The British Mysteries Edition: 14 Novels & 70+ Short Stories. Sapper
rat if there was a wound in a dead man's back and no blood on the ground underneath it.
He was far too accustomed to battle, murder, and sudden death to feel particularly upset about the matter. What had happened seemed fairly clear. There had been some row below, and the three of them had come up to the office to settle it. The dead man had lost his temper, hit the dago and the dago had shot him. So much seemed obvious. The point was—what was his next move?
In certain countries the answer would have been one word—nothing. But in England things were different. It was perfectly true that if he now walked out of the house as he had walked in, no one would be any the wiser. But he felt a strange disinclination to let the matter drop. A telephone was on the desk, and for a while he stared at it. Should he ring up the police? And then it struck him he didn't even know the name of the house. It was absurd to state that he was in an unknown house with a dead man on the floor beside him. Almost equally absurd to ask the Exchange where he was. To find out he would have to go down and look outside the gates. Even then it might only be a number, and as he was also ignorant of the name of the road, he would be no better off.
At the same time it seemed equally fatuous to remain where he was. If the two men returned he knew that one of them, at least, had a gun which he did not scruple to use. And if there was one thing more than any other that he disliked, it was a balance debit in the matter of firearms. If they did not return it would be daylight in less than an hour, and he might be seen leaving the house, which would prove awkward.
Suddenly it struck him that as yet he had not examined the dead man's face. The eyes were wide open and staring: the teeth were set in a snarl: the expression, in fact, was just what he would have expected in a man killed instantaneously in the middle of a quarrel. And so it was not that that caused him some few seconds later to rise to his feet with a look of incredulous amazement on his face. The thing was impossible; frankly impossible. And yet there was no mistaking the likeness of the murdered man to the girl he had been talking to that evening.
Jim Maitland had none of the popular disbelief in coincidence. He had met so many amazing ones in his life that he took them as a matter of course. So that it was not so much the strangeness of the affair that worried him, but how this new development affected his course of action. If this was Judy Draycott's brother—and in view of the likeness he felt but little doubt on the fact—the whole thing became very much more personal. He liked what little he had seen of her immensely, and here he was confronted with the dead body of her twin brother, knowing full well that the murderer was a dago whose Christian name was Ernesto.
His course of action was obvious. Ring up the Exchange: explain briefly what had occurred, and ask them to tell the police to come round. With the clues he could give them it should prove a very easy matter to lay hands on the man who had done it. Moreover he realised that if he did not take that course of action, and it should ever transpire that he had been mixed up in it the girl would never forgive him. And yet he hesitated. Twice did his hand go out to pick up the receiver: twice did he refrain.
It was certainly not due to any desire to shield the murderer. Even if the dead man had been a bit of a waster that was no excuse for a dago plugging him. His hesitation came from a very different cause. The instant the police came into the matter he automatically went out. And he was not sure he wanted to go out. The coincidence of the thing, and the strangeness of the whole episode had intrigued his curiosity.
When talking to the girl he had poured cold water on her tale about buried treasure, but now he found himself wondering. Was it possible that this was not a mere gambling quarrel, but something bigger? After all, no one would come home after a long absence abroad and spend his first night playing chemin de fer without even letting his people know he had returned. And clearly the girl had no idea that her brother was back.
A liner had berthed that morning: the dead man then had been in London well over twelve hours. Surely he would under normal circumstances have got in touch with his relatives.
Jim realised that the reasoning was thin, but it afforded him just sufficient excuse not to do his plain duty and use the telephone. Which was negative, not positive: to decide what you are not going to do is easier than deciding what you are.
If his supposition was right: if this youngster had been talking out of his turn with regard to some genuine proposition in South America one thing was vitally important. He must have a closer look at the two men who had been responsible for the murder. The girl would be coming into it, and he could help her far more by spotting the enemy unknown to them than by handing one of them over to the police. And it was as he arrived at this satisfactory, if somewhat unmoral, conclusion that he suddenly straightened up with every nerve taut. From outside had come the unmistakable sound of a door opening....
He looked into the passage, and realised he was a sitting target for a man with a gun: the only hope was to tackle him as he came in. And in one bound he was beside the door, pressed against the wall.
A board creaked close by, and Jim waited tensely. Then there stepped into the room a strange figure. It was that of a small man hardly more than five feet high, clad in a silk dressing-gown. His head, covered with a skullcap, moved quickly from side to side like that of a bird: his hands were stretched out gropingly in front of him. And suddenly Jim understood: the man was blind.
"Monty: is that you?"
The voice was querulous, and high pitched—almost like a woman's, and a feeling of repugnance almost akin to nausea gripped Jim Maitland. He felt an overwhelming temptation to seize this little monstrosity by the throat and throttle him, and in the days that were to come he often recalled the fact. What a lot of trouble would have been saved if he had yielded to the impulse.
"Monty: where are you?"
It was almost a hiss, and the blind man's head gradually moved slower and slower until at length it became stationary with the sightless eyes staring at Jim. With that strange sixth sense given to those who cannot see he had located the stranger in the room. With a feeling of unreality Jim stared at him: the whole thing seemed like a dream. There was something so hideously abnormal about the little man apart altogether from his blindness. The hands were huge but beautifully made: the shoulders had that great depth and width which showed strength far above the average. But the incongruous thing was the look of almost devilish malignity on the face, instead of the gentle peacefulness generally seen on the features of the blind.
Suddenly the man spoke again in a voice barely above a whisper.
"Who are you, and what do you want?"
Jim thought quickly. Should he say he was a policeman, and demand details of the crime? If he did he would have to carry the bluff through; an impossible thing if the others returned. And evidently the blind man was expecting them back, or at any rate someone called Monty. Better not: he would find out more if he kept silent. There would be no difficulty in eluding this little devil if it became necessary, or, should the worst come to the worst, in knocking him out. And then came the thing he had not expected. There was a click, and the room was in darkness.
For a moment he did not realise the significance of the move: then low breathing close beside him put him wise. The absence of light made no difference to his adversary, but it made all the difference to him. He stepped quickly backwards, and the other man chuckled gently. A hand touched his shirt front, and the chuckle was repeated.
"Evening clothes," came a whisper. "You foolish fellow."
Again Jim backed, but all the time he knew the other was following him. And suddenly there came to him a feeling he had experienced so rarely in his life that he refused to acknowledge it—fear. He had an almost irresistible desire to blunder about wildly: to hit out with all his force into the black, impenetrable wall around him. There was something abnormal about this squat, misshapen form which he knew was close beside him—invisible and yet so real.
He forced his nerves into control, and listened intently. Was that the sound of breathing behind his left shoulder? He swung his fist round, and cursed under his breath as he hit the wall. And once again came that odious chuckle from somewhere in the centre of the room.
A new idea came to him which steadied his nerves