The Black Gang

The Black Gang

By H. C. McNeile.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. I: In Which Things Happen Near Barking Creek
4. II: In Which Scotland Yard Sits Up and Takes Notice
5. III: In Which Hugh Drummond Composes a Letter
6. IV: In Which Count Zadowa Gets a Shock
7. V: In Which Charles Latter, M.P., Goes Mad
8. VI: In Which an Effusion Is Sent to the Newspapers
9. VII: In Which a Bomb Bursts at Unpleasantly Close Quarters
10. VIII: In Which the Bag of Nuts Is Found by Accident
11. IX: In Which There Is a Stormy Supper Party at the Ritz
12. X: In Which Hugh Drummond Makes a Discovery
13. XI: In Which Hugh Drummond and the Reverend Theodosius Longmoor Take Lunch Together
14. XII: In Which Count Zadowa Is Introduced to Alice in Wonderland
15. XIII: In Which Hugh Drummond and the Reverend Theodosius Have a Little Chat
16. XIV: In Which a Rolls-Royce Runs Amok
17. XV: In Which Hugh Drummond Arrives at Maybrick Hall
18. XVI: In Which Things Happen at Maybrick Hall
19. XVII: In Which a Murderer Is Murdered at Maybrick Hall
20. XVIII: In Which the Home Secretary Is Taught the Foxtrot
21. Colophon
22. Uncopyright

Imprint

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I

In Which Things Happen Near Barking Creek

The wind howled dismally round a house standing by itself almost on the shores of Barking Creek. It was the grey dusk of an early autumn day, and the occasional harsh cry of a seagull rising discordantly above the wind alone broke the silence of the flat, desolate waste.

The house seemed deserted. Every window was shuttered; the garden was uncared for and a mass of weeds; the gate leading on to the road, apparently feeling the need of a deficient top hinge, propped itself drunkenly on what had once been a flowerbed. A few gloomy trees swaying dismally in the wind surrounded the house and completed the picture⁠—one that would have caused even the least imaginative of men to draw his coat a little tighter round him, and feel thankful that it was not his fate to live in such a place.

But then few people ever came near enough to the house to realize its sinister appearance. The road⁠—it was little better than a cart track⁠—which passed the gate, was out of the beaten way; only an occasional fisherman or farm labourer ever used it, and that generally by day when things assumed their proper proportion, and it was merely an empty house gradually falling to pieces through lack of attention. At night they avoided it if possible; folks did say that twelve years ago some prying explorer had found the bones of a skeleton lying on the floor in one of the upstairs rooms with a mildewed rope fixed to one of the beams in the ceiling. And then it had been empty for twenty years.

Even now when the wind lay in the east or northeast and the tide was setting in, there were those who said that you could see a light shining through the cracks in the shutters in that room upstairs, and that, should a man climb up and look in, he’d see no skeleton, but a body with purple face and staring eyes swinging gently to and fro, and tied by the neck to a beam with a rope which showed no trace of mildew. Ridiculous, of course; but then so many of these local superstitions are. Useful, too, in some cases; they afford a privacy from the prying attention of local gossips far more cheaply and effectively than high walls and bolts and bars.

So, at any rate, one of the two men who were walking briskly along the rough track seemed to think.

“Admirable,” he remarked, as he paused for a moment at the entrance of the weed-grown drive. “Quite admirable, my friend. A house situated as this one is, is an acquisition, and when it is haunted in addition it becomes a godsend.”

He spoke English perfectly with a slight foreign accent, and his companion nodded abruptly.

“From what I heard about it, I thought it would do,” he answered. “Personally I think it’s a damnable spot, but since you were so set against coming to London, I had to find somewhere in this neighbourhood.”

The two men started to walk slowly up the drive. Branches dripping with moisture brushed across their faces, and involuntarily they both turned up the collars of their coats.

“I will explain my reasons in due course,” said the first speaker shortly. “You may take it from me that they were good. What’s that?”

He swung round with a little gasp,