The crimson circle
theatre party that night, and Jack bent his steps homeward. He had
sent his car away, for he felt he needed exercise to dissipate his
energies, and as he crossed the gloomy park, taking a short cut to his
house, he found himself wondering what sort of a home life a man like
Parr could have. He had never spoken about his family, and his mode of
living outside of the police head-quarters was almost as much of a
mystery as that which he was trying to unravel.
Where was Stamford Avenue, he wondered. He had reached a deserted spot
of the park, when he thought he heard footsteps behind him, and turned
his head. He was not a nervous type, and ordinarily the sound of
somebody walking in his rear would not have interested him
sufficiently to make him turn. The path here skirted a dense thicket
of rhododendrons. There was nobody in sight. Jack went on, quickening
his pace.
He heard no more footsteps, but looking round he thought he saw a man
walking on the grass by the side of the path. As Jack stopped he too
halted. He was doubtful as to what he should do. To challenge the man
might put him into an absurd position; there was no reason in the
world why any good citizen should not walk in the park at night, or,
for the matter of that, why they should not walk behind him anywhere
at a respectable distance.
And then ahead of him he made out a slowly strolling figure, and heard
the unmistakable “beat walk” of a policeman.
To his own amazement he felt relieved, and when he looked round, the
figure that had followed him had disappeared. He tried to reconstruct
his impression; whoever his tracker had been, he was smally made. At
first Jack had thought it was a boy; perhaps some poor park beggar who
was mustering up courage to approach him for the price of a night’s
bed. It seemed absurd that he was glad to be out of the park, and to
step into the well-lighted street, but it was the case.
He made an inquiry of a policeman.
“Stamford Avenue, sir? That bus you see over there will take you, or
you can get there in a taxi in ten minutes.”
Jack stood for a long time before he called the taxi-cab. Mr. Parr
would rightly resent this intrusion into his domestic privacy, and
really he had no excuse to offer. But making up his mind of a sudden,
he called a cab, and in a very short time was experiencing exactly the
same doubts and misgivings before the door of Inspector Parr’s
maisonette.
It was Parr himself who opened the door.
His face was naturally free from expression, and he neither showed
surprise nor annoyance at the arrival of his late visitor.
“Come in, Mr. Beardmore,” he said. “I have just arrived, and am having
supper. I suppose you’ve had your evening meal a long time ago.”
“Don’t let me interrupt you, Mr. Parr, only I was rather interested to
hear that you had caught Brabazon, and I thought I’d come along.”
The inspector was showing him into the dining-room, when suddenly he
stopped.
“Good Lord!” he said.
Jack could only wonder what had startled him.
“Do you mind waiting here?”
For the first time since Jack had known the police officer, Parr was
embarrassed.
“I must first tell an old aunt of mine who is staying here who you
are,” he said. “She’s not used to visitors. I’m a widower, you know,
and my aunt keeps house for me.”
He entered the dining-room hurriedly, closing the door behind him, and
Jack felt something of his host’s embarrassment.
A minute, two minutes passed. He heard a hurried movement in the room,
and Parr opened the door.
“Come in, sir.” His red face was even a deeper red. “Sit you down, and
please forgive me for keeping you waiting.”
The room in which he found himself was well and tastefully furnished.
Jack was annoyed with himself for expecting anything else.
Mr. Parr’s aunt was a faded lady with an absent manner, and she seemed
to cause Mr. Parr a considerable amount of anxiety. He scarcely took
his eyes from her as she moved about the room, and she hardly spoke
before he jumped in to interrupt her, always politely, but always very
definitely.
The inspector’s supper was set upon a tray; he had just about finished
when Jack had knocked at the door.
“I hope you’ll excuse our untidiness, Mr.--er----”
“Beardmore,” said Jack.
“She’ll never remember it,” murmured the inspector.
“I can’t keep the place as mother kept it,” she said.
“Of course not, of course not, auntie,” said Mr. Parr hurriedly. “A
little absent,” he murmured. “Now what did you want to know, Mr.
Beardmore?”
Jack laughingly excused himself for his call.
“The Crimson Circle is such a complicated business that I suspect
every new agent to be the central figure,” he said. “Do you think that
the arrest of Brabazon is going to help us?”
“I don’t know,” replied Parr slowly. “There is just a chance that
Brabazon will be a very big help indeed. By the way, I’ve put one of
my own men to look after him, and I have given instructions that the
jailer is not to go into the cell under any circumstances.”
“You’re thinking of Sibly, the sailor, who was poisoned?”
Parr nodded.
“Don’t you think, Mr. Beardmore, that that was one of the greatest
mysteries of all the mysterious Crimson Circle murders?”
He asked this question very soberly, but there was a little glint in
his eye which Jack did not fail to notice.
“You’re laughing. Why? I think it was mysterious, don’t you?”
“Very,” said the inspector. “In some respects, and the poisoning of
Sibly will, to my mind, be a much more important factor in the
eventual capture of the Crimson Circle than is the arrest of our
friend Brabazon.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk about crime and criminals,” said his aunt
fretfully; “really, John, you are very trying. It may have suited
mother----”
“Yes, of course, auntie; I’m sorry,” said Parr hurriedly, and when she
had left the room, Jack Beardmore’s curiosity got the better of his
discretion.
“Mother seems to have been rather a paragon,” he smiled, and wondered
if he had made a _faux pas_.
The answering laugh reassured him.
“Yes, rather a paragon; she is not staying with us just now.”
“Is she your mother, Mr. Parr?”
“No, my grandmother,” said Mr. Parr, and Jack looked at him in
astonishment.
Chapter XXVIII.
A Shot in the Night
The inspector must have been nearly fifty, and he made a rapid
calculation as to the age of this wonderful grandmother who took an
interest in crime, and kept the house tidy.
“She must be a wonderful old lady,” he said, “and I suppose she’d even
be interested in the Crimson Circle.”
“Interested!” Mr. Parr laughed. “If mother was on the track of that
gang with the same authority as I have, they would be high and dry in
Cannon Street police station to-night. As it is,” he paused, “they are
not.”
All the time they were talking Jack was puzzling his head as to why,
in spite of its order, the room gave him an impression of untidiness.
But he was not left to his own thoughts for very long, for Mr. Parr
was in an unusually communicative mood. He even went so far as to tell
Jack some of the unpleasant things said to him by the Commissioner.
“Naturally police head-quarters are rather rattled by the continuance
of these crimes,” he said. “We haven’t had anything like this for
fifty years. In fact, I don’t think since the Ripper murders there has
been such an orgy of destruction. It may interest you, too, Mr.
Beardmore, to know that the Crimson Circle, whoever he is, is the
first real organising criminal we have had to deal with for nearly
fifty years. Criminal organisations are loose affairs, and as they
depend for their safety upon that sense of honour which every thief is
supposed to possess, but which I have never met with, the game doesn’t
last very long. The Crimson Circle, however, is a man who obviously
trusts nobody. He cannot be betrayed because nobody is in a position
to betray him. Even the minor members of the gang cannot betray one
another, because it is just as clear to me that they do not know one
another by name or by sight.”
He went on to discuss interestingly cases in which he had been
concerned, and it was nearly half-past eleven when Jack rose with a
further apology.
“I’ll take you to the front door; your car is here, isn’t it?”
“No,” said Jack. “I came by taxi.”
“H’m,” said the inspector. “I thought I saw a car drawn up in front of
the door. We are not a motor-car owning neighbourhood; probably it is
a doctor’s machine.”
He opened the door, and, as he had said, a black car was drawn up at
the kerb.
“I seem to have seen that before,” said the inspector, and took a step
forward. As he did so a pencil of flame leapt from the dark interior
of the car; there was a deafening report, and Inspector Parr fell into
Jack’s arms and slid to the ground. A second later and the car was
speeding up the street; it showed no light and vanished round the
corner as the doors in the street began to open and to let out the
alarmed residents.
A policeman came running along the pavement, and together they lifted
the detective and carried him into the dining-room. Happily the aunt
had gone to bed, and had apparently heard and noticed nothing.
Inspector Parr opened his eyes and blinked.
“That was a nasty one,” he said with a wince of pain. He felt gingerly
in his waistcoat and brought out a flat piece of lead. “I’m glad he
didn’t use an automatic,” he said, and then, seeing the blank
amazement on Jack’s face, he grinned.
“The Crimson Circle gentleman is only one of three who wear a
bullet-proof waistcoat,” he said. “I am the second, and--” he paused,
“Thalia Drummond is the third, as I happen to know.”
He did not speak again for some time, and then he said to Jack:
“Will you telephone to Derrick Yale? I think he is going to be
considerably startled.”
The prophecy understated the case.
Derrick Yale arrived half an hour after the shooting in such haste
that his appearance suggested that he had dressed over his pyjama
suit. He listened to Parr’s story, and then:
“I don’t want to be uncomplimentary, inspector,” he laughed, “but
you’re the last person in the world I should have thought they would
have wanted to shoot.”
“Thank you,” said Parr, who was gingerly fixing a lint pad over his
bruised chest.
“I don’t mean that as uncomplimentary; I merely mean that such a
definite challenge to the police is the last thing in the world I
expected them to deliver.” He frowned heavily. “I don’t understand
it,” he said as though speaking to himself. “I wonder why she wanted
to know. I’m talking about Thalia Drummond. She asked me this morning
what was your address,” he said. “I understand your name is not even
in the telephone book or in the local directory.”
“What did you say?”
“I gave her some evasive answer, but I’ve just remembered that my
private address book is accessible, and she could easily have
discovered it without troubling to ask me. I wonder she didn’t.”
Jack gave a weary sigh.
“Really, Yale, you’re not suggesting that Miss Drummond fired that
shot, are you? Because, if you are, it’s a ridiculous suggestion. Oh,
I know what you’re going to say: she’s a bad lot and has been guilty
of all sorts of miserable little crimes, but that doesn’t make her a
murderess!”
“You’re quite right,” replied Yale after a pause. “I’m being unjust to
the girl, and it doesn’t seem that I’m starting fair if I am sincere
in my desire to give her a chance. I wanted to see you to-night, by
the way, Parr.” He took from his pocket a card and laid it on the
table before the inspector. “How does that strike you for nerve?”
“When did you get it?”
“It was waiting in the letter-box for me, but I didn’t see it,
curiously enough, until I was rushing out to find a taxi to bring me
here. Isn’t it colossal?”