The crimson circle
keeps a small newsagent’s shop to which letters may be addressed, to
give me the first look over all letters addressed to Johnson. He
wanted a little inducing, because our newsagent is a very honest,
straightforward man, but it is my experience, and probably yours, that
the mere suggestion that a man is assisting the cause of justice will
induce him to commit the most outrageous acts of disloyalty. I took
the liberty of suggesting, without stating, that I was a regular
police officer; I hope you don’t mind.”
“There are times when I think you should be a regular police officer,”
said Parr. “So Thalia Drummond is in communication with the Crimson
Circle?”
“I shall continue to employ her, of course,” said Yale. “The closer
she is to me, the less dangerous she will be.”
“Why did Froyant go abroad?” asked Parr.
The other shrugged his shoulders.
“He has many business connections abroad, and probably is engaged in a
deal. He owns about a third of the vineyards in the Champagne. I
suppose you know that?”
The inspector nodded. Then, for some reason or other, a silence fell
upon them. Each man was busy with his own thoughts, and Mr. Parr
particularly was thinking of Froyant, and wondering why he had gone to
Toulouse.
“How did you know he had gone to Toulouse?” asked Derrick Yale.
The question was so unexpected, such a startling continuation of his
own thoughts, that Parr jumped.
“Good heavens!” he said, “can you read a man’s mind?”
“Sometimes,” said Yale, unsmilingly. “I thought he had gone to Paris.”
“He went to Toulouse,” said the inspector shortly, and did not explain
how he came to know.
Possibly nothing Derrick Yale had ever done, no demonstration he had
given of his gifts, had so disconcerted this placid inspector of
police as that experiment in thought transference. It alarmed, indeed,
frightened him, and he was still shaken in his mind when Harvey
Froyant’s telephone call came through.
“Is that you, Parr? I want you to come to my house. Bring Yale with
you. I have a very important communication to make.”
Inspector Parr hung up the receiver deliberately.
“Now, what the devil does he know?” he said, speaking to himself, and
Derrick Yale’s keen eyes, which had not left the inspector’s face all
the time he was speaking, shone for a moment with a strange light.
* * * *
Thalia Drummond had finished her simple dinner and was engaged in the
domestic task of darning a stocking. Her undomestic task, which was of
greater urgency, was to prevent herself thinking of Jack Beardmore.
There were times when the thought of him was an acute agony, and since
such moments of quietness and solitude as these were favourable for
such meditation, she had just put down her work and turned to
something new for distraction, when the door bell rang.
It was a district messenger, and he carried in his hand a square
parcel that looked like a boot box.
It was addressed to her in pen-printed characters, and she had a
little flutter at her heart as she realised from whom it had come.
Back in her room she cut the string and opened the box. On the top lay
a letter which she read. It was from the Crimson Circle, and ran:
“_You know the way into Froyant’s house. There is an entrance from the
garden into the bomb-proof shelter beneath his study. Gain admission,
taking with you the contents of this box. Wait in the underground room
until I give you further instructions._”
She lifted out the contents of the box. The first article was a large
gauntlet glove that reached almost to her elbow. It was a man’s glove,
and left-handed. The only other thing in the box was a long,
sharp-pointed knife with a cup-like guard. She handled it carefully,
feeling the edge; it was as sharp as a razor. For a long time she sat
looking at the weapon and the glove, and then she got up and went to
the telephone and gave a number. She waited for a long time, until the
operator told her there was no answer.
At nine o’clock.
She looked at her watch. It was past eight already, and she had no
time to lose. She put the glove and the knife in a big leather
hand-bag, wrapped herself in her cloak, and went out.
Half an hour later, Derrick Yale and Mr. Parr ascended the steps of
Froyant’s residence and were admitted by a servant. The first thing
Derrick Yale noticed was that the passage was brilliantly illuminated;
all the lights in the hall were on, and even the lamps on the landing
above were in full blaze, a curious circumstance, remembering Mr.
Harvey Froyant’s parsimony. Usually he contented himself with one
feeble light in the hall, and any room in the house that was not in
use was in darkness.
The library was a room opening from the main hall; the door was wide
open, and the visitors saw that the room was as brilliantly lighted as
the hall.
Harvey Froyant was sitting at his desk, a smile on his tired face, but
for all his weariness there was self-satisfaction in every gesture,
every note in his voice.
“Well, gentlemen,” he said almost jovially, “I’m going to give you a
little information which I think will startle and amuse you.” He
chuckled and rubbed his hands. “I have just called up the Chief
Commissioner, Parr,” he said, peering up at the stout detective. “In a
case like this one wants to be on the safe side. Anything may happen
to you two gentlemen after you leave this house, and we cannot have
too many people in our secret. Will you take your overcoats off? I am
going to tell you a story which may take some time.”
At that moment the telephone bell trilled, and they stood watching him
as he took down the receiver.
“Yes, yes, colonel,” he said. “I have a very important communication
to make; may I call you up in a second or two? You will be there?
Good.” He replaced the instrument. They saw him frown undecidedly, and
then:
“I think I’ll talk to the colonel now, if you don’t mind stepping into
another room and closing the door. I don’t want to anticipate the
little sensation which I am creating.”
“Certainly,” said Parr, and walked from the room.
Derrick Yale hesitated.
“Is this communication about the Crimson Circle?”
“I will tell you,” said Mr. Froyant. “Just give me five minutes and
then you shall have your thrill of sensation.”
Derrick Yale laughed, and Parr, who had reached the hall, smiled in
sympathy.
“It takes a lot to thrill me,” said Derrick.
He came out of the room, stood for a moment with the door edge in his
hand.
“And afterwards I think I shall be able to tell you something about
our young friend Drummond,” he said. “Oh, I know you’re not
interested, but this little fact will interest you perhaps as much as
the story you are going to tell us.”
Parr saw him smile, and guessed that Froyant had growled something
uncomplimentary about Thalia Drummond.
Derrick Yale closed the door softly.
“I wonder what his sensation is, Parr,” he mused thoughtfully. “And
what the dickens has he to tell your colonel?”
They walked into the front drawing-room, which was equally well
lighted.
“This is unusual, isn’t it, Steere?” said Derrick Yale, who knew the
butler.
“Yes, sir,” said the stately man. “Mr. Froyant is not as a rule
extravagant in the matter of current. But he told me that he’d want
all the lights to-night, and that he was not taking any risks,
whatever that might mean. I’ve never known him to do such a thing.
He’s got two loaded revolvers in his pocket--that is what strikes me
as queer. He hates firearms, does Mr. Froyant, as a rule.”
“How do you know he has revolvers?” asked Parr sharply.
“Because I loaded them for him,” replied the butler. “I used to be in
the Yeomanry, and I understand the use of weapons. One of them is
mine.”
Derrick Yale whistled and looked at the inspector.
“It looks as if he not only knows the Crimson Circle, but he expects a
visit,” he said. “By the way, have you any men on hand?”
Parr nodded.
“There are a couple of detectives in the street; I told them to hang
around in case they were wanted,” he said.
They could not hear Froyant’s voice at the telephone, for the house
was solidly built, and the walls were thick.
Half an hour passed, and Yale grew impatient.
“Will you ask him if he wants us, Steere?” he said, but the butler
shook his head.
“I can’t interrupt him, sir. Perhaps one of you gentlemen would go in.
We never go in unless we are rung for.”
Parr was half-way out of the room, and in an instant had flung open
the door of Harvey Froyant’s study. The lights were blazing, and he
had no doubt of what had happened from the second his eyes fell upon
the figure huddled back in his chair. Harvey Froyant was dead. The
handle of a knife projected from his left breast, a knife with a steel
cup-like guard. On the narrow desk was a blood-stained leather
gauntlet.
It was the startled cry of Parr that brought Derrick Yale rushing into
the room. Parr’s face was as white as death as he stared at the tragic
figure in the chair, and neither man spoke a word.
Then Parr spoke.
“Call my men in,” he said. “Nobody is to leave this house. Tell the
butler to assemble the servants in the kitchen and to keep them
there.”
He took in every detail of the room. Across the big windows which
looked on to a square of green at the back of the house, heavy velvet
curtains were drawn. He pulled them aside. Behind these were shutters
and they were securely fastened.
How had Harvey Froyant been killed?
His desk was opposite the fire-place, and the desk was a narrow
Jacobean affair which would have distracted any ordinary man by its
lack of width, but it was a favourite of the dead financier.
From which way had the murderer approached him? From behind? The knife
was thrust in a downward direction, and the theory that his assailant
came upon him unawares was at least plausible. But why the glove?
Inspector Parr handled it gingerly. It was a leather gauntlet, such as
a chauffeur uses, and had been well worn.
His next move was to call the Police Commissioner and, as he had
suspected, the colonel was waiting for a communication from Harvey
Froyant.
“Then he did not telephone to you?”
“No. What has happened?”
Parr told him briefly, and listened unmoved to the almost incoherent
fury of his chief at the other end of the wire. Presently he hung up
the receiver and went back to the hall, to find his men already
posted.
“I am searching every room in the house,” he said.
He was gone half an hour, and returned to Derrick Yale.
“Well?” asked Yale eagerly.
Parr shook his head.
“Nothing,” he said. “There is nobody here who has no right to be
here.”
“How did they get into the room? The hall-way was never empty except
when Steere came into the drawing-room.”
“There may be a trap in the floor,” suggested Yale.
“There are no traps in drawing-room floors in the West End of London,”
snapped Parr, but a further search had a surprising result.
Turning up one corner of the carpet, a small trap-door was discovered,
and the butler explained that in the days of the war, when air raids
were a nightly occurrence, Mr. Froyant had had a bomb-proof shelter
constructed of concrete in a lower wine cellar, ingress to which was
gained by means of a flight of stairs leading from his study.
Parr went down the stairs with a lighted candle and discovered himself
in a small, square, cell-like room. There was a door, which was
locked, but, searching the body of Harvey Froyant, they found a master
key. Beyond the first door was a second of steel and this brought them
into the open.
The houses in the street shared a common strip of lawn and shrubbery.
“It is quite possible to get into here through the gate at the end of
the garden,” said Yale, “and I should say that the murderer came this
way.”