The Hampstead Mystery (Thriller Novel). Arthur J. Rees
talking to Hill, Police-Constable Flack came up to them with a card in his hand. Hill looked at the card and exclaimed:
"Mr. Holymead? What does he want?"
"He asked if Miss Fewbanks was at home."
Hill took the card in to Miss Fewbanks, and on coming out went to the front door and escorted Mr. Holymead to his young mistress. Crewe, as was his habit, looked closely at Holymead. The eminent K.C. was a tall man, nearly six feet in height, with a large, resolute, strongly-marked face which, when framed in a wig, was suggestive of the dignity and severity of the law. In years he was about fifty, and in his figure there was a suggestion of that rotundity which overtakes the man who has given up physical exercise. He was correctly, if sombrely, dressed in dark clothes, and he wore a black tie--probably as a symbol of mourning for his friend. His gloves were a delicate grey.
Crewe sought out Hill again and questioned him closely about the relations which had existed between Sir Horace Fewbanks and Mr. Holymead, whose enormous practice brought him in an income three times as large as the dead judge's, and kept him constantly before the public. Hill was able to supply the detective with some interesting information regarding the visitor, and, in contrast to his manner when previously questioned at random by Crewe, concerning his young mistress's habits, seemed willing, if not actually anxious, to talk. He had heard from Sir Horace's housekeeper that his late master and Mr. Holymead had been law students together, and after they were called to the Bar they used to spend their holidays together as long as they were single.
When they were married their wives became friends. Mrs. Holymead had died fourteen years ago, but Mrs. Fewbanks--Sir Horace had not been a baronet while his wife was alive--had lived some years longer. Mr. Holymead had married again. His second wife was a very beautiful young lady, if he might make so bold as to say so, who had come from America. The butler added deprecatingly that he had been told that both Sir Horace and Mr. Holymead had paid her some attention, and that she could have had either of them. She was different to English ladies, he added. She had more to say for herself, and laughed and talked with the gentlemen just as if she was one of themselves. Hill mentioned that she had been out to see Miss Fewbanks the previous day, but that Miss Fewbanks had not come up from Dellmere then, so she had seen Inspector Chippenfield instead.
While Crewe and the butler were talking a boy of about fourteen, with the shrewd face of a London arab, approached them with an air of mystery. He came down the hall with long cautious strides, and halted at each step as if he were stalking a band of Indians in a forest.
"Well, Joe, what is it?" asked Crewe, as he came to a halt in front of them.
"If you don't want me for half an hour, sir, I'd like to take a run up the street. There is a real good picture house just been opened." The boy spoke eagerly, with his bright eyes fixed on Crewe.
"I may want you any minute, Joe," replied Crewe. "Don't go away."
The boy nodded his head, and turned away. As he went down the hall again to the front door he gave an imitation of a man walking with extended arms across a plank spanning a chasm.
"Picture mad," commented Crewe, as he watched him.
"I didn't quite understand you, sir," replied the butler.
"Spends all his spare time in cinemas," said Crewe, "and when he is not there he is acting picture dramas. His ambition in life is to be a cinema actor."
Crewe engaged Police-Constable Flack in conversation while waiting for Mr. Holymead to take his departure. Flack had so little professional pride that he was pleased at meeting a gentleman who usurped the functions of a detective without having had any police training, and who could beat the best of the Scotland Yard men like shelling peas, as he confided to his wife that night. He was especially flattered at the interest Crewe seemed to display in his long connection with the police force, and also in his private affairs. The constable was explaining with parental vanity the precocious cleverness of his youngest child, a girl of two, when Holymead made his appearance, and he became aware that Mr. Crewe's interest in children was at an end.
"Look at that man," said Crewe, in a sharp imperative tone to the police-constable, as the K.C. was walking down the path of the Italian garden to the plantation. "You saw him come in?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you see any difference?"
"No, sir; he's the same man," said Flack, with stolid certainty.
"Anything about him that is different?" continued Crewe.
Police-Constable Flack looked at Crewe in some bewilderment. He was not a deductive expert, and, as he told his wife afterwards, he did not know what the detective was "driving at." He took another long look at Holymead, who was then within a few yards of the plantation on his way to the gates, and remarked, in a hesitating tone, as though to justify his failure:
"Well, you see, sir, when he was coming in it was the front view I saw, now I can only see his back."
But before he had finished speaking Crewe had left him and was following the K.C. Holymead had gone into the house without a walking-stick, and had reappeared carrying one on his arm. Crewe admired the cool audacity which had prompted Holymead to go into a house where a murder had been committed to recover his stick under the very eyes of the police, and he immediately formed the conclusion that the K.C. had come to the house to recover the stick for some urgent reason possibly not unconnected with the crime. And it was apparent that Holymead was a shrewd judge of human nature, Crewe reflected, for he calculated that the rareness of the quality of observation, even in those who, like Flack, were supposed to keep their eyes open, would permit him to do so unnoticed.
As Crewe went down the path he beckoned to the boy Joe, who at the moment was acting the part of a comic dentist binding a recalcitrant patient to a chair, using an immense old-fashioned straight-backed chair which stood in the hall, for his stage setting. Joe overtook his master as he entered the ornamental plantation in front of the house, and Crewe quickly whispered his instructions, as the retreating figure of the K.C. threaded the wood towards the gates.
"When I catch up level with him, Joe, you are to run into him accidentally from behind, and knock his stick off his arm, so that it falls near me. I will pick it up and return it to him. I must handle the stick--you understand? Do not wait to see how he takes it when you bump into him--get off round the corner at once and wait for me."
Crewe quickened his pace to overtake the man in front of him. He gave no glance backward at the boy, for he knew his instructions would be carried out faithfully and intelligently. He allowed Holymead to reach the big open gates, and turn from the gravelled carriage drive into the private street. Then he hurried after him and drew level with Holymead. As he did so there was a sound of running footsteps from behind, and then a shout. Joe had cleverly tripped and fallen heavily between the two men, bringing down Holymead in his fall. The K.C.'s stick flew off his arm and bounded half a dozen yards away. Crewe stepped forward quickly, secured the stick, glanced quickly at the monogram engraved on it, and held it out to Holymead, who was brushing the dust off his clothes with vexatious remarks about the clumsiness and impudence of street boys. For a moment he seemed to hesitate about taking the stick.
"I believe this is yours," said Crewe politely.
"Ah--yes. Thank you," said the K.C., giving him a keen suspicious glance.
CHAPTER VIII
Crewe had well-furnished offices in Holborn but lived in a luxurious flat in Jermyn Street. Although he went to and fro between them daily, his personality was almost a dual one, though not consciously so; his passion for crime investigation was distinct--in outward seeming, at all events--from his polished West End life of wealthy ease. Grave, self-contained, and inscrutable, he slipped from one to the other with an effortless regularity, and the fashionable folk with whom he mixed in his leisured bachelor existence in the West End, apart from knowing him as the famous Crewe, had even less knowledge of the real man behind his suave