“What are you doing in these rooms?” asked the policeman, less suspicious but by no means more friendly.
“Well, you see,” said Reeves, “they’re my rooms.”
“I ought to warn you,” the policeman pointed out, “that this may involve you in a serious charge. We have reason to think that a murderer has been hiding in that passage there. Say nothing if you don’t want it to be used as evidence.” And he took out the inevitable notebook which is the policeman’s substitute for a thunderbolt.
“I’m sorry, officer,” said Gordon, “but you must see that we’ve been going round one another in circles. You’re looking for a murderer—let me make a rash guess, and put it to you that it’s Brotherhood’s murderer you’re looking for? Well, we’re doing exactly the same. It seems that, by a mere chance, he’s been taking refuge in a passage which communicates with this room which is rented by Mr. Reeves here. And instead of finding the murderer, we’ve found one another.”
“Very irregular, gentlemen. You know as well as I do that if you’ve any information in your possession which might lead to the conviction of the criminal, it’s your duty to communicate it to the police. Of course, I’m very sorry if I gave you gentlemen a fright, but you’ve got to look at it this way, Whose business is it to see justice done, yours or mine? You see, if it hadn’t been for you gentlemen giving the alarm, not meaning to, I’m not saying you meant to, but if you gentlemen hadn’t given the alarm, I might have got this chap bottled up properly in the passage there; and now how am I to know where he is? That’s the way you’ve got to look at it.”
“But the coroner’s jury brought in a verdict of suicide,” objected Reeves.
“Ah, that may be; but you see it’s this way, the Force isn’t tied down by what the coroner’s jury says, and if the Force has its suspicions, then it acts accordingly; and if anybody else has their suspicions, then it’s their duty to communicate them to the police, d’you see? And then the police can act accordingly.”
“Well, I’m very sorry if we’ve interfered with your plans at all,” said Gordon, seeing that the Olympian rage was taking its normal course, and simmering down into a flood of explanatory platitude. “We were meaning to take a little something after all that hunting about in the wainscoting; it’s dusty work. I suppose it’s no good asking you to join us, Inspector?”
“Sergeant, sir, is what I am. Of course, it’s against the regulations, strictly speaking, when on duty; but if you was to offer me something just to show there’s no offence taken, why then I won’t say No to a glass.” And, as the pledge of amity began to flow, Jove ratified his compact by the infallible formula, “Here’s to your very good health, gentlemen.”
Reeves felt that the moment had arrived for cooperating with Scotland Yard. The fact that Scotland Yard, with no golf balls and no photographs to guide it, no Carmichael and no chewing-gum to aid it, had after all got on the track of the right criminal, began to impress him.
“Well, Sergeant,” he said, “there’s not much sense in either of us playing a lone hand, is there? What I’m asking myself is, why shouldn’t you and we hunt in couples?”
“Very sorry, sir; of course, any information you may see fit to give the police will be acted on accordingly; but you see it’s against our regulations to take civilians about with us when we’re on duty, that’s how it is. Not but what, as it’s all between friends, I don’t mind taking you gentlemen downstairs and showing you the other door of that there passage as you didn’t see and I came in by.”
The fact that Carmichael was still at his useless post occurred to the two friends at this point, and made them consent to the indignity of a personally conducted tour. “In a cellar the other door is, but it’s a cellar you have to get to from the outside,” the sergeant explained, leading the way downstairs. They were not destined to complete, on that occasion, their experiences of the passage. They had only just got out of the front door when the whirlwind figure of a second policeman almost cannoned into them, and their attention was directed to a motorcycle, with sidecar, just disappearing through the lodge gates.
“It’s ’im,” panted the newcomer. “Gone off on the blinking bus!”
The mystery man had disappeared, and disappeared, with singular effrontery, on the very vehicle on which the representatives of the law had come to track him down.
“Come on, Sergeant,” shouted Reeves, rising to the occasion. “I’ve got my car only just round here, and she’ll do a better pace than anything else you could pick up!” And, while the agitated sergeant explained to Gordon the message he wanted telephoned to the station at Binver, Reeves did a record time in starting and bringing round to the front his new Tarquin “Superbus.” It was scarcely three minutes since the disappearance of the adventurous stranger when the two policemen, one at Reeves’ side and one luxuriously cushioned in the tonneau, bounded off down the drive in pursuit.
“What does that car of yours do, Sergeant? Forty? I can knock fifty out of this easily, as long as we don’t get held up anywhere. I say, what happens if some of your friends want to run me in for furious driving?”
“You’d get off with a caution, sir, and it wouldn’t be in the papers. You’re all right, don’t you worry, as long as you don’t run into anything.” Indeed, at the pace Reeves was making, it seemed highly desirable that they should not. The motorcycle was still out of sight, and it seemed likely enough that they were on a forlorn quest. About half a mile from the Club the road split into two, either branch
