Black Cat Weekly #14

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHTGeorge Colton’s shop in St. Giles-street was of the type that has almost disappeared from London. Soon the South Kensington Museum will be the only place where they can be seen. There was the eighteenth century rounding front with its small panes of heavy clouded glass that had weathered, with infrequent breakage, two hundred years of London street life. The heavy steel bars behind were as discreetly unobtrusive as it was possible to make them. Outside, the insignia of successive generations of royal patrons were small and weatherbeaten—not large, shiny and vulgar, as they are sometimes displayed by new stores. The upper storey was low, the many windows narrow and leaded. Inspector Bull knew the place very well. He supposed Mrs. Colton would sell it to Woolworth’s. Still, Woolworth’s would probably have no use for such a location as St. Giles. Showmanship had not been important in the dealings of Colton’s. Bull wondered vaguely if he mightn’t buy the old front and set it up in Hampstead. He decided it would be impracticable as well as out of place, and further that Mrs. Bull would not allow it.

He looked around for the man who was keeping an eye on the place, and spotted him leaning with ostentatious ease against a pillar-box across the street. He nodded to him and the man came over.

“Anyone been here?”

“Yes, sir. This morning early the old fellow—said he was a clerk—came. I told him what had happened. He sort of went balmy, sir.”

“Where’d he go?”

“Don’t know, sir. I offered to get him a cab. Said he didn’t want one. Just shook his head and sort of staggered off. I was sort of worried, but I couldn’t leave. He turned left on Bond-street, sir.”

Bull unlocked the door with one of the keys he had got from the proprietor’s pocket, and stepped inside. He found a switch and turned on the lights. It might have been a hundred years since the shop had seen human activity. It had a curious air of having always existed completely apart from the slow-moving current of life on the little street outside. Bull thought how much more neatly shop-keepers died than other people. When you were called in after a shop-keeper’s death everything was already nicely put away and ready for you.

He went into the small back room. A grey cat came to meet him, and rubbed luxuriously against his leg.

“Hello!” he said, and was a little shocked at his own voice.

He looked around. There was not much furniture. Several efficient-looking modern safes stood against the wall. A dingy black alpaca jacket hung from a hook in a large cupboard. A narrow stairway led from the corner behind a small work-bench. Bull went up, thinking irrelevantly how many beaux of three centuries had climbed these steps, and how different his errand was from any of theirs.

He was in the small front room with the heavy leaded casement windows; it had a faded Turkey carpet and a little mahogany table with a black velvet cushion on it. There was a chair on one side and a stool on the other. Again Bull had a picture of the earlier days of Colton’s, when Colton was a master goldsmith, and his clients wore plum-coloured velvet breeches and embroidered coats. The present—or immediately past—owner was different, and so were his clients. Bull could not imagine George Colton balanced on the stool showing a tiara to His Excellency Mr. ___ of the Province of ___. But doubtless he did. Then Bull decided he didn’t, when he went into one of the back rooms and saw a comfortable modern office, furnished with shiny mahogany. A small safe was set into the wall in one corner. He looked around. He was trying to find something to open with a small gold key. He preferred to find it without assistance.

Bull spent half an hour in the shop and went out as wise as he had come in. Perhaps a little wiser; he knew Frank Smith’s address. He also knew where the “boy”—whose name was James B. Gates—lived, but that did not seem important at the time. Later it became so, Inspector Bull found.

* * * *

In his room on the Embankment Bull frowningly drained the syrupy dregs of an enormous cup of tea, brushed the crumbs of sultana cake off his burnt sienna cravat, and prepared to tell Commissioner Debenham and Chief Inspector Dryden what he had found out about the Colnbrook Outrage—or more properly, what he had not found out.

The two were in the Commissioner’s room when he went

in.

“Well, Bull,” said the Commissioner, “what have you done?”

Commissioner Debenham liked Bull, chiefly, he supposed, because Bull was so inordinately serious. He was always amused by Bull’s reports, which read like bad mystery yarns, and by his inveterate faith in ultimate romance. The Commissioner himself had a sense of humour and knew how bad people really were. Bull, having very little, had no idea, the Commissioner insisted, of even the minor sins of mankind.

“Not much of anything, sir,” said Bull. “I saw Colton. He was shot twice, once, near the heart and once right through it. He died instantly. The fellow on the cycle got away clean as a whistle, of course.”

“Well, what have you got?”

A slight scowl appeared on Inspector Bull’s otherwise impassive large face.

“There’s something funny about it, sir.”

Debenham glanced across at Chief Inspector Dryden.

“I don’t understand Colton’s wife. She’s under thirty, I think. His daughter’s about the same age. Pretty and fierce, she is. Then there’s the chauffeur. He’s an American.”

Chief Inspector Dryden glanced at the Commissioner.

“Did he tell you so, Bull?”

“No, sir. I didn’t have to ask him. His looks and the way he speaks.”

“Go on, Bull.”

“Well, I didn’t question him much, but I’m looking him up to see if he’s got a record. He doesn’t look like a chauffeur much. Well, they both say just what they said last night, and it sounds pretty good. I mean about the actual hold-up and shooting. They sound as if they meant it. But the driver sounds as if he meant something more, too.

“I was out there in an hour after the murder, but it’d been raining. I couldn’t see anything—not even car tracks. There’s no record of motorcyclists between there and town. He got away clean. But there are two funny things. The first is, why didn’t Colton go on the by-pass?”

Commissioner Debenham nodded.

“It’s obviously a put-up job, sir. The man on the motorbike knew exactly what was happening. They didn’t say that he didn’t hesitate a moment about anything, but they implied it. He knew. It’s a nice lonely spot, that—where the Der-went-Foster place is for sale.”

The Commissioner nodded again.

“Then there’s point Number Two, sir. The Royces. It’s the old lady’s diamonds were stolen. They’re worth from ten to fifteen thousand pounds and they’re insured for thirty-five. Depreciation, sir. I’m going to see Albert Steiner about them at half past five this afternoon. Well, they stand to gain by that robbery. Now Mrs. Colton says she thought Colton was going to sell them. Smedley—he’s the manager of Continental Bonding and Assurance—says they were going to reappraise them to cut the insurance.”

The Commissioner turned to the Chief Inspector.

“Gives it a little different look, Dryden?” he said.

Dryden nodded noncommittally.

“It might just be a lucky break for the Royces, sir, as the Americans say.”

“Very lucky, indeed, I’d say, sir,” Bull observed. “Well, then here’s the list of those that knew Colton was Jjringing the jewels in to town. Mrs. Royce, Michael Royce, Colton, the clerk Smith, Smedley, Albert Steiner, and perhaps the clerk Gates at Colton’s. They knew a day or so before, all of them. Then Mrs. Colton knew it that night only—so she says.

“Now the driver knew Colton was carrying stones when he saw the black satchel, but not before. He didn’t know their value. He says Colton was never armed. Can’t explain the automatic in the side pocket of the car. Had no idea there was one there. Sometimes carried a gun himself, when he knew Colton had jewels, but always without Colton’s permission. And that’s about all, sir. I ought to have the report on Peskett—that’s the driver—pretty soon, and I. have to sec Steiner now. Then I’m going to find the clerk, Smith, and see that Colton household again. This isn’t as clear as it looks, sir.”

Debenham nodded as Inspector Bull departed.

“Well,” said Chief Inspector Dryden, “he may be right, sir. But I think it’s important that that driver is an American. Some of these Americans are pretty lousy.”

“Dryden,” said the Commissioner, “where in God’s name do you get these appalling expressions?”

Dryden grinned sheepishly.

“My son’s engaged to an American college girl, sir.”

“Dryden, you’re just the man I’ve been looking for. You meet the deputation from the Philadelphia traffic division this afternoon.”