Two Against Scotland Yard

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREEIt was a little after eleven that night when Inspector Bull and Mr. Pinkerton drove up to the Colnbrook police station in Inspector Bull’s open Morris Oxford. It had begun to rain in torrents, but Bull had refused to take the time to put up the curtains. Cold and wet, he and Mr. Pinkerton listened with impassive silence to the sergeant’s account of the holdup and murder. At least Inspector Bull did, in the best manner of the Metropolitan police. Mr. Pinkerton’s attempt to appear impassive was a little-comical; he was quivering like a badly bred hound at the kill. The sergeant in the meantime had learned for the first time from Inspector Bull the importance of the victim that Fate had left on his doorstep, and was little short of interested himself.

“Well, we’d better run down and have a look,” Bull said when the man had finished. “This rain’ll leave everything a blank. What time did you phone in to have the London Road watched?”

“About 9.35, sir.”

The sergeant tended to be a little aggressive, without particularly being able to think of anything he had left undone. But he had told his story ten times in the last hour, and Inspector Bull was the only person not impressed.

“Any report come in?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you notify the station at Slough?”

The sergeant looked bewildered.

“He was headed for London!” he replied with some vexation.

Bull grunted. “If I was him,” he said calmly, “I’d have turned left into the by-pass and gone right through Slough, or anywheres else, and left the people at Cranford still waiting. But I guess he could have got to Dover by the time we heard about it. Let’s get along.”

A lone constable in a rubber cape was on guard in the road.

“That’s the place,” the sergeant said.

Bull turned his overcoat collar up around his neck and got heavily out of the small car. It was pitch dark except for the small sea of light from their headlights. The sergeant explained

“The man stopped by the gate there and waited until they came along. When the car came, he stepped out and held up his hand. The driver stopped and asked what he wanted. He found himself looking in a gun. He gets out and holds up his hands. The man orders Colton to get out. The lady is to stay where she was—she’d started to get out too, you see?”

Bull grunted.

“The car was right here?”

“That’s right. The man stood here, and the driver stood just here. Then the woman takes a revolver out of the pocket in the car and fires at him. The fellow shoots twice straight into Colton. He drops right forward here. Then he’s off on the cycle.”

Bull grunted at this second recital and made a rapid examination, with the help of his pocket lamp, of the entrance in which the man had stood while waiting. The rain washing down the brick walk made a small sea at the side of the road. So far as Bull could make out, there was no evidence that either a man or a machine had ever stood there.

“There’s one point, Inspector,” the sergeant went on judicially. “That’s how did he know the car with those diamonds was coming this way? It’s the first thing on wheels that’s not a touring lay-out that we’ve seen here for a month of Sundays. You know the by-pass takes ’em all around the other way.”

Inspector Bull’s grunt was even less interested than usual.

“Has anybody been by here while you’ve been on duty?” he asked the constable.

“No, sir. Only the 102 bus from Windsor. No private cars.”

“And nobody on a motor-bike, I suppose.”

“No, sir.”

Bull chewed his lower lip.

“Colton was standing right here when he was shot?”

“That’s the spot, sir,” said the sergeant. He pointed to what Mr. Pinkerton could imagine was still the tinge of crimson that nature, in her inexorable cleanliness, had washed away with swift torrents of rain.

“Where is the body now?” Bull asked.

“Had it taken to Slough, sir. We don’t have much room in the village for that sort of thing.” The sergeant’s voice suggested a certain fastidiousness. People seldom died in Colnbrook; no one was murdered.

“Right. We’ll push along then. You might keep your man here till morning. Somebody might show up. Ready, Pinkerton?”

The little man was standing in the gateway where the killer had stood. He was dripping wet, but his eyes were bright. He decided that what he wanted to say could wait.

At Slough Inspector Bull lifted the sheet from the dead face of George Colton, jeweller by appointment to half the royal heads, crowned and decrowned, of Europe. He knew something of the history of the man on the cold marble slab in front of him. If he hadn’t, he thought then, he could almost have guessed it from the prosperous well-fed look, some of which lingered even in death. The round smooth discreet face had settled into the complacent mask of the successful London merchant. For that was what George Colton had been, exclusive of everything else.

Five generations of Coltons had done business over the same counter of the little shop off Bond-street. They had done better business in the little upper room across a table made from one of Mr. Chippendale’s designs done especially for Mr. George Colton, jeweller to his Majesty, in 1750. The alliances and mésalliances of half the great houses of Europe had been sealed for two hundred years by a priceless bauble from the little shop. It hardly ever changed. The Coltons ceased to reside in the little rooms above the shop sometime in the Eighties; and in 1910 they were virtually forced, by their assurance agent, to put up steel shutters. Otherwise things were much the same over a hundred years. The Colton business was small in number of transactions, but large when they counted the year’s profits. If a customer paid before a year had passed—so people said—they added twenty-five per cent, for the embarrassment of lowering the standard of their clientele; otherwise they added ten per cent, for credit.

Inspector Bull did not know all this. He only knew that Colton was reputed to be one of the most prosperous jewellers of London, his firm highly solvent and above all immaculately respectable; that he was dead—murdered, in fact; that he had been robbed of a collection of diamonds reputed to have considerable value; and that it was Inspector Bull’s job first to find the murderer and second to recover the jewels. He knew the habits of jewel thieves well enough to know that the two things weren’t necessarily synonymous. Quite probably the continental police would put their hands on the jewels if they turned up abroad; or it was conceivable that one of the London fences might handle them. But Inspector Bull knew very well that the Commissioner would be concerned with the man who had done the thing rather than the jewels. Scotland Yard still regards human life as of more importance than precious stones. If such an outrage went unpunished, the highways of England would be as dangerous as the tracks of the jungle.

Bull looked at the collection of small articles taken from the dead man’s pockets. A watch, a card case, a few notes, a handful of silver, a key ring with ordinary house keys, a handkerchief. The only article of interest the local sergeant kept, with the instinct of a showman, until the last.

“He wore this around his neck, sir.”

It was a single small gold key attached to a long flat black cord.

“I’ll take that,” said Bull quickly. He examined it, then put it in his pocket. “In fact, I’ll take the other keys too. By Jove!” he added, and then reached for the telephone.

“Bull speaking,” he said when he had got Scotland Yard. “Have you got a man detailed at the Colton shop in St. Giles-street?”

He listened intently for a minute. Then he hung up the receiver.

“Well, I’m damned,” said Inspector Bull mildly.

Mr. Pinkerton looked at him with bright expectant eyes.

“A man was detailed at the shop at half-past ten,” Bull said placidly. “But P. C. Maxim is on point duty there. He reports that at five minutes to ten a man entered the shop by the front door, with a key. Maxim was going past when the man opened the door. The man said ‘Good evening,’ and asked Maxim to stand by for a minute till he came out, so he wouldn’t have to lock up behind him. He was inside three minutes or so, came out, said good-bye to P. C. Maxim, and walked off.”

“That’s very interesting,” Mr. Pinkerton said eagerly.