IN SEARCH
OF A
VILLAIN
ROBERT
GORE-BROWNE





*2*











SEARCH OF A VILLAIN





dl Oil ft
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
A STORY OF DETECTION
BY ROBERT GORE-BROWNE
AUTHOR OP THE CRATER
PUBLISHED

THE CRIME CLUB, INC.
BY DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.
GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK, 1928
1 QH ftll f^il


COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY DOUBLEDAY, DO RAN
* COMPANY, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE
COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
FIRST EDITION


"I ever thought a cutler should
distinguish the cause of my
death rather than a doctor."
—John Webster.





thou*, Q- - •.<n:
CONTENTS
paoi
PART I
The Scent I
PART II
The Run 119
PART III
The Kill 199





PART I
THE SCENT





IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
CHAPTER I
"The worst of getting middle-aged," I said to my man,
''is that nothing ever happens."
Black heard my complaint in disapproving silence. So
apparently did the Devil.
"I am going out to dinner," I continued.
"It's a nasty night, sir," said Black.
("A good night to show him," thought Satan).
"In Soho," I added.
"Very good, sir," said the former.
("The very place," thought the latter).
I had nearly finished dinner when Signora Dona moved
ponderously to my table and remarked without original-
ity that the night was wet. As if to confirm her words, a
gust of wind sent the rain spattering against the window
of the Restaurant Farnesina.
"Nobody come to-night," she added gloomily, "only
three parties beside the Signor."
I thought it optimistic to describe the silent individuals
who sat round the little room at separate tables as
"parties."
i


THE SCENT
3
That night the Farnesina clientele seemed to run to
hair. At first sight the second diner was chiefly remark-
able for an aggressive red beard, a shock of fine red hair
and a long reddish nose. He looked up and revealed a
contradiction. His eye was as cold and blue as the rest
was red and hot. He stared at me without any pretence
of politeness.
"Another politician?" I asked.
"Oh, no," replied the Signora, "he paints pictures.
Very good. He was a famous man. A portrait painter,
very clever. But now "she nodded in the direction
of his glass.
"Drinks too much?" I said.
"And what he says, it's so rude. How do you say?
So "she made a hissing sound.
"Sarcastic," I suggested.
"Yes. Then his pictures. He paints his clients how he
sees them; not how they see themselves. They do not like
it."
"I can imagine that."
An anaemic youth who combined the functions of
scullion and waiter carried the sarcastic painter a brown
earthenware dish that contained, as my nose assured me,
some compound of veal and mushrooms. At least the man
was not a vegetarian.
"Before he lost his clients," the Signora was whisper-
ing, "he painted many famous people. Sir Gordon
Liebstein"
"The financier?"
"He painted him with a big, curved nose"
"He had one," I put in.


4
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"And the Scottish petticoat."
"Kilt," I corrected. "How absurd!"
"And General—what was the name? Gold something."
"Goldsmith? Who lost two divisions on the Somme?"
"I do not know. Round his neck he painted a bit of
rope."
"A noose? What shocking taste!"
"Then one of your great ladies. Her picture is always in
the paper."
"I wonder which that would be. How did he paint
her?"
"In her drawers."
"Abominable. No wonder the fellow came to grief."
"But he's a very clever man. A pity he drinks!"
Her regrets were interrupted by the third diner, who
had diffidently been trying to catch her eye. Compared
with the couple we had just discussed he was agreeably
commonplace. A squat little man with hollow eyes and
hair making a last stand at the back of his head.
Signora Dona took him his bill on a plate.
"This is the first time he come here," she said,
when she had waddled back to my table, "but I know
him."
"Who is he?" I asked. Really I felt little interest. He
might be a senior clerk in some unprogressive firm; he
might have his own business—haberdashery or grocery
—in the suburbs. He had not, I thought, enough imagina-
tion for a house agent or presence for an undertaker.
Whatever his walk in life, it was not prosperous. That
resigned, patient look—


THE SCENT 5
1
"That," said Signora Dona, approaching her lips to
my ear, "is Signor Heppel of"
Her confidences were interrupted by that mild little
man himself. Carefully arranging a low pile of coins in
the exact centre of his bill, he rose to his feet, dusted
some crumbs from his blue serge suit and walked mod-
estly to the door. He looked out into the street, and
daunted, I thought, by the weather, came back to the
restaurant. He seemed to have mistaken his table, for
he stopped in front of the foreigner. For a moment he was
silent, but when he spoke it was in the clear tones of one
accustomed to read the lessons on Sunday.
"Finish your supper, Max," he said, "and come along
with me."
The Russian seemed to grow even paler.
"Where to?" he asked.
"Scotland Yard," said Signor Heppel apologetically.
Sweat formed on the foreigner's forehead like the steam
that condensed on the window.
"To tell us what you know about the murder of Sir
Arthur Baxter at Lincot last night," added the detective
slowly.
The foreigner gripped the edge of the table. I felt that
the restaurant had suddenly turned cold.
"My God!" he breathed. "My God! Is he dead?"
The detective's eyes never left his face. He nodded.
"Am I arrested?"
"No," said Heppel gently. He dropped his eyes.
"Not yet."
The foreigner turned suddenly to his plate. "I swear


THE SCENT
7
The detective spoke at last.
"I wish you would not use bad language," he said.
"Brandy, Signora!" said the artist, when the door had
closed behind the policeman and the man called Max.
The threshold was wet where the rain had blown in.
"And leave the bottle on the table," he added. He
turned to me. "Talking to fools makes -one thirsty."
The man's arrogance was intolerable.
"There is no finer body of men than the English
police."
I regretted my words before they were spoken.
"I can't hear," he said and picked up his bottle by the
neck.
"My name's Clay," he went on, seating himself at my
table. "Have a drink? Lucien Clay. You know my work.
What's that about the police?"
I refused the drink, concealed my ignorance of his art,
and declined to be drawn into an argument.
"Of course you believe the usual legend of your class,"
the painter continued, pouring out the brandy. "The
police are intelligent, tactful, incorruptible, and so on."
"Well, aren't they?" I hazarded.
"Did you ever offer a bobby half-a-crown?" he asked
aggressively. He called the waiter, and sent him for a
bigger glass. "The poor know better. Do you know what
they say?"
I shook my head.
"'Never take lodgings where a man in blue hangs his
hat.' Jolly good rule too."


8
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
I asked if he thought that Max had been taken up for
failing to bribe the police. The arrival of the larger glass
saved him from the difficulty of answering. When it had
been filled, I was given to understand that corruption
was not their only shortcoming. Colossal stupidity was
another.
"You think that Max is innocent?" I asked.
"Not for a moment," was the reply. "But he's not a
murderer."
"How do you know?" I fired at him.
Lucien Clay did not reply. He steered an indirect
course to the door and looked out.
"Perfectly foul," was his verdict. "I may as well waste
the time here as anywhere."
I thanked him but received no apology. He sat for
some time drinking in silence. The wine seemed to mellow
his opinion of the police. He went so far as to remark
tolerantly that he didn't entirely blame them for all the
murders that were never discovered.
"Murder is out of their class," he said.
I asked why.
"I didn't think you would understand," he said dis-
agreeably. "Hasn't it ever struck you that criminals form
one of the professional classes? That your thief, forger
or burglar thieves, forges or burgles for a living? And
blackmailers, coiners and bigamists make a business of
guilty secrets, bank notes and marriage? Just as you do
out of shares."
I asked him how he knew I was on the Stock Exchange.
He pointed to a copy of the Oil World that lay on the
table.


THE SCENT
9
"No one but a company promoter, a flat or a stock-
broker would read that paper," he stated. "You're not
rich enough for a promoter or poor enough for a flat.
You're a stockbroker."
I laughed and asked what that had to do with undis-
covered murders.
"Wait," he said. "Will you admit that ninety-nine
criminals out of a hundred are professionals?"
I nodded for the sake of peace.
"But murderers," he asserted, "as any criminologist
will tell you, are almost always amateurs. Hate and
opportunity make the murderer, not the professional
instinct."
"Well?" I said, as he paused for me to admire his
epigram.
"The police are trained and exercised on professional
crooks. How can they be expected to understand the
technique of an amateur?"
He reached for the diminishing bottle.
"Then the origin of the average detective! The
middle-class isn't given to murder. How can it foresee
the working qf instincts it has never felt? It is psycho-
logically isolated."
I asked him what that meant.
"It can't understand the classes where murderers are
found," he declared.
"The lower classes?" I asked.
"And the uppej. The two drinking classes. They go
together. The bourgeois is separate—the thinking class."
He cracked a walnut under his heel.
"Our ancestors," he remarked, "had the sense to see


IO
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
that a man's crime should be judged by his peers. Our
children will have it detected by them."
I thought I had listened long enough. The rain no
longer beat against the glass. But Lucien Clay had not
finished.
"You remember," he demanded, "the case of Lord
Glebe?"
I nodded. His lordship had been found dead in a lava-
tory compartment on a Great Eastern Express.
"The police said suicide," he snorted. "But no one of
his own class would for a moment conclude that the un-
fortunate nobleman chose that spot to end his life."
I asked what his own theory was.
"Why, the valet," was the answer. "A drop of arsenic
in his master's thermos and an arm to help him along the
corridor. Just what a valet would think of. And just what
the police would miss."
"You can't have every policeman a peer," I objected.
"And if birth is all they lack"
"It isn't," he cut in rudely. "Imagination! Do you
think that chap who's just gone out has a grain of it?
How can he cope with an intelligent assassin?"
"Patience, system, courage "I began.
"Aren't a ha'porth of use without imagination."
"According to you, a poet would make a detective!"
"A good one, certainly. Think of Shakespeare and the
Macbeth Mystery. But most of them are too romantic;
like the police themselves. Shelley fussing about a skylark
would be as useless as a bobby who lets a pretty girl get
in front of the crowd to see Queen Mary. You must have
a realist."


THE SCENT
ii
I inquired what sort of man he thought would make
the best detective. He seemed surprised that I should ask.
"Why! A painter, of course," he declared. "A portrait
painter." He banged the table with his fist. "Imagine a
Big Four of painters! Sargent, Rembrandt, Raeburn and
Velasquez. The criminal would become rarer than the
okapi."
I suggested that the masters he mentioned would need
training.
"Nonsense!" he said. "What secret had Philip that
he could hide from Velasquez!"
I had to admit that the painter had certainly read the
heart of his royal sitter.
"What Jew could bluff Sargent?" he went on. "Which
of his burgomasters could keep his thoughts from
Rembrandt?"
I saw that argument was useless.
"And yet "he said, and paused.
I encouraged him to finish.
"I have proved to you that the perfect sleuth must be
well bred." He sighed. "Would the masters' genius make
up for that? " He sighed again, and relapsed into a slightly
sodden silence.
"The Clays are the oldest family in Kent," he said
simply.
The owner of the Restaurant Farnesina looked at the
clock and rose from her desk.
"It is time, Signori," he said, appropriating the bottle
that had once held brandy.


12
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"England, the home of Liberty!" declaimed the artist,
swaying a little as he got to his feet.
I left him and paid my bill. Signora Dona apologized
for the manners of my new acquaintance.
"He is a very clever man," she alleged in excuse.
Against my will I was impressed with the reasoning
of this drunken, ill-spoken failure, but I did not care to
admit it. So I said that for a clever man he talked a great
deal of nonsense.
"And sense too, Signor," she persisted. "He has helped
me. Only last week when Giuseppe stole the entree
dish."
"He drinks too much." I said.
She agreed. "Perhaps you would see the Signor home,"
she whiskered, as she helped me on with my coat. "It
is not far but I am not sure"
I was not sure either. Clay's brain seemed steadier
than his legs.
"I'm going your way," I said to the painter, as he
steered himself dubiously through the door of the restau-
rant. "You haven't told me yet why you would acquit
that man Max."
Outside the rain had ceased but the wind blew cold.
The artist had disappeared into the recesses of a regret-
tably ginger-coloured ulster.
"Set a painter to catch a murderer." He pointed to
the lighted blinds of the Farnesina. "There were three
of us in there, three not counting Max. You, a stockbroker
of fair intelligence and average education"
"Really "I began.


THE SCENT
13
"The middle-class detective," he continued unmoved,
counting on his long white fingers, "drilled by Scotland
Yard in the stereotyped struggle against professional
crooks."
"His name is Heppel," I said.
"And I," he concluded, jerking his beard towards the
sky, "Lucien Clay, the portrait painter. Now how would
the brain of each register what happened?" He stopped
and leaned against the wall of a house.
"There wasn't very much "I began.
"You can guess at Heppel's reaction." In a monoto-
nous voice he began a parody of a policeman's report.
"At eight-fifteen I followed the accused into the Farne-
sina Restaurant, situated at number 393 Great Compton
Street, Soho. Taking my seat at the second table to the
left of the door I observed the accused for the duration
of dinner. At nine-three, after assuring myself that P.C.
77 was within call, I approached the accused and in-
formed him that he was wanted at Scotland Yard. The
accused stated"
He broke off and laughed. I protested that the im-
aginary Heppel had given all the facts.
"Facts," said the artist in disgust. "Who wants facts?"
The black oilskin cape of a policeman shone under a
street lamp. I induced Clay to leave the support of the
wall.
"What did you think about it all?" he challenged me.
I found it difficult to answer.
"I can tell you," he cut in. "You didn't think at all,
till you'd finished your dinner. Then you fit your cigar,


14
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
looked at Max, and reflected he'd be the better for a shave.
And 'that's the worst of Soho,' you thought, 'so many
foreigners.'"
I had to admit the truth of this.
"When Heppel, whom you'd dismissed as a nonentity,
walked over to Max's table your ideas of privacy were
outraged. But when you saw he was a policeman, you
knew he must be right and the Russian wrong!"
He stopped and looked hard at me from under his
raised, vermilion eyebrows. I shrugged my shoulders.
"In fact you saw nothing," he said rudely. "You just
confirmed your prejudices."
I felt injured and did not answer. Clayrolled a cigarette.
"I haven't a match," he stated, and took my box.
"The artist," he said, with conscious superiority, "is
different. He sees with the fresh, careful eyes of the child.
When he is a genius, he has the television of genius."
"What then?" I asked; unimpressed.
"That is how I knew," he said, blowing a cloud of
smoke through his wide nostrils, "that Max, whom I
never saw before, is not a murderer."
"How?" I persisted.
"You can't explain how instinct works," he declared.
"My art has taught me to recognise types, to interpret
expression, to read character."
"Is that all?" I asked.
"It may be easy to you," he snapped, "you do it so
well."
I changed the subject. What had he started from?
"To begin with, Max is a Russian."
"How do you know?"


THE SCENT
"By his face and gestures and the way he crossed
himself before dinner."
"Catholics and Anglo-Catholics do that."
"From top to bottom and then from left to right. The
Russian reverses it."
There seemed to be rather more in his deductions than
I had supposed. I began to be interested.
"Well, suppose he's a Russian," I admitted. "What
next?"
"Russians talk, they don't act," he affirmed, with his
obstinate jerk of the beard.
"What about Lenin?" I hazarded.
Exceptional Russians, he stated, had exceptional faces.
He went on to distinguish between the rat type and the
dog type. Max's sort had to be drunk to kill.
I asked how he knew that Max had not been intoxi-
cated.
"You didn't notice he drank water at dinner?" he
asked, cocking one eyebrow higher than the other. "If
in drink you had murdered a man one night, would you
take water the next?"
I conceded drunkenness.
"A murderer needs enterprise, determination. In a
word 'guts.' There's no room for that quality in Max's
narrow head, or behind his long nose, thick lips and little
pointed chin."
I said that I did not believe in physiognomy as a guide.
The ginger ulster swelled with scorn.
"Your blasted prejudices again. One feature may be
misleading, but when half a dozen "he threw away
his cigarette end with a disgusted gesture. "Don't you


i6
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
tell me that a hand with those weak thumbs could kill a
man!"
"Was he strangled? " I asked.
"You blithering idiot!" shouted Clay. "Weak thumbs,
weak nature!"
It would be silly to take offence. "Mightn't a weak
man murder?" I asked humbly.
"Not an inert man," declared Clay. "Then look at his
other traits. He's a talker."
"Why?"
"A politician of a sort. You can tell it by his head—
high at the back of the crown."
"Is that a sign?"
"And his prominent lips, and that heavy fold under
the eye. All signs of the politician or speaker. I've painted
them by the dozen."
"And a politician would never commit a murder?" I
asked sceptically.
"He'd get some one else to do it for him," Clay replied,
avoiding a lamp post with some care.
"Brutus?" I suggested.
"He was an idealist. You don't get them in politics
nowadays. Mind you, when I say 'politician' I'm prob-
ably flattering the fellow. No doubt he's a political agita-
tor, encouraging bolder men to do what he daren't do
himself."
"But you're sure he's innocent?"
Clay stopped abruptly in the middle of the main road.
A taxicab whizzed profanely by.
"Good Lord!" he said. "Not innocent."
I pulled him on the pavement. His opinion appeared to


CHAPTER n
A dozen hours later I stood, a little out of breath, on the
dusty landing outside Lucien Clay's studio. Although the
door was open, I could see no sign of the painter. Un-
willing to face the stairs a second time, I made up my
mind to wait until he came back.
Looking round the gray, disorderly apartment I
thanked heaven I was not an artist. In spite of its size
there seemed no room to move. A book—one of the
Notable British Trials series—lay open on the gas cooking-
stove; a pair of elastic-sided boots stood on a Sheraton
table; a square of old French brocade covered a birdcage.
In the centre of the room a fine glass chandelier from some
Venetian palace hung perilously askew. In the corner
rose a heap of wine bottles, some empty, some broken,
some full. Canvases lined the walls. To judge by the dust
that covered them, they had been stacked there for
years. And when their faces were turned to the light, the
neglect they had suffered was sufficiently explained.
For a world-renowned statesman could hardly be
expected to buy a portrait, however penetrating, that
stressed his likeness to a stoat. The doyen of the diamond
fields would naturally prefer that posterity should see
him seated in his library at Park Lane than on the para-
pet of Baboon Hill, Regent's Park. A famous actress had
19


IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
cause to be angry that under the surface of her trium-
phant beauty showed the bosses and recesses of a skull.
This want of taste and a certain lack of finish marred
work that was at once powerful and profound. It could
not obscure the evidences of a remarkable insight into
human nature and its failings. I began to wonder if I
had not judged Clay's theories of the art of detection too
lightly.
My reflections were interrupted by a voice. I turned in
its direction. All that was visible was a screen pasted
with the portraits of prize-fighters in militant attitudes.
"Did any one speak?" I asked.
"Yes," replied the voice, and the beard and hair of
the artist flamed over the top of the screen. "What the
hell do you want?"
I told him.
"Oh, it's you. Did I? All right, look in my clothes."
I asked where.
"On the floor, of course. Do you think I sleep in them?"
The space behind the screen seemed to rank as bed-
room. The artist lay on a divan under a striped Italian
blanket. He was wearing a pair of sea-green silk pyjamas
which heightened the colour of his hair.
"There's my wardrobe," he said, jerking his head
towards some heaps of clothes. "Help yourself!"
It was impossible to miss the ginger ulster. I took my
match-box from its pocket and with an apology to Clay
for disturbing him, turned to the door.
"Don't go," he said, and invited me to join him at
breakfast.
I told him I had already breakfasted, and, as I watched


22
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
Clay glanced at me and returned to his kidneys. They
smelt abominable.
"I happened to be passing," lied the superintendent,
"so I thought I'd look in to ask you what you know
about this business."
"Nothing," replied the artist with his mouth full.
"And Max Rothmann?" went on the detective gently.
"Never seen him before!"
"Odd!" commented Heppel, "whenyou told Mr."
he paused inquiringly.
"Dale," I said.
"That he was a Russian agitator!" he went on.
Clay laughed.
"And last night you were so sure he was innocent!"
"Well, isn't he?" said Clay, draining his tea cup.
The detective walked to the wall and straightened a
picture. "There is plenty of evidence against him," he
stated.
"The police will attend to that!" said Clay.
I saw that the detective suspected Clay of knowing
more than he cared to reveal, and, guessing that the
malice of the artist might encourage the mistake, I
intervened. Mr. Clay's knowledge of Rothmann went
no further, I explained, than an uncanny insight into
human nature.
"What do you mean?" asked the detective.
I rapidly sketched the painter's methods so far as he
had revealed them to me. The policeman was not im-
pressed.
"Guesswork, Mr. Dale!" he said." Pure guesswork! Hit
and miss. Miss and hit. The police can't afford to miss."


THE SCENT
23
"I've noticed that!" said Clay, who had begun to
dress.
"Patient attention to detail," went on the arm of the
law, "has hanged more men than guesswork, .however
clever."
"The wrong ones then," said Lucien Clay, putting on
his trousers.
The detective turned to take his hat. Clay stopped him.
"I want to hear about the murder. How was Baxter
killed?"
Heppel shook his head regretfully. He was not allowed
to say anything that had not been given to the Press.
"I never read the papers," said Clay arrogantly.
Superintendent Heppel picked the elastic-sided boots
off the Sheraton table, looked at them dubiously and
aligned them against the wall.
"I like to see things in their proper place," he said.
The artist was not to be put off.
"You can at least tell me what has appeared in the
papers," he insisted.
"That's not very much," replied the detective. "They
report that shortly before midnight Sir Arthur Baxter
was found by his butler on the floor of the library in his
country house, dead."
"And there is no doubt he was murdered?" I put in.
"A bayonet was sticking in his back," said Heppel.
"It would be hard to do that to oneself."
"An odd weapon for a murder!" I remarked.
"It was taken from a trophy of arms on the wall."
"Where does Max Rothmann come in?" asked Clay.
"Not in the papers!" answered Heppel.


26
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"Would that be a rabbit or a hare?" he inquired, and
without waiting for an answer, remarked that it was no
good trying to bluff any one as astute as the artist. Cards
on the table, he declared unconvincingly, had always been
his motto, and he did not mind admitting that a line on
the people at Lincot would be a help to the police.
"I dare say it would," said Clay, rolling and lighting a
cigarette.
The detective was not deterred.
"You're going to Lincot," he said, "to look about on
your own. I'm going too. Now suppose some one told
you something they wouldn't tell me?" He paused but
received no encouragement. "It would be your duty to
report it."
"I don't give a hoot!" said Clay and blew a cloud of
smoke.
There seemed no satisfactory answer. The detective
stared at the ceiling.
"Do you know, Mr. Clay," he remarked, "I doubt
if that candle affair is safe. You ought to have it re-
hung."
The artist did not seem interested in the fate of the
chandelier.
"Of course," continued the superintendent, "I'm
not suggesting a one-sided arrangement. You tell us
what you know and we tell you."
Clay meditated, scratching his fine red hair. To pool
information," he said at last. "Is that it?"
Mr. Heppel nodded blandly.
"All right," said the artist, "on two conditions." The
detective waited.


THE SCENT 27
"I must tell my host that what I hear goes on to the
police."
Heppel's protests were ignored.
"And I keep my conclusions to myself till they're
complete."
The detective's delight was incompletely concealed.


CHAPTER III
Lucien Clay dragged forward an oak arm-chair that
had once, he alleged, accommodated the person of the
Virgin Queen. More recently it seemed to have been
used as a wash-stand.
"Sit down," he said, "and tell me why you arrested
Rothmann."
The detective looked doubtfully at the royal relic, and
said he would prefer the kitchen chair that stood against
the wall. After wiping its seat with a blue and white
spotted handkerchief, he began his story.
It was a bald account of the merciless slaughter of an
old, defenceless man. It opened with the mysterious visit
of a stranger in a brown suit.
About ten o'clock on Monday night he rang the bell
at Lincot and asked to see Sir Arthur Baxter. Political
visitors—constituents and others—had been known to
call at that late hour, and the butler who admitted him
classed him with these. He took him too for a foreigner,
but the name of Mr. W. Johnstone which was printed on
his card did not confirm this impression. He showed him
into the library and left him alone with the baronet.
"That was the last that was seen of the man in the
brown suit!" said Superintendent Heppel.
Half an hour later Sir Arthur Baxter came out of the
library alone. In the adjoining room two ladies, his cousin
28


THE SCENT
29
and his adopted daughter, were sitting. They could see
into the library through the door that their kinsman left
open. The room appeared to be empty. They assumed
that the stranger had been shown out of the French
window to the terrace, which was used as a short-cut to
the station path.
The old man drank a whisky and soda and returned to
the library, locking the double doors behind him. He
was not again seen alive.
"When was the murder discovered?" I asked.
"About half-past eleven the butler knocked at the
library door. There was no answer. He tried it. It was
locked. Alarmed, he got through the dining-room window
to the terrace to look into the library. The curtains were
drawn but a light was burning. No one answered his tap
on the glass. He pushed at the window. It was open. On
the green carpet, half-hidden by a large desk, lay the
corpse of Sir Arthur Baxter with a bayonet driven into its
back."
The detective paused at this tragic discovery and
cleared his throat.
"The point of the weapon," he continued, "stuck out
in front of the body. A very powerful blow."
He looked at his hearers as if expecting some comment.
"Ghastly!" I said. "But no great mystery."
"The cases that look the simplest," Superintendent
Heppel declared, shaking his head, "are often the hardest
to solve."
The County police were summoned by telephone and
made a thorough examination of the premises. Their
report lay in Heppel's pocket. It favoured the theory that


3°
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
Sir Arthur, at the conclusion of his interview with the
man in the brown suit, had shown him the short-cut to
the station. Going to drink his whisky in the next room,
he had left the window unfastened. During his brief
absence, his visitor returned by the open window and
hid behind the long curtains. The locked door made
escape for his victim impossible.
"No cry was heard?" I asked.
Heppel shook his head.
"And there were no finger-prints?"
"Not even on the bayonet."
I suggested that the murderer had worn gloves. The
detective agreed.
"Mr. Johnstone," he said, "was not so careful with
his visiting card."
For when on Tuesday morning the County police in-
voked the aid of the C.I.D., reference to records identi-
fied Mr. W. Johnstone's thumb-mark with that of a cer-
tain Max Rothmann, who had been arrested for inciting
to violence during the General Strike of 1926.
The political interests of Rothmann taken with his
nationality suggested a motive for the murder, since the
late baronet had been prominent in and out of Parliament
for his attacks on the Bolshevists.
"So, as Max was a foreigner, you arr.ested him," said
Clay, throwing his cigarette-end on the floor. "Trust a
bobby to down on a Dago."
The detective ignored the remark.
"Acting on the report of the Finger-print Department,
I sent a man to search Rothmann's lodgings in his ab-
sence."


THE SCENT
31
"How reckless of you!" exclaimed the painter.
"And what he found decided me. In the bottom of a
cupboard were hidden a pair of brown trousers. On the
legs were certain stains. Our analysts declared them to
be"
"Soup," interrupted the artist.
"Blood!" said the detective impressively. "Recent,
human blood."
"If the regulations about aliens were stricter "I
began.
"The trousers," went on Heppel, "were sent by special
messenger to Lincot. They were identified at once by
the butler with those worn by Johnstone. Under twenty-
four hours elapsed between the discovery of the murder
and the detention of the Russian. Which wasn't bad for
the police!" he concluded, rubbing his hands.
"Which would not have been bad for the police,"
corrected Clay, "if they had got the right man!"
"There's every reason to suppose they have," said the
detective. "A suspicious visit, the wrong card, a blood-
stain."
Clay interrupted him.
"What does Rothmann say?
"He's put in an alibi. We're investigating it. Alibis
have been faked before now."
"Psychology hasn't, retorted the artist.
"I won't argue with you about that, Mr. Clay. But
I'll tell you one thing. If Rothmann did not do it, then
it must have been some one living in the house."
"Why?"
"I can show you better at Lincot."


32
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"What time's our train?" asked Clay.
"I am going down by the one fifty-five."
"An hour to get packed and to the station," said Clay,
lifting a Gladstone bag off a marqueterje bureau.
"And to tell me a bit about the Baxter household,"
Heppel added.
"It may have changed," replied the painter. "But
when I was there, they were as harmless a lot as you'd
find."
"Give me the names!" said Heppel.
"There was Baxter himself, his nephew John, his cousin
Sophie de Manca, who ran the house, and a secretary
chap."
"Lewis Hope?" the detective suggested.
"That's right. Then staying in the house were Mr.
and Mrs."
The detective cut him short. "Only the regular lot,"
he said. "Wasn't there a Miss Eyre?"
"Away!" said the artist. "On a visit to an invalid
sister. Just my luck, they say she's lovely. The old man
wanted me to paint her. That was before he saw his own.
Said I made him look like a sheep. Well, he was!"
He opened the Gladstone bag and shook it. A dozen
white shirts unexpectedly fell to the floor and made room
for what he called his "things." These seemed to consist
mainly of sketching apparatus.
"Have you noticed," he asked us as he bent over his
packing, "that while films are quite untrue to Life, Life
is very often true to the film?"
I confessed that I had not.
"At Lincot, for instance, you might have been living


THE SCENT
33
inside the brain of a Hollywood movie magnate. Baxter
would have been his beau ideal of an Old English gentle-
man. In reality he was a very average die-hard back-
bencher. Only a communist would take him seriously,
just as he took communists seriously. He was a precise,
rather fussy man, but not to the point of murder."
"He was a J.P.," I remarked, "and did valuable serv-
ice on various boards."
"I dare say," said Clay, who seemed to like to monop-
olise the conversation, "he hadn't much to do. He was
an unmarried man with an eye for a pretty woman.
Lady "(he mentioned the name of the pearl fancier)
"had the forehead of a Botticelli Madonna."
He rolled up a violent-hued dressing gown and stuffed
it into the bag.
"That may have been why he adopted this girl, Delia
Eyre. Another cinema type. Sweet young thing. Orphan
and all that. Adrift on an Indifferent World. Purity and
a Typewriter. A Haven out of the Storm."
He paused in his packing. "You should grow a beard,"
he said to the detective. "It saves so much luggage. No
razors, shaving soap. Fewer collars"
The superintendent brought him gently back to Lincot.
"Oh,yes!" he said. "Delia Eyre! She came to Baxter as
his secretary. Typed his speeches about the Red Peril and
the Hand of Moscow. A year or so ago he adopted her.
"But she kept her own name?" I asked.
"Yes. Sense of duty to her dead father. That's what
young Baxter—the nephew, you know—told me. I fancy
he has a scheme of his own for getting her to change her
name."


34
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"Do you know Sir John Baxter, as we must call him,
well?" asked Heppel.
"Where the hell did you put my boots?" asked the
artist irritably. The detective showed him. "Know John
Baxter well? I used to see him at the Jawbone pretty
often."
"Then he's an artist?" assumed Heppel, for the Jaw-
bone is where Chelsea spends its nights out.
"No. Keen on a model who went there." Clay thrust
a couple of stiff collars into the boots that he held in his
hand and forced them into the Gladstone bag.
The detective pursed up his lips, and said that he had
understood Sir John was attracted by Miss Eyre.
"Can't a man want two women at once?" was the
painter's deplorable sentiment. "In any case the model
affair was over years before John went to Lincot." With
the aid of his foot he compressed the- contents of his lug-
gage.
"When was that?"
"Not before he had to!"
The superintendent stooped to help Clay shut his bag.
When they had done with it, it looked like a fish after
feeding time in an aquarium.
"John Baxter," declared Clay, "was another film
personality. Two in fact! A mixture of the Strong Silent
Man and the Impetuous Young Hero. He had gone
straight to the war from the Varsity. During his years of
residence, Lord's cricket ground—he was a fast bowler—
and Queen's football-field—he was a formidable member
of the pack—had loomed larger in his life than the mid-
night lamp and the Honour Schools.


THE SCENT
35
"After collecting an M.C. and bar in Flanders, he
volunteered for service with the White Armies in Russia.
He was next heard of running a ranch in the Argentine.
The failure of that venture brought him back to London
to spend the last of his patrimony on the lady from
Chelsea. When she had ultimately disappeared with a
Mayfair Jew, an attempt to forget her by encouraging
silver foxes to breed in Hudson Bay almost ended fatally.
Had his uncle not sent him the money to pay his passage
home, he would have starved."
"So he settled at Lincot?" said Heppel.
"That was the old man's condition."
"He seems to have been rather a rolling stone."
"He couldn't do much rolling on what his uncle al-
lowed him!"
The detective picked up a sketch book and turned the
pages.
"And now he inherits the Baxter fortune?" he said
casually.
The painter supposed so. He was the dead man's next-
of-kin and succeeded to the baronetcy. But part of the
money might go to Sophie de Manca.
"Sir Arthur's cousin?" supplied Heppel.
"And protegee," said Clay, "and another double film
type. The Ageing Vamp coupled with the Poor Relation."
As a young woman Sophie Baxter had succumbed
to the fascination of a Portuguese count. He was reputed
to be immensely rich, but that, said Clay, was insufficient
excuse for marrying him. Political developments in his
motherland counselled a visit to the Portuguese colonies
in Africa. Only a year elapsed before his young wife was


36 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
assisting at his death bed ("gin aggravated by malaria"
was Clay's diagnosis) but there had been time for him
before that "happy event" to invest his capital in a gold
mine. In due course Sophie de Manca returned to England
by the third class and accepted her kinsman's offer of a
home.
"Where she acts as a sort of housekeeper?" said Hep-
pel.
"Yes!" answered the artist. "But Sir Arthur is careful
of her feelings and does not pay her."
The detective glanced at his watch. "You've time to
tell me about Mr. Hope," he said.
"Plenty!" agreed Clay. "For I know nothing. He's a
man who doesn't talk about himself."
"What impression did you get of him?"
"A big man. Rather fat. Clean-shaven, with circular
gold-rimmed spectacles. Not a common movie variety.
Perhaps the Silent-Footed Amanuensis."
"You don't know where he comes from?"
"No. He took Delia Eyre's place, I believe."
"You wouldn't know anything about the servants?"
The artist agreed that he would not. There was a butler
who insisted on putting out a clean collar for him every
day. Face like a cod.
"That sounds like Freeman!" said the detective.
A church clock struck the half-hour.
"Time we started," said Clay to me.
"We?" I queried.
"I must have some one who will at least listen to my
theories."
I protested I had no clothes.


THE SCENT
37
"I'll lend you some," offered the painter.
Rather than that, I hurried to the wine merchant at
the corner ("Where," stated Clay unnecessarily, "they
know me.") to telephone for my man to bring my suitcase
to the station.
The painter and the policeman were descending the
stairs when I came back. I felt bound to hint that the
auburn ulster into which Clay was struggling seemed to
me a trifle conspicuous. He asked indignantly whether I
imagined that he was going to wear blue glasses with a
false nose and crawl around on his stomach, examining
flower-beds with a magnifying glass. "I leave all that to
Heppel," he declared, clapping a rusty black hat with a
wide stiff brim on his head.
The detective smiled and signalled to a passing cab.
"There's one character you left out," I remarked to
Clay, "in your cinema cast."
"What's that?"
I watched the taxi fetching a circle through the traffic.
"The villain!" I said.
"I've supplied him," interposed Heppel, "with my
friend Max."
"Rubbish!" cried Clay. "That little pointed chin"
Without answering Heppel climbed stolidly into the
cab.
"You're right, Dale," announced the artist. "I will
have to re-cast our company and find the missing char-
acter."


CHAPTER IV
Sir John Baxter met us at the station. I wondered what
conclusion Clay drew from his hand. I was only conscious
that its rough, almost brutal clasp had left my fingers
limp. He swung the artist's bag on to the top of the limou-
sine as if it had been empty, and, doubling the legal limit,
soon had us speeding toward Lincot House.
Small talk was not his strong suit, and his only utter-
ance during the drive was to express his relief that the
detective and the artist seemed harmonious. He had, he
told me, wired to the latter before he knew that Scotland
Yard were sending a man. The local police were very good
chaps but—he lapsed into silence.
From my seat by his side, I watched the young giant's
dark, rather heavy face. His eyes were hollow and he
looked as if he had not slept. Behind his reserve I felt
there were fires smouldering.
As we drew up at our destination, I heard the superin-
tendent remark to Lucien Clay on the age of the house.
"They didn't build this in the last hundred years," were
his words.
"Nor in the last three hundred," answered the painter.
Our host gave a short laugh. "Lincot was not new when
Oliver Cromwell burnt the east wing," he said.
The high red walls throw a shadow on the gravel. Un-
warmed by the autumn sun, the air felt chill. The country,
38


40
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
I raised my eyes to the top of the stairs where I sup-
posed the bedroom lay. They fell on the slim figure of a
girl with a sad, white face. She must have made up her
mind to meet us, for soon her little high-heeled feet came
tapping down the stairs.
"Delia!" said Sir John and his tired eyes looked less
strained. "Miss Eyre," he introduced.
Her hand was very cold and her wide-set eyes the
colour of wet turquoise. Her plain black dress set off the
fairness of her skin and short, curled hair. Her small,
curved mouth was clean of paint and her delicate face
with its rounded chin was unpowdered. I felt sorry that
one who appeared a credit to her sex should be dragged
into the middle of a police investigation.'
"If there's anything I can do to help?" she asked.
Heppel smiled and shook his head. "I don't think this
is much in your line, Miss Eyre," he said.
When she had left us the silence of the house seemed to
close in. Even our footsteps on the oak stairs sounded
muffled. We turned into a broad passage and walked to
its end. Before a closed door our host faltered.
"I won't come in," he said, and added, "unless you
want me." He turned away suddenly.
The room was darkened by the brown blind. A spruce
little man in check breeches and cloth leggings met us
with an outstretched hand. More like an auctioneer, I
thought, than a doctor.
A bull-necked constable rose from his chair beside the
four-poster bed and released the blind. The light fell on


THE SCENT 41
the bed and its occupant. As I looked at the silent form
covered by a sheet, I thought of the effigies on tombs that
time and decay have in part obscured.
Heppel was shaking hands with the doctor, whom, in
his civil way, he thanked for coming so promptly.
"They've given me your report," he said, "and I've
seen the police surgeon. But I'd like a few words with the
man who was first on the spot."
He walked calmly to the bed and turned down the
sheet. Although his action was not without reverence, it
was the reverence of a collector for a book. Lucien Clay
followed and looked over his shoulder, his eyes alight
with interest. His mind, I felt, was riveted on the solution
of a problem in which pity had no part.
For myself I was filled with compassion for the man
I had never known. His bald head and the white hair
that had grown on his chin proclaimed his age and his
title to mercy. He had been a decent, kindly Englishman
of the best class in the country, meriting the esteem and
protection of his fellows. No man could have been less
prepared for violent, death. Age and distinction apart, he
might have been myself.
For some minutes the detective was busy at the
bed. Then he turned and drew a bulky envelope
from his pocket. He spread its contents on a writing
table by the window and asked the doctor to take a
seat.
"I see, Dr. Gillman," he said, with his eyes on a type-
written paper, "from Sergeant Wood's report that you
reached the house about midnight."
Dr. Gillman nodded.


THE SCENT
43
brought from his pocket, weighed it in his hand and felt
the sharpness of its point against his palm.
"Apparently a premeditated crime," he remarked.
I asked his reasons for so supposing.
"The murderer must have put on gloves to leave no
finger-print on that polished hilt. You don't wear gloves
in the house without a purpose."
"You do if you're a woman," said Clay.
"Possibly," said Superintendent Heppel gently. "But
then you can't drive a two-foot bayonet through a thick-
set man." The painter's hand flew to his upstanding hair,
and Heppel went on, "I'll read you what Dr. Gillman
says and the police surgeon endorses."
He turned the sheets of the report until he found the
place.
"'The police's attention is directed to the following
point. It is evident that the fatal blow was delivered with
unusual force for the broad blade of the bayonet not only
to traverse the body of a heavily built man and his winter
clothing but to protrude two and a quarter inches out of
his chest.'"
Heppel handed the weapon carefully to Clay.
"You will notice," he said, "that the point is not very
sharp."
As he examined it I had an idea.
"Suppose Sir Arthur, in an effort to escape, fell back-
wards just as the murderer struck," I suggested.
"Wouldn't that drive the bayonet through him?"
Clay gave a snort of irritation.
"The dawn of reason," he said offensively. "In the
case you suppose, don't you see the wound would slant


THE SCENT
45
I tried to remember Rothmann's height. As he left
the Farnesina he had looked tall beside the lit tie detective.
But he was not six foot and he appeared too soft to be
strong. I could not put out of my mind the young giant
who had met us at the station. I knew the idea was pre-
posterous, but
"I dare say you are right, Mr. Clay," the detective was
saying, "but it's just a theory. Before I start building
theories, I want a few facts."
There was a knock at the door, I jumped. The com-
pany of the silent figure on the bed must have affected
my nerves more than I knew. The door opened and a
stout man in gilt-rimmed glasses came silently into the
room.
As his eyes, magnified by the spectacles, fell on the
weapon in the artist's hand, he stopped and for a moment
I thought he was going to retire as silently as he had
entered.
Heppel must have noticed the momentary hesitation.
"You've seen that bayonet before?" he asked.
"On the library wall," said the intruder with compo-
sure. "But now its associations are rather terrible.
Macbeth's dagger"
"I am speaking to Mr. Lewis Hope?" interrupted
Heppel.
The secretary bowed. The motion recalled those egg-
shaped wooden figures that a touch sets rocking. Lewis
Hope was so very round. The circular gold-rimmed spec-
tacles, the wide blue eyes, the chubby pink face, the
rounded shoulders, the comfortable corpulence—every-
thing about the man was round.


46
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"I came to ask if you would want me this afternoon,"
he explained. "I have a little business on the estate.
'Praise great estates, cultivate small ones' as the Wizard
of Mantua warns us."
Our police are never at a loss.
"I'm afraid, Mr. Hope," said Heppel pleasantly, "you
can't follow Mussolini's advice this afternoon. I must
ask every member of the household to hold himself at
my disposal for the present."
"I'll tell them," said Lewis Hope, and left the room as
silently as he had entered it.
"You were asking for facts," began Clay, when the
door had shut behind the secretary. "Here's one for you!
Not only was the murderer tall and powerful, but we
know something more about him."
"I thought you mentioned facts," said the detective
patiently.
"I see I must start at the beginning," retorted Clay,
"like a child's history book. You've examined the wound.
Is it not a fact that it slants not only in a downward
direction from back to chest but also laterally from right
to left?"
The detective nodded.
"Doesn't that prove it!" said Clay with a jerk at his
red beard.
"Prove what?" I asked.
The painter picked up the bayonet in his right hand.
"Watch me," he said. "I'm going to show you the
three ways of stabbing a man between the shoulders.
Lessons for little murderers."
Holding the hilt in his two hands above his head he


THE SCENT
47
raised himself on his toes and plunged the blade point
downwards into an imaginary victim.
"Number one," he said. "With one hand or both. In
either case it leaves a straight wound with no lateral
slant. We can wash that out."
He looked round for our assent.
"Number two," he said. "Back-handed."
He held the weapon with the back of his hand upper-
most, drew it over his left shoulder and drove it down and
to the right.
"That's the way we recommend," he stated. "Used
by all the leading professionals. But it leaves a cut that
slants from left to right."
Again we had to agree.
"Number three. The forehand shot."
He raised his hand above his right shoulder, knuckles
to the front and struck across to his left. The length of
the bayonet made the attitude awkward and the blow
ineffective.
"No intelligent assassin," he declared, "would stab
like that with a long knife. But that's the only way to
leave a cut from right to left."
"If you hold the knife in the right hand," said Heppel
quietly.
"Colossal!" said Clay. "A policeman who can see a
thing when he is shown!"
"You think "I began.
"That he used Number two stroke and held the weapon
in his left hand—because he was a left-handed man,"
completed Lucien Clay.


CHAPTER V
A left-handed man; six foot tall; strong. I could not say
that Rothmann fitted the bill. But I found it easier to
disbelieve Clay's deductions than to fix the guilt on the
only six-foot man I had seen at Lincot.
Sir John Baxter might be left-handed; he certainly had
the necessary physique and doubtless, if he was his uncle's
heir, the motive. But I refused to believe that a young
fellow of one's own class, outlook, and upbringing, could
murder an old, unarmed man who was his near relation
and who had shown him every kindness.
But there were, I had to admit,, several undeniable
facts which might excite Heppel's suspicion. There was
the young man's wild past which Clay had unfortunately
revealed, the money and position his uncle's death would
bring, his stature and strength, even his reluctance to
enter the room where the body lay. If into the bargain
he proved to be left-handed
I glanced at the detective and was relieved to see how
little interest he showed in Clay's theories.
"All this about left and right hands," he remarked,
"may be very pretty," But it was too soon, he opined,
for any fancy work. What he wanted was facts. And the
library, if Dr. Gillman would take him there, was the
place to find them.
48


THE SCENT
49
Lincot, I found, was built in the shape of the letter U.
The west wing, which contained the drawing-room, ante-
room, and library made the left hand member; the east
wing with the billiard-room and servants' quarters the
right; and the hall and dining-room the middle.
The doctor led us down the uncarpeted stairs, across
the stone hall and into a high apartment panelled in
dark oak. One window and a fan-light over the door that
led to the next room did not provide enough illumination
for modern requirements.
"This ante-room and the library in there," said Dr.
Gillman pointing to the communicating door, "formerly
made one long gallery. Under Victoria, it was divided in
two with that partition."
By the door he had indicated, which alone connected
the library with the rest of the house, stood an uniformed
policeman. He saluted as we passed.
The library was a pleasanter room. It was difficult to
believe that it had so lately been the theatre of a brutal
murder. Its wide French window faced south and opened
on a broad, flagged terrace on whose balustrade climbed
pink ivy-leafed geraniums.
Through the casement window in the west wall entered
the level beams of the afternoon sun. Its light on the old
buff bindings of the books that lined the walls made me
think of a field of ripe corn. Into the panel over the wide
stone fireplace had been left the portrait by Van Dyck
of that Baxter who held the house for his king against
the Puritans. His sombre eyes, accustomed as they may
have been to Scenes of blood, can have witnessed nothing


So IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
grimmer than the tragedy that had been so recently en-
acted below his portrait.
The furniture of the room was good substantial stuff.
Connoisseurs might condemn it as Victorian, but if the
workmanship and the wood is good I cannot see that that
matters. In front of the fireplace had been placed a deep
leather arm-chair. Other arm-chairs and a long leather
sofa stood against the bookshelves that hid three of the
walls.
The effect of so many books was not, however, over-
whelming. Their shelves did not reach to the ceiling, nor
were they arranged in one unbroken line, but pillar al-
ternated with recess. Where the shelves stopped, came
oak panelling, and the whole of the wall that divided
library from ante-room was bare of books.
Across some of the sections, brass rods that locked the
books into place glinted in the sunshine, and bore evidence
that the dead baronet had been an orderly man, some-
thing of a bibliophile and, as Clay might cynically have
deduced, without much confidence in the honesty of his
guests.
The same love of order was manifest on the surface of
the large rosewood writing-table that stood near the
centre of the room. Clean blotting paper, new nibs, a
heavy silver inkstand without a spot of ink on its bright-
ness, a carriage clock whose tick was inaudible, a tray of
sealing wax, and a little silver lamp to melt it, pencils of
different hardness, a pencil sharpener, a number of boxes
containing various sorts of paper fasteners; each had its
appropriate place on that table. There was only the day-


THE SCENT
51
by-day calender to show by its arrested record that this
meticulous activity had ceased.
In keeping with the character that the room revealed
was the elimination of noise. Not only was the door and
the fan-light above it double, but the room was spread
with a heavy pile carpet of a mossy-green colour, into
which the foot sank without sound. I wondered if these
precautions, which had gone to the length of locking the
library door, had not helped the murderer's task.
My thoughts were interrupted by Heppel speaking
from the writing-table.
"That is where you found the body," he said to Dr.
Gillman. I followed the direction of his eyes and saw
that a large uneven stain discoloured the green carpet.
The blood had dried, clotting the threads of the carpet,
till they looked like the hair of a dog that had swum a
muddy pool. I shut my eyes, but to my nostril came, I
thought, the terrible treacly smell of human blood.
I looked at Heppel. With his head a little on one side
and his bowler hat under his arm, he regarded the stain
with a mild professional interest. He brought out his foot-
rule, and measuring the distance of the stain from the
wall and the desk, referred to a blueprint which he drew
from the envelope in his pocket.
This, he explained, was a scale plan of the room that
the County police had prepared for him. It gave the body
as lying two feet from the north-east corner of the writing-
table, stretching diagonally to the room with its feet
towards the fireplace and its head to the door.
He passed the plan to the doctor who was standing with


52
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
his legs apart in front of the fireplace. With his mouth
pursed as if he were about to whistle, he studied the
blueprint in silence.
"That's correct," he said at length.
"Then I need not waste any more of your time," said
Heppel with his apologetic air, and held the door open
for the doctor, who looked as if he would have been very
ready to stay.
Lucien Clay rose-from the arm of the leather sofa where
he had been swinging his thin legs, with an air of detach-
ment from all this pedantic detail.
He glanced casually at the sinister mark on the carpet.
"They talk about blood crying aloud," he remarked.
"This lot certainly speaks for itself."
I asked him what he meant.
"And the chair pushed back to one side!" he went on,
ignoring my question.
"Well?" I said.
"Why," he answered, "he was stabbed in the back as
he sat here. Staggered to his feet and died trying to reach
the door. All over in a moment."
Heppel glanced up from his foot-rule with a mournful
smile. "I expect you're right, Mr. Clay," he said. "But
I'm afraid I must look for something a little more con-
crete."
"Something concrete," repeated the painter, biting his
nails. "What about those bayonets?"
Without much enthusiasm Superintendent Heppel
walked to the trophy that was fixed to the wall on the
left of the door. It was balanced on the right by an ar-
rangement of oriental arms. Circular in form, swords,


THE SCENT
53
sabres and bayonets of all sorts and sizes radiated from its
centre. Like everything in the room the steel was beauti-
fully kept. A gap in the pattern showed where one weapon
had been released from its latter-day duty of ornament.
The detective stared at the wall gloomily. "I don't
see anything wrong with that," he said at last.
"That's just it," replied the painter clawing his violent
beard. "They're so very right."
Superintendent Heppel remarked patiently that he
did not quite take him.
"Stabbing would be so much easier with almost any of
those things. Why did he choose the most awkward?"
This struck me as reasonable. I examined the trophy.
It contained bayonets much shorter than the one the
left-handed man had taken, swords much lighter and
sabres much sharper.
"A long weapon," went on Clay, "gives you a longer
reach than your opponent. But what's the good of that,
when he is an old, unarmed man and you stab him in the
back?"
"It certainly is odd," admitted the detective, adding
with a trace of sarcasm, "but I'm sure that you can give
the reason."
"That's the oddest part," said Lucien Clay, "I can't."
The superintendent did not waste time on his rival's
perplexities. He walked across the room to the casement
window in the west wall. Pushing back the catch he tried
to open it. It resisted his efforts. He ran his forefinger
round the edges of the frame.
"That's not been opened since it was last painted,"
he remarked.


IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
He left it and turned his attention to the French
window by which Rothmann was supposed to have en-
tered. He stood peering at the panes and examining the
catch through a magnifying glass. His black methodical
silhouette and his stretched neck suggested an anxious
bird.
"Too many people have touched that handle," he re-
marked with a sigh.
Carefully pulling up his trousers, he went down on his
knees and studied the threshold of the window and the
floor behind the long green curtains where the Russian
might have stood. He opened the window, and for some
minutes his bent figure was visible through the glass as
he searched the flags of the terrace.
Presently he stood up and beckoned to us.
"There's nothing here," he said. "But this is a good
place to show you why I know that if Rothmann left
Sir Arthur alive, one of his relations, dependents or serv-
ants must have murdered him."
He paused on these menacing words, and with a feeling
of apprehension I looked about me.
The paved terrace ran the length of the house. Three
French windows opened on it. From its centre, stone steps
descended to a second terrace of gravel. A further flight
of steps led to the edge of a wood that stretched up rising
ground to the horizon. At the end of a wide glade that
divided the wood had been reared a little classical temple
of white stone.
"You see that lower terrace?" said Heppel with a jerk
of his thumb.
I nodded.


56
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
hands deep into his trouser pockets and stuck out his
bearded chin at the little detective.
"There's a very good reason why Rothmann was not
the murderer," he declared.
"Yes, I know, Mr. Clay," said Heppel soothingly.
"His little pointed chin"
"Another equally good!"
"An intuitive one, Mr. Clay?"
"A common-sense one, Superintendent Heppel. One
that even a policeman could see."
"The police can only see what's there."
"This is as noticeable as a millionaire in heaven. Only
a relation or an employee could have killed old Baxter."
"Why's that, Mr. Clay?"
"Wasn't he stabbed in the back?"
Heppel nodded.
"And wasn't the bayonet taken from the wall in front
of him?"
"Apparently."
"And you tell me that a Conservative politician let a
stranger pick a weapon off a wall before his eyes, walk
half round the room and stab him in the back without
shout or struggle?"
"He may have shouted and no one heard him. The
bayonet may have been lying on the ledge behind him."
"May! Hell! With that tidy old man in the room!"
"So your intuition tells you"
"My common-sense tells me that Baxter knew the
murderer so well that he did not bother to look up from
what he was doing."
"That doesn't prove it was some one in the house.


THE SCENT
57
Any friend would do. If you don't mind, Mr. Clay, I
prefer my foot-prints. They have the advantage of being
facts."
"Only figures are more misleading than facts," mis-
quoted Clay.
"They're good enough for me," answered Heppel
stolidly.
"I hope I'm not interrupting an argument," said a
languid voice behind us.
I tutned. A few feet away a tall woman with chestnut
hair advanced with a walk more appropriate, I thought,
to a mannequin than a lady.
"Sophie de Manca!" exclaimed Lucien Clay.


CHAPTER VI
The newcomer was fashionably dressed. A small, beige
hat came low on her forehead and shaded her face. She
came forward with a hand languidly extended.
"So I had to come and look for you, Lucien!" she
murmured.
"My dear lady," replied Clay, "you must remember
I am no longer the care-free artist; the busy sleuth is
notoriously indifferent to ceremony."
"How is the painting?" she asked with her fine eyes
on his face.
Clay answered that he had given up Art and taken
to Brandy.
"It leaves you less dissatisfied," he said.
She laid a jewelled hand on his sleeve.
"I don't believe half the terrible things you say about
yourself," she remarked.
The attitude of familiarity was charming if artificial,
and I thought what a handsome woman she was. A gleam
of the setting sun fell on her face and disclosed how little
had been left to Chance or Nature. But with tiny lines
that powder could not hide and shadows that massage
could not fill, Nature had taken her revenge.
"We'll have tea in the hall," she said, "in half an
hour."
The artist replied that he did not drink tea.
58


THE SCENT
59
"Perhaps your companions"
She paused and Clay had to introduce us to Sir Arthur's
cousin. Heppel shook hands jerkily and thanked her.
Tea would depend, he said, on how the work went.
Sophie de Manca's mouth tightened. Here was a
woman, I thought, who did not like opposition, even in
trifles.
"Of course," she said, "the only thing that matters is
to find the man who killed poor Arthur."
"I think we've got him," stated the superintendent.
"Mr. Johnstone is at Bow Street."
"How quick you've been!" said Mrs. de Manca ad-
miringly.
"And how quick you'll be letting him go!" sneered the
painter. Fixing his eyes on the red-haired woman he
added, "Mr. Johnstone had certainly no more to do with
the murder than you, Sophie."
"The woman leaned forward. Her hat hid her eyes.
"Why do you say that?" she asked.
Clay was silent.
"If it wasn't Johnstone," she urged, "a tramp must
have come in through the open window."
"It was no one from outside the house," said Clay
steadily.
"But who in the house ?" she stammered. "The
servants have been here for years. Every one else—we're
all relations or friends."
Clay's sensitive white hand went out.
"'Yea, mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted,
which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against
me.


6o IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
I observed that the painter, like other disreputable
characters, could quote Scripture.
Mrs. de Manca stared at the speaker from under her
blackened lashes. I thought she was going to answer, but
with a shrug of her pretty shoulders she turned on her
heel. When she had gone some yards she stopped. "I
hope to God you are wrong," she said.
"Mrs. de Manca seems to have suspicions," I re-
marked when she was out of earshot.
"Suspicions," said Heppel gloomily with one foot on
the window ledge, "intuitions, theories—we've got them
by the bagful."
He disappeared into the room and I heard him mutter
that he would give his hat for a few facts.
When I had followed him, I found him standing by the
writing table in the centre of the room. It was a big square
desk of the "kneehole" variety. The lowest drawer on
the left-hand side was open to its full extent. The key
attached to the dead man's ring was in the lock. I could
see the white lining paper at the bottom of the drawer
and remarked that we would have a clue to the motive
of the murder if we knew what had been taken out.
"I think we do," said the detective after a moment's
hesitation. "The bank manager at Lincot states that the
deceased drew six hundred pounds in notes on the morn-
of his murder. They are not to be found."
"Not even at Rothmann's lodgings?" I suggested.
Clay was still standing in the window. The name of
Rothmann drew him into the room.
"Are you too prejudiced to see," he exploded, his red
hair bristling, "that the money is a point in Rothmann's


THE SCENT
61
favour? He'd never been in the house before. How the
hell could he know that the money was there? Whoever
made straight for that drawer without disturbing any-
thing else in the room, was familiar with Baxter's every
movement."
I inquired if Sir Arthur often drew large sums in cash.
"This was the first," replied the detective. "The bank
manager says he was very careful with money."
"You've got the numbers of the notes?" I asked.
Superintendent Heppel smiled mournfully. "The police
are not quite as incompetent as Mr. Clay would have you
believe," he sighed.
As he spoke, he pulled the drawer from its recess and
examined it on his knees.
"Hallo!" he said.
He pushed his square fingers under a folded end of the
lining paper.
"A poor exchange for six hundred pounds!" he re-
marked.
In the palm of his hand lay a cheap round mirror about
two inches in diameter.
"Here's a fact at last," he said and pointed to the edge
of the mirror. I saw the clear print of a thumb.
Holding the glass carefully by its sides, he turned it
on its celluloid back.
N"Woolworth," he said. "Pretty difficult to trace."
He took a small box from the pocket of his blue serge
suit and slipped the glass, face upwards, into it. Calling
the constable on duty at the door, he gave instructions
for the package to be taken by messenger to Scotland
Yard.


62 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"In two hours," he said, "we'll hear on the 'phone
whether that is Rothmann's print or not."
His face had brightened since the discovery of the
mirror. The painter on the contrary seemed less cocksure
than was his habit.
"Why, in the name of Conan Doyle," he asked the
ceiling, "did an elderly M.P. keep a threepenny mirror
in a locked drawer?"
I suggested that it might have got there by chance.
"Nothing got anywhere by chance with that old
gentleman," was the answer. "Look at his room."
"It might," I hazarded, "be a memento."
"Woolworth's did not exist," he pointed out, "in the
days of the baronet's flaming youth."
He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets. "Let us
try the Socratic method," he proposed. "What, my dear
Dale, are the uses of a mirror, besides of course the obvi-
ous one that any flapper could suggest?"
For the moment I could think of no other.
"And yet you probably fought in the late war," he said
aggressively.
I saw what he meant. "Periscopes!" I exclaimed.
"You mean the dead man expected an attack from behind
and kept a mirror to give him warning?"
The painter did not answer. "And the South African
War?" he said, jingling the coins in his pocket.
"Heliographs!" I guessed. But it seemed absurd to
suppose that the baronet had sat at his desk flashing
messages with the sunlight to some one on the terrace.
"Exactly what are you getting at?" I asked, but Lucien
Clay would not reply.


THE SCENT
63
I turned to the superintendent; he was staring at the
floor.
"Will you help me to move this desk?" he asked.
Together and with some straining, we pushed the heavy
table two or three feet to the left.
"I wonder why he had that done," said the detec-
tive.
I followed his gaze to the thick green carpet. In the
pile were eight distinct impressions. Four marked the
position of the table we had just moved. The other four
were similiar but deeper.
Heppel was on his knees, peering at the deeper set.
"That's where the table stood till recently," . he de-
clared. "It had stood there for a long time. The carpet is
worn down to the web."
I glanced at Clay to see what he thought of the superin-
tendent's discovery. But he was wandering about the
room, humming to himself.
"Why was the table moved farther from the light?"
asked Heppel.
"Nearer the fire," I suggested.
With his unfailing thoroughness the detective rose to
his feet and walked to the fireplace. He peered up the
wide chimney.
"The fire has not been lit this season," he said. "There's
a starling's nest in the chimney."
I looked round and noticed that the room was warmed
by a large radiator. Clay, who had stopped his prowl, was
staring at the four impressions. He did not voice his
thoughts.
"The butler," said Heppel leaving the fireplace, "will


64 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
have some perfectly natural explanation. I'm getting as
imaginative as Mr. Clay."
I expected a retort from the artist, but he had trans-
ferred his attention to the bookshelves. His nostrils were
quivering.
"Come here, superintendent," he said. "Come and
use that imagination you're boasting about." He pointed
to the top shelf on the left of the fireplace. "Which of
them did that?" he asked. "And why?"
With my eyes I followed the direction of his finger
but saw nothing to provoke his interest. I looked at
Heppel. He wore his usual air of depressed respectability.
"Did what, Mr. Clay?" he asked.
"Look at those books."
"I am."
I strained my eyes to read the titles in the top shelf.
It was devoted to a set of Dodsley's Old Plays bound in
calf. A volume in the middle was missing, its place taken
by a smaller book.
"Old Plays," read the superintendent. "I dare say it's
just as well they are kept locked in."
"The other book. What's it doing there?"
The detective protested that surely there was nothing
extraordinary about a book in the wrong place. A servant
had found it lying on a table and had tidied it away.
Clay made an impatient gesture. "Into a top shelf?"
he asked. "When there are other gaps at hand level?"
Superintendent Heppel was of the opinion that Sir
Arthur might have put it there himself.
"If he did, it was for a definite reason. I want to know
that reason."


THE SCENT
65
"To get rid of the book," said Heppel stolidly.
The artist threw out his hands with an exasperated
air. "Look round the room," he commanded, "and tell
me whether the man who worked in it would ever do
anything so unmethodical!"
The detective shrugged his shoulders.
"You wouldn't believe me when I told you the truth
about Rothmann's face. Now you're as bad about Bax-
ter's character," cried Clay. "In small things character is
uniform. The valetudinarian always changes his socks
when they are wet, not sometimes. The punctual man
is always in time for his train, not sometimes. Do you
think the Prince Consort ever made an indecent remark?
Or did Mr. Gladstone ever chew less than thirty-two
times? A good habit is the most insidious thing in the
world. Drink or drugs are nothing to it."
The detective said gently that he did not see what the
Prince Consort had to do with the murder of Sir Arthur
Baxter.
"Nothing!" exclaimed the painter. "But wasn't
Baxter before all things a tidy man? Wasn't it his second
nature to keep things in their places? Everything in the
room proclaims it. Everything, that is, except that
book."
"What's the book? " I asked. "The lettering is too worn
for my eyes."
"Crimes des Rois," read Clay, placing a chair so that
he could reach the volume. "Now can you tell me for
what purpose Baxter put Crimes des Rois in the middle
of Dodsley's Old Plays?"
He climbed on the heavy oak chair and perched there


66
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
with his lean neck stretched and his hands clasped behind
his back, looking like a great red bird of prey.
The detective handed him the dead man's key ring.
After an interval he reported failure. I looked on the
writing-table and found a-brass key lying on a little china
tray.
While the artist was unlocking the bar, "Why are
you so sure that Sir Arthur put that book there?" asked
Heppel.
"It might equally well have been the murderer,"
answered Clay, intent on the lock.
"Why not any one who happened to be in the room?"
The artist cut him short by pushing the book in his
face. "Because any one who happened to be in the room
would not cover the book with blood," he exclaimed.
The detective took the volume and studied a dark
stain. His indifference vanished. Quickly he turned the
leaves. His brows were wrinkled.
"I don't understand French," he admitted.
I offered my services.
"Wait a minute," he said, and proceeded to dust the
covers and edge of the book with a violet powder.
"Not a finger-print anywhere," he declared at last
and handed the book to me.
I found its contents less sensational than either the
title or the sinister mark on the binding. It seemed to be
propaganda of the French Revolution, and the crimes
detailed were principally political. I reported the re-
sult of my researches. Heppel was examining the book-
shelf.
"Some one has been looking at the books in this sec-


THE SCENT
67
tion," he remarked, and showed me how some were close
against their bar and some pushed back a little.
With the attention to detail which I had come to ex-
pect, he took out each book in turn, examined it and
stacked it on the floor after making a note of the title.
But his patience went unrewarded, for presently he had
stripped the shelves and had nothing to show but a list
of names.
He ran his finger slowly through the dust that had
gathered on the panelling behind the books. Nothing
had been disturbed. He tapped the wood and ran his
foot-rule over the empty shelves, more, I fancied, out of
habit than in hopes of any discovery.
The silence was broken by Clay who was wandering
round the room, his eyes on the bookshelves. "Here it is!"
he exclaimed.
"What?" I asked.
He held up another book.
"The missing volume of plays."
"Where was it?" I inquired.
Clay was turning over the pages. He did not look up
to answer that he had found it on the other side of the
fireplace, wedged among some French memoirs. Suddenly
the rustle of the pages ceased.
"We've found some odd things in this room," said
Lucien Clay meditatively. "But this is surely the odd-
est!"


CHAPTER VII
The painter's tone made me turn and stare. His long
fingers were playing with a piece of vividly blue paper.
I wondered at his excitement; half a sheet of notepaper,
whatever its colour, did not seem so very queer.
The superintendent held out his hand for the trophy
casually enough, but as he glanced at it he seemed to
stiffen like a setter sent into a field with game.
I looked over his shoulder. Across the sheet in capital
letters was scrawled the single word AVENGED.
The case seemed to have taken a new turn. I glanced
at Clay who stood by the bookshelf, as if frozen immobile
with thought, holding the book still open in his hand.
"A vendetta," I surmised, "or the vengeance of some
secret society. Rothmann must have been a member"
Heppel had laid the sinister inscription on a sheet of
white blotting paper and stooped over it, peering through
his lens.
"The ink," he remarked, "is fresh. Fairly fresh. Not
more than three days old. It was very likely written
at the time of the murder."
"Even if the agent, of a secret society were idiot enough
to write that," said Clay, coming out of his meditation
and handing the book to Heppel, "why should he put it
inside a book where any one less logical than I would
never dream of looking?"
68


THE SCENT
69
"The inscription would be meant," I agreed, "to tell
the world that this secret society knows how to punish."
"Or else," said Heppel, taking his insufflator from its
case, "to put the police on a false trail."
"I can think of other meanings," said Clay, but the
detective was too busy with his powder to ask them.
At last with a sight he desisted from his efforts to
secure a finger-print. "The glove trade must be looking
up," he remarked, slipping the blue paper into an en-
velope.
"If the police," said Clay addressing the ceiling, "used
brains instead of scientific dodges, there'd be fewer
murderers handing round the bag in church."
Heppel received this sally with his usual equanimity.
"I feel like a nice cup of tea," he said. "Don't you?"
The painter snorted but followed him into the hall.
We found the house-party seated round a lamp-lit
table.
"School-room tea, superintendent," called Sir John
and made room beside him. He had jam on his plate and
I could not help a glance to see in which hand he held his
knife. To my relief it was the right.
"Sugar?" asked Mrs. de Manca, her fingers poised
over the basin.
I took a chair next to Miss Eyre. Rather unnecessarily,
Clay had pushed himself into the place on her other side.
In a low voice she asked me how our investigation was
progressing. I told her that I was not at liberty to repeat
anything I had heard or seen. I heard the painter grunt,


IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
but his mouth was too full of buttered toast for his sneer
to be audible.
"It's a nightmare," sighed Miss Eyre. "I don't feel I
shall ever be able to forget."
I set myself to cheer her and described, not unamus-
ingly, my meeting with the artist the night before.
"I must have been beastly drunk to think you'd be
any use," said Clay with a laugh. "I'm ready to reform,
if you'll take my case in hand, Miss Eyre."
The girl blushed and Baxter moved in his seat, making
the china clatter. I fancied that he wished he had not
asked the artist to Lincot. Sophie de Manca saw his dis-
comfort and hastened to pour oil on the fire.
"Why don't you paint Delia's portrait?" she asked
Clay innocently.
"I should like to," he replied, "if there's time. Perhaps
a pastel."
"Pastel," said Lewis Hope, helping himself to cake,
"is the least durable of media. We have lost the respect
for permanence that characterised the Middle Ages,
as well as their care for the excellence and purity of ma-
terial. It is related of Gerard Dou that he would enter
his studio on tiptoe and would wait for the dust he had
raised to subside, before he ventured to take out his
palette."
"I expect Mr. Clay keeps his studio cleaner than Mr.
Dou," said Delia, amid laughter.
I looked round the table. Was it possible that one of
those pleasant, laughing faces hid the consciousness of a
brutal murder? Was I to believe that one of this company,
normal in its bearing, cultured in its talk, human in its


THE SCENT
7i
weakness, had struck down in cold blood a friend and a
benefactor?
I tried to feel sure that Rothmann the Bolshevist was
the assassin. It was easy to believe a man of his political
convictions guilty of any atrocity. Yet Clay was loud in
declaration of his innocence; and if Heppel believed in
his guilt, why was he at Lincot following clues that did
not seem to lead to the Russian?
For the first time since he had sat down at the table,
I heard the detective's voice. He was asking our host if he
might put to his butler a few questions.
"Of course," said Sir John. "I'll ring."
"And when I've finished with him," said Heppel in an
apologetic manner, "I'd like to see each of you ladies
and gentlemen in the library in turn."
A hush fell on the table. Every mind had been jerked
back to the tragedy whose last act still remained to be
written.
In silence I followed Clay and Heppel through the
ante-room into the library. The room was now quite dark
and the detective fit the reading lamp that stood on the
dead man's table. Seating himself in the heavy chair be-
hind it, he tilted the shade so that his face was in the
shadow and the light fell on the far side of the table. For
the next two hours that yellow circle served as a witness
box that presaged the waiting dock.
On a sofa in the darkness by the wall lolled Lucien
Clay. Only by his quick breathing could I tell he was not
asleep.
The first person to take his stand in the pitiless circle
of fight was Freeman, the butler.


72
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"I want you to cast your mind back to the evening of
the murder," began Heppel.
The butler lifted his expressionless face to the lamp and
waited.
"What time was dinner over on Monday?" went on
the detective.
"We usually come to the port by about nine-fifteen,"
was the stately reply.
"And the gentlemen sit over it?"
"For a quarter of an hour or so, sir."
"Then you cleared away?"
"Yes, sir. As I came into the dining-room Mr. Hope
stepped out on the terrace. Through the French win-
dow."
"Leaving the window open?"
"I shut it behind him, sir, and put up the shutters.
When I had finished clearing away, I locked the dining-
room door and put the key in my pocket."
"Why did you do that?"
"There was some wine out. Sir Arthur was very par-
ticular."
"Where were you when the front door bell rang?"
"In the servants' hall. All the servants were there with
the exception of the third housemaid who is away on her
holiday." Freeman's face was lit with the dignity of the
senior domestic.
"You'd never seen this Mr. Johnstone before?"
"No, sir."
"Did your master appear to know the name?"
The butler paused.
"I thought he did, sir. I thought he was going to refuse


THE SCENT
73
to see him. I remember him fidgeting with the paper-
knife."
I made a note in my pocket-book. The dead man had
been afraid of Rothmann.
"What did you do after you had shown Mr. Johnstone
in?"
"I put the whisky in the ante-room."
"Where Miss Eyre was sitting?"
"Yes, sir. Then I went back to the pantry."
"And stayed there alone?"
"Yes, sir. Until the ante-room bell rang."
"What time was that?"
The man paused and thought.
"At twenty minutes to eleven," he said.
"How can you fix the time so exactly?"
"Miss Delia rang for me to post a letter, sir. She asked
me if it would catch the last post. That goes at eleven-
five. It is twenty minutes' walk to the village. I looked at
my watch and saw I could just do it."
"You caught the post?"
"I did, sir."
"Did you see the address of the letter?"
The butler looked at the ground.
"I happened to glance at it," he said. "It was to the
Conservative Association at East Tedding."
Heppel pulled a writing block towards him and made a
note.
"When you answered the bell, the door between the
library and the ante-room was shut?" his steady voice
began again. Freeman bowed.
"Any sound of voices?"


THE SCENT
75
The butler stood on one leg. "I didn't notice, sir," he
replied.
"You noticed glasses, but you don't notice latches.
Go on."
"I took him to the library through the window. He
was very upset. He told me to telephone for the police."
"While he stayed in the library?"
"Yes, sir."
The detective leaned back in his chair. In the shadow
his receding eyes were invisible. He bent forward sud-
denly. "Where was Mr. Lewis Hope?" he asked.
"I fetched him from his room. I had not seen him since
he went out of the window after dinner."
"Thank you, Mr. Freeman," said Heppel. "You've
answered all my questions very clearly."
The butler looked relieved. He had felt the strain of
the prolonged examination. His knees had bent a little
and he kept passing his hand over his forehead.
Heppel was making some notes on his writing block.
"Was there anything else you noticed?" he asked
without looking up.
"No, sir," replied the butler. Then the instinct to play
a part in these sensational events conquered the desire
to be quit of questions. "Unless it was one of those letters
coming that morning."
"What letters?" asked the superintendent laying
down his pencil.
"The blue ones, sir."
"Blue letters?"
"On the blue paper, sir."
The detective felt in his pocket. He drew the half sheet


76
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
from its envelope and held it to the butler face downward.
"Like that?" he asked.
"That's it," said the butler. "How did you know, sir?"
It appeared that these letters had arrived frequently
enough to attract Freeman's attention. He would recog-
nise the handwriting, he thought, and admitted rather
reluctantly that he had noticed the postmark.
Heppel asked eagerly what it was.
"London, W.i," replied the butler solemnly.
The detective's face lengthened. "A lot of people live
there," he said and fell silent.
The butler shifted his feet. "Can I go now, sir?" he
asked at last.
"Yes!" said the superintendent. Then casually, "By
the way, when did you move this table?"
Freeman stopped in the doorway.
"Move the table, sir? I didn't."
"But you noticed it had been moved?"
"Yes, sir. I asked the maids."
"When was this?"
The butler rubbed his shaven chin. "About a fortnight
ago," he decided.
"And they hadn't?"
"No, sir."
"Then Sir Arthur must have moved it himself."
Lucien Clay opened his mouth for the first time since
Freeman came into the room.
"Was Sir Arthur Baxter, M.P., J.P., M.V.O., in the
habit of pushing the furniture about?" he asked.
The butler looked in the direction of the voice. "No,
sir," he said imperturbably.


78
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
Reluctantly the young man withdrew, his eyes fixed
on the girl's face until the door hid her from his view.
The detective smiled reassuringly at the slight figure in
black and began his questions.
At first Delia sat nervously upright and answered in
an almost inaudible voice, but the unfailing kindness of
Heppel's tone won her confidence, and at the end of her
examination she was reposing sideways in the big leather
chair, her slim legs tucked under her. The story she told
filled some important gaps in our knowledge.
After dinner on the fatal Monday night, she was sitting
by the ante-room fire reading. She could hear Mrs. de
Manca moving about doing the flowers in the hall. She
had read a dozen pages when uncle and nephew passed
through the room on their way to the library.
"Did they stop?" inquired Heppel.
"John asked me what I was reading," was the answer.
Another half hour and the young man came out of the
library alone.
"Did he say anything?"
The blue-veined lids for a moment covered the big
eyes.
"He sat down beside me without speaking. Then
Sophie came in with a vase and asked him"
"Did you notice anything odd in his manner?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
She hesitated.
"He may have seemed a little worried," she admitted.
But she had no time to probe the cause of his anxiety,
for Sophie professed an interest in some cottages that


THE SCENT
79
were building on the estate and John had to take her to
the billiard-room to see the plans. Delia sat on with her
book.
Her account of the visit of the man in the brown suit
added nothing to our knowledge.
Soon after the stranger had shut the library door be-
hind him, Sophie, her interest in architecture satisfied,
came back to the ante-room with the Morning Post.
The two ladies read in silence till the door opened and
Sir Arthur appeared alone.
"And that was the last time you saw him alive?" asked
the detective.
I saw the corners of the curved mouth droop and the
blue eyes fill. I kicked Heppel on the shin.
"I'm sorry I put it like that," he hastened to say.
"I know you didn't mean it," her voice trembled.
"But I lost my own father when I was twelve and when
I found another "She wiped her eyes with a minute
handkerchief.
The detective waited for a decent interval.
"Do you think you could give me any idea what
time ?" He paused tactfully.
"I heard the last train pass," she murmured. "It goes
about half-past ten."
Heppel paused again to let her recover her self-control
before he asked what her father did in the ante-room.
Apparently he had come for a whisky and soda. He
filled his glass and talked to his cousin. Delia had not
heard what he said as she was fetching her typewriter
from the library. She had a letter to write for him that
had to go by the last post.


THE SCENT
81
"She was there when I'd finished my letter."
"How much later was that?"
"About five minutes. It was quite a short letter. About
a meeting."
"Did you hear anything while you were writing?"
"No."
"Or after?"
She shook her head. For the moment she could not
control her voice.
"Do you think he was ?" She swallowed. "Do
you think it happened while I was sitting there?" She
clasped her hands in entreaty.
Heppel replied soothingly that we did not know at
present. That was why he had to ask her so many ques-
tions.
"But it may have been then? I might have saved him!"
The detective was almost fatherly as he told her that
she was not to blame. He waited patiently until she was
ready to go on.
She finished, she told him, her letter and rang for Free-
man to post it. Then she went and helped Sophie with
the flowers. When they were done, the two ladies went
upstairs to bed.
"What time was that?" asked Heppel.
"About quarter-past eleven."
Throughout her story Clay had not spoken. He sat
in the shadow with his head tilted upwards and his beard
pointed to the ceiling. He looked like an unattractive toy
that a child has discarded and left asprawl. But now he
asked a surprising question.
"Did your adoptive father like plays?" he asked.


84
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"But who can it be in the library?" I asked.
"We'll soon see," said Heppel pugnaciously.
The scene that met our eyes as Heppel snapped up
the blind was reassuring. In the chair by the fireplace
sat Miss Eyre. She was knitting a silk tie. But it was not
at this that I looked. A stranger stood with his back to
the window. His lower jaw moved with that circular
motion peculiar to the ruminants and the citizens of the
Greatest Republic. Delia Eyre looked up from her work
as we stepped through the window.
"This is Mr. "She glanced at a card on the arm of
her chair. "Wolland. He has called to see the officer in
charge of the case. John told me to bring him here."
The American turned. We were facing a thin, sinewy
man, rather below the middle height, whose light-gray,
double-breasted coat was tight over the hips. The working
jaw was narrow and hard as a pike's but no fish had ever
that bright blue eye. Although his expression was sophis-
ticated, his face was unlined. He was probably ten years
younger than he looked.
His thin lips framed a smile that the blue eyes gave
unexpected charm.
"Pleased to meet you, superintendent," he said, hold-
ing out a lean hand.
"You're connected with an American press syndicate,
Mr. Wolland?" replied the detective, glancing at the
card which Delia had given him.
"That is so," confirmed the stranger. "My syndicate
wants a two-column word picture of this tragic affair."
"I'm afraid "began the detective.


THE SCENT
85
"Which occurred, I understand, in this old-world
apartment," went on the reporter inexorably."
The detective nodded curtly.
"A brief description "began the American.
Delia Eyre shivered and folded up the tie.
"You don't need me any more," she said and went to
the door.
"You came by train, Mr. Wolland?" asked Heppel.
"There's an excellent service."
The American assented at some length.
"You walked up by the short cut?" interrupted the
detective.
"You forget I'm a stranger," was the reply.
"Of course you are! So you didn't see any one in the
woods?"
The reporter took out a note-book and pencil. "That
sounds uncommonly like a story," he said with his quick
smile. "Can you tell me any more about the party in the
woods?"
Heppel confessed that he knew nothing to tell.
"But I reckon there's plenty you know about this
murder!"
The detective was proof against flattery. The police,
he said, had told the papers all that they were prepared
to divulge. Perhaps after the inquest
"Well, isn't that too bad," protested the reporter. "I
reckon that over here you don't appreciate the help the
Press can give the police. Now in New York"
Heppel led him firmly towards the ante-room. In the
doorway he paused and took a little gilt box from his
pocket. "As you say, Mr. Wolland," he remarked, "we


86 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
are old-fashioned in this country. I, for example, still
have the habit of taking snuff. Can I offer you?"
He held out the box, but before the American had time
to refuse or to accept it, it had slipped from his fingers.
It fell on the threshold in a cloud of fine dust.
With the ghost of a smile on his thin lips, Mr. Wolland
looked thoughtfully at the floor. Then with a long stride
he stepped carefully over the patch of snuff.
"Now that was real bad luck," he said, shaking hands
with the detective from the farther side.
When he had gone, Lucien Clay spoke.
"There's a simpler way, superintendent," he said.
"What of?" asked Heppel a trifle brusquely.
"Knowing if Mr. Wolland left those foot-marks—and
without wasting snuff."
"I suppose you mean I might have asked him?"
"I didn't. If he's a reporter, he'd lie. If he isn't, we
mustn't show our hand."
His words were interrupted by a tap on the window.
I confess I was relieved when Heppel ran up the blind and
revealed the constable with the casts.
He took them and arranged them under the light of
the reading lamp. There were two impressions, one for
each foot. Clay looked over his shoulder.
"It was Wolland right enough," he asserted. "But
was it journalistic zeal, American enterprise, or?"
Heppel turned his head.
"More guesswork, Mr. Clay," he said. "Wolland isn't
the only man who wears a number seven shoe."


THE SCENT
87
"No," agreed Clay, "but did you notice his right leg?"
"It was bandy," said Heppel. "It had probably been
broken."
"While the left was straight," interrupted Clay. "Now
is it guesswork to suggest that a bandy leg throws the
weight of the body on the outside of the heel?"
With his long forefinger he pointed to the casts. The
outside of the right heel had pressed deeper into the gravel
than the rest of the foot. The impression of the left foot
was uniform.
The policeman with the sandy eyebrows was standing
at attention by the window. He cleared his throat.
"Well, West?" asked his superior.
"I had a word, sir, with the young women in the
kitchen this morning," he announced.
"Really?" said Clay. "You surprise me!"
"They mentioned a writing gentleman who called
a fortnight or so ago to see over the house. He said he
was composing a book on the country mansions of
England."
"Those were his words?" asked Clay.
"Yes, sir!"
"He may have been a writer," said Heppel, "but
there's no reason to suppose he was our American."
"Except that an Englishman would not talk about a
mansion," said Clay.


CHAPTER IX
"I can't stand this light in my eyes," said Sophie de
Manca and tilted the shade away from her. In the sub-
dued light, sitting back in the arm-chair with her legs
crossed and displaying the perfection of their form, she
looked no more than twenty-five. Her dark eyes that
contrasted with her tawny hair were mysterious in the
shadow. Her smooth white hands emphasised her words
with a flash of rings.
The evidence she gave threw no fresh light on the
mystery. It confirmed Delia's story in every detail.
Sir Arthur's last words to her as he drank his whisky
had been trivial—about some theatricals that were pro-
posed for Christmas. She agreed with Delia that he locked
the library door at about half-past ten. Then she was
driven out of the room by the typing.
"How long did that last?"
"Quite long enough. Five minutes."
"And she was typing continuously?"
"Yes, an odious noise."
Heppel rose to his feet to reach a pencil. As if acciden-
tally, his sleeve caught the lamp-shade and again the
light fell on Sophie's face.
"What were these letters on blue note-paper?" he
asked casually.
The jewelled hand corrected the angle of the shade.
88


THE SCENT
89
"I know nothing of my cousin's affairs since "She
broke off.
"Since what?" prompted the detective.
"You had better ask Miss Eyre," she contented herself
with saying.
"You feel she had an undue influence?" asked Heppel
in a confidential tone.
"She did what she liked with Arthur. And John is as
bad as Arthur. What fools men are!"
"Miss Eyre and Sir John will make a very handsome
pair," mused the superintendent disingenuously. "And
now that he's come into the place"
"Delia mistress here!" Her jealousy flamed. "There's
something to be explained first."
Heppel asked her what she meant.
"Ask Lewis Hope what he heard on the terrace," she
hinted.
"Won't you tell me?" pressed the detective.
But already Sophie de Manca had regretted her out-
burst. "It was imagination" she said, biting her Hps.
Heppel wisely abstained from further questions and with
a word of thanks he let her go.
"This jealousy business," he said, meditatively fining
his pipe. "It's a blessing to us detectives."
"Surely you don't believe that Sir John "I began.
"I don't believe anything I'm told," was the reply.
"But it's useful being told."
"Why did you let her go like that?" grumbled Clay.
"I had a question I wanted to ask."
"Shall I call her back? What was it about?"
"About volume seven of Dodsley's plays."


IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
The painter got up and walked to the shelf of French
memoirs to which he had returned the odd volume.
"Why do you attach so much importance to that
work?" asked Heppel.
"I'm not the only one who does!" said Lucien Clay.
"What makes you say that?"
"Because the book has gone!" was the surprising
answer.
Our search was interrupted by Freeman with the news
that a Mr. Mackenzie wanted to see the superintendent.
"One of* my young men," said Heppel as the butler
retired. "He's been looking up Rothmann's alibi."
"Even if the Russian can show an alibi," I protested,
"how can he explain the blood on his trousers?"
"His story is not impossible," was the reply. "He ad-
mits that he was at Lincot on Monday night. After an
interview in the library—a 'business deal' as he vaguely
describes it—Sir Arthur showed him out of the French
window and told him he had quarter of an hour to catch
the last train. When he got to the woods, he says he
started to run and caught his foot in some wire. He cut
his leg and it bled on to his trousers."
"Has he really a wound in his leg?" I asked.
The detective nodded.
"Of course you can cut your own leg," he murmured.
"Not with thumbs like Rothmann's," said Clay.
"You're a great believer in palmistry!" remarked
Heppel with a sigh.
"Watch a man's hands," replied the artist, "and
you're watching his soul. Their shape too. Spatulate


THE SCENT
9i
finger-tips, for instance," he spread his long, white hand
complacently, "are a token of genius."
Unmoved by the spatulacy of Lucien's fingers, the de-
tective walked to the door to admit Mackenzie.
He was a thin young man with a sallow face and keen
gray eyes. His fingers were stained with nicotine. "Max's
alibi is O.K.!" he announced from the door.
"My old chief had two maxims," said Heppel. "One
was 'Look for the Motive'; the other was 'Mistrust the
Perfect Alibi.'"
Mackenzie listened respectfully.
"I saw the booking clerk at Marylebone," he stated.
"He is positive that he talked to Rothmann on Monday
night. His neighbour confirms it."
"How did he know Max?"
"The clerk is a red-hot Socialist."
"Too many of the railway men are," I put in.
"Hands off Russia, and all that. He knows Max from
political meetings."
"And you believe the word of an avowed agitator?"
I asked.
"He's a highly respectable man. Like most of them."
Was all the answer I got.
"What time did he talk to Rothmann?" demanded
Heppel.
"He doesn't remember. But he came off duty at half-
past eleven.
"That's bad," said Heppel scratching his thinly-
covered head.
"Why?" I asked.


92
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"The two ladies saw Sir Arthur alive at half-past ten.
Rothmann was in London before half-past eleven."
"Motorcar!" I suggested.
"You can't do it by road in an hour," said Heppel
gloomily.
"Aeroplane?"
He glanced at Mackenzie.
"I've been round the London aerodromes. No planes
landed after dark," stated the young detective.
"Then he must have gone by train," I said.
"Exactly," replied Mackenzie, "and the last train
leaves Lincot at ten twenty-nine."
"At which moment," added Heppel, "Sir Arthur Bax-
ter was talking to Mrs. de Manca in the anteroom."
"I did my best," said Clay with a grin, "to save the
police making fools of themselves. But it's a whole-time
job. You'll have to let Rothmann go."
The superintendent caught Mackenzie's eye and
nodded. "Put some one on to shadow him," he said.
"We'll learn more from him out of prison than in."
The young detective turned to go. Heppel raised a
square hand.
"There's an American called Wolland in the train on
his way to London. Telephone to the Yard for some one
to pick him up at Marylebone. I want to know where he
lives and all about him."
"Very good, sir."
Heppel picked up the plaster casts.
"These, we think, are his foot-prints. Have them com-
pared with the other ones from the terrace. That's all,
except to ask Sir John Baxter to spare us five minutes."


THE SCENT
93
As the door shut, I heard the painter laughing silently.
"Now you start level with me," he remarked. "Sophie,
Delia, Freeman, Hope or Baxter. Which was it?"
The young colossus strode heavily into the room and
made the springs of the chair creak under his weight. I
thought he looked very tired.
Heppel explained that he wanted to know everything
that happened on the night of the murder.
Sir John grunted.
"There's not much I can tell you," he replied.
"There's one thing only you can tell us," said Heppel
bending forward.
The man in the circle of light raised his black eyebrows.
"What your uncle said to you after dinner," said the
detective slowly.
The young man hesitated. His hand went up to shade
his eyes.
"It was a private matter that only concerned him,"
he said at last.
A sound from the sofa by the wall told me that Clay
had shifted his position to hear better.
"And that is exactly why I want to know," was
Heppel's suave rejoiner.
"I'm afraid you can't."
The superintendent did not seem put out. His voice
was as matter-of-fact as. ever.
"But you want me to find the murderer?" he asked.
"If I answered your question, you'd be no nearer,"
Baxter replied doggedly.


94
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"You must let me judge. I confess I think you are ill-
advised. You'll find it awkward at the inquest."
Sir John shrugged his great shoulders.
"Even a coroner can't force me to speak," he said.
Heppel dropped the subject. "After you left the li-
brary "he began again.
"I went to the billiard-room," interrupted the other.
"I showed Mrs. de Manca some plans. Then I practised
some shots on the table. After that I read the paper."
"And when did you burn the letters?" asked Heppel
innocently.
Sir John Baxter flushed. "What letters?" he stam-
mered.
Heppel's reply was to pull the envelope of reports from
his breast pocket.
"The letters whose ashes P. C. West found in the
billiard-room grate," he said quietly.
"Why do you suppose it was I who burnt them?" re-
torted the young man.
"The constable found the ashes when he went round
the rooms after the murder had been discovered. The
housemaid told him that when she did the room during
dinner the grate was empty. No one but you used the
billiard-room."
"Suppose I did burn some letters?" admitted Sir John.
"I would like to know who wrote them and what they
were about."
"Well, you won't!" replied the baronet.
The detective changed the subject. Tapping his teeth
with a pencil, "About half-past eleven," he said, "Free-
man found the body and called you to the library?"


96 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
Sir John's fingers. I had to admit that the young man's
evidence was far from satisfactory. Moreover it came on
the top of Clay's description of the murderer—"a six-
foot man, strong and left-handed." Suppose John Baxter
was really left-handed?
Contact with the investigators must have sharpened
my wits for I saw in a flash how that question could be
answered.
"You said that Sir John bowled for Cambridge,"
I remarked casually. "Do you remember what sort of
stuff he put down?"
"Fast, right hand," replied LucienClay.
I turned triumphantly to the detective, but he was
still examining his globe.
"I think I'll get the housemaid to pack this in cotton-
wool," he said; "then it can go by hand to the Yard."
He left the room holding the bulb by its end between
finger and thumb.
I turned to Clay, who was biting his nails.
"You'll have to get your friend out of this mess," I
said.
"Serves him right for telling Heppel a pack of lies,"
replied the painter unsympathetically.
"You don't think he murdered his uncle!" I ex-
claimed.
"Why not?" was the cynical reply. "He's his heir!"
I was in no mood for this sort of talk. Although I knew
that I could not base my conviction on reason, I was sure
that a fine young English sportsman like Sir John was
incapable of a brutal murder, almost amounting to parri-
cide.


THE SCENT
97
"Dinner will be an amusing meal!" Clay interrupted
my thoughts to remark.
"Why do you say that?" I asked.
"You don't sit down at every dinner table," he replied,
tugging at his beard, "with the certainty that one of the
company is a murderer."


CHAPTER X
When the superintendent returned, he was carrying a
framed picture under his arm.
"Hallo!" I said chaffing him. "I didn't know you were
fond of art!"
"I'm not as a rule, Mr. Dale," he replied, blowing the
dust off the frame. "I found this hanging in the passage.
And as you're keen on cricket"
He handed the picture to me. It was a school photo-
graph taken at Harrow in 1907 of a house cricket eleven.
Why on earth should the detective think it could interest
me?
"He's changed a good deal since then, hasn't he?"
went on Heppel chattily.
I looked again at the photograph and saw that the
names of the boys were written underneath. That of
/. Baxter corresponded to a long-legged, untidy youngster
on the captain's left.
Clay's beard tickled my ear as he leaned over my
shoulder. I heard him draw his breath. I was puzzled
at the interest they took in a dusty old group. "I don't
see "I began.
"Even then he bowled for his house," put in Heppel.
"I suppose so," I said. "He's got the ball in his hand."
"In his left hand," was the gentle correction and I
98


THE SCENT
99
realised that Superintendent Heppel did not miss very-
much.
"I thought you'd like the picture," he said mildly.
"But I've told you already I don't set much store by this
right and left hand stuff myself."
"Is that what you went for?" I asked.
"I went to get my parcel done," was the reply. "Ger-
trude Williams did it. A sensible girl. A good hand with
a parcel. And observant too."
He sat down and filled his pipe.
"In a big house like this," he remarked, "it seems the
housemaids go round the bedrooms after dinner emptying
the basins and all that. On Monday night when Gertrude
was in Sir John's room drawing the curtains, she saw a
light in the garden."
I asked where Sir John's room was situated.
"Over the library," replied the detective. "The light
came from the direction of what she calls the belvedere,
that stone summer house affair at the end of the glade
opposite.
"The light disappeared at once and she thought noth-
ing of it, supposing it to have been lit by one of the
gardeners."
"What time was this?" I asked.
"Between half-past nine and ten."
My mind flew to the mysterious Mr. Wolland. "Then
there was some one hanging about the house!" I ex-
claimed.
"Who did not cross the gravel!" Heppel reminded me.
I mentioned the two trails of foot-prints leading away
from the house. Had the superintendent not heard of


IOO
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
people walking backwards to disguise the direction of
their foot-marks?
"Only in books," declared the detective. "I'd like to
see them walk fifty yards backwards in the dark without
giving the show away!"
He blew his nose aggressively and came back to Ger-
trude Williams and her story.
In the servants' hall where she went when her work
was finished, she found all the servants except Freeman.
And there they stayed until bedtime, soon after eleven.
The maids went upstairs together and, as the rooms were
big at Lincot, they slept two in a room. No one had been
missing.
The detective paused and looked first at Clay and then
at me.
"Is that all?" I asked.
"Practically all," he replied thoughtfully. "The serv-
ants' hall lies immediately behind the billiard-room.
Gertrude Williams says she heard the dick of billiard
balls."
"That backs up Sir John," I pointed out.
"She heard the balls for five or ten minutes," said the
detective imperturbably. "They then ceased. For what
he did between half-past ten and half-past eleven, we
have to rely entirely on Sir John's own story."
I sat down discouraged. Every fresh discovery seemed
to turn against the man I was sure was innocent.
There was a knock at the door and the round face and
gold-rimmed glasses of Mr. Hope appeared.
"I hear you are ready for me, superintendent," he said
amiably. "With the poet, I will plunge 'in medias res.'"


THE SCENT
101
When Monday's dinner was over, we learned, the
secretary had stepped through the dining-room window to
smoke a cigarette on the terrace—'"dum favet Nox et
Bacchus'" as he put it.
"What does that mean?" asked Heppel bluntly.
"That the night was fine and Sir Arthur's port excel-
lent," replied Clay.
"How long did you stay there?"
"How long does it take to smoke a couple of cigarettes?
Twenty minutes?" was the reply.
He pulled his case from his pocket and after offering
it to the detective lit a cigarette.
"You've been in Italy lately?" said Clay's voice from
the shadow.
Lewis Hope turned round. His eyes looked puzzled
behind his big spectacles.
"Oh, I see!" he said at last. "These thin Italian
matches! No, I get them in Soho. They fit a silver box
I usually carry."
Heppel smiled gently. "That's where the inductive
method falls down, Mr. Clay," he remarked.
Clay was silent.
"And when you had finished your second cigarette,
Mr. Hope?" asked Heppel.
The secretary smiled more genially than ever. "I went
for a stroll in the grounds," he replied.
"Starting off across the lower terrace, I suppose?"
said the superintendent.
The secretary bowed.
"How long did your stroll last?" inquired the detective.
"It's hard to say. Until I felt cold. Half an hour? I


102
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
made a complete circuit of. the place and let myself in
by the back door. I have a key."
"Did you see any one when you came in?" he was
asked.
"No one. I went straight up to my room and wrote
some letters. I was there when Freeman came and told
me"—he paused—"the news."
"While you were on the terrace after dinner did you
notice if the library window was open?"
Hope nodded his large round head. The detective
knocked out his pipe and fixed his eyes on the sec-
retary.
"Did you hear anything?" he asked.
"I heard voices. 'Voces et praeterea nihil.'"
"Sir Arthur's and his nephew's?"
Lewis Hope nodded. The detective leant forward.
"What were they saying?"
"I wasn't listening," said Hope with dignity.
"Of course not. But you heard them say?"
"I told you I could only hear voices," said the secre-
tary, as if he wished to end the matter.
"I'm asking you," said Heppel patiently, "because
Mrs. de Manca said that "he drew out the sentence.
"'How hard it is for women to keep counsel!'" quoted
Hope and added that he had not wanted the police to
know the few words he had overheard. They probably
meant nothing.
"I can promise you, Mr. Hope," said Heppel sooth-
ingly, "that we will not attach more importance to them
than you do yourself."
"I heard," said Hope reluctantly, "John Baxter say


THE SCENT
one sentence. Something like 'I've warned you. If you
won't listen 'Then he broke off."
"What was the answer?"
"I could not hear."
"Nothing?"
"I heard one word. Something about 'pressure.'"
A silence followed the secretary's revelation. My sense
of the deadliness of the house again became urgent. For
a moment it was difficult to breathe in that tidy, com-
fortable room. The orderly rows of books that stored the
spent thoughts of men for the most part dead and for-
gotten, the blackened portrait of the cavalier of whose
gallantry and grace not even memory remained, the panel-
ling dark with age and rotten with worms—the whole
room seemed to close on me as in the terrifying stories
of the Inquisition.
The illusion was momentary and once more Superin-
tendent Heppel of Scotland Yard in a neat serge suit
and a striped shirt was sitting behind a table, asking
questions of a fat secretary whose circular glasses re-
flected the light of the reading-lamp—questions that were
weaving a rope round the neck of a man I was sure was
innocent.
"You say they spoke loud," the detective was asking.
"Were they quarrelling?"
The secretary reflected. "I would rather say 'disput-
ing,'" he announced.
"Did they often dispute?"
"I once heard Sir Arthur reproach Mr. John for getting
into debt. Mr. John did not like it."
"Is Sir John in debt?"


io4
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN"
"He has no money of his own. His allowance is very
small. He is very open-handed."
Heppel inspected the backs of his nails.
"Would you feel it a breach of confidence," he asked,
"to tell me exactly what that allowance was?"
The secretary pursed his lips together.
"You can easily find out," he said. "Four hundred
pounds."
"And now he inherits his uncle's fortune?"
"I don't know."
"And Miss Eyre got an allowance?"
"Seven hundred a year."
"Which ceases with her adoptive father's death?"
"Unless provision has been made in the will."
"Mrs. de Manca, I understand, gets no regular allow-
ance?"
"That is so. And my salary is six hundred. I suppose
I should say, 'was.'"
Heppel's hand went to his pocket. "In your, capacity
as secretary," he said, "you may have had to deal with
some letters on note-paper of that colour?" Between his
fingers was the blue half sheet.
The secretary put out his hand for the paper, but Hep-
pel did not respond. Hope pushed his spectacles on his
forehead and stared at it.
"I think," he said slowly, "my employer once showed
me the end of a letter written on that paper, but he held
it so that only a few words were visible. They looked
like a postcript."
"No signature?" asked Heppel.
The secretary shook his head.


THE SCENT
"What were the words?"
"I can only tell you the beginning and the end. The
middle seemed to me to be gibberish. Sir Arthur was
equally puzzled. He had shown it to me in case I knew
the language they were in."
"But the postcript began and ended in English?"
"It began 'Dear Sir' and it ended 'Meet me,'" said
Hope impressively. "Between those expressions there
were five or six words that I could not understand."
"You have no idea who wrote them?"
"None. I should not say it was an educated man."
'"Dear Sir,' gibberish, 'meet me,'" repeated the crime
expert. "That's a curious thing to write. More in your
line than mine, Mr. Clay."
The painter did not speak. He was scribbling on a
piece of paper.
"Well, Mr. Hope," said the detective, "you've given
us something to think about. The late baronet's cor-
respondence may help us now. Will you give me his
keys?"
And with his habitual energy, before the secretary had
left the room, Heppel was piling the contents of the
drawers on the top of the writing-table.


CHAPTER XI
Dinner was a silent and uncomfortable meal. I could not
put Clay's words out of my mind, and it was an intoler-
able thought that one of the pleasant quiet-voiced diners
at that impeccable table must be a murderer.
My eyes wandered round the room. With her back to
the fire sat Delia Eyre. Her low voice, her pretty hands,
her hair the colour of moonlight lent a charm that is rare
in these days of nude stockings and hp-sticks.
Her neighbours—Sir John, massive and sombre; Lucien
Clay, unkempt and angular—served by contrast to em-
phasise her daintiness. She did not shirk her share of the
flagging conversation and I heard her telling the artist
of a recent visit to her invalid sister in London, and the
theatres she had seen. Clay's confession that he never
saw a play except from the bar did not seem to help the
conversation.
Across the table Mrs. de Manca was proffering her
admiration for Scotland Yard and its methods. She was
no exception to the rule that in the evening women look
their best in black. Her low-cut dress revealed a well-
creamed neck and shoulders. If the effect was over-
elaborate, it was partly the fault of her neighbour's blue
serge suit. Heppel had meant to lodge in the village, had
not Sir John assured him that his only chance of a bed
106


THE SCENT
lay at Lincot House. In the pauses of Lewis Hope's quota-
tions I caught snatches of her conversation—questions
about the Big Four and the Flying Squad, that were
answered principally by discreet evasion.
More than once I tried to steer my neighbour Hope
into personal channels but, as Clay had hinted, the one
topic which the secretary seemed to avoid was himself.
He sat at the foot of the table, eating well and pinker
than ever in the rosy light of the red-shaded lamp. He
might have just emerged from too hot a bath.
At the other end, as complete a contrast as you could
find, sat our host. His long legs had driven his chair a
little back from the table and out of the direct beam of
the hanging lamp. His black coat merged in the darkness
behind him and only the white of his face, his shirt front,
and his hands gripping the arms of his chair were visible.
His straight eyebrows and his clipped moustache made
two black bars across the pallor of his unsmiling coun-
tenance. He spoke little, but when he bent with a word
to Delia Eyre on his left, I felt the strain on his nerves
relax. As my neighbour pointed out, the girl was worthy
of Sir Walter Scott's fine lines on the ministrations of
woman, "when pain and anguish wring the brow."
Behind Sir John's big oak chair hung the two white
ovals that represented the face and the shirt-front of the
butler. How many nights had he stood behind the same
chair when it was filled by a shorter, stouter figure that
now lay covered with a sheet in the silent room upstairs.
Was it after all possible that the temptation to occupy
that chair had led John Baxter to this dreadful deed?
I dismissed the thought as soon as I had formed it. But


io8 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
how could I suspect any of the kindly faces that sur-
rounded the table? If only it were possible to believe that
the inquisitive American or the unhealthy-looking Bol-
shevist was the assassin But no. One of the hands
that held so fastidiously the silver knives and forks dis-
secting the admirable English peaches must be dark with
the old man's blood.
After dessert the ladies left us and with them all effort
at conversation dropped. Our minds were too full of the
one subject that we could not broach.
When Clay had drunk his third glass of port, our host
pushed back his chair. "If you want somewhere to work,"
he said to Heppel, "you can have the billiard-room to
yourself."
He rang the bell for Freeman to fetch the detective's
papers, but when we had settled ourselves round the big
open fireplace that warmed the billiard-room, Heppel
seemed in no hurry to continue his study of the dead
man's letters.
"What did you think of the stories we heard before
dinner?" he asked the painter.
Clay tugged at his beard for a moment in silence.
"They were true," he said, then added, "as far as they
went." After a further pause, "Except John Baxter's, of
course."
"What makes you so sure the others were true?" asked
Heppel.
"My eyes," snapped the painter.
"You seem, if I may say so," replied the other gently,


THE SCENT
"to think every one innocent who has a kind face. The
law, as you know, assumes every one innocent until they
are proved guilty. I assume every one guilty till they are
proved innocent."
"Which accounts for your success in the case of Max
Rothmann!" sneered Clay.
"Mr. Hope would remind us," I put in, "that 'to err
is human, to forgive divine.'"
"Then the police keep the Almighty busy," was the
retort.
Heppel changed the subject. "Suppose," he suggested,
"we analyse the evidence we have just heard?"
"It would be a privilege," assented Clay, "to watch
the trained mind at work."
He rolled a cigarette on his thigh and offered it to Hep-
pel. The detective considered it dubiously and shook his
head.
"I'll smoke a pipe," he said, feeling in his pocket.
"The first step," he continued, "is to separate facts
from fancies."
"What do you call facts?" asked Clay.
"What I see for myself. That's what I call a first-rate
fact. When several credible people separately tell me the
same thing, that may be a fact too. A second-rate fact.
When somebody, however, respectable tells me something
I haven't seen, with no one to back him up, that isn't a
fact, it's a statement."
"Is Saul also among the cynics?" said Clay.
"It isn't cynicism, it's sense," Heppel corrected him.
"For instance, it's a first-rate fact that Sir Arthur Baxter
is dead, stabbed in the back. I've seen his corpse, I've


no
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
examined the wound. And it's a second-rate fact he was
killed before eleven-thirty. Freeman says he found him
at that hour, Sir John Baxter backs him up, the police
took down the telephone message at eleven thirty-seven
and P.C. West saw the body at eleven-fifty. We may call
that a second-rate fact. But Mr. Hope's story of what he
heard on the terrace can only be claimed as a statement,
unless we can get Sir John to confirm it."
"The Child's Guide to Detection," murmured Clay.
"That's the way I tackle a case," went on the detective
calmly. "It would be too simple to be worth explaining,
if people could tell facts from fairy tales."
Before Clay could retort, I remarked that the second-
class fact about the hour of the baronet's death was con-
firmed by the doctor's verdict. He put the fatal event
between half-past ten and eleven.
Superintendent Heppel nodded.
"That's so," he said. "Now let's see if we can agree
the other end of his time bracket. When was Sir Arthur
last seen alive?"
"He came into the library at about half-past ten," I
mentioned.
"That's what the two ladies say. They told the same
story independently," mused the detective.
"And any fool might see that Sophie de Manca detests
Delia Eyre!" put in Clay.
"Any fool would know that need not prevent collu-
sion!" retorted Heppel. "But we've no evidence to sup-
pose it, and Freeman's story about the glass of whisky
confirms their statements."
"There seems little doubt," I said, "that Sir Arthur


THE SCENT
in
was alive at half-past ten and dead before half-past
eleven."
Heppel puffed at his pipe and nodded.
"It merely remains to find out who went into the li-
brary and killed him," sneered the artist.
Heppel put out a stubby hand. "Let us first find out
how he went," he stipulated. "Leaving out the casement
window which was painted up, there are two ways into
that room. The door and the French window."
"You forget the chimney," said Clay, with a sarcastic
twist of his red lips.
"Pardon me. I measured it before dinner."
"The door was locked on the inside and the window
was open," I pointed out.
"So we are told."
"Both the ladies heard the key turned and Freeman
could not open the door," I insisted.
"And one or both of the ladies was sitting all evening
in the ante-room or the hall," agreed the detective. "Yes,
I think we must take it as a fact that the murderer did
not enter by the door."
"So you accept the window?"
"Rothmann says he left it open, and Freeman says
he found it open," said Heppel, crossing his hands on his
stomach.
"Aren't you nearly ready to begin to consider who
murdered the old man?" interrupted Clay impatiently.
"I'd rather begin by settling who did not murder him,"
answered the detective gently. "I mean of the ladies and
gentlemen we've just dined with. And the butler who
waited on us."


IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"I'm sure "I began.
"I'm sure of nothing," said the detective. "Let's take
it from this angle. We've heard where the various parties
say they were between half-past ten and eleven. To which
can we give a clear bill?"
"The ladies anyhow," I said. "Even if it were credible
that either of them"
"Anything is credible," said Heppel. "Even Mr.
Clay's theories."
"Besides, the doctor was sure that the murderer was a
man of unusual strength," I protested. "How could a
woman"
"That," said the cautious little man, "is opinion, not
fact."
"And the ladies were never out of each other's sight."
"Except for the five minutes when Miss Eyre was
typing and Mrs. de Manca was in the hall," Heppel said
quietly.
"But the library door was locked and Miss Eyre was
in the ante-room," I objected. "How could Mrs. de
Manca?"
"The clining room also opens on the terrace and con-
nects with the hall."
"But Freeman said he had put up the shutters, locked
the door and taken away the key," I reminded him.
"There might be another key," said the detective.
"On the other hand, five minutes is not very long to find
a key, unlock a door, take down the shutters, cross a
terrace, commit a murder and return, leaving everything
as it was."
"Especially in a tight skirt," put in Clay.


THE SCENT
"3
"How do you know Mrs. de Manca was wearing a
tight skirt?" asked Heppel prosaically.
"That type of woman always does," was the reply.
"Surely you can dismiss Mrs. de Manca from your list
of suspects?" I said.
"We can at any rate say that it would have been
very difficult for her to murder Sir Arthur," agreed
Heppel.
"And Miss Eyre too?"
"The case in Miss Eyre's favour is stronger. The
library door was locked; to reach the library window by
the terrace she would have had to pass Mrs. de Manca in
the hall."
"Unless she jumped out of the ante-room window,"
interposed Clay.
"Without stopping typing?" asked Heppel patiently.
Clay got red.
"Apart from the fact," continued the detective, "that
there were no foot-prints on the flower beds that flank
the terrace."
"One up for you, superintendent!" admitted Clay.
"The rest of the time," went on Heppel, "the young
lady was in the view of either Freeman or Mrs. de Manca.
I do not see how she could have entered the library."
"The other women in the house," I said, "the maid-
servants, as one would expect from the physical force
theory, are cleared. They were all in the servants' hall
until eleven when they went to their double rooms."
"The servant whose movements we must check,"
agreed Heppel, "is Freeman."
"After leaving the servants' hall to admit Rothmann,


IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
he says he was in the pantry till Miss Eyre rang about
ten-forty," I reminded him.
"So the first ten minutes of the critical period are un-
covered," said Heppel. "Nor do we know that he really
spent the remainder of the time going to the post."
"The Conservative Association could say if they got
the letter next morning," I suggested.
"I have already telephoned. But do we know that
Freeman went himself? Or on foot? The return journey
would not take long on a bicycle."
"You can find that out," I said.
The detective nodded. "Until I have, we must keep
Freeman on the list of possibles."
"Mr. Hope," I remarked in pursuit of my own train
of thought, "gave me the impression of knowing more
than he cared to tell."
"The secretaries of public men," stated Clay, "spend
hours daily, practising that look. But why did he go on
the terrace?" he added.
"To smoke," replied the detective.
"I should have thought it would be warmer indoors
at this time of year. He doesn't strike me as the sort of
man to enjoy battling with the elements."
"Bricks without straw, Mr. Clay."
"Better than bobbies without brains, superintendent.
That night walk too. Does Hope strike you as the sort
of man to go for walks in the dark for pleasure? The open
road and all that. With gold-rimmed spectacles and a
pleasant manner?"
"And yet he went," said Heppel, opening a despatch
case. "We can support that statement."


THE SCENT
He lifted out a plaster cast and laid it on the table.
"That's one of the Monday night foot-prints," he
said and took from his pocket a strip of paper.
"I met Mr. Hope's boots going down to be cleaned,"
he added and laid the paper on top of the cast. They
corresponded exactly.
"So he had his stroll," said Heppel. "Although we
don't know how long it lasted. That's all we can say for
the present."
There was a silence while we weighed his words.
"Hope's a clever chap," said Clay at last. "And yet
he had no proper alibi."
"Nor any motive," added Heppel, "that we know of.
You'd expect both if he was guilty."
"John Baxter had a motive," said Clay, throwing an-
other log on the fire, "even if he hadn't an alibi."
The superintendent did not expand. "Sir John," he
said, "is, so to speak, your client."
"I've come to save him from the stupidity of the
police," answered Clay. "Not from the consequences of
anything he has done."
Heppel thought for a moment before he began to
summarise Sir John's ascertained actions on the fatal
evening.
After dinner the young man had talked to his uncle for
half an hour. That was established. The interview was
stated by Hope, under pressure, to have been stormy.
Some colour was lent to this statement by Miss Eyre's
admission that Sir John had seemed worried, and by his
own refusal to give any account of the conversation.
The hour and a half that elapsed between his leaving


THE SCENT
117
"Is that Cummings?" he said after a delay. "Did you
identify the thumb-print on the Woolworth mirror?"
He listened intently to the reply that came along the
wire before he turned to us.
"The finger-print department at the Yard," he stated,
"say that they have no record of that thumb. It is not
Rothmann's."
He returned to the instrument.
"Have they brought you my second parcel? . . . You
haven't unpacked it yet? "... Yes, I'll hold on."
A pulse seemed to beat in my head as I waited for the
report. It came at last. Heppel hung up the receiver.
"The thumb-print on the electric light bulb," he said,
"is the same as the print on the mirror!"


1


PART II





CHAPTER I
That night the commonplace person of Superintendent
Heppel came between me and sleep. When I shut my
eyes, I saw his square, stubby fingers dispassionately
twisting the noose that was to fit the neck of an unsuspect-
fellow-creature. His slow, gentle voice rang in my ears,
blandly marshalling the fatal sequence that was to con-
vince twelve good men and true that life must pay for
life.
I dozed, and in my sleep I saw the two men sitting in
the library with the writing-table between them. The rain
of deadly questions hardened into a rattle and the detec-
tive's blue-clad body began to swell and bulge. In his
place span and flickered the shining wheels and gears of a
purring, squat machine. The table had vanished, but
Baxter sat silent on his chair. His tie began to flutter in
the wind that the fly-wheel created. It blew out and out,
until its end caught in the gleaming cogs. The man clung
desperately to the chair, to the shelves. Slowly, inexora-
bly he was dragged under the grinding teeth. . . .
I expected to be the first at breakfast, but Sir John
was down before me. As he helped me from the silver
dishes, I wondered how I could warn him of the mounting
121


122
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
tide of suspicion. Sure as I was of his innocence, I was in
no way his intimate. I could not blurt out that he was
suspected of murdering his uncle.
The young man put an end of my embarrassment by
apologising for leaving me alone. He had, he declared, a
dozen jobs to do before he caught a midday train to
London. He would be back, he hoped, to dinner.
At any rate, I reflected, his absence would give him a
day's respite from arrest. During the twelve hours some
new fact might come to light to clear him. But I could
not suppress a fear that Clay's uncertain, if sometimes
brilliant, guesses were poor tools to fight the detective's
patient and pitiless logic.
In the billiard-room I found that Heppel had finished
his scrutiny of the dead man's papers.
"After all that," he pointed to the piles of neatly
docketed letters, "I've found nothing. Everything that
mattered went in there, I suppose." He jerked his head
towards the big stone fireplace.
"If it ever existed," I objected.
"When I've had my breakfast," he went on, "we'll see
if they know anything about those blue letters at the
post office. Small country offices sometimes know a good
deal."
I waited for him on the terrace. As I walked up and
down, my eye was caught by a streak of vivid orange at
one of the first-floor windows. It was Clay in his dressing-
gown.
"I'll be with you," he shouted, "as soon as I've got the
cork out of my breakfast."


THE RUN
123
We made an incongruous trio as we descended the
steps that led from the terraces to the path through the
woods. 1
I, as I hope, was suitably dressed in a gray knicker-
bocker suit and a cap of the same stuff. Heppel wore his
inevitable bowler hat, a little too small for his head, and
a carefully brushed serge suit, its waistcoat crossed by a
silver watch chain. Clay's lamentable ulster was buttoned
to the neck and concealed, I suspected, the jacket of his
pyjamas. His hat, the illegitimate issue of a sombrero and
a clerical "boater," was a stern warning against irregular
unions.
As we reached the foot of the steps, "On our way,"
said the artist, "I'd like to have a look at the belvedere."
Instead, therefore, of taking the path to the left which
led to the village, we held straight up the glade that ran
through the trees.
"Gertrude Williams," Heppel mentioned, "could not
be sure the light was inside."
"All the same," said Clay, "I'd like a.look."
But when we reached the little white stone temple that
some classically disposed Baxter had erected, we found
it green doors locked.
A gardener with a lame leg was sweeping leaves. Hep-
pel asked him if the place was always kept shut.
"I locked it on Tuesday morning," said the man,
giving the appearance of the light as the reason. "We
don't want tramps about."
"I thought it was one of your people who lit the light,"
said Heppel casually.
The man dissented. None of his mates was in the garden


IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
at that time of night. He volunteered that the key was in
his pocket, should we care to look inside. The place was
tidy, he added; he had swept it on Monday afternoon.
The belvedere stood on the brow of the hill. There was
a portico back and front. Within the columns on the rear
side were the double doors that faced the house; on the
south a wide plate glass window overlooked a piece of
ornamental water beyond the wood.
We entered. The Augustan temple was furnished sim-
ply with a croquet set, a folding table, and three green
chairs. There was no ventilation, and the sun on the lead
roof had overheated the air.
But Heppel did not heed the atmosphere. His quick
eyes were fixed on the concrete floor. He walked to the
corner, stooped and picked up some small object. When
he came back to us, in the palm of his hand lay a long thin
wax match. It had been lit.
"Those don't come from Italy," said the artist reminis-
cently. "You can buy them in Soho."
Without speaking the detective laid his trophy on the
table. Then he lowered his gaze to the floor. He lifted one
of the chairs and bent down. This time there was the
end of a cigar between his fingers. He laid it beside the
match.
"If the gardener swept this place on Monday afternoon
and locked it on Tuesday morning, it doesn't take Mr.
Clay to suggest that these were dropped here the night
that Gertrude Williams saw the light," he remarked.
Lucien Clay peered at the match. Fastidiously he
lifted the cigar-end between finger and thumb, held it
six inches from his eyes and finally smelt it.



THE RUN
"When Lewis Hope went for that rather unlikely stroll,
he came here to meet a friend," he declared.
"Why need there have been a second person?" asked
the detective with a patient air.
"You don't light cigars with wax matches," replied the
artist. "Especially if they cost half a crown apiece."
"You'd better tell us what happened," suggested the
detective blandly.
"Certainly," was the cool reply. "On the night of the
murder Lewis Hope waited on the terrace for some one
whom he had arranged to meet in the belvedere. That
person probably carries a gold petrol-lighter in his waist-
coat pocket, lives or stays within two miles of this spot, and
has false teeth. With his lighter he gave an agreed signal.
When Hope saw the flame, he hurried across in the dark.
The interview was brief. I'm afraid I can't tell you what
was said."
"Did you ever have lodgings in Baker Street, Mr.
Clay?" asked the detective.
Clay did not appear to be amused.
"Even a policeman," he replied, "should be able to see
that Hope was hanging about in the cold for a purpose.
The light in the belvedere explains that purpose."
"Possible so far," agreed the superintendent.
"And any one but a policeman would understand that
the interview that followed could not have lasted long,
since Hope, who is practically a chain smoker, left no
cigarette ends here. He threw away one cigarette in the
woods, lit another with the wax match you found, and
had not finished that before the conversation was finished.
"But the false teeth?" I asked. "And the gold lighter?"


126 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"The man who smoked that cigar had an ugly habit
of rolling it in his mouth and chewing it. Real teeth don't
leave such regular marks. As there is only Hope's match
on the floor, the signal was given with an electric torch
or a petrol-lighter. A cigar smoker would be likely to
carry the latter, and since only a rich man smokes that
brand of cigar it may be gold."
The detective laughed. "And he lives two miles from
here?" he said kindly.
"Not more," was the composed reply. "When you
were crawling about the floor you found no ash, did
you?"
Heppel shook his head.
"Therefore the cigar was about finished when he
reached this place. The faint smell of port that clings to
the stump tells me it was lit at the end of dinner."
"That's good," I exclaimed.
"A cigar," he went on, "doesn't last longer than half
an hour if smoked in the open air. Even supposing that
its smoker started as soon as it was lit and walked four
miles an hour, he could not have come more than two
miles."
"Unless he came part of the way in a car, Mr. Clay."
"If you're meeting a man secretly by night in the
middle of a wood, you don't leave a car to show where
you've gone, superintendent."
"You don't think it was Rothmann who talked to Hope
in the belvedere?" I asked after a pause.
"It's not the sort of cigar a Russian would smoke.
Hope's friend was an Englishman—or perhaps an
American," he added thoughtfully.


128 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
The girl looked up.
"Are you being funny?" she asked as coldly as her
adenoids would let her. "You aren't old enough for a
pension!"
"I shall be by the time you've served me!" retorted
the artist.
Contemptuously the young woman turned her back
and searched the pigeon holes. Like a red ape's, Clay's
long ulster-clad arm reached over the cage and snatched a
dip of papers that lay beside the telegraph instrument.
Before the girl had faced about, he had whisked them
under his coat.
"You shouldn't have done that," said Heppel mildly,
when we had left the office with its occupant engaged in
identifying a three-letter synonym of "consumed." He
added that the assistant would get into trouble.
"A bit of trouble will do that girl all the good in the
world," replied the artist, and hoisted himself on to a
gate.
The bundle of papers proved, as Clay's quick eyes had
discerned, to be the month's file of "telegrams des-
patched."
"This may show us if anything has been going on,"
muttered the painter, as he ran through the forms.
"Hallo! Here are some in code." He handed three tele-
grams to the detective.
"Sent the afternoon after the murder," said Heppel.
I looked over his shoulder. The forms were made out
to telegraphic addresses—two in London, and one in
Glasgow. The message in each case consisted of two
words over a varying signature.


THE RUN
I2C
. "Betting telegrams," said Heppel.
v I asked him how he knew. He pointed to the first word
of the wires.
"Onagra is a horse," he explained. "He won at Kemp-
ton the other day." He went on to tell me that the second
word indicated the amount of money staked. In each
case the word ended in "—ing," a bookie's code conven-
tion for an "each way" bet.
The artist seemed surprised that I did not know these
details. I was glad to be able to tell him that although I
enjoyed a bet on the course as much as any ordinary
Englishman, I did not think much of the stay-at-home
backer.
As I finished speaking the detective handed the bundle
of forms to Clay.
"There's not much telegraphing done at Lincot," he
remarked, "and what there is seems pretty straightfor-
ward—except possibly those betting wires."
I said that it did not seem to me suspicious if three
people had backed Onagra on Tuesday.
"Except that it was only one person," said Clay, giving
his hat a rakish tilt that emphasised its incongruity with
the mellow English landscape.
I raised my eyebrows.
"The time is the same on each telegram," he explained.
"He was going large," I suggested.
Heppel was dusting the knees of his trousers that the
search on the belvedere floor had soiled.
"It may only be a coincidence," he said slowly. "But
six hundred pounds were missing from Sir Arthur's
drawer."


IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
The artist nodded. "It would be interesting to know
who Messrs."—he glanced at the signatures at the bot-
tom of the telegrams—"Briskfoot, Elijah and Clutter-
buck are. It would be curious if they happened to be the
noms-de-guerre of any of our friends at Lincot."


CHAPTER II
Clay lowered his long limbs from the gate, and we re-
sumed our walk in silence. We had decided to go back
by the road since, as Heppel said, the more we knew of
the neighbourhood the better.
From behind, the rattle and pop of a motor-cycle as-
saulted our ears. Forcing us close to the hedge, with a
blast of air and a spatter of mud the projectile passed.
I was remarking that the things should not be allowed
on the roads, when a face that goggles made owl-like
turned over the rider's shoulder. A single explosion and
the appearance of a pair of mackintoshed legs signified
that the machine had stopped.
"Good-morning, Mackenzie," said Heppel, as we came
alongside. "I did not expect you so early."
"I thought you'd want my report, sir," replied his
assistant, pushing back the goggles that hid his gray
eyes. "Wolland was picked up all right at the station."
He felt in his pocket, and produced a slip of paper.
"That's where he's staying," he said. "In Bloomsbury."
"I know it," replied Heppel. "It's a quiet, respectable
sort of place."
"The hotel people," went on Mackenzie, "can't tell
us much. He's a reporter, he's been there a month, he
goes out a good deal."
131


132
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
Heppel took off his hat and smoothed the hair that
thinly covered the back of his head.
"You'd better cable that Press syndicate in New
York," he said. "If they say he's O.K. we'll drop him."
Mackenzie nodded. "There's no news of the bank-
notes," he added.
"I didn't expect any yet," said Heppel. "Is Roth-
mann out?"
"We turned him loose last night."
As he spoke a large limousine swung round the corner.
Sir John Baxter was driving, fast as was his fashion, with
a chauffeur on the seat beside him.
"Where's he off to?" said the superintendent sharply.
"He told me he was going to London," I volunteered.
Heppel shook his head sadly. "And you didn't think
I'd like to know?" he murmured. Then turning briskly
to his assistant. "Get on your bicycle, and keep up with
that car. If its driver goes to the station, get into the
train too."
The young man was already pedalling at his starter.
"If he books to London," said Heppel, "send me a
note from the station."
Mackenzie nodded, as he fitted on his goggles and raced
the engine.
"Keep the Yard informed where he goes," shouted
Heppel. "I may come up myself."
Quarter of an hour's walk took us to the house, and
Freeman's imposing figure loomed up in answer to our
ring. He was holding a silver salver.


THE RUN
133
"A letter for you, sir," he said to Heppel. "By the
second post."
The detective glanced at the post-mark without open-
ing the envelope.
"It's too fine to go indoors," he remarked, "I'll look
at this in the garden."
To the west of the house lay the rose garden. Its beds
and brick paths, sunk below the level of the surrounding
lawns, its rambler roses trained round on a network of
wires, promised beauty and seclusion.
"This is from East Tedding," said Heppel, tapping the
envelope against his teeth. "We'll hear if Freeman posted
the letter Miss Eyre typed to the Conservative Associa-
tion."
To reach the gate of the rose garden we had to make
a nearly complete circuit of its hedge. I lagged behind my
companions to admire a splendid second blooming of
Gloire de Dijon half-buried in the leaves of the ramblers.
The roses that delighted our fathers have a scent our
more advertised varieties have lost, and I stooped to
smell the blossom. The movement brought my eye level
with a gap in the shiny green foliage that hid the inside
of the rosary. Through the hole I saw two hands; one
the hand of a woman, off which the facets of a diamond
threw the sunlight in drops of fire; the other also soft
and white, but unmistakably male.
It was not, however, the sight of the hands that kept
me stooping. Into the woman's palm the thick fingers
were pressing a white packet. I could see the stiff, fibrous,
semi-transparent paper; I could hear the dry crackle as
the slim hand closed on the bundle of Bank of England


IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
notes. At the same moment my ears caught a whisper.
"Put it away! Here's some one!"
The hands fell apart and I could see no more. I heard
my name called from the gate and Clay's sarcastic voice
inquiring whether I had taken up botany. Deciding to
say nothing at the moment of what I had seen, I picked
the rose that had led me to my brief but suggestive vision
and followed the two investigators into the little garden.
As I had expected, side by side on the outer path of
the rose-ringed circle paced Mrs. de Manca and Lewis
Hope. But if I had expected that they would show any
trace of agitation I was disappointed. The secretary was
as bland and rubicund as ever. His head was bare and the
slightly odorous oil that he used made his smooth hair
glisten in the sun. His companion looked surprisingly
young under the shelter of a pink-lined sunshade. She
waved her hand to us. I noticed that it was empty.
"You were up very early, superintendent," said Hope
genially.
"We have to get up early in my profession," was the
smiling reply.
"Is there anything new?" asked Mrs. de Manca
quickly, and added. "But perhaps I mustn't ask."
"There seems no lack of new features," said Heppel
pleasantly, "and each pointing in a new direction."
I could not help agreeing. Rothmann, Baxter, Hope—
the finger of suspicion pointed to each in turn. But if
the last-named felt the shadow he did not show it.
"Look at that Ophelia," he said, touching with a
loving finger a magnificent bloom. "'Nymph in thy
orisons"'


THE RUN
i3S
"'A rose by any other name," I agreed, "would not
smell as sweet.'"
"If Ophelia did not happen to be scentless," put in the
painter.
"All, well," sighed the secretary; "'cottige, virgo, rosas
dumflos novus et novus pubes,' but I'm old, and must go
indoors to do accounts."
He laughed ruefully, and left us with a little bow. It
was hard to believe that those amiable lips with their
mild tags had just whispered the warning I had overheard.
"What was all that?" asked Mrs. de Manca. "The
only word I understood was 'virgin.'"
"Virgo merely means a girl," said Clay. "The Romans
were a great people, but simple."
Sophie de Manca laughed.
"If you are going to be cynical," she said, "I'll go and
see the cook. If I don't, you won't get any dinner."
She threw us the smile of the busy housewife. I realised
that whatever else she was, the woman was a superb
actress. With her swaying walk she disappeared through
the gate that Hope was holding open.
The painter looked after them.
"The rosary, the belvedere—Mr. Lewis Hope seems to
like secluded spots," he said.
The detective sat down heavily, with his knees apart,
on a flat stone bench that fitted a recess in the wall of
greenery. He took off his bowler hat and laid it beside him.
"If only Marcus Stone could have seen you there,"
said the irrepressible Clay.
But Heppel was not listening. He had opened the
envelope from East Tedding.


i36 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"Miss Eyre's letter was posted all right," he reported.
"They send it back for me to see"
"That doesn't prove that Freeman took it to the post
himself," I pointed out.
The detective did not reply. His deep-set eyes were
staring at the paper. After a close scrutiny he turned it
over and studied the reverse side. Then he ran his finger
lightly over the paper.
I sat down beside him. As one would expect, there was
no writing on the back, only the faint reversed indentation
of the keys. I asked what was in the letter.
"Just what Miss Eyre told us," the detective an-
nounced. "It's quite short, arranging for a political meet-
ing at which Sir Arthur was to speak."
He handed the letter to Clay.
"If you want to ask Miss Eyre about it," I suggested,
"I know where she is."
I had seen her cutting flowers in the long border by
the red wall of the kitchen garden. I could not help feeling
her company would provide a change from the preoc-
cupation of the policeman and the flippancy of the
painter.
"That's very kind of you, Mr. Dale," said Heppel.
Delia was still there. In her blue linen frock and a hat
that flapped over her eyes, she stood on tip-toe to cut the
gray spikes of lavender from the top of a bush that may
have been five times as old as she, and was certainly
taller. A flat wicker basket, half full of flowers, hung over


THE RUN
137
her bare arm. As I came up, a bumble-bee zoomed off
the aromatic bush.
I took the scissors from her hand and cut the stalks
that were out of her reach, before I told her that Heppel
was in the rosary.
"Is he in a hurry?" she asked. She looked up at me
and her big eyes were appealing. "Couldn't we just walk
round the kitchen garden?"
I assured her that the detective could wait, and we
passed through wrought-iron gates into the walled garden.
We progressed side by side for some way in silence. I
felt that the sad little mouth wanted to tell me something,
but found the beginning hard.
"I'm nearly a stranger," I said, "and we met under
tragic circumstances, but if there's anything"
Again the blue eyes were raised to my face.
"I knew I could talk to you," she said; "you see I'm
so terribly alone now."
I protested that she must not think that. She was
among good friends. She bent and snipped the head off
a withered phlox.
"Yes, I know," she said. "I'm sure I am. And I've got
John. But it's about John I want to talk."
Her words gave me an idea. At breakfast I had been
puzzled to find a way of warning him. Could I not convey
a hint through Delia?
"You see," she was saying, "although he's been here
quite a long time, I hardly know Mr. Hope. No one does,
unless Sophie—and Sophie doesn't really like me. I think
she feels I took her place."


IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
I was silent, remembering the two hands I had seen
through the roses.
"I know Superintendent Heppel is awfully kind; but
he's got his duty to do, hasn't he?" she went on. "And
John told me how clever Mr. Clay is! But he's rather
alarming, I think." She looked up, and seeing that I
agreed about the artist, she laughed shyly.
I said I hoped she did not find me alarming. She smiled
again.
"Aren't I telling you everything?" she asked, but her
laughter soon died.
"I'm dreadfully worried about John," she murmured,
taking the basket of lavender off her arm and placing
it on the path at her feet.
I assured her that I was his warm partisan.
"I knew you'd like him," she exclaimed. "I adore
John. He wants me to marry him. But I won't till he's
had time to be quite sure he wants to. John's got a
dreadful past. He's told me everything." Her eyes
were less grave than her voice, and choosing a pear off
the wall, she smelt it before she sank her little white
teeth into its flesh. I murmured something about wild
oats.
"Besides he really knows nothing about me. An orphan
his uncle adopted out of pity," she dropped the pear,
half-eaten. "I'm unlucky to have for a daughter. My real
father's death was sudden. And now my adopted father
has been "She could not finish the sentence.
I urged her to keep her mind off these tragedies.
"So I feel I might bring bad luck to a husband. John
isn't even engaged to me and already"


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141
Freeman walked ponderously across the little garden,
rounding the beds with the slow imprecision of a dirigible
balloon.
"A boy has just brought this from the station, sir,"
he said, holding out a letter.
"Excuse me, Miss Eyre," said Heppel and tore open
the letter. He was silent for a moment before he said that
he must go to London. Might Freeman telephone for a
car?
"I'll do it myself," said Delia, and ran towards the
house. I wondered if her step would have been as light,
had she guessed the car was wanted to trail her lover.
"That is really most kind," said Heppel, and turned
to the painter. "Are you coming with me, Mr. Clay?"
"No!" said Clay. "Take Dale with you to London to
tell me what happens. I'll stay here."
"And finish your sketch?" I suggested.
"And find out who killed Baxter," he corrected.


THE RUN
143
Heppel picked up a pile of letters, and began to open
them.
"What did he say?" he asked.
"'Sir John has gone to ground in a flat opposite,'"
and she mentioned the number.
The detective raised his eyebrows, and asked if Mac-
kenzie knew who lived there.
"The board gave the name of Mrs. Maud Johnson."
"Spelt with a't?'"
The girl did not know.
"Of course it may be a coincidence," said Heppel, with
his usual caution. He pulled a scribbling block towards
him and wrote three names.
"Those are telegraphic addresses," he said to the clerk,
"probably of bookmakers. Please find out where they
live."
He drew a line and wrote another name.
"There's another person," he added, "I want to know
about. You might try the places that secure engagements
for secretaries." He busied himself once more with his
bundle of letters. Presently he dropped them on the table.
"Nothing we don't know," he remarked. "The report
of the man who is shadowing Rothmann; an official an-
swer about the finger-prints; negative replies about the
bank notes and the Woolworth mirror. When we've had
a bit of lunch, I think we'd better see how Mrs. Johnson
spells her name."
A taxi dropped us at the bottom of Newman Street.
When we had walked a couple of hundred yards, Heppel
halted before a large sheet of plate glass behind which
shone a selection of highly polished motor cars. In the


144
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
driving seat of a forty horse-powered saloon sat, staring
in front of him, a young man with a sallow face and gray
eyes. A salesman with well-creased trousers and plastered
hair bent over the bonnet and gave an optimistic account
of the mechanism.
Heppel pressed the handle of the door, and we passed
into the shop.
"I think," said the young man at the wheel to his in-
formant, "I would like to see a blueprint."
The salesman gave a sigh, and went in search.
"He's in there," Mackenzie addressed us quickly, nod-
ding his head towards the house his eyes had never left.
"He's been there thirty-five minutes."
He recounted his day. The baronet had gone straight
from the station to the Newman Street flat. But the per-
son he wished to see must have been out, as he emerged
immediately. For the next two hours he seemed to be
killing time, visiting a tailor and a barber.
"I had my hair cut yesterday," declared Mackenzie,
"but I had it done again in the next chair. I look like a
lag." He took off his hat, and showed us that he did not
exaggerate.
After a visit to his club, into which the young de-
tective was not able to penetrate, Sir John came back
to Newman Street. His second visit seemed to be more
fortunate.
As Mackenzie spoke, the tall figure of the man he was
hunting appeared in the doorway opposite. Heppel pulled
me behind the car and we watched through the window
in its back.
Sir John Baxter stood for a minute, glanced up and


THE RUN
down the street, then stepped off with a long, rapid pace
towards the north.
"After him!" said Heppel in Mackenzie's ear. "I'll
explain things to your motoring friend."
Mackenzie's hand was on the door when the superin-
tendent called him back. "By the way," he said casually,
"how does Mrs. Johnson spell her name?"
"The same as Rothmann," came the reply as the door
shut.
My eyes were following the pair, hunter and quarry,
up the street, when I heard Heppel exclaim with an ac-
cent of surprise that was rare with him.
I looked round. Approaching rapidly from the direction
of Oxford Street was the blue-shaven jowl and flabby
form of Max Rothmann. He seemed to be out of breath.
Glancing over his shoulder, he crossed the road behind a
lorry and disappeared into the doorway of the block
opposite. Heppel's hand was on my arm.
"He won't know you," he whispered. "Slip into the
flats and see where he goes."
My instinct was to refuse an employment so like a
spy's, but reflecting that by suppressing my own feelings
I could best serve Delia and her lover, I obeyed.
The stairs were of stone, and I could hear the Russian's
footsteps echoing above me. If the flat he was visiting
was at the top I would overtake him. The steps ceased
and I heard a bell ring. I ran up the third flight and saw
a door shut. The number over it was 6.
I retraced my steps more slowly, and consulted the
board in the lobby. The tenant of No. 6 flat was Mrs.
Maud Johnstone. What sort of a woman was this, fre-


146
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
quented by an alien conspirator as well as by a man of
Baxter's position?
As I stepped on to the pavement my preoccupation
with the problem nearly involved me in a collision with
another pedestrian. But as he was staring up at the win-
dows on either side of the street I could not hold myself
entirely to blame.
I crossed the road, and re-entered the motor shop. Hep-
pel I found in conversation with the immaculate salesman,
whom he was encouraging to repeat his eulogy. I mur-
mured my news in the detective's ear.
"This is getting interesting," he said, and asked the
shopman to get him a catalogue.
His attention, I saw, had been drawn to the wayfarer I
had so narrowly avoided. That person must have crossed
the road behind me, for he now stood with his back to
our show window. I noticed that his neck was thick
and his ears red and protruding. He kept turning his
head to left and to right, and I wondered what he had
lost.
Without speaking Heppel bent forward and tapped
the glass behind the seeker. The man did not look round,
nor did he, I observed, pursue his passage up the street.
"Talk to the salesman till I come back," whispered
Heppel in my ear. "There's something about the oil
pump he likes explaining."
He stepped into the street, and put his foot on the
ledge of the window beside the man with the prominent
ears. His bootlace did not appear to me to need attention,
but the knot must have been awkward for he bent over
it for some moments. Then he must have changed his


THE RUN
147
mind for he came back into the shop. The thick-necked
man resumed his walk.
"That's one of my chaps," volunteered Heppel, behind
his hand. "He's shadowing Rothmann. Max gave him
the slip in Oxford Street."
"You told him where he's gone?" I asked.
The detective grunted.
"He'll pick him up when he comes out," he promised.
We did not have long to wait for that event. Our sales-
man had hardly brought the catalogue and re-embarked
on the delights of the lubricating system, when the pale
face of the Russian peeped out of the front door opposite.
Heppel developed a sudden interest in the intestines
of the car, and gave an admirable imitation of an ostrich,
until I reported that Rothmann was well on his way to
Oxford Street with the red-eared man in his wake.
"It seems to be Mrs. Johnstone's 'day,'" said the detec-
tive, as he came to the surface. "We mustn't miss that."
As we climbed the stone staircase and left behind us an
ornament of the motor trade plainly incredulous of
Heppel's promise to "think it over," I wondered what
our reception in flat 6 would be. Was there such a lady
as Maud Johnstone, or did the name on the board conceal
the rendezvous of some Bolshevist secret society that, not
content with the murder of the uncle, was luring the
nephew into its net?
Heppel, however, appeared to feel no misgiving and in
the most matter-of-fact way pressed the bell-push in the
centre of the door. In answer to a sharp buzz on the inside,
footsteps came shuffling down the passage. My muscles
tightened as the door half opened.


i48 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"Good-afternoon, Mrs. Johnstone," began the inspec-
tor. His voice rose half a tone. "Why, it's Yellow Meg!"
"Mrs. Johnstone to you, inspector," came the chilling
reply, and the crack diminished as far as the detective's
foot would allow. I moved behind him to get a sight of
the woman who could put Heppel in his place.
Starting from ground level my eye took in a pink, bare
foot in a heelless slipper trimmed with rather dirty
swansdown; rose slowly by way of an admirable ankle
and calf to a gray squirrel coat held together by an over-
manicured hand, and upwards to a shingle of improbable
gold.
"I was forgetting," came from a wide, irregularly
painted mouth, "it's superintendent now."
"Thank you, Meg," said Heppel, with a grin.
"Well, well! There's always room at the top, as the
man said who looked for the gas leak with a candle."
"Can we come in, Meg?" interrupted the detective.
"It's draughty here."
"Why, sure!" exclaimed the lady; "aren't the police
always welcome?"
We followed our involuntary hostess through a dark,
passage-like hall, and into a thickly furnished room on
the right.
One used, regrettably, to hear a vulgarism, whose
full meaning I never imagined until I saw Maud John-
stone's drawing-room. In symbol and letter "with knobs
on" exactly expressed it.
The mirror, lamps, ash-trays, picture-frames and waste-
paper basket were all liberally be-knobbed with festoons
of flowers and fruit, enamelled a slick scarlet, green or


THE RUN
149
gold. It passed through my mind that that, if any sort
of fruit, should be forbidden.
The deep velvet sofa was piled with cushions mostly
black satin, but of every shape known to geometrician,
cubist painter or delirium trement. Tassels and bobbles
sprouted with an almost tropical luxuriance from the
ends, which, to ensure that uneasy should lie the head,
were as heavily bound with gold braid as a French general.
The telephone was concealed under the dusty skirts
of a crinolined lady, the reading lamp inside the opales-
cent figure of a parrot. There was a book by Michael
Arlen on a Moorish table. In the bow window, whose net
curtains the London air was changing from pink to puce,
stood a writing-table of mixed French parentage. Over
its edge balanced a half-smoked cigarette, and on top of
the letters that bestrewed it sat limply with sad, libidi-
nous eyes a long-legged doll such as night clubs give away.
One wondered why Mrs. Johnstone did not follow their
example.


CHAPTER IV
Mrs. Johnstone and Superintendent Heppel seemed to
have plenty to say. I heard him compliment her on her
books.
"It's wonderful what beauty-parlours can do," con-
fessed Yellow Meg. Then looking at the detective with
her head on one side. "Why don't you try? It couldn't
do any harm."
"What with monkey glands," retorted Heppel, "and
one thing and another, I dare say a girl would hardly
notice a stretch of seven."
1 The broad, good-humoured face with its high, almost
Mongolian cheekbones darkened.
"Don't talk shop," she said, and added defiantly,
"you haven't got anything on me!"
"And I don't want to have," said the detective. "I've
always liked you, Meg. But the way things are shap-
ing"
"Come off it, Heppel," interrupted the lady elegantly.
"You don't bluff me!"
"But they'd shape better," persisted Heppel, "if you
could give me a hint about a friend of mine."
"I don't know your friends and I don't want to!"
"Not even Sir John Baxter?"
"Not even the Archbishop of Canterbury."
150


152 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
which had been resting on the edge of the writing-table,
slid to a pile of papers. With a quick movement it twitched
a square of brown pasteboard under the hat on his knees.
A moment later the unconscious Maud was offering him
a lighted match.
"Is Max an old friend of yours?" asked Heppel, be-
tween puffs at his pipe.
"Are you choosing my friends, inspector?"
"You aren't married to him, are you?" he demanded
looking up suddenly.
"Me marry that poor fish 1" Meg shot back.
"Then why did he take your name the night he went
to Lincot?"
"Did he?" was the calm reply. "Well, it's not so very
uncommon, is it?"
"Just a coincidence, eh? And a coincidence that two
men mixed up in that affair called on you this afternoon?
You'd much better give us the story, Meg," persuaded
the detective.
"I don't know any stories," declared Yellow Meg.
"Try the children's hour."
The detective, holding his hat against his chest, rose
to his feet.
"Then I won't waste any more of your time," he re-
marked pleasantly.
"Its your own time you're wasting," was the retort.
"Not in your company, my dear. What's that perfume
of yours? It smells good to me."
I walked to the door. I was not interested in the detec-
tive's gallantries.


THE RUN
153
"Dans la nuit. Half a guinea the small bottle."
"Write it down, Meg. I fancy my fiancee would like
that."
"Good-bye, Mrs. Johnstone!" I called from the door,
hoping that Heppel would take the hint. Instead he
offered the woman his fountain pen.
"Do come again soon," she answered me with her
wide smile. "And don't hang about in the street next
time."
Heppel overtook me at the foot of the stairs, as I
caught the eye of a passing taxi-driver.
"Funny finding a friend," I remarked, climbing into
the cab.
"Yellow Meg is hardly a friend. More like a business
acquaintance," he answered.
I asked if he meant she was a crook. He hesitated.
That it depended what I meant by the word. She had
never been in prison.
"She's too careful," he added.
Whenever a woman without principles could make
money quickly and safely, you were likely, it appeared,
to meet Meg. Sometimes she figures in an unofficial, but
not unprofitable, role at houses where young men who
play baccarat neither wisely nor too well are invited.
In the subsequent proceedings at the police court, no
connection with the management was ever proved
against her, and to be bound over for "frequenting" was
the limit of her risk.


154
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
On one occasion the sunshine she diffused over the
last weeks of an old gentleman whose heart was younger
than his head had nearly secured her an easy affluence.
But in the lawsuit that followed, his daughter had con-
vinced an unsympathetic judge that the hand that
smoothed the pillow had also guided the pen. Once . . .
but I felt I had followed the life history of Yellow Meg far
enough. It was not as if Heppel had been able to connect
her with the murder.
"By the way, superintendent," I remarked. "I gather
I've got to congratulate you. I did not know you were
engaged to be married."
"I'm not," replied the detective, with the ghost of a
smile. "I've got five children."
"But you said "I began.
Instead of answering, the detective handed me a sheet
of notepaper. On it was scribbled the name of the scent
he had seen fit to admire. But it was the colour of the
paper that inspired my whisper.
"The blue letters!"
"Very possibly," said the detective slowly, and held
the sheet to the window. "Not only the same colour as
the "Avenged" half-sheet, but the same water-mark!"
At last I felt we had unearthed a concrete fact, even
if its explanation was still remote.
"I saw you conceal something else. Would I be in-
discreet ?" I hinted.
"You would not," said Heppel. "But perhaps some-
one else has been."
He put his hand into his breast pocket, and brought
out the pasteboard. I saw it was a photograph.


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155
"It was lying under some letters," he explained, and
turned it over.
I found myself looking into the face of Sophie de
Manca.
"An amateur photograph," said the detective phleg-
matically. "Enlarged."
I let down the window of the taxi with a bang, and
stared at the hurrying traffic. My brain reeled. By our
visit to the flat in Newman Street, no fewer than five
people seemed to have become connected with the sinister
blue letter which Sir Arthur received on the day of his
death and with the enigmatic notice discovered by Clay
in the pages of the odd volume of Dodsley's Plays. What
was the link that united such diverse personalities as
Maud Johnstone, Sir John Baxter, Max Rothmann,
Sophie de Manca, and—judging by the scene I had sur-
prised in the rose garden—Lewis Hope?
I decided that it was my duty to tell the detective
what I had witnessed. I found he made light of my
story.
"There might be a hundred reasons why Mr. Hope
gave Mrs. de Manca a bundle of notes," he declared;
"and none of them connected with this photograph, or
with the murder of Sir Arthur Baxter."
I refrained from argument, but I had to admit that
Clay had not been far wrong when he said the police
had no imagination.
"Perhaps there are a hundred reasons why Mrs. de
Manca's photograph should be on Yellow Meg's table?"
I said, and the detective's silence showed that my shaft
had gone home.


IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
As we talked we were driving, the blocks in the traffic
permitting, in an easterly direction. But now our taxi
swung north, round the sweep of a quiet Bloomsbury
square and came to rest against a high curb.
Heppel alighted, and looked at the house in front of
him. Two deeply cut Corinthian columns flanked the
blistered paint of a double door, and the grimy panes of
a semi-circular fanlight surmounted it. What, in the
reign of an earlier George, had been the dignified home of
some substantial English family whose name may have
been known to history, was now the sojourning place of
American tourists and Indian law-students.
Heppel's ring was answered by a porter in his shirt-
sleeves. Yes, Mr. Wolland was staying in the hotel; but
he was out. If the gentlemen liked, they could certainly
see the manageress.
A tall, fiat lady dressed in black serge received us in an
office that smelt of gravy. It was furnished with the
gloomier ferns and occasional tables.
Heppel explained his visit. While crossing the Atlantic,
he had, he declared, made friends with a Mr. Wolland.
After landing in England he had lost touch with him until
an acquaintance had said that a visitor of that name was
staying in his hotel.
The manageress began a vague description—"About
the middle height, between twenty-five and thirty"
which Heppel interrupted. If he could see the name in
the visitors' book, he thought he would know the writing.
The lady in black laid a heavy calf-bound volume on
one of the tables, and let Heppel run his finger down the
columns, where biblical first names from the Middle


158 IN SEARCH OF"A VILLAIN
"I didn't expect to. But a detective must cover every
inch of the ground." He added that if reference to Paris
proved the reporter had been there on Monday night,
we could dismiss him from our minds. "Though," he
added, "he acted queerly last night."
Here we overhauled a steam lorry with a cargo of zinc
buckets and for a time conversation was impossible.
When we had drawn clear, I asked what we were to do in
Regent Street.
"Not 'we,'" said the detective with a grin, "you!"
He proceeded to explain his meaning.
Five minutes later I was seated, Scotland Yard's latest
recruit, in a bookmaker's office—one of the three whose
addresses Heppel's homely secretary had obtained while
we were at lunch.
Anyone who beards a bookmakerin his lair with visions
of a saloon furnished with ruby plush sofas and gilt
caryatids in'risking disillusionment. The room where I
met Mr. Banks had a plain gray carpet, shaded lights
and a good mahogany desk. Nor did Mr. Banks wear a
check suit with satchel and gray top hat. To judge from
his looks he had probably served in a county regiment
and belonged to a good club. He did not even smoke a
cigar.
He listened courteously while I explained that I wanted
to open a betting account, noting on a writing pad the
references I offered. After discussing the amount of
credit I would require, he handed me a little leather
book. "You can count that as settled, Mr. Dale," he
said. 'That's our book of rules. You'll find everything
there."


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"Your telegraphic code?" I suggested. "I'll want to
bet by telegram."
"In the book," he said. "Have you any code signature
you prefer?"
"Briskfoot," I said, remembering my lesson.
The bookmaker took a list out of one of the drawers
and glanced at it.
"Unfortunately," he said, "that nom-de-plume seems
to have been taken. Would you choose another?"
"I'd prefer Briskfoot," I lied. "I've always used it, and
it has brought me luck. Don't you think its owner could
be persuaded to change?"
"He might, of course," was the doubtful reply.
"If you'd give me his address, I'd write and ask," I
persisted.
Mr. Banks hesitated, but, anxious not to disoblige a
prospective client, ended by writing a name on his mem-
orandum block.
"Perhaps you will let me know what you arrange?"
he said, as he handed me the sheet.
I took my hat and proceeded to re-enact the scene at a
similar establishment in the Haymarket. The third book-
maker lived in Glasgow and had to be approached by
letter.
I regained the taxi and with Heppel opened the books
of rules at the list of code words. A quick comparison
proved that the amount laid on Onagra with each book-
maker had been a hundred pounds, win or a place.
Supposing that the same bet had been telegraphed to
Glasgow, the total amount staked would be six hundred
pounds. ,


160 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"And the six hundred pounds that Sir Arthur drew
from the bank on the day of his death cannot be found,"
I murmured.
From my pocket I drew two slips of paper and gave
them to the detective.
"One man uses the signatures Briskfoot and Elijah,"
I said. "His name is Mr. Lewis Hope of Lincot."


CHAPTER V
We drove back to Lincot in the dark. Our start had been
delayed by Mackenzie, whom we found on the Embank-
ment waiting to report the end of his day's shadowing.
After leaving Newman Street he had followed Sir John
Baxter on foot to Marylebone, and had seen him leave
London for Lincot in the four-fifteen train. He had re-
turned to the Yard where he was joined by Rothmann's
attendant. The man with the ears had asked him to report
that Max had gone from Maud's flat to his own lodgings,
outside which a relief detective was now stationed.
I was heartily glad that the day's work seemed at last
to be ended. My early breakfast had made a hasty lunch
off sandwiches and water from a tap quite inadequate;
and now it looked as if I would miss my dinner. I had
been on my feet, with eyes and wits alert, for many hours.
I began to see the hardships of a real detective's life, and
to despise the arm-chair variety to which Clay belonged.
For I could not but feel that my success with the book-
makers showed I had a natural instinct for the work.
The drive took two hours, and my fears about dinner
were realised. Freeman laid us two places at one end of
the big dining table, and in silence we made the best of a
cold sirloin and a plum tart. When we had progressed to
an excellent Stilton, we were joined by our arm-chair
colleague.
161 •
r


162 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
The term evening-dress can apparently be stretched by
the artistic mind to cover a soft shirt and a brown velvet
coat; I could only be thankful that it seemed to stop short
of an ulster.
Clay's first words were no better chosen than his ward-
robe.
"What a lot you fellows eat!" he exclaimed.
This was really too much. Without waiting to finish
my cheese I gave him an outline of all we had done that
day in London. He showed an interest in the secret of
the betting telegrams which flattered me, until I found
that it was purely egotistic.
"So it was Hope who sent them," he mused. "That
is the trail I have been following."
He had paid, he told us, a second visit to the girl at
the post office. By returning the bundle of telegrams
which, he declared improbably, were lying in a ditch,
he had secured her attention. He completed his conquest
by suggesting an eight-letter synonym for "whale."
In return he had been allowed to examine such telegrams
as had not, in the course of routine, been sent to head-
quarters. Among them he found three signed with the
code names that Heppel and I had been investigating.
The filly that had been backed six weeks ago was called
Light Lady.
"So Hope is in the habit of betting," I commented.
"Then I came back," continued the painter, "and had
tea with Delia."
I could not help thinking he had spent his day pleas-
antly enough. He must have guessed my thought.
"Even at tea I stuck to the trail," he declared. "We


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163
ran through the neighbours who live within a two-mile
radius. There are only three whose teeth are not genuine,
and one of them, Lady Bansmuir, is ninety-five. I don't
suppose she would chew cigars."
I sympathised with Heppel when he interrupted the
artist's chatter.
"I must see Sir John," he announced, and brushed
the biscuit crumbs off his waistcoat. "Do you know where
he is?"
Hearing from the artist that the rest of the party was
in the drawing-room, in spite of my protest that we
had done enough for one day, Heppel got up from the
table.
As he opened the door, the notes of a piano met our
ears. Some one was playing Chopin and playing him
divinely. We crossed the hall in silence and paused on the
threshold of the drawing-room. The piano stood in an
arched alcove at the far end of the great salon that the
Adam brothers had decorated. The light of a single lamp
wuminated the rippling hands of the performer, and left
the sea-green walls and the gilt line round panel and
capital a suggestion rather than a certainty.
We made no noise entering. With her eyes shut, the
better to see the beauty Chopin had translated into
sound, Delia Eyre played on. Nor had Sir John heard us.
He sat with his back turned. In the shadow his body
sprawling on an Empire settee seemed monstrous. From
the angle of his head, I guessed that he was staring hun-
grily at Delia's beautiful sightless face.
She was playing one of the Nocturnes and the melody
drooped as if too charged with sentiment for the air of


164
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
the quiet room to support. The notes died away. Silence
reigned for a full minute before she slipped into the 24th
Prelude. The thudding guns of Warsaw sounded in that
fatal house like the knocking of destiny. They drummed
on my nerves till I felt I could bear no more.
That moment Heppel chose to clear his throat. Delia
broke off with a discord and a little cry of alarm. Her
lover looked round at us with a frown on his dark, hand-
some face.
Heppel was profuse in his apologies for the interruption.
He would only keep Sir John ten minutes.
"Won't to-morrow do?" asked the young man im-
patiently.
"The inquest is to-morrow," was the reply, "and I
must get one or two points clear before that."
Sir John rose unwillingly, remarking that if we went to
the library we need not disturb Delia at the piano.
On our way through the ante-room, Clay caught sight
of the Corona typewriter that stood on its little table
by the fireplace.
"That's what I was looking for," he said. "Can you
work these things, Dale?"
I helped him insert a sheet of paper and, laboriously
picking the key he wanted with one finger, he typed a
letter of three lines. Seeing that he no longer needed me,
I passed to the library, where Sir John and Heppel were
sitting on the leather sofa.
"I must warn you, sir," the detective was saying,that
this line may draw unpleasant comment from the jury."
"I can't help that," was the steady reply.
"When I'm in the box, suppose I say what I know?"


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"What do you know?"
"Where you went to-day!"
Sir John stared.
"Don't you think you had better tell me?" persisted
Heppel.
Still the young man sat silent.
"Are you still sure you know nothing about the letters
on blue paper?" asked the detective again.
The baronet shrugged his shoulders.
"Although you spent the afternoon with the woman
who wrote them?" ventured Heppel.
Sir John shifted in his seat. "You seem to know every-
thing. Why ask me?" he protested.
"I don't know what was in the letters," confessed
Heppel. "And you can tell me."
"Perhaps this will remind you, Baxter," said the
artist's voice from the door. "One of Maud's letters con-
tained an odd postscript. It began with the words 'Dear
Sir,' and ended 'Meet me.'"
The young giant hesitated, and Heppel pressed home
the advantage with a piece of bluff. "Mr. Hope stated
that your uncle, when he consulted him about the post-
script, said that you had already seen it."
"Yes, I saw it," admitted Sir John, "but Hope was
not quite right about the words. It began"—he spelt
out the syllables—"'DRSIR' and ended 'EETME.' I
remember that because it so nearly made sense. The rest
was rubbish."
"How many words of rubbish?" asked Clay.
"Five. Seven words in all."
"How many letters in each word?"


166 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"I didn't notice; they were all about the same length;
quite short."
"No doubt a cipher," said Heppel. "Seven five-letter
groups. We haven't got enough to work on."
"I'm not sure," said the artist. "I used to take an
interest in dphers." He sat with his beard in his hand.
"I'd call your attention to the number seven," he said.
Heppel looked puzzled. "You're not thinking of the
kid that passed the sob-stuff on the poet?" he asked, and
without waiting for a reply turned to the baronet. "Per-
haps you'd tell me what was in the rest of the letter?"
"I'm afraid I can't," was the dogged reply.
The detective shrugged his shoulders.
"You'll excuse me saying that you're not making
things easy for the police—or safe for yourself," he said.
The man he warned did not answer; he may have felt
that he had been caught off his guard and was deter-
mined to find refuge in silence. Without further speech
he left the room.
I glanced at the artist to see what he thought of his
friend's attitude. But he was examining the fly-leaf of a
volume he had drawn from his pocket. It looked like a
thin-paper edition of a classical author. Turning the book
upside down, he laid it on the writing-table. With paper
and pen he began a careful copy of some inscription.
There seemed to be no help from that quarter.
"What will happen to-morrow," I asked Heppel, "at
the inquest?"
He did not answer at once.
"You don't think they'll bring in a verdict of murder
against Sir John?" I asked anxiously.


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167
"We won't give them the chance—not yet," was the
grim reply. He went on to explain that, when the body
had been identified and medical evidence of the cause of
death had been given, the police would apply for an
adjournment.
"My case is not complete," he added.
"But you don't seriously think Sir John murdered
his uncle!" I exclaimed.
The detective avoided a direct answer.
"When I start an investigation," he said, "I suspect
every one who, by the laws of time and space, could
possibly be guilty. As the case develops and facts pile
up, some of these potential suspects disappear from my
list. As the circle narrows, suspicion concentrates closer
on one or two persons. The last stage is reached, when
I am sure that only one man could have committed the
crime. I have not yet reached the final stage."
"But Sir John," I interposed, "is still in your ever-
contracting ring?"
"How can he be otherwise?" asked Heppel gravely.
"He had the opportunity, the motive, the physique.
For what it's worth he is, or was, left-handed. He quar-
relled with his uncle half an hour before his death. He has
no alibi, and he refuses all information."
"There may be good reasons for his silence," I sug-
gested.
"He burnt the letters that seem to have been con-
nected with the crime," continued the detective with a
shrug of his shoulders; "and he is in touch with the
woman who probably wrote them—a woman of the crook
class, and an associate of crooks." The detective paused


168
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
ominously and concluded. "You must add to this that
his finger-prints were found in the room with the body."
"The finger-prints," said Clay, without looking up
from his drawing, "are about the only thing in his
favour."
"You like your joke, Mr. Clay."
"You're easily amused, Superintendent Heppel. But
when you've finished laughing, perhaps you will explain
to me why Baxter, if it was he who killed the old man,
took off the glove he had worn to hold the bayonet, when
he wanted to pick up the looking-glass."
The detective did not reply at once.
"Murderers do silly things," was all the explanation
he could offer.
"But surely," I put in, "there are other people whose
actions are suspicious. You yourself said that Freeman's
story needed checking."
"I've checked it," answered Heppel. "Freeman is a
non-starter."
Not only had the butler worked for Sir Arthur for
thirty years and bore an excellent character, but inter-
rogation of the other servants proved that he had taken
the letter to the post himself on foot. During the ten
minutes of the critical period'that he was invisible in the
pantry, the maids had heard his voice raised in song.
"And," added Heppel, "according to Gertrude Wil-
liams, once you've heard Mr. Freeman sing, you can't
mistake it."
"Well, what about Lewis Hope?" I asked. "He has no
alibi. The day after the murder he laid the. exact sum that
Sir Arthur drew on a horse"


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"Talking of Lewis Hope," said Clay, and got up from
the writing-table, "do you think that will do?"
He handed me the volume he had been studying, open
at the fly-leaf. I saw the book belonged to the secretary.
Before I could ask Clay what "would do," he had given
me a sheet of notepaper.
On it was typed a request to the manager of a bank
for a pass-book to be made up and despatched. The letter
was signed "Lewis Hope."
"The right way to forge a signature," said Clay calmly,
"is to turn your specimen upside down and copy it as
you would a pattern."
"But it's perfect!" I exclaimed.
"I told you a painter makes the best detective," an-
swered Clay modestly. "He also makes the best forger."
"But the pass-book will go to Hope," I objected.
"Not if I'm in the hall when the post comes," was the
unprincipled reply.


CHAPTER VI
Prom a late breakfast which I thought my labours of the
previous day had earned, I stepped through the open
window on to the terrace.
The rest of the household, with the exception of Delia,
whose presence at this preliminary hearing the police
had excused, were attending the inquest in the village
hall. Since Heppel had told me that only formal evidence
would be taken, I decided to spend the morning with a
pipe in the garden.
Seated on a wooden bench, shutting out of my mind
the tragic and mysterious happenings of the week, I was
enjoying the late song of a single thrush and the beauty
of the woods that autumn had gilded, when I heard light
steps behind me.
I turned and met the wide, blue eyes of Delia Eyre. I
thought she had been crying. Determined to cheer her
up, I talked naturally of indifferent things—the colour
of the woods, a cock pheasant that flew across the glade
that led to the belvedere. She interrupted me in the mid-
dle, of a sentence.
"Mr. Dale," she whispered, "I'm frightened!"
I laughed and asked what of. She looked behind her.
"Of the superintendent," she said.
Although so mild a man should not excite fear, I
170


172
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
I asked her where it had run.
"One end came out in the cellars," she said; "the
other in the hall. But how?"
"There may have been a hidden door into the library
which the murderer reached from the cellars."
"But it's all been destroyed!"
Remembering Heppel's maxim that a detective must
leave no inch of the ground uncovered, I begged her to
take me to the basement.
Five minutes later we stood, candle in hand, in a low
vaulted chamber. The dry scurry of rats made my com-
panion's candle throw great splashes of grease on the
ground but her loyalty to her lover mastered her fear.
I looked around me. The roof and walls had been white-
washed and it was not difficult to see.
"That's where the entrance was," said Delia, and led
me to a corner of the cellar where wood for the fires of
the house had been stacked. It was still possible to see
the outline of an arched doorway, that had, as Delia
declared, been bricked up for many years.
Unwilling to be convinced, I knocked on the wall
tapping its whole surface without, however, detecting any
sound of hollowness. Undeterred, I picked up a hatchet
that lay by the wood and scratched away the mortar.
With much labour and at the cost of a torn finger. I got
a brick out; but behind the opening I found a solid wall
of rubble. Here there was no access to the passage. The
discovery seemed to knock the bottom out of my theory,
and I was tempted to give up the search. Then I remem-
bered Mrs. de Manca's five minutes in the hall while
Delia was typing. Heppel had said the time was too short


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173
for her to reach the library through the locked and shut-
tered dining-room. But what if the secret passage con-
nected hall and library?
I ran up the cellar steps and along the kitchen passage
into the hall. But another disappointment awaited me.
Delia took me to the south-west corner of the room
and pointed to the wall that faced the front door.
"That's where the entry was," she said, and made a
little face.
At some time the oak panelling had been stripped from
the hall and the stone walls of the oldest part of the house
were bare. The line of an archway again was faintly
visible. With my clenched hand I beat on the wall where
the secret door had been. It was as solid as the masons
of our fathers' time could make it.
Delia watched my efforts in silence. At length I de-
sisted.
"The passage must have run between the dining-room
and the library," I said. "Has it been filled up?"
"No, they laid it open and made cupboards in the
dining-room."
I swore internally. If the girl had told me at first, it
would have saved me hurting my hands. Still, having
done so much, I had better look into the dining-room. I
opened the door.
"They're just ordinary cupboards," she said.
She proved to be right.
A couple of feet separated the panelling of the library
from the panelling of the dining room. In that space a
secret passage may once have run, but many years ago
it had been converted into three deep cupboards. They


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solicitor." Luncheon, she added, would be ready in ten
minutes, and she must wash off the traces of our morning's
work.
After the exchange of civilities, the lawyer told me he
had come from London to attend the inquest and the
funeral. With the authorities' consent the latter would be
held that afternoon to avoid the publicity inevitable in a
case of murder. There had been, for instance, a crowd
of sensation-seekers at the inquest.
I asked if their appetities had been gratified.
"Hardly," was the answer. "Only three witnesses were
called. The first was Sir John, who identified the body
after the jury had viewed it. I am sorry to say that there
was some sort of a demonstration when he went into the
box. The ignorant people about here seem to have got it
into their heads"
Reflecting that it was not only the ignorant, I asked
what form the demonstration had taken.
"Oh, nothing very much. Some whispering, and some-
one at the back of the room said'that's the chap as did it.'
The coroner silenced them at once."
"Did he ask Sir John any questions?"
"None, except as to identity. Then Dr. Martin was
called and the police surgeon. They testified the cause of
death. That will allow us to hold the funeral and to pro-
ceed with the will. I have it in my pocket."
I inquired whether Heppel had said anything.
"Not a word; and his friend with the red beard was
drawing on the backs of envelopes throughout the pro-
ceedings."
I glanced at Clay, whose interest in the case I felt was


176
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
waning. He was talking to Delia in the doorway, asking
questions, no doubt about our fiasco of the secret passage.
I wondered what Sir John thought of the admiration
which the artist, whose morals were not likely to be
superior to those of his profession, did not trouble to
hide.
When at last he let her go, Clay turned to the detec-
tive and touched his arm.
"It was not a bad thing," he said, "that Dale stayed
all morning with Delia, to give his imitation of the most
imbecile policeman of fiction."
I opened my mouth to protest, but the insufferable
painter proceeded.
"I don't think she ought to be left alone." He spoke
slowly, and, contrary to his habit, gravely.
"Do you mean she is in danger!" I cried.
"I don't mean anything yet," he replied, sucking his
wild moustache into his mouth. "I haven't quite solved
the cipher. But I don't want anything to happen."


CHAPTER VII
Darkness found me seated in front of the billiard-room
fire. The electric light was unlit, and a faint sound of
whistling indicated where Heppel sat cleaning his pipe
with a feather. Clay on the window seat, everlastingly
scribbling on the back of a letter, was silhouetted against
the last light of the sunset, which dyed his beard redder
than the brush of any fox.
Sir John, I knew, was closeted with the solicitor; Delia
had gone upstairs to lie down after the emotions of the
funeral; Mrs. de Manca and Hope had left the church-
yard together and, so far as I knew, had not returned to
the house. If we could explain the bond that seemed to
unite the secretary and the widow of the Portuguese
financier, might we not, I wondered, solve at one blow
the mysteries of the betting telegrams, the rose garden
and the enlarged photograph—the photograph that led
us straight to Maud Johnstone and the Russian agitator?
It was true that Clay in a desultory manner was fol-
lowing the clue of the six hundred pound bet, but Heppel's
more practical and disciplined brain seemed devoted to
piling up a mass of circumstantial evidence against a man
I felt in my bones to be innocent.
The detective blew through the stem of his pipe and
spoke. His words fitted my thoughts.
177


178
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"This will," he said, "is rather unfortunate for Sir
John."
I said that I understood he was the principal bene-
ficiary.
"Exactly," was the reply. "Nobody gains except Sir
John. Mrs. de Manca and Freeman receive small legacies,
but less than they would have got had the deceased not
died. Miss Eyre, too, appears to lose."
"How's that?" I asked.
"She used to get an allowance of £700 a year. That
will stop. And a reversion of the property of a man of her
own age may never benefit her."
I said that I did not doubt that Miss Eyre and Sir John
would marry before long.
"That may depend on the jury," said Heppel.
The door opened, admitting a triangle of light.
"Mr. Wolland to see Superintendent Heppel," came
Freeman's voice.
"Bother!" exclaimed the detective with his usual
moderation, and added that the visit was his own fault
for telling the journalist to come back after the inquest.
Where was the man?
"I showed Mr. Wolland into the ante-room," replied
the butler.
When the detective had shut the door, and Freeman
had been sent for the inevitable brandy, Lucien Clay got
up and turned on the lights.
"I suppose you don't know the first thing about
ciphers," he said.
I replied quietly that I had never studied the subject.
"I have," said Clay, and fell into a silence before he


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added, "it might clear my own mind if I explained this
system to you in words of one syllable."
"But you've only got a bit of the message," I objected.
"That's the amusing part," was the reply; "we've got
the key-word, without the text."
"How do you mean 'we've got the key-word?'" I
asked.
"Good God!" said the artist rudely. "Do you mean to
say you didn't see that?"
I did not answer.
"Did you seriously suppose," he continued, "that the
emissary of a secret society would be half-witted enough
to stick a warning notice in a book where it might never
be seen?"
I pointed out that it was seen.
"Only because I was there," he boasted. "And didn't
it ever occur to you to connect the words on one bit of
blue paper with the word on another?"
I said I did not see why I should.
"Did you never wonder why some one should take
the trouble to steal a volume of old plays?"
I confessed that had puzzled me.
"Can't you see, you poor boob," shouted the artist,
"that the man who stole the book thought the bit of
blue paper with AVENGED written on it was still in
the book? And he stole it because AVENGED was the key
to the cipher message. And he didn't know the text had
been burnt."
I wished the painter would sit down like a reasonable
being instead of pacing the room like something in a cage.
But I knew it was hopeless to protest.


180 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"How did the paper get into the book?" I asked.
"We're not concerned with that. I'm trying to show
you why I know AVENGED was a key-word and not a
Tom-fool warning."
I said I was not convinced.
"I'd rather be a missionary preaching the gospel to a
deaf idolater who had just eaten his twenty-third con-
cubine. With all his faults he'd take less convincing than
you. Don't you see there are seven letters in the word
AVENGED, and seven words in the cipher?"
I did not grasp the connection, but I felt it unwise to
offer any further objections.
"Well?" I said encouragingly.
"When you cipher a message, as distinct from coding
it, you may shuffle the letters which compose its words,
or re-arrange its words, or both. Alternatively you may
substitute other words and letters. The key-word is the
rule by which you and your correspondent can recover
the original order. A code is a different thing"
"Is this a cipher?"
"Obviously."
"Then never mind about codes."
The door opened and Freeman appeared with the de-
canter. For a period codes and ciphers were forgotten,
but when his considerable thirst was quenched, Clay
came back to them.
"There are only a limited number of ciphers in the
world," he said; "and the class where the total of words
in the text corresponds to total of letters in the key-
word is still more limited. I tried all that I knew of until


THE RUN
181
I found one that fitted. I'll show it to you. It was origin-
ally a commercial cipher in use on the Danube."
He reached for a sheet of paper and began to write on
the billiard table.
I looked over his shoulder; he was printing the word
AVENGED, with a space left between each letter.
"The letters of that word," he said, handing me the
paper, "give the order in which the groups of the DRSIR
—EETME message must be arranged to bring it back
to its original form in clear English."
I said I did not follow.
"A," he said, "as even you will agree, is the first letter
of the alphabet; therefore the group in the cipher that
corresponds to the A of AVENGED comes first when
you re-arrange the message. D is the next letter, in the
order of the alphabet, that occurs in the key-word; so
the D group comes next. E is the third; so the first E
group is the third word and the later group the fourth.
G is the fifth, N the sixth and V the last."
As he spoke he wrote each numeral over the appro-
priate letter of the word he had printed.
17 3 6542
AVENGED
"The next thing," he continued, "is to build a sort of
cage with a column for each of the seven letters."
He drew a pattern like a framework of a children's
cross-word puzzle.
"Now suppose we want to send a bit of secret informa-


l82
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
tion in this cipher. Something we want no one to know.
'Alfred Dale has a corpse in his kitchen,' for example."
I protested feebly, while the artist wrote the phrase
across the pattern:—
i 7 3 6 542
AVENGED
A
1
f
r
e
d
D
a
1
e
h
a
s
a
c
0
r
P
s
e
i
n
h
i
s
k
i
t
c
h
e
n
r
"There are three blank spaces at the end," he said.
"To make the groups the same length and to give nothing
away, we fill in with three letters chosen at random. Say
a, t, and L" He wrote the letters as he spoke in the blank
spaces.
"The next move," Clay proceeded; "is to copy out the
message on a fresh bit of paper."
He took a half sheet and started to write.
"You write down each column of the figure, reading
it from top to bottom. Each column makes a separate
group, and the groups are arranged in the order prescribed
by the key-word. I've shown you that already. The A
group first, then the D group and so on."


184 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
come to re-arrange the text into clear English, according
to the order of the key-word, they fill two consecutive
columns."
As he spoke he drew a fresh frame and, starting at the
top, he wrote downwards the two words DRSIR and
EETME, placing them in its first and second columns, to
suit, as he had pointed out, the order of the letters A and
V in the word AVENGED.
1 7 3 6 S 4 2
A V E N G E D
D
e
r
e
—
s
t
i
m
r
e
I remarked that the five blank columns were very
tantalising.
"Perhaps it would be easier for you," he replied, "if
we set out the message like an ordinary bit of writing,
leaving blanks for the missing letters."
He took his pencil and wrote:—
DE RE ST IM RE
I stared at the paper. All Clay's ingenuity did not seem
to have advanced us much.


THE RUN
"Why," said the artist after a pause. "Even Heppel
could have filled in the first two words!"
His pencil was busy, and again I looked over his shoul-
der. To my anxiety I read:—
DELIA EYRE ST IM RE
"Good heavens!" I cried. "I'm not surprised you
think that Delia is in danger. She ought to be sent away
to a safe place."
Clay considered my suggestion.
"Perhaps she ought," she said, "but we haven't got
much to go on. So far I've failed to fill up the other gaps,
although I've tried every combination I could think of.
We must wait for fresh data."
Again I felt the chill I had experienced in the dead
man's bedroom. The artist so inhumanly looked at men
and women, living and dead, as symbols in a problem
of algebra. But before I could expostulate, Heppel had
returned.
"Well," said Clay, crumpling up the paper in his hand,
"have you told the world what a mess the police is
making?"
"I'm not telling any reporter very much," was the
reply, "and Wolland least of all."
"But," I put in, "I thought you said he was harmless.
Have you heard from Paris?"
"Yes," said Heppel. "The hotel people say he was
there from Saturday till Tuesday."
"Then he could have nothing to do with the murder!"
"I didn't say he had. But there are one or two things
about Mr. Wolland I don't understand."


186 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
I asked him to explain.
"Last time Wolland came," he replied, "we caught him
peeping in at the library window. When we came back
from hunting him, he was in the library."
I agreed that that was so.
"This visit," went on the detective, "Freeman showed
him into the ante-room. But when I got there I found
him in the library."
"The instinct of the reporter for the scene of a crime,"
I commented.
"That might be the explanation," said Heppel slowly,
"if he was a reporter."
"Not a reporter!" I echoed.
"Apparently not," said the detective gently."Macken-
zie has had an answer to his cable. The syndicate Wolland
said he represented have never heard of him."


CHAPTER VIII
Luncheon on Satuday was the most cheerful meal I had
eaten at Lincot. Conversation was general and free.
Even our host contributed his share. Perhaps the absence
of the superintendent, who had taken an early train to
London, had helped to release our tongues. I kept my
ears open for any unguarded remark that might reveal
a secret current of thought.
By the time Freeman brought coffee, the talk had
reached the subject of national attitudes to women. _
"Italians," declared Mrs. de Manca, and I could not
help wondering how she knew, "make the best lovers and
Jews the best husbands."
"That is what you would expect," said Clay. "For it is
a biological truth that all rapacious animals, including
the vultures, are monogamous."
"I always felt," said Delia, "that vultures must have
some saving quality. They make me shut my eyes when
I pass their cages at the Zoo."
"Why is monogamy supposed to be a virtue?" asked
Clay. "Some very respectable men had more than one
wife at one time. Abraham, Mahomet, Charlemagne"
"Religious leaders," said Hope, "are given that way.
I have just read of an abbot elect of St. Augustine's at
Canterbury. In the year 1171 he had seventy children in
a single village."
187


188
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"The clergy have always been prolific," remarked Sir
John, putting sugar into his coffee.
"Not that they can compete with the animal king-
dom," resumed the secretary. "Monsieur Balbiani ob-
served a paramoecium reproduce itself 1,384,116 times
in forty-two days."
"The patience of Monsieur Balbiani," said Clay peel-
ing an apple, "was only equalled by the enthusiasm of
the paramoecium."
"A family of paramoeciums would be a menace to the
peace of Europe," I ventured.
"Some German newspapers were advocating polygamy
after the war," said Sir John; "and really our system of
war marriages and armistice divorces came to the same
thing."
"We are only now recovering," I remarked, "from
war-time morals."
"It wasn't the morals I minded so much," answered
Mrs. de Manca, "as the manners. Some of the young
"It was the fault of the girls," I said, "for standing
it."
"I hate to see the way some women pet headwaiters
and chefs d'ofchestre and dress-designers," said Sir John.
"No wonder they are above themselves."
"I think we hear rather too much about the stage,"
put in Delia. "I'm not really interested in what musical
comedy stars eat for breakfast."
"Actors," said Hope, "were denied Christian burial
by canon law; and by an act of 1572 all bearwards and
common players wandering, without licence were subject


THE RUN
189
to be grievously whipped, and burned through the gristle
of the right ear."
"Your generation too," I turned to Delia, "does not
care for the play."
"There's so much dancing," she replied.
"And you don't care for horses," I persisted; "it's all
motor cars."
"Talking of horses," said Clay. "I've got a tip for next
year's Derby."
"Do tell us!" cried Sophie de Manca.
"A horse called Black Mint," Clay announced.
I could not help glancing at Hope. He did not seem
interested.
"I've never been to the Derby," said Delia.
"But surely," protested Sir John, after a pause, "Black
Mint is a three-year-old now."
"That was the horse they told me," persisted Clay.
"Well, I'll look out for him," declared Sophie de
Manca, pushing her chair back from the table.
"I'd like to finish roughing-in before the light changes,"
said the painter to Delia.
All morning he had been busy on a pastel-drawing of
the girl as she stood on the terrace steps. How far love of
art, anxiety for her safety, or pleasure in her company
inspired his activity, I could not guess.
I was following the others out of the room, when Sir
John touched my arm.
"I'd like a word with you," he said, and waved me to
one of the arm-chairs by the fire. We waited in silence
until Freeman had cleared the table and shut the door.
"Delia told me what you said," he began, and ex-


IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
pressed more gratitude to me than I had earned. "Of
course," he went on, "I felt the superintendent was sus-
picious, but I didn't know"
He subsided into silence, picking nervously at the
padded arm of his chair. I tried to suggest steps by which
he might dispel the suspicion. He shook his head gloomily.
"If anything should happen to me," he murmured, "if
they—arrest me, I know you'll look after Delia." He
looked at me anxiously.
"That's another reason why you should do all you
can to avoid arrest," I said. "I think Miss Delia needs
your protection."
He asked me what I meant. I hesitated. The cipher
was not my secret. At the same time it was Baxter who
had supplied Clay with the two groups that had made
his partial solution possible. As Delia's lover he was her
natural protector. I told him all I knew.
He listened to my story with less alarm than I had
expected, and seemed inclined to think that the rest of
the message might be harmless. He agreed, however, that
the girl ought not to be left without protection. As we
spoke of her, her shadow fell on the window. Sir John
leapt up and opened it.
"Is Mr. Clay in love?" Delia asked me, putting a foot
delicately encased in lizard skin on the sill.
"You ought to know, Miss Delia!" was my reply.
The girl opened her curved lips and laughed.
"As soon as he saw the postman's hat, he dropped his
pastels and ran," and she mimicked the painter's haste.
I thought I knew an interest other than sentimental
that drew him to the post bag.


THE RUN
191
"I shan't sit, or rather stand, any more to-day," Delia
pouted. "I've had enough. Take me for a drive, John."
Without much warmth, she invited me to come. But
fearing from the scowl on the baronet's face that I would
be tipped out at the first corner, I refused.
I had not moved from my arm-chair when Clay came
looking for his sitter.
"Well," I said, "did they send it?"
Instead of answering, the artist drew a bulky packet
from his coat.
"What do you expect to discover?" I asked.
He slit the envelope, and a fat red pass-book fell out.
For the next half-hour he pored over the book, only stop-
ping to scribble figures on a sheet of paper. At last he
returned it to his pocket. I made interrogative sounds.
"Just what I expected," he said, crossing one thin
leg over the other.
"Onagra won at four to one," I mentioned. "There
should bean entry of two thousand four hundred
pounds."
"No, there shouldn't," snapped Clay. "Bookie's ac-
counts don't close till Friday night. I might have found a
letter with a cheque for that amount if I'd thought it
safe to pinch Hope's mail this morning."
"What about Light Lady?" I asked, remembering the
earlier bet.
"She's there. Nine hundred quid paid in the Monday
after the wire was sent. Another horse that won. That's
the odd thing about Hope's bets."
"What's odd?" I asked.
"He doesn't bet often. I can only spot six bets in the


192
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
last eighteen months. But when he does he usually wins.
Four of the six won."
"He must know a lot about racing," I suggested.
"If he does, he hides it well. He heard me tip a four-
year old to win the Derby without turning a hair."
I stated that in my opinion Mr. Lewis Hope was quite
clever enough to hide his feelings. Clay's long fingers
combed his beard.
"He asked me up into his room when you were in
London. I looked at his bookshelves. Not a form-book
or a Ruff's Guide to be seen."
I repeated that I thought he underrated the secretary.
"He doesn't go to race meetings. I found that out from
Freeman. He's never away Epson week or Goodwood
or Newmarket."
"Why did you say you found what you expected in the
pass-book?" I demanded.
"I'll tell you when Heppel comes back from London,"
said Lucien Clay; "I hate explaining obvious things more
than once."
But when Heppel came back, we had other things to
talk about. During the afternoon his homely secretary
rang up from Scotland Yard to ask us to walk down to
the station after dinner, and meet his train. The superin-
tendent, she said, had something urgent to tell us.
So when the detective jumped with his short thick legs
out of a third-class carriage and stood folding an evening
paper into a neat rectangle, I scanned his face anxiously
to see if the news he brought was good or bad.


THE RUN
193
He did not speak till we had left the station behind
us for the narrow path that led to Lincot through the
woods. The night was dark and we had to walk in single
file.
"I wanted to tell you quietly away from the others,"
said Heppel, stepping over a puddle. I was behind him
and found it hard to catch his words.
"Mr. Clay," he went on, "came here to watch Sir
John's case and I know what Mr. Dale's opinions are."
I held my breath and hoped that the words I feared
would not be spoken. Heppel cleared his throat.
He had spent the day, he told us, visiting the offices
of money-lenders. A certain person at Lincot was in debt
and the police knew the sort of money-lender he would
go to. Not that, as a class, they cared about discussing
their customers. But sometimes the police could bring a
little pressure to bear—financiers, as they like to call
themselves, prefer to stand well with Scotland Yard.
At his fifth visit Heppel struck oil. The Scotch philan-
thropist, as he must have been to judge by his name and
advertisements, admitted that during the past two years
he had obliged Sir John Baxter with certain advances.
Had any re-payments been made recently? Heppel had
asked.
That very morning, replied the clansman.
Was it possible to see the cheque?
No. For payment had been made in Bank of England
notes.
Heppel stopped in the middle of the path and wiped
his forehead. "The notes with which he paid the money-
lender," he said impressively, "bore the same numbers as


THE RUN
195
uncle? You may be able to prove that he had the oppor-
tunity; that he touched the dead man's drawer; that he
cashed his notes. Do you think a jury would convict on
that?"
I understood Heppel to say that you never knew what
a jury would do.
"But if you wait, as I ask you, Baxter may give you
just the evidence you need to hang him. Or I," he added
under his breath, "may show you the real murderer!"
"Suppose he bolts," began Heppel, half convinced,
and stopped dead. In the darkness I nearly fell over him.
"Look!" he whispered.
I saw a flicker of light, perhaps a couple of hundred
yards in front of us.
"It's only some one smoking in the woods," I remarked
"In the belvedere," said Heppel.
I nodded my head. In the daytime, from where we
stood, the plate glass front of the little temple would be
visible.
"Follow me," muttered the detective, pushing Clay
behind him. "If we try to look in from the front, we'll
show against the sky."
Five minutes later Heppel was bending his ear to the
crack between the double doors. It seemed a long time
before he pulled me behind a tree on the edge of the glade.
"There are two people there," he whispered.
I asked what they were saying.
"I couldn't hear the words."
I suggested that there was nothing to prevent us going
in.
"They've locked the door."


PART III
THE KILL


202
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
know. With her lavender, she had been moving between
the flower-room and the hall.
"And Sir John?" asked Heppel.
He had gone to the lodge after dinner. The keeper's
child was ill, said Delia, on her way to fetch another
armful.
"I wish it hadn't been so dark," mused Heppel when
she had left us. "I'd like to be sure who threw this."
He unbuttoned his coat and revealed the wicked-
looking weapon he had hidden from the girl. The round
wooden handle felt as if it was weighted with lead. The
long, thin blade was as sharp as grindstone could make it.
"If that had gone where it was aimed," said Heppel
to Clay, "into your throat, we'd be choosing now between
granite and marble."
He balanced the weapon in the palm of his hand.
"It's a proper throwing-knife made for the job. We
don't see many in this country."
In the drawing-room the foxtrot drawled into a waltz.
Heppel beat time with his foot. "Let me see," he said
thoughtfully. "Didn't you say Sir John had been in
Canada and the Argentine?"
"Don't they have these knives in the States?" I asked.
"Wolland had just left the belvedere."
The detective nodded.
"That's quite possible," he said. "I'll put a man on the
hotel in Bloomsbury. But what has Wolland got against
Mr. Clay?"
Hurriedly, as Delia's high heels were heard on the stone
floor of the kitchen passage, he slipped the knife under a
pile of newspapers.


THE KILL
203
"There's a car coming up the drive," said the girl,
appearing in the doorway with a bundle of lavender that
scented the whole hall. "I saw its lights from the flower-
room."
A bell rang shrilly. My nerves must have been on
edge for I started. What fresh move did that ring
announce? Was Wolland back with the members of his
gang?
Some such thought may have occurred to Heppel. He
turned to Delia, and taking the lavender out of her arms
asked her to wait upstairs. She obeyed him. The piano in
the drawing-room stopped in the middle of a phrase and
we stood in silence, our nostrils full of the incongruous
scent of the lavender. Again the bell rang.
Signing to us to wait, Heppel stepped into the lobby.
I heard the rattle of the lock. A gust of cold air filled the
room. Then a voice spoke. I could not catch the words;
they did not sound English. But Heppel answered and his
tone was cordial.
A stranger advanced into the room. An exaggerated
moustache, iron-gray, perhaps from intensive culture,
swept up from lip to cheekbone. A flat, broad nose, that
seemed to contain no bone, dominated a full mouth and a
couple of chins.
"Who the hell?" said Clay softly as he stared at the
stranger.
A brown Homburg hat slanted over one bushy eyebrow.
A chocolate coloured overcoat hung over an arm whose
big white hand rested on a well cared-for stomach. Its
owner's jacket was gay with the unnecessary pockets and
belts that are dear to the heart of a French tailor. If I


206
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
added, Jim had never worked in this country. That, with
his cleverness at disguise, explained why he had not been
recognised.
"You mean he sucked you in," said Clay brutally.
Heppel retorted that the American police had been no
more successful with Jim. They had never secured a con-
viction.
"And yet he's one of the most dangerous men in
America!" I exclaimed.
"He strike as quietly and as quickly as a snake," put
in the Frenchman, giving an imitation of a very corpulent
cobra.
"He's a killer," said Heppel. "He kills while the ordi-
nary murderer is making up his mind."
He quoted the death of Bartoldi, the film actor, who
imprudently won fifty thousand dollars from Jim at
Hollywood.
"That was at ten o'clock," he said. "By ten-thirty
the police were photographing the corpse and Jim had
established an alibi in Los Angeles."
"So it was Wolland who killed Sir Arthur!" I ex-
claimed.
Heppel scratched his thin hair.
"It couldn't have been," he stated, and turned to
Boulestin. "You say your man had him under observa-
tion till Tuesday?"
The Frenchman spread his hands with an affirmative
gesture.
"It was not difficult," he declared. "Jim has—how do
you say?—'pick a bird.'"
Heppel stared for a minute.


208
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"All the ladies like Monsieur Jim," meditated Boule-
stin.
"He seems to fascinate them," confirmed Heppel.
"Bilderman's murder, for instance. Every one was sure
Mrs. Bilderman"
But I was not listening to the details of that terrible
career. I was thinking of the diamond ring I had seen in
the light of Wolland's match. Was it credible that Sophie
de Manca had got mixed up with an American gun-man?
Did she know his dreadful trade or was she involved,
innocent, in his web?
"Why is Wolland known as Whistling Jim?" I asked
when the detective had done. "I've never heard him
whistle."
"But you heard something else whistle," he answered
grimly. "That is where he gets his name."
He scattered the pile of papers and showed Boulestin
the knife which had passed between my head and Clay's.
"That's the article," said the Frenchman. "That's
what he always uses."
He laid the deadly thing on his upturned palm, crooked
his fingers and showed me with a flick of the wrist how
the missile could be sent on its deadly errand.
"Could not a bayonet be thrown like that?" I sug-
gested.
It was Clay who replied.
"When the thrower was in Paris?"
I was about to answer, when Boulestin with a wave of
his large hand imposed silence.
"Ecoutez!" he whispered.
We stood silent, listening to the beat of a motor,


THE KILL
muffled by the thick walls of the old house. Dropping his
coat with a bound that showed an unexpected agility,
Monsieur Boulestin flung open the front door and disap-
peared into the darkness. The rest of us followed more
slowly.
In the half-circle of light that poured from the hall
through the open door on the gravel, we found the French-
man, his arms above his head, his fists clenched. A red-
tail light receded up the drive.
"Was that your car?" I asked the French detective,
who was calling in vain on his Maker.
"Not mine," said Boulestin, a little comforted. "It
belonged to Scotland Yard."
"And now," corrected Clay, "it belongs to Whistling
Jim."


CHAPTER II
Next morning we said good-bye to the Frenchman on
the steps of Scotland Yard. Sir John, who seemed to feel
no fear of detectives of whatsoever nationality, had per-
suaded him without much difficulty to spend the night at
Lincot.
M. Boulestin had struck up a warm friendship with
the secretary ("Hope, my old"), who proved to have
been educated in France and who spoke the language
faster than I could follow. We sat up late, listening to a
dramatic description of the underworld of Paris, which
crept about, it appeared, in terror of the name of Boule-
stin.
Nevertheless we were early at breakfast. Even the
painter put in an appearance, clad, although it was
Sunday, in his orange dressing-gown.
Heppel asked if he was not coming to London with us.
"What for?" said Clay, watching the visitor give proof
of his freedom from national prejudice in a second plate
of bacon and eggs.
"To round up Wolland," answered Heppel.
The artist stared moodily at a bit of ham in front of
him, and stated that he was not interested in American
crooks. His job was to find the murderer of Sir Arthur
Baxter.
210


212
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
and showed no signs of premeditated flight. A pair of
trousers were pressing under the mattress, a row of coats
swung on hangers in the cupboard.
Heppel ran his hands through their pockets. They were
empty. A light gray coat he lifted out, and held nearer the
window.
"There's a patch of oil on the lining of that pocket,"
he remarked, as he returned it to its peg.
Mackenzie held up a miniature oil-can that lay on the
writing-table by a portable typewriter.
"That may have leaked," he said, "it's empty."
The superintendent examined the table. There were
no letters or papers. A few books denoted the nationality
and reputed profession of their owner—a Saturday Eve-
ning Post, a volume of short stories by Irvin S. Cobb, a
Daily Mail Year Book, a Thesaurus and a Baedeker of
London.
"It's Jim's secret to sink himself in the personality
of the man he pretends to be," commented Heppel.
A fat bunch of keys that Mackenzie produced from his
pocket soon accounted for the lock of a cabin trunk.
It was half full of clothes.
"I wonder where he keeps his knives," said Heppel.
While Mackenzie was going through the contents of
the trunk, the superintendent's head had disappeared
into the lower part of the cupboard.
"Nothing but boots," came his voice rather muffled.
And then louder, "Hallo, here's an old friend!"
He emerged with something pink dangling from his
hand. He threw it across the room and it cartwheeled into


THE KILL
213
my arms. I had last seen that long-legged doll lolling on
Yellow Meg's table.
"Well," I said, disappointed, "that doesn't tell us
much. We knew Meg and Jim were friends. She's given
him her doll, that's all."
"Not quite," said Heppel. "Her doll had yellow hair."
I must have looked puzzled, for the detective pro-
ceeded to explain.
"It's only a straw," he declared, "but it may help to
make a brick."
There must be two almost identical dolls, no doubt
proceeding from one night-club, which Jim and Meg had
probably visited together on at least two occasions. If
we could find what shop sold the dolls to what club, we
would get a line on Jim's haunts. The clue sounded slight
to me, but Heppel turned to his assistant and gave him
his instructions.
"Get a trade directory," he said, "and visit all the
people who sell those things wholesale. Take London
first."
"To-day's Sunday, sir," suggested the young man re-
spectfully.
"I know. But most of that trade is in the hands of
Jews."
From Bloomsbury we drove to Newman Street. As we
turned into the Tottenham Court Road, I expressed a
doubt that had been troubling me.
"If Wolland was in Paris on the night of the murder,"
I said, "aren't we wasting our time?"
r


214
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"Wolland knows something," replied Heppel con-
fidently, "and we can pull him in over that knife."
A policeman held up his hand, and our taxi stopped
with a jerk.
"It's odd," said the detective, scratching his chin,
"how everything takes us back to Maud Johnstone—the
name Max Rothmann borrowed, the snapshot Mrs. de
Manca sent, the visit Sir John paid, the trip Wolland
took."
My first ring at Maud Johnstone's door was unan-
swered. So was my fifth.
"She's either out or foxing," said Heppel. "I think we'll
risk it."
He felt in the pocket of his blue serge suit and pro-
duced a roll of oilcloth. From it he selected a gimlet. In
two minutes he had bored a slanting hole through the
door three inches to the right of the Yale lock. Again he
rummaged in his portable tool chest and found a stiff
bit of wire.
After several failures, he hooked back the catch of the
lock and the door opened.
"A bit of putty will put that right," he remarked,
nodding at the work of the gimlet.
We tiptoed down the dark hall. The bedroom door
stood open and revealed a profusion of pink bows and
cheap lace. The Soul was Awakening on one wall, and the
Bay Mare was being Shod on another. The bed was not
made, and the floor was covered with tissue paper. In
the fender by the gas-fire lay on odd glove.
"Meg has a wonderful nose for a sinking ship," said
Heppel cheerfully. "I bet she's on the Riviera by now,


CHAPTER III
"The club," I said to Clay six hours later as we watched
the couples revolve, "lives up to its name. Most of the
ladies are!"
"Are what?" he asked.
"Dancing bare," I replied, "or nearly!"
The artist did not laugh. He had joined us for dinner
at the Farnesina, where less than a week before the three
of us had met for the first time.
When dinner was over we had remained sitting at our
table, Clay consuming burgundy and Heppel reading the
telephoned reports that he had picked up at the Yard.
They came from every police station in England but
their tenor did not vary. Whistling Jim had disappeared
and left no trace.
Tired of watching in silence the painter drinking glass
after glass of Beaune and the detective crumple telegram
after telegram, I asked Clay if anything had happened
at Lincot that day.
"I've found out which of them did it," he asserted
with a confidence that I suspected would evaporate with
the fumes of the wine.
"You'd better tell me," I urged; "you'll have forgotten
by to-morrow."
The artist refused. He had come up to London, he said,
to check his deductions. I must wait twenty-four hours.
218


THE KILL
219
"What about Lewis Hope," I asked, "and his bets?"
"That too we'll know to-morrow," was the evasive
reply. "I've found the man with the false teeth."
"Time for the Dancing Bear!" interrupted Heppel, as
he scattered the pieces of the last report.
We discussed our plan of campaign. Night-club porters,
said Heppel, had a nose for a policeman. We had better
split into two parties. He would stay and chat to Signora
Dona while Clay and I went on.
Ten minutes' walk and some steep stone steps took
the first detachment to a bright scarlet door. The artist
rapped on it with his knuckles.
A hatch opened and revealed the flattened features of
an elderly pugilist, who addressed us with so imperfect a
dentition that it was impossible to understand what he
said.
He must have seen our difficulty, for he began to hunt
for his "set." It was found in a glass of water and inserted
with a click. We were then able to understand that none
but members could be admitted.
I protested our suitability.
"I'll ask the boss," was the cautious reply.
The boss proved to be a lean Pole, with a taste for
jewellery. He was obliging enough to propose us for mem-
bership. So with the bruiser as seconder and an entrance
fee of ten shillings, etiquette was satisfied.
Through the smoke of Virginian cigarettes that drifted
in wreaths about the underground ballroom of the Danc-
ing Bear, I could see a dozen couples gyrating slowly in a
foxtrot. The men, in day dress, seemed to come from a
class that neither toils or spins; the women with bare


220
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
arms, legs, necks and armpits, from the class that toils
for them.
Round the room were arranged iron tables painted
yellow. Some of them were occupied by pairs of women.
At others, a man and a woman drank and laughed to-
gether. At a corner table a bald man with a wig a little
aslant steadily ate a sandwich with a knife and fork. He
munched without glancing at his companion, who smiled
vacantly at the ceiling and beat time to the music with
her lipstick.
A waiter with whiteish stains on his dress-trousers, and
a shiny collar to his tail-coat, dodged in and out of the
dancers, slapping down small tumblers half-full of bad
whisky, squirting a jet of soda-water from a syphon
tucked under his arm, pocketing half-crowns and offering
half-heartedly some coppers of change.
A piano stood in the middle of the room. The front
had been removed, laying bare its entrails, and a tuneless
rhythm was torn from it by a half-caste in his shirt sleeves.
His eyes were shut, a cigarette stuck to his upper lip and
waggled as his hands came down on each chord. A glass of
stout, half-emptied, stood ready for him on the top of
the instrument.
The syncopation was helped by a fat man with a chunk
of chewing gum in his cheek. He sat on the pianist's left
and banged indifferently on a slack drum.
For some minutes we stood in the doorway; then Clay
nodded in the direction of a thin brunette in an electric-
blue frock that had no visible means of support. She was
sitting by herself at one of the yellow tables.
"That's the girl for us!" remarked the painter.


224
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
Her hand could never have driven a blunt bayonet
through the body of a heavily built man!
I felt Clay's hand on my shoulder.
"Glady's says we can get drinkable brandy in the bar,"
he remarked, and rose to his feet.
"You aren't surely going yet?" protested the girl, and
Clay had to excuse himself with a half-promise to come
back.
"They don't seem to have let Heppel in," he com-
mented, as we made our way past the entrance and up a
narrow flight of wooden stairs.
The bar was a narrow room with walls of yellow pine,
shiny with cheap varnish. A counter laden with bottles
took up the end opposite the door. Several tables, covered
with cloths once white, now stained with the circular
marks of the week's glasses, occupied the centre of the
room. A red plush sofa ran along one wall.
At a table sat a familiar figure. Heppel had been less
easy to exclude than Clay had supposed. Opposite him,
with his back to us, was a man in a brown suit. Beside
him stood a tumbler of beer.
The detective gave no sign of recognition as we took
our place on the sofa by the wall. From our new position
I was able to see the face of his companion. It was Max
Rothmann!
"All the scum of London seems to come here," mur-
mured Clay, and called for brandy. When the barman
had left us I strained my ears to catch what the Russian
was saying.
As far as I could hear he was making a complaint
against the police.


THE KILL
225
"I do nothing and you arrest me," he grumbled. "You
find it is true what I say and you release me. But you set
a great policeman to follow me everywhere. It is not fair,
Mr. Heppel, not fair. We are the subjects of King George,
not of Tzar Nicholas."
I fancied I caught the echo of the street corner.
"Loyal subject of King George, aren't you, Max?"
grinned Heppel.
I could not hear the communist's reply.
"Why," went on Heppel, as he put down his glass,
"you aren't even naturalised!"
I turned to make a remark to Clay so that it should not
seem that we were listening. When I looked back at the
detective's table he was taking a printed paper out of his
pocket-book.
"That's the registration form, Max," he said. "You
have to write your name there. In capitals."
With his tongue pressed against his teeth Rothmann
bent over the paper. When he had finished, the detective
folded it and returned it to his pocket.
"Well, Max," he said, getting up, "we'll see what can
be done about that great policeman you object to so
much."
He nodded to the Russian and went out of the bar.
I heard his boots creaking down the wooden stairs.
Rothmann sat for some minutes picking his teeth with
a match. Then he too got up and loafed to the counter.
He swallowed a drink, and wiping his mouth on the back
of his hand, shambled out of the room.
"This sofa is too low to be comfortable," said Clay.
He picked up his glass and moved to the chair the


CHAPTER IV
At ten in the morning the Vauxhall Bridge Road is never
a lively spot. And when it is Monday and a fine mist is
rising from the river, there can be few more depressing.
"I have an uncomfortable feeling," said Clay, as our
tram clanged its way down the endless road, "that with
a late poet laureate we are spinning for ever down the
ringing grooves of change."
"You are a victim to uncomfortable feelings this
morning," I replied. "In Victoria Street you thought we
were being followed."
"From what I hear of Whistling Jim," said Clay, "his
failure outside the belvedere will only rouse him to fresh
endeavour."
"In the Vauxhall Bridge Road?" I asked.
"Swinburne died at Putney," was the reply. "Why
should not Lucien Clay perish at Vauxhall?"
I wondered what he really thought. An early conference
with Heppel had identified Rothmann with the writer of
the word AVENGED. Clay had volunteered to see him
at once, hinting that he had a way of making him talk.
I felt that it was indeed time that somebody spoke.
Here were four men. One of them a professional murderer,
one the respectable secretary of an eminent M.P., the
third a Bolshevist agitator, and the last a worthy country
227


THE KILL
231
gone a light purple. The cynical token, he told us, of
his deposal had inflamed his jealousy. He looked about
the room to see what hurt he could do. In the blotting
book he found a letter from Maud to Baxter, written but
unposted.
Now Wolland had a secret. Max knew it. On a scrap
of paper he scribbled a revelatory sentence, sat down and
coded it in a cipher he knew. At the end of the letter he
copied the seven words that resulted. He stuck up the
envelope and posted it to the baronet.
The guttural voice broke off and my ears were grateful.
The strip of light on the linoleum, I noticed, had reap-
peared.
"What was the point of ciphering the warning?" asked
Clay.
The Russian looked cunning. He laid a finger stained
with nicotine on his long nose. With Wolland's secret in
Sir Arthur's hand but unread, and the key-word to reveal
it in his own possession, could he not force the American
to leave his mistress alone?
"No," said Clay. "You hadn't the guts."
Rothmann's face fell. He rubbed his chin till I could
hear the bristles grate.
"Whistling Jim," he said, "is a nasty customer."
He had to admit that he had not plucked up courage
to try the effects of the threat before the couple left for
Paris.
"I do not know until I go to her flat on Monday," he
declared. "Then I see red. I break the furniture. I write
down the word and I take it to the country to Sir Baxter.
I walk from the station. I ring the bell"


232
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"Yes, and you wiped your feet on the mat!" said Clay
impatiently. "But what did you do with the word?"
"I give it to Sir Baxter."
"Where did he put it?"
"On the table. I show him how to use it. He is going to
undo the words when I have gone"
"Neither of you touched the books?"
The Russian looked puzzled and shook his head.
"Why did you call yourself Johnstone?" demanded
Clay.
The Russian hesitated.
"Perhaps Sir Baxter will not see me. But if he think I
come about the letters Maud write he say 'come in, old
chap/" he declared optimistically.
"Well, go on," ordered the painter.
Rothmann proceeded to tell us how he had left the
house by the library window and the terrace. The story
did not differ from the version he had given to the police.
Clay cut him short.
"I don't for a moment believe you've told me the
truth," he said unkindly. "But then you can't."
The unfortunate agitator began to protest.
"You know perfectly," went on the artist, "what Maud
Johnstone wrote. But you're afraid. Never mind; I'll
find out. In twenty-four hours I'll have the whole thing
clear."
With a contemptuous gesture he tossed the strip of
paper on the bed.
"Next time you see Whistling Jim," he said, with his
hand on the door, "you can tell him that he and his
friends may be sorry he can't throw a knife straight.


THE KILL
235
I could see the veins stand up on the young man's fore-
head. But he stuck out his jaw and did not speak.
The detective drew his chair a little closer.
"If," he said more gently, "you believe that by keeping
silence you can in some way protect the memory of your
uncle, I must warn you. From what Rothmann left un-
said, the police have no doubt that he and the woman
were engaged in blackmail. Only if we know the full truth,
can we take steps to save your uncle's reputation."
The young manconsidered l^ie superintendent's words.
At last he spoke.
"Perhaps I'd better tell you everything," he murmured
between his teeth.
"It is only fair to caution you," said Heppel, "that
what you say may be used in evidence against you."
"I'll risk that," said John.


CHAPTER V
"I had no idea," said Sir John Baxter, after a moment's
thought, "that anything was wrong, until last Monday
evening. It was true that my uncle had shown me a queer
jumble of nonsense at the end of a letter and had asked
me what I made of it, but he did not confide in me until
the last night of his life.
"When dinner was over he took me by the arm and
led me to the library. He wanted, he said, my advice as a
man of the world. This surprised me, since he was more
accustomed to give advice than to take it.
"He was looking, I thought, a tired, old man. He sat
down heavily in the chair behind the writing-table and
felt in his pocket for his keys. He unlocked the bottom
drawer and gave me a bundle of letters. They were writ-
ten on blue notepaper. 'Read those,' he said.
"I glanced quickly through them. They were all signed
'Maud Johnstone' and harped on something my uncle had
written her. Her husband, she alleged, had found the
letter and was going to divorce her. She implored my
uncle to save her.
"Six or seven letters were written in that vein. The
last, which had induced him to confide in me, was more
definite. It was dated the previous Saturday."
"Posted before she started for Paris," said Heppel in an
undertone.
236


238
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
now; it is easy to be brave when it is not your own reputa-
tion that is at stake."
"Had he really been involved with Maud Johnstone?"
asked Clay.
"I suppose so," said Sir John reluctantly. "He rather
avoided the subject."
"How did he get to know her?" persisted the artist.
"I am not sure," was the reply. "I gathered that Sophie
had something to do with it."
The elegant figure of the widow seemed to stand by
every sign-post that pointed the way through this laby-
rinth of crime.
Sir John continued, ignorant of the suspicions he had
confirmed. "When," he said, "I found my uncle would
not listen to me, I made the best arrangement I could.
Hoping in my heart that I could frighten the brutes into
silence, I offered to negotiate the deal. He jumped at my
offer and, re-opening the drawer, took out a bundle of
bank notes."
Clay interrupted to ask if the drawer was left open.
Sir John considered the question.
"No," he said, "I think my uncle put the letters back
and locked the drawer. But I was counting the notes.
The total was correct and I put them in my pocket, where
they stayed till the will was read and I had the right to
use them for my own purposes."
Heppel seemed inclined to comment on the young
man's action but refrained.
"Your uncle had no idea his life was threatened?" he
asked.
"So far as I know, none. I left him writing some letters


THE KILL
239
with his mind apparently relieved. An hour and a half
later, Freeman called me to his dead body."
He paused as if his story was finished. Heppel had to
prompt him.
"And the letters?" he said.
"The letters were lying in the bottom drawer which
was now open."
"Had they been disarranged?" asked Heppel.
"I don't think so."
"Did you move the writing-table?"
"Why should I?"
"Or any of the books?"
Sir John Baxter shook his head. Heppel opened his
pocket-book for the blue paper with the key-word on it.
"Was that on the table?" he asked.
Sir John looked at it curiously.
"I didn't see it," he said. "But I was too upset to
notice details. Even to think very clearly. I saw that to
save his name the letters must be destroyed. While Free-
man was telephoning to the police, I took them to the
billiard-room, and burnt them in the grate."
"It would have been better if you had trusted our
discretion," said Heppel sadly. "You may have burnt the
most valuable evidence."
"That occurred to me afterwards. That is why I went
to Newman Street to the address at the head of the
letters."
"If I may say so, the police would have done that
better."
"Possibly. The woman professed to know nothing.
She said she had read of my uncle's death in the papers


THE KILL
241
"You want to see if that drawer is opened, without
yourself being seen. What do you do?"
His fingers closed round the handle.
"You look at the ceiling!" he stated, and drew out the
drawer. A little pool of light moved across the white sur-
face.
Heppel had watched the performance with his lips
pursed and his head on one side. Without a word he disap-
peared behind the curtains. For a moment there was no
movement behind the heavy folds. Then he emerged with
a sad little smile on his inexpressive features.
"I call that a very clear idea, Mr. Clay," he said
gently; "and I'd agree you'd solved the mystery of the
looking-glass, if it wasn't for one thing."
"What's that?" I asked.
"If you're hidden behind the curtains, you can't see
the ceiling!"
The artist shrugged his shoulders.
"Have it your own way," he snapped. "But don't say
I didn't show you."
He looked at his watch. "It's about time," he said.
"What for?" asked Heppel.
"Our appointment at the belvedere. I've arranged for
Mr. Hope's friend to meet us."
The detective with a puzzled air allowed himself to be
led out of the French window.
"I. don't quite know what you are doing, Mr. Clay,"
he said as we went down the terrace steps.
"The police's work," said the artist. "This time I'm
showing you why Hope met a stranger in the belvedere
on the night of the murder."


IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
bookmakers!" He nearly choked in his struggle for ex-
pression.
"And Hope is one of your obliging friends?" asked
Heppel hurriedly.
The trainer nodded.
"For a consideration," he said. "Two per cent, on
winning bets; that's a fair enough commission for any
one."
"But why the belvedere?" demanded Heppel.
"It suited both of us. Hope didn't want people to know
he did this stunt. He said that if the old man found out,
he'd be sacked. And I didn't want my coups arranged in
public. Things leak out. One has trouble with the book-
makers and the income tax fellows."
Mr. Leeds fell into gloomy contemplation of a nature
red in tooth and claw.
"So I fixed to come here," he said at length, "on the
night before the race and give him his instructions about
Onagra. What beats me is how you found out."
I looked at the artist anxiously. I was afraid of allusion
to tooth marks on a cigar.
"We had to clear up everything that happened on the
night of the murder," said Heppel quickly.
We followed the trainer out of the little temple. As his
legs, slightly bandy, carried him back to his stables, Clay
stretched his long body elaborately.
"Well," he said, "that lets out Lewis Hope."
"And Sir John is already cleared," I added.
"If you'll excuse me contradicting," Heppel interposed,


THE KILL
247
heard. She was whiter than the camelia on her shoulder.
Her lover put his arm round her and tried to lead her
from the room, but she held to the door post.
Heppel did not seem to realise that he had been a little
brutal. "It's lucky I kept that car," he remarked in his
matter-of-fact way.
"I'll come too," said Clay, and turned to Sir John.
"You don't need me now to protect you against the
police. I think I'll go back to my studio."


IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"Between nine and ten in the morning," replied the
constable.
I started, for Clay and I had left the Russian alive at
half-past nine. His murderer must have been waiting for
us to go.
Then I remembered how Clay had opened the. window
and how, as we sat talking, I had seen the slit between
the curtains obscured. Perhaps it had not been the wind.
Perhaps the killer had picked us up in Victoria Street and
followed us. He may have travelled on the same tram
down the long road. The opened window gave him his
chance to hide behind the curtains.
I saw how close death had been to us. While we dis-
cussed the Whistler's secret, he had stood there very
quiet, very deadly, feeling the point of that thin knife
on the palm of his hand. . . .
At last we leave the Russian alone. The doomed man
gets up to lock the door behind us; turning to regain his
bed, he meets the eyes of his enemy sinning between the
curtains. No wonder terror is written on his dead face.
He shrinks back against the wall, his fingers feel for the
handle of the door. Before he can reach it, while we are
still on the front door step, the knife has w"histled across
the darkened room. . . .
I told the superintendent my suspicions. He listened at-
tentively. Then I remembered the cipher and walking to
the bed turned over the gray blankets.
"We left a strip of paper here," I said; "I can't see it."
"Nothing has been touched, sir," the constable as-
sured me.
"Except by the murderer," said Heppel.


THE KILL
251
He walked to the window. Drawing the curtains he went
down on his knees.
"You're right, Mr. Dale," he said, and showed me a
semi-circle of gray mud the shape of a heel; "that's where
he was."
He turned to the open window and looked out. The
mean yard was lit up by the uncurtained windows of the
houses that gave on it.
"He saw you go in at the front door," explained Hep-
pel, "and went round to the street behind. Found a door
open—the woman of the house may have been scrubbing
the step—and made his way to the yard. Mr. Clay's red
beard appears in the window. He knows where to go and
how to get there. A leg over the window sill, and he can
listen to every word. It was lucky for you he had only one
knife."
"Why did he kill Rothmann?" I asked.
Heppel shrugged his shoulders.
"Perhaps," he said, "Max knew too much. Perhaps he
had already said too much."
The door opened and the lean features of Detective
Mackenzie appeared.
"Any news of Jim?" asked Heppel.
"No," said the newcomer. "But I've got Meg."
"Where?"
"In a taxi outside."
She had been traced to Brighton. Although she swore
she had not seen Wolland since her return from Paris,
Mackenzie thought this new development might loosen
her tongue.
Heppel scratched the thin hair at the back of his head.


252
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"It's a bit irregular," he said, "but I think we'll see
her in the sitting-room."
Maud Johnstone was wearing a red felt hat with a dia-
mond buckle; under her arm was a big, white patent
leather bag. She looked angry.
"See here, Heppel," she began, as soon as her high
heels had crossed the threshold of the dingy little par-
lour, "you'll get into trouble over this!"
"I'll risk it, Meg," answered the superintendent.
"Can't a girl go for a fortnight to Brighton for a breath
of sea air without being dragged back by a lot of flatties?"
She paused with dramatic effort. No one answered.
"You got nothing on me," she declared fiercely.
"Your memory is bad," said Heppel quietly. "You've
forgotten asking Sir John Baxter for a thousand pounds."
"I never asked him for a penny," she said and added
with a laugh, "anyhow the letters are burnt."
"Sir John has told us what was in them."
"Has he? Well, he'll like sitting in court to hear me
read the soppy things his uncle wrote!"
"And Rothmann has come across."
"You're lying, Heppel!"
The detective shrugged his shoulders.
"You'll get five years, Meg. You'd much better tell
us," he said persuasively.
"What?"
"Where Wolland is!"
"I don't know."
"I'll get them to drop the blackmail charge," Heppel
offered.
"I tell you I don't know. You're trying to bluff me.


THE KILL
253
There is no charge. Let me see Max. He'll tell you there
was no harm in those letters."
The superintendent pondered.
"All right, Meg," he said. "You shall see Max. But
I'm afraid he won't tell us anything."
He led the way down the dark passage and threw
open the door that the policeman had forced. The woman
in the red hat walked airily into the room and looked
about her.
"Max certainly is mean with the gas company," she
said. As she spoke she turned and saw the shell of the man
so recently her lover. Her laugh strangled in her throat.
With her hands over her eyes she ran out of the room
and fell on the horse-hair sofa in the parlour. Her breath
came in gasps.
"Wolland did that," said Heppel relentlessly. "And
you spent last week-end with him."
"I was nothing to him," sobbed the woman who had
been the mistress successively of victim and murderer.
"There was somebody else he cared for. He was only
filling in the time with me."
"Then you won't mind telling us where he is," insisted
Heppel.
She took a handkerchief out of the white bag she kept
clasped under her arm and shook her head doggedly.
"You don't want to be mixed up in a murder charge,"
he urged. "Tell us where he is, and you can catch the
late train back to Brighton." I noticed that his eyes were
on her bag.
"He'd get me too," she said fearfully. "I'd rather go
to prison than be like—Rothmann." She shut her eyes


254
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
as she thought of what stood against the wall of the room
behind her.
"Well, Meg, I'm sorry." He called the policeman from
the front door and told him to take her away in the taxi.
"Just leave me your bag."
Her arm tightened on it.
"That's mine," she said defiantly.
"You shall have it back—at the station."
She hesitated a moment.
"All right," she said casually; "don't mess it. It's
new."
When sne had been led away, Heppel pushed back the
catch and turned the contents on the table. I saw the
usual litter of emancipated womanhood—a lip-stick, a
latch key, a lace handkerchief, a bit of beaver's fur gray
with face powder.
"There's a reason," said Heppel, "why Meg hugged
that bag so close."
With his square forefinger he turned over a draper's
bill; under it was a cloak-room ticket.
"One suit-case," he read, "deposited at Victoria
Station on last Saturday."
"That was the day Jim disappeared. Of course it may
be a coincidence."
"What's the name?" I asked.
"Dalmagarry. I wonder what his ticket is doing in
Maud's new bag."
"It's a Scotch name," I said.
"But I've a fancy it's been borrowed by an American,"
was the reply.


THE KILL
As the police car slanted between two converging
trams, Heppel put his hand into his coat pocket.
"Got a gun, Mr. Dale?" he asked.
I replied that I had my army revolver in a drawer at
home.
The detective shook his head.
"If Mr. Dalmagarry's first name is Jim," he remarked,
working the breach of his automatic, "you'll want it
handier than that."
He returned the pistol to his pocket.
"We'd better drop Mr. Dale at Victoria," said Mac-
kenzie.
I protested that I would not miss the fun for anything.
"My idea of fun," said Heppel, "is a bit quieter. A
pipe in the garden of a Sunday afternoon."
We plunged into the eddy of motor buses that enlivens
the courtyard of Victoria and emerged with screaming
brakes against the pavement. Pushing our way through
the travellers and their luggage we reached the cloak-
room. The maker of the hieroglyphic at the foot of Mr.
Dalmagarry's ticket was on duty.
He produced the suit-case. While Mackenzie was busy
with his bunch of keys, Heppel explained his authority
and his quest.
"Yes, sir," I heard the man say, "I do happen to
remember him. You see Dalmagarry is the name of a race
'orse and I calls Jim Wallis here, and I says, ''E don't
look as if 'e'd win the Derby!" He laughed in recollection
of the jest.
Jim was summoned and together they produced a
tolerable description of the depositor. They were also


IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
able to state that, although he had other luggage, he had
not taken it in the direction of the taxis. As it was too
big for the tube, the station hotel seemed his probable
destination.
By this time Mackenzie's keys had done their work.
He held up a coat he had taken out of the case.
"That was not made on this side of the Atlantic," said
Heppel. "I'm not surprised Mr. Dalmagarry didn't
want it."
The girl at the reception desk of the station hotel
hunted the register for the name without success.
Heppel repeated the description the cloak-room man
had given. Had any one like that arrived on Saturday
night?
"It might be Mr. MacBrian of No. 307," replied the
girl. "He's been here since Saturday."
Application to the head porter revealed that Mr.
MacBrian had gone out early that morning, despatch case
in hand, and had not yet returned, as far as the porters
knew."
"F think I'll go up to his room," said Heppel.
"What name shall I say?"
"I'll say it myself."
The lift shot us up to the third floor. Outside Number
307 we stopped. The detectives' hands went to their
pockets and two automatics covered the door.
Heppel knocked. There was no reply.
He turned the handle and threw open the door. The
room was empty.


THE KILL
257
"His brashes and shaving things have gone," said
Heppel.
Mackenzie stooped and opened a trunk. It was half
full of old newspapers. Heppel was poking about in the
fireplace. He handed the other detective a black wallet.
"Those are the cases Cook's use for their Continental
tickets," he said gloomily.
Reference to the tourist agency revealed that a gentle-
man of the name of MacBrian had reserved a place in the
Pullman that left for Dover at eleven that morning.
A porter on the Continental departure platform remem-
bered an elderly gentleman answering to our description,
carrying a despatch case, who caught that train.
The detectives looked tired and depressed.
"Never mind," I said; "you've got the ports watched."
"A man with nerve, a good disguise and a forged pass-
port needn't mind that," said Mackenzie.
"And we'd have heard by now, if he'd been stopped,"
added Heppel.


THE KILL
261
"My next group were five prepositions of place—at,
by, in, on, up. All these were possible. I treated them
for the moment as one word meaning, if you take me,
'place.'"
I nodded again.
"That left six particles, all of which had to be tried in
combination with various phrases that would fit the re-
maining spaces on either side of the letters RE."
I asked what the six words were.
"As, if, is, of, or, to," catalogued the painter. "It
was only a matter of patience. The first decent phrase
that fitted was this."
His pencil was again busy and I read over his shoulder.
DELIA EYRE IN WHISTLING JIM'S POWER
E
"If that was correct," he resumed. "The final E might
be the first letter of the word ESCAPE. But I had to con-
sider how that warning could fit in with the facts I had
ascertained about the murder. For various .reasons"
There was a knock at the door.
"Come in," shouted Clay.
It opened, and a short middle-aged man came into the
room. He wore a black coat and dark trousers. There was
something half clerical, half legal in his appearance.
He might "have been a solicitor with a practice in a cathe-
dral city.
"I hope I'm not disturbing you, gentlemen," he said,
with a genial smile. I noticed how bright and blue were
his eyes behind the thick glasses.


262
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"Superintendent Heppel told me to call," he went on,
and turned his back to shut the door more carefully.
He faced us again and now there was a thin knife with
a heavy wooden handle in the hand of that mild-looking
man.
"You're dead right now if you speak above a whisper,"
said Whistling Jim.
There was a dead silence while we stared at the as-
sassin. I heard the clock of a church near by strike eleven.
The slow stroke was like a tolling bell.
I felt that we ought to hurl ourselves on the man and
overpower him, but what chance had we of covering
alive the twenty feet separating us from the hand that
balanced the deadly knife?
Clay was the first to move. His arm went out towards
the marqueterie table.
"Don't move, brother," said the Whistler gently.
"My dear Jim," answered Clay casually. "You
mustn't be frightened. I only want a paint brush."
He held the implement for the other's inspection.
"I'm sure you'll excuse me," he continued, picking up
his palette, "we painters have to make the most of the
light. You will have noticed the days are drawing in."
"If that's British humour," said the assassin, "I'd
cut it right out."
"It's an odd thing," remarked the artist,"that when we
are at our most serious, Americans suspect us of humour.
I'm not joking, Jim, when I say I'm delighted to see you.
I was afraid you had left England."
"'Afraid' is good," said Whistling Jim with the quick
smile I had noticed at Lincot.


264 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
severed the slack of the rope, Jim turned his attention to
me. Five minutes later my arms were pinioned behind
the back of the kitchen chair and my feet strapped to its
legs. Although I hope I concealed it, I was terribly afraid.
We were at the mercy of a man who knew no mercy.
He ran his hands through our pockets and laughed.
"You poor boobs," he said contemptuously."Fancy
meddling with me when you don't even carry a gun!"
"Guns aren't the only things that kill," said Clay.
"No," replied Jim with his bright smile, "there are
knives."
"If it comes to that, there are ropes and electric
chairs," remarked the artist genially. "But they come
later."
"Too late to help you."
"You know, Jim," went on Clay conversationally,
"I'm not quite such a fool. When I let them tell you I
was here, I took certain precautions."
My spirits rose at his words. Was there, then, a way
out?
"After Heppel had dropped me here last night," Clay
was saying, "I sat down and wrote a long letter. To the
police. I told them exactly how Baxter was killed and by
whom. What was your share in the murder and the more
deadly part played by some one else."
"You know the hell of a lot, Clay," said Whistling Jim,
feeling the edge of his knife.
"Yes," agreed the artist, "I do. And I sent the letter
that told what I know to Scotland Yard, with directions
to open it if anything happened to me. Then I sat down
and waited for you to come."


THE KILL
265
Jim did not answer, he was tickling the palm of his
hand with the point of the knife. It could only be a ques-
tion of time before Clay would force him to use that knife
to cut our bonds.
"You don't want that letter opened, do you, Jim?"
said Clay persuasively.
At last the American spoke.
"Say gink," he said, "you're clever. You're damned-
clever." He paused and tossed the knife into the air. It
flashed a glittering circle and fell, its handle to his hand.
"But you're not cute enough to beat Whistling Jim,"
he added.
My stomach seemed to contract. Had the artist over-
looked one vital move in the game he was playing with
death?
The American laid his knife carefully on the table and
felt in his pocket. He produced a long envelope and held
it before the artist's face.
"Is that the letter you wrote to Scotland Yard?" he
asked, and his blue eyes danced. "Because if it isn't, I
must have picked the wrong one out of the pillar-box."
Clay stared at the envelope before him. I realized that
the reed had broken in his hand.
"I was watching when you went out to post your let-
ter," said Jim. "To be on the safe side I bust the lock."
He lit the candle I had moved—how many centuries
before?—from the big chair, and after a glance at the
contents of the envelope held it to the flame.
"That's your trick," admitted Clay, as he watched the
ashes drift to the floor.
Whistling Jim ground them under his heel.


THE KILL
267
But the murderer's hateful voice was addressing Clay..
"When I knelt behind Max's curtains," he said, "you
kept the audience in a roar about my missing you in the
wood."
"'Listeners never hear good,'" quoted Clay.
"'Max,' you said. 'Next time you see Jim, tell him
to be sorry he can't throw a knife straight.' Max didn't
have time to give me your message, but I won't forget it.
See here."
With his quick feline step, he glided to the far corner
of the room.
"Ijt doesn't matter if I spoil your picture," he re-
marked; "you won't be able to finish it."
He leant against the wall. Twenty foot away stood the
easel supporting Clay's unfinished nude. Between sat
the painter, tied to the big chair, his back to the Ameri-
can, his face to the picture and the door.
The Whistler poised himself on the balls of his feet.
The knife lay on the palm of his hand. Its blade shone
blue in the cold studio light. A ring glittered on a well-
manicured ringer.
Then the sinewy wrist gave a flick. I held my breath
as the knife sailed across the room two inches above the
artist's head, passed through the canvas, and stuck
quivering in the door.
The naked lady still posed in all her ugliness. But the
knife had torn out her throat.
"The criminal classes," said the indomitable artist,
"have no feeling for Art."
Without replying Jim slid noiselessly across the room
and tugged at his knife.


268
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"It's just as easy on a real man," he said examining
the point.
Apparently satisfied, he laid the weapon on his palm.
One blue eye was half-shut, the other glared malevolently
at the painter. Clay's face was deathly white above his
flaming beard. Sweat stood on his forehead. The well-
manicured fingers closed on the wooden handle. I shut
my eyes.
"Don't move, please," I heard the American say, and
his words were followed by a whistle and a smack. I
forced myself to look. Clay still sat bolt upright in his
chair. A trickle of blood crossed his forehead and caught
on his light eyebrows. Just above his head, scraping his
scalp, the knife stuck out of the high oak back.
The tormentor pulled his instrument out of the wood.
To its point adhered a tuft of fine red hair.
"Some one might like that for a memento," he said,
and dropped it on the painter's lap.
"I'll get a pass from the Home Secretary to see you
hanged, Jim," was the retort.
"Don't kid yourself, Steve," said the American.
■"You're for it now. I've had my bit of fun."
"You'll have to be quick then," said Clay.
"Why?"
"I'll tell you if you'll wipe the blood out of my eyes."
"Why?"
"Because there's some one coming up the stairs."
Whistling Jim listened.
"Give me the key," he commanded.
"There isn't one."
The murderer glanced round the room.


THE KILL
269
"And there's no other way out. You're caught, Jim."
"Am I, Hell!" said the Whistler, ducking behind
Clay's chair as the door opened.
Revolver in hand, Heppel stood on the threshold.
The appearance of an archangel could not have been
more welcome than the sight of the little man in the neat
serge suit.
"Some one seems to have been having a game with
you, Mr. Clay," he said blandly. "Has he gone?"
"No," answered Clay. "He's tickling the back of my
neck with a knife."
"That'll go right in," declared Jim, rising behind the
chair, "if any tricks are tried."
"Dear me!" said Heppel mildly. "It's lucky, Mr.Clay,
you arranged to ring up the Yard every hour. It took
me twenty minutes to get here after you missed the
eleven o'clock call."
"Keep that for your reminiscences, Heppel," cut in the
American. "This is checkmate, I guess. If you try to
take me, buddy here is for a casket in polished oak."
Heppel nodded thoughtfully.
"I see what you mean," he said.
"Get along and call off the sleuths," ordered Jim.
"Come back to untie Mutt and Jeff and I'll have blown."
I opened my mouth to protest. I would not spend ten
minutes alone with Whistling Jim for all the money in
the world. Then I caught Heppel's eye.
"We'll have to think this out," he remarked, smooth-
ing his chin. "I'd better shut the door."
To my surprise the quiet-mannered little man sent
it to with a bang that shook the room.


270
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"Now then, Heppel "began Jim. But the detective
was not looking at him. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling.
Before the Whistler could finish his sentence, a splintering
crash came from behind him. He spun round knife in
hand. Up came Heppel's revolver. A spurt of flame, and
the killer's arm dangled useless by his side. His knife
tinkled to the floor.
"You'll get another, if you move, Jim," said the de-
tective.
He walked up to the wounded man and, pushing the
revolver against his spine, pointed to the ceiling. A large
hole in the"plaster showed where the chandelier had hung.
"I always said that thing wasn't safe," he commented.
Mackenzie and two policemen invaded the room.
While the constables untied our ropes, Mackenzie pro-
duced a pair of handcuffs. One link he snapped on his
own wrist, the other on the American's unwounded arm.
With a sigh Heppel put away his automatic.
"I'm always glad when that part of the business
is over," he said, and turned to his assistant. "Take him
along, Mackenzie."
The American had not spoken since the chandelier
had cost him his freedom. Now he raised his head. The
blue of his eyes was not dimmed.
"What's the charge, boys?" he asked.
"Wilful murder of Max Rothmann. Anything you say
will be used"
"Good enough," he interrupted, "and you can take
down that I killed old Baxter too."


THE KILL
271
Lucien Clay rose stiffly from the big oak chair, and
wiped the blood off his forehead.
"My good Jim," he said, "that's probably the only
decent thing you ever tried to do. But it's no good, and
you'll be hanged quite as well for Rothmann whom you
killed, as for Baxter whom you didn't."


CHAPTER VIII
Ten o'clock found us seated round a large old-fashioned
card table in the ante-room at Lincot. The air was cold,
and, after the terrible strain of the morning, Clay and I
agreed that we were glad of the comfort of a fire that
roared up the wide chimney.
I had fallen in with Sir John's suggestion that I should
sit with my back to it, the more readily when I discovered
that Delia's place was on my right. Next to her, Sir John
took his seat at the top of the table, and opposite him at the
foot, gleamed the well-waved, tawny head of his cousin.
Facing me sat Clay, with a piece of plaster on his fore-
head and Heppel, apparently unmoved by the excitement
of the morning. Between them—was it by accident or
design?—bulged the rounded form of the secretary.
For a little time we made spasmodic conversation, won-
dering why we had been bidden to this formal gathering.
At last Heppel knocked out his pipe and spoke.
"It has been decided," he said, with the voice and
manner of the president of a suburban debating society,
"to invite you all to-night to be present at an experiment
less common in England than across the Channel. I mean
a reconstruction of the crime."
He paused and an uneasy rustle ran round the table.
"This reconstruction will, I fear, be painful to some of
272


THE KILL
273
you," he glanced at the ladies. "But I am sure you will
subordinate your own feelings to the interests of justice.
It is time to fit together the evidence we have collected."
I looked round the table, but there was little to learn of
the emotions this statement must have aroused. Sir John's
dark face, never expressive, was unreadable; Delia was
too close to let me look without rudeness; across the table
Hope nodded with his usual mandarin-like affability;
and Sophie de Manca lay back in her deep chair with her
eyes half closed.
"Since yesterday morning," continued the superin-
tendent, who was obviously enjoying his professorial r61e,
"we have been able to clear the ground to a large extent.
In the first place the two professional criminals, Roth-
mann and Wolland, are disposed of. Of course, since one
was in the train at the time of the murder, and the other
in Paris, we knew that neither was directly responsible.
But we did not fully understand the part they had
played in the tragedy."
"So far from fully," interrupted Clay, "that we began
by arresting Rothmann."
Heppel gave no sign that he had heard.
"Our task," he resumed, "has been further lightened
by a voluntary statement from Sir John explaining some
points that had puzzled us, and by an investigation con-
ducted by Mr. Clay into certain actions of Mr. Hope's,
which at one time seemed connected with the mystery."
Hope's face, I fancied, was a little pinker than usual,
but he only nodded his ball-like head.
"But," said Heppel, playing with his watch chain,
"there still remain a few points that are not yet clear."


274
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
As he spoke he turned and faced the woman in the big
arm-chair.
"Mrs. de Manca, will you explain your connection
with Maud Johnstone and Wolland?"
Sophie de Manca could not turn pale. There was too
much powder on her face. But the knuckles of her
clenched hands went white.
"Surely, superintendent, that is no business of yours,"
she said arrogantly.
"Wolland," went on the detective imperturbably,
"is the alias of an American crook known as Whistling
Jim, who murdered Rothmann and has twice tried to kill
Mr. Clay. Maud Johnstone is Wolland's mistress."
"Don't be coarse," said Clay, "with Miss Delia here."
In my opinion both announcement and reproach were
equally unfortunate. I had seen the girl's cheek flush.
The detective made no apology. He stood up and tossed
a photograph on the table.
"That was found in Maud Johnstone's room," he de-
clared, with his deep-set eyes fixed on the widow's face.
"What of that?" she asked, biting her lip.
"She was blackmailing Sir Arthur," continued Heppel
inexorably. "He told his nephew that you introduced
her."
Sophie de Manca drew herself up, and laid her whit-
ened arms on the green cloth.
"Since you force me," she said, "I'll tell you. After all
I have nothing to conceal. Arthur, who would have dis-
approved, is dead."
A year ago, she said, she received a letter and some
samples of beauty specialities—creams and so forth—


THE KILL
275
from an address in Newman Street. She tried the pre-
parations and found them good. Ordering more without
asking the price, she soon ran up a bigger bill with the
alleged beauty specialist than she could pay. Maud
Johnstone's price of calling off her solicitor was an in-
troduction to the baronet.
"After all," was Sophie's excuse, "he was old enough to
look after himself."
But of his relations with Maud, and her letters she
knew nothing. She leaned back in her chair as if she had
finished.
"And the photograph?" insisted Heppel. »
Sophie de Manca gripped the edge of the table.
"As detectives know everything," she said bitterly,
"you will know that when a woman reaches my age, her
skin begins to sag. The remedy is to have your face lifted.
This operation Maud Johnstone had offered to arrange.
She asked for an enlarged photograph, not touched up,
to judge the likelihood of success. I sent it. As I was sure
Arthur would disapprove, I could not ask him for money
for the operation. Mr. Hope sold a pendant for me and
kept the transaction secret. Women, superintendent,
do not care to tell every one that they are growing old."
I glanced at Heppel to see how he took the snub. But
he did not seem to have noticed it.
"Thank you, Mrs. de Manca," he was saying. "That
explains your connection with Maud Johnstone. Was it
through her you got to know Wolland?"
The widow stared at him.
"Wolland?" she said. "The reporter? I never even saw
him!"


276 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
If I was not sure I had seen her in the belvedere with the
American, I would have been convinced, so genuine did
her surprise appear. I looked at her hand where the dia-
mond, still glittered; at Delia's, which was bare. Maud
Johnstone I had noticed at Rothmann's rooms wore an
emerald. There was no other woman in the case.
The detective, it seemed, accepted her disclaimer.
"Then I must have been misinformed," he declared,
and sat down.
A little buzz of comment ran round the card table.
Lewis Hope leaned forward and seemed to sympathize
with the widow.
The clock on the mantelpiece struck half-past ten.
The windows rattled as a train went past on the line.
"At this hour eight days ago," said Heppel, in a low
voice. "Sir Arthur was last seen alive. Let us go into the
library and reconstruct bis last actions."
Eyeing each other covertly, we rose stiffly to our feet
and filed into the next room. At the door Delia turned
and went to the fire. I saw her lifting a big log and offered
my help.
"I can manage nicely," she said, and smiled.
I followed Clay into the library. Heppel was marshal-
ling the company against the west wall. He took the
artist by the arm and led him to the doorway between
the two rooms.
"Mr. Clay," he announced, "will represent Sir
Arthur, acting as we believe him to have acted."
The low hum of talk from the group by the wall
ceased. I wondered what the guilty one must feel as the
living man began to repeat the actions of the dead.


THE KILL
277
Clay, who must have rehearsed his part, stood for a
moment in the doorway, then in silence he walked
slowly into the middle of the room.
"Sir Arthur," commented Heppel. "said good-night
to the ladies in the ante-room. He then re-entered the
library. We will omit the locking of the door to allow
Miss Eyre to join us when she is ready."
He glanced over his shoulder at Delia, who was still
busy with the fire. I was glad that she should be spared
part at least of this painful scene.
Clay stood as if deep in thought, near the middle of
the room. Then he walked to the window. The spectators
by the wall crowded back to let him pass, as if he had in
truth been something from the grave. He stood looking
out of the window.
The detective's voice broke the almost intolerable
silence.
"It is probable," he said, "that the deceased looked
out of the window through which he had sent another
man who had not long to live."
Clay dropped the curtain he had been holding, and
walked to the writing-table. He stood tapping its rose-
wood surface before he sat slowly in the heavy chair.
Something—it must have been a bat—banged against
the window. Sophie de Manca gave a little cry. Then
the silence closed in on us, only broken by the ticking of a
clock. I turned my eyes to the group by the wall. Their
faces were only visible as pale ovals in the shadow. I
could hear the breathing of one of them.
Heppel's voice broke in.
"He wanted," it said, "to read the cipher. His visitor


278
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
had told him the key-word. The letter lay in the drawer."
I looked at Clay's pale face and vivid hair lit by the
reading lamp. He obviously felt the strain of the grim
part he played. His arm moved, and there was a faint
jingle.
"He took his keys from his pocket," said the detective.
The loud breathing by the wall was more insistent.
It drowned the slow tick of the clock.
"He fitted the key. On top of the letters in the locked
drawer lay a mirror."
Involuntarily I glanced upward for the evil little eye
that had slid over the. white ceiling.
"As the drawer moved the mirror flashed its message.
The reflection of the ceiling was seen through the fan-
light over the door by a watcher in the ante-room."
The low voice broke off.
"Now, Mr. Clay," he commanded sharply, "please
open that drawer."
"Right," said Clay, leaping as he spoke away from the
desk.
It was well he did, for a section of the book-case,
heavy with old books, detached itself from the wall be-
hind the writing-table and smashed to the ground. It
missed the chair in which Clay had been sitting by inches
but smashed to splinters the drawer he had just opened.
Had he carried out his impersonation of the dead man,
and bent over the drawer to extract the letters, his spine
would infallibly have been snapped.
But no one looked at the wreckage. Clay and Heppel
had sprung to the door. Over their shoulders I could see
the little figure of Delia still standing by the fireplace.
-


THE KILL
Her hand seemed to hold something at the side of the
chimney. She let it go as we crowded into the room.
A queer smile lurked on her curved lips and at the back
of her wide blue eyes. With her short little skirts and curly
head she might have been a naughty child, a child too
beautiful to punish.
"Kate Gibson," said Heppel in his matter-of-fact
tone, "I arrest you for the murder of Sir Arthur Baxter,
and for the attempted murder of Lucien Clay"
"You've left something out," she said, her finger to
her lip.
"What?" asked Heppel sternly.
"Attempted suicide," she whispered.
The detective leapt forward, but Clay, I thought,
stood in his way. Before Heppel could reach her, she had
slid to the ground.
For a moment of pain she writhed and turned on her
back. Her features twisted and contorted like a wax
mask that melts. Greed, knowledge, weariness looked out
»f the blue eyes. Then the muscles relaxed and she
seemed to sleep like a tired baby.


CHAPTER IX
Two nights later I dined with Heppel and Clay at the
Farnesina. That afternoon the detective had attended
another inquest.
"Felo-de-se," he said in answer to my question, and
helped himself to macaroni.
"I confess I'm sorry she's dead," remarked Clay. "It's
refreshing to meet a thoroughly bad woman, one who
did not tamper with a single commandment, but put her
foot through the whole lot."
"Except the fifth," corrected Heppel, cutting the
bread.
"Yes, she certainly honoured her father," admitted the
artist.
"The Finchley murderer," explained Heppel for my
benefit, "hung in 1913 for poisoning an old lady whose life
he had insured."
"Murder ran in the blood," said Clay. "She inherited
not only the taint, but a grudge against Society that had
orphaned her. You may recall her pious references to her
father's memory. She was a consummate actress."
"Hypocrite, you mean," I amended. "But when did
you discover her parentage?"
"On the morning of her death," said Heppel. "You
remember last Thursday I told my clerk to make in-
quiries at the agencies that place secretaries?"
380


THE KILL
281
"And I thought it was Hope!" I exclaimed, and gave
the detective one of those thin veal cutlets that Italians
cook so well.
"Starting from the agency," he went on, "my people
traced her back through various aliases, till she con-
nected with Kate Gibson, aged seven, placed after her
father's execution in a charitable institution. Inciden-
tally we found that there never was an invalid sister, since
Kate was the only child. The imaginary cripple was her
excuse for frequent visits to London to meet her lover."
"When did you first begin to suspect?" I gasped.
"As soon as I saw her," cut in Clay. "Her eyes set
wide apart, her U-shaped face. Most murderesses have
them."
"I don't find faces as suggestive as Mr. Clay," said
the detective. "Many bishops look like murderers."
"How do you know they're not?" shouted Clay, with
his mouth full.
"In any case I did not suspect Gibson, as we must
call her, until I saw the letter she typed during the
critical period. Even then I only felt there was something
odd."
"What was odd in the letter?" I demanded.
"She had been a secretary and was a skilled typist,"
explained Heppel; "yet the full stops had cut right
through the thick paper, a fault that no good performer
would make, unless she was labouring under some
strong emotion, or wished to make the maximum of
noise."
He interrupted his explanation while the anaemic waiter
cleared away the plates.


282 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"A secondary matter," he resumed, "was the short-
ness of the letter. Mrs. de Manca heard the typewriter
working consecutively for five minutes. A letter of that
length would not take two. Gibson tried to cover the
discrepancy by saying she had spoiled her first attempt.
But in that case the sound of typing would have been
interrupted."
"And that made you suspect her?" I said.
"It drew my attention," was the cautious reply.
"That and two other small points."
I asked to be enlightened.
"According to Rothmann's story, Sir Arthur laid the
key-word on the writing-table. But when he was found
dead, the paper had gone. The only people who had the
opportunity to move it were the theoretic murderer,
who might have entered by the window and Gibson who
collected the typewriter."
"That was pretty vague," I remarked.
"My suspicion was supported," said the detective.
"The volume of plays that had hidden the paper dis-
appeared while we were on the terrace. When we returned
Wolland and Gibson were in the library. Either might
have taken the book, but it was worth noticing that again
she might be connected with the mysterious word."
"Of course," added Clay, "it was the word that made
me sure of her guilt. Without that it would have been
impossible to reconstruct the cipher."
"'DELIA EYRE IN WHISTLING JIM'S POWER.
ESCAPE,'" I quoted.
"No, you idiot! That was only my first shot at it. The


THE KILL
two-letter word was IS. IS WHISTLING JIM'S
what?"
"Four letters and then RE ... ."J meditated.
"MISTRESS, of course!" snapped Lucien Clay.
"It's too short," I said. "There are still three letters to
come."
"Those would be three blanks, filled with three letters
chosen, as I explained, at random."
"'But how," I asked, "were you sure that your second
version was right?"
"Miss Legkt of the Dancing Bear told me by recogniz-
ing the photograph. It would be more natural to take a
mistress to a night-club than a girl in your power. I then
checked Gladys with Max, showing him the reconstructed
cipher and smudging the three dummy letters that I could
not guess. His reception of the cipher assured me that
the Diana of Lincot was the same as the Delilah of Soho.
One thing only puzzled me. How had Jim discovered so
soon that I was on his track, and why did he go for me
outside the belvedere?"
.I filled the artist's glass.
"I'm afraid that may have been partly my fault,"
I admitted, and explained how I had told Baxter that
Clay was reconstructing the cipher. That infatuated man
must have passed his knowledge to the object of his
duped affections.
"Ah, well!" was the artist's offensive comment. "That
was a risk I ran when I joined up with a half-wit; useful
to disarm suspicion, but dangerous."
Heppel tactfully changed the subject.


284
IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"Talking of the belvedere," he said, "I've solved the
secret of the diamond ring that wasn't Mrs. de Manca's."
"I solved that," boasted Clay, "while Jim was throw-
ing knives at me. He had a diamond on his finger at
that interesting moment, which he had turned inwards
in its setting for the part of the reporter. In the darkness
of the belvedere, Dale with his usual intelligence saw
Gibson's elbow and Jim's ring and jumped to the con-
clusion that both were Sophie's."
I drank my coffee in silence. It was no good arguing.
Every mistake that had been made was put down to me.
"When did she first conceive her abominable plan?"
I asked.
"It grew," was Heppel's verdict. "The post of secre-
tary to a rich man gave her an opportunity which she
exploited by every honest and dishonest means. With
patient dissimulation of her real character, she made her
way from the position of confidential secretary to that of
adopted daughter. The baronet's weakness for pretty
women helped her. That was the .first stage."
"The second was the plot to blackmail?" I suggested.
The detective nodded, as he felt for his pipe.
"It is probable," he said, "that Jim, Maud, Max
and Kate worked in what is loosely called a gang. We
shall never have details of that partnership since Jim
will soon follow his victim and his mistress into a per-
petual silence, and Maud is the least talkative of women."
"But when was blackmail dropped for murder?" I
asked.
"The two plans no doubt ran side by side. The idea of
murder was probably started by the discovery—for she


286 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"That was Jim. He was wearing a light gray suit."
"How do you know that?" I asked. But the detective
swept on.
"Together they explored the possibilities of the book-
case. While Gibson in the ante-room worked the lever,
Jim in the library moved the desk to the exact spot
it had to occupy for the descending section of the book-
case to miss Sir Arthur's chair and overhang his back, as
he bent to the bottom drawer. The brass rods prevented
the books from falling out, though not from moving for-
ward. His final task was to mark down the place on the
shelf where the knife must be fixed to penetrate the old
man's heart."
I shuddered at the cold-blooded preparations that Hep-
pel described.
"In the ante-room," he continued, "Gibson was mark-
ing how far the lever had to be depressed to bring it
within striking distance. Jim's oil-can, (which left a stain
of oil in his light gray suit), frequently refilled, was used
to silence the rusty mechanism. The trap was set, it
remained to await the moment."
"Why," I asked, "did they choose that Monday
night?"
Clay was ready with an answer.
"You want," he said, holding up his glass to the light,
"to see the plot as a sort of diabolic quadrille danced
by two monstrous pairs. On one side of the pattern, Max
and Yellow Meg bow and strut as they drive their in-
famous trade of blackmail. On the other side of the
square, their heads close together, whispering of bloodier
deeds, circle Whistling Jim and Kate Gibson. Suddenly


288 IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN
"Everything is ready. With a glance to see that the
shaded reading-lamp throws no gleam on the waiting
blade, she leaves the room."
The artist paused and glanced at me for admiration. I
determined to pour cold water.
"How do you know all that?" I asked.
He replied airily that it was the logical explanation of
the clues found in the library.
"She sat down with her typewriter," he continued,
"by the ante-room fireplace. Baxter went back to the
library. She started to type, knowing that the noise
would drive Sophie from the room. She hit the keys hard
so that she should be heard in the hall—and that nothing
else might be heard. She typed with one eye on the fan-
light over the door for the signal of the mirror. When she
had finished the letter, she went on rattling the shift key
so that the sound of her typing might not cease.
"At last the little circle of light appeared and moved
slowly across the ceiling. Still pressing the keyboard with
her left hand, her right felt upwards till it touched the
lever—pulled it the necessary distance—gave it a quick
jerk to disengage the bayonet from its place between the
books, then raised the lever to its first position.
"The delicate operation had been performed, and she
rang for Freeman to post the letter arranging for Sir
Arthur Baxter to speak at East Tedding in the Conser-
vative interest."
There was a long pause.
"You deduced all that from the clues you found in the
library?" I said incredulously.
"How else," asked Clay, "can you explain the mirror