The Secret of Chimneys
suggestions concerning the manuscript in my charge. He also extended an
invitation to me from Lord Caterham to join the house party here.”
“Delighted to see you, my dear fellow,” said that nobleman. “Better
late than never—eh?”
George frowned at him.
Superintendent Battle bent an unmoved eye upon Anthony.
“And is that your explanation of your presence here last night, sir?”
he asked.
“Certainly not,” said Anthony warmly. “When I am asked to stay at a
country-house, I don’t scale the wall late at night, tramp across the
park, and try the downstairs windows. I drive up to the front door,
ring the bell and wipe my feet on the mat. I will proceed. I replied to
Mr. Lomax’s letter, explaining that the manuscript had passed out of
my keeping, and therefore regretfully declining Lord Caterham’s kind
invitation. But after I had done so, I remembered something which had
up till then escaped my memory.” He paused. The moment had come for
skating over thin ice. “I must tell you that in my struggle with the
waiter Giuseppe, I had wrested from him a small bit of paper with some
words scribbled on it. They had conveyed nothing to me at the time, but
I still had them, and the mention of Chimneys recalled them to me. I
got the torn scrap out and looked at it. It was as I had thought. Here
is the piece of paper, gentlemen, you can see for yourselves. The words
on it are ‘_Chimneys 11.45 Thursday._’”
Battle examined the paper attentively.
“Of course,” continued Anthony, “the word Chimneys might have nothing
whatever to do with this house. On the other hand, it might. And
undoubtedly this Giuseppe was a thieving rascal. I made up my mind to
motor down here last night, satisfy myself that all was as it should
be, put up at the inn, and call upon Lord Caterham in the morning and
put him on his guard in case some mischief should be intended during
the week-end.”
“Quite so,” said Lord Caterham encouragingly. “Quite so.”
“I was late in getting here—had not allowed enough time. Consequently
I stopped the car, climbed over the wall and ran across the park. When
I arrived on the terrace, the whole house was dark and silent. I was
just turning away when I heard a shot. I fancied that it came from
inside the house, and I ran back, crossed the terrace, and tried the
windows. But they were fastened, and there was no sound of any kind
from inside the house. I waited a while, but the whole place was still
as the grave, so I made up my mind that I had made a mistake, and that
what I had heard was a stray poacher—quite a natural conclusion to
come to under the circumstances, I think.”
“Quite natural,” said Superintendent Battle expressionlessly.
“I went on to the inn, put up as I said—and heard the news
this morning. I realized, of course, that I was a suspicious
character—bound to be under the circumstances, and came up here to
tell my story, hoping it wasn’t going to be handcuffs for one.”
There was a pause. Colonel Melrose looked sideways at Superintendent
Battle.
“I think the story seems clear enough,” he remarked.
“Yes,” said Battle. “I don’t think we’ll be handing out any handcuffs
this morning.”
“Any questions, Battle?”
“There’s one thing I’d like to know. What was this manuscript?”
He looked across at George, and the latter replied with a trace of
unwillingness:
“The Memoirs of the late Count Stylptitch. You see——”
“You needn’t say anything more,” said Battle. “I see perfectly.”
He turned to Anthony.
“Do you know who it was that was shot, Mr. Cade?”
“At the _Jolly Dog_ it was understood to be a Count Stanislaus or some
such name.”
“Tell him,” said Battle laconically to George Lomax.
George was clearly reluctant, but he was forced to speak:
“The gentleman who was staying here incognito as Count Stanislaus was
His Highness Prince Michael of Herzoslovakia.”
Anthony whistled.
“That must be deuced awkward,” he remarked.
Superintendent Battle, who had been watching Anthony closely, gave a
short grunt as though satisfied of something, and rose abruptly to his
feet.
“There are one or two questions I’d like to ask Mr. Cade,” he
announced. “I’ll take him into the Council Chamber with me if I may.”
“Certainly, certainly,” said Lord Caterham. “Take him anywhere you
like.”
Anthony and the detective went out together.
The body had been removed from the scene of the tragedy. There was a
dark stain on the floor where it had lain, but otherwise there was
nothing to suggest that a tragedy had ever occurred. The sun poured in
through the three windows, flooding the room with light, and bringing
out the mellow tone of the old panelling. Anthony looked around him
with approval.
“Very nice,” he commented. “Nothing much to beat old England, is there?”
“Did it seem to you at first it was in this room the shot was fired?”
asked the superintendent, not replying to Anthony’s eulogium.
“Let me see.”
Anthony opened the window and went out on the terrace, looking up at
the house.
“Yes, that’s the room all right,” he said. “It’s built out, and
occupies all the corner. If the shot had been fired anywhere else, it
would have sounded from the _left_, but this was from behind me or to
the right if anything. That’s why I thought of poachers. It’s at the
extremity of the wing, you see.”
He stepped back across the threshold, and asked suddenly, as though the
idea had just struck him:
“But why do you ask? You know he was shot here, don’t you?”
“Ah!” said the superintendent. “We never know as much as we’d like to
know. But, yes, he was shot here all right. Now you said something
about trying the windows, didn’t you?”
“Yes. They were fastened from the inside.”
“How many of them did you try?”
“All three of them.”
“Sure of that, sir?”
“I’m in the habit of being sure. Why do you ask?”
“That’s a funny thing,” said the superintendent.
“What’s a funny thing?”
“When the crime was discovered this morning, the middle one was
open—not latched, that is to say.”
“Whew!” said Anthony, sinking down on the window seat, and taking
out his cigarette case. “That’s rather a blow. That opens up quite
a different aspect of the case. It leaves us two alternatives.
Either he was killed by some one in the house, and that some one
unlatched the window after I had gone to make it look like an outside
job—incidentally with me as Little Willie—or else, not to mince
matters, I’m lying. I dare say you incline to the second possibility,
but, upon my honour, you’re wrong.”
“Nobody’s going to leave this house until I’m through with them, I can
tell you that,” said Superintendent Battle grimly.
Anthony looked at him keenly.
“How long have you had the idea that it might be an inside job?” he
asked.
Battle smiled.
“I’ve had a notion that way all along. Your trail was a bit
too—flaring, if I may put it that way. As soon as your boots fitted
the footmarks, I began to have my doubts.”
“I congratulate Scotland Yard,” said Anthony lightly.
But at that moment, the moment when Battle apparently admitted
Anthony’s complete absence of complicity in the crime, Anthony felt
more than ever the need of being upon his guard. Superintendent Battle
was a very astute officer. It would not do to make any slip with
Superintendent Battle about.
“That’s where it happened, I suppose?” said Anthony, nodding towards
the dark patch upon the floor.
“Yes.”
“What was he shot with—a revolver?”
“Yes, but we shan’t know what make until they get the bullet out at the
autopsy.”
“It wasn’t found, then?”
“No, it wasn’t found.”
“No clues of any kind?”
“Well, we’ve got this.”
Rather after the manner of a conjurer, Superintendent Battle produced
a half-sheet of notepaper. And, as he did so, he again watched Anthony
closely without seeming to do so.
But Anthony recognized the design upon it without any sign of
consternation.
“Aha! Comrades of the Red Hand again. If they’re going to scatter this
sort of thing about, they ought to have it lithographed. It must be a
frightful nuisance doing every one separately. Where was this found?”
“Underneath the body. You’ve seen it before, sir?”
Anthony recounted to him in detail his short encounter with that
public-spirited association.
“The idea is, I suppose, that the Comrades did him in.”
“Do you think it likely, sir?”
“Well, it would be in keeping with their propaganda. But I’ve always
found that those who talk most about blood have never actually seen
it run. I shouldn’t have said the Comrades had the guts myself. And
they’re such picturesque people too. I don’t see one of them disguising
himself as a suitable guest for a country house. Still, one never
knows.”
“Quite right, Mr. Cade. One never knows.”
Anthony looked suddenly amused.
“I see the big idea now. Open window, trail of footprints, suspicious
stranger at village inn. But I can assure you, my dear superintendent,
that, whatever I am, I am not the local agent of the Red Hand.”
Superintendent Battle smiled a little. Then he played his last card.
“Would you have any objection to seeing the body?” he shot out suddenly.
“None whatever,” rejoined Anthony.
Battle took a key from his pocket, and preceding Anthony down the
corridor, paused at a door and unlocked it. It was one of the smaller
drawing-rooms. The body lay on a table covered with a sheet.
Superintendent Battle waited until Anthony was beside him, and then
whisked away the sheet suddenly.
An eager light sprang into his eyes at the half-uttered exclamation and
the start of surprise which the other gave.
“So you _do_ recognize him, Mr. Cade,” he said, in a voice that he
strove to render devoid of triumph.
“I’ve seen him before, yes,” said Anthony, recovering himself. “But
not as Prince Michael Obolovitch. He purported to come from Messrs.
Balderson and Hodgkins, and he called himself Mr. Holmes.”
13
The American Visitor
Superintendent Battle replaced the sheet with the slightly crest-fallen
air of a man whose best point has fallen flat. Anthony stood with his
hands in his pockets lost in thought.
“So that’s what old Lollipop meant when he talked about ‘other means,’”
he murmured at last.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Cade?”
“Nothing, superintendent. Forgive my abstraction. You see, I—or rather
my friend, Jimmy McGrath, has been very neatly done out of a thousand
pounds.”
“A thousand pounds is a nice sum of money,” said Battle.
“It isn’t the thousand pounds so much,” said Anthony, “though I agree
with you that it’s a nice sum of money. It’s being done that maddens
me. I handed over that manuscript like a little woolly lamb. It hurts,
superintendent, indeed it hurts.”
The detective said nothing.
“Well, well,” said Anthony. “Regrets are vain, and all may not yet be
lost. I’ve only got to get hold of dear old Stylptitch’s Reminiscences
between now and next Wednesday and all will be gas and gaiters.”
“Would you mind coming back to the Council Chamber, Mr. Cade? There’s
one little thing I want to point out to you.”
Back in the Council Chamber, the detective strode over at once to the
middle window.
“I’ve been thinking, Mr. Cade. This particular window is very stiff,
very stiff indeed. You might have been mistaken in thinking that it was
fastened. It might just have stuck. I’m sure—yes, I’m almost sure,
that you _were_ mistaken.”
Anthony eyed him keenly.
“And supposing I say that I’m quite sure I was not?”
“Don’t you think you could have been?” said Battle, looking at him very
steadily.
“Well, to oblige you, superintendent, yes.”
Battle smiled in a satisfied fashion.
“You’re quick in the uptake, sir. And you’ll have no objection to
saying so, careless like, at a suitable moment?”
“None whatever. I——”