15: Flown!

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RICHARD moved off to a table in a quiet corner of the coffee-room, motioning Liversedge to follow him. They were comparatively alone, but he lowered his voice as he leaned across from his chair.

“Does that mean---arrest?” he asked.

“Why, scarcely that, as yet, Mr. Marchmont. Though, to be sure, we shall keep our eyes on Lansdale now that we’ve found him. No!---What it does mean is that our people at headquarters want to hear, from his own lips, some explanation of his doings on the night of your uncle’s death, and of his movements since. There’s a certain suspicion attached to him, of course. It all depends on what account he gives of himself as to whether he’s detained or not. He may be able to give a perfectly satisfactory account of his goings-on. Again---he mayn’t!”

“Then---he’ll have to go with you?” suggested Richard.

“If he’s an innocent man, he’ll make no bones about that!” said Liversedge. “Best thing for him!---in his own interests.”

“An innocent man may be forced into a very queer position,” remarked Richard. “He may find it very difficult to show that he is an innocent man!”

“Well, he’s done himself no good by hiding down here,” replied Liversedge. “He’d have done far better to come out into the open at once. When a man runs off and hides himself as he’s done----”

“Didn’t Vandelius explain that to you?” asked Richard.

Liversedge picked up his knife and fork and began to eat his bacon and eggs. He chewed steadily for a minute or two before he replied. “Vandelius, Mr. Marchmont,” he said at last, “is a queer chap! I had a fair amount of talk with him during the time I was up there, and I can’t make him out. He’s a good hand at telling a straight and plausible tale, though. What he said amounts to this: He knew something, though probably not everything, about Lansdale’s movements on what the newspaper fellows and story-writers would call the fateful night. I don’t think he was more than, shall we say, politely concerned about your uncle---and not a great deal about Lansdale and his safety. What he really was concerned about was getting through, satisfactorily, some big business deal, to complete which the signatures of Lansdale and himself, to certain papers, not then arrived, but daily expected, were absolutely necessary. He didn’t want anything to interfere with that. So---he carried Lansdale off to this place. Now, I understand, the papers have come, and have been signed---last night. And, the deal being effected, it’s my conviction that Vandelius has pretty well exhausted his interest in the affair. He lives in an atmosphere of mystery, anyhow!”

“He takes jolly good care to guard himself!” remarked Richard. “Did I tell you how I got into his house last night? No?---Well, you listen!” He went on to tell Liversedge of his adventures from leaving the hotel to being held up by the armed men in the shrubbery. “What do you make of that?” he concluded. “Out of the common, eh?”

“Sounds like a bit out of a tale, or a scene from a play,” said Liversedge. “Vandelius is a mystery man, and I’d like to know more about him. But I’m not concerned with him just now---professionally. My concern is with Lansdale.”

“But aren’t they all mixed up?” suggested Richard. “How are you going to disassociate one from the other? Vandelius, to begin with. Then that man Crench---for whom I’ve a particular dislike, though I don’t know why. Then the other man, Garner. I don’t like the looks of him, either! They are all mixed up together---evidently!”

“I know something of the last two,” remarked Liversedge. “Crench is pretty much what Simpson described him to be---a pettifogging solicitor, with very little practice. Garner, I have found out, is a man who’s been known for some time, in certain circles, as a company promoter. He’s not in very good odour, so I’m told. Never come under our notice, you understand, but still a doubtful character---been connected with some affairs of the sort that can only be catalogued under one head---shady. And the strange thing to me about this business, Mr. Marchmont, is just this: If Vandelius and Lansdale are such wealthy men, such great figures in high finance, what are they doing in company and in dealings with a twopenny-halfpenny solicitor and a man of questionable reputation?”

“I gathered, from what I saw and heard, that Crench and Garner are merely subordinates, paid employees, underlings,” replied Richard. “Vandelius is the head and front.”

“Maybe!” agreed the detective. “But I should have thought he could or would have got himself better-class tools. However, as I said, I’ve nothing to do with those three---at present. My job is with Lansdale. Now, Mr. Marchmont, you can come in at this! So let me ask a question---did you see the daughter last night?”

“No,” replied Richard.

“You’ll see her this morning---I’ll take care of that,” continued Liversedge. “Now, Mr. Marchmont, you talk confidentially to her---and straight out. Tell her to advise her father to come at once with me to headquarters, and to give us a candid, frank, truthful account of his doings with Mr. Henry Marchmont. Tell her to point out to him that he’s nothing to fear if he’ll be straightforward with our people, and will tell all he knows about Henry Marchmont and the Bedford Row office on the night of the murder. Convince her---and get her to convince him---that openness is his best policy. I mean to say---let her persuade him that he’ll be acting in his own very best interests if he comes quietly along with me and tells his tale in a candid fashion. It’s all we want!”

“Supposing you don’t believe him?” suggested Richard bluntly.

Liversedge shook his head.

“It’s got to be an obviously hatched-up story that we’re suspicious of, Mr. Marchmont,” he answered. “We can tell when a man’s speaking the truth, in nine cases out of ten! Anyhow, that’s the thing to be done. Get Miss Lansdale to talk to her father a bit---then you can come with both of them, in our car, to headquarters, where he can say his say. A thousand times better than hiding in holes and corners and letting suspicion gather more and more thickly about him!”

“You’ve got to remember that Lansdale made no effort to run away,” remarked Richard. “It was Vandelius who persuaded him to leave the hotel.”

“Oh, I know that, Mr. Marchmont!” asserted Liversedge. “That’s all right!---but it doesn’t alter my present contention. They’ve got this deal through---now let Lansdale come out and unbosom himself.”

“Didn’t he say to you this morning that he’d speak at the right time and place?” asked Richard. “Well?---what did he mean by that?”

“I don’t know,” answered Liversedge. He pushed away his plate, and drank off his coffee. “The right time is as soon as may be, and the right place is Scotland Yard, Mr. Marchmont! Let’s be getting up to the Manor.”

Richard gave some instructions to his valet, and joining Liversedge outside the hotel, set off with him along the road which by that time had become as familiar to him as Jermyn Street.

“You left a couple of your men at the house, didn’t you?” he asked as they came in view of the battlemented gateway in the wall. “On guard, I suppose?”

“Why, sufferance would be a better term, Mr. Marchmont,” replied Liversedge, with a smile. “On sufferance!---Vandelius’s sufferance. We’ve no warrant, you know---we’re merely here on a voyage of exploration. I asked him if I could leave my assistants there while I came back to the town to see you---he was quite agreeable. A very amiable gentleman, Mr. Vandelius!---that is, if he likes to be! If he likes to be, Mr. Marchmont, eh?---if he likes to be!”

“You think he could show another side of himself?” suggested Richard.

“I should imagine he could show a good many sides!” assented Liversedge dryly. He pointed his stick at the confines of the Manor. “Now why does he surround himself and his demesne with a wall that makes you think of a jail, and why is the only way through it built like the gateway of one of our old castles?---you’d think he feared a siege. Look at that door!---solid oak, studded with iron nails, and twenty feet high---formidable affair that, Mr. Marchmont! I reckon it would take one of those ancient battering rams they used to use to make an impression on it. Looks like it would never open----”

But just then the two halves of the great door swung back, moved by some invisible machinery, and a powerful automobile swept through, at full speed, the janitor having thrown the gates open in readiness for its approach; it was travelling so rapidly that it flashed past Richard and his companion before they had more than realised its presence. Yet great as its speed was, they were able to see that the blinds of its windows, front back, and sides, were closely drawn; whoever was inside was securely guarded from outside inspection. The two men turned sharply and followed the car’s course, instead of taking the road to the town, it slowed down a little, rounded a bend, and took what both knew to be the highway to London.

“I wonder who was in that?” exclaimed the detective. “Queer! Blinds drawn in every window, Mr. Marchmont! Not a glimpse of the contents possible!”

“Vandelius, I should say,” replied Richard. He went on to tell Liversedge of what the garrulous waiter had told him the previous morning. “One of his eccentricities, I suppose,” he concluded.

Liversedge made no comment on that. But when they had passed through the wicket-gate at the main entrance he hastened his steps and walked fast towards the house. Once across the moat, he walked faster still---and still faster when he caught sight of his two assistants advancing in his direction over the trim lawns. Richard, inspecting their faces as they drew near, saw that these men were either perturbed or perplexed---perhaps both.

“Anything wrong?” demanded Liversedge as they came within speaking distance. “Anything happened?”

“We don’t know---we aren’t sure!” replied the elder of the two. “But did you see a closed car on the road or in this park? Well, we think Lansdale and his daughter are off in that!”

Liversedge smothered what was obviously going to be an expletive.

“What makes you think that?” he demanded. “Did you see anything?”

The man who had first spoken turned, pointing to the house.

“We were taking a turn there, in the garden before the front,” he answered. “A man-servant came and told us that breakfast was laid for us. We went in with him—he took us to a room at the back, where breakfast was ready---a jolly good breakfast too----”

“Confound it! Why didn’t you go separately?” exclaimed Liversedge. “One at a time---leaving the other to watch?”

“We didn’t know what to do---we never expected anything to happen until you came back. They were very polite, and----”

“Get on with it!” said Liversedge “Quick!”

“Well, when we came back to the front from breakfast, an elderly man and a young lady were just stepping into that car! We’d no right, you know, to stop or question them, and of course we didn’t know who they were; besides, the car was off on the instant---full speed down the park. We----”

Liversedge stopped him with another impatient exclamation. He looked round---and suddenly caught sight of Mr. Vandelius, who, attired in country-squire fashion, was evidently giving some instructions to his head gardener, at the end of the terrace. The detective made for him, closely followed by Richard.

“Mr. Vandelius!” said Liversedge in injured tones. “You’ve let Lansdale go!”

Vandelius turned and stared hard at his questioner; of Richard he now took no notice whatever.

“My good fellow!” he said, looking Liversedge slowly over from head to foot. “You are impertinent! You speak to me as if I had been Mr. Lansdale’s jailer instead of his host! It is only because I don’t wish to be rude to you that I tell you that just after breakfast Mr. Lansdale informed me that he wished to go up to town at once. I immediately placed one of my cars at his disposal, and he has gone---and his daughter with him. They have returned, of course, to the Hotel Cecil. You had better follow them---with your companion.”

He turned away, without further word or sign, and Liversedge, after a moment’s hesitation, glanced at Richard with a wry expression.

“That’s what they call being done in, Mr. Marchmont!” he muttered. “Pipped! Now, you know, I’d a suspicion that Lansdale was in that car! Well!---now it’s all got to begin over again!”

“Scarcely that, if Mr. Lansdale’s returned to his hotel,” remarked Richard.

“Aye---but has he?” said Liversedge. “Perhaps!---and perhaps not! However, I can only go there and see. I’ll get off at once. About yourself, now?”

Richard told him that he would get back to London by the next train, and would go straight to the Hotel Cecil. He returned to the town and collected his valet and shortly after noon turned out of the Strand into the courtyard of the big hotel, in the ardent hope of seeing Angelita within a few minutes. Instead, he saw---Liversedge. Liversedge shook his head.

“They haven’t come back here,” he said. “They haven’t heard anything of their coming, either. I never supposed they would come. As I remarked down there at Vandelius’s this morning, we’ve got to begin all over again. But I say, Mr. Marchmont, haven’t you forgotten something? The adjourned inquest on your uncle is fixed for this afternoon. Two o’clock---same court. I suppose you’re going to be there?---though we’ve got very little new evidence, if any.”

Richard got a hasty lunch and went to the Coroner’s court. He had forgotten all about the adjourned inquest until Liversedge reminded him of it, and he had little hope of hearing anything that would clear up the mystery of Henry Marchmont’s murder. He expected nothing, in short, when he entered the gloomy court, and certainly not to see what he saw as he stepped in---Angelita sitting at the solicitor’s table, and next to her a man whom he knew at once to be her father.