Big Foot E-Book

Edgar Wallace

• Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 323

Beschreibung

Big Foot by Edgar Wallace is a pulse-pounding thriller that plunges readers into the dark heart of the London underworld. When a series of brutal murders baffles Scotland Yard, all clues point to a legendary criminal known only as "Big Foot." Detective Sergeant Elk, a sharp and relentless investigator, takes on the dangerous task of tracking down this elusive figure. As the body count rises, Elk uncovers a web of deceit, betrayal, and hidden motives that lead him deeper into the shadows. Will he be able to stop the killer before it's too late, or will he become the next victim of the monstrous Big Foot? Dive into this gripping tale of suspense and unravel the mystery behind the most feared name in London.

Leseprobe

Big Foot

Author: Edgar Wallace

Edited by: Seif Moawad

Copyright © 2024 by Al-Mashreq eBookstore

First published by John Long Ltd., London, 1927

No part of this publication may be reproduced whole or in part in any form without the prior written permission of the author

All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Big Foot

I. — SOOPER

II. — THE UNEXPECTED HANNAH

III. — A LAWYER LOSES A CASE

IV. — DINNER AT BARLEY STACK

V. — THE SNIPER

VI. — THE STORY OF THE $100 BILLS

VII. — A JOURNEY SOUTHWARD

VIII. — THE KITCHEN

IX. — THE VISITOR

X. — ELFA’S STORY

XI. — THE SEALED ENVELOPE

XII. — LATTIMER’S UNCLE

XIII. — SOOPER INQUIRES

XIV. — THEORIES AND DEDUCTIONS

XV. — ELFA LEIGH’S HOME

XVI. — A LITTLE DINNER

XVII. — SOOPER’S SENSATION

XVIII. — THE PASTRY

XIX. — SMOKE FROM HILLBROW

XX. — THE WARNING

XXI. — TEA IN THE PARK

XXII. — CHLOROFORM

XXIII. — THE WARRANT

XXIV. — AMBUSHED

XXV. — THE NOOSE

XXVI. — MR. WELLS

XXVII. — THE FAREWELL FEAST

Landmarks

The Council of Justice

Cover

I. — SOOPER

IT was a coincidence that Sooper made a call at Barley Stack this bright spring morning, for at that moment he knew nothing of the attempt to burgle Mr. Stephen Elson’s house, was ignorant that such a person as Sullivan the tramp existed, or that his crazy companion in crime was wandering loose around the fair countryside, singing foolish little songs about love—and those in a foreign and unintelligible language.

But Barley Stack had for Sooper the fascination which the flame has for the moth, or, a better illustration, the battle for the veteran war-horse. Though he must have known that at this hour Mr. Cardew had long since departed to the City, for Gordon Cardew, though retired from his profession, had the nine o’clock habit ineradicably implanted in his system.

Nevertheless Sooper called. Failing a more poignant thrill of crossing swords with this man Cardew, there was generally a certain amount of satisfaction to be had from an encounter with Hannah Shaw. Mr. Cardew’s attitude of mind towards him was one of resentment, for Sooper had hurt him. Hannah, on the other hand, was incapable of feeling or expressing the fine nuances of personal regard, and hated this ancient superintendent of police with a loathing which she never attempted to conceal.

Hannah stood squarely in the porch of Barley Stack, and the malignant light in her brown eyes might have spoken for her. She was a woman below middle height and rather plump, and her black alpaca dress did not enhance her comeliness.

Comely she was, in a way. Her heavy face was unlined, the thick black fringe over her forehead untinged with grey, though she was well past forty. If her features were big they were regular, and in spite of her proportions it would have been unfair to describe her as dumpy.

“Nice weather we’re havin’,” murmured Sooper. He leant languidly against his dilapidated motor-bicycle, his eyes half closed as though, in the warmth of the morning and the beauty of the surroundings, he was predisposed to take his siesta. “And the garden’s looking lovely too. Never seen so many daffydils as you’ve got in the park, and carnations too! Got a good gardener, I’ll bet. Mr. Cardew in?”

“No, he isn’t!”

“Out followin’ the trail of the Boscombe Bank-hold-up, I’ll bet!” said Sooper, shaking his head in simulated admiration. “Soon as I saw that hold-up in the papers, I said to my sergeant, ‘It wants a man like Mister Cardew to trail that gang—ord’nary police couldn’t do it. They’d never find a clue—they’d be baffled from the start.’”

“Mr. Cardew has gone to his office, as you very well know, Minter,” she snapped, her eyes blazing. “He has something better to do than waste his time on police work. We pay rates and taxes for the police, and a precious lot of use they are! An incompetent, ignorant lot of men who haven’t even an education!”

“Can’t have everything,” said Sooper sadly. “Stands to reason, Mrs. Shaw—”

“Miss Shaw!” Hannah almost shouted the correction.

“Always think of you that way,” said Sooper apologetically. “I was only sayin’ to my sergeant the other day, ‘Why that young lady doesn’t get married beats me: she’s young—’”

“I’ve no time to waste on you, Minter—”

“Mister Minter,” suggested Sooper gently.

“If you’ve any message for Mr. Cardew I’ll take it—otherwise, I’ve a lot of work to do and I can’t waste my time with you.”

“Any burglaries?” asked Sooper as she half-turned to go.

“No, there aren’t any burglaries,” she answered shortly. “And if there were, we shouldn’t send for you.”

“I’ll bet you wouldn’t,” said Sooper fervently. “I’ll bet Mr. Cardew would just take the size of the burglar’s footprint an’ look him up in his book on anthro—whatever the word is, an’ the poor nut would be pinched before night.”

Miss Hannah Shaw turned round on him in a fury.

“If you think you’re being clever, let me tell you that there are people in London who can make you look small, Minter. If Mr. Cardew went to the Secretary of State and told him half of the things you do and say, he’d have your coat off your back before the end of the week!”

Sooper examined his sleeve critically.

“What’s the matter with it?” he asked, as she slammed the door viciously in his face.

Sooper did not smile, nor was he annoyed. Instead he filled his foul pipe with great deliberation, gazed admiringly at the glorious colouring of the spring flowers that filled every bed in sight, and, stopping only long enough to fix a stolen pimpernel in the lapel of his worn jacket, went noisily down the drive to the main road.

Half an hour later: “When a man’s got to my age ‘n’ exalted position,” said Sooper, blinking rapidly at the sober-faced young officer who sat on the other side of the table, “he’s entitled to be temp’ramental. I’m temp’ramental today. There’s a touch of spring in the air, an’ I’ll bet I didn’t hear a cuckoo last Sunday? And when there’s cuckoos around and the bluebells are growing in the woods, I’m temp’ramental. Besides, I’ve just had a talk with the Belle of Barley Stack, and my head’s full of sentimental ideas. You ask me to give a good look at this here tramp an’ I reply that I’d sooner go chasing primroses on the river’s brink.”

Sooper was tall and angular and very untidy. His suit had been an old one in pre-war days, and now, cleaned and turned, was a mockery of clothes. His lank, brown face and awkward grey eyebrows gave him a distinction which his garb did much to dissipate. Hannah Shaw’s contempt for his wardrobe was one of his dearest joys.

There were many superintendents of police, but when you spoke in Metropolitan Police circles of Sooper, you meant Superintendent Patrick J. Minter and nobody else.

“Go you and interview the vagrant, my good sergeant.” He waved his big hand with a lordly gesture. “The serious business of criminal detection belongs to my past—it was too simple! Got me going senile—that’s why I took this job, where I can live in the country an’ keep chickens an’ rabbits an’ study nature in all its majesty an’ splendour.”

“I” division of the Metropolitan Police covers that part of rural London which comes up against the Sussex border. It is notoriously a sleepy division, a backwater into which men drift gratefully from the turbulent waters of Limehouse and Greenwich and Notting Dale. “I” division dealt mainly with such surprising crimes as vagrancy, poaching and rickfiring.

The men of “I” division, to the envy of their city fellows, impound straying horses and cattle and take active steps to deal with foot-and-mouth disease. They are known as ‘the yokels’, ‘the hayseeders’ and ‘the lost legion’. But the men cultivate gardens (many raising their own garden truck), and can afford to smile tolerantly when jealous comrades make sneering references to their bucolic pursuits.

Sooper was transferred from Scotland Yard to this pleasant haven, not as a mark of his superiors’ appreciation of his excellent services—he was one of the Big Five that smashed the Russian gang in Whitechapel—but (the truth had best be told) because he was a thorn in the side of certain police officials. Sooper was a source of constant irritation to headquarters. He respected nobody, from the Chief Commissioner downwards; he was polite to nobody; he agreed with nobody. He wrangled, he argued, and occasionally he defied. Most irritating of his qualities was the fact that he was generally right. And when he was proved right and his chiefs were wrong, he mentioned the fact some twenty or thirty times in the course of a working day: “What’s more,” he went on, “talking to this low tramp’s goin’ to interrupt my studies. I’m takin’ an intensive course of criminology. Never heard of Lombroso, I’ll bet? Ah! Then you don’t know anything about criminals’ brains! Ord’nary brains weigh…I’ve forgotten what, but criminals’ brains are lighter. Go bring me this man’s brain and I’ll tell you whether he was trying to break into Barley Stack. And prehensile feet: d’ye know that five per cent of crim’nals can pick up things with their toes? An’ d’you know that oxycephalic heads are all the fashion in crim’nal circles? You’ve missed sump’n’. Go take a tape measure and get that hobo’s statistics and watch out for his asymmetrical face! It was always simple, catchin’ ‘em. It’s childish easy now!”

Sergeant Lattimer was too wise a man to interrupt his superior until his garrulity showed signs of running dry. This seemed a favourite moment to interject a remark.

“But, Super, this isn’t an ordinary burglary. According to Sullivan—that is the tramp’s name—”

“Tramps haven’t got any names,” said Sooper wearily. “You started wrong. They’re ‘Mike’ and ‘Weary’ and ‘Box Car Billy’, but they haven’t any family names.”

“According to Sullivan,—the other tramp who was with him would not allow him to get into Mr. Elson’s house and take money. He wanted something else—”

“Deeds of the family estate, maybe,” interrupted Sooper thoughtfully. “Or the birth certificat’ of the rightful heir? Or maybe Mr. Elson, bein’ a low-down American, stole the sacred ruby from the right eye of the great god Hokum, an’ s’nister Injuns have followed him waitin’ their opportunity? This is a case for Cardew—maybe you can tackle it. Go to it, Sergeant. You’ll get your pitcher in the papers: and you’re a good-looker too. P’raps you’ll marry the girl that’s supposed to be a housemaid but turns out to be the daughter of the duke, having been pinched by gipsies in her youth: Go on!”

II. — THE UNEXPECTED HANNAH

THE young officer listened with admirable patience.

“I took Sullivan because he was sleeping in the neighbourhood last night—and he has now practically admitted that he ‘felt’ the house for an entry.”

“Go get his ear marks,” murmured Sooper, taking up his pen. “Ever notice how crim’nals an’ paranoiacs have windscreen ears? It’s in the book. And the book can’t lie. Detectivizin’ is not what it was, Sergeant. We want more physiognomists an’ more chemists. My idea of a real detective is a feller who sits in a high-class fam’ly mansion with a microscope an’ a blood stain an’ a bit of London mud, an’ putting the three together can tell you that the jewels were pinched by a left-handed man who drove a Patchard coupe (‘21 model) painted green. Ever meet a man called Ferraby?”

“Mr. Ferraby from the Public Prosecutor’s office?” asked the sergeant, momentarily interested. “Yes, sir: I saw him the day he called here.”

Sooper nodded; his jaws closed like a rat-trap and he showed two rows of teeth. He was smiling.

“He’s not a detective,” he said emphatically; “he only understands fac’s. If that feller was called in to unravel the myst’ry of the Rajah of Bong’s lost wrist-watch an’ he found that the Grand Vizzer or Visher or whatever they call him, had pawned a wrist-watch at Veltheim’s Day an’ Night Loan Office, he’d go and pinch the Grand—whatever he is. A real detective wouldn’t be that foolish. He’s just deduce at once that the clock was torn off in a struggle with the young and beautiful stenographer who’s hidden behind a secret panel gagged ‘n’ bound an’ ready to be freighted to the loathsome Injun palace built of lapsus laz—whatever it is. Now, old man Cardew is a detective! There’s a man you might model yourself on, Sergeant.”

Sooper pointed the end of his pen impressively at his subordinate.

“That man’s studied crime from all angles; he’s got the psycho—whatever the word may be—psychology, is it? Well, he’s got that. And he’s strong for ears an’ prognathic jaws and assymmetrical faces an’ the weight of brains an’ all that. Got a library up at Barley Stack full of stuff about crime.”

When Sooper started on the subject of that excellent amateur, Mr. Gordon Cardew, he was a difficult man to turn, and the sergeant sighed lightly and respectfully.

“The point is, sir, would you care to see this man Sullivan? He has practically confessed that he went to Hill Brow to commit a burglary.”

Sooper stared menacingly, and then, to Lattimer’s surprise, nodded. “I’ll see this Sullivan—shoot him in.”

The sergeant rose with alacrity and disappeared into the small charge-room. He returned in a few minutes accompanied by a very big, a very unprepossessing, and an altogether embarrassed tramp.

“This is Sullivan, sir,” reported the officer, and Sooper put down his pen, wrenched off his pince-nez and glared up at the prisoner. “What’s this stuff you’ve been giving us about the hobo who wouldn’t let you go into Hill Brow?” he asked unexpectedly. “And if you’re lyin’, tramp, lie plausibly!”

“It’s true, Sooper,” said the tramp huskily. “If I die this minute, this crazy fellow nearly killed me when I tried to open the window. And we had it all fixed—he told me about the place an’ where this American kept his ‘stuff’. If I die this very second—”

“You won’t: hobos never die,” snapped Sooper. “Sullivan? Got you! You went down for three at the London Sessions for robbery—Luke Mark Sullivan, I remember your holy names!”

Mr. Luke Mark Sullivan shuffled uneasily, but before he could protest himself an injured and innocent convict, Sooper went on: “What do you know about this crazy tramp?”

Sullivan knew very little. He had met the man in Devonshire, and had heard something about him from other knights of the road.

“He’s plumb nutty, Sooper: all the fellers say so. Goes about the country singing to himself. Doesn’t run with any gang, and talks queer—swell stuff and foreign languages.”

Sooper leaned back in his chair. “You couldn’t invent that. You haven’t the weight of brain. Where’s his pitch?”

“Everywhere, but I got an idea he’s got a real pitch near the sea. He used to ask me—I’ve been on the road with him for a week—if I liked ships. He said he looked at ‘em for days passin’ on the sea, and got to wonderin’ what kind of ships couldn’t sink. He’s crazy! An’ after we’d fixed to go into this house, what do you think he said? He turned on me like a dog and said, ‘Away!’—just like that, Sooper—‘Away! Your hands are not clean enough to be the…’ well, sump’n about ‘Justice’…he’s mad!”

The superintendent stared at the uncomfortable man for a long time without speaking.

“You lie in your throat, Sullivan,” he said at last. “You couldn’t tell the truth: you’ve got odd eyes! Put him in the cooler, Sergeant—we’ll get him hung!”

Mr. Sullivan was back in his cell, and the sergeant was half-way through his lunch, before Sooper moved from his chair. He sat glowering at the office inkpot, motionless, his dry pen still in his hand. At last he moved with a grimace, as though the effort pained him, kicked off the slippers he invariably wore in office hours and pulled on his worn boots with a grunt.

Lattimer had reached the apple pie stage of his feast when the old man shuffled into the officers’ mess-room.

“Know anything about this American feller Elson?” asked Sooper. “Don’t stand up, man—eat your pie.”

“No, sir—except that he’s a bit of a rough diamond. They say he’s very rich.”

“That’s my deduction too,” said Sooper. “When a man lives in a big house an’ has three cars an’ twenty servants I put two an’ two together and deduce that he’s well off. I’m goin’ up to see him.”

Sooper had a motor-cycle that was frankly disreputable. It bore the same relationship to an ordinary motor-cycle that a slum bears to Buckingham Palace. Every spring, Sooper took his machine to pieces, and, under the dazed eye of Sergeant Lattimer, put it together again in such a manner as to give it an entirely different appearance. This illusion may have had its cause in his passion for changing the colour of the weird contrivance. One year it was a vivid green, another year it was a flaming scarlet. Once he painted it white and picked out the spokes in sky-blue. Sooper was so constituted that he could not pass a hardware shop that displayed bicycle enamel without falling. In the little hut behind his cottage were shelves covered with tiny paint pots, and the year when, yielding to the influence of the war, he employed a dozen sample cans in camouflaging his machine, is one remembered by the whole of the Metropolitan Police force.

Yet it was a good motor-bicycle. By some miracle its two cylinders were capable of developing tremendous energies. Its once silvery handlebar had long since been painted over; its saddle seat was held in position by string, and its tyres were so patched that even the least observant village child could tell, from an examination of the dustprints, not only that Sooper had passed, but in what direction he was moving; but it ‘went’.

He chug-chugged his way up Dewlap Hill, skirted the high red wall of Hill Brow, and, dismounting, pushed open the gate and passed between the elms that bordered Mr. Elson’s drive. Leaning his bicycle against a tree, he walked slowly towards the big house, up the broad steps, and halted in the open doorway.

The hall was empty, but he heard voices, a woman’s and a man’s. The sound came from a room that opened from the hall. The door was ajar; he saw four plump fingers at the edge as though somebody had paused in the act of pulling it open.

Sooper looked round for a bell-push and then saw that it was in the centre of the front door. He was stepping into the hall to reach the push when…

“Marriage or nothing, Steve! I’ve been kept fooling around too long. Promises, promises, promises!…I’m sick of ‘em!…Money? What’s the use of money to me? I’m as rich as you…”

At that moment the door opened and the speaker came into view, and though her back was towards him, Sooper recognized her. It was Hannah Shaw, the ungenial housekeeper of Barley Stack.

For a second he stood looking at the figure, and then noiselessly stepped back to the angle of the wall, dropped lightly over the balustrade of the steps and melted out of sight.

Hannah did not even see the shadow of him as he passed. To make doubly sure that his presence should escape notice, Sooper wheeled his bicycle a mile before he mounted.

III. — A LAWYER LOSES A CASE

THE Temple, on a day in early summer, with a blue sky overhead, is a very pleasant and drowsily restful place. For there are rooks in Temple Gardens, and the green leaves of the trees that wave their branches over the worn flagstones are translucent in the sunlight, and the fountain splashes musically. The grim fronts of ancient buildings, so menacing in the thin fogs of February, take on a bland beauty of their own, so that hurrying lawyers in their grey wigs and long black gowns hesitate on the threshold of their own offices in momentary doubt as to whether or not they have, in a moment of aberration, wandered into some strange and more charming locality than that to which use has accustomed them.

Jim Ferraby, strolling at leisure from Fleet Street to his rooms in King’s Bench Walk, paused by the fountain to rescue a small girl’s hat from destruction, and passed on, whistling softly, his hands deep in his pockets, his brow unruffled, a good-looking and contented young man on the indiscreet side of thirty.

He reached the walk, paused again on the stone steps of his chambers, and surveyed, with evidence of approval, the silvery stretch of river visible from this point. Then he slowly mounted the gloomy stairs, and, stopping before a heavy black door, pulled a massive key from his pocket and inserted it in the huge lock.

He was twisting the key when he heard the door open on the opposite side of the landing, and, looking round, flashed a smile at the girl who stood in the open doorway.

“Morning, Miss Leigh,” he said cheerfully.

The girl nodded. “Good morning, Mr. Ferraby.”

Her voice was very soft and curiously sweet. It was Elfa Leigh’s voice which had first attracted him to old Cardew’s secretary. He agreed with himself that this too was the principal attraction; and the fact that she had the kind of face that artists draw but men seldom see, and a straight figure which was lovely in spite of its slimness; that she had grey eyes set wide apart and almost Oriental in the slant and depth of them had nothing to do with his interest in the sole member of Mr. Gordon Cardew’s office staff.

Their acquaintance, extending over a year, had begun on that dusty landing, and had progressed with a certain primness.

There was really no reason why old Mr. Cardew (he was really fifty-eight, but fifty-eight is very old to the twenties) should have an office in King’s Bench Walk, for he was a nonpractising member of his profession. Once upon a time the firm of Cardew and Cardew had enjoyed a clientele unequalled in quality and wealth in the whole of London. They had been agents for great estates, trustees of vast properties, legal representatives of powerful corporations, but during the war the last of the Cardews had grown weary of his responsibilities and had transferred his clients to a younger and, as he said, more robust firm of solicitors. He might have followed the traditions of the profession and taken a partner, preserving the name of a house that had existed for one hundred and fifty years. He preferred to wash his hands of his practice, and the large gloomy office on King’s Bench Walk was now exclusively devoted to the conduct of his own prosperous affairs—for Mr. Gordon Cardew was a man of some substance.

“I suppose you won your case and the poor man has gone to prison?”

They stood now in opposite doorways, and their voices echoed across the hollow hallway.

“I lost my case;” said Jim calmly, “and the ‘poor man’ is now, in all probability, drinking beer and sneering at the law he cheated.”

She stared at him.

“Oh…I’m sorry!…I mean, I’m not sorry that the man is free, but that you lost. Mr. Cardew said he was certain to be convicted. Did the other side bring fresh evidence? What a shame!”

She talked cold-bloodedly of ‘the other side’, as lawyer’s clerk to lawyer.

“The other side brought fresh evidence,” said Jim deliberately. “Sullivan was acquitted because I prosecuted him. The truth is, Miss Leigh, I have a criminal mind, and all the time I was talking against him, I was thinking for him. It is the first case in which I have ever appeared for the State, and it will be the last. The judge said in his summing up that my speech for the prosecution was the only reasonable defence that the prisoner had made. Sullivan should have gone to jail for a year, instead of which he is going about the country stealing ducks.”

“Ducks?…I thought it was a case of attempted burglary?”

She was puzzled.

“I quoted an ancient non sequitur. I’m a ruined man, Miss Leigh—I have the brain of a master criminal combined with the high moral outlook of a Welsh revivalist. From now on I’m just a nameless official at the office of the Public Prosecutor.”

She laughed softly at his solemn declaration, and at that moment came a firm step on the stair and, looking down, Jim saw the shining top of Mr. Cardew’s immaculate hat.

A grave, esthetic face, eyes that gleamed good-humouredly from under shaggy brows, a punctilious neatness of attire, and a pedantic exactness of speech—that was Mr. Gordon Cardew.

His furled umbrella was under his arm, his hands were clasped behind him as he came up the stairs, and momentarily his face was clouded. Looking up, he saw the young man.

“Hullo, Ferraby, your man got off, they tell me?”

“Bad news travels fast,” growled Jim. “Yes, sir: my chief is furious!”

“And so he should be,” said Cardew, with the ghost of a smile in his fine eyes. “I met Jebbings, the Treasury counsel. He said…well, never mind what he said. It isn’t my business to make bad feeling between members of the Bar. Good morning, Miss Leigh. Is there any urgent business? No? Come in, Ferraby.”

Jim followed the lawyer into his cosily furnished room. Mr. Cardew closed the door behind him, opened a cigar-box and pushed it towards the young lawyer.

“You’re unfitted for the job of prosecuting the guilty,” he said with a quizzical smile: “Socially and financially, there is no reason why you should follow a profession at all. So I don’t think, if I were you, that I should worry very much about what happened at the Central Criminal Court today. I am naturally interested in the case, because Mr. Stephen Elson is a neighbour of mine—a somewhat overbearing American gentleman, a little lacking in polish but a good fellow, they tell me. He will be annoyed.”

Jim shook his head helplessly. “I’ve a kink somewhere,” he said, in despair. “My sympathies are on the side of law and order, and in the office I gloat over every hanging I’ve brought about. In court my intellect was working double shifts to discover excuses for this brute—excuses that I myself would have advanced if I was in his position.”

Mr. Cardew smiled reprovingly. “When a prosecuting lawyer gets up and casts doubt upon the infallibility of the finger-print system—”

“Did I?” asked Jim, flushing guiltily. “Lord! I seem to have made a hash of it!”

“I think you have,” was the dry response. “You don’t drink port so early in the morning?” And, as Jim declined, Cardew opened a cupboard, took out a black and dusty bottle, carefully wiped a glass and filled it with ruby-coloured liquid.

“I have yet another interest in Sullivan,” he said. “As you probably know, I am—er—something of a student of anthropology. In fact, I rather flatter myself that there is a good detective wasted in me. And really, when one sees the type of man who occupies important positions in the police force, one wishes that the system was reorganized so that persons of ripe experience and—er—erudition could find an opportunity for exercising their talents. We have a man in charge of my division who is simply…”

Words failed him. He could only shrug helplessly, and Jim, who knew Superintendent Minter, concealed his amusement. It was common knowledge that Sooper had a most profound contempt for all amateurs and theorists: it was the attitude of the good workman towards the indifferent artist. And on one occasion he had been offensive (Mr. Cardew described it as “boorish”) over a matter of anthropology.

“Man, ye’re childish!” snarled Sooper, when Mr. Cardew had mildly suggested that a cracked voice and a bright, hard eye were inseparable from a certain type of criminal. Mr. Cardew often said that such an unpardonable act of rudeness was difficult to forgive.

Jim was wondering what was the reason for this unexpected invitation into Cardew’s private office—it was his first visit, though he had known the lawyer off and on for five years—and that the invitation had a special meaning was obvious from the older man’s behaviour. He was obviously worried—and nervous, pacing the room with irresolute steps, and stopping now and again to adjust some paper on his desk or to move a chair to a different position.

“All the way up to town you have been in my mind,” he said suddenly, “and I have been wondering whether or not I should consult you. You know my housekeeper, Hannah Shaw?”

Jim remembered very well, the sulky-faced woman, who spoke in monosyllables, and who, ever since he had spoken well of Sooper, had never made any attempt to hide her dislike for him.

Mr. Cardew was eyeing him keenly. “You don’t like her,” he stated, rather than asked. “She was rather annoying to you the last time you came, eh? My chauffeur, who is something of a gossip, told me that she had snapped at you. Undoubtedly she is snappy and dour, and a most disagreeable person. But she suits me in many ways, and is, moreover, a legacy from my dear wife—she took her out of an orphan asylum when she was a child, and Hannah has been practically brought up in my home. With all respect I might liken her to one of those Aberdeen terriers that snaps at everybody except his master.”

He put his hand in his pocket, took out a leather case, opened it and showed some papers, and finally spread one on the table.

“I am taking you into my confidence,” he said, and looked up again at the door to see if it was closed. “Read this.”

It was a sheet of common paper. It bore no address or date of any kind. There were three hand-printed lines of writing, which ran:

‘I have warned you twice.

This is the last time.

You have driven me to desperation.’

The note was signed “Big Foot”.

“Big Foot? Who is Big Foot?” asked Jim, as he read the note again. “Your housekeeper has been threatened—she showed you this?”

Mr. Cardew shook his head. “No, it came into my possession in a curious way. On the first of every month Hannah brings me the household bills, places them on the desk in my study, and I write out cheques for the tradesmen. She has a habit of carrying bills around in her pocket and her bag, and scrambling them together at the last moment—she is the reverse of methodical. This letter was in the folds of a grocer’s bill: she must have taken it hurriedly from her bag without realizing that she was giving me a private letter.”

“Have you spoken to her?”

Mr. Cardew frowned and shook his head.

“No,” he hesitated, “I haven’t. In a clumsy way I have hinted to her that, if she is ever in any kind of trouble, she must come to me, but Hannah just snarled at me—there is no other word, she snarled! It was—well, not to put too fine a point upon it, impertinent.” He sighed heavily. “I hate new faces,” he said, “and I should be very sorry to lose Hannah. If she had adopted another attitude, I should, of course, have told her of my discovery. And now, to be perfectly honest, I am scared to tell her that one of her letters is in my possession. We have had one serious disagreement over a stupid joke of hers. The next will end our association. What do you make of the letter?”

“From a blackmailer of some kind,” suggested Jim. “The letter is written with the left hand with the object of disguising the writing. I think you ought to ask her for an explanation.”

“Ask Hannah?” repeated Mr. Cardew in tones of alarm. “Great heavens, I dare not! No, the only thing I can do is to keep my eyes open, and at the first opportunity, when I get her in an amiable mood—and she is amiable at least twice a year—broach the subject—”

“Why not consult the police?” asked Jim.

Mr. Cardew stiffened. “Minter?” he suggested icily. “That uncouth, unimaginative policeman? Really, my dear fellow. No, if there is any mystery in the matter, I think—I rather think—that I am capable of probing the thing to its depths. And there is a mystery outside of, or consequent upon, this letter.”

He looked at the door, behind which his innocent secretary was working, and lowered his voice.

“As you know, I have a little bungalow on the foreshore of Pawsey Bay. It used to be an old coastguard station. I bought it for a song during the war, and have spent some very pleasant hours there. I go there very seldom nowadays, and usually I give my servants the use of the place. In fact, my secretary, Miss Leigh, had it for a week last year, and went down with some girl friends. Most unexpectedly, Hannah came to me this morning and asked if she could have the bungalow from Saturday to Monday. She has not been there in years; she hates the place, and told me as much only a week ago. Now I’m wondering whether that sudden trip to the coast has not something to do with the letter.”

“Have her watched,” suggested Jim, “by private detectives,” he made haste to amend his suggestion.

“I have considered that,” replied Cardew thoughtfully, “but I am loath to spy on her. Remember she has been in my service for nearly twenty years. Of course, I’ve given her permission, though I am a little worried in view of these facts. Usually Hannah spends her spare time driving about the country in an old Ford—my chauffeur taught her to drive some years ago—so that it isn’t a change of air she wants. I pay her well; she could afford to stay at a good hotel, and there is no reason whatever why she should go to Pawsey, unless, of course, it is to meet this mysterious Big Foot. Do you know, I sometimes think that she is a little…” he tapped his forehead.

Jim was still wondering why he had been consulted: he now learnt.

“I am giving a little dinner-party on Friday at Barley Stack, and I want you to come down and—er—use your eyes. Two heads are better than one. You may see something which escaped me.”

Jim’s mind was busy hunting up excuses when Cardew went on: “You won’t mind meeting Miss Leigh socially? My secretary I mean—she is coming down to index a new library I bought the other day at Sotheby’s. A complete set of Mantagazza’s works….”

“I’ll be delighted,” said Mr. James Ferraby with great heartiness.

IV. — DINNER AT BARLEY STACK

“YOU know Mr. Elson?”

Jim Ferraby knew Mr. Stephen Elson well enough to be satisfied in his mind that he did not wish to know him better.

He had been the principal (if reluctant) witness in the case of the State against Luke Mark Sullivan, and Elson had taken that light-fingered tramp’s acquittal as a personal affront.

Jim was prejudiced against Elson for many reasons, not least of which was that gentleman’s insolent admiration of Elfa Leigh. It was insolent from Jim’s point of view, and, he hoped, from Elfa’s. Not that she meant anything in his life. She was merely the girl on the other side of the landing; she had a beautiful soft voice and grey eyes set wide apart, and the colouring that is only seen in the advertisements of complexion soaps. But Jim Ferraby took a detached interest in her (as he told himself). She was just a very charming, very cultured, and, to tell the truth, rather beautiful young woman, and he admired her in an aloof, perfectly friendly and philosophical way.

But she was a lady, and therefore socially the equal of anybody in Mr. Cardew’s drawing-room. And Jim Ferraby didn’t like the easy familiarity of Stephen Elson. That he was invited at all was a surprise, almost a cause for indignation, to Jim Ferraby. His host might not be a great detective, but he was sensitive to certain impressions, and he took the first opportunity of drawing the young man aside.

“I had quite forgotten that you had met Elson,” he said. “It is very embarrassing, but the truth is, it was Hannah’s suggestion that he should be invited. In fact, every time that man has been to this house it has been Hannah’s suggestion. She pointed out to me that we had not asked him to dine in a year, and I thought this would be an excellent opportunity. I don’t think I could endure him tete-a-tete!”

Jim laughed. “I am not at all embarrassed,” he said, “though he was infernally rude to me after the case. What was he, and how did he come to settle in England?”

Cardew shook his head. “That is one of the little matters for investigation which I shall take up some day,” he said. “I know nothing about him except that he’s very rich.” He looked across the drawing room to where the broad-shouldered American was engaged in a frolicsome conversation with the girl. “They get on well together,” he said irritatingly; “I suppose because they’re both from the same country—”

“Miss Leigh is not an American?” said Jim in surprise.

Cardew nodded. “Yes, she is an American girl: I thought you knew. Her father, who was unfortunately killed during the war, was an official of the American Treasury, and I believe spent a great deal of his time in this country, where Miss Leigh was educated. I never met him—the father, I mean—but he occupied quite a good position. In fact, she was recommended to me by the American Ambassador.”