Mr. Brewster looked at his watch and found the time to be half past three. He thought he would take a walk. Fresh air and exercise would assist his mental processes. A strong inclination to walk in the direction of Cole Lester presented itself. He was engaged in a prudent resistance, when the telephone bell rang and a voice demanded Mr. Lushington. He recognized the voice as that of Mr. Brook and made a note of the fact that the tone suggested urgency.
When staying at Railing Place, Mr. Lushington was accommodated with a sitting-room which opened out of his bedroom. Both rooms were provided with telephone extensions. Mr. Brewster informed his chief that he was wanted on the line and withdrew. But at the same moment that Mr. Lushington was saying “Hullo!” his secretary was opening the bedroom door and very carefully closing it again. It was essential that he should discover what had brought that urgent tone into Mr. Brook’s voice. He crossed silently to the bedside instrument, lifted the receiver, and listened in. He had lost nothing except the preliminary “Hullo!” for he could hear the Home Secretary saying, “What is it, Brook?” And then Mr. Brook, still with that subdued urgency, “Well, sir, I thought I had better tell you. There’s something come to light among those papers we took out of the safe.”
“Yes, Brook?” Montagu Lushington’s tone was quiet.
“Well, sir, I’m afraid it’s conclusive.”
“Will you tell me what has been found?”
“A scrap of paper with a couple of lines of cipher on it-just a bit that had been torn off and had got caught up in a pile of bills. That’s why it wasn’t noticed before.” Mr. Brook’s voice dropped a shade. “I’ve just had it decoded. It runs: ‘To have one of Lushington’s secretaries in our pay is worth all he asks-and more.’ I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid it is quite conclusive. The Chief Constable is having Mr. Somers arrested at once.”
“I see,” said Montagu Lushington in a tired voice. What he saw was family disgrace, public scandal, and the end of his own career.
Mr. Brewster slipped quietly out of the bedroom, and downstairs and out of the house. Whatever prudence counselled, he was going to walk over to Cole Lester. It would be worth some risk to see Algy Somers arrested.
He took a short cut across the fields which would reduce the distance from five miles to three. The path presently skirted a deserted quarry and came by way of a rough cart track out upon the high road again.
XXXVI
Algy Somers looked up from the letter he was trying to write and said, “Come in.” The knock which he thought he had heard was so weak and hesitating that it might have been any chance sound. He was therefore faintly surprised when the door opened and displayed William in a condition of acute embarrassment.
“Yes?” said Algy. “What is it?”
William stood and twisted the handle. It went sharply through Algy’s mind that the police had come to arrest him, and that William knew it. He managed a smile, and said,
“Out with it, William. What is it?”
William came a hesitating step into the room, let go of the handle, fumbled for it again, and reverting to a less polished standard than that set up by the late Mr. Sturrock, reached with a nervous foot and kicked the door to behind him.
“If you please, sir-” he said, and stuck.
“Well, William?” said Algy.
William dragged a handkerchief from his cuff and wiped a clammy brow.
“If I might have a word with you, sir-”
Relief rushed in on Algy. So it wasn’t his arrest-not yet. He said cheerfully.
“As many as you like. What’s up, man? Why are you dithering?”
“I don’t rightly know how to begin, sir.” But the handkerchief went back into his cuff and his brow remained fairly dry.
“Begin at the beginning. What’s it all about anyway?”
William turned bright plum colour.
“I’ve got a young lady, sir-”
Algy very nearly said, “So have I,” but it seemed well to keep William to the point if possible, so he substituted an encouraging “That sounds all right.”
“She works at the Hand and Flower at Railing,” said William.
Algy sat up and began to take notice.
“The deuce she does! Well, that’s very interesting. What about it?”
William’s forehead began to glisten again.
“It don’t seem as if I ought to hold my tongue.”
“Then I shouldn’t.”
“Only my young lady she don’t want to be drawn into it, if you take my meaning, sir.
Algy laughed a little grimly.
“I don’t suppose any of us wanted to be drawn into it.”
“No, sir. All very well on the pictures murders are, but close at hand there’s something ’orrid about them to my way of thinking.”
“Two minds with but a single thought,” said Algy. “Now what about coming to the point-getting the stuff off the chest?”
William produced the handkerchief again.
“Sunday nights when I have my evening out I go over to Railing, but Sunday nights when I don’t my young lady she comes over here, and I can slip out and we do a bit of walk up and down in the lane, and last night-”
“You slipped out?”
“Yes, sir. And Ellen she says to me-her name is Ellen Hawkins and she’s got a married sister that keeps a toy-shop in Railing-very nice people they are, and Ellen she’s at the Hand and Flower-”
“What did she say?”
“Well, she hadn’t heard about Mr. Sturrock being shot. She’d had the afternoon off from four o’clock, so she wasn’t there when the police come, and she didn’t know nothing about it, and she says, ‘Oh, William,’ she says, ‘how ’orrid! I wouldn’t ha’ come over if I’d ha’ known.’ And ‘It don’t seem hardly right, and you’ll have to take me home, for I won’t go by myself and that’s flat,’ she says, so I done it.”
“Is that all?” said Algy after a prolonged pause.
William shook his head.
“Oh, no, sir. We got talking while we were going along like, and Ellen she told me something, and I told her she didn’t ought to keep it to herself.”
Algy regarded William with admiration.
“Good man! What did she tell you?”
“We had quite a difference of opinion about it, sir, and I don’t say there wasn’t something in what she said.”
“Well, what did she say?”
“Well, she put it this way, sir-if the police come and asked her, she’s be bound to tell them, and if they didn’t ask her, then it wasn’t none of her business. ‘And look what come to poor Mr. Sturrock,’ she says. ‘You won’t make me nor anyone else believe that he didn’t know something,’ she says, ‘and that’s why he was done in. And I wish I’d held my tongue and not told you anything,’ she says.”