Murder in the Museum, A British Library Crime Classic (17 page)

“Any luck, Cunningham?” He knew what the answer would be before it came up to him in Cunningham's stentorian voice from the floor below.

“No, sir, not a trace of a soul anywhere. I think we're on the wrong track.”

“I think so too,” Shelley answered. “There's no one on the first floor. Still, I must have a look at the floor above, just to make sure.”

“Right-ho, sir,” answered Cunningham cheerfully. “I'll just hang on down here.”

“I don't expect that I shall keep you very long,” said Shelley.

And he was right. The top floor was more or less a repetition of the previous one, except that there were two rooms which had been lived in—the bedroom from which old Mr. Ramsbottom had first looked down at them, and another room, which was apparently drawing-room, dining-room, and kitchen all rolled into one.

But any trace of an inhabitant apart from Mr. Ramsbottom himself Shelley could not find anywhere in the house. It was all very disheartening, but it was not the first time that Shelley had been led astray by a false clue, and he walked down the stairs in a fairly good temper. It was, after all, quite possible that the criminal was at the other place which Cartwright had mentioned—Blackthorn Farm was it?—and that was quite clearly indicated as their next port of call.

“No go, Mr. Ramsbottom,” Shelley told the old man as he reached the ground floor. “Must have been a false alarm after all, I think. We shall have to look for our criminal else-where.”

For the last time the old man emitted his uncanny cackle. “I never thought you'd find him here, my lad,” he said.

“Why not?” asked Shelley, as he made his way to the front door.

“Because everybody in Penistone knows that old Jim Ramsbottom's got no brass,” the old man explained. “And what yon criminals are after is brass, every time.”

“That's true in most cases, Mr. Ramsbottom,” Shelley admitted, “but not in this case.”

“No?”

“No. You see, this man was running away from the police. And a man who's running away from the police will go anywhere where he thinks he's likely to be safe.”

“Ay. That's so,” the old man agreed.

“Well, folks,” said Shelley, as they settled themselves once more in the police car. “I guess we now try our luck at Blackthorn Farm.”

“Ay,” returned Cartwright.

“Where is it?” asked Shelley.

“Matter of two or three miles outside the town,” Cartwright explained.

“Matter of five or six minutes, then,” said Shelley with a smile; and settled down to enjoy the scenery.

Chapter XXI

The Hunt Is Up

Violet awoke from a deep sleep which had been disturbed by the most absurd and ridiculous dreams. Her face expressed the most complete bewilderment, as one who says: “What am I doing here, and where is it anyway?” Then, suddenly, memory came back; there flowed into her mind a thought of her dreadful plight, and she had to fight hard to keep back the tears that sprang unbidden to her eyes.

Above her loomed the bearded figure of her captor. He grasped her shoulder roughly in a large hand, and had obviously shaken her into waking.

“You must get up,” he muttered viciously.

“Why?” Violet was still half asleep, and she rubbed her eyes like a child just getting out of bed on a cold morning.

“It is necessary,” he said, speaking slowly and deliberately, almost as if explaining something very difficult and complicated to the child that she appeared to be, “that we should leave this house at once.”

“But I don't want to leave,” Violet objected. “I am very comfortable where I am, thank you.”

“You will do as I tell you,” he said roughly. “It is enough that I tell you that we leave this house at once. I order you, and you obey. It is only on that agreement that we can proceed at all. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

“I suppose so,” Violet agreed. “In any case, as I seem to be quite helpless in your hands, I suppose I must do as you tell me.”

He positively purred his satisfaction at this sudden change of front.

“Ah,” he said, “that is better. That is much better, thank you, Miss Arnell. If you will just adopt a sensible attitude like that—ah, then we shall get somewhere. I might tell you that if you try to dispute my right to tell you what to do…” And he paused significantly.

“What will you do?” Violet's question sounded quite innocent; but actually she was playing for time, realising that this decision on his part must be an indication that the pursuit was near at hand.

“What will I do?” He laughed harshly in tones that grated unpleasantly on her ear. “I will proceed, my dear Miss Arnell, to give you a little injection with a delightful little drug which I have in my possession. That drug will ensure that you will take no interest in the proceedings for—oh, for a considerable time.” Again that harsh laugh rang out; and Violet found herself, in spite of her steely determination not to flinch, to show no fear of this evil man, shuddering at the dreadful menace of his tones. He positively exuded evil, as if he were the personification of evil himself.

“So you see,” he was going on, “it will be as well for you to do as I tell you. Such behaviour will be more sensible and will mean less trouble for all concerned, including yourself—I said, including your dear self, my dear young lady.”

Violet thought that he was more detestable when he tried to be pleasant than when he was in his determinedly commanding moods; but she made no objections, and suffered herself to be led from the room down the stairs and out of the front door of the house. Here she found the car waiting, and she was bundled into it. Rapidly the man drove off. At the end of what was apparently a private road he alighted, opened a farm gate which straddled the entrance to the main road, and then returned to the car. He drove off again.

As they went along the road Violet found herself glancing around her, looking to try to get her bearings, so to speak, in this strange country where she had been a prisoner for some time. She could not imagine how long she had been here, for she might have slept for an hour or a day; nor did she know how long she had been unconscious in the house prior to her first awakening.

She saw a stretch of broad moorland, dotted here and there with grey outcrops of granite, and with dirty-looking sheep grazing here and there on the rugged slopes of cruel hills. On one occasion her captor swerved to avoid one of these sheep, muttered a curse, and swerved back on to the road once more, having gone within inches of a drop which must have been several hundred feet. Violet drew a deep breath of relief when she saw the ribbon of road winding its brown length ahead of them again. Her captor merely chuckled as he glanced at her white face.

“Narrow shave, eh?” he said. “Trust me. I'm a good driver, I am. Never had a smash yet, nor a serious breakdown that I couldn't remedy. You're in safe hands when you're in a car with me, my dear.”

Almost as if to disprove his words, the car slowed down, the engine uttering uncouth sounds, and then stopped abruptly in the middle of the road.

“Hell!” muttered the man, pressing the self-starter energetically. It emitted loud buzzes, but the car still remained quite stationary.

“Looks as if this is the occasion where your ability falls down flat, Mr. Man,” announced Violet with a cheeky grin, her confidence returning.

“Not a bit of it,” he replied. “I'll soon put this right.” He rose from his seat, and, carefully locking the doors of the car on the outside and pocketing the keys, made his way to the front, where he threw open the bonnet and gazed at the engine for a few minutes.

He tinkered with the engine ineffectively for some time, then came round to the side again, unlocking the door and motioning her to get out and join him.

“What's the meaning of all this?” she asked.

“Never you mind,” he grunted, and grasped her wrist tightly, dragging her out of the car by main force and landing her, breathless, in the road.

“Look here,” she protested. “What on earth does all this mean, sir? You drag me all over the country, and then you land me on a God-forsaken moor in the middle of Yorkshire—if what you tell me is true—and now apparently you expect me to tramp all over the north of England with you. I tell you, whatever power you have, this is just not good enough.”

“Don't be a fool, my dear,” he said—a little more pleasantly, it is true. “We're only walking as far as the nearest garage.”

“How far is that?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Well, I'm not going to walk ten miles with you.”

“You're going to walk a hundred miles if I tell you to,” he answered roughly. “That car won't run without petrol, and to get some petrol we must get to a garage.”

Violet laughed. “So the all-efficient kidnapper forgot to fill up his petrol-tank!” she chaffed him, almost forgetting, in her amusement at this puerile slip, the peril in which she stood at that moment.

“Yes,” he said. “And, since I can't leave you in the car until I come back, I have to take you to the nearest garage with me. And if you don't do as I tell you—well, I warn you that I have other methods. I can force you to do exactly what I wish. So don't try to disobey me, or it will be the worse for you. Understand?” He pulled his hand out of his overcoat pocket, to reveal the fact that it held an enormous, villainous-looking revolver, and Violet, this time, had no difficulty in reminding herself that this man was probably a murderer.

They tramped along the road, the man's hand tightly gripped on her arm, and Violet looked at the cruel hill above her, and the dangerous precipice below, wondering if an attempt to escape would be possible. Then she decided that it would not. This man, who was no doubt an excellent shot with a revolver, would be able to pick her off without difficulty long before she got out of revolver-shot. So the only thing to do was to carry on, and hope that some opportunity to escape might offer itself later. So she obediently altered her pace to fit her captor's pace as he strode hurriedly along the road.

As the car sped out of Penistone Shelley kept his eyes anxiously bent on the road ahead.

“How far did you say?” he asked.

“Two or three miles,” answered Cartwright.

“Shan't be long, then,” said Shelley in composed tones, but Cunningham knew well enough that his chief was feeling the most intense excitement. That look of intense concentration, the steel-grey eyes fixedly following the road that wound its way up the hill ahead of them, was unmistakable.

They followed a road that was now rapidly running into open moorland. Shelley noticed, as Violet had noticed before him, the curious blend of brown in the hills, the granite that projected at their tops, the sheep of an indeterminate dirty colour that were dotted here and there on the perilous slopes of the hills, clinging precariously at points where it would have seemed totally impossible for any animal to secure satisfactory foothold.

“Wait!” exclaimed Cartwright as they passed a gate off the main road. “Yon's the place.”

The driver obediently stopped the car, and swivelled round in his seat.

“Where? Through that gate?” he asked.

“Ay,” answered Cartwright. “Couple of hundred yards up there. 'Tis a big farmhouse, you know.”

While this explanation was being made the deft driver had reversed the car and reached the gate.

“Hullo,” remarked Cartwright. “That's queer.”

“What's queer?” Shelley was, as always, eager to discover any strange things that were happening, for he knew that any which might crop up in any case would probably prove to be valuable clues. Such, at any rate, had been his experience in the past; and such, he was firmly convinced, was to be his destiny in the future.

Cartwright frowned in a puzzled manner. “Never before,” he announced, “have I seen the gate open.”

“How did they get out, then?” asked Cunningham.

“I don't exactly mean that,” Cartwright said with a somewhat sheepish grin. “I mean that never before have I seen the gate left open. When anybody came in or out they always shut the gate behind them.”

“H'm.” Shelley looked thoughtful. “Probably the birds have flown, then. Wonder how they got wind of it?”

Cunningham had a suggestion to offer. “You remember,” he said, “how, when we left Penistone, we came to the top of a high hill?”

Shelley nodded.

“Well,” his assistant went on, “if a man at the top of this house”—he pointed to the farmhouse which they were now rapidly approaching—“had a telescope and watched the road, as he might if he suspected that he was being followed, he would see us there, a mile or more away, and would be able to get out of the place long before we got near enough to see
him
.”

“Yes,” Shelley agreed. “And we should be in the valley below, so that we should know nothing whatever about it. I fear very much that something like that has happened, and that we have a bit more chasing to do before the affair is finished, and before the present identity of our friend Mr. Wallace is revealed to us.”

“We shall soon see,” remarked Cunningham.

“Yes,” said Shelley.

And they did see. They had now arrived at the house, which looked deserted enough in all conscience. The front door was wide open, as if left carelessly by fleeing inhabitants. Yet, when they cautiously proceeded into the house itself it showed every sign of recent occupation. On the table in the little breakfast-room off the roomy kitchen a meal was laid on the table. An egg had been eaten, its shell in an egg-cup remaining on the table. Shelley went over to the table and grasped the metal coffee-pot which rested on a cork mat on the polished oak table.

“We're mighty close on their trail, Cunningham,” he said with a satisfied grin.

“How do you know?” asked Cunningham.

“Feel this coffee-pot.”

Cunningham touched it gingerly, and then whistled. “Hot!” he exclaimed.

“Yes; we've missed them by about ten minutes at the most,” said Shelley.

They hurried upstairs and looked around the various rooms of the house. Few showed any signs of recent habitation, but there was, as Cunningham had suggested, a telescope in one of the bedrooms. It was facing a window, and Shelley applied his eye to its lens. Then he too whistled, a shrill, almost uncanny note.

“Cunningham,” he said, “I think I shall have to suggest that you get some promotion.”

“Why? Was I right?”

“You were. Dead right. This telescope is turned to face that spot on the hill that you spoke about. It is focussed exactly for the spot. Quick! We must look around the other rooms, and then be off after them.”

In a bedroom, however, they found something that detained them for a moment. Henry Fairhurst, who had been strangely quiet for some time, pounced on a handbag which was lying on the floor.

“That's Miss Arnell's!” he shouted with some excitement.

Shelley picked it up, opened it, and glanced at its muddled contents.

“Quite right, Mr. Fairhurst,” he admitted. “Well, that clinches the whole affair. Mr. Wallace has Miss Arnell here in Yorkshire. And they can't be very far away, judging by the heat of the coffee in the pot on the breakfast-table downstairs.”

“How are you going to catch them?” asked Henry.

“Watch me and see,” answered Shelley. He ran down the stairs, the others following him helter-skelter.

Out of the front door Shelley ran; Cunningham, who was a burly man, puffed in his wake, and the others straggled along in the rear.

Shelley paused in front of the house, anxiously scanning the gravel, which was loosely thrown on the little private road which led from the main road up to the house itself, and up which they had driven a mere few minutes earlier.

“Ah!” he exclaimed at length. “Here we are. See, Cunningham?”

Henry Fairhurst peered at the two detectives, as they looked at the ground.

“Yes,” said Cunningham. “An old Dunlop with a patch. That should be easy enough to follow.”

“Good,” answered Shelley. “In the car, quickly, gentlemen, if you don't mind. We're close to them now, and we shall soon have them.”

Soon they were in the car, and Shelley gave his instructions to the driver. “Drive down to the main road as fast as you can,” he said, “and then stop at the gate.”

The driver complied readily enough, and soon they were at the gate once more. Shelley and Cunningham descended from the car, and examined the road very carefully. At first they did not seem to agree. There was a good deal of head-shaking and discussion. Soon, however, they reached a decision.