Into this pause floated again the voice of the landlady. “I’ve taken the hot water along, sir. Are you coming up now?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Priestley grimly, flung open the door once more and began to mount the stairs.
Willy-nilly, Laura went with him.
Chapter VII.
Inspector Cottingham Smells Blood
If anybody had told Guy Nesbitt, a few hours earlier, that at twelve o’clock the same night he would be engaged in a whole-hearted attempt to hoodwink the official police force, the proprietor of an important newspaper and the entire British public, as if they had all been provided with one enormous joint leg for hauling purposes, he would have repudiated the suggestion with grief and amazement. And rightly, notwithstanding the subsequent event, because these things cannot be concocted in cold blood.
One does not remark casually over one’s second cup of tea: “By the way, you people, an idea’s just occurred to me for hoaxing the British Broadcasting Company rather neatly. Anybody care to give me a hand? I shall tell them, you see, that I’ve got a trained rabbit that gives organ recitals, and …” Certainly not. But give the average law-respecting Briton (which Guy was not, nor yet Mr. Doyle, but George was) a modicum of sound alcohol to titillate his sense of humour into a slightly perverted form, taunt him through the mouth of one friend with inability to carry the thing through, egg him on through the lips of another to show the stuff he is made of, and smile at him through his wife’s eyes as if to say, “Dear old Guy! Oh yes, my dear, he often talks like this—but bless you, he’d never do anything. Oh, dear no!”—do these things to him, and then be very careful not to answer for the consequences. For consequences will certainly occur. In cold blood George would never have considered that he possessed any corpse-imitating properties at all.
At twelve o’clock, then, two people stood in Guy’s drawing-room and dithered; two others watched them happily. The ditherers were the constable, who had been keeping it up for the last hour, and Mr. Foster. These two victims of the modern cinema were being watched by Guy himself, with critical appreciation of their efforts towards his ends, and by Inspector Cottingham, of the Abingchester Police.
Inspector Cottingham was a fatherly man, with a large walrus moustache, and he was very, very happy. He had not only smelt blood, he had actually seen it. He had, not to disguise the truth, gloated over it. Blood very seldom comes the way of a country Inspector of Police.
Inspector Cottingham however, had been blessed above most country Inspectors, for this was the second time blood had come his way. Many, many years ago, when the Inspector had been a mere Sergeant, a small village outside Abingchester had startled the placid neighbourhood by becoming the scene of a particularly brutal and mysterious murder, and Sergeant Cottingham had taken the matter in hand. To the admiration of the neighbourhood, and the intense surprise of his superior officers, the Sergeant, by a series of brilliant deductions, had followed an obscure trail to the person of the murderer, who, sharing the astonishment of the Sergeant’s superiors, had been so taken aback as to confess at once to the crime.
This confession was very fortunate for the Sergeant. It obviated all necessity to produce the person of a certain Ethel Wilkinson, a labourer’s daughter, who had actually seen the murder committed, had told the Sergeant all about it, and had pointed out to him the clues which had so won the Chief Constable’s admiration—a series of facts which the Sergeant had prudently concealed. Ethel Wilkinson, who had no wish to be mixed up in such a sordid affair and help to put a rope round a fellow-creature’s neck, had been grateful to the Sergeant for keeping her name out of it and had never breathed a word of her knowledge from that day; the Sergeant had been no less grateful to Ethel Wilkinson. The Chief Constable, sharing in the general gratitude, had come to the conclusion that he had misjudged a very sound man and had caused the Sergeant to be promoted, by way of some small reward, to the rank of Inspector. Ever since then Inspector Cottingham had naturally been the district’s sage and authority where the science of criminal detection was concerned.