Richardson Scores Again (7 page)

“Not at all. The greedy little brute eats anything. I was just going to give him buttered toast when he chose to go and sit on the fire.” She caught Dick's eye roving to the tea-table. “You'll have some tea, won't you?”

During the next half-hour their acquaintance ripened. They found themselves talking as if they had known one another for years. Dick learned that she was the daughter of a country parson in Sussex, and that, having her own living to make, she had been trained as a secretary; that through the influence of one of her father's friends she had been lucky enough to get a job as private secretary to the famous James Vance.

Observing the blank look in her visitor's face she exclaimed in shocked surprise, “You've never heard of him?”

“Never.”

“But surely you've heard of Vance's Rejuvenator, the patent medicine that you see advertised everywhere.”

“No, I never take patent medicines.”

“Nor do I, but evidently quite a lot of people do: otherwise Mr. Vance wouldn't have made his millions. Surely you know those short stories in the magazines which are quite interesting until you are brought up quite suddenly by something like this—‘that's why I took to Vance's Rejuvenator.'”

“I never read magazines now that they've taken to the American trick of breaking off at the exciting point and telling you to hunt for the rest on page 937.”

“Yes, but I should have thought you would have heard of Mr. Vance's activities in other directions. He's a Manchester man, and his present craze is prison reform. As far as I can make out he would like to convert prisons into rest-houses run on the lines of Sunday schools.”

“I didn't know that there were such people nowadays. How is he setting about it?”

“That's the trouble. Providence has denied to Mr. Vance one gift—the gift of public speaking—and for the matter of that, the gift of writing grammatical English. I have to do that for him. The letters he dictates are simply awful, but luckily he never suspects that I've written all he wanted to say in half the length and in passable English.”

“You don't do his public speaking for him?”

Patricia laughed merrily. “No, I haven't got as far as that yet. He subsidizes young men to do it for him: he has a small army of them.”

“Do they believe in him?”

“They say they do; one or two of them certainly do—Mr. Ralph Lewis, for instance. You've heard of him?”

“I've seen his name in the papers, but I'm afraid I've never troubled to read his speeches. Don't the Liberal papers call him ‘the coming man'?”

“I believe they're right. I've heard him speak. He carries you right off your feet. You really ought to go and hear him.”

“Perhaps I will—some day.”

His indifference pricked her like a goad. “I suppose that when
you
go out in the evening you waste your time at some musical comedy, but I promise you that if once you hear Ralph Lewis he'll carry you away as he did me.”

“I hate political speeches and the men who make them. What is the special point about this one?”

“Well, to begin with he's very good-looking and he has a wonderful voice. I've seen his audience in tears, and the tears running down his own cheeks. One night there was a little knot of interrupters, and people were calling to the chairman to have them put out, but Mr. Lewis just raised his hand and turned his face to the part of the hall where they were. They told me afterwards that before he had finished they were crying too.”

“What does he say?”

“Oh, one can't remember what he says. I suppose it's the way he says it.”

“I'll go and hear him if you'll take me, but now you must be longing to do your packing. James and I will leave you to it. But you must give me your address in case he seems to be sickening for psittacosis.”

With her card in his pocket, Dick Meredith approached James, who allowed himself to be immured in his cage with the greatest amiability, and was carried down to the floor below.

As Dick was fumbling with his latch-key, the lift shot up to his floor-level: the gate clanged back and the figure of his pet aversion, red-haired Albert, who looked as if he had been poured into his suit of buttons, strutted out full of importance, with a letter and a visiting-card between finger and thumb. Dick set down the cage to receive them.

“Gentleman waiting downstairs to see you,” said Albert.

“Absolutely,” remarked the parrot, who seemed to have a warm feeling for the young of the human species.

While Dick was reading his letter Albert improved the occasion by whistling a lively air and ejaculating “Pretty Polly,” greeting each “Absolutely” with a scream of ribald laughter. “Going to take charge of Miss Carey's parrot?” he asked.

“Bring the gentleman up,” said Dick, without deigning to reply to the question. The name on the card conveyed nothing to Dick, but the letter was addressed in the handwriting of his sailor brother, whose ship, as he knew, had just berthed in Portsmouth for a refit.

Ronald Eccles used the lift and was at the door within three minutes. Having conceived all lawyers to be austere-looking persons who cultivated side-whiskers and bald heads, he seemed relieved to find in Dick a man of his own age to whom he could talk freely. After the usual greetings Dick opened the business.

“My brother tells me that you've had trouble with the police? A motoring offence, I suppose.”

“It's worse than that. I'm on remand for stealing a car and assaulting a constable, and I want some-body to take up my case.”

Dick looked at him quizzically and decided in his own mind that he did not look the sort of man who would spend his first night ashore by painting the town red. “I think that you had better tell me the whole story before I can advise you what to do.”

He listened without interrupting his visitor except to interject a question here and there, and when Eccles came to the discovery by the police of his stolen pocket-book in the garden of his uncle's house in London, and of the murder and the burglary, he began to show a quickened interest.

“Can you give me a description of the man who took you round the public-houses, pretending to be a detective?”

‘‘He was decently dressed and about the same height as I am. He wore a bowler hat, a bit worse for wear; he had a thin face and rather cunning little eyes.”

“Did you take him for a detective as soon as you saw him?”

“Well—no. I couldn't place the blighter at first. I thought he might be one of these reporter chaps who wanted to pump me about our cruise for the local rag, but when he told me that he was a detective I was fool enough to believe him.”

“Did the man he arrested in the public-house behave as a criminal would if a detective pounced on him suddenly?”

“He kept saying, ‘You've made a mistake, Guv'nor. Beale's not my name,' and when my man stuck to it that it was, he turned nasty and tried to wriggle himself free until I got hold of his other arm. Then he said, ‘All right, Guv'nor, I'll go quiet, but leave go of my arm: you're hurting me.'”

“How was he dressed?”

“Like a dock labourer, I should say. I remember that his clothes didn't seem to fit him and that he'd a dirty muffler round his neck instead of a collar. But I'd know him again if I saw him. I'd know them both. There's another thing about Flaxton, the detective, which I suppose you ought to know. He had a folded newspaper sticking out of his left pocket: it fell out on the seat when he was driving and he left it behind when he went off. It was a
Mercury
, and one of the paragraphs was heavily marked in blue pencil—something about a political meeting in Cardiff addressed by a political bloke named Ralph Lewis.”

“Have you still got the paper?” asked Dick, trying to disguise his interest.

“Yes, here it is.”

Dick Meredith read the paragraph, headlines and all. It described the meeting and gave a brief resume of Lewis's speech, referring to the speaker as a young Liberal of whom more was likely to be heard in the near future. “May I keep this paper?” he asked.

“Certainly. Keep it as long as you like. I don't want it back.”

“You haven't shown it to the police?”

“Good Lord, no! I've had enough of the police to last me for the rest of my natural life.”

“I think they ought to be told, but you can leave that to me, if you like. Now, on the face of your story, three men were members of the same gang—the man who pinched your pocket-book in the hotel, the sham detective, and the man he pretended to arrest. Apparently you can identify two of them. I suppose that you don't care to tell me how you spent the morning between the time you left the ship and the time you sat down to lunch?”

“Oh, that has nothing whatever to do with the case.”

“Very well. Now the part of the business that really presses is to clear you of the charges in Somersetshire on which you are remanded. For that you must employ a solicitor, and I can give you the name and address of the very man…”

Eccles' face fell. “I hoped that you would undertake the case yourself.”

“I'm a barrister, not a solicitor, and a barrister can't undertake a case except on instructions from a solicitor.”

“But if I tell the solicitor that I'd rather have you?

“Ah, then it would rest with him, but to employ counsel to represent you in what is now a preliminary hearing in a police court would double your costs.”

“Oh, blow the expense! My uncle told me to get the best man whatever it cost.”

“Then hold on while I scribble a note to the solicitor. You'll find a cigarette-box at your elbow and whisky and a siphon on that sideboard. Help yourself while I'm writing.”

The silence was broken only by the fizz of the siphon as it squirted a few thimblefulls into the glass, for Eccles was a young man who did not believe in drowning good liquor. He was feeling more at peace with the world now that he was in the hands of this sensible and competent young man who knew what to do and how to do it. Before he had had time to empty his glass his host rose from his writing-table.

“Here's the note. You'll find the name in the Law List and the Telephone Directory. In your place I should ring him up, tell him who you are, and say that you have a note from me and you would like to make an appointment for to-morrow morning. Stop—I forgot that probably you haven't a club in London. I'll ring him up for you.”

Dick went to his telephone, and Ronald Eccles listened to one half of the conversation. “Meredith speaking—yes—Dick Meredith. Are you full up for to-morrow morning?—No, nothing of the kind. I've a naval officer here—a friend of my brother—who wants to consult you. He's in trouble with the Somerset Constabulary. It seems from what he's told me to be an interesting case—one after your own heart…at what time?…ten o'clock? Good, he'll be there.”

As soon as Meredith was alone he picked up the newspaper again, reflecting that it was a remarkable coincidence that he had twice encountered the name of Ralph Lewis on the same afternoon, and that a man denounced to him as a car-thief should have been carrying a newspaper with a paragraph about Lewis marked in blue.

“Curious, isn't it, James?”

“Absolutely,” agreed the parrot.

James had taken kindly to his new quarters, and for the first eighteen hours all went well. He rattled at his cage door, demanding liberty; climbed to the roof of his prison and surveyed the world with one yellow eye; bowed his green head for caresses, and seemed to take no note of the open window or of the sunshine streaming through it. Dick wished that his temporary mistress had looked in on her way downstairs to see what an admirable caretaker he was, but he had heard her pass his door with her suit-case early that morning. And then, as he turned away from the cage, came the catastrophe. His foot caught the leg of the stool on which the cage was standing. Feeling the foundations of his solid world rocking beneath him, James might have been forgiven for what he did. With a whir of his green wings he shot across the room and out through the open window into the vast spaces of London.

Dick ran to the window in the vain hope that he would be able to take the bearings of James's flight, but he was out of sight. Surely, thought Dick, he must have made for one of the parks: row upon row of chimney-pots would have little attraction for a bird reared in a Brazilian forest. The first obvious step was to advertise; the second to invoke the help of the Metropolitan Police. He rang up the Advertisement manager of the
Daily Mail
and dictated an advertisement offering a generous reward to James's finder, dismissing the thought that the hall-porter downstairs would be beset next day by persons of both sexes with Amazon parrots for whom they had failed to find a market. Then he betook himself to the police station to take counsel with the sergeant in charge.

The station sergeant listened to his story with cleverly simulated sympathy. “You say that the bird took to flight this morning, sir.”

“Yes, not half an hour ago.”

“Then, sir, he's pretty sure to be in one of the squares, or in Chelsea Hospital Gardens, or in Hyde Park. Quite a number of parrots are lost in London, but I'm afraid that the owners don't very often get them back. I remember one that was loose in St. James's Park for an entire summer and autumn. It used to come down to feed with the ducks. I suppose the cold weather in the winter killed the poor thing, but the owner never got him back though he offered a good reward for him.”