Chapter XXXI: In Epping Forest

“I think, if you will leave him with me, he will be all right,” said Benson. He was feeling Clive’s pulse with a professional touch. “The heart action is normal, and there is nothing to be alarmed about. If you would prefer that I called a doctor----”

“Indeed I would,” she said emphatically.

He bowed, and presently she heard his voice at the telephone. Until a neighbouring doctor arrived she did not leave the unconscious Clive.

“It is nothing,” said the medical man. “He hasn’t been smoking opium?”

She shook her head.

“Has he been smoking at all?” The doctor looked down at the cigarette ends in the hearth. “Egyptian cigarettes, I see? It often happens that these cigarettes contain opium in large or small quantities, introduced, in my opinion, by the makers, to give them flavour… sometimes through the carelessness of the workpeople an additional quantity gets into the tobacco.…”

He expounded his theory at length. When Clive was showing some sign of returning consciousness she left him in the doctor’s charge and drove home, and, about an hour later, he himself telephoned to say that he had quite recovered.

“That fool of a doctor thought it was dope in the cigarettes,” he said, “but I’m perfectly satisfied that my cigarettes are as harmless as candy; and, what is more, if they’re Egyptian, they’re made in England.”

“You’re not ill, are you, Clive?” she asked anxiously.

“No, I’m not ill, but I’m infernally suspicious.”

He did not elucidate this cryptic remark, and when she called him again later in the evening, he was his old, cheerful self, and did not discuss the queer happening of the afternoon.

“I have Mr. Bullott with me now,” he said, lowering his voice. “You haven’t seen him, by any chance?”

“No,” she replied.

“I’ve been telling him about the dream you can remember. He doesn’t seem to be impressed.”

She cared very little whether Mr. Bullott was impressed or not. Her main grievance against the detective was that there had come a new lodger to the house that afternoon, and her landlady, in a flutter, had informed her that the ground floor room, so long empty because of the extortionate price demanded (the landlady dreamt dreams of entertaining a wealthy American family) had been let to a man she knew, through some obscure source of family information,--a detective.

She did not think it necessary to tell Clive this, but a great deal of her resentment at being treated as somebody who needed watching disappeared toward bedtime.

Although she was very tired, she did not fall asleep readily, turning from side to side, her mind a confusion of thoughts and recollections. Towards one o’clock she remembered, with a sense of dismay, that she had accepted an invitation to breakfast with her new-found uncle in Albemarle Street, and by sheer force of will she drove herself into sleep.

And then she felt the dreams beginning all over again. The movement, the sensation that somebody had his arm about her shoulder, and that horrid, burning pain in her right forearm. She struggled more desperately to regain consciousness than she had on the previous occasion, flung out her arms wildly, and felt her knuckles bruise against something hard. Then the creak of a door, footsteps on the stairs, and the sound of a struggle in the hall. Somebody screamed; it was the landlady. Then there was a sound like a violent explosion, which she guessed was the street door slamming, and with trembling hands she switched on the light.

Her room door was open, and as she stepped out unsteadily on to the landing the light came on in the hall, and she saw a man in violently striped pyjamas, struggling into his overcoat.

“It’s all right, Miss,” he called up, and she guessed, rather than knew, that this was the detective that Bullott had put into the house.

She went back to her room, and after ten minutes there was a gentle tap. She opened the door to find the detective.

“Did they come into your room? There were two of them,” he said. “I don’t know what made me sleep. They must have been as silent as cats.”

“Who was it?” she asked tremulously.

“I don’t know, Miss. There were two of them.” He rubbed his head, and under his hand she saw a lump like a pigeon’s egg. “They coshed me,” he said tersely. “Do you mind if I come into your room and have a look round?”

The shivering landlady had joined the party by now, and stood with Betty watching the detective conduct his search. He stooped to pick something from the floor.

“Here’s a hypodermic, half filled with something,” he said, shaking it. “No, there’s nothing else, as far as I can see. Gosh, that fellow was a big ’un--the man that hit me! I guess his heart was pure all right.”

“Why?” she asked innocently.

“Because he had the strength of ten,” said Officer Brown, and evidently this was a stock jest with him, for he shook with laughter. “There’s no other trouble? You’ll have to get some bolts on that door and a chain.”

“Do you think they came after me?” she asked.

“Yes, and I ought to be kicked for letting them get past me. Bullott told me to shoot, but I’ve got an Englishman’s constitutional objection to using a gun.”

Apparently he telephoned to Bullott, for later, as she was dropping to sleep, she heard that officer’s voice in the hall, and, looking at the phosphorescent dial of her watch, saw that it was a quarter to three. She heard no more, for she slept steadily till her landlady wakened her at half-past eight.

“Mr. Brown says you’re not to go by ’bus or train; he has a car waiting for you,” was her remarkable news, and Betty found that this was the case. Looking out of the window, she saw a handsome saloon, obviously hired, and it was in state that she drove up to Albemarle Court, and Lambert Stone, waiting for her on the tiny balcony of his study-drawing-room, chuckled to himself.

“You are sensible, after all,” he said, as he took her wrap. “I told you to spend money----”

“The car doesn’t belong to me,” she interrupted solemnly. “I wouldn’t have been guilty of such a piece of extravagance! But Mr. Bullott thinks that, having been abducted once, and a second attempt having been made, the third time may pay for all.”

He listened with a grave face while she tried to make light of her second adventure of the night.

“That’s bad,” he said. “Young lady, I’m going to take you off to America.”

“Not really?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “We’re sailing on the _Escorial_; on Saturday week--I booked the tickets provisionally last night. You needn’t stay in America,” he went on hastily. “I promise you that I will not attempt to make an heiress of you. But you ought to see our great country, and somehow I think you’ll come often when you’ve seen it once! And I’m making up a party; I’ve just been on to Lowbridge, and he has promised to be my guest. I’ll even invite your favourite reporter----”

“Please don’t,” she asked hastily, “if by ‘favourite reporter’ you mean Mr. Holbrook.”

He laughed again. “Why, that’s unkind,” he said, “considering William discovered you--William and his questionable friend. Anyway, you’ll come?”

“It will be fun. Where do we go--to New York?”

“New York will hardly suit you in July,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. “No, we’re going up to my camp in the Adirondacks. That will be an experience for you, young lady, and I shall be able to look after you there, with Laffin three thousand five hundred miles away.”

“You still believe Dr. Laffin is the villain of the piece?” she asked.

“We all believe that--Holbrook, Bullott and I. I haven’t asked Lowbridge; I guess he’s too loyal to say what he thinks!”

On the following Sunday afternoon Bill Holbrook awoke from his afternoon doze, struggled sleepily to his feet and filled his pipe before he went out and filled his bath. His unfinished notes for Monday’s newspaper lay on his table, and he read them over, his lip curling at the thought of his own inadequacy.

“Padding,” he growled, “padding and stalling!”

And he was not far from the truth. The Brother John murder had ceased to fill the important columns of the newspapers, and had been relegated to ten-line paragraphs on inside pages. Newer matters of public interest usurped the leading columns, and Bill Holbrook’s _raison d’être_ was disappearing.

When he had come out of his bath and returned to his room, he found Bullott in his shirt-sleeves, a pipe between his teeth, a scowl of misery on his face. He stood glaring out of the window at his garden.

“Cheer up, misery,” grunted Bill. “It is I who am going to be killed to-night!”

“You’re not going on the Epping Road.”

“Why not?” asked Bill. “It will be broad daylight at nine o’clock; the road will be alive with cyclists and motor-cars; nobody is going to kidnap me.”

“I can’t understand this affair. I’m well out of my depth,” he said. “I suppose I ought really to hand over my job to a real policeman.”

“Real nothing!” snarled Bill. “What’s the matter with you, Cuthbert? Do you expect things to unfold themselves as quickly as they would in a short story? You’re nutty! You’re finding out something new every day!”

“But is it worth finding out?” demanded the other, in a tone of complete weariness. “I seem to spend my time discovering the roots of other trees! Do you remember some time ago telling me about an immense sea captain you’d met--a big man with a voice like a foghorn?”

Bill nodded.

“I saw him to-day,” Bullott went on, “and trailed him--to where do you think? To a respectable lodging in Bloomsbury, where he goes to bed at ten every night and gets up at six every morning, and doesn’t do anything more criminal than smoke cigarettes. So they tell me--yet if Harvey Hale wasn’t one of the people who tried to lift Miss Carew last night I’m a lunatic. I told Marsh this, and the poor mysterious hound got so excited, you might have thought I’d given him information that the murderer of Brother John was under lock and key!”

“Maybe his excitement was justified,” said Bill. “When are you making your raid?”

“To-morrow night--unless I get fired from this job before,” said Bullott.

“You have had no word from Tinker Lane?”

Bullott’s grimace was the answer.

“He has got cold feet,” he said; “possibly one of the Twenty-Third Degree folk tipped him off that he was running risks--you can easily scare that kind of fellow. Or, what is more likely, if there is any sort of illegality in the degree they have paid him to skip.”

Bill shook his head.

“Did they pay Brother John to skip?” he asked, and Bullott did not reply.

When Bill Holbrook reached the third milestone on the Epping Road, he found that his prediction was more than fulfilled. As far as he could see, the long forest road was covered with cyclists and motor-cars, and the chance of a repetition of the attempt which had been made upon him was even more remote than he had imagined.

The third milestone was a little difficult to discover; it stood back from the roadway and was half-covered with undergrowth, but what had an especial interest for him was the white envelope which must have been placed there very recently, for the wood was filled with strolling couples and it was hardly likely that the letter would have escaped observation had it been in its place any considerable time.

Never doubting that it was for him, he pulled it from the thorny briars which held it in its place, and, as he had expected, he found his name written on the cover.

“Follow the red confetti,”

was all that it said.

He looked round; there was no sign of confetti, red or otherwise. And then, peering into the cool depths of a wood, he thought he saw something red on the ground, and went nearer. Yes, that was it, a sprinkle of tiny red paper discs beneath a tree. He went a little distance farther on, and now the trail was clear.

It led him along a well-worn path, and was so carefully laid that Bill guessed that the average pleasure-seeker would not notice its presence. After a while it left the path, branching off to the right, and threading a way between the trees.

It was clear to him that the part of the wood through which he was now moving was one which was very seldom visited by picnic parties. Every few steps he took startled some wild creature in the underbrush. He had a glimpse of a hare flying to his burrow; he saw a lithe black shape darting through the grasses in pursuit of his quarry; and once he disturbed a vixen with her prick-eared litter. And the red confetti led on and on, until it crossed a small stream on the farther banks of which his unknown guide had left the paper more thickly strewn that it might not escape his attention.

He had to climb the bank before he came to a plantation of young trees, so thick that it was with some difficulty that he made his way into the depths. He stood and listened; no sound broke the stillness of the quiet forest; the dusk was coming, the light in the sky had deepened to a richer and darker blue; the dying sun’s rays shot slantwise, and when he reached an open space his shadow ran at incredible length along the grass before him.

The sun gave him his direction; he was travelling south-east, and had been travelling south-east all the time, but suddenly the trail shot off at right angles, and he followed cautiously, his hand upon the round, hard object in his pocket, every sense alert.

Ten minutes’ walking brought him within view of a small lodge hut. It lay in a clearance at the foot of the slope down which he was moving when he first sighted the building. Again he stopped, looked and listened, but saw and heard nothing. Down the gentle hill the trail led to the rough door of the hut, and there stopped.

His heart was beating a little faster as he walked quickly to the door, gripped the handle and pulled it wide open. The interior was in darkness; he heard neither the breathing of men nor movement, and looked round suspiciously at the darkening forest. He looked again into the hut; his eyes were now accustomed to the gloom, and he saw something moving, something that swayed left and right rhythmically. He struck a match, and stepped back with a gasp of horror.

Hanging from a beam in the roof was the body of a man, and, as he looked, the distorted face turned towards him. It was the face of the Tinker!

Alone in that valley of death for a second, his courage deserted him, and he felt his hands trembling.

“No weakness, Danton,” he quoted mockingly at himself, and, running across the floor of the vale, mounted the slope, his eyes still searching for the confetti trail, and went at a jogtrot back the way he had come.

He had reached the plantation when he felt, rather than saw, the ambush into which he was falling. Hampered as he was by the closely growing trees, his progress was slow.

_Plop!_

He had heard that sound before, but this time the bullet missed, and snicked the bark of a growing beech, and went, whining and humming, into the wood.

The second shot went even wider, and then he came to a place where the trees were less thickly planted, where he had had elbow room and a clear throw. He stopped and took a Mills bomb from his pocket, pulled out the pin, and as he saw the flash of a third shot, flung it with all his might in the direction of the hidden assassin. In another second he was flying like a man demented. He judged his time perfectly, and flung himself on the ground only the fraction of a moment before the bomb exploded. From somewhere behind he heard a shriek, and, rising to his feet, ran swiftly.

He had missed the trail, but he had a rough idea of direction. Once he stopped to take breath, listening intently, but there was no sign of pursuit. Ten minutes later he heard voices and footsteps ahead of him, saw a figure come into view, and was challenged by a familiar voice.

“It’s all right, Bullott--Holbrook speaking.”

“What was that explosion?” asked Bullott.

Bill saw that there were three men with him. It was not necessary to ask what had brought him here, but the detective volunteered the information.

“I followed you, of course,” he said, “but I lost you in the wood, and I didn’t realise that they’d laid a trail for you, until one of my men showed me the confetti. What was the explosion?” he asked again.

Bill explained briefly, and together they went back the way he had come.

That somebody had been wounded was clear from the bloodstains. Some of the dried undergrowth was burning, and this they put out with little difficulty. But of the assailant there was no sign.

Sending one of his men back for an ambulance, the inspector accompanied Bill to the hut in the vale. To Bill’s surprise the door of the hut was locked, and it was an hour before they succeeded, with the help of a ranger, in getting the door open. Bullott flashed his lamp inside: it fell upon a loose, hanging rope, newly severed. The body of Tinker Lane had disappeared!