The Glass Alibi: A Case for Superintendent Slade, page 7
"I have to take precautions," he told me, as though he were confiding a great secret, and laughed in the back of his throat as though the joke were both rich and rare.
By this time I was a man moving in the motions of a semi-hypnotic state. I was under no spell cast by this strange Ferdinand Pagliach. It was the bewildering pattern of circumstance that bemused me and left me without any further initiative.
The cold air of that Saturday night flowed into the hall and wrapped around me in the intimate folds of a toga. I spread my feet apart and tried to look as though I had taken root. At least I produced an arched look of surprise on his pink face. The blue eyes filled with swift questions.
"Please," he begged, "you are not going to be tiresome now. You have been so reasonable."
I skipped the back-handed compliment.
"Who are you, Pagliach?" I asked.
I tried to stare him down, and he melted with an overt sadness.
"Perhaps," he said, "you should know. It does not matter greatly. Your so excellent Scotland Yard knows all about me. I am the representative in Great Britain of the International Baltic Trading Commission."
It didn't mean a thing to me.
"You're a long way from home," I said.
He thought that over. "Perhaps not so far as you would think, Mr Felling."
"And what is Professor Bergen to you?"
I asked that out of the blue. For a moment I swear his jaw fell slack with surprise. But his recovery was so swift and so complete that the very next instant I was left wondering whether or not I had been deceived by the light in the hall and the shadows that were around us.
"Professor Bergen?" he frowned inquiringly. "Isn't that the name of the scientist who is missing? I seem to remember reading about him in your newspapers."
I hadn't got past his guard, and felt depressed.
He seized the advantage he had won.
"Now, Mr Felling," he urged, "please let us conclude this meeting which neither of us is enjoying. I bid you goodnight and good-bye."
I don't remember passing over the doorstep and into the night, but I do remember the door clicking shut and darkness being all about me save for the glow from the curtained windows.
I walked down the steps to the gravelled drive. Somehow the interview, which had begun so differently, now seemed like something imagined rather than lived. The only vital thing I retained was the impression of graven fear on June's face. That was the catalyst that deposited truth in the murk of my mind.
The night breeze was cool and I dragged my jacket around me and buttoned it close. My steps made crunching sounds with a strange rhythm.
I passed between the open gates and quickened my stride. My eyes were lifted somewhere between the tree-tops and the stars in Orion's Belt. I didn't see the cord stretched across the path. I didn't feel it until I had lost my balance and was falling.
It was while I was still falling that the gunshot sounded close. I went sprawling down on my hands and knees. Then something hit the lane close to my head and bounced with a metallic clatter.
I thought I heard footsteps breaking through undergrowth, but my head wasn't clear, and I was trying to bend bruised knees.
A hand went under my armpit and I was lifted to my feet.
"It was a lucky thing we tripped you, Mr Felling," said Superintendent Slade, "or that bullet would have been through your head, my friend."
I didn't have to be told the identity of the thick-set man with him. The bushy moustache and squared shoulders fitted too well. The fact that Constable Hicks of Wayland was not in uniform afforded little disguise. It was the constable who stooped and picked up the gun with a handkerchief. I looked at it in the poor light. It looked very much like the gun that had been taken from me.
"I don't get it," I said.
"That is true—up to a point," said Slade drily. "But let's be moving."
I walked with him and the constable to where the Yard man had parked his car.
"Get in," said Slade.
I climbed in. The constable climbed in beside me, and Slade squeezed under the driving-wheel. He drove down the lane without lights, which must have given the constable a few pangs. Then the lights came on, we debouched into a wider road, and the engine sprang to clamorous life.
Slade drove into Seahaven, the coastal town that sprawled up to the very foot of the Downs. He parked outside the police station, and we walked in together.
"Is Detective Joyce in?" he inquired.
The desk sergeant nodded, and we went into a room at the end of a corridor painted in two shades of green distemper. Seated with his feet up on one chair and his hat on another, reading the day's sports results, was the man with the shaggy moustache who had paraded outside the phone box while I waited to speak to Slade.
"So you know me," he grinned, giving me a glance sharp enough to impale me to the farther wall.
CHAPTER IX
A MAN NAMED LAVENDER
I FOUND my voice.
"I'm not sure I deserve all this attention," I cracked.
It didn't go down at all well. Slade took the matter seriously and scored heavily.
"I'm inclined to agree, Mr Felling. But you are a difficult subject to pin down."
Then I boiled over.
"Pin down!" I cried. "Someone's just about tried to kill me in sweet fashion. And do you know what's happened to Mrs Kragle? She's doped so that she can't move or speak, and that damned Pagliach—"
The trouble with boiling over is that one is apt to put out the flame affording the heat necessary to ensure boiling.
That's what I did. I slumped down on the chair from which Joyce had taken his feet.
"Oh, hell, what's the use!" I grunted in a forlorn voice, aware that Constable Hicks was looking at me in heavy-eyed fashion that conveyed the disapproval of the entire force of Sussex Constabulary.
"Well, now," said Joyce brightly, "that's what we're going to find out, isn't it?"
I looked at Slade, who was keeping a straight face. He moved to a table and sat on the end of it.
"We tried to take care of you, Mr Felling," he said. "Joyce kept a look-out for you in the village. That was arranged before I left Tullenfield. After you phoned, Constable Hicks and I drove over, and took a look around the neighbourhood of Myrtle Lodge. I know something of Mr Pagliach's reputation. He is a gentleman with considerable means who nominally represents a Baltic trading organisation. I say nominally because it is believed that the office enables him to stay in this country directing other affairs."
"Such as approaching Professor Bergen?" I asked.
"I didn't say that," said Slade, while Joyce wagged his head disapprovingly.
Hicks maintained a stolid watchfulness.
Slade resumed from the point where I had interrupted. "We saw a man come running down the drive. He disappeared into some undergrowth. Hicks had brought a length of stout cord. We had considered the possibility that we might have to tie a prisoner. No, not you, Mr Felling," the Yard man added as I looked the obvious question. "Fortunately we were well placed. It wasn't difficult to stretch out the line. I think we tripped you in time. Hand me the gun, Hicks."
The constable took the gun still wrapped in a handkerchief from his pocket. Slade placed it on the table and turned back the edges of the handkerchief. The gun certainly looked like the one I had found in my room at the Merry Cavalier.
"I think," the Yard man continued, "your body might have been found with this gun nearby. It might have looked at first glance like suicide, especially as I have no doubt your fingerprints are on it."
I gulped. That was hard to swallow, but had to be got down. Now he had put it into words I knew I didn't question his interpretation of what had happened. It had been so devilishly simple. I had pocketed the gun, turned up at Myrtle Lodge, just as though I had been behaving like someone subject to remote control. I would have been shot dead, and the gun found.
"Not only my fingerprints are on it. Pagliach handled it," I said.
Slade smiled. "I think you are not giving Mr Pagliach credit for enough ingenuity," he said. "A little collodion on his fingers, and he would leave no fingerprints."
I had something else to offer as a possible objection.
"But the shot was fired too far away for suicide, surely."
His quick nod conceded my point.
"You have read thrillers where that detail is made much of, I can see," he said. "In certain circumstances that is so. For instance, in an enclosed room. But it does not necessarily follow in the open, where a stiffish breeze might interrupt such things as powder burns and dust from the road get into a wound and spoil precise medical evidence. However, it is not perhaps unreasonable to assume that Mr Pagliach decided the English police would be willing to take the easy way out and proclaim suicide as the most obvious and certainly the simplest conclusion."
I was in a mental fog.
"But why?" I wanted to know.
"I think to-morrow may answer that question," he said cautiously, and went on, "Now tell me about your interview with the gentleman who occupies Myrtle Lodge. You saw Mrs Kragle?"
"Yes, indeed. But she was drugged, as I told you. She couldn't talk to me, though Pagliach left us together."
"The gentleman has a nice touch of finesse. I hope you're convinced he's dangerous."
I jumped at a fresh conclusion. "You think he is the murderer of Kragle and Jennifer Wade?"
But Slade wasn't wearing that. "I'm still keeping an open mind," he reminded me in tantalising fashion. "Let's hear what else you can tell us of what transpired."
I found that the story of my visit could be condensed into very few words, and they seemed totally inadequate to convey all I had felt and my mixed feelings at the clever way I had been handled.
When I had finished Slade said, "We can assume certain facts without wildly guessing. Pagliach knows I brought you down. He has a body on his hands."
That jolted me. Slade was referring to the body of Jennifer Wade. I'm afraid I found his detachment more than a little gruesome.
"He will want to satisfy me, deal with you, and dispose of the body. Let's assume he has a plan for the last, that might combine with his way for ridding himself of you, Mr Felling, and, in his way of thinking, help to satisfy me."
I wasn't even trying to follow him. A fresh impatience was running through me. I felt impelled to say, "Why don't you raid Myrtle Lodge to-night and rescue June Kragle?"
Slade pursed his mouth and gave me a slow, contemplative look.
"I'm beginning to understand something of your impulsive nature, Mr Felling," he said. "Not what I should have expected to find in an accountant employed by Broom and Parsons, who have a sober enough reputation."
His reminding me of my employers served to side-track my thoughts.
"How about them?" I asked. "You were going to fix things with Simon Broom."
He nodded. "In good time. This is Saturday night. We have another full day before you're expected in the office. Much can happen in a day. But let me get back to your first question. To raid Myrtle Lodge I would require a warrant and a very strong case. I have no intention of drawing blank when I lock horns officially with Mr Pagliach. If I paid a visit he would receive me and enjoy the interview far more than I should, and of course I shouldn't see Mrs Kragle."
I began to see that Slade walked a delicate path between high thorn hedges. There were other questions I wanted to put to him, but was dissuaded by a feeling that perhaps I might succeed only in making myself appear a bigger fool than he already thought me.
He went on, "No, I think there is a better way of handling friend Pagliach. That is why I agreed in principle to your coming to Tullenfield. I knew you would be quickening the tempo of this involved case."
Joyce grinned at that. Hicks remained stolid, unblinking. I don't think he understood a word of what was said, and rather envied him.
"You agreed rather more than in principle," I pointed out, stung a little.
"Perhaps," Slade smiled. "The point I am trying to make is—we shall make the maximum progress if Pagliach is allowed to think he has succeeded in eliminating you."
I was getting my breath again when Slade continued.
"Fortunately you have no wife or family to consider."
"I have an aunt," I claimed rashly.
The straggly ends of Joyce's moustache went up half an inch as his grin stretched, and I could have clouted him with considerable pleasure.
"Let's hope we don't disturb the lady," Slade said solemnly.
"If you're her favourite nephew she might feel sorry for you and leave you a fortune," said Joyce, prepared to enjoy himself moderately at my expense.
"I'm scared she won't leave enough to pay the death duties," I told him.
Strangely, that remark puzzled Hicks more than Joyce. I could see him working over the problem and being worried by it.
"We won't let the report in the Press be too definite," said Slade.
"Oh, so I'm going to be in the papers," I exclaimed.
"In the stop press column, I hope," said Slade. "That poses a problem. You won't be able to go back to the Merry Cavalier for a time. Now—"
He looked straight at Joyce, who gave me a glance and adopted an attitude of complete resignation.
"All right," he said. "He can share my room. I live with my sister and her husband here in Seahaven."
"Good," said Slade, and he must have been speaking solely for himself. Neither Joyce nor myself seemed in the slightest enchanted by the prospect. "You'd better get through to the hospital and have them to send out an ambulance. If they prove sticky I'll have a word. The ambulance must go through Tullenfield. I want it talked about before the pubs shut."
"I'll fix it," said Joyce.
He left us, and one of the questions I had battened down in his presence I now released.
"The man who shot me. How can you be sure he won't know he missed?"
"So that's bothering you," nodded Slade. "Set your mind at rest. He didn't stay to find out. He fired. Almost at that moment you were pitching forward. He tossed the gun at you and broke away through the undergrowth beyond the hedge. Hicks had started whistling softly. The would-be murderer didn't want to be around with any witnesses. Anyway, we wanted him to decamp. If he had found the cord stretched across the lane that would have spoiled everything."
I felt I had to take his word for it.
"By the way," said Slade, "the man who tried to put a bullet into you is also an inmate of Myrtle Lodge. He goes by the pleasant name of Lavender. Probably derived from a multi-syllabic Slav name."
Well, Slade had certainly done his own checking, and that was reassuring up to a point.
"Undoubtedly Lavender saw us arrive in Tullenfield, and waited until we left your room. Then he went up and planted the gun. Quite good staff work on Pagliach's part," Slade approved.
So far as I was concerned it was too good. But I still couldn't figure Slade's own game. He seemed to know the rules, but was operating at only half pressure.
"Why didn't you and Hicks grab him after he took that shot at me?" I asked. "That would have had him cold."
"There is little satisfaction in catching a minnow when you've spent a long while angling for a bigger fish, Mr Felling."
That was fobbing me off, but it was quite well done. I couldn't expostulate with any righteousness. I had done more than my own share of letting minnows get away—and not all minnows.
Joyce came in. He didn't look happy.
"Sorry, sir," he said to Slade. "Those hospital people are proving sticky. It seems the local medical executive council are on the warpath about something or other, and they're scared to act without official sanction."
"They're still on the line?"
Joyce nodded.
"All right, I'll have a word."
Slade and Joyce went out together. I glanced at the granite-like Hicks and cleared my throat. That simple action was sufficient to win me a glance of such baleful intensity that I quickly effected a mental retreat. I couldn't swap conversational punches with Hicks without being spiritually flattened. I didn't even bother to offer him a cigarette that I knew would be refused on principle. I sat smoking and waiting until Slade returned. Joyce no longer accompanied him.
"Well, that's settled," he announced. "Joyce will see that a guarded report goes to the Press, and the hospital will cover up. So when Mr Pagliach gets his morning paper he will be free to think the worst has happened. Only he might consider it the best for himself. He has such perverted ideas."
I could tell that Slade was archly amused. He looked at Hicks.
"How far is the weir below Tullenfield, constable?"
Hicks' enormous face gathered a frown like a thunder-cloud as he gave this momentous question his complete absorption.
"About two miles," he said in his rich Sussex voice. "Little less than half-way to Wayland, sir."
I was filled with fresh inquisitiveness at Slade's question, but not so Hicks. He had answered a question, and there was an end of it. I followed his example because I had little mental courage in that moment.
"Well," said Slade, turning to me, "when Joyce is through you'll be able to go along with him. He'll fix you up with sleeping things and shaving tackle."
"When shall I be able to go back to the Merry Cavalier?" I asked.
"I hope soon," said Slade evasively. "Is there anything else you want to know?"
I think he knew that was a rash question, in the circumstances, but perhaps he was feeling sorry for me. On the other hand, he might have wanted to know my personal reactions. I wasn't able to make up my mind then and I haven't been able to since.
Anyway, I thrust my reticence on one side.
"Yes, there is," I said. "For one thing, why should Pagliach kidnap Mrs Kragle? Obviously, as you know so much about him, he's mixed up in some under-cover international affair. That Baltic trading set-up is a blind."
"The trading set-up isn't," Slade corrected me. "Pagliach's connection with it is the blind."
"All right," I said, feeling I had drawn blood from a stone, "then where does Pagliach fit in with the mystery of Professor Bergen?"
Slade looked thoughtful as he considered this, and I remembered something I had omitted from my brief account of what had transpired at Myrtle Lodge.
