The crimson circle
could realise his intention he had seized her in his arms. He was a
powerful man, a head taller than she, and his big hands gripped her
arms like steel clamps.
“Let me go,” said Thalia steadily. She did not lose her nerve nor show
the least sign of fear.
Suddenly he felt her tense muscles relax. He had conquered.
With a quick intake of breath he released his hold of the sullen girl.
“Let me have some supper,” she said, and he beamed.
“Now, my dear, you are being the little girl I--what’s that?”
The last was a squeak of terror.
She had strolled slowly to the table and had taken up the brocade bag.
He had watched her and thought she was seeking a handkerchief. Instead
she had produced a small, black, egg-shaped thing, and with a flick of
her left hand had pulled out a small pin and dropped the pin on to the
table. He knew what it was--he had dabbled in army supplies and had
seen many Mills bombs.
“Put it down--no, no, put the pin in, you young fool!” he whimpered.
“Don’t worry,” she said coolly. “I have a spare pin in my bag--open
that door!”
His hand shook like a man with palsy as he fumbled at the keyhole.
Then he turned and blinked at her.
“A Mills bomb!” he mumbled, and fell back an obese mass of quivering
flesh against the delicate panelling.
Slowly she nodded.
“A Mills bomb,” she said softly, and went out, still gripping the
lever of the deadly egg-like thing. He followed her to the door and
slammed it after her, then went shakily up the stairs to his bedroom.
“Flush” Barnet, standing in the shadow of a clothes-press, heard the
click of locks and the snap of a bolt as Mr. Marl entered his room.
The house was still. Through the thick door of Mr. Marl’s bedroom no
sound came. There was no transom to the door, and the only evidence
that there was somebody in his room was afforded by a fret of light in
the ceiling of the passage, which came through a ventilator in the
wall of the bedroom.
During the war this house had been used as an officers’ convalescent
home, and certain hygienic arrangements had been introduced, which
were more useful than beautiful.
“Flush” crept softly in his stockinged feet to the door and listened.
He thought he heard the man talking to himself and looked around for
some means by which he could obtain a view of the room. There was a
small oaken table in the corridor and he placed this against the wall
and mounted. His eyes came to the level of the ventilator and he
looked down upon Mr. Marl pacing the room in his shirt-sleeves,
obviously disturbed. Then “Flush” Barnet heard a sound. Just a faint
“hush-hush” of feet on a carpet, and he slipped down, walked quickly
along the corridor, passing the head of the stairs.
The hall below was in darkness, but he felt rather than saw a figure
on the stairway. Whether it was man or woman he could not say, and did
not stop to discover. It might be one of the servants returning
furtively--servants did not always stay away when they were bidden.
“Flush” passed to the farther end of the corridor and from an angle in
the wall watched. He saw nobody pass the head of the stairs, but there
was no background. After a while he crept back again. There was
nothing to be gained by forcing the door of Marl’s bedroom, even if it
were possible. He had had time to inspect the house at his leisure,
and he had already decided upon investigating the little safe in the
library, for Mr. Marl’s own room had drawn blank.
The “investigation,” which took two hours and the employment of one of
the best sets of tools in the profession, was not unprofitable. But it
did not reveal the huge sum of money which he anticipated. He
hesitated. The night was too far through to make an attempt on the
bedroom, even if he had not already searched it from wall to wall. He
folded his kit and slipped it into one pocket, his loot into another,
and went upstairs again. There was no sound from Marl’s room, but the
light was still on. He tried to look through the keyhole, but the key
was still there. The only inducement there was for him to enter the
room was the possibility that the money was in the man’s clothes. This
likelihood was remote, he thought. Possibly Marl had taken it to some
safe deposit--a contingency which Barnet had foreseen.
He went slowly down the stairs, through the hall and the butler’s
pantry to the side door, where he had left his boots, his overcoat and
his shiny silk hat, for he was in evening dress. Then he stole softly
forth along the covered passage-way running by the side of the house.
Here a door opened into the little forecourt of Marl’s house. He
reached the garden and his hand was on the gate when somebody touched
him and he spun round.
“I want you ‘Flush,’” said a well-remembered voice. “Inspector Parr.
You may remember me?”
“Parr!” gasped the bewildered Barnet, and with an oath wrenched
himself free and leapt through the gate, but the three policemen who
were waiting for him were not so easy to dispose of, and they marched
“Flush” Barnet to the nearest police station, a worried man.
In the meantime Parr conducted a search of his own. Accompanied by a
detective he made his way to the hall of the house and up the stairs.
“This is the only room occupied apparently,” he said, and knocked at
the door.
There was no reply.
“Go along and see if you can rouse any of the servants,” said Parr.
The man came back with the startling information that there were no
servants in the house.
“There’s somebody here,” said the old inspector, and flashing his lamp
along the corridor he saw the table, and with an agility remarkable in
one of his age, he leapt up and peered through the ventilator.
“I can just see somebody asleep,” he said. “Hi! Wake up!” he called,
but there was no reply.
Hammering on the door did not produce any response.
“Go down and see if you can find a hatchet, we’ll break open the
door,” said Parr. “I don’t like this.”
Hatchet there was none, but they found a hammer.
“Can you show a light, Mr. Parr?” asked the man, and the inspector
flashed his lamp on the door. It was a white door--white except for
the Crimson Circle affixed to a panel as by a rubber stamp.
“Break in the door,” said Parr, breathing heavily.
For five minutes they smashed at a panel before they finally hammered
it through, and the sleeper within gave no sign of consciousness.
Parr reached his hand through the door, turned the key and, by dint of
stretching, found the bolt at the top. He slipped into the room. The
light was still burning and its rays fell across the man on the bed,
who lay upon his back, a twisted smile on his face, most obviously
dead.
Chapter XVII.
The Blower of Bubbles
It was long after midnight and Derrick Yale was sitting in his
pretty little study--he lived in a flat overlooking the park--when the
knock came to the door and he rose to admit Inspector Parr.
Parr related the incident of the evening.
“But why didn’t you tell me?” asked Derrick a little reproachfully,
and then laughed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I always seem to be butting
in on your affairs. But how came the murderer to escape? You say you
had had the house surrounded for two hours. Did the girl come out?”
“Undoubtedly; she came out and drove home.”
“And nobody else went in?”
“I wouldn’t like to swear that,” said Parr. “Whoever was in the house
had probably arrived long before Marl returned from the theatre. I
have since discovered that there was a way out through the garage at
the back of the house. When I said the house was surrounded that was
an exaggeration. There was a way through the back garden which I did
not know. I didn’t even suspect there were gardens there. Undoubtedly
he went through the garage door.”
“Do you suspect the girl at all?”
Parr shook his head.
“But why were you surrounding Marl’s house at all?” asked Derrick Yale
seriously.
The answer was as unexpected as it was sensational.
“Because Marl has been under police observation ever since he came
back to London,” said Parr. “In fact, ever since I discovered that he
was the man who wrote the letter, the scrap of which I found and which
I compared last week with his writing--I asked him for the address of
his tailor.”
“Marl?” said the other incredulously.
Inspector Parr nodded.
“I don’t know what there was between old man Beardmore and Marl, or
what brought him to the house. I’ve been trying to reconstruct the
scene. You may remember that when Marl came to the house on a visit he
was suddenly seized with a panic.”
“I remember,” nodded Yale. “Jack Beardmore told me about it. Well?”
“He refused to stay at the house, said he was going back to London,”
said Parr. “As a matter of fact, he went no farther than Kingside,
which is a station some eight or nine miles away. He sent his bag on
to London and came back by road. He was probably the person whom the
murderer saw in the wood that night. Now why had he come back if he
was so scared that he ran away in the first place? And why did he
write that letter for delivery in the night when he had every
opportunity to tell James Beardmore by day, when he was with him?”
There was a long silence.
“How was Marl killed?” asked Yale.
The other shook his head.
“That is a mystery to me. The murderer could not possibly have entered
the room. I had an interview with ‘Flush’ Barnet--as yet he knows
nothing about the murder--and he admits he broke in for the purpose of
burglary. He says he heard the sound of somebody moving about the
house, and very naturally hid himself. He also says he heard a strange
hissing sound, like air escaping from a pipe. Another remarkable clue
was a round wet patch on the pillow, within a few inches of the dead
man’s hand. It was exactly circular. At first I thought it was a
symbol of the Crimson Circle, until I discovered another patch on the
counterpane. The doctor has not been able to diagnose the cause of
death, but the motive is clear. According to his banker--I’ve just
been talking to Brabazon on the telephone--he drew a large sum of
money from the bank yesterday. In fact, Brabazon closed his account.
They had a quarrel over something or other. The safe was of course
opened by ‘Flush’ Barnet, but there was no money found on him when he
was searched at the police station. Curiously enough, we did discover
several little oddments that ‘Flush’ had picked up--now, who took the
money?”
Derrick Yale paced the floor, his hands behind him, his chin on his
breast.
“Do you know anything of Brabazon?” he asked.
The other did not reply immediately.
“Only that he is a banker and does a lot of foreign work.”
“Is he solvent?” asked Derrick Yale bluntly, and the inspector raised
his dull eyes slowly until they were on a level with the other’s.
“No,” he said, “and I don’t mind telling you that we’ve had one or two
complaints about his methods.”
“Were they good friends--Marl and Brabazon?”
“Fairly good,” was the hesitating reply. “The impression I have from
reports is that Marl had some hold over Brabazon.”
“And Brabazon was insolvent,” mused Derrick Yale. “And this afternoon
Marl closes his account. In what circumstances? Did he come to the
bank?”
Briefly the detective explained what had happened. It seemed that
there was precious little that did happen at Brabazon’s bank that he
did not know.
Derrick Yale was beginning to respect this man, whom at first he had
regarded, with a good-natured scorn, as a little stupid.
“I wonder if it would be possible for me to go to Marl’s house
to-night?”
“I came to suggest that,” said the other. “In fact, I kept a cab
waiting at the door with that idea.”
Derrick Yale did not speak during the journey to Bayswater, and it was