The Punch and Judy Murders shm-5 Read online

  Colonel and Mrs. Charters were waiting for us on the porch. Charters I had not seen since the old days, when he had been H.M.'s right-hand man and very nearly his rival. But the years had not treated him, kindly in any way. He still kept his leanness, his stiff back, his clipped and courteous manner; yet he was an old man, and the expression round his eyes was one of worry and fretfulness — as though over

  trifles. He looked as though he had missed the good things, and knew it. His dull-grey hair was close-cropped round the long head, his dull-grey eyes were kindly but tired, and I suspected that he had a set of false teeth to annoy him. The mufti smartness of his clothes was not so precise as I remembered it, but I instinctively addressed him as "sir," exactly as though it were the old days. Mrs. Charters, a good-natured dumpling of a woman in a print dress, bustled to make us welcome.

  "I know it's the devil, Blake," Charters said, "to drag a man away on the evening before his wedding. Swear if you must, but listen: Merrivale and I decided you were the best one to help us." His bony grip was genial, even if his voice sounded fretful. "Come back here."

  He led us to the wide veranda at the rear, overlooking a faint-gleaming sea on which there were now shadows. A cool breeze ruffled through it. There were comfortable wicker-chairs, and bottles and a bowl of ice on the table. Charters picked up a cube of ice and dropped it, with a flat clink as though he were reflecting, into a tall glass. Then he looked out over the veranda-rail, down the height of the cliffs to where, far off, the beach was dotted with the heads of bathers in the surf.

  "It's very peaceful down there," he said. "I only hope to God it remains so. This is a quiet corner of the world. I didn't want this business cropping up. I thought, when we'd caught Willoughby the other week, that we had the most in excitement Devon could provide." He nodded towards a window, which evidently gave on his study, and at a tall iron safe just inside. I did not understand what he meant by Willoughby or by the glance at that safe, I only wish I had asked. Charters had turned irritable again. "That was ordinary crime, but this cursed business-!’ Did you tell him, Merrivale?"

  "I said Hogenauer was here, that's all," grunted H.M.

  "And," I put in, "that he was working on a machine or something to make himself invisible and carry him through the air. Look here, sir, you haven't brought me several hundred miles just to talk nonsense. What's it all about?"

  Charters dropped another cube of ice into the glass. "It's about this," he said. "I didn't know Hogenauer was in England, much less living within a dozen miles of here, until about three months ago. When you came up here did you notice another house — little brick house-just over the way? Yes. There's a Dr.-Antrim living there: youngish, quite a good fellow, with a very pleasant wife. My wife took quite a fancy to her. We've struck up an acquaintance, and we've more or less run in and out of each other's houses. One evening Antrim came up here bursting with news. It appeared he had just met an old acquaintance of his — Antrim had studied in Germany — about whose scientific talents he was enthusiastic. Yes: it was Hogenauer.

  "Antrim was very anxious for me to meet Hogenauer. But we never did. I didn't let on to Antrim that I knew him, and Hogenauer has kept a very tight-closed mouth about knowing me. After he heard I was here, he only came up to see Antrim once or twice, though Antrim is his doctor and Hogenauer doesn't seem to have been well. I immediately looked him up at the police station. He's registered at the alien's bureau, and since last autumn he's been living in a neat little suburban villa at Moreton Abbot, not far from here. Well, I put a man to watch him. Of course, I had nothing to go on…. "

  Charters handed round some admirable gin-fizzes. A little of his old sharpness, his old doggedness, had come back when he began to outline his facts. He sat down on the veranda-rail, his arms folded and hands cradled under bony elbows.

  "He's been leading an ordinary life: except for one thing. On every alternate day, between eight and nine in the evening and often until much later, he shuts himself up in his back parlour. The windows are closed up with shutters of the old-fashioned wooden kind. The man I had watching him — Sergeant Davis — tried to get close and see what was going on. One night he climbed over the garden wall, crawled up under the window, and tried to look through chinks in the shutter. And this is what he says: he says that the room was dark, but that it seemed to be very full of small, moving darts of light flickering round a thing like a flower-pot turned upside down."

  H.M., who had been getting out his pipe, opened his eyes, shut them, and opened them again. His turned-down Panama hat gave his face the look of a malevolent urchin's. "Oh, love-a-duck," he said. "Look here, old son. This Sergeant Davis, is he-'

  "He's absolutely reliable. You can talk to him for yourself."

  "What about Hogenauer's household?"

  "He keeps one manservant to do the cooking and cleaning. Or a series of them, rather. Two have already got the sack for being inquisitive. There's a new man there now."

  "Any friends? Close friends, I mean?"

  Charters tried to gnaw at his cropped moustache. "I was coming to that. As I say, I had my attention rather distracted by that Willoughby affair, which put me up to the eyes in work. But this much I can tell you. Hogenauer left Germany after, apparently, a quarrel with the government; and also apparently he didn't leave it with much money. Since he's been living at Moreton Abbot, he's had only one friend-in fact, outside Antrim the only man who's visited him at all. And this friend is Albert Keppel; he's dropped the `von.' "

  "Uh-huh. The physicist," said H.M., making a vacant circle in the air with his pipe. "I heard him lecture. Pretty sound feller. And Keppel is a kind of exchange professor who's been lecturin' for a year at the University of Bristol. And Keppel lives in Bristol. And at Filton, in that same Bristol, is the biggest aeroplane works in England. And they're workin' double-shift, night and day, behind locked doors, on God-knows-what. Hey? Still…"

  He made another circle in the air with his pipe.

  "And still," I said, "I don't see what it has to do with me’

  "Because L. is in England," replied Charters sharply. He got up from the rail, and began to pace the veranda. He seemed to be looking back over the past. "I dare say you didn't know L. Merrivale and I did — at least, we knew his name."

  "But not the man?"

  "But not the man," said Charters grimly, "or the woman. L. may be a man or a woman. There's always been a dispute about that. All we know is that L. was the cleverest limb of Satan that ever plagued the Counter-Espionage Service. My God, Merrivale, do you remember '15. The tanks? L. very nearly got away with that information, if we hadn't stopped the bolt-hole. You see, L. wasn't and isn't a German, so far as we know; yet he might be German or English or French. He's a kind of international broker for secrets, and he doesn't care particularly whom he serves so long as he's paid. He's out after the big secrets. He gets them, and he sells them to the highest bidder."

  "But look here," I protested: "nearly twenty years after all the fuss, he must be a real Iron Man if he's still working. And surely you must have some clue- "

  "We have," said Charters calmly. "Hogenauer has offered to tell us who L. is."

  There was a pause. The light was darkening to faint purple along the water, and the cliffs threw long shadows. Inside the house I heard a clock strike the quarter-hour after eight. Charter's long face, with its high ascetic framework of bones, was now as puzzled as H.M.'s.

  "It was a week ago to-night," Charters went on, considering each word, "and Hogenauer came here-alone. It was the first time I had seen him face to face since the old days when we had him under observation. We've got a small household: just my wife, my secretary, and the maid: but they were all out. There's an inspector of police named Daniels, who sometimes goes over reports with me in the evening, but he had just left. I was sitting there in my study," he pointed to the window of the room I had observed before, "at a table drawn near the window, with the lamp lighted. It was very warm, and the window was up. All
of a sudden I looked up from my papers-and there was Hogenauer, standing outside the window looking in at me."

  He paused, and looked at H.M. "Merrivale, it was dashed queer. You used to say I hadn't much imagination. Perhaps not; I don't know. I hadn't heard the man approach; I simply looked up, and there he was; or half of him over the sill of the window. I knew him in a second. He hadn't changed much, but he looked ill. He was as little and mild and sharp-featured as ever, but his skin looked like oiled paper over the bridge of his nose. I've seen people in a bout of malaria who had eyes just like his. He said, `Good evening,' and then — just as casual as be damned — he climbed over the sill of the window into the room, and took off his hat, and sat down opposite me. Then he said, `I want to sell you a secret for two thousand pounds."'

  Charters looked satirically at both of us.

  "Of course, I had to pretend I didn't know him, and what was he doing there, and how did he know me. He corrected me very mildly, and said: `I think you know me. I once wrote you a letter explaining why I was going to Germany, and why I could not reveal the dye-process on which I was working. In Berlin we knew all the men who worked against us in your bureau."'

  "Bah!" snorted H.M., who was' evidently stung.

  'Bluff" said Charters. "And yet I don't think it was. He might be mad, though: that was what occurred to me. The long and short of it was that he told me L. was in England, and offered to tell me who L. is, and where to find him, for two thousand pounds. I told him I was no longer in the service, and asked him why he didn't communicate with you. He said, very calmly, that to communicate with you — and to be known as having done it — would be as much as his life was worth. He said: `I want two thousand pounds, but I will not risk my life for it.' Then I asked him why he needed money so badly. He began to talk of his `invention,' or his `experiment'. Merrivale has told you as much of that as I know… and I began to think he was mad. What I can't describe is the supreme — what's the word I want? — the supreme quietness of the man, sitting with his hands folded on his hat, and his bald head, and his eyes as big and fixed as a stuffed cat's.

  "Anyhow, Blake, I made a trip to London to see Merrivale next day. Hogenauer hadn't been lying; L. is believed to be in England now."

  Charters stopped, and dusted the knees of his trousers like a man who wishes to get rid of the whole thing. His conscience appeared to be bothering him.

  "Ho ho ho," chortled H.M., with a leer. "Charters has got it stuck in his throat; he can't go any farther; he can't tell you where you come in, Ken. But I will. You're goin' to do a spot of housebreaking."

  I set down my empty glass, looked at H.M., and began to feel a trifle ill.

  "Point's this," pursued H.M. obstinately, and pointed with a vast flipper. "If Hogenauer's on the level, he could get his two thousand quid. Oh, yes. We've made these little bargains before, though nobody ever whispers it to the police. I'd be willing to pay it out of my own pocket. But is be on the level? Son, there's something awful fishy about this whole business, and I smell the blood of an Englishman again. It's all wrong. There's somethin' rummy and devilish peepin' out of it, which we don't begin to understand. Therefore we got to begin to understand it. Therefore, you're goin' to bust into this beggar's house, and overhaul his papers if he's got any, and find out what the flickering lights mean when they whirl round the flower-pot. Got it?"

  Charters cleared his throat. "Of course," he said, "I can't give you any official sanction.

  "Exactly," I said, "so what if I'm caught? Damn it all, tomorrow I'm supposed to be married. Why don't you hire a professional burglar?"

  "Because I couldn't protect a professional burglar," answered the Chief Constable rather snappishly, "and I can protect you. Besides, there will be no danger. Hogenauer is going to Bristol to-night, not later than by the eight o'clock train, and he won't be back until tomorrow. He was at Dr. Antrim's last night, and told Antrim that. As for the manservant, he's courting a girl in Torquay and won't be back until midnight at the earliest. You will have a couple of hours after dark — probably more-to make a thorough examination of an empty house." Then Charters grew uneasy, after the effervescence of the old days had subsided. "But it's damned irregular all the same," he grumbled. "I shouldn't blame you if you refused to go. Mind, Merrivale, this is your responsibility entirely. If anything should go wrong-"

  I pointed out, with some heat, just whose responsibility it was. H.M. was soothing. "Looky here!" he added, with an air of inspiration, as though he were dangling a peppermint-stick in front of a child. He lumbered into the house and emerged with a small black satchel, rather like a doctor's medicine-case. From this he took a series of skeleton keys, or `twirlers' as we used to call them, a brace and bit, wedges, a forceps, and a glass-worker's diamond. Next came a clawshaped jemmy whose design was new to me, a small bottle of paraffin oil to use on the metal instruments, a pair of rubber gloves, and a very curious tiny bottle which glowed inside like a cluster of fireflies.

  "The Compleat Burglar," observed H.M. with ghoulish relish. "Don't it fire your blood, Ken? This is a telescopic jemmy; finest thing made; a yard long extended, and it's got a powerful leverage. This bottle of phosphorus is much better than a flashlight. Flashlights have a habit of flyin' all over the place, and coppers see them through the window. This can't be seen, and there's enough light for any honest purpose. I say, Charters, we'd better put in some stickin'plaster for him in case he has to cut a pane out of a window. You take my advice, Ken, and try the scullery window first; that's the most vulnerable part of any house. You're wearin' a dark-blue suit, and that's all right…"

  "Just a minute," I interposed. "What I want to know is, why the unnecessary camouflage? Instead of saying, `absolute burning imperative that you be butler,' why didn't you say burglar? What has my role as Robert Butler got to do with this?"

  H.M. did not roar. He remained blinking steadily at me, turning over the jemmy in his hand.

  "That's our second line of defence, son," he said, "in case anything goes wrong. I don't mean to minimize the risks. There's very, very nimble-minded people working against us, and the trouble is that we don't have a ghost of an idea what they're doin'. It's just possible they've laid some kind of trap. Out somewhere there're three people whose ideas or motives we don't know. First, there's Paul Hogenauer. Second, there's that apparently harmless professor of physics, Dr. Albert Keppel. Third, there's the elusive L. It may be that none of 'em has a dangerous purpose at all. Or, again, it's just possible that Hogenauer has laid some sort of trap for us — or whatever agent we send. It's just possible his goin' away to Bristol to-night is a blind. I don't say it's probable, but it's possible."

  "And I may walk into this trap?"

  H.M. grunted. "That's why I asked you to come here. There's plenty of smart lads who could do a neater job of jemmying a window or cavortin' on a drain-pipe, if that's all I wanted. But you met Hogenauer in the old days. You met him in the character of Robert Butler, a spy and a bitter enemy of England, and Hogenauer never forgets a face. So far as we know, he never knew any different about you. If by any chance this is a trap, you'll walk into it before you've done any damage. You can pretend to be an ally of his, you can pretend to be on his side — and you're the only one who can pretend that. You can get out of it before you're into it, if it is a trap. And you may be able to learn something."

  "Or walk into a bullet," I said. "Hogenauer seems to know a whole lot about us. Has it occurred to you that he may know all about me as well, and that he knew about me in my `Butler role?"

  "Uh-huh," said H.M., nodding rather vaguely. "Sure, Ken; it was the first thing I thought of. But somehow… I move in mysterious ways of cussedness. You may have noticed it. I got plans at the back of my head; I see a move and jump or two on funny gambits, as Charters can tell you; oh, yes. And somehow I don't think you're in as much danger as you might be. I know I seem to be askin' an awful lot of you, especially at a time like this; and you'd be quite right to tell me to go and jump i
n the bay. But will you trust the old man?"

  "Right," I said. "Let's get on with it. When do I start?"

  "Good," said Charters quietly. "You'd better have something to eat first. It won't be dark until close on ten o'clock, but you'd better start about nine and reconnoitre the neighbourhood. Sergeant Davis wrote down Hogenauer's address for me somewhere: I think it's `The Larches,' Valley Road, Moreton Abbot. The servant, as I told you, will be going to see a girl and you'll have a clear road. You'll take a car, of course, but I don't need to tell you to park it some distance away from the house. Take Merrivale's car: or mine if you prefer it, unless Serpos has got it out now…."

  H.M. seemed mildly disturbed.

  "This Serpos, now," he suggested. "That's your secretary, ain't it? Exceedingly limp feller I saw up here last night?"

  Charters was sarcastic. "You always were a suspicious beggar, Merrivale. Sinister-sounding foreign name, eh, and the legend of the villainous secretary? Nonsense! Young Serpos is about as meek and mild as they make 'em. I knew his father quite well. Serpos is an Armenian: but educated in England, of course. He worked in a bank in London, but his health wasn't any too good, and I gave him easier work in a healthier climate. Rather amusing chap," Charters admitted grudgingly, "and an expert mimic when you get him started. He'd make money on the halls."

  "It's a queer international stew all the same," muttered H.M. shaking his head. "And while we're on the subject, Charters, who's this Dr. Antrim?"

  "No more foreigners. And," said the Chief Constable, "if you're looking for suspicious characters near at hand, I think you can safely forget it." He chuckled. "Antrim is a big Irishman. You'll like him. His wife is a dashed pretty girl: much too pretty to be a trained nurse, which I believe she was before they were married. She helps him with his work. Of course, the life of a country G.P. isn't very exciting, any more than the rest of our lives are…."

  He stopped, rather guiltily, as we heard heavy footfalls clumping through the main hall of the house. H.M. swept up the kit of the Compleat Burglar, and had just snapped shut the catch of the little bag when a tall figure lumbered out on the veranda.