“Oh, rather!”
Wimsey considered a few moments on the doorstep, and then drove straight down to New Scotland Yard, where he was soon ushered in to Detective-Inspector Parker’s office.
Parker, a square-built man in the late thirties, with the nondescript features which lend themselves so excellently to detective purposes, was possibly Lord Peter’s most intimate—in some ways his only intimate friend. The two men had worked out many cases together and each respected the other’s qualities, though no two characters could have been more widely different. Wimsey was the Roland of the combination—quick, impulsive, careless and an artistic jack-of-all-trades. Parker was the Oliver—cautious, solid, painstaking, his mind a blank to art and literature and exercising itself, in spare moments, with Evangelical theology. He was the one person who was never irritated by Wimsey’s mannerisms, and Wimsey repaid him with a genuine affection foreign to his usually detached nature.
“Well, how goes it?”
“Not so bad. I want you to do something for me.”
“Not really?”
“Yes, really, blast your eyes. Did you ever know me when I didn’t? I want you to get hold of one of your handwriting experts to tell me if these two fists are the same.”
He put on the table, on the one hand the bundle of used cheques, and on the other the sheet of paper he had taken from the library at the Bellona Club.
Parker raised his eyebrows.
“That’s a very pretty set of fingerprints you’ve been pulling up there. What is it? Forgery?”
“No, nothing of that sort. I just want to know whether the same bloke who wrote these cheques made the notes too.”
Parker rang a bell, and requested the attendance of Mr. Collins.
“Nice fat sums involved, from the looks of it,” he went on, scanning the sheet of notes appreciatively. “£150,000 to R., £300,000 to G.—lucky G.—who’s G? £20,000 here and £50,000 there. Who’s your rich friend, Peter?”
“It’s that long story I was going to tell you about when you’d finished your crate problem.”
“Oh, is it? Then I’ll make a point of solving the crate without delay. As a matter of fact, I’m rather expecting to hear something about it before long. That’s why I’m here, dancing attendance on the phone. Oh, Collins, this is Lord Peter Wimsey, who wants very much to know whether these two handwritings are the same.”
The expert took up the paper and the cheques and looked them over attentively.
“Not a doubt about it, I should say, unless the forgery has been astonishingly well done. Some of the figures, especially, are highly characteristic. The fives, for instance and the threes, and the fours, made all of a piece with the two little loops. It’s a very old-fashioned handwriting, and made by a very old man, in not too-good health, especially this sheet of notes. Is that the old Fentiman who died the other day?”
“Well, it is, but you needn’t shout about it. It’s just a private matter.”
“Just so. Well, I should say you need have no doubt about the authenticity of that bit of paper, if that’s what you are thinking of.”
“Thanks. That’s precisely what I do want to know. I don’t think there’s the slightest question of forgery or anything. In fact, it was just whether we could look on these rough notes as a guide to his wishes. Nothing more.”
“Oh, yes, if you rule out forgery, I’d answer for it any day that the same person wrote all these cheques and the notes.”
“That’s fine. That checks up the results of the fingerprint test too. I don’t mind telling you, Charles,” he added, when Collins had departed, “that this case is getting damned interesting.”
At this point the telephone rang, and Parker, after listening for some time, ejaculated “Good work!” and then, turning to Wimsey,
“That’s our man. They’ve got him. Excuse me if I rush off. Between you and me, we’ve pulled this off rather well. It may mean rather a big thing for me. Sure we can’t do anything else for you? Because I’ve got to get to Sheffield. See you tomorrow or next day.”
He caught up his coat and hat and was gone. Wimsey made his own way out and sat for a long time at home, with Bunter’s photographs of the Bellona Club before him, thinking.
At six o’clock, he presented himself at Mr. Murbles’ Chambers in Staple Inn. The two taxi-drivers had already arrived and were seated, well on the edges of their chairs, politely taking old sherry with the solicitor.
“Ah!” said Mr. Murbles, “this is a gentleman who is interested in the inquiry we are making. Perhaps you would have the goodness to repeat to him what you have already told me. I have ascertained enough,” he added, turning to Wimsey, “to feel sure that these are the right drivers, but I should like you to put any questions you wish yourself. The gentleman’s name is Swain, and his story should come first, I think.”
“Well, sir,” said Mr. Swain, a stout man of the older type of driver, “you are wanting to know if anybody picked up an old gent in Portman Square the day before Armistice Day rahnd abaht the afternoon. Well, sir, I was goin’ slow through the Square at ’arf-past four, or it might be a quarter to five on that ’ere day, when a footman comes out of a ’ouse—I couldn’t say the number for certain, but it was on the east side of the Square as might be abaht the middle—and ’e makes a sign for me to stop. So I draws up, and presently a very old gent comes out. Very thin, ’e was, an’ muffled up, but I see ’is legs and they was very thin and ’e looked abaht a ’undred an’ two by ’is face, and walked with
