The Quiet Hotel
We beat them by a short head; but we beat them. When the clerk threw open the communicating door, we were standing in my room by the mantelpiece, and I was lighting cigarettes for Evelyn and myself. The trouble was that it is devilish difficult to assume an air of outraged dignity when you're grimy, dishevelled, and when the lady had no shoes on. There had not even been time for that.
That fellow had charged at the door, evidently convinced that we had done a bunk. I had heard him hammering vainly at my door while we shuffled along the ledge. Now he entered by the open way, and stopped dead.
Before I had not noticed him: he had been only a professional Voice masked under a dim light in the glass fort downstairs. Now he emerged as an energetic young man with flat fair hair, a rather high colour, serious eyes under sandy brows, and a heavy jaw. His clothes were good, and rather worn. He had one hand in the pocket of his jacket: it was gripped round something which made a suggestive bulge there. After throwing open the door, he stopped dead — and I could see in his expression the sort of position in which he thought he had found us. You could almost hear the word: "Misconduct, eh?" Yet this sort of thing usually startles the person who walks in more than the person who is walked in upon. He was definitely flustered.
"Good evening," I said politely. "Well?"
His suspicions, it was clear, were struggling with his professional bearing. The question was whether he would go back into his chrysalis or emerge from it. His tone showed a mixture of the two.
"I — came in," he said. "You didn't answer my knock."
"No," I agreed. "Well?"
There was a pause. Then, after a glance at the night-porter behind, he got it out.
"I'm sorry if there's been a mistake," he said; "but do you usually pay your bills with counterfeit money?"
His higher colour, at that remark, seemed to say, "Rather neat way of putting it." I thought I detected in this young man a keen student of the films. If so, it was all the worse. His eyes had a shiny look, and he breathed rather fast: undoubtedly he was prepared for trouble.
"Counterfeit money? What the devil do you mean, counterfeit money?"
"I repeat, sorry if there's a mistake. You gave me four ten-shilling notes. All of them are bad."
Evelyn and I looked at each other, as though at a private revelation which had just startled us.
"I wonder!" said Evelyn, acting at the very top of her form. "Could it be… that car you sold"
"And," I said, "he paid me in bundles of notes. New notes"
We did not offer to explain to him; we threw sentences at each other as though we were solving a problem of our own, growing more and more excited over it without the matter being of the least concern to anyone else. Then Evelyn, with a look well below freezing, broke off and gave him a glance. You could see that it had shaken his reassurance.
"Both of us seem to have made a mistake," she told him. "However, please don't let it worry you. There is plenty of perfectly good money in my handbag in the other room."
Now he was looking at our grimy state, and his eye wandered across to the window. Then he made his decision. He volplaned down into honest speech, and I liked him for it.
"Look here," he said, "if I'm making a ruddy fool of myself, I'll find it out fast enough. But I think you're a couple of crooks, and I think you've been up to something here tonight. Got any objection to being searched?"
"Yes."
Nodding and bracing himself, he took the revolver out of his pocket. Again his film-training came to his assistance. "Get 'em up," he said.
"Nonsense," cried Evelyn.
"Get 'em up," he said, and meant it. At the back of his bead he was probably enjoying this, despite his uneasiness. It was just possible that he might cut loose with a harmless shot or two to show his mastery of the situation; and the moment that people begin firing harmless shots is the moment that somebody gets hit. Up went our hands, a queer situation for a sedate English hotel-room with a picture of "Deer Drinking by Moonlight" on the wall. Then he beckoned to the night-porter.
"Search 'em."
The porter, who was not a film-goer, looked uncomfortably at Evelyn and made protesting noises. The clerk was flustered.
"Well, search him, anyhow. Hop to it."
The porter, who I could have sworn was apologizing under his breath, began gingerly to put his hands in my pockets and take out the collection of articles I had been all night transferring from one costume to the other. The first thing he found was the red-sealed envelope. The second thing he found was that £100 bank-note.
"Gawdlummycharley!" said the porter, opening it out.
"Bring it here," ordered our captor. I am not likely to forget him fingering that bank-note, looking up and down from it in quick jerks of his head, so as never to take his eyes off us. The muzzle of his revolver was dusty, and I think there was a fragment of cobweb inside the barrel; but it was not an object with which anybody was likely to play tricks. Then he looked up in a blaze of triumph.
"That settles it. This note is counterfeit too — yes, and not a very good counterfeit either. Willoughby's hand must have slipped. My lad, we've caught Willoughby's mob right enough."
I peered round at Evelyn. So the note which had been in the newspaper which Mrs. Antrim said she had found in Hogenauer's scullery, — that note, was bad. And it would appear that in some fashion Hogenauer himself bad been twisted into this business of the counterfeit money. The thing was getting to be too much for my staggering wits, and the clerk grinned like a cat from Chester.
"Get to the house-phone," he ordered the porter, "and wake up Mr. Collins. Also 'phone the police station, and tell 'em we've got two of the Willoughby gang on toast. There's a thousand pounds reward out for them. `Kenwood Blake.' `Evelyn Cheyne.' I wonder what your real names are? Don't move or I'll drill you."
"Oh, for God's sake!" I said in some disgust. "Stop that kind of talk and listen to reason. Do we get a chance to explain? This is more serious than you think."
"It can't be more serious than I think," he informed me. "I took a long shot and it's come off. You can explain at the police station." He considered. Without a doubt, there was enough evidence against us to send the Archangel Gabriel to clink; he knew he was right; and he began to see himself as a hero.
"Here," he added thoughtfully. "This is a story that'll interest the outside world. Just to do your duty, you might ring up the `Press' office. It's — it's a story that'll interest every London paper too. I don't think it's too late to get it in; but anyway there'll be room in Stop Press-"
And also a tasty morsel for Major-General Sir Edward Kent-Fortescue Cheyne to read when he opened his paper at breakfast.
"That," I said, "would be fine publicity for the hotel, wouldn't it? Yes, it would. In your eye. Then you'll have neither the reward nor your job. Will you allow us to prove. who we are? Also, do you mind if I take my hands down?"
He studied this. "Right. But put your hands in your pockets and keep 'em there." Then the porter handed him the long red-sealed envelope which vas the will-o'-the-wisp we had been chasing throughout this entire case, and which was now passing irretrievably out of my hands. "What's in this?"
"Just some papers."
"Probably some more counterfeit money."
"Well, why don't you open it and see, then?" I said. I was in such a heat of wild curiosity to know what that envelope contained that, at the moment, I should not have minded if he had read whatever was in it. "Go ahead — open it."
"Trap of some kind, eh?" he said swiftly. He contemplated the envelope. "Anyhow, we'll see later. Here, Frank. Take this envelope downstairs with you and lock it up in the safe."
Good-bye. Good-bye for ever. And there was absolutely nothing that could be done about it. He was handing it to the porter when he stopped and looked more sharply at it. "It's smeared all over," he muttered. "Dirty. Just like… What is the stuff on it? Lamp-black, by George!"
The porter — our apologetic friend Frank, who had a wart on his cheek-opened his eyes and spoke unexpectedly.
"Is 'e?" he inquired with interest. "Lamp-black! Gawdlummycharley, I bought lamp-black for Mr. Keppel last night. He sent me out for it. Nine-pennyworth. Ah."
"I begin to see," observed our captor, and his eyes were shinning. "Keppel! You asked' for him when you came in, and made sure he was out. You didn't make any appointment, or he'd have been in; he's fussy. You got out that window. You walked along the ledge. You got into his room… Frank! Have you got the master-key to the Yale lock on Dr. Keeper's door?"
"Ah," said Frank.
"We're going down there now to have a look. You two march in front of me, and don't try any tricks… Wait! Who's that coming upstairs?"
Momentarily he had glanced towards the door, and that second might have been the time to knock his weapon aside. But I did not attempt it, for at Frank's reply our last hope went up the chimney and all future prospects of a wedding dissolved in smoke. Frank replied that it was p'leece. Frank said that it was Inspector Murchison from the Bridewell — which I took to be police headquarters — and Frank seemed relieved. Our captor let out a relieved whoop and call to the deliverer, while Evelyn shut her eyes. Into the room came the burly man with the bowler hat, whom we had seen at the station. He looked round the group, and surveyed us sardonically. But that was not the end of it. Peering beyond his shoulder, eager and pink of face, trotted Mr. Johnson Stone.
Stone pointed to me.
"That's the man," he said.
Evelyn spoke in a somewhat strangled voice, after a pause. "OOoo, you Judas," she breathed. "So it was a game after all! It was ghost stories you were telling us after all. L. isn't dead. I'll bet you're L. yourself. You set him on us, did you? Well, I hope you're satisfied."
Stone cast up his eyes. For a moment he stared and went pinker. Then he spoke in the same tangled tone.
"So now," he said, "now I'm a Judas, am I? That's fine. That's just dandy. I hereby take a solemn oath that never again, never if I live to be a billion, will I ever put out a helping hand to anybody again. I'll kick 'em in the face! I'll kill 'em! I'll Listen, you lunkheads, why didn't you wait and let me explain?" He put out a hand and seized the inspector by the shoulder, as though to steady himself. "You poor, blithering, blistering….. Listen. The fellow wasn't at the station to arrest you. He never heard of you in his life. He wasn't coming to our compartment to grab you. He was at the train to meet me. He's my son-in-law, you one-horned limbs of a piebald cow, the son-in-law I've been talking about all evening and the one I said could probably help you! But would you listen? No. And now, as far as I'm concerned you can take your envelopes and your Keppels and your Hogenauers, and you can I make a pause here, remembering that scene in the prosaic hotel-room with the ‘Deer Drinking by Moonlight’ on the wall. It marked the change. It marked the crossing of the Jordan and the parting of the roads. It did not mean peace, for there was no peace in this case until the end of it; but at least it meant the end of our flying career as fugitives from justice. Though I was not certain of this at the moment, I know that I had seldom felt such a sense of relief.
Evelyn spoke in a small voice. "Does that mean," she said, "that-er"
"Take it easy," growled Stone. "What kind of a jam have you got into now?"
Murchison glanced at the clerk, and rattled coins in his pocket. "Anything wrong?" he asked casually.
Stone's son-in-law, in essentials, was a sort of older and Anglicized version of Stone himself. Also, there was about him something which reminded me of our friend Humphrey Masters. He was about thirty-five, heavy in the body, square in the jaw, and with light-blue eyes under wrinkled lids, which gave him an older look. When he took off his bowler bat, which is the Force's way of indicating that there is a truce from duty, he showed wiry brown hair standing up like a brush. He had two furrows round the sides of his mouth, and a slow easy way of talking, which again was like Masters. He stood tapping his fingers on his hat, looking almost absently at the clerk; and I guessed that Stone had told him the whole story.
"Anything wrong," he repeated, "Mr.-'
"Robinson," said the other. He appeared somewhat dazed, and acutely conscious of the revolver in his band. The atmosphere of the room did not now go with it. "I should rather think," he went on slowly, "there was a whole lot wrong. I've caught two members of the Willoughby gang."
"Nonsense," said Murchison.
Murchison was grinning broadly, with an indulgent air. The clerk stared from one to the other of us.
"I seem to have got in wrong, somehow," he observed. "You're all looking at me as though I'd done something. I.tell you this man gave me four counterfeit ten-shilling notes, and he's got a counterfeit £100 note in his pocket-!"
Murchison seemed a trifle startled at this, but he only went over and clapped the other on the shoulder, with a sort of shepherding motion, as though he were gently easing him out of the room.
"Now, now, take it easy," he urged. "I know all about that. I can vouch for this lady and gentleman. They're all right."
The clerk hunched his neck down into his shoulders. "Then I'm in the soup," he replied frankly. "But there's something very funny going on here, and I've got a right to know what it is. I think I'll wake up Mr. Collins — that's the manager-and get him to find out what it is, if I can't. Hang it, man, look at them! They burgled Dr. Keppel's room. Look at this envelope. If you'll just go down there, you can see for yourself. You know Dr. Keppel yourself. You've been here to see him. Well, I tell you this man must have.."
Under his rather sleepy and paternal air, I thought Murchison looked very worried at this. He cleared his throat and shifted his heavy shoulders.
"Did you see him enter the room?" he asked quickly.
"No, but if you'll only go down there-"
"Where is Dr. Keppel?"
"He hasn't come in yet."
"Now suppose," suggested Murchison, with the air of one making a fair business proposition, "you leave this to me, eh? Just for a little while? You can take my word for it that these people aren't criminals. But I want to talk to them. Suppose you go downstairs and wait until I call you. Just leave everything to me, and you won't have anything to worry you. Yes, yes, yes, I know you were `only doing your duty'; no, there'll be no trouble'
"Have a cigar," said Stone affably.
A somewhat dazed clerk, with a cigar in one hand and a cobwebbed revolver in the other, was shepherded out of the room. When the door was closed, the two others turned to us. Murchison's air of sleepy-smiling bonhomie was gone; his heavy face, with the puckered eyelids looked ugly and worried. He held the red-sealed envelope which he had deftly slid out of Robinson's hand, and he tapped it against his hat. Stone was worried too: he spoke in an almost conspiratorial tone, peering over his shoulder to make sure the door was closed.
"Listen," Stone said hoarsely. "I didn't tell him about it. That is, I didn't introduce the subject, until after he'd told me something. Then I had to tell him, and we got over here as fast as we could. Bill here-"
"Wait a bit, Pop," said Murchison irreverently. After a pause, during which the breath whistled in his nostrils, the inspector spoke in a very quiet voice. "He's dead, isn't he?"
The breeze still blew the curtains at the window. Evelyn went over softly and huddled down into the padded chair.
"Dead? Who?"
"You know who I mean. Dr. Keppel."
I drew a deep breath. "Yes, he's dead. He's sitting in that room down there, in exactly the same position as… Here, by the way: do you know about Hogenauer?"
"Yes. The head of the family here told me after I'd disgorged my bit of information, which I didn't know was important." He smiled sardonically. "I thought it was a bit of a good story to greet the visitor with. It wasn't. It Let's get this straight. Keppel's dead, then. Strychnine poisoning, I suppose?"
"That's it; and in the same brand of mineral-water as Hogenauer. They're sitting in just the same position at the table, and Keppel's got on a cap like Hogenauer. But how did you know it?"
"Because I knew Keppel was going to drink the stuff," Murchison answered bitterly. "No, no, I don't mean he was going to drink strychnine, and you can lay a small bet that neither did he. As for this envelope," be juggled with it, "as a matter of fact, I put it into the pigeon-hole of the desk myself. I was here this afternoon, you see. It was all a part of the same — well, so far as I can see or so far as I'm concerned, the same hoax."
From the chair Evelyn spoke almost casually.
"We're terribly grateful to you," she told him, "for pulling us out of that mess. But if you know the explanation of all this: then before I go completely off my rocker: before I turn into as stark gibbering a lunatic as Mr. Stone thinks I am: will you please, please tell us what this is all about?"
Murchison shook his head. "That's it. I don't know. All I know is what happened this afternoon. And that I'm likely to get into a devil of a lot of trouble myself."
He walked over and put his hat down on the bed. Then be folded his arms and stared at the floor, repeating, "Nice mess! Pretty mess!" as though he were calling on a dog to do tricks.
"Oh, ah. Well, Dr. Keppel.rang me up this afternoon, and asked me if I could come over here. I know him slightly. I've also met his friend, Mr. Hogenauer. You see, both of them were very anxious to keep on the good side of the law. Keppel not so much as Hogenauer, I admit. I gather Hogenauer had got in to a row in Germany, and was afraid we might deport him."
"Whoa there! There's been a lot of talk," Stone interposed, blinking curiously at me, "about a fellow named `L.' — and international plots-and maybe —‘
"International plots my foot," said Murchison explosively. He glanced up with a sort of heavy keenness. "Excuse me, Mr. Blake. Mind you, I don't want to contradict any Powers That Be, or put my oar in where I've got no business. But I have got business here now, worse luck; and I tell you quite frankly I think it's rubbish. Those two? Keppel and Hogenauer? I'll lay you a tanner that if Hogenauer ever saw so much as a dog without a license, he'd go and report it to the Moreton Abbot police station."
"Harmless," I said, "perhaps. But did you know that Keppel's got a sort of miniature guillotine rigged up on a window in there?"
Murchison jerked up his head. "Miniature guillotine? What do you mean?"
"That can wait for a minute. Go on with what you are saying."
"Well — it's not much." He rubbed his leathery jaw, and at that moment he looked older than Stone. "Sometimes I used to drop in on Keppel, at his invitation. He wasn't a recluse like the other one. I liked to hear him talk. Ever see him in action? Little chap standing up very straight, eyes half-shut, two fingers pinched together in the air as though he'd got hold of an idea by the tail. Fussy, bustling sort. But I liked him. He could talk on the subject of Light (that was his branch); you didn't know quite what he was talking about, but it sounded damn interesting with all those thingummyjigs. Understand? Oh, ah, well.
"This afternoon he rang me up and asked me if I could come over here. That was about four o'clock. When I got here he said he wanted `expert advice.' I said, on what? Then he showed this envelope. The flap was gummed down, but there was no red seal on it. Then he said, `I want to put this envelope in such a position that nobody who came in here secretly could possibly get at its contents.' "
"Yes?" I prompted, as he paused.
"Naturally, I said, `why don't you lock it up in the hotel safe? Are you afraid of burglars?' He said I didn't understand. He's got a very patient air, though his English gets mixed up when he's excited. He said something to the effect that this was a kind of trap. He said he wanted to make certain nobody could put over any hanky-panky on him: move the letter: read it: touch it. He said he'd got some lamp-black to spread in such a position that if the letter were moved at all there'd be traces. I showed him another trick. See this?"
He held out the envelope and pointed to the seal. We all crowded round. Evelyn had ducked into her own room, to put on her shoes and tidy herself up; but at this she emerged like a cuckoo out of a clock.
"What about it?" Stone asked suspiciously. "I don't see anything. It looks like a blob of plain wax to me. Hold on! It's a finger-print."
"It's Keppel's finger-print," Murchison told him with dour complacency. "There are ways of forging seals, but you can't do any bread-crumb trick that will imitate this. It's too delicate. Well, I put the envelope into the pigeon-hole and arranged it for him. Then I asked what the game was. He said if I would come round the next morning he would tell me. That was all."
"But the strychnine?"
Murchison swore under his breath. "There's the worst of it. I said, `Are you going to wait up to catch somebody at that envelope?' He said that he'd probably be asleep. I said, `asleep?' Then he got out a yellowish envelope with a dose of white powder in it, and showed it to me. I remember his exact words, because he was so precise about 'em. He said:
`My friend Mr. Hogenauer gave me this, and assured me it was ordinary bromide. I do not believe him. I think he has tried to give me a sleeping-powder and insisted that I take it. I have tasted the powder, and it is bitter. That means it is veronal'."
I whistled.
"Veronal! And that's why he took it as meek as a lamb!"
Stone was exasperated. "You say this and that. You say it might be this or that, but still you're not making much sense that I can see — Why don't you settle it? Why the devil don't you open the envelope?"
Murchison nodded.
"Yes. He told me to come her; to-morrow morning and open the envelope to `see fair play.' That's what I'm worried about-"
With a quick gesture he tore open the envelope.