The Six Queer Things, page 21
“It commits you to pay the sum of twenty thousand pounds to Bella Crispin should either of you at any time be in a position to discharge the whole sum. This means that until you accumulate at least that amount, we cannot legally press you. If you earn any less sums, we have no claim to them.”
“Then it doesn’t seem to me that this document is worth much to you!”
“Well, that’s my look-out, isn’t it? I want you both to sign it jointly. You can sign it here and now, and I will get Marjorie to sign it directly she is released.”
“Well, I don’t know, it seems a bit funny. Is this kind of thing legal?”
“Perfectly. You see the document mentions the consideration—that we assist in finding Marjorie Easton, who at the date of the agreement is stated to be missing. Therefore it is a contract good in law. Anyway, the legality of it is our responsibility. Here is a pen. Sign it, and I will tell you where Marjorie is.”
Wainwright signed it. Miss Crispin outlined her plan, and arranged a meeting place for the next day. When he returned to the bungalow, he found an empty telegraph envelope in the hall. Harness was waiting for him with a false expression of joviality on his face.
“Hello, old chap! I wondered where you had got to!”
“I just went for a stroll round,” replied Wainwright, with an equally false cordiality.
He had met Miss Crispin only just in time! He would have to make a getaway that night, so that in the morning Harness would find the bird had flown.
2
When Marjorie woke from a drugged sleep to find the walls of the asylum once more round her, her first feeling was of a dull, aching despair. Impossible as it had seemed, she was a captive, without hope of release. What at first she had thought was some strange mental upheaval had proved to be the active enmity of real human beings.
Why they displayed this cold implacable enmity, why this battalion of foes had suddenly sprung up at every turn, in the place of those whom she thought friends, was more than she was able to fathom. But of the facts there was now no doubt.
This despair presently gave place to a kind of apathy. What was the good of doing anything, when everything had proved so useless? For some reason or other, it had been determined that she should be put out of the way. Now that she had time to reflect, she came to see clearly that at the back of it all must be the figure of Dr Wood. His was the main responsibility for this appalling deed; and it seemed that it could only be a fiendish cruelty, a lust for suffering in others as an end in itself, which could dictate his actions. And this purposelessness of the cruelty made her resigned, as one might become resigned to an inevitable illness. Whether any bromides were administered in her food to produce this resignation, she could not tell. But certainly during the next two or three days a complete apathy came over her.
Meanwhile Ted Wainwright was going through the opposite process.
He had hoped to be able to help Marjorie at once, but instead of that Miss Crispin, who had taken him to a room in the north of London and warned him to go out as little as possible, had kept on putting off the day. He chafed with a fury and impatience which gathered force each day.
He wondered if he had been tricked. But if he had, it seemed pointless. He preferred to accept Miss Crispin’s statement in her letters from Norwich that it was impossible to do anything more than she was doing to make contact with Marjorie.
The only consolation he got was that Miss Crispin had seen Marjorie more than once walking in the grounds, and reported that she was quite well, mentally and physically, and that there was no pressing fear for her safety. So the days passed.
“Our only hope for the moment,” wrote Miss Crispin frankly, “is that Marjorie should be moved to another room.”
Marjorie was much more strictly guarded than she had been before, and though she was allowed in the grounds, she was always accompanied by an attendant, and was not allowed to speak to any of the other patients. Although she looked out for Lambert, she noticed to her surprise that he was nowhere to be seen. This set her wondering. Had his help of her brought some dreadful punishment down on his head; or was he simply ill; or was he being kept shut up in his room?
She asked her attendant but got no answer beyond a resentful stare. Evidently Lambert was a sore point with them, and she thought it more prudent to avoid reference to him in the future.
Matters went on like this until one day, as a result of her constant complaints about the darkness of her room, which gave on to the inner courtyard, she was moved into a room in front. The same day, a strange incident occurred. She was sitting in a seat facing the wall, while her attendant by her side was busy reading. Suddenly she saw a woman’s head appear over the other side of the wall, and give her a warning look. A small white object came over the wall and fell into the flower bed below. Then the head disappeared.
Marjorie managed to walk near the flower bed, stoop as if to do up her shoe, and pick up the note. She unfolded it in the privacy of her room. It read as follows:
Marjorie Easton: Find some way of keeping your window unlocked tonight.
This message, suggesting outside help, sent the blood pulsing through Marjorie’s veins again. But how could she keep her window unlocked? As a matter of routine, every evening, her attendant came round and locked the casement window by turning the key in a padlock which was fixed on the catch.
At last a stratagem occurred to her. She vividly remembered an uncle who was subject to fits of asthma and who, when he had them, had been forced to lean out of the window half the night, purple in the face. Remembering his symptoms she started to imitate them, and with such success that, towards the evening, her attendant sent for the doctor. Marsden came in and found her leaning out of the window, gasping for breath.
“Have you ever suffered from asthma?” he asked after a brief examination, and Marjorie explained that she had occasionally had it as a child, but this had been her first attack for many years. She repeated some of the symptoms she had often heard her uncle complain of.
As Marjorie had calculated, the attacks of asthma and the visits of the doctor served to postpone the locking of the window, and once the routine time had passed, no attempt was made to do so.
Marjorie was unable to sleep that night. She lay on her bed fully dressed and waiting. When she heard faint noises in the grounds, and scraping sounds, she jumped up and went to the window. It was pitch dark outside, and she could see nothing, but as she leaned out she heard a whisper.
“Are you there, Marjorie?”
Impossible—staggering as it seemed to her—the voice was Ted’s! Marjorie’s voice almost broke as she answered:
“Yes, here!”
Five minutes later Marjorie was climbing down the ladder which led to escape—and Ted.
CHAPTER XV: Who Is the Director?
Inspector Morgan gained little from an examination of the blear-eyed fugitive whom he charged with the murder of Dr Wood. Tremayne’s examination of Lambert, brief though it was, established definitely that his mind had disintegrated finally under the emotional upheaval involved in his act of homicide. Lambert was now a mere human shell. He was not even harmful now. His last outbreak had drained him of all energy and interest in the outside world. From now on he would live in a twilit world of fantasy and self-exploration. Reality had completely ceased to exist for him. Perhaps this was as well.
A search of his past proved conclusively that, starting from being a fairly harmless eccentric, with one or two curious foibles and a passion for psychic investigation, he had been deliberately driven over the borderline by Crispin. Crispin had made contact with him through the world of psychic research, and had deliberately exploited the psychological mechanism of dissociation to produce a complete cleavage of personality.
In the early stage of this condition, Lambert had come into contact with Wood, who was playing as usual the role of a disinterested investigator. Lambert had applied to him for treatment of the obsessions and compulsions which were manifesting themselves. Wood’s treatment—as his notebook showed—had been deliberately directed to complete the ruin. After that, there had been no difficulty in getting an order which put Lambert’s affairs in the hands of his cousin, Sir Timothy.
What were the motives of Crispin and Wood for this apparently disinterested fiendishness? An examination of the banking account of Timothy Lambert soon showed that large sums of money had passed from the estate to the medium and the doctor, and even larger cash sums to some personality, evidently concerned in the crime, who had adopted the device of cash payments to preserve his anonymity. Was he the Director to whom Wood’s intercepted telephone message had referred?
Evidently Lambert’s subconscious mind had retained some inkling of what had been done to the shattered personality of which it was a part. On the occasions when he had made an escape, he had gone straight to his archenemies and attempted to kill them. Now that both were dead, one by his own hand, all resentment seemed to have left his ruined mind. He had become inert and without volition, as the result of a crisis which had brought his insanity to the higher stage of catatonia.
“It’s the beginning of the end,” explained Tremayne. “Poor fellow, he won’t survive long!”
Morgan prepared for the trial which could only result in finding him unfit to plead, and liable to detention at the King’s pleasure.
This, however, did not solve the mystery of Crispin’s death, for, if one thing was abundantly clear, it was that the murder of the medium was not carried out by a lunatic, but by someone of unusual sanity and acumen. Nothing could be farther removed from the brutal slaying of Wood than the subtle mystery of Crispin’s death, in which everything pointed to the complicity of Ted Wainwright and yet where more and more the inspector, in spite of his warrant for Wainwright’s arrest, seemed to sense the impress of a more cunning hand.
A vital question for the inspector was: where had Lambert been incarcerated during his “treatment” in an institute? Nothing could be found among the doctor’s papers to clear this matter up. Lambert’s solicitor was apparently completely ignorant of the address. “All that side of it,” he explained with an air of distaste, “had been left to Mr Lambert’s medical adviser.”
It was impossible, in his present state, to get any response from Lambert. Sir Timothy Lambert professed complete ignorance, and since he was in a pitiable condition of fear, with a criminal prosecution and approaching bankruptcy both hanging over his head, it was unlikely that he would be deceiving the police in this matter.
Morgan was quite prepared to find the place outwardly a respectable, registered institution, with periodical inspections, correct routine, and all the visible signs of authenticity. Cases of bogus mental homes were sufficiently numerous in his experience for such a thing to be well within the bounds of possibility. This made it difficult to know where to begin to look for the place. Morgan contented himself, as an immediate routine step, with making sure that a full list of all registered mental institutes against which any complaints had been received should be compiled and sent to him for checking.
Meanwhile he was still faced with the old problems.
How and why had the strychnine been introduced into Crispin’s drink, in full view of everyone in the séance room at that time?
Why was the empty poison bottle, which had contained hydrocyanic acid, found in Ted Wainwright’s pocket?
What was the explanation of the lying story which the doctor and Mrs Threpfall had told him about Wainwright, and what was the doctor’s purpose in protecting Wainwright, in view of his own guilt?
Unless he could solve these problems, he was at a dead end, for the murder of Crispin had been the starting point of the whole tangle, and must therefore be the end of it. The other mysteries—the disappearance of Marjorie and Miss Crispin—were unquestionably bound up with this problem.
Clear, unpoisoned water had flowed out of the tap in the séance room. By the time it had reached Crispin, it had become poisoned. Under the basin in the séance room there had been a pool of water sufficiently impregnated with strychnine to cause the instant death of the small dog who had lapped it up. What was the solution to these contradictory facts?
Then quite suddenly Morgan—perhaps for the first time in his life—had an inspiration. That is, he saw quite clearly in his mind’s eye, without any basis in hard fact, a picture of how the crime might have been carried out. It floated in his imagination tantalisingly clear and vivid. Forty years of routine and factualism demanded that he suppress so wild a vision. If he allowed himself that kind of loose speculation, the forty years reminded him, he would soon be running everywhere on all kinds of wild-goose chases, while the real criminal sat safe and sound under his nose.
But the vision refused to be exorcised. So, with a shamefaced feeling, and saying nothing to his subordinates, Morgan jumped into a car and followed his “hunch.” It led him to Belmont Avenue, to the Crispins’ home, still shuttered, its rooms full of dust-sheeted furniture. Outside was the notice of an impending auction.
Morgan went straight to the séance room. Then he knelt down beneath the basin and examined the piping leading up behind it carefully. Of course his idea was absurd but——
“Good heavens,” he exclaimed aloud, in an awed tone, “I was right!”
The piping, and the wall immediately underneath the basin, showed clearly what had happened. A small tank, fitting neatly behind the basin, had been fastened to the rising water pipe in two places. The traces of the two holes, which were now soldered up, could be distinctly felt with the finger tips. It was obvious that this tank could have contained only one thing—poison.
Whoever installed the apparatus was a plumber of no mean ability, for the job had been neatly done and neatly removed, and the unknown had allowed for the pressure of the water by fastening the tank to the pipe in two places, one constituting an inlet, and the other an outlet, so that as the water flowed through the main pipe it would induce a corresponding flow through the feeder pipe and effectually poison the water as it passed. A nice calculation was necessary to ensure that sufficient poison entered the flow without immediately exhausting the tank.
No doubt, the inspector reflected, the poison reservoir had not been a plain tank, but a tightly coiled worm of piping. If he remembered anything of hydraulics, it would have to have been like that.
But whatever it was, it had been fixed up before Crispin’s death, and had been carefully removed at some later date. In being removed, some of the poison it contained had been spilt on the mat below, thus accounting for the death of the dog. Perhaps the unknown had crept into the house and removed it that very morning. Perhaps Morgan had been in the house at the same time as the murderer!
Whoever fixed it must have been in an unusual position, in that he had been morally certain that Crispin would drink a glass of water after the séance. This last was a surprising factor. Even given that Crispin generally took a glass of water after a séance, how could the murderer be certain of such a chancy thing?
Even more odd was the fact that the glass of water was handed to Crispin by Ted Wainwright, and Ted Wainwright was found, after his arrest, to have an empty poison bottle in his pocket. Now at first it seemed as if there was a deliberate attempt to make Wainwright the scapegoat. But if this was the case, and the poison bottle was introduced into Wainwright’s pocket by Mrs Threpfall, why had such a careless error been made as to introduce a prussic-acid bottle instead of one which had contained strychnine? Why should Mrs Threpfall go to the pain of buying prussic acid when strychnine had already been bought for the slaying of Crispin?
No, it was impossible that such a gross error had been made. From which impossibility one could only deduce that the two complications were set on foot entirely separately, that there was no connection between the poisoning of Crispin and the purchase of prussic acid by Mrs Threpfall on behalf of Ted Wainwright.
Who was the Director? More and more clearly it seemed to Morgan that he was fighting an unknown enemy; and that this enemy was the dangerous one. Wood, Crispin and Mrs Threpfall had been exposed; the whole web of horror behind them had been brought to light; but somewhere there still lurked the spider who had spun it all, and of whom Wood, Ted Wainwright, Crispin and Mrs Threpfall were only tools.
Was Marjorie Easton in his clutches now? And if so, why? As he reflected on this, Morgan felt the pattern slip into place, like a missing jigsaw piece when it is turned to fill a gap. He walked out of Belmont Avenue, got into his car again, and drove straight to the suburb of Bilford. He had decided to call on Samuel Burton.
Samuel Burton was in. When Morgan walked into his room behind him he could clearly see, by the line of his back, that Samuel Burton was afraid. Backs are expressive, and, by the very reluctance with which Burton turned to bring his face towards his visitor again, Morgan could see that he was afraid. Morgan’s guess had been right then. Here was the key.
“Mr Burton, I have come—as you have doubtless guessed—about your niece Marjorie,” began the detective.
A wavering smile played over the rubicund face of Mr Burton. His eyes remained hard and blue, like little bits of china.
“Have you news of her? Good news? Please don’t keep me in suspense!”
“No, I have no news,” replied Morgan quietly, and he felt certain that there was a distinct expression of relief in Burton’s face.
“On the contrary, I have come to you for information.”
Burton gave an exclamation of surprise.
“I? I have heard nothing. If I had, I would have come to you at once.”
“I am not asking for any information you may have received subsequent to my last visit.”
Mr Burton’s eyes narrowed watchfully.
“What exactly do you mean, Inspector?”
“Simply this: that I believe you knew more than you told me on my last visit. It is absolutely essential that you be frank with me.”
The other man shook his head in a puzzled reproachful fashion.
“Then it doesn’t seem to me that this document is worth much to you!”
“Well, that’s my look-out, isn’t it? I want you both to sign it jointly. You can sign it here and now, and I will get Marjorie to sign it directly she is released.”
“Well, I don’t know, it seems a bit funny. Is this kind of thing legal?”
“Perfectly. You see the document mentions the consideration—that we assist in finding Marjorie Easton, who at the date of the agreement is stated to be missing. Therefore it is a contract good in law. Anyway, the legality of it is our responsibility. Here is a pen. Sign it, and I will tell you where Marjorie is.”
Wainwright signed it. Miss Crispin outlined her plan, and arranged a meeting place for the next day. When he returned to the bungalow, he found an empty telegraph envelope in the hall. Harness was waiting for him with a false expression of joviality on his face.
“Hello, old chap! I wondered where you had got to!”
“I just went for a stroll round,” replied Wainwright, with an equally false cordiality.
He had met Miss Crispin only just in time! He would have to make a getaway that night, so that in the morning Harness would find the bird had flown.
2
When Marjorie woke from a drugged sleep to find the walls of the asylum once more round her, her first feeling was of a dull, aching despair. Impossible as it had seemed, she was a captive, without hope of release. What at first she had thought was some strange mental upheaval had proved to be the active enmity of real human beings.
Why they displayed this cold implacable enmity, why this battalion of foes had suddenly sprung up at every turn, in the place of those whom she thought friends, was more than she was able to fathom. But of the facts there was now no doubt.
This despair presently gave place to a kind of apathy. What was the good of doing anything, when everything had proved so useless? For some reason or other, it had been determined that she should be put out of the way. Now that she had time to reflect, she came to see clearly that at the back of it all must be the figure of Dr Wood. His was the main responsibility for this appalling deed; and it seemed that it could only be a fiendish cruelty, a lust for suffering in others as an end in itself, which could dictate his actions. And this purposelessness of the cruelty made her resigned, as one might become resigned to an inevitable illness. Whether any bromides were administered in her food to produce this resignation, she could not tell. But certainly during the next two or three days a complete apathy came over her.
Meanwhile Ted Wainwright was going through the opposite process.
He had hoped to be able to help Marjorie at once, but instead of that Miss Crispin, who had taken him to a room in the north of London and warned him to go out as little as possible, had kept on putting off the day. He chafed with a fury and impatience which gathered force each day.
He wondered if he had been tricked. But if he had, it seemed pointless. He preferred to accept Miss Crispin’s statement in her letters from Norwich that it was impossible to do anything more than she was doing to make contact with Marjorie.
The only consolation he got was that Miss Crispin had seen Marjorie more than once walking in the grounds, and reported that she was quite well, mentally and physically, and that there was no pressing fear for her safety. So the days passed.
“Our only hope for the moment,” wrote Miss Crispin frankly, “is that Marjorie should be moved to another room.”
Marjorie was much more strictly guarded than she had been before, and though she was allowed in the grounds, she was always accompanied by an attendant, and was not allowed to speak to any of the other patients. Although she looked out for Lambert, she noticed to her surprise that he was nowhere to be seen. This set her wondering. Had his help of her brought some dreadful punishment down on his head; or was he simply ill; or was he being kept shut up in his room?
She asked her attendant but got no answer beyond a resentful stare. Evidently Lambert was a sore point with them, and she thought it more prudent to avoid reference to him in the future.
Matters went on like this until one day, as a result of her constant complaints about the darkness of her room, which gave on to the inner courtyard, she was moved into a room in front. The same day, a strange incident occurred. She was sitting in a seat facing the wall, while her attendant by her side was busy reading. Suddenly she saw a woman’s head appear over the other side of the wall, and give her a warning look. A small white object came over the wall and fell into the flower bed below. Then the head disappeared.
Marjorie managed to walk near the flower bed, stoop as if to do up her shoe, and pick up the note. She unfolded it in the privacy of her room. It read as follows:
Marjorie Easton: Find some way of keeping your window unlocked tonight.
This message, suggesting outside help, sent the blood pulsing through Marjorie’s veins again. But how could she keep her window unlocked? As a matter of routine, every evening, her attendant came round and locked the casement window by turning the key in a padlock which was fixed on the catch.
At last a stratagem occurred to her. She vividly remembered an uncle who was subject to fits of asthma and who, when he had them, had been forced to lean out of the window half the night, purple in the face. Remembering his symptoms she started to imitate them, and with such success that, towards the evening, her attendant sent for the doctor. Marsden came in and found her leaning out of the window, gasping for breath.
“Have you ever suffered from asthma?” he asked after a brief examination, and Marjorie explained that she had occasionally had it as a child, but this had been her first attack for many years. She repeated some of the symptoms she had often heard her uncle complain of.
As Marjorie had calculated, the attacks of asthma and the visits of the doctor served to postpone the locking of the window, and once the routine time had passed, no attempt was made to do so.
Marjorie was unable to sleep that night. She lay on her bed fully dressed and waiting. When she heard faint noises in the grounds, and scraping sounds, she jumped up and went to the window. It was pitch dark outside, and she could see nothing, but as she leaned out she heard a whisper.
“Are you there, Marjorie?”
Impossible—staggering as it seemed to her—the voice was Ted’s! Marjorie’s voice almost broke as she answered:
“Yes, here!”
Five minutes later Marjorie was climbing down the ladder which led to escape—and Ted.
CHAPTER XV: Who Is the Director?
Inspector Morgan gained little from an examination of the blear-eyed fugitive whom he charged with the murder of Dr Wood. Tremayne’s examination of Lambert, brief though it was, established definitely that his mind had disintegrated finally under the emotional upheaval involved in his act of homicide. Lambert was now a mere human shell. He was not even harmful now. His last outbreak had drained him of all energy and interest in the outside world. From now on he would live in a twilit world of fantasy and self-exploration. Reality had completely ceased to exist for him. Perhaps this was as well.
A search of his past proved conclusively that, starting from being a fairly harmless eccentric, with one or two curious foibles and a passion for psychic investigation, he had been deliberately driven over the borderline by Crispin. Crispin had made contact with him through the world of psychic research, and had deliberately exploited the psychological mechanism of dissociation to produce a complete cleavage of personality.
In the early stage of this condition, Lambert had come into contact with Wood, who was playing as usual the role of a disinterested investigator. Lambert had applied to him for treatment of the obsessions and compulsions which were manifesting themselves. Wood’s treatment—as his notebook showed—had been deliberately directed to complete the ruin. After that, there had been no difficulty in getting an order which put Lambert’s affairs in the hands of his cousin, Sir Timothy.
What were the motives of Crispin and Wood for this apparently disinterested fiendishness? An examination of the banking account of Timothy Lambert soon showed that large sums of money had passed from the estate to the medium and the doctor, and even larger cash sums to some personality, evidently concerned in the crime, who had adopted the device of cash payments to preserve his anonymity. Was he the Director to whom Wood’s intercepted telephone message had referred?
Evidently Lambert’s subconscious mind had retained some inkling of what had been done to the shattered personality of which it was a part. On the occasions when he had made an escape, he had gone straight to his archenemies and attempted to kill them. Now that both were dead, one by his own hand, all resentment seemed to have left his ruined mind. He had become inert and without volition, as the result of a crisis which had brought his insanity to the higher stage of catatonia.
“It’s the beginning of the end,” explained Tremayne. “Poor fellow, he won’t survive long!”
Morgan prepared for the trial which could only result in finding him unfit to plead, and liable to detention at the King’s pleasure.
This, however, did not solve the mystery of Crispin’s death, for, if one thing was abundantly clear, it was that the murder of the medium was not carried out by a lunatic, but by someone of unusual sanity and acumen. Nothing could be farther removed from the brutal slaying of Wood than the subtle mystery of Crispin’s death, in which everything pointed to the complicity of Ted Wainwright and yet where more and more the inspector, in spite of his warrant for Wainwright’s arrest, seemed to sense the impress of a more cunning hand.
A vital question for the inspector was: where had Lambert been incarcerated during his “treatment” in an institute? Nothing could be found among the doctor’s papers to clear this matter up. Lambert’s solicitor was apparently completely ignorant of the address. “All that side of it,” he explained with an air of distaste, “had been left to Mr Lambert’s medical adviser.”
It was impossible, in his present state, to get any response from Lambert. Sir Timothy Lambert professed complete ignorance, and since he was in a pitiable condition of fear, with a criminal prosecution and approaching bankruptcy both hanging over his head, it was unlikely that he would be deceiving the police in this matter.
Morgan was quite prepared to find the place outwardly a respectable, registered institution, with periodical inspections, correct routine, and all the visible signs of authenticity. Cases of bogus mental homes were sufficiently numerous in his experience for such a thing to be well within the bounds of possibility. This made it difficult to know where to begin to look for the place. Morgan contented himself, as an immediate routine step, with making sure that a full list of all registered mental institutes against which any complaints had been received should be compiled and sent to him for checking.
Meanwhile he was still faced with the old problems.
How and why had the strychnine been introduced into Crispin’s drink, in full view of everyone in the séance room at that time?
Why was the empty poison bottle, which had contained hydrocyanic acid, found in Ted Wainwright’s pocket?
What was the explanation of the lying story which the doctor and Mrs Threpfall had told him about Wainwright, and what was the doctor’s purpose in protecting Wainwright, in view of his own guilt?
Unless he could solve these problems, he was at a dead end, for the murder of Crispin had been the starting point of the whole tangle, and must therefore be the end of it. The other mysteries—the disappearance of Marjorie and Miss Crispin—were unquestionably bound up with this problem.
Clear, unpoisoned water had flowed out of the tap in the séance room. By the time it had reached Crispin, it had become poisoned. Under the basin in the séance room there had been a pool of water sufficiently impregnated with strychnine to cause the instant death of the small dog who had lapped it up. What was the solution to these contradictory facts?
Then quite suddenly Morgan—perhaps for the first time in his life—had an inspiration. That is, he saw quite clearly in his mind’s eye, without any basis in hard fact, a picture of how the crime might have been carried out. It floated in his imagination tantalisingly clear and vivid. Forty years of routine and factualism demanded that he suppress so wild a vision. If he allowed himself that kind of loose speculation, the forty years reminded him, he would soon be running everywhere on all kinds of wild-goose chases, while the real criminal sat safe and sound under his nose.
But the vision refused to be exorcised. So, with a shamefaced feeling, and saying nothing to his subordinates, Morgan jumped into a car and followed his “hunch.” It led him to Belmont Avenue, to the Crispins’ home, still shuttered, its rooms full of dust-sheeted furniture. Outside was the notice of an impending auction.
Morgan went straight to the séance room. Then he knelt down beneath the basin and examined the piping leading up behind it carefully. Of course his idea was absurd but——
“Good heavens,” he exclaimed aloud, in an awed tone, “I was right!”
The piping, and the wall immediately underneath the basin, showed clearly what had happened. A small tank, fitting neatly behind the basin, had been fastened to the rising water pipe in two places. The traces of the two holes, which were now soldered up, could be distinctly felt with the finger tips. It was obvious that this tank could have contained only one thing—poison.
Whoever installed the apparatus was a plumber of no mean ability, for the job had been neatly done and neatly removed, and the unknown had allowed for the pressure of the water by fastening the tank to the pipe in two places, one constituting an inlet, and the other an outlet, so that as the water flowed through the main pipe it would induce a corresponding flow through the feeder pipe and effectually poison the water as it passed. A nice calculation was necessary to ensure that sufficient poison entered the flow without immediately exhausting the tank.
No doubt, the inspector reflected, the poison reservoir had not been a plain tank, but a tightly coiled worm of piping. If he remembered anything of hydraulics, it would have to have been like that.
But whatever it was, it had been fixed up before Crispin’s death, and had been carefully removed at some later date. In being removed, some of the poison it contained had been spilt on the mat below, thus accounting for the death of the dog. Perhaps the unknown had crept into the house and removed it that very morning. Perhaps Morgan had been in the house at the same time as the murderer!
Whoever fixed it must have been in an unusual position, in that he had been morally certain that Crispin would drink a glass of water after the séance. This last was a surprising factor. Even given that Crispin generally took a glass of water after a séance, how could the murderer be certain of such a chancy thing?
Even more odd was the fact that the glass of water was handed to Crispin by Ted Wainwright, and Ted Wainwright was found, after his arrest, to have an empty poison bottle in his pocket. Now at first it seemed as if there was a deliberate attempt to make Wainwright the scapegoat. But if this was the case, and the poison bottle was introduced into Wainwright’s pocket by Mrs Threpfall, why had such a careless error been made as to introduce a prussic-acid bottle instead of one which had contained strychnine? Why should Mrs Threpfall go to the pain of buying prussic acid when strychnine had already been bought for the slaying of Crispin?
No, it was impossible that such a gross error had been made. From which impossibility one could only deduce that the two complications were set on foot entirely separately, that there was no connection between the poisoning of Crispin and the purchase of prussic acid by Mrs Threpfall on behalf of Ted Wainwright.
Who was the Director? More and more clearly it seemed to Morgan that he was fighting an unknown enemy; and that this enemy was the dangerous one. Wood, Crispin and Mrs Threpfall had been exposed; the whole web of horror behind them had been brought to light; but somewhere there still lurked the spider who had spun it all, and of whom Wood, Ted Wainwright, Crispin and Mrs Threpfall were only tools.
Was Marjorie Easton in his clutches now? And if so, why? As he reflected on this, Morgan felt the pattern slip into place, like a missing jigsaw piece when it is turned to fill a gap. He walked out of Belmont Avenue, got into his car again, and drove straight to the suburb of Bilford. He had decided to call on Samuel Burton.
Samuel Burton was in. When Morgan walked into his room behind him he could clearly see, by the line of his back, that Samuel Burton was afraid. Backs are expressive, and, by the very reluctance with which Burton turned to bring his face towards his visitor again, Morgan could see that he was afraid. Morgan’s guess had been right then. Here was the key.
“Mr Burton, I have come—as you have doubtless guessed—about your niece Marjorie,” began the detective.
A wavering smile played over the rubicund face of Mr Burton. His eyes remained hard and blue, like little bits of china.
“Have you news of her? Good news? Please don’t keep me in suspense!”
“No, I have no news,” replied Morgan quietly, and he felt certain that there was a distinct expression of relief in Burton’s face.
“On the contrary, I have come to you for information.”
Burton gave an exclamation of surprise.
“I? I have heard nothing. If I had, I would have come to you at once.”
“I am not asking for any information you may have received subsequent to my last visit.”
Mr Burton’s eyes narrowed watchfully.
“What exactly do you mean, Inspector?”
“Simply this: that I believe you knew more than you told me on my last visit. It is absolutely essential that you be frank with me.”
The other man shook his head in a puzzled reproachful fashion.
