The crimson circle
“Here is the jailer’s statement,” he said. “I’ll save you the
preliminaries, but this is what he says,” said the Commissioner; he
fixed his glasses and read slowly:
“The prisoner sat on his bed. Mr. Parr was sitting facing him and Mr.
Yale was standing with his back to the cell door, which was open when
I went in. I took a tin mug half full of water which I drew from a
faucet which had been fixed for the purpose of supplying drinking
water. I remember putting the tin down whilst I attended a bell call
from another cell. So far as I know it was impossible that this tin
could be tampered with, though it is true that the door into the yard
was open. When I went into the cell Mr. Parr took the tin from my
hand, and set it on a ledge near the door and told me not to interrupt
them.”
“You notice that no reference is made to the shorthand-writer. Was he
obtained locally, do you think?”
“I’m almost sure he was from your office.”
“I must ask Parr about that,” said the Commissioner.
Mr. Parr (who had returned from France) when questioned on the
telephone, admitted that the shorthand-writer was a local man whom he
had secured by making enquiries in the little town. In the confusion
which had followed the discovery that Sibly was dead, he had not
thought to enquire about the man’s identity.
A typewritten transcript of Sibly’s statement had been given to him,
and he remembered indistinctly paying the writer for his trouble. That
was as far as he could help the Commissioner, whose information on the
subject was not greatly increased.
Derrick Yale waited whilst this telephonic communication was in
progress, and when the colonel had finished, he gathered from his
dissatisfied expression that Parr’s information was of no particular
value.
“You don’t remember the man yourself?”
Yale shook his head.
“His back was to me, most of the time,” he said, “and he sat by the
side of Parr.”
The Commissioner muttered something about gross carelessness, and
then:
“I shouldn’t be surprised if your shorthand-writer was an emissary of
the Crimson Circle,” he said. “It was a piece of criminal neglect to
have taken a man whose identity cannot be established for such an
important piece of work. Yes, Parr has failed.” He sighed. “I am
sorry, in many ways. I like Parr. Of course, he’s one of the
old-fashioned police officers whom you bright outside men affect to
despise, and he hasn’t any extraordinary gifts, although he has been,
in his time, a remarkably good officer. But he’ll have to go. That is
decided. I may tell you this, because I have already made the same
intimation to Parr himself. It is a thousand pities.”
It was no news to Yale: nor was it news to the youngest officer at
police head-quarters.
But the person who seemed least concerned was Inspector Parr himself.
He went about his routine work as though unconscious that any
extraordinary change in his position was contemplated, and even when
he met his successor, who came to look at the office he was shortly to
occupy, was geniality itself.
One afternoon he met Jack Beardmore by accident in the park, and Jack
was struck by the stout little man’s good spirits.
“Well, inspector,” said Jack, “are we any nearer the end?”
Parr nodded.
“I think we are,” he said. “The end of me.”
This was the first definite news Jack had received of the inspector’s
retirement.
“But surely you’re not going? You have all the threads in your hands,
Mr. Parr. They can’t be so foolish as to dispense with you at this
very critical moment unless they have given up all hope of capturing
the scoundrel.”
Mr. Parr thought “they” had given up all hope long ago, but the
attitude of head-quarters was a subject which he did not care to
pursue.
Jack was going down to his country house. He had not visited the place
since his father’s death, and he would not have gone now but the
necessity had arisen for revising a number of farm leases, and since
the business could not be done in town, and there were other matters
which needed local attention, he decided to spend a night in a place
which had, in addition to the memory of this tragedy, memories almost
as distasteful.
“Going down into the country are you?” said Mr. Parr thoughtfully.
“Alone?”
“Yes,” said Jack, and then as he guessed the other’s thoughts, he
asked eagerly, “You would not care to come down as my guest, would
you, Mr. Parr? I should be delighted if you could, but I suppose this
Crimson Circle investigation will keep you in town.”
“I think they’ll get on very well without me,” said Mr. Parr grimly.
“Yes, I think I should like to come down with you. I haven’t been to
the house since your poor father’s death, and I should like to go over
the grounds again.”
He asked for an additional two days’ leave, and head-quarters, which
would have willingly dispensed with him for the remainder of his
lifetime, agreed.
As Jack was leaving that night the inspector went home, packed a small
Gladstone bag, and met him at the station.
Neither the weather nor the roads were conducive to a long motor-car
journey, and on the whole the inspector agreed that travelling by
train was more comfortable.
He had left a little note addressed to Derrick Yale, telling him where
he was going, and added at the foot:
“_It is possible circumstances may arise which would need my presence
in town. Do not hesitate to send for me if this should be the case._”
Remembering this postscript, Mr. Parr’s subsequent conduct was not a
little odd.
Chapter XXXIII.
The Posters
Jack did not find him a pleasant travelling companion; the inspector
had brought with him a whole bundle of newspapers, in each of which he
read religiously the comments upon the Crimson Circle. His host saw
what he was reading, and was astonished that the man, phlegmatic as he
was, could find any pleasure in the uncomplimentary references to
himself which filled the journals. He said as much.
The inspector put down a paper on his knees, and took off his
steel-rimmed pince-nez.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Criticism never did anybody any harm; it is
only when a man knows he is wrong that this kind of stuff irritates
him. As I happen to know I am right, it doesn’t matter to me what they
say.”
“You really think you are right? In what respect?” asked Jack
curiously, but here Parr was not offering any information.
They arrived at the little station and drove the three miles which
separated the line from the big gaunt house which had been James
Beardmore’s delight.
Jack’s butler, who had come down to superintend arrangements for his
master’s comfort, handed a telegram to Inspector Parr almost as soon
as he put his foot across the threshold.
Parr looked at the face of the envelope and then at the back.
“How long has this been here?”
“It arrived about five minutes ago; a cyclist messenger brought it up
from the village,” he said.
The inspector tore open the envelope and extracted the form. It was
signed “Derrick Yale,” and read:
“_Come back to London at once; most important development._”
Without a word he handed the message to the young man.
“Of course you’ll go. It’s rather a nuisance; there isn’t a train
until nine o’clock,” said Jack, who was disappointed at the prospect
of losing his companion.
“I’m not going,” said Parr calmly. “Nothing in the wide world would
make me take another train journey to-night. It must wait.”
This attitude toward the summons did not somehow go with Jack’s
perception of the inspector’s character. He was, if the truth be told,
secretly disappointed, although he was glad enough that Parr would
share his first night in the house, every corner, every room of which,
seemed to have its own especial ghost.
Parr looked at the telegram again.
“He must have sent this within half-an-hour of our leaving the
station,” he said. “You have a telephone, haven’t you?”
Jack nodded, and Parr put through a long distance call. It was a
quarter of an hour before the tinkle of the bell announced that he had
been connected.
Jack heard his voice in the hall, and presently the detective came in.
“As I thought,” he said, “the wire was a fake. I’ve just been on to
friend Yale.”
“And did you guess it was a fake?”
Mr. Parr nodded.
“I’m getting almost as good a guesser as Yale,” said the detective
good-humouredly.
He spent the evening initiating the young man into the mysteries of
picquet, of which Parr was a past-master. There is probably no more
fascinating card game for two in the world than this, and so
pleasantly was the evening passed, that it was with a shock that Jack
looked at the clock and found it was midnight.
The room to which the inspector was shown was that which had been
occupied by James Beardmore in his lifetime. It was a roomy apartment,
lofty and expansive. There were three long windows, and at night the
room, as the rest of the house, was lighted by means of an
acetylene-gas plant which James Beardmore had installed.
“Where are you sleeping, by the way?” he said as he paused at the
entrance of his room, after saying good-night.
“I’m in the next room,” said Jack, and Parr nodded, closed the door,
locking it behind him.
He heard Jack’s door shut, and proceeded to divest himself of part of
his clothing. He made no attempt to undress, but taking from his
battered suit-case an old silk dressing-gown, he wrapped it about him,
turned out the light and, walking to the windows, pulled up the three
blinds.
The night was fairly light; there was sufficient to enable him to find
his way back to the bed, on which he lay, pulling the eiderdown over
him. There is a method by which the worst cases of insomnia-haunted
patients may obtain sleep, though it is one which I believe is very
little known. It is to attempt deliberately to keep one’s eyes open in
the dark.
Mr. Parr succeeded only by turning on his side and staring out of the
nearest window, which he had opened a little.
Towards morning he rose suddenly and stepped noiselessly towards the
nearest window; he had heard a faint whirr of sound, a noise which a
smoothly-running motor-car makes, but now there was a profound
silence. He went to the washstand, and rubbed his face with cold
water, drying it leisurely. Then he walked back to the window, pulled
up a chair and sat so that he commanded whatever view there was of the
avenue leading to the front of the house.
He had to wait nearly half an hour before he saw a dark figure steal
from the shadow of the trees, only to disappear again in a deeper
shadow. He momentarily glimpsed it again as it passed out of his range
of vision into the shadow of the house itself.
The inspector moved softly from the room and, crossing the landing,
went down the stairs. The main door of the house was bolted and
locked, and it was some time before he could open it. When he stepped
out into the night there was nobody in sight. He crept stealthily
along the path which ran parallel with the house, but found no
intruder, and he had reached the main entrance again when he heard the
sound of the motor fading gradually--the midnight visitor had gone.
He closed and bolted the door and went back to his room. This visit
puzzled him. It was clear that the man, whoever he was, had not seen
Parr, nor could he have been certain that he was under observation. He
must have come and gone almost immediately.
It was not until he came down to breakfast in the morning that the
mystery of the visitation was revealed.
Jack was standing before the fire reading a crumpled paper which
looked as if it had been posted up and torn. It was the size of a
small poster and hand-printed. Before he saw its contents, Parr knew
that it was a message from the Crimson Circle.