I could just make out the shape of his head in the gleam of those little torches that he has fastened to his mask, and I chanced it. So you see that my two years amongst the Texas cowboys were not wasted. Here, come along, Chiffner.”
The steward came promptly enough, for, standing outside, he had heard all that was going on. He helped to remove the choking lasso from the throat of the man lying there, and lifted him to his feet. He cried out suddenly, “Gaylor!” he exclaimed. “It’s Jim Gaylor.”
“Ah, precisely as I had expected,” Nettleship exclaimed. “Ella, this is Mr. James Gaylor, the son of the late baronet’s butler. A regular bad lot, and only recently back in the neighbourhood after a long term of penal servitude. When I learnt this fact from Chiffner, I was pretty sure who was at the bottom of all the trouble. I can’t understand why they didn’t suspect it before. You see, as he was born here, he must have known all about the house and the secret passage leading from the back of the old monastery to the back of this room.”
“I didn’t know it, sir,” Chiffner said.
“Well, as you have only recently come here to look after the place, how should you? You are quite right, Ella, when you said there was a missing space of eight feet, and that is right behind Sir Godfrey’s portrait, which is painted on a sliding panel. This chap knew all about it, and very good use of his knowledge he has made. All these months he has been able to play the ghost of the haunted room, and well he has done it, for he has done no work since he came out of gaol, and he seems to have had plenty of money to spend in the bar downstairs. He hung about there, night after night, waiting for some one to take Room Five, and once he knew that a visitor was there, then the rest was easy. Chiffner, you had better telephone to the police station. I can look after this man till you come back.”
The unfortunate Gaylor seemed to be taking no interest in the proceedings. He lay on the floor, weak and helpless, and evidently still suffering deeply from the cruel pressure of the lasso about his throat.
Ella smiled up into her husband’s face,
“You have done splendidly,” she said.
“Well, in a way I have,” Nettleship said. “But most of the credit belongs to you. It was you who found out all about that missing space, and gave me the clue to the secret entrance to the house. Well, I managed to find that, and when I discovered that one of the men who came to drink here was the son of the late baronet’s butler it seemed to me that I knew exactly where to put my hand on the criminal. You see, he was just the sort of man to know all about the mysteries of the house, and his past made him suspect. Now, let’s get him out of the way, and go quietly to bed. This ought to be a rattling good Christmas for us, and when it is over we’ll just go back to London and get into that little flat of ours without further delay.”
A Policeman’s Business
(Edgar Wallace)
There was living at Somers Town at that time a little man named Jakobs.
He was a man of some character, albeit an unfortunate person with “something behind him.” The something behind him, however, had come short of a lagging. “Carpets” (three months’ hard labour) almost innumerable had fallen to his share, but a lagging had never come his way.
A little wizened-faced man, with sharp black eyes, very alert in his manner, very neatly dressed, he conveyed the impression that he was enjoying a day off, but so far as honest work was concerned Jakobs’ day was an everlasting one.
Mr. Jakobs had been a pensioner of Colonel Black’s for some years. During that period of time Willie Jakobs had lived the life of a gentleman. That is to say, he lived in the manner which he thought conformed more readily to the ideal than that which was generally accepted by the wealthier classes.
There were moments when he lived like a lord — again he had his own standard — but these periods occurred at rare intervals, because Willie was naturally abstemious. But he certainly lived like a gentleman, as all Somers Town agreed, for he went to bed at whatsoever hour he chose, arose with such larks as were abroad at the moment, or stayed in bed reading his favourite journal.
A fortunate man was he, never short of a copper for a half-pint of ale, thought no more of spending a shilling on a race than would you or I, was even suspected of taking his breakfast in bed, a veritable hallmark of luxury and affluence by all standards.
To him every Saturday morning came postal orders to the value of two pounds sterling from a benefactor who asked no more than that the recipient should be happy and forget that he ever saw a respected dealer in stocks and shares in the act of rifling a dead man’s pockets.
For this William Jakobs had seen.
Willie was a thief, born so, and not without pride in his skilful-fingered ancestry. He had joined the firm of Black and Company less with the object of qualifying for a pension twenty years hence than on the off chance of obtaining an immediate dividend. He was guarded by the very principles which animated the head of his firm.
There was an obnoxious member of the board — obnoxious to the genial Colonel Black — who had died suddenly. A subsequent inquisition came to the conclusion that he died from syncope: even Willie knew no better. He had stolen quietly into the managing director’s office one day in the ordinary course of business, for Master Jakobs stole quietly, but literally and figuratively. He was in search of unconsidered stamps and such loose coinage as might be found in the office of a man notoriously careless in the matter of small change. He had expected to find the room empty, and was momentarily paralysed to see the great Black himself bending over the recumbent figure of a man, busily searching the pockets of a dead man for a letter — for the silent man on the floor had come with his resignation in his pocket and had indiscreetly embodied in this letter his reasons for taking the step. Greatest indiscretion of all, he had revealed the existence of this very compromising document to Colonel Black.
Willie Jakobs knew nothing about the letter — had no subtle explanation for the disordered pocketbook. To his primitive mind Colonel Black was making a search for money: it was, in fact, a stamp-hunt on a large scale, and in his agitation he blurted this belief.
At the subsequent inquest Mr. Jakobs did not give evidence. Officially he knew nothing concerning the matter. Instead he retired to his home in Somers Town, a life pensioner subject to a continuation of his reticence. Two years later, one Christmas morning, Mr. Jakobs received a very beautiful box of chocolates by post, ‘with every good wish,’ from somebody who did not trouble to send his or her name. Mr. Jakobs, being no lover of chocolate drops, wondered what it had cost and wished the kindly donor had sent beer.
“Hi, Spot, catch!” said Mr. Jakobs, and tossed a specimen of the confectioner’s art to his dog, who possessed a sweet tooth.
The dog ate it, wagging his tail, then he stopped wagging his tail and lay down with a shiver — dead.
It was some time before Willie Jakobs realized the connection between the stiff little dog and this bland and ornate Christmas gift.
He tried a chocolate on his landlord’s dog, and it died. He experimented on a fellow-lodger’s canary, and it died too — he might have destroyed the whole of Somers Town’s domestic menagerie but for the timely intervention of his landlord, who gave him in charge for his initial murder. Then the truth came out. The chocolates were poisoned. Willie Jakobs found his photograph in the public Press as the hero of a poisoning mystery: an embarrassment for Willie, who was promptly recognized by a Canning Town tradesman he had once victimized, and was arrested for the second time in a week.
Willie came out of gaol (it was a “carpet”) expecting to find an accumulation of one-pound postal orders awaiting him. Instead he found one five-pound note and a typewritten letter, on perfectly plain uncompromising paper, to the effect that the sender regretted that further supplies need not be expected.
Willie wrote to Colonel Black, and received in reply