Stopping a moment at the bar, he spoke a few words and then returned to the table.
`I've ordered you all a drink,' he said slowly. `A whisky. It's just three minutes until closing time, and then we shall have to go.'
`Go?' repeated Sir William. `Go where?'
Hadley did not speak until the waiter had brought the drinks and left the table. Then he said, `Good luck!' hastily drank a little whisky, and set the glass down with care. Again Rampole was conscious of that tightening sense of terror….
'Sir William,' Hadley, went on, looking at the other levelly, `I hope you will prepare yourself for a shock:
'Yes?' said the knight.
`We were speaking a moment ago of your nephew.'
`Yes? Well, good God! What about him?'
'I'm afraid I must tell you that he is dead. He has just been found at the Tower of London. There is reason to believe that he was murdered.'
The foot of Sir William's glass rattled on the polished table-top. He did not move; his eyes were fixed steadily and rather glassily on Hadley, and he seemed to have stopped breathing. At last he said, with an effort.
`I–I have my, car here…. ‘
`There is also reason to believe,' Hadley went on, `that what we thought a practical joke has turned into murder.
Sir William, your nephew is wearing a golf suit. And on the head of his dead body, somebody has put your stolen top hat.'
3. The Body at Traitors' Gate
The Tower of London….
Over the White Tower flew the banner of the three Norman lions, when William the Conqueror reigned, and above the Thames its ramparts gleamed white with stone quarried at Caen. And on this spot, a thousand years before the Domesday Book, Roman sentinels cried the hours of the night from Divine Julius's Tower.'
Richard of the Lion's Heart widened the moat about a squat grey fortress, fourteen acres ringed with the strength of inner and outer ballium walls. Here rode the kings, stiff-kneed in iron and scarlet; amiable Henry, and Edward, Hammer of the Scots; and the cross went before them to Westminster, and the third Edward bent to pick up a lady's garter, and Becket's lonely ghost prowled through St Thomas's Tower.
A palace, a fortress, a prison. Until Charles Stuart came back from exile it was the home of the kings, and it remains a royal palace to-day. Bugles sound before Waterloo Barracks, where once the tournaments were held, and you will hear the wheel and stamp of the Guards.
On certain dull and chilly days there creeps from the Thames a smoky- vapour which is not light enough to be called mist nor thick enough to be called fog. The rumble of traffic is muffled on Tower Hill. In the uncertain light, battlements stand up ghostly above the brutish curve of the round-towers; boat whistles hoot and echo mournfully from the river; and the rails of the iron fence round the dry moat become the teeth of a prison….
Rampole had visited the Tower before. He had seen it in the grace of summer, when grass and trees mellow the aisles between the walls. But he could visualize what it would be like now. The imaginings grew on him during that interminable ride in Sir William's car between Piccadilly Circus and the Tower.
When he thought about it afterwards, he knew that those last words Hadley spoke were the most horrible he had ever heard. It was not so much that a man had been found dead at the Tower of London. He had eaten horrors with a wide spoon during those days of the. Starberth case in Lincolnshire. But a corpse in a golfing suit, on which some satanic hand had placed the top-hat stolen from Sir William, was a final touch in the hideous. After' placing his stolen hats on cab horses, lamp-posts, and stone lions, this madman seemed to have created a corpse so that he could have at last a fitting place to hang his hat.
The ride was endless. In the West End there had been a fairly light mist, but it thickened as they neared the river, and in Cannon Street it was almost dark, Sir William's chauffeur had to proceed with the utmost care. Hatless, his scarf wound crazily about his throat, strained forward with his hands gripping his knees, Sir William was jammed into the tonneau between Hadley and Dr Fell. Rampole sat on one of the small seats.
Sir William was breathing heavily.
`We'd better talk,' Dr Fell said in a gruff voice. `My dear sir, you will feel better… It's murder now, Hadley. Do you still want me?'
`More than ever,' said the chief inspector.
Dr Fell puffed out his cheeks meditatively.
`Then if you don't mind, I should like' to ask…?’
'Eh?' said Sir William, blankly. `Oh. No, no. Not at all. Carry on.' He kept peering ahead into the mist.
The car bumped. Sir William turned and said: `I was very fond of the boy, you see'
`Quite,' said Dr Fell, gruffly. `What did they tell you over the phone, Hadley?'
`Just that. That the boy was dead; stabbed in some way. And that he wore a golf suit and Sir William's top- hat. It was a relay call from the Yard, Ordinarily, I shouldn't have
got the call at all. The matter would have been handled by the local police station, unless they asked the Yard for help. But in this case
`Well?'
`I had a feeling that this damned hat business wasn't sheer sport. I left orders — and got smiled at behind my back for it, that if any further hat antics were discovered, they should be reported to the Yard by the local station, and sent through Sergeant Anders directly to me.'
`How did the people at the Tower know it was Sir William's hat?'
`I can tell you that,' snapped Sir William, rousing himself. `I'm tired of picking up the wrong hat when I go out in the evenings. All top-hats look alike in a row, and initials only confuse you. I have Bitton stamped in gold inside the crown of the formal ones, opera hats and silk ones; yes, and bowlers too, for that matter.' He was speaking rapidly and confusedly, and his mind was on other things. `Yes, and come to think of it, that was a new hat, too. I bought it when I bought the Homburg, because my other. opera hat got its spring broken…'
He paused, and brushed a hand over blank eyes.
`Ha,' he went on, dully, `Odd. That's odd. You said my 'stolen' hat, Hadley. Yes, the top-hat was stolen. That's, quite right; how did you know it was the stolen hat they found on Philip?'
Hadley was irritable. 'I don't know. They told me over the phone. But they said General Mason discovered the body, and so..;'
`Ah,' muttered Sir William, nodding and pinching the bridge of his nose. `Yes. Mason was at the house on Sunday, and I daresay I told him. I.'
Dr Fell leaned forward, So,' he said, `it was a new hat, Sir' William,?'
`Yes. I told you °
'An opera hat,' Dr Fell mused, `which you were wearing for the first time…. When was it stolen'?'
`Eh? Oh. Saturday night. When I was coming home from the theatre. We'd turned off Piccadilly into Berkeley Street.
It was a muggy night, rather warm, and all the windows of
the car were down. Just opposite Lansdowne Passage. Simpson slowed down to let some sort of blind man with a tray of pencils, or something, get across the street. Then somebody jumped out of the shadows near the entrance to the passage, thrust his arm into the rear of the car, twitched off my hat, and ran.'
`What did you do?'
`Nothing. I was too startled.'
`Did you chase the man?'
`And look a fool? Good God! No.'
`So naturally; said Dr Fell, `you didn't report it. Did you catch a glimpse of the man?'
`No. It was too sudden, I tell you. Flick, and it was gone. Ha. Damn him. And now…. You see,' Sir William muttered, hesitantly, turning his head from, side to side `you see… Never mind the hat; I'm thinking about Philip. I
