The Missing Million

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"IF the detection of crime was as simple as the average detective story, I should solve all the mysteries of the world before I got out of bed," said Jimmy Sepping. "It is a pretty simple business, once all the characters have been introduced and you've had an opportunity of studying their various peculiarities, to narrow your suspicions down to two or three people. Obviously, the villain of the piece cannot be the open-faced hero with the curly hair, however damning the evidence may be against him. As obviously it cannot be the pure, blue-eyed heroine, or the inevitable friend of the family."

Rex Walton laughed softly and filled his glass from the long-necked bottle. He was dining at Jimmy's flat, and he was very ready to find life amusing, for it was the last night of his bachelorhood. Jimmy went on.

"If all villains were tall, dark men, who wore cloaks and sombreros and a sinister expression, and blue eyes were invariably a proof of innocence, life would run very smoothly— wait!"

He got up from the table and went out of the room, returning with a bulky volume under his arm. Clearing a space by the side of his guest, he laid the book down and opened it. It was a scrap-book in which were pasted photographs of men and women, interiors and exteriors of houses, letters, scraps of pencilled writings, rough plans, and, on one page, a few pressed flowers.

"Look at that man."

His finger touched the portrait of a smiling young man with deep-set, intelligent eyes.

"That is Ballon, the Gateshead murderer. He killed four women and disposed of their bodies so cleverly that we never found one. Who would you say that was?"

He touched another portrait. It was that of a man, broad-faced, menacing.

"Notice the small eyes, the irregular-shaped nose, the loose lower lip?"

"Another murderer," suggested Rex, and Jimmy chuckled.

"Chief Inspector Carter, who arrested Ballon. Carter is a bachelor who spends all his money on running a creche for poor children!"

He turned a leaf.

"Is that a good woman or a bad woman?" He pointed to another picture.

Rex shook his head.

"She looks a commonplace, middle-class woman to me," he said. "I should think it was a portrait of an old housekeeper or a faithful family retainer."

"Jessie Heinz— baby farmer," said the other briefly. "She killed seven children and was hanged at Cardiff."

He closed the book with a bang.

"When the police arrive on the scene in a murder case, they come into contact with the body of somebody unknown to them. All that body stands for, all its hates and fears and loves, all the complex of its life, are unknown. The strings that bound it to the world are cut. You have to work back and reconstitute its associations."

Rex Walton looked thoughtfully at the end of his cigar and gently tapped the ash into the coffee saucer.

"I wish to heaven you could reconstruct Kupie— and kill him," he said savagely.

Jimmy looked up quickly.

"I have tried, and so far failed. If you are normal you can never get into the mind of an anonymous letter writer. Kupie is more than that, I admit. He is a most expert blackmailer, but not all his letters are written for profit. Sheer wicked malice is behind half his letters."

"Go on," said Rex Walton quietly. "It always hurts, and to-night, of all nights, I should keep the matter out of my mind."

"I'm sorry; I had forgotten," said Jimmy, and tried to turn the subject.

"It was malice that made him kill Miller—"

Rex jumped from his chair as though he had been shot.

"Miller— which Miller? Not the Scotland Yard man? Good God!"

The terror in his blanched face was a revelation to Jimmy.

"You knew him? He was the man you consulted about this villain's warning?"

Rex nodded.

"Do you think... he was killed for that? How did they—"

"He committed suicide. I tell you this in confidence, Rex, because the part that Kupie played is not public property and never will be. They found something about him, something discreditable."

Rex shook his head wildly.

"It wasn't that," he cried, "it wasn't that! He was killed because he helped me. Because..."

"Well?" asked Jimmy as the man paused. Rex Walton took out his pocket- handkerchief and wiped his streaming forehead.

"I shall be glad when to-morrow is over," he said as he poured out another glass of wine (his hand was shaking, Jimmy noted and wondered). "Zero hour never got me like this, though I've seen men paralysed with fear. But we knew what was on the other side of No-Man's-Land. Kupie is unknown."

Then suddenly he laughed.

"I'm a fool," he said. "The thing I am afraid of can't happen— now."

Jimmy was instantly alert.

"Why not now'?" he asked.

At that instant there was a knock at the door, and his manservant came in.

"Miss Coleman and Miss Walton," he announced.

Dora looked lovely in a wrap of crimson velvet; pretty Joan Walton, with her bobbed hair and her virile face, almost suffered by contrast.

"This is not my idea of a bachelors' dinner," said Dora, a smile in her eyes. "Yet I'm sure you have not been dull, Rex."

Walton helped her out of the crimson theatre wrap she was wearing.

"No, I'm never dull with old Jim," he said, and there was nothing in his voice that would betray the strain he endured.

"What have you been talking about? Crime and murder, and things of that kind?" asked Joan. "Nobody ever helps me with my wrap— don't trouble, Jimmy."

She flung her cloak on to the sofa and pulled up a chair.

"The play was bad, and Dora was so full of her own thoughts that I couldn't even get her to say unpleasant things about the leading actor," she said. "What is that?"

She made to open the book on the table, but Jimmy stopped her.

"Not for little girls," he said. "It is my little book of horrors."

"Do let me see it," pleaded Joan, her eyes dancing. "There can't be anything more tragical in it than 'Sundered Lives.'"

"I thought 'Sundered Lives' was a comedy?"

"It is supposed to be," said Joan, and helped herself to a cigarette. "I feel in harmony with the criminal classes to-night. Observe the pained look in Dora's eyes!"

Dora Coleman laughed quietly.

"I'm not at all pained. You've been trying to shock me all the evening, but I absolutely refuse to so much as raise an eyebrow."

"My dear Joan," said Walton, with a little touch of irritation in his voice, "I do wish that you wouldn't bother Dora."

"It's good for Dora to be shocked," said Joan calmly.

She glanced over the table, picked up the wine bottle and read the label with a grimace.

"Dr. Budsteiner? How very dull!" she said. "I thought on such occasions as these the good yellow wine of Champagne was the only admissible drink. Jimmy, have you been giving him good advice?"

"I never offer advice to young married people, or young about-to-be-married people," said Jimmy. "It does not come within the province of a police officer."

Dora had taken a grape from the table and was nibbling it thoughtfully.

"Did Rex tell you his secret?"

Jimmy's eyebrows rose.

"I didn't know that he had a secret," he said truthfully.

"He has secret plans for the honeymoon," interrupted Joan with an extravagant flourish of her cigarette. "It is to be a honeymoon like no other honeymoon ever was! Nothing so commonplace as a journey to Venice; no flying off to the wilds of Scotland; no disappearance to Paris." She turned to her brother, laughter in her eyes. "Tell us now, Rex; you're amongst friends. I swear—" She wetted her finger and drew it with a suggestive gesture across her throat.

"You can swear until your eyes grow green," said her brother complacently. "That is my own mystery, which I share with nobody. It is a secret I shall tell my bride immediately after we leave the registrar. Now, young people, I'll take you home. You'll be at Portland Place to-morrow? We're having the wedding breakfast beforehand— I've told you that about three times. Then we go on to the registrar's office. No wedding presents, Jimmy." He raised a warning finger.

"Even the wedding present to the bride is a mystery," said Joan. "Personally, I insist upon giving a silver-plated cruet. It is an invariable practice of mine, and one from which I will not depart. People aren't properly married unless they have silver cruets— it's part of the ceremony."

Jimmy escorted them to the entrance of Halliwell House, the block of flats in which he lived, and watched on the sidewalk until the car had disappeared. As he stood there a man passed hurriedly and, stepping back, Jimmy came into collision.

"Sorry," said Jimmy, but the man hurried on without a word.

Jimmy went back to the deserted dining-room. Putting his hand into the pocket of his dinner-jacket to find his match-box, his fingers touched something unusual and he drew it out. It was a tiny celluloid doll of familiar pattern, a "Kupie" with staring eyes and smirking lips. About its little middle was a white ribbon sash on which had been written:

Keep out and stay out.

He looked at the tiny doll in amazement.

"Where the devil did that come from?" he demanded.