"One of these days you'll drive me nuts!" said Hemingway. "Of course I know! Dangerous Drugs! Was that bird under suspicion?"
"I am telling you: if he was concerned in that droch business, we could not discover it. There was not enough evidence against him to warrant pulling him in for interrogation. He had a sgeul that might have been true. Since then I have never heard tell of him. Indeed, I had forgotten the man until I saw the picture of him in that house."
Hemingway walked on beside him in silence for some fifty yards. "Growing, isn't it?" he said at last. "Ever add two and two together and get five for the answer? No, you wouldn't, because you've got no imagination, but it's what I can see myself doing. All the same, taking your bit of dirt with what I gathered from Lady Nest's way of carrying on, I think this'll bear looking into. When I gave you the Indian sign to clear out, I was backing a hunch. I thought there was a chance Lady Nest might talk, if there was no one but me to listen. She didn't - at least, not as much as I'd have liked; but the hunch was all right. Something Terrible Timothy said put me on to it: I believe she pushed the Haddingtons into society because Mrs. Haddington had a screw on her. Plenty of indiscretions in the Lady Nest's past, I shouldn't wonder. What you tell me makes me ask myself if that mightn't have been it. If Mrs. Haddington knew she was getting drugs from Seaton-Carew - ?"
"Och, mo thruaighe! You never asked that lady if she had had the black put on her?" Grant exclaimed.
"Well, seeing she'd been so open and friendly, I thought I'd take a chance on it," replied Hemingway coolly. "If you're thinking she'll lodge a complaint, you're wrong. She's scared white - particularly of her husband's getting to know anything about it."
The Inspector thought it over for a moment. "If that one knew that his wife was getting drugs - ach, now you have me making two and two five!"
"We won't try to add it up yet. This is a job for Cathercott and his merry men: he can go over Seaton-Carew's flat. Sometimes I think those chaps can smell the stuff."
"If I had recognised the man when I saw him dead, we could have had an officer posted to keep an eye on the flat!"
"Don't take on about it! If you're thinking that that curly-headed mistake we saw at the flat was in the racket, your psychology's rotten! Drug-peddling isn't a game for little play-boys. I reckon Seaton-Carew would have been caught years ago, if he'd used that kind of an assistant."
"Ma seadh! But where, think you, would Mrs. Haddington stand? Mind, there was nothing proved, nor found out against the man!"
"Look here, I don't mind you making two and two five, but when you start making it six you're going too far, Sandy!" expostulated Hemingway. "I don't think Hardfaced Hannah would stand anywhere. This Seaton-Carew bird was a sight too downy to take in a female in his little games. Besides, why should he? What's more, drug-peddling wouldn't get her into all the best houses, under Lady Nest's wing. You don't take up one of the most dangerous crime-rackets just to get into Society, my lad! Yes, I know you're being very cagey about Seaton-Carew, but I've known Jim Darliston any time these past fifteen years, and if he thought Seaton-Carew was worth watching, that's enough for me! We'll get back to the Yard at once, and set Cathercott on to that flat. Meanwhile, did you get Beulah Birtley Meriden's dossier for me?"
"I did, sir. It was one of Underbarrow's cases."
"You don't say! Yes, now I come to think of it, I remember that it was. Ran it hard, did he?"
"It is his way," the Inspector said.
"It is, and one of these days it'll get him into trouble. Go on!"
"The jury were out above an hour," said Grant carefully. "You would say, looking at the evidence, that there was nothing to keep them away so long, but I have had a word with Bingham - you'll mind he was attached to that Division! - and by what he tells me, the Chairman's summing-up left the matter in a good deal of doubt. Now, in Scotland -"
"If you think I'm going to waste my time arguing with you about whether Not Proven is a good thing or not, you're mistaken!" interrupted Hemingway. "Why did the Chairman sum up in the girl's favour?"
"That," said Grant, "I do not know, but from what Bingham was telling me he treated young Mr. Maxstoke rough - verra rough, he treated him, when he stood in the witness-box! I should say that it was with the firm of Maxstoke's the lassie had employment. She was fresh out of one of these Commercial Colleges, and young Mr. Maxstoke took her for his secretary. He is the nephew of Jasper Maxstoke, and at that time he was a partner in the firm, the old man having no sons, and -"
"At that time?"
"I am told," said the Inspector, "that it is a matter of three months since he left the firm. Why, I do not know."
"Sometimes I wonder why I put up with you!" said the exasperated Hemingway. "What was the girl charged with?"
"It was alleged," said Grant, "that she had forged Mr. Harold Maxstoke's signature on various cheques, and cashed them; and it was proved that she had in her possession some bank-notes, of which the numbers had been taken. You would say that it was an open-and-shut case."
"Which means, I suppose, that I shouldn't have said anything of the sort. I don't think I was in Court when this Maxstoke gave his evidence. What sort of a bloke was he?"
"I have not seen him. Sergeant Bingham tells me - but," added the Inspector, with a touch of austerity, "he is a vulgar man, that one! - that he would be the man to pinch and cuddle a lassie! A droch duine, is what he called him."
"That I'll be bound he never did! I don't know what it means, nor I don't want to, but the idea of you putting words like that into poor old Bingham's mouth! The inference being that the whole affair was a plant? Well, I have heard of such things, but not often, and I'm bound to say I didn't take to the fair Beulah. Looked as if she'd murder her own grandmother for sixpence. But one of her fellow-convicts sent her to Seaton-Carew, thinking he could use her; and it looks very much to me as though he pretty soon found out he couldn't - not in the way that was meant, anyhow. Now, that's very interesting, Sandy! If you ask me, drug-peddling wasn't his only racket, not by a long chalk! He didn't want an agent for that! It wouldn't surprise me to learn that he ran a blackmailing business, by way of a side-line. That's where the tie-up between him and Hard-faced Hannah may have come in. I don't say it did, but you want to bear it in mind, as a possibility. If she didn't put the black on Lady Nest, I'll eat my hat! She's got a lot of money, too: much more than she ought to have, in these days, when honest people can't possibly have a lot of money."
"I was not hearing from the servants anything that would bear that out," observed Grant doubtfully.
"I don't suppose you were. What they had to say, by what I can make out, they might as well have kept to themselves, for all the good it's likely to do us. They've none of them been with her above two years, and most of 'em not half as long. She's a bad mistress, but that doesn't make her a criminal."
"It does not. But they think she is not a lady, for all such grand people visit her house."
"One up to you," agreed Hemingway generously. "If they say that, they're right: they always know!"
He ate his supper that evening in the cosy little house in Bromley in which Ex-Superintendent Darliston had retired. While this meal was in progress, and Mrs. Darliston sat presiding over a teapot almost as enormous as herself, nothing was talked of but the prospects of the Ex-Superintendent's three sons, the amazing intelligence of his five grandchildren, the iniquitous behaviour of his hens, and the success he had enjoyed at the last local Show with his tomatoes; but when the Ex-Superintendent had let his belt out a hole or two, and had drawn a pipe and an aged pouch from his pocket, his spouse heaved her massive form out of her chair, piled all the crockery on a tray, and said: "Well, I'll go and wash up. If Stanley came out here to talk to you about the new greenhouse, Herbert, I didn't marry a policeman, thirty years ago, more fool me! No, I don't want any help, Stanley, thanking you all the same! Just open that door for me, and give over doing the polite!"