The Clue of the Silver Key - Edgar Wallace (read e book txt) 📗

the marks of a powerful jemmy showed where

the door had been forced. The lock itself was hanging on one screw. He

went ahead, switched on the lights, without result.

 

‘It’s been turned off at the fuse box. Where is it?’ She indicated the

position, and after a little fumbling there was a click, and light showed

along the short passage.

 

‘He fastened the door after he got in, but couldn’t fasten it when he

left.’

 

Smith picked up two small wooden wedges from the floor. He went out again

into the corridor, the end of which was formed by a half wood, half glass

door leading to the fire escape.

 

He tried this and, as he expected, found it open. A flight of iron stairs

led into the darkness below. He sent for the lift-man, who could give no

information at all. On a Saturday night most of the people who lived in

the flats, he said, were out or away for the week-end, and there had been

no strange visitors that he could remember.

 

Surefoot went ahead down the passage into the flat, saw a door wide open,

and entered Mary’s bedroom. It was a scene of indescribable confusion;

every drawer of every bureau had been taken out and emptied on the bed

and roughly sorted, They found the same in the dining-room, where the

little desk, which she had locked before she went out, had been broken

and its contents piled on to the table.

 

Mary gazed with dismay on the scene of destruction, but was agreeably

surprised when she found that a small box which had been in her desk

drawer, and which had been wrenched open, still contained the articles of

jewellery she had left there. They were valued at something over four

hundred pounds, she told the detective.

 

‘Then what on earth did they come for?’ she asked.

 

On further inspection Smith found that even the waste bin in the kitchen

had been turned bottom upward and sorted over.

 

One valuable clue he discovered: a small kitchen clock had evidently been

knocked off the dresser and had stopped at eleven-fifteen.

 

‘Less than an hour ago—phew!’ Surefoot whistled softly. ‘In a devil of a

hurry, too. Now tell me who knows this place—I mean, who’s been here

before? Forget all your girl friends, but tell me the men.’

 

She could enumerate them very briefly.

 

‘Mike Hennessey has been here, has he? Often? I’ve seen all the rooms,

haven’t I?’

 

‘Except the bathroom,’ she said.

 

He opened the door of this well-appointed little apartment, switched on

the light, and went in. The intruder had been here too; the wash-basin

was half-filled with discoloured water. ‘Hullo! What’s that?’ Smith’s

eyes narrowed. Level with the wash-basin, and a little to the right of

it, the enamelled wall of the bathroom bore a red smear. The detective

touched it; it was still moist. He looked at the tessellated floor. There

was nothing, but on the edge of the white bath the smear occurred again.

 

Behind the door was a clothes hook, and here also there was a trace of

red.

 

‘He came in here first,’ said Surefoot slowly. ‘He had to wash his hands

and as he turned on the tap, his sleeve brushed the wall. There was blood

on it but he didn’t notice. He took his coat off and threw it on the edge

of the bath. Then he changed his mind and hung it up.’

 

‘Blood?’ Mary stared at the gruesome stain. ‘Do you think he hurt himself

getting in?’

 

‘No, we should have seen it on the floor or in the passage. Besides, the

glass door of the corridor wasn’t broken—I wonder where he got it?’

Surefoot considered all the possibilities in the shortest space of time.

‘It beats me,’ he said.

 

Surefoot Smith went into the kitchen to re-examine the clock. He was no

believer in coincidences, had seen the stopped clock too often featured

in works of fiction to believe implicitly the story it told. But his

inspection removed all doubt; the clock had not stopped, but was still

ticking; the jolt had merely thrown the pin connecting the hands from its

gear, and no clever clue-maker could have done that.

 

Mary had followed him into the kitchen, and watched him silently whilst

he was making the examination. ‘Now will you tell me?’ she said quietly.

 

Surefoot Smith gaped at her. ‘About—?’

 

‘You said you would tell me what you have discovered about Mr Lyne’s

murder.’

 

He perched himself on the edge of the kitchen table, and briefly told her

all he knew.

 

To say that Dick Allenby was surprised was to put it mildly. He regarded

every Scotland Yard detective as reticence personified. Surefoot Smith

was notoriously ‘dumb’, and here he was talking freely to the girl, and,

if he showed any embarrassment at all, it was the presence of Dick

himself which provoked the inhibition.

 

Mary Lane sat with her hands clasped in her lap. She frowned.

 

‘Got anything?’ asked Surefoot anxiously.

 

And then he must have caught a glimpse of the astonishment in Dick

Allenby’s face, for he scowled at him.

 

‘You think I’m being foolish, Mr Allenby? Get the idea out of your mind;

I never am. Every woman has just the kind of mind that every detective

should have and hasn’t. No science in it—not that I mean to be

disrespectful, Miss Lane—just plain commonsense. Got it?’

 

He addressed the girl again. She shook her head. ‘Not quite,’ she said.

‘I know why they burgled my flat, of course.’

 

Surefoot Smith nodded. ‘But you can’t quite understand how they came to

think it was here?’

 

Dick interrupted. ‘May I be very dense,’ he asked politely, ‘and inquire

what this is all about? Didn’t know what was here?’

 

‘The bank statement,’ said Mary, without looking up, and again Smith

nodded, a broad grin on his face. ‘I guess that’s what they came for, but

I can’t understand how they knew.’

 

Surefoot chuckled. ‘I am the clever fellow that gave it away,’ he said.

‘I told Mike Hennessey this afternoon that a bank statement had been sent

to you. I didn’t tell him that it was in my pocket, and I could have

saved him a lot of time and trouble. It’s a great pity.’ He ran his hand

irritably through his hair and slid off the table. ‘Those bloodstains

now—they look bad,’ he said, and loafed out of the room with the other

two behind him into the bathroom. ‘That’s his sleeve—that’s his hand,

but too blurred to get a print. The man who came here wasn’t hurt, and

probably wasn’t aware that he was bloodstained. Look at the top of that

tap.’

 

He pointed; there was a distinct smear of blood on the top of one of the

taps.

 

Surefoot Smith took out his torch and began to examine the passageway. It

gave him nothing in the shape of clues; but when he went outside the

fireproof door and inspected the door itself, he found two new traces of

blood, one on the iron railings and one just below the glass panel of the

door.

 

‘I’ll use your phone,’ he said, and a few minutes later was talking

volubly to Scotland Yard. Every railway station was to be watched; all

ports and airports were to be warned. ‘Not that he’ll attempt to get out

of the country. It’s curious how seldom they do,’ he explained to the

girl.

 

His offer to send up a man to be on guard outside the door she refused

immediately, but he insisted, and in such a tone that she knew it would

be a waste of time on her part to press her objection.

 

On his way home he called at old Lyne’s house to interview Binny. That

worthy man was in bed when he knocked, and showed considerable and quite

understandable reluctance to open the door. No police had been left on

the premises; Surefoot had been content to remove all documents to

Scotland Yard for a closer scrutiny and to seal up the bedroom and the

study.

 

Binny led him down to the kitchen, poked together the dying remnants of

the small fire and dropped wood on it, for the night was a little chilly.

 

‘I wondered who it was knocking—it brought me heart up into me mouth,’

he apologized, as he ushered the visitor into the tiny room. ‘I suppose,

Mr Smith’—his voice was very anxious—‘the old gentleman didn’t leave me

anything? I heard you’d found the will—mind you, I’m not going to be

disappointed if he didn’t. He wasn’t the kind of man who worried very

much about servants; he used to say he hated having them about the place.

Still, you never know—’

 

‘I haven’t read the will thoroughly,’ said Surefoot, ‘but I don’t seem to

remember finding your name very prominently displayed.’

 

Binny sighed.

 

‘It’s been the dream of my life that somebody would die and leave me a

million,’ he said pathetically. ‘I was a good servant to him—cooked his

food, made his bed, did everything for him.’

 

The detective pushed over a carton of cheap cigarettes and, still

sighing, Binny selected one and lit it.

 

‘There’s one way you can help me, I think,’ said Smith. ‘Do you remember

Mr Moran coming here?’ Binny nodded. ‘Do you know what he came about?’

 

The man hesitated a moment. ‘I don’t know, sir. But I have an idea it had

something to do with his balance. Mr Lyne was a very curious old

gentleman; he never wanted to see anybody, and when he did he was always

a bit unpleasant to ‘em.’

 

‘Was he unpleasant to Mr Moran?’

 

Binny hesitated. ‘Well, I don’t want to tell tales out of school, Mr

Smith, but from what I heard he did snap a bit at him.’

 

‘You listened, eh?’

 

Binny smiled and shook his head. ‘You didn’t have to listen, sir.’ He

pointed to the ceiling.

 

‘The study’s above here. You can’t hear what people are saying, but if a

gentleman raises his voice as Mr Lyne did, you can hear him.’

 

‘You know Moran?’ Binny nodded, ‘Do you know him very well?’

 

‘Very well, sir. I worked for him—

 

‘I remember, yes.’ Surefoot Smith bit his lower lip thoughtfully. ‘Did he

speak to you after his interview with the old man?’

 

Again Binny hesitated. ‘I don’t want to get anybody into trouble—’

 

‘The trouble with you, Binny, is that you can’t say “yes” or “no.” Did

you see him?’

 

‘Yes, sir, I did.’ Binny was evidently nettled. ‘I was taking in a letter

that had come by post as lie went out. And now, Mr Smith, I’ll tell you

the truth. He said a strange thing to me—he asked me not to mention the

fact that he’d been, and slipped me a quid. Now I’ve told you all I know.

I thought it was funny—but, bless your heart, he wasn’t the first man to

ask me not to mention the fact that they’d called on Mr Lyne.’

 

‘I suppose not.’

 

On a little table near the wall was a small paper parcel, loosely

wrapped. Surefoot Smith was blessed with a keen sense of smell; he could

disentangle the most conflicting and elusive odours. But putty was not

one of them; it had a pungent and, to Surefoot Smith, an unpleasant

aroma. He pointed to the parcel.

 

‘Putty?’

 

Binny looked at him in surprise. ‘Yes, sir.’

 

‘Have you been mending windows?’ Surefoot looked up.

 

‘No, sir, that was done by a glazier. I broke the