The Clue of the Silver Key - Edgar Wallace (read e book txt) 📗
- Author: Edgar Wallace
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As the car drove into Naylors Crescent he saw Surefoot Smith and three
plain clothes officers waiting outside the house.
‘Sorry to bring you back, but it’s necessary that I should make another
search of this house, and it’s very advisable you should be present.’
‘Did you find Moran?’ asked Dick impatiently.’ You got my telephone
message—’ Surefoot nodded. ‘Did he tell you anything about Binny?’
‘Binny’s told me quite a lot about himself,’ said Surefoot grimly. ‘I
haven’t interviewed the gentleman, but he left a very illuminating
document.’
Dick opened the door of the house and they went in.
Although it had only been unoccupied for a very short time, it smelt of
emptiness and neglect. Hervey Lyne’s study had been tidied up after the
detective’s search. Every corner had been examined, the very floorboards
and hearthstone lifted by the police in their vain effort to find a clue.
It was unlikely that this apartment would yield any fresh evidence.
They went into the kitchen, where Mary Lane had her unpleasant adventure.
Smith had visited the place an hour or two after Mary’s escape, had
passed through the cupboard door down a flight of steps to the coal
cellar. The truckle bed he had found there on his first visit had been
removed.
‘The strangest thing about Binny is his wife,’ said Surefoot, ‘Why he
should attach himself, or allow himself to be attached, to this poor
drunkard is beyond my understanding. He must have smuggled her away the
night Miss Lane came here, and where she is at the moment I’d rather not
inquire.’
Dick had already expressed his opinion on this matter. He thought it was
probable that the woman was not Binny’s wife at all. Hervey Lyne
invariably advertised for a man and wife. To gain admission to the
establishment Binny would not have been above hiring a woman to suit his
purpose. This theory was rather supported by the fact that ‘Mrs Binny’
occupied a small, separate room. That she could have been a source of
menace to the murderer was unlikely. The evidence of tradesmen had been
that she was invariably in a state of fuddle, and that the cooking was
done by Binny himself.
THE INVALID CHAIR in which the old man had been found dead occupied a
place under the stairs, and to Dick’s surprise the detective gave
instructions to have it taken into the front room study. Surefoot had
always had an uncomfortable feeling that he had not paid sufficient
attention to the chair. What he had learned in the past few days made a
further examination essential.
Immediately opposite the door of the study there was an alcove in the
wall of the passage, and he saw now that this served a useful purpose.
Obviously Lyne was in the habit of getting into the chair in the study.
Against the lintel of the door, at the height of the wheel’s hub, were
several scratches and indentations where the hub had touched the wood.
But for the fortuitous circumstance of the alcove being so placed, it
would have been difficult either to take the chair into the room or bring
it out. Surefoot put a detective into the chair and made the experiment
of drawing him into the street. The width of the conveyance was only a
few inches less than the width of the front door opening and again he
found marks on the door posts where the hub had touched. Without
assistance he pushed the chair into the street. The wheels fitted into
the little tramlines which Lyne had had placed for the purpose. The slope
was so gentle that it was as easy to pull the laden chair back into the
house.
The experiment told him very little. On the day of the murder he had
examined every square inch of the vehicle. He ordered it to be put back
in the place where it had been found and then continued his search and
examination of the house.
‘What do you expect to find?’ asked Dick.
‘Binny,’ was the terse reply. ‘This fellow isn’t a fool. He’s got a
hiding place somewhere, and I wish I knew where to look for it.’ He
looked at his watch. ‘I wonder if I could persuade Miss Lane to come
along?’
Dick Allenby took a taxi to the hotel, a little doubtful whether after
the excitement of the night she would be either physically fit or willing
to come to this house of gloom. He found her in her sitting-room, showing
no evidence of the strain she had experienced. Her first question was
about Binny.
‘No, we haven’t found him,’ said Dick. His voice was troubled. ‘I’m
getting terribly worried about you, Mary. This fellow would stop at
nothing.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think he’ll worry me again,’ she said. ‘Mr
Smith is right: Binny will take no risk that doesn’t bring him profit. As
long as he thought he could get the bank statement from me or stop me
speaking and telling what I had discovered about the cheques, I think I
must have been in terrible danger.’
‘How did he know you were making inquiries?’
‘He knew when I sent him up to the North,’ she said.’ That was a crude
little plan, wasn’t it? I under-rated his intelligence and he must have
been following me when I was visiting the tradesmen. I had an idea once
that I saw him. It was the day I went to Maidstone.’
She showed no reluctance in accompanying Dick back to the house. On the
way she told him that she had seen Leo Mora in the night and that he was
out of danger. There had been time when the doctors had been doubtful as
to whether he would recover.
They reached the house. Surefoot was in the little courtyard at the back.
She followed Dick down the few steps that led to the kitchen. She
shuddered as she recalled her midnight visit to this sinister little
apartment. Even now, in the light of day, it had an unpleasant atmosphere
due, she admitted to herself, rather to her imagination than to unhappy
memory. There was the ‘cupboard’ door wide open now and the little door
into which she had fitted the replica of the silver key. The kitchen and
the adjoining scullery seemed amazingly small. She realized that this was
due to the fact that her earliest recollections of the house belonged to
childhood, when small rooms look large and low articles of furniture
unusually high.
Surefoot came in as she was looking around and nodded a greeting.
‘Remember this, Miss Lane?’
‘Yes.’ She pointed to the inner kitchen, looking very deal with its
lining of white tiles.’ That’s new,’ she said, and walked in.
The place puzzled her: she missed something, and try as she did she could
not recollect what it was. Some feature of the room as she remembered it,
was missing. She did not mention, her doubts, thinking that memory was
playing tricks—a way that memory has.
‘You know what this is?’ asked Smith. He had found it in the kitchen
drawer: a curious looking instrument rather like a short garden syringe,
except that at the end was a rubber cup. ‘It’s a vacuum pump,’ explained
Smith.
He wetted the edge of the rubber cup, pressed it on the table and,
drawing up the piston, lifted the table bodily at one end. ‘What’s the
idea of that? Have you ever seen it before?’ She shook her head.
Surefoot had found some other things: a small pot of dark-green paint and
a hardened mass wrapped in oily newspaper. ‘Putty,’ he explained. ‘I saw
it when I was here before. Do you know what it was used for?’ He beckoned
her and she followed him into a dark passage.
The bulb that had been switched on gave very little light, but Surefoot
took a powerful little torch from his pocket. He walked up to the door,
stooped and, sending the bright light along the inside of the thick door
panel, said: ‘You see that, and that?’ She saw now a deep circular
indentation. ‘It was filled with putty and painted over. I thought it was
a nut-hole until I started picking out the putty.’
‘What is it?’ she asked wonderingly.
‘It is the mark made by a spent bullet,’ said Smith slowly. ‘The bullet
that killed Hervey Lyne. He was shot in this passage.’
‘IT’S ALL BASED on deduction so far,’ said Surefoot, ‘but it is the kind
of deduction that I am willing to bet on, and that is saying a lot for
me: I don’t waste money. Binny had known for some time that the old man
was suspecting him and things were getting desperate. He had to do
something and do it pretty quickly. The old man was getting suspicious
about his bank account. He couldn’t have suspected Binny or he wouldn’t
have told him to send for Moran. Lyne hated bankers and never had an
interview unless he couldn’t help it. When Binny was told to send for the
bank manager he was in a hole. There was only one thing he could do and
that was to get a confederate to pose as a bank manager and that
confederate was—’
‘Mike Hennessey!’ said Dick.
Surefoot nodded.
‘I haven’t any doubt about that,’ he said. ‘When we searched Hennessey’s
clothes we found a paper containing the identical figures that were on
the statement. This could only mean that Binny had supplied him with the
figures and that Mike had had to commit them to memory in case the old
man questioned him. Obviously the paper had been continuously handled. I
was extremely soiled and had been folded and re-folded.’
They were in the kitchen and providentially Surefoot had found a big
sheet of blotting-paper, which he spread on the table, and on which he
elaborated his theory as he spoke.
‘Moran was never notified and never asked to call. It happened by a
coincidence that he was not in his office at the time of the interview.
He was, in fact, consulting with the agents of the Cassari Oils. At the
time fixed for the appointment Mike came. Hervey Lyne had never seen the
bank manager, and even if he had he would not have recognized him, for he
was nearly blind. He must have said something or done something which
left the old man unsatisfied. Lyne was very shrewd. One of his hobbies
was working out how he could be swindled and it is possible that he had a
doubt in his mind whether the man who called on him was Moran; and he may
have heard the real Moran on the radio that night.
‘We shall never know what it was that made suspicion a certainty. It may
have been something he overheard in the kitchen: there were times when
Binny and his so-called wife had unholy rows—I got this from the servants
in the next house. He picked up the first piece of paper he could find—it
happened to be the bank statement—and wrote the message to you.’ He
nodded at Mary. ‘I do not think there is any doubt that he was sure that
the man who had called that morning was not Moran, and that he suspected
Binny of being the villain of the piece and that is why he asked that the
police should be sent for. Binny got to know this. Whether the old man
charged him at the last moment or said something, we shall only know if
Binny tells the truth before he is hanged.
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