Fire, Burn! Read online

  The policeman, stiff-backed, marched across to a door on the right. He threw it open.

  “Mr. Cheviot,” he announced in a hoarse brandy-voice.

  Cheviot felt a second’s blind panic, worse than any he had known. He was committed. For good or ill, for ease or death, he must walk the path to God-knows-where. Well! All the more reason why he should walk it with good grace, as Flora would have him do.

  He caught only a glimpse of a good-sized room, its oak-panelled walls cluttered to confusion with military trophies. Colonel Rowan, he vaguely remembered, was a bachelor and kept living-quarters here. Then, throwing back his shoulders and with a lazy smile, Cheviot strolled in.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said.

  2

  A Problem in Bird-Seed

  ACTUALLY THERE WERE three men in the room. But, since one was sitting at a writing-desk in a far corner, Cheviot at first saw only two.

  On the floor lay a red-patterned Turkey carpet, so spattered and trampled with tobacco-ash that its original colours remained dubious. A polished mahogany table, much burned at the edges, stood in the middle. On it, amid scattered documents and a paper of cigars, was a lamp with a fluted red-glass shade and a red-glass bowl burning a broad flame of petroleum oil.

  Cheviot wondered, not for the first time, why petroleum-burning lamps didn’t blow up; and was soon to learn that they often did.

  Sideways to the table, in an easy-chair of padded purplish silk, sat a tall, slender, rather handsome man in his late forties. His thinning and greying fair hair was brushed up and curled back from a high forehead. What you first noticed were the large eyes and wide nostrils; they added an air of sensitiveness and intelligence to the thin face.

  This was Colonel Charles Rowan, of course. Except for the absence of sword or sword-belt, he wore dress uniform: his scarlet coat, with heavy gold epaulettes, bore the buff facings and silver lace of the 52nd, a Light Infantry regiment. His white-trousered legs were crossed. His left hand held a lighted cigar; with his right hand he slapped at the chair-arm with a pair of white gloves.

  Cheviot glanced across the table at the other man.

  Mr. Richard Mayne, a bouncing barrister in his early thirties, was also smoking a cigar. At first glance his face appeared to be perfectly round. This was because of his shiny black hair and shiny side-whiskers. Though the side-whiskers did not completely encircle his face and meet at the chin, they came within an inch or more of doing so. Out of this frame peered dark eyes, also shiny and shrewd, above a long nose and a wide mouth.

  Mr. Mayne’s clothes were much like Cheviot’s own, though of less fine quality. Mr. Mayne wore a sombre-hued coat, pinched-in at the waist but long and loose almost to the knees. The high sides of his collar showed above a white neckerchief. His trousers were of brown velvet, strapped under the shoes like Cheviot’s.

  “Now steady!” thought the latter. “I’m perfectly cool.”

  And yet he kept on clearing his throat as he bowed formally.

  “I—I must apologise for my lateness, gentlemen.”

  Both his companions rose to their feet and returned the bow. Both of them threw away their cigars into a china spittoon under the table.

  “I beg you won’t mention it,” smiled Colonel Rowan. “Speaking for myself, I was rather gratified at your application. This, I take it, is your first visit to Scotland Yard?”

  Slight pause.

  “Well!—” said Cheviot, and made a noncommittal gesture with his hat.

  “Ah, yes. Kindly be seated, in that chair there, and we’ll consider your qualifications.”

  Mr. Richard Mayne, who had sat down, bounced to his feet again. His face, circled with the dark hair and whiskers, was not at all unfriendly; but it was dogged.

  “Rowan,” he said in a deep voice with a faint trace of Irish accent, “I have no liking for this. Forgive me, Mr. Cheviot,” and his dark eyebrows twitched back towards the Colonel, “but this gentleman is too plainly a gentleman. Rowan, it won’t do!”

  “And yet,” mused the other, “I am not sure.”

  “Sure? Damme, it’s against the express orders of Peel himself! The Force, in general, is to be composed of ex-Army privates, commanded by non-commissioned officers. Non-commissioned. Peel don’t want gentlemen, and says so.” Here Mr. Mayne squeezed up his eyes in memory. “‘A sergeant of the Guards at two hundred pounds a year,’” he quoted, “‘is a better man for my purpose than a captain of high military reputation who would serve for nothing, or if I could give him a thousand a year.’ What do you say to that?”

  Colonel Rowan’s thin, fair-grey head, atop the high black-leather stock which gave his courtesy so stiff-backed a look, turned slowly towards Mr. Mayne.

  “At our very first parade,” he said, “we were obliged to dismiss five officers for being drunk on duty. Not to mention the nine men we dismissed for complaints at what they called the long hours.”

  “Drunkenness?” scoffed the young barrister. “Come, now! What else can we expect?”

  “Better than that, I think. One moment.”

  With another polite bow, Colonel Rowan walked to the desk in the far corner of the room. There he exchanged a few words in a low voice with a man sitting behind the desk. This man, whom Cheviot could not see very well, handed him a long sheet of foolscap. Colonel Rowan returned to the table.

  “Now, sir,” he added, looking at Cheviot. “Your record.”

  He sat down. So did Mr. Mayne and Cheviot, the latter turning round and round the brim of his hat in unsteady hands.

  Under the eye of Colonel Rowan, light-blue and mild as it appeared, he felt very small. He remembered, ghost-like, the painting of Colonel Rowan with the five medals across his coat. This man had fought in every major battle of the Peninsular War, and had commanded a wing at Waterloo.

  “I believe,” continued the Colonel, glancing at the foolscap-sheet, “you served in the late wars?”

  He meant the Napoleonic Wars, of course. But Cheviot could speak truthfully about the only war he knew.

  “I did, sir.”

  “Your rank?”

  “Captain.”

  Mr. Richard Mayne grunted. But Colonel Rowan was not ill-pleased.

  “Yes. In the 43rd Light Infantry, I think.” Then he spoke of Cheviot in the third person, as though the latter were not there at all. “Served with distinction at … hum! I will not embarrass him.”

  Cheviot said nothing.

  “Lives,” pursued Colonel Mayne, “in chambers at the Albany. Is of independent means: intelligence kindly supplied us by his bankers, Messrs. Groller of Lombard Street. Moves in the—the beau monde. Noted as pistol-shot, wrestler, and singlestick-player.” He glanced with approval at Cheviot’s shoulders, and looked at Mr. Mayne. “His private affairs … hum! These are no concern of ours.”

  Cheviot’s voice rang out loudly in the smoky, dirty room.

  “If you don’t mind, sir, I should be interested to hear what you have gleaned about my private life.”

  “You insist?”

  “I request.”

  “Is at times a heavy gambler,” read Colonel Rowan, without looking up, “but goes for months without touching cards or dice. No friend to temperance societies, but is never observable as being drunk. His friendship with Lady Drayton is well known—”

  “H’m,” grunted Mr. Mayne.

  “But is, I repeat, no concern of ours.”

  And he dropped the sheet of foolscap on the table.

  Too many shocks were having on Cheviot just the opposite effect. They induced in him a mood of exhilaration, a don’t-give-a-damn high-heartedness; he was ready to seize at one dream amid dreams.

  This was just as well, because Mr. Mayne’s deep voice came driving in.

  “Now, Mr. Cheviot!” said the barrister, thrusting an arm so suddenly across the table that Cheviot feared the lamp would singe his whiskers. “By your leave, I’ll ask the question Rowan was about to ask.”

  Mr. Mayne rose to
his feet, putting his hands under his coat and waggling the coat-tails. This disclosed a velvet waistcoat, in which arabesques of black dominated arabesques of green, and which was crossed by a gold watch-chain with a bunch of seals.

  “Sir,” he continued, “you have applied for the post of Superintendent at our Central or Home Division. You are, we hear, of independent means. But your emolument would be only two hundred a year. You would be on duty twelve hours a day. Your work would be hard, dangerous, even bloody. Mr. Cheviot, why do you want this post?”

  Cheviot also sprang to his feet.

  “Because,” he retorted, “the duties of the police comprise more than suppressing brawls, or hauling away drunkards and prostitutes. You agree?”

  “And if I did?”

  “Well, what of crimes committed by a person or persons unknown? Thievery? House-breaking? Even,” and Cheviot rounded the syllables, “murder?”

  Mr. Mayne frowned at the table and flapped his coat-tails. Colonel Rowan did not speak.

  “Such crimes, I believe,” said Cheviot, “are now dealt with by the Runners. But the Runners are corrupt. They can be hired by a private individual, or rewarded by the Government with prices according to the scale of the crime. Oh, yes! Bow Street can always produce a victim to be hanged. And how often do you hang the right man?”

  Colonel Mayne interposed with unusual sharpness.

  “Seldom,” he said. “Damned seldom!—In good time, a dozen years or so,” he added, “we shall abolish the Runners altogether. We shall then create a new force of our own, to be called the ‘detective police.’”

  “Good!” said Cheviot in a ringing voice. “But why shouldn’t I, in addition to my ordinary duties, become the first member of your detective police? And begin those services now?”

  There was a silence.

  Colonel Rowan looked startled and even displeased. But in Mr. Richard Mayne could be sensed a new and different mood.

  “Eh, and why not?” exclaimed the barrister, firing up. “We live in a new age, Rowan. Of steam, of railways, of power-looms for the mills!”

  “And therefore,” the Colonel retorted, “of worse and worse poverty. This cry for Reform will cause riots; remember that. If we can assemble seventeen divisions by this time next year, we need every man. You go too fast, Mayne.”

  “Do I? I wonder! Always provided, that is, Mr. Cheviot could manage this work. What makes you think, sir, you could manage the work?”

  Cheviot bowed.

  “Because I can prove it,” he said.

  “Prove it? How?”

  Cheviot had been looking quickly round the room.

  The blood-red glass of the lamp cast a dim, rather ghastly light. Patterns of swords, pistols, muskets, and metal cap-badges glimmered with dull polish round the walls. In the back wall, beside a white marble mantelpiece, loomed up a stuffed and moth-eaten brown bear; the bear stood on its hind legs, fore-paws out, seeming to leer and listen with one glass eye gone.

  Cheviot addressed Colonel Rowan.

  “Sir,” he said, gesturing round, “is there a loaded pistol among all these trophies?”

  “At least,” the other answered gravely, “I have one here.”

  Colonel Rowan drew open a drawer of the table. From it he produced a medium-weight, medium-bore pistol; the whole of its handle, Cheviot rejoiced to see, was plated with pure silver bearing Colonel Rowan’s initials.

  Just as gravely its owner drew back the hammer to half-cock, above the percussion-cap on the firing-nipple. Then he handed the pistol to Cheviot.

  “Will that do?”

  “Admirably. With your permission, sir, I will try an experiment. You gentlemen will be the two witnesses. Stop!” Cheviot looked at the figure behind the desk. “I see there is a third. Three witnesses would make my task more difficult.”

  Colonel Rowan craned his neck round, “Mr. Henley!” he called.

  There was a bumping noise, and the rattle of an unlit lamp, as someone pushed his way clumsily from behind the desk. Out of the shadows emerged a shortish, stocky man in his middle fifties.

  He was partly lame in the right foot, from a wound at Waterloo, and supported himself on a thin ebony walking-stick. But he had a merry brown eye, a flattish nose, and an amiable fleshy mouth. Even his thick side-hair and short-cut side-whiskers, reddish in colour, could not hide the broad runnel of baldness in the middle.

  You would have thought him something of a ladies’ man, a dasher, a lover of good food and wine. You would have thought so even despite his very dark clothes and the air of portentousness he assumed under Colonel Rowan’s eye.

  “May I present Mr. Alan Henley, our chief clerk?”

  “Your servant, sir,” intoned Mr. Henley, portentously and in a cultured voice which had not always been quite so cultured.

  He directed at Cheviot a private grin which Colonel Rowan did not see. Then he propped up his stick at the narrow end of the table, assumed an air of deep wisdom, and leaned on the table with both hands.

  “But, I say!” burst out Mr. Mayne. “What’s this demm’d experiment? What does the fellow mean to do?”

  “Observe!” said Cheviot.

  With an immense and vari-hued silk handkerchief, whipped from the tail-pocket of his coat, he had been polishing the pistol as though only to give it a higher gloss. Next, left forefinger on the muzzle and right forefinger under the handle, he put it down under the lamp.

  “Out in the passage,” he continued, restoring the handkerchief to his pocket, “you have a constable on duty. I propose to go out there. Tell the constable to engage my attention; at any event, be sure I cannot possibly see what occurs in here.”

  “Well? Well? Well?”

  “Then close the door; lock it. One of you gentlemen, I suggest, shall take up the pistol. Let him fire a shot, from any distance he likes; say at that stuffed bear beside the fireplace.”

  All swung round to look at the brown bear, which leered back with one glass eye.

  “Finally,” said Cheviot, “give me a sign to return. I will then tell you which of you three fired the shot, from what distance it was fired, and what the man in question did before and afterwards. That’s all.”

  “All?” echoed Mr. Richard Mayne, after a stupefied pause.

  “Yes, Mr. Mayne.”

  Mr. Mayne smote the table a blow with his fist.

  “Man, you’re mad!” he almost yelled. “It can’t be done!”

  “May I try?”

  “Poor old Tom,” Colonel Rowan said rather sadly, and looked at the brown bear. “I got him in Spain many years ago. One more bullet won’t hurt him.—At the same time,” the Colonel added with some sharpness, “our guest may well be able to tell us at what distance a shot is fired. By reason of the powder-burns.”

  Cheviot’s heart seemed to turn over. These people couldn’t possibly …?

  His momentary consternation was shared by the chief clerk as well as the barrister. Mr. Alan Henley rolled up his heavy, half-bald head, opening his eyes wide. A drop of sweat trickled down beside one reddish side-whisker.

  “S-sir?” he demanded.

  “Come, Henley, you have been to the wars! Have you never observed the nature of wounds?”

  “No, sir. Can’t say as,” here Mr. Henley coughed and instantly corrected his grammar, “can’t say I have.”

  “If a firearm is discharged close against the body, there will be black burns on the uniform. Even at ten or a dozen feet, granting a heavy charge of powder, there will be faint marks. Otherwise, if Mr. Cheviot will forgive me, I find his offer incredible.”

  “Incredible?” cried Mr. Mayne. “I tell you it’s impossible!” He looked at Cheviot. “A small wager, perhaps,” he suggested, “that you can’t do it?”

  “Mr. Mayne, I—”

  Cheviot paused.

  A wave of revulsion, almost like nausea, rose up in his throat. What he intended was a trick, and a very cheap trick at that. It is all very well to imagine yourself dazzling the ignor
ant with your superior knowledge, and playing the great omniscient. But, when you are face to face with this, you shy back and find you can’t do it.

  “Five pounds?” inquired the barrister, diving into his pocket and waggling a banknote. “Shall we say five pounds?”

  “Mr. Mayne, I can’t take your money. This is a certainty. You see—”

  Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat.

  It was only a sharp knocking at the door to the passage. Yet none of them realized how great had grown the tension. Mr. Mayne jumped. Even Colonel Rowan, the imperturbable, jerked up his chin.

  “Yes, yes, what is it?” he called out.

  The door opened and closed behind the constable. The constable’s tall hat seemed even taller in this light. Standing stiffly at attention, he saluted. Then he marched towards Colonel Rowan, holding at arm’s length a four-folded sheet of paper sealed with a conspicuous crest in yellow wax.

  “Letter for you, sir. Personal, and by ’and.”

  “Thank you.”

  The red-faced constable marched backwards stiffly and stood at attention by the door. Colonel Rowan, after glancing at the letter, swung round again.

  “Billings!”

  “Sir.”

  “This letter has been opened. The seal has been pried up from underneath.”

  “Yessir,” instantly and hoarsely replied Billings. “I reckon it was the lady, sir.”

  “Lady? What lady?”

  “The lady, sir, has got her kerridge pulled up smack to the front winders. Fair-haired lady, sir, as pretty as any pictur you ever see.”

  “Oh,” murmured Colonel Rowan. But his eye strayed towards Cheviot.

  “By your leave, sir!” said Billings, saluting again. “I hear some horse a-coming up outside. I thinks it’s one of the Patrol. I opens the street-door. But ’t’an’t that at all. It’s a footman in livery, on an ’orse. An ’orse!” he added, with much disgust. “In my time, sir, they made us run. And run like blazes too.”

  “Billings!”

  “Very good, sir. Oh, ah; well. The lady puts her head out of the kerridge-winder. The footman stops and looks smarmy. She says something to him; can’t hear what. He gives her the letter into the kerridge. Presently she gives it out again. He wallops up to me, gives me the letter, and wallops off without waiting for a reply. Can’t say no more or that, sir.”