The Plague Court Murders - John Carr

Somebody had obviously been indiscreet. Scotland Yard can muzzle the press tolerably well; and there had been an error somewhere, unless - it suddenly occurred to me - Masters wanted to accentuate the supernatural side of the business for reasons of his own. The stories were all reasonably accurate so far as they went, though there was no hint of suspicion towards any of our group.

Curiously enough, these wild speculations about the supernatural tended to diminish rather than accentuate in my own mind the very suggestions they made. In the clear-headed morning after, away from the echoes and dampness of Plague Court, one fact became apparent. Whatever others might believe, nobody who had been in the house at the time could doubt that we faced nothing more than either a very lucky or a very brilliant murderer, who could be hanged like anybody else. But that in itself might be problem enough.

When I was still mulling it over after breakfast, the house-phone rang and they told me that Major Featherton was downstairs. Then I remembered his promise of last night.

Major Featherton was annoyed. Despite the rain, he was tightened into morning-dress, with a silk hat and a rather startling tie; his shaven jowls were waxy with grooming, but his eyes looked puffy. The aroma of shaving-soap was strong. On my writing-table, as he planked down his hat, he caught sight of the tabloid with his bottle-of-beer picture; and he exploded. Evidently it was familiar. He said things about lawsuits; he drew comparisons between reporters and hyenas, stressing the more exalted moral character of the latter; and he was full of wild references to something that had just happened "at the Rag." I gathered that there had been certain observations at the Army and Navy Club, together with some talk of presenting him with a tambourine for his next seance. It also appeared that a facetious brigadier had come up behind him and hissed, "Guinness is good for you."

I offered him a cup of coffee, which he refused, and a brandy and soda, which he accepted.

"I was salutin' the flag, dammit!" snorted Major Featherton, when he had been pushed into a chair with a consoling cigar lighted. "Now, confound it, I won't be able to show my face anywhere; all because I tried to oblige Anne. A mess. Devil of a mess, that's what it is. Now I don't even know whether I ought to go through with what I came to ask you about. Be in for a confounding ragging from...." He paused, and sipped his drink. He brooded. "I phoned Anne this morning. She was snappish last night; wouldn't let me take her home. But she didn't take my head off this morning, because the poor old girl's upset. I gather Marion Latimer had phoned her before I did; called her an old trouble-maker; and practically said straight out, both for herself and young Halliday, that the less they saw of her in the future the better they'd both like it. However-!"

I waited....

"Look here, Blake," he continued, after another pause. The old cough was racking him again, at intervals of minutes. "I said a lot of things last night that I shouldn't have; eh?"

"You mean about hearingnoises. in

the room?"

"Yes."

"Well, if they were true...."

He scowled, and grew confidential. "Certainly they were true. But that ain't the point, my lad. Surely you can see it? Point is this. We can't have them thinking what they're bound to think, sooner or later, and that's plain downright tommyrot. That one of us - eh? H'mf. Tommyrot! And it ought to be stopped."

"What's your own notion of a solution, Major?"

"Confound it, I'm not a detective. But I'm a plain man, and I do know this. The idea that one of us - baah!" He leaned back, made a heavy gesture, and almost sneered. "I tell you it's somebody who sneaked in unknown to us, or it's that medium. Why, see here! Suppose one of us did want to do that blighter in: which we wouldn't, mind you. Fancy anybody taking risks like that, with a whole room full of people all around! It's all nonsense. Besides, how could anybody do a thing like that without getting all smeared up with blood? I've seen the niggers trying to knife our sentries too often; and anybody who cut old Darworth up like that would've been soaked - couldn't help it. Bah?'

Some cigar-smoke got into his eye, and he rubbed it blearily. Then he leaned forward with great intentness, his hands on his knees.

"So what I suggest, sir, is this. Put it in the proper hands. Then it'll be all right. I know him well, and so do you. I know he's devilish lazy; but we'll put it up to him as a matter of of caste, dammit! We'll say, `Look here, old boy...."

Then there occurred to me what should have occurred , long before. I sat up. "You mean," I said, "H.M.? The old Chief? Mycroft?"

"I mean Henry Merrivale. Exactly. Eh?"

H.M. on a Scotland Yard case.... I thought again of that room high over Whitehall, which I had not seen since 1922. I thought of the extremely lazy, extremely garrulous and slipshod figure who sat grinning with sleepy eyes; his hands folded over his big stomach and his feet propped up on the desk. His chief taste was for lurid reading-matter; his chief complaint that people would not treat him seriously. He was a qualified barrister and a qualified physician, and he spoke atrocious grammar. He was Sir Henry Merrivale, Baronet, and had been a fighting Socialist all his life. He was vastly conceited, and had an inexhaustible fund of bawdy stories....

Looking past Featherton, I remembered the old days. They began calling, him Mycroft when he was head of the British Counter-Espionage Department., The notion of even the rawest junior calling him Sir Henry would have been fantastic. It was Johnny Ireton, in a letter from Constantinople, who started the nickname; but it failed to stick. "The most interesting figure in the stories about the hawk-faced gentleman from Baker Street," Johnny wrote, "isn't Sherlock at all; it's his brother Mycroft. Do you remember him? He's the one with as big or bigger a deductive-hat than S.H.,; but is too lazy to use it; he's big and sluggish and won't move out of his chair; he's a big pot in some mysterious department of the government, with a card-index memory, and moves only in his orbit of lodgings-club-Whitehall. I think he only comes into two stories, but there's a magnificent scene in which Sherlock and Mycroft stand in the window of the Diogenes Club rattling out an exchange of deductions about a man passing by in the street both of them very casual, and poor Watson getting dizzier than he's ever been before.... I tell you, if our H.M. had a little more dignity, and would always remember to put on a necktie, and would refrain from. humming the words to questionable songs when he lumbers through rooms full of lady typists, he wouldn't make a bad Mycroft. He's got the brain, my lad; he's got the brain...."

But H.M. discouraged the, use of the nickname. In fact, he was roused to ire. He said he was not animitation of anybody, and roared about it. Since I left the service in 1922, I had seen him only three times. Twice in the smoking-room of the Diogenes Club, when I was a guest; and on both occasions he was asleep. The last was at one of Mayfair crushes, where his wife had dragged him. He had slunk away from the dancing to see whether he could get a drink of whisky; I found him prowling near the butler's pantry, and he said he was suffering. So we waylaid Colonel Lendinn and got up a poker-game at which the colonel and I lost eleven pounds sixteen shillings between us.... There had been some talk of the old days. I gathered that he was tinkering with the Military Intelligence Department. But he said - sourly, flicking the cards with a sharp crrr-ick under his big thumb-that the glamour was gone; that these were dull times for anybody with a brain; and that, because the thus-and-so's were too parsimonious to install a lift, he still had to walk up five thus-and-so’d flights of stairs to his little office overlooking the gardens along Horse Guards Avenue.

Featherton was talking again. I only half-heard him, for I was remembering the days when we were a very young crowd, and juggled with our lives twenty-four hours in a day under the impression that we were having a fine time, and thought it great sport to 'pull a. tail-feather or two from the double-eagle that was Imperial Germany. The rain still slashed monotonously, and Featherton's voice rose

"-tell you what we'll do, Blake. We'll pick up a cab and go straight round there. If we phone to say we're coming, he'll swear he's busy, eh? And go back to reading his confounded shockers. What say? Shall we go?"

The temptation was too much.

"Immediately," I said.

It was raining hard. Our cab skidded down into Pall Mall; and five minutes later we had swung left off the stolid, barrack-windowed dignity of the Be-British Street, down a little, sylvan-looking thoroughfare which connects Whitehall with the Embankment. The War Office seemed depressed, like the dripping gardens that enclosed it behind. Away from the bustle at the front, there is a little side door close to the garden wall, which you are not supposed to know about.

Inside, I could have found my way blindfolded through the little dark entry, and up two flights of stairs past doors that showed rooms full of typists, filing-cabinets, and harsh electric lights. It was surprisingly modern in this ancient stone rookery, whose halls smelt of stone, damp, and dead cigarettes. (This, by the way, is a part of old Whitehall Palace). Nothing had changed. There was still a peeling war-poster stuck on the wall, where it had been for twelve years. The past came back with a shock, of men grown older but time stood still; of young fledglings clumping up these stairs a-whistling, with officers' swagger-stick cocked under one arm; and outside on the Embankment a barrel-organ grinding out a tune to which our feet still tap. That flattened cigarette-stump on the stairs might just have been tossed away by Johnny Ireton or Captain Bunky Knapp, if one hadn't been dead of fever in Mesopotamia and the other long disposed of by a pot-helmeted firing party outside Metz. I never realized until then how damned lucky I had been....

On the fourth flight you must pass a barrier in the person of old Carstairs. The sergeant-major looked exactly the same, leaning out of his cubicle and smoking a forbidden pipe. Our greetings were affable, though it was strange to be saluted again; I told him glibly that I had an appointment with H.M. - which he knew was a lie - and trusted to old times. He looked dubious. He said:

"Why, I dunno, sir. I daresay it's all right. Though there's a sort of bloke just gone up." His boiled eye was contemptuous. "A bloke from down the way, 'e said. From Scotland Yard. Ayagh!"

Featherton and I looked at each other. After thanking Carstairs, we hurried up the remaining and darkest flight of stairs. We caught sight of the bloke on the landing, just raising his hand to knock at H.M.'s door.

I said: "Shame on you, Masters. What would the assistant commissioner say?"

Masters looked first angry, and then amused. He was back in his old stolid placidity again, where he could feel the brick walls of Whitehall: well-brushed, and heavy of motion. Any reference to his unheard-of behavior last night would probably startle him as much as it startled me to think of it.

"Ah! So it's you?" he said. "Um. And Major Featherton, I see. Why, that's all right. I've got the assistant commissioner's permission. Now -"

In the dingy light of the landing, I could see the familiar door. It bore a severe plate which said, "Sir Henry Merrivale." Above this plate H.M. had long ago taken white paint and inscribed in enormous staggering letters: "BUSY!!! NO ADMITTANCE!!! KEEP OUT!!!" and below the plate, as though with a pointed afterthought, "This means YOU!" Masters, like everybody else, merely turned the knob and walked in.

It was still unchanged. The low-ceilinged room, with its two big windows overlooking the gardens and the Embankment, was as untidy as ever; as full of papers, pipes, pictures, and junk. Behind a broad flat desk, also littered, H.M.'s great bulk was sprawled in a leather chair. His big feet were on the desk, entangled with the telephone and he wore white socks. A goose-neck reading-lamp was switched on, but bent down so far that its light fell flat on the desk.. Back in shadow, H.M.'s big baldish dusty head was bent forward, and his big tortoise-shell spectacles had slid down his nose.

"Hullo!" grumbled Major Featherton, rapping on the inside of the door. "I say, Henry! Look here-"

H.M. opened one eye.

"Go 'way!" he rumbled, and made a gesture. Some papers spilled out of his lap to the floor, and he went on querulously: "Go 'way, will you? Can't you see I'm busy? ... Go 'way!"

"You were asleep," said Featherton.

"I wasn't asleep, damn you," -said H.M. "I was cogitatin'. That's the way I cogitate. Ain't there ever goin' to be any peace around here, so a man can fix his mind on the coruscation of the infinite? I ask you!" Laboriously he rolled up his big, wrinkled, impassive face, which rarely changed its expression no matter what his mood was. The corners of his broad, mouth were turned down; he looked as though he were smelling a bad breakfast-egg. He peered at us through the spectacles, a great, stolid lump with his hands folded over his stomach, and went on testily: "Well, well, who is it? Who's there? ... Oh, it's you, Masters? Yes, I've been readin' your reports. Humph. If you'd only let a man alone for a while, I might'a been able to tell you something. Humph. Well, since you're here, I s'pose you might as well come in." He peered, suspiciously. "Who's that with you? I'm busy! BUSY! Get out! If it's that Goncharev business again, tell him to go jump in the Volga. I got all I want now."

Featherton and I both started to explain at once. H.M. grunted, but looked a little less severe.

"Oh, it's you two. Yes, it would be. Come in, then, and find a chair.... I s'pose you ought to have a drink. You know where the stuff is, Ken. Same place. Go get it."

I did know. A few more pictures and trophies were added to the walls, but everything was in its old place. Over the white marble fireplace, where a dull heap of embers glowed was the tall Mephistophelian portrait of Fouche. Incongruously, on either side of it was a smaller picture of the only two writers H.M. would ever admit had ever possessed the least ability: Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. The walls on either side the fireplace were disorderly with crammed bookshelves. Over against one of those stood a large iron safe, on the door of which (H.M. has a very primitive sense of humor) was painted in the same sprawling white letters, "IMPORTANT STATE DOCUMENTS! DO NOT TOUCH! ! !" The same legend was added beneath in German, French, Italian and - I think - Russian. H.M. has a habit of ticketing, according to his fancy, most of the exhibits in this room; Johnny Ireton used to say it was like going through Alice in Wonderland.

The safe door was open, and I took out the whisky-bottle, the siphon, and five rather dusty glasses. While I was doing the proper offices, H.M.'s voice kept on in its same rumbling strain: never raising or lowering, always talking.... But he sounded even more querulous.

"I ain't got any cigars, you know. My nephew Horace - you know, Featherton, Letty's kid; the fourteen-year-old 'un with the feet gave me a box of Henry Clays for my birthday. (Sit down, dammit, can't you? And mind that hole in the 'rug; everybody who comes in here kicks it and makes it bigger). But I haven't smoked 'em. I haven't even tried 'em. Because why?" inquired H.M. He lifted one hand and pointed it at Masters with a sinister expression. "Eh? I'l1 tell you. Because I've got a dark suspicion that they explode, that's why. Anyway, you have to make sure. Fancy: any right kind of nephew givin' his uncle explodin' cigars!-I tell you, they won't take me seriously, they won't... So, d'ye see, I gave the box to the Home Secretary. If I don't hear anything about it by tonight, I'll ask for 'em back. I got some good pipe-tobacco, though ... over there.... "Look here, Henry," interposed the major, who had been wheezing and glaring for some time, "we've come to you about a dashed serious matter,"