The Rogues’ Syndicate: The Maelstrom. Frank Froest
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I was knocked out.’
‘H’m!’ said Foyle reflectively. ‘Can you make anything of it, Menzies?’
The chief-inspector was gnawing his moustache—a sure sign of bewilderment with him. He shrugged his shoulders.
‘There’s little enough to take hold of,’ he returned. ‘Could you recognise any of the people you saw again, Mr Hallett—the girl, the man who was running after her, or the chap in the house?’
‘I haven’t the vaguest idea of what the face of either of the men was like,’ said Hallett.
‘But the woman—the girl?’ persisted Menzies.
Hallett hesitated.
‘I—I think it possible that I might,’ he admitted. Then an impulse took him. ‘But I’m sure she’s not the sort of person to be mixed up in—in—’
The three detectives smiled openly.
‘In this kind of shemozzle, you were going to say,’ finished Menzies, ‘There’s only one flaw in your reasoning. She is.’
Wrung as dry of information as a squeezed sponge of water, Hallett was permitted to depart. The courtesy of Sir Hilary Thornton supplied him with a motor-car back to his hotel; the forethought of Menzies provided him with an escort in the shape of a detective-sergeant. Hallett would have been less pleased had he known that the before-mentioned detective-sergeant was to be relieved from all other duties for the specific purpose of keeping an eye upon him. Weir Menzies was always cautious, and, though his own impression of the young man had been favourable enough, he was taking no chances.
All through that night Weir Menzies drove his allies hither and thither in the attempt to bring the end of the ravelled threads of the mystery into his hand. No one knew better than he the importance of the first hot burst of pursuit. An hour in the initial stages of an investigation is worth a week later on. The irritation at being kept out of bed had vanished now that he was on the warpath. He could think without regret of a committee meeting of the church restoration fund the following day, from which he would be forced to absent himself.
Scores of messages had been sent over the private telegraph and telephone system of the Metropolitan Police before, at seven o’clock in the morning, he took a respite. It was to an all-night Turkish bath in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly Circus that he made his way.
At nine o’clock, spruce and ruddy, showing no trace of his all-night work beyond a slight tightening of the brows, he was in Heldon Foyle’s office. The superintendent nodded as he came in.
‘You look fine, Menzies. Got your man?’
The other made a motion of his hand deprecatory of badinage.
‘Nope,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got a line on him.’
Foyle sat up and adjusted his pince-nez.
‘The deuce you have! Who is he?’
‘His name is Errol,’ said Menzies. ‘He’s a prodigal stepson of Greye-Stratton, and was pushed out of the country seven years ago.’
‘Menzies,’ said Foyle, laying down his pince-nez, ‘you ought to be in a book.’
WEIR MENZIES fitted his form to the big armchair that flanked Foyle’s desk, and dragged a handful of reports, secured by an elastic band, from his breast-pocket. Foyle snipped the end off a cigar, and, leaning back, puffed out a blue cloud of smoke.
‘It’s been quick work, though I say it myself,’ observed Menzies complacently, ‘especially considering it’s a night job. This night work is poisonous—no way of getting about, no certainty of finding the witnesses you want, everyone angry at being dragged out of bed, and all your people knocked up the next day when they ought to be fresh.’
Foyle flicked the ash from his cigar, and a mischievous glimmer shone in his blue eyes.
‘It’s tough luck, Menzies. I know you hate this kind of thing. Now, there’s Forrester—he’s got nothing in particular on. If you like—’
Menzies’ heavy eyebrows contracted as he scrutinised his chief suspiciously. Untold gold would not have induced him to relax willingly his hold of a case that interested him.
‘I’m not shifting any job of mine on to anyone else’s shoulders, Mr Foyle,’ he said acidly.
‘That’s all right,’ said Foyle imperturbably. ‘Go ahead.’
Menzies tapped his pile of statements.
‘As far as I can boil down what we’ve got, this is how it stands. Old Greye-Stratton was a retired West Indian merchant—dropped out of harness fifteen years ago, and has lived like a hermit by himself in Linstone Terrace Gardens ever since. It seems there was some trouble about his wife—she was a widow named Errol when he married her, and she had one son. Five years before the crash there was a daughter born. Anyway, as I was saying, trouble arose, and he kicked his wife out, sent the baby girl abroad to be educated, and the boy—he would then be about twenty—with his mother. Well, the woman died a few years after. Young Errol came down to Greye-Stratton, kicked up a bit of a shindy, and was given an allowance on condition that he left the country. He went to Canada, and thence on to the States, and must have been a bit of a waster. A year ago he returned to England, and turned up at Linstone Terrace Gardens. There was a row, and he went away swearing revenge. Old Greye-Stratton stopped supplies, and neither the lawyers nor anyone else have seen anything of Errol since.’
Foyle rolled a pencil to and fro across his blotting-pad with the palm of his hand. He interrupted with no question. What Menzies stated as facts he knew the chief-inspector would be able to prove by sworn evidence if necessary. He was merely summarising evidence. The inference he allowed to be drawn, and so far it seemed an inference that bade fair to place a noose round young Errol’s neck.
‘We have got this,’ went on Menzies, ‘from people in Linstone Terrace Gardens, from Greye-Stratton’s old servants, from the house-agents from whom he rented his house, and from Pembroke, of Pembroke and Stephens, who used to be his solicitors. Greye-Stratton was seventy years old, as deaf as a beetle and as eccentric as a monkey. I don’t believe he has kept any servant for more than three months at a stretch; we have traced out a dozen, and there must be scores more. But it is only lately that he has taken to accusing them of being in a plot to murder him. The last cook he had he made taste everything she prepared in his presence.
He had no friends in the ordinary way, and few visitors. Twice within the last year he has been visited by a woman, but whom or what she was, no one knows. She came evidently by appointment, and was let in by the old man himself, remained half an hour, and went away. Practically all his business affairs had been carried on by correspondence, and he was never known to destroy a letter. Yet we have found few documents in the house that can have any bearing on the case, except possibly this, which was found in the fire-grate of the little bedroom he habitually used.’
He extracted from the pile of statements a square of doubled glass, which he passed to Foyle. It contained several charred fragments of writing-paper, with a few detached words and letters discernible.
‘J. E. Gre … will see … ld you … ues … mother to her death … ous swine … let me hea …’
‘Errol’s writing?’ queried Foyle.
‘I haven’t got a sample yet, but I’ve little doubt of it. Now, here’s another thing. It was Greye-Stratton’s custom to lock up the house every night at dusk himself. He would go round with a revolver and see to every one of the bolts and fastenings, and no one was alowed in or out afterwards. It was one of the grievances of the servants that they were prisoners soon after four o’clock each day in winter. And though he always slept with that revolver under his pillow, we can’t