The crimson circle
as though some thought had arrested him. “I wonder,” he muttered, “I
wonder if that is it?”
“She’s a perfect young lady, is Milly,” Mr. “Flush” hastened to
explain. “Honest as the day, wouldn’t swipe a clock, not if her life
depended on it. I don’t want you to think she is bad, Mr. Parr,
because she’s not. We’re both living what I might term an honest
life.”
Parr’s placid face wrinkled in a smile.
“That’s grand news you’re telling me, ‘Flush.’ Where is Milly to be
found in these days?”
“She’s living in diggings on the other side of the river,” said
“Flush” reluctantly. “You’re not going to rake up old scandals, are
you, Mr. Parr?”
“Heaven forbid,” said Inspector Parr piously. “No, I’d like to have a
talk with her. Perhaps----” he hesitated, “anyway, it can wait. It was
rather providential meeting you, ‘Flush.’”
But “Flush” did not share that view, even though he expressed a faint
acquiescence.
“So that’s it,” said Inspector Parr to himself, but he did not express
the nature of his suspicions, even when he met Derrick Yale at his
club half-an-hour later. And it was a further curious fact, that
though they touched every aspect of the Crimson Circle mystery in the
long conversation which followed, never once did Mr. Parr mention
Thalia Drummond’s interview, which, if he had not seen, he had at
least guessed.
The two men left early the next morning for the little country town
where one Ambrose Sibly, described as an able-seaman, was held on a
charge of murder. At his own earnest request, Jack Beardmore was
allowed to accompany them, though he was not present at the interview
between the two detectives and the sullen man who had slain his
father.
A brawny, unshaven fellow, half Scottish, half Swede, Sibly proved to
be. He could neither read nor write, and had been in the hands of the
police before. This much Parr had discovered from a reference of his
fingerprints.
At first he was not inclined to commit himself, and it was rather
Derrick Yale’s skilful cross-examination, than Inspector Parr’s
efforts, which produced the confession.
“Yes, I did it all right,” he said at last.
They were seated in the cell with an official shorthand-writer taking
a note of his statement.
“You’ve got me proper, but you wouldn’t have got me if I hadn’t been
drunk. And whilst I’m confessing, I might as well own up that I killed
Harry Hobbs. He was a shipmate of mine on the _Oritianga_ in
1912--they can only hang me once. Killed him and chucked his body
overboard, I did, over the question of a woman that we met at Newport
News, which is in America. I’ll tell you how this happened, gentlemen.
I lost my ship about a month ago, and was stranded at the Sailors’
Home at Wapping. I got chucked out of there for being drunk, and on
top of that I was locked up and got seven days’ imprisonment. If the
old fool had only given me a month I shouldn’t have been here. One
night after I came out of prison I was walking through the East End,
down on my luck and starving for a drink, and feeling properly
miserable. To make it worse, I had the toothache----”
Parr met Derrick Yale’s eyes, and Derrick smiled faintly.
“I was loafing along the edge of the pavement looking for cigarette
ends, and thinking of nothing except where I could get a bit of food
and a night’s lodging. It was beginning to rain, too, and it looked as
though I was going to have another night on the streets, when I heard
a voice say, almost in my ear, ‘Jump in.’ I looked round. A motor-car
was standing by the side of the roadway. I couldn’t believe my ears.
Presently the man in the car said ‘Jump in. It’s you I mean!’ and he
mentioned my name. We drove along for a while without his saying
anything, and I noticed that he kept clear of all the streets where
the big lights were.
“After a bit he stopped the car, and began to tell me who I was. I can
assure you I was surprised. He knew the whole of my history. He even
knew about Harry Hobbs--I was tried for that killing and
acquitted--and then he asked me if I’d like to earn a hundred pounds.
I told him I would, and he said there was an old gentleman in the
country who had done him a lot of harm, and he wanted him ‘outed.’ I
didn’t want to take the job on for some time, but he gave me such a
lot of talk about how he could get me hung for Hobbs’s murder, and how
it was safe, and he’d give me a bicycle to get away on, and at last I
agreed.
“He picked me up by arrangement a week later in Steyne Square. Then he
gave me all the final particulars. I got down to Beardmore’s place
soon after it was dark, and hid in the wood. He told me Mr. Beardmore
generally walked through the wood every morning, and that I was to
make myself comfortable for the night. I hadn’t been in the wood an
hour when I had a fright. I heard somebody moving. I think it must
have been a game-keeper. He was a big fellow, and I only just got a
glimpse of him.
“And I think that’s about all, gentlemen, except that the next morning
the old fellow came in the wood and I shot him. I don’t remember much
about it, for I was drunk at the time, having taken a bottle of whisky
into the wood with me. But I was sober enough to get on to the
bicycle, and I rode off. And I should have got away altogether, if it
hadn’t been for the booze.”
“And that is all?” asked Parr, when the confession had been read over
and the man had affixed a rough cross.
“That’s all, guv’nor,” said the sailor.
“And you don’t know who it was who employed you?”
“Not the faintest idea,” said the other cheerfully. “There’s one thing
about him, though, I could tell you,” he said after a pause. “He kept
using a word that I’ve never heard before. I’m not highly educated,
but I’ve noticed that some men have favourite words. We had an old
skipper who always used the word ‘morbid’.”
“What was the word?” asked Parr.
The man scratched his head.
“I’ll remember it and let you know,” he said, and they left him to his
meditations, which were few, and probably not unpleasant.
Four hours after, the jailor took Ambrose Sibly some food. He was
lying on his bed, and the jailor shook him by the shoulder.
“Wake up,” he said, but Ambrose Sibly never woke again.
He was stone dead.
And in the tin dipper, half-filled with water, which stood by his bed,
and with which he had slaked his thirst, they found sufficient
hydrocyanic acid to kill fifty men.
But it was not the poison which interested Inspector Parr so much as
the little circle of crimson paper which was found floating on the top
of the water.
Chapter XII.
The Pointed Boots
Mr. Felix Marl sat behind the locked door of his bedroom, and he was
engaged in a task which had the elements of unpleasant familiarity.
Twenty-five years before, when he was an inmate of the big French
prison at Toulouse, he had worked in a bootmaker’s shop, and the
handling of boots was an everyday experience. It is true his business
had been to repair, and not to destroy. To-day, with a razor-sharp
knife, he was cutting to shreds a pair of pointed patent leather shoes
which he had only worn three times. Strip by strip he cut the leather,
which he then placed on the fire.
Some men live intensely and suffer intensely. Mr. Felix Marl was one
of those who could crowd into a day the terrors of an æon. In some
manner a newspaper had got hold of the story of the footprint in
Beardmore’s ground, and a new fear had been added to the many which
confused and paralysed this big man. He was sitting in his shirt
sleeves, the perspiration rolling down his face, for the fire was a
big one and the room was super-heated.
Presently the last shred was thrown into the fire and he sat watching
it grill and flame before he put away the knife, washed his hands and
opened the windows to let out the acrid odour of burning leather.
It would have been better, he thought, if he had carried out his first
resolution, and he cursed himself for the cowardice which had induced
him to substitute his revolver for a fountain pen. But he was safe.
Nobody had seen him leave the grounds.
With such men as he, blind panic and unreasoning confidence succeed
one another, almost as a natural reaction. By the time he had
descended his stairs to his little library he had almost forgotten
that he was in any danger.
In the fading light of day he had written a conciliatory, even a
grovelling letter, and had, as he believed, delivered it safely. Would
it be found? He had another moment of panic.
“Pshaw!” said Mr. Marl, and dismissed that dangerous possibility.
His servant brought him a tea-tray and arranged it on a small table by
the side of his desk, where the big man sat.
“Will you see that gentleman now, sir?”
“Eh?” said Mr. Marl, turning round. “Which gentleman?”
“I told you there was a man who wanted to see you.”
Marl remembered that his boot-destroying operation had been
interrupted by a knock.
“Who is he?” he asked.
“I put his card on the table, sir.”
“Didn’t you tell him that I was engaged?”
“Yes, but he said he’d wait until you came down.”
The man handed him the card, and Mr. Marl reading it, jumped and
turned a sickly yellow.
“Inspector Parr,” he said unsteadily. “What does he want with me?”
His shaking hand fingered his mouth.
“Show him in,” he said with an effort.
He had not met Inspector Parr either professionally or socially, and
his first glance at the little man reassured him. There was nothing
particularly menacing in the appearance of the red-faced detective.
“Sit down, inspector. I’m sorry I was busy when you came,” said Mr.
Marl. When he was agitated his voice was almost bird-like in its
thinness.
Parr sat down on the edge of the nearest chair, balancing his Derby
hat on his knee.
“I thought I’d wait until you came down, Mr. Marl. I wanted to see you
about this Beardmore murder.”
Mr. Marl said nothing. With an effort he kept his trembling lips from
quivering, and assumed, as he believed, an air of polite interest.
“You knew Mr. Beardmore very well?”
“Not very well,” said Marl. “I certainly have had business dealings
with him.”
“Have you met him before?”
Marl hesitated. He was the kind of man to whom a lie came most
readily, and his natural habit of mind was to state the exact opposite
of the truth.
“No,” he admitted. “I had seen him years ago, but that was before he
had grown a beard.”
“Where was Mr. Beardmore when you were coming into the house?” asked
Parr.
“He was standing on the terrace,” replied Marl with unnecessary
loudness.
“And you saw him?”
Marl nodded.
“They tell me, Mr. Marl,” Parr went on, looking down at his hat, “that
for some reason or other you were startled--Mr. Jack Beardmore says
that he thought you were momentarily terrified. What was the cause of
that?”
Mr. Marl shrugged his shoulders and forced a smile.
“I think I explained it was a little heart attack. I am subject to
them,” he said.
Parr had turned his hat so that he was looking into the interior, and
he did not raise his eyes when he asked:
“It was not the sight of Mr. Beardmore?”
“Of course not,” said the other vigorously. “Why should I be scared of
Mr. Beardmore? I’ve had a lot of correspondence with him, and know him
almost as well----”
“But you hadn’t met him for years?”
“I hadn’t seen him for years,” corrected Marl irritably.
“And the cause of your agitation was just a heart attack, Mr. Marl?”
asked the inspector.
For the first time his eyes rose and fixed themselves upon the
other’s.
“Absolutely.” Marl’s voice did not lack heartiness. “I had forgotten
all about my little seizure until you reminded me.”
“There is another point I wanted cleared up,” said the detective. His
attention had gone back to his fascinating hat, which he was turning