The Shutters of Suburbia
It was a quarter past nine when I set out on my weird travels. I ate a plate of sandwiches and drank a bottle of beer while a route was mapped out for me to Moreton Abbot, some ten miles away. Things did not now look so bad: with luck, I should be able to get the business done and return to Charters's by midnight, with everything off my mind. I did not realize the nervous strain under which I was fuming, although the sandwiches seemed tasteless and the beer flat.
H.M. and Charters I left in the latter's study. Both were very worried over Antrim's information. As I was going out, I remember Charters's saying that he would show H.M. some exhibits in the Willoughby case, whatever it might be. I also noticed that the blue Hillman touring-car was no longer in the drive outside the bungalow. Stowing away the Compleat Burglar's kit under a rug in the tonneau — it was more of a cursed nuisance than anything else, since I meant to use only the skeleton keys or the glass-cutter — I climbed into H.M.'s Lanchester and let drive for the great adventure.
It was not quite dark. A strip of pale clear sky lay along the west, but smoky blue had begun to obscure it; and below, along the main highway, street-lamps were winking into flame. The lane down which I ran the car was deeply shadowed. On either side were high hedgerows, and beyond them white-blossoming apple trees. In short, all was peace — for precisely fifty Seconds. I had come to the mouth of the lane opening into the main road. In the highway was the homely sight of a bus stopping by a street lamp, and somebody in a white linen suit climbing down. Then, in the hedgerow to my right, there was a sound of violent crackling. Somebody said, "Pss-t!" A face, looking paler by reason of the gloom and its mahogany-coloured hair, was poked through the hedge. It was followed by a shambling body, and, as I stopped the car, Dr. Antrim laid his hand on the door.
"Excuse me," he said. "I know you'll think this is confounded cheek, but it's pretty urgent. My own car's gone bust — no time to fix it — you know. They said you were driving to London to-night. Could you manage to drop me off at Moreton Abbot?"
This was dilemma before the adventure had even begun. Antrim's eyes appeared to have a steady shine in the gloom.
"Moreton Abbot," I said, as though the name were unfamiliar. "Moreton Abbot? What part of Moreton Abbot?"
"Valley Road. It's just on the outskirts. Dignity be damned, no time for dignity now. It's very important," urged Antrim, running a finger round under a tight collar. "Fact is, a patient of mine lives there. Name of Hogenauer. It's very important."
If I didn't take him, he would probably take a bus and go anyway. If I did take him, it might wreck the whole of my little enterprise; but at least I should have him under my eye and know when I could start housebreaking in safety. Nevertheless, the decision was taken out of my hands. The passenger who had got off the bus in the main highway had just turned into the mouth of the lane. I saw a stocky man in a white linen suit, wearing a straw hat and smoking a cigar. The man hesitated, and then came towards the car.
"I wonder if you could tell me " said a familiar hearty voice, in an almost deferential tone, and then broke off. "Well, well, well!" it crowed. "If it isn't Blake! Imagine running into you down here! How are you, Mr. Blake?"
The last light shone on the alert pince-nez, with the little chain going to the ear, of Mr. Johnson Stone — still on H.M.'s trail. Stone's round, fresh-complexioned face was turned up with great amiability, but he had the look of one whose inner temper is wearing thin. Even as he extended his hand, a new thought appeared to strike him.
"Here," he said in a somewhat aggrieved tone, "were you holding out on me? Did you know where Merrivale was after all? I've only just tracked him down. Out of the pure goodness of my heart, just to do him a favour, I've hunted all over England for him when I was supposed to be taking a holiday; and right at this minute I'm supposed to be visiting my son-in-law in Bristol. If you people have been holding out on me — "
"Beg pardon, sir," interposed Antrim curtly. Antrim had been looking steadily at me. "I understood that this fellow's name was Butler."
"Well, it was Blake when I met him in London," answered Stone, regarding him curiously. "But it's possible that he's going round in disguise as well as the rest of 'em. I'm getting a little tired of all this."
"It's possible he is," said Antrim in a curious voice-and then his big figure disappeared through the gap in the hedge. Stone blinked. There was a pause.
"I'm sorry if I've spoiled anything, he said calmly, "I wouldn't have, if I'd known. But that took me off balance, and if you intend to go around giving false names you ought to let me know in advance. I've always regarded the English as a pretty level-headed sort of people, but, so help me Jinny, this is the queerest country I ever got into! I ought to be in Bristol to-night. And if I ever do catch up with Merrivale, which seems unlikely —‘
I let in the clutch. "He's up there. But there's one thing I'd ask and plead of you: for God's sake stop harping on that tedious joke about disguise — particularly when you meet H.M. And whatever else you do, don't mention his hat."
The car moved down into the main road. I had the satisfaction of seeing Stone put up a hand bewilderedly to his pince-nez, and of creating some mystification on my own account. He seemed to be puffing vigorously at his cigar. But Antrim had bolted like a rabbit at the mention of a false name: why? I had lost any chance I might have had of learning something from Antrim, though it was some consolation to reflect that I hadn't the remotest notion as to the subject on which I might have learned something. It was all a game in the dark, and very shortly I would literally be playing a very dangerous game in the dark.
I took my time over that drive to Moreton Abbot, leaving Torquay by a roundabout way through the deep lanes. But, when I wound into Moreton Abbot, the first street I found was Valley Road. It was very long, very broad, not too well-lighted, and a picture of suburban respectability. There were long ranks of detached and semi-detached houses, neat and low-built, in stucco or brick or stone, imaginatively or sedately painted, but all looking curiously alike in their mere closeness to each other. Each had a small front-garden minutely laid out with flowers. Each had a brown-painted gate inscribed with some more or less relevant name. Most of the houses were lighted; cyclists toiled along the road with plodding pedals; and through an open window a radio was talking hoarsely.
Though it is usually next to impossible to find a house by name rather than by number, I cruised past "The Larches" almost at once. The name was fresh-painted on the gate. It had (surprisingly) a larch like a stunted pine-tree growing on either side of a white-painted front door, and it looked even more respectable than its neighbours. But I was relieved to see that the houses on either side were already dark. There appeared to be an alley running along the rank at the rear, and it might have been the safest way in unobserved; but alleys usually mean watchdogs.
I drove on for several hundred yards, and swung into a gloomy turning labelled Liberia Avenue, where I could stop the car and consider. The question was how far away I should park the car. I pulled up to the kerb and lit a cigarette.
And at the same time a hand fell on my shoulder from behind.
A very large policeman was looking down at me in the twilight, with a sort of sad and gloomy satisfaction like Monte Cristo in the melodrama; by the glow of the dashlamps I could see the sergeant's stripes on his arm. At the same moment another policeman appeared at the front. of the car, directing a beam from a bull's-eye lantern at the number-plate.
"You're under arrest," said the sergeant. "I have to warn you that anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence- That the right number?" he added over his shoulder.
"Ah," agreed his companion. "AXA 564. That's it. Bit of luck, this. Then they both looked at me intently. "Sst!" warned the second man, after this sinister pause. "Black bag, sir. Black bag that they told us to look out for."
"Right," said the sergeant. He examined the front of the car, finding nothing more significant than my feet; then he looked in the rear, felt under the rug, and with granite triumph produced the case of the Compleat Burglar. "Out you get, my bucko. Got any objection to my opening this?"
By this time I had (somewhat) got my wits about me.
"I have. A very strong objection. Don't talk rot. In the first place, you've got your formula all wrong. Before you put a man under arrest, especially somebody who's innocent, you're supposed to tell him what he's charged with."
"I don't mind," answered the Law grimly. "For a starter, with the theft of a motor-car. And then we'll go on to grand larceny. Since you know so ruddy much about legal forms, you'll know that the maximum sentence for grand larceny is fourteen years."
"Who charges me with all this?"
The sergeant permitted himself a grunt approaching a laugh. "A gentleman named Sir Henry Merrivale and Colonel Charters, who happens to be Chief Constable of thissur county. Eh, Stevens?"
For a second or two I tried to convince myself that this was not a bad dream. With that peculiar cussedness and cross-purpose which always dogs my adventures under H.M.'s direction, it was plain that some mistake had been made; but, in the devil's name, what mistake? This was obviously H.M.'s Lanchester. I knew it as well as I knew my own car at home. Yes, but suppose H.M. and Charters hadn't sent out any such charge at all? Suppose this was a first attempt of the cloudy Enemy? There came into my mind Charters's mention of his secretary, named Serpos, and Charters's comment: "An expert mimic when you get him started." Whereupon I fixed the sergeant with a hypnotic eye.
"Look here," I said. "You're making a mistake. There's no use arguing with you: all I want to do is prove you're making a mistake. I'm on a very serious mission for the Chief Constable. Let's go along to the police station, by all means; you give me two minutes at a telephone, and I'll prove it. Isn't that fair enough? Neither Sir Henry Merrivale nor Colonel Charters ever sent any such message as that."
The sergeant looked at me curiously. It is never wise to say too much. Then he climbed into the back of the car, keeping his hand on my shoulder.
"Hang on to the running-board, Stevens," he ordered. "You drive straight on. Yes, it's fair enough: if you can prove it." He chuckled. "Bluff don't go down with me, my bucko. General alarm was sent out twenty minutes ago from Torquay police station. And the two gentlemen you spoke of came in person to turn in the alarm. In person, my bucko. So they didn't send it out, didn't they? They turned in them charges against you. They also said to keep an eye out for a black bag you would be carrying."
"Sergeant, everybody can't be crazy. Who am I supposed to be?"
"I dunno, answered my captor, with broad indifference. "You've probably got plenty of names. They said one of the aliases you might use might be Kenwood Blake."
I took a deep breath and a firmer grip of the steeringwheel, but the car almost stalled as we set off. If this was for some reason a genuine trick played by the mysterious-moving two who had sent me on this expedition, all I could say was that it was a damned dirty, low-down trick. But I couldn't credit that. I also played with the idea that these might be bogus policemen, though that melodramatic notion was soon dispelled.
The police station was in Liberia Avenue, where it curved to the left only a hundred yards or so from the main road. It was a low-built converted house, set back from the street in a paved yard, with an arc-light burning over the door. My captors took me out of the car and marched me with stately triumph into the charge-room. Behind the desk a fat sandy-haired sergeant, with the collar of his tunic unfastened, sat writing in a book. A clock on the wall over his head said ten minutes to ten. I saw, with unholy relief, a telephone on the desk.
"Got him the minute we stepped out of the station," said my sergeant, and his colleague at the desk whistled. "All in order. Here's the black bag. He wants to phone Colonel Charters. Yes: we'll ring up Torquay and make the report. Stevens — put him in there." He nodded toward a door at the back of the room. "Now, now, this part of it's private, my bucko! You'll get your chance to speak."
I had no choice. The careful Stevens opened the door into a little low room with a back door and a back window, after which he poked his head out of the window. Despite the dusk figures and faces were still distinct, and there was a bright arc-lamp in the rear yard. Two policemen were tinkering with the motor of an Austin police-car, while a motorcycle man looked on: there was no possibility of a jail-break. Then Stevens hurried into the outer room, shutting the door, to listen to what promised to be a highly interesting conversation by telephone. It was. I was down on the floor, in a highly curious posture, with my ear to the crack under the door, and probably as boiling mad as anybody in the British Isles.
After getting through to Torquay, the sergeant exchanged some amenities in a leisurely fashion. "Ha ha," he said. "Yes, we've got him safe enough. Smart work, eh? Do you think I could speak to Colonel Charters? No, not the superintendent! Yes, Colonel Charters! He personally instructed me," declared my beauty of a sergeant, with pompous intonation, "to — well, try his private wire, then. He's probably at home." There was a long pause. "Not in? Well, is there a gentleman there named Merrivale? No? Any message? This fellow tried a great bluff that he wanted to talk to him. Is there any, message?" Then the sergeant appeared struck dumb with surprise. "Not to charge him? What do you mean, we're not to charge him? He's accused of-"
Another long pause ensued, while there seemed to be explanations: and then gradually the sergeant's tone changed, into a roaring chuckle.'
"No!" he said. "No? You don't say! Well, well, well!" (By this time my curiosity and wrath had reached almost a point of mania.) "Is that so? And he probably thought he was doing well, I suppose, the poor fool. Ha ha ha." He grew serious. "Yes, but if neither of the gentlemen will charge him, what are we going to do with him? What did they say? Ah! Yes, that's the best thing. I'll tell you what: we'll put him down in the cells for to-night. Then we'll bring him to Torquay to-morrow morning, and they can talk to him. About eleven o'clock, say? Right. How are the wife and kids?"
And at eleven-thirty to-morrow morning I was due for a very different sort of appointment.
I scrambled up off the floor, at that state where fury becomes, coolness and clear sight, to make an inspection of the room. It was a bare enough place. A green-shaded lamp hung from the ceiling, over a deal table with a well-thumbed detective-story magazine on top of it, and a couple of kitchen chairs around. There was a sink and water-tap, with a dissipated-looking roller towel hung up beside it. But my eye was drawn to the three wooden lockers built against the wall. Inside the first locker I found what I had hoped to find: a uniform-tunic neatly arranged on a hanger. There was a helmet on the shelf above, a belt coiled beside it, and a bull's eye lantern. As H.M. had noticed, I was wearing a dark blue suit, and my own trousers would suffice. It took just ten seconds to put on the tunic and helmet, buckle the belt round my waist, and hang the lantern from it, in order to become the Compleat Policeman. It wasn't a bad fit. From the outer room I could hear the sergeant still droning at the telephone; and, through the open window to the rear yard, somebody was commenting on the lascivious habits of carburetors. The back way was the only way out. And I admit that I was feeling queasy in the stomach when I approached it.
I backed out of the place, as though I were turning round to close the door behind. Six steps led down into the yard. If the men in the yard glanced up, as they naturally would, they would see a familiar back and helmet. The great dangerpoint was that arc-lamp over the door. My legs felt light, and the queasy feeling had increased, when I carefully closed the door. Then I turned round full under the arc. At the same time I casually switched on the lantern, and swung the brilliant beam straight in their faces. They were all bending over the engine of the Austin, so that it caught them flat.
"Gaa!" roared one, and jumped. "Take that blasted thing What's the game, Pierce?"
They had all looked away. I came down the steps, not too quickly. The light bad to be moved, but I could count on about a second's blindness after it. At the rear of the yard was a tolerably high wall, with double gates giving on an alley. I heard my own footsteps ringing on the pavement of that yard, with an almost goose-step regularity in my effort to keep them slow. I didn't dare look round now, for I had a feeling that eyes were on me.
A voice said, "That's not Pierce," — and I cut loose for it.
The rear gates were only two feet ahead now, and there was a padlock and chain hanging loose from them. Those gates were spiked at the top, so that it would want careful climbing to get over them. I jumped through, slammed the gates with a crash like a falling lift, closed the padlock, and pitched away the key. For the first time I glanced behind. There were no shouts from that yard: no shouts, and no fuss. They were coming for me as quietly as a cage of animals, black against the light, and one arm came through like a paw as the gates crashed. The rear door of the station was open now, and a voice was calling with deadly efficiency:
"Thompson, over the wall. Dennis, through the sidegate next door and up the alley. Stevens, up the street as far as you like and get him from the front. Pierce-"
This was something like a chase to rouse a man's wits. While I ran up the alley, the geography of the place became clearer. In coming into Liberia Avenue from Valley Road-, I had made a left-hand turning, and the police station was almost at the end of the former street. It was a right-angle. If I doubled back now, I could get into the alley running at the rear of Valley Road. If I stayed in the open, they could nail me easily. It became clear that my only sanctuary was the place where I had originally intended to go: "The Larches," an empty house. The attention of householders I was not afraid of; my uniform was the best kind of security against that; and the neighbourhood would shortly be buzzing with policemen.
I was pelting in the dark along a narrow, rocky alley with garden walls on either side. Each had its ash-bin outside, and the roof of its miniature greenhouse faint-gleaming by starlight over the wall. High up behind me a beam of light shot out, and I saw one of my pursuers poised on the wall over the police station gate before he jumped. Hitherto the night had been so quiet that I heard the thud when he landed in the alley: but now the dogs began. That devilish din of barking masked the noise when I overturned a few ash-bins in the path of the man behind me. I had stormed round the turning now, into the lane behind Valley Road, so that his light could not find me. From behind there was a crash as apparently he met one of the ash-bins, and the light vanished; I hoped to heaven he had broken it. But people were moving in Valley Road itself, out beyond the houses between, and even at that considerable distance a white beam pierced through the trees into my face.
They were closing in. Several windows in the neighbourhood were going up with a bang; I could discern the heads of early-retiring householders poked out like turtles. My only course now was to switch on my lantern.boldly, beat the brush with a halloo, and pretend to be a real policeman searching for myself-while hoping with some fervency that I could find the back gate of "The Larches." That was the snag. Every one of those cursed gates looked alike. I was panting hard when my lantern flickered over one fence, into a tidy garden with paths laid out in white pebbles, and caught a larch-tree as neatly as you catch a fish. It might be a coincidence, but I should have to risk it. I pulled open the gate, closed it behind me, and ran smack into bottles.
There seemed to be dozens of bottles. They were ranked up just inside the gate; my imagination magnified them into a forest even as my foot sent them rolling and clanking and bumping as though they were alive, with din enough to rouse everyone in Valley Road. To taut nerves they became monsters. I turned my lantern down while I seemed to slip and wade in empty bottles. They were not even honest beer-flagons, but they had contained a particularly villainous brand of German mineral-water — with a taste rather like Epsom salts-which I remembered by the blue-and-red label. So far, the houses on either side of "The Larches" had remained dark and quiet. But now, in the house to the right, an upstairs window was half raised. I saw a woman's head in curl-papers edged in the window as though she were listening at it, and heard a voice speaking shrilly to me.
I steadied myself, and tried to get my breath.
"Sorry to disturb you, madam," I said, with a heavy imitation of a Force manner, "but there's an escaped murderer loose. He's a homicidal maniac, and the neighbourhood ought to have been warned, but don't worry, we'll catch him."
The window went down with even greater celerity than I had hoped for, and the curtain swept over it. I stood alone among bottles, sweating blind and listening to my heart bump. It had become uncannily quiet again. The dogs' barking was dying away. Even the pursuit, though that was quiet enough, seemed to have taken another direction. I could not understand why — unless they had spotted me, and were silently closing in.
Nothing stirred except a faint wind in the trees. Suburbia (which some, I believe, are foolish enough to call dull) was dozing under clear starlight. I went quietly up the path, which was outlined along its borders with white pebbles, past geometrical flower-beds and a tall post supporting a radio aerial. The scullery of "The Larches" projected some dozen feet from the flat line of the house. Besides the scullery door, and the door to a coal-house, there was a third door facing out on the garden. To the right of this were two windows, closely shuttered. These were undoubtedly the windows of the mysterious back-parlour, through a chink in whose shutters Sergeant Davis had seen the lights flicker round "a thing like a flower-pot turned upside down."
Even while I was wondering how I should be able to get into the house without any of the Compleat Burglar's kit, I found myself approaching those windows. It seemed an ordinary suburban house, and yet I did not like it, It looked wrong.
I went up to the window nearer the door, and tried to peer through the slits in the shutter — without result. It was dead black inside. Even when I put my lantern to the slit, and tried to look in alongside it, there was only a blur. The window itself, however, did not appear to be closed. Next I tried the farther window. As I put the lantern to the chink, it made a faint rattling sound on the wood: and I could have sworn that there was a movement in the room. I could not identify it — it was something like a rustling — but it almost made me drop the lantern. This time the slit was a trifle larger, so that I could see something very dimly and darkly on the edge. It was something of rounded shape, like the back of a chair. And projecting over the top of it, at a queer unnatural angle, was something like a flower-pot turned upside down. It seemed to be of the same reddish colour, although I could not be certain in that blur, and it did not move. There was no reason in the world why such a sight should seem horrible to a prosaic-minded man in a suburban garden: I can only tell you that it did. As I stood back from the window, wiping my forehead, I heard the rustling movement again.
I tried the shutters. Both were tight-fastened. More as an automatic gesture than with any hope, I moved along and tried the knob of the door. But the door was unlocked.
Though I tried to ease it open gently, the thing creaked and cracked at every foot. Ahead was the main hall of the small house, with the front door facing me some thirty feet ahead. And that front door was now open. In the aperture, the key of the front door still in his hand, a man stood silhouetted against the faint glow of the street-lamps outside, looking at me.