I will go into this matter thoroughly to-morrow. Meanwhile, breathe not a syllable to a living soul. If I were you, I’d let Mr. Grant understand that we regard him as rather outside the scope of our inquiry. This beer is very good for a country village. You know a good thing when you see it, I expect. Pity I don’t smoke, or I’d join you in a pipe. I must get a move on, now, or that fat landlord will be locking me out. Good night! Yes. I’ll take the hat. Good night!”
While walking up the hill Furneaux fanned himself with the straw hat.
“One small bit of my brain is evidently a hereditary bequest from a good-natured ass!” he communed. “Here am I, Furneaux, plagued beyond endurance by a first-class murder case, and I must go and busy myself with the love affair of a postmaster’s daughter and a feather-headed novelist!”
When Tomlin admitted him to the Hare and Hounds, he buttonholed the landlord, who, at that hour, was usually somewhat obfuscated.
“Sir,” said the detective gravely, “I am told that you Steynholme folk indulge occasionally in such frivolities as amateur theatricals?”
“Once in a way, sir. Once in a way. Afore I lock up the bar, will you—”
“Not to-night. I’ve mixed port and beer already, and I’m only a little fellow. Now you, Mr. Tomlin, can mix anything, I fancy?”
“I’ve tried a few combinations in me time, sir.”
“But, about these theatrical performances—is there any scenery, costumes, ‘props’ as actors call them?”
“Yes, sir. They’re stored in the loft over the club-room—the room where the inquest wur held.”
“What, here?”
Furneaux’s shrill cry scared Mr. Tomlin.
“Y-yes, sir,” he stuttered.
“Is that my candle?” said the detective tragically. “I’m tired, dead beat. To-night, Mr. Tomlin, you are privileged to see the temporary wreck of a noble mind. God wot, ’tis a harrowing spectacle.”
Furneaux skipped nimbly upstairs. Tomlin proceeded to lock up.
“It’s good for trade,” he mumbled, “but I’ll be glad when these ’ere Lunnon gents clears out. They worry me, they do. Fair gemme a turn, ’e did. A tec’, indeed! He’s nothin’ but a play-hactor hisself!”