Dictator's Way (31 page)

Olive by now was in a very distressed, nervous condition, as if she were beginning to realize more clearly what had happened. He did his best to soothe her and soon help arrived, first the emissaries from the Yard direct, and then Ulyett, so that Bobby was very busy telling his story over and over again and explaining how it was he had been there to make the discovery. Olive, too, had to answer many questions. She had been staying, she said, at a small hotel in Bayswater. She had gone there at the dead man's request, rather, by his insistence. For he had believed they were all in great and imminent danger and that the attempts to dispose of them by ramming and sinking the yacht would be continued with even greater intensity on land.

*‘‘Here, in London?” someone asked incredulously.

Olive did not answer but she looked towards the closed door before which a uniformed constable stood on guard, behind which lay Peter Albert's body.

“He thought they might try to get things out of me they would think I knew,” she explained. “Even when I got the 'phone message to-night I wasn't quite sure. I thought it might be a trick. Peter said if I wasn't sure, I must go to Mr. Owen. I wasn't sure to-night, only that it was something terrible. So I told Mr. Owen and he came here with me.

Bobby was conscious of a sudden glow that warmed him through and through, as though all at once he stood in an actual ray of heat. She had spoken as though somehow it were natural for her to turn to him, as though indeed she had a special right to his help, as though, too, in his protection, she felt safe. Ulyett, who was questioning her, asked her what she had actually heard, and almost in the same words she repeated what she had told Bobby. It was told with the dramatic force that is given by utter simplicity and truth, and they were all silent, as if they, too, heard that faint summons whispered over the telephone wire and those distant sounds that had resembled the noise of a book falling on the floor.

Olive had no more to tell and presently she was allowed to go. But Bobby was not permitted to be the one to accompany her back to her hotel. That task was entrusted to someone else and Bobby was told to wait. Then he was told that Ulyett wanted him, and going to the superintendent he found him examining the hat and walking-stick discovered near the dying man in the room where the murder had been committed.

“Waveny again, eh?” Ulyett said. “Looks like it, doesn't it? Same M.O., walking-stick and all. Anyhow, he'll be here in a minute or two, and we can hear what he has to say. We got word he rang up the block of flats where he lives to say he would be back to-day. Did this little job and then bunked off home to put in a spot of alibi, eh? Probably meant to come back here and clear up, or else he panicked after he had done the job. Anyhow, what he's left behind makes it pretty plain.”

“Yes, sir,” Bobby answered, “only there is ink on his fingers. And no pen.”

“Whose fingers? Peter Albert's?” Ulyett asked. “Well, what about it?”

Before Bobby could reply there was the sound of another car arriving and a moment or two later Waveny himself was brought in. He was in a great state of indignation and protested vehemently that he knew nothing about what had taken place. He admitted at once that the hat and stick shown him were his property, but protested he had no idea how they had got there.

“Must have been pinched,” he said angrily, “probably you did yourselves, just as you pinched my other stick.”

“We didn't pinch it, did we?” Ulyett asked mildly. “I think we asked you for it and you handed it over.”

“Same thing,” growled Waveny. “Your fellows just said might they have it and didn't give me a chance to say no.”

“There was blood on the handle,” Ulyett remarked. “The report says it is blood of the same class as Macklin's.”

“I know there was blood on the handle,” Waveny answered. “I hurt my hand getting out of a taxi and it bled a bit and I daresay some got on the handle. Why shouldn't it? and why shouldn't my blood be the same class or whatever you call it as Macklin's?”

“That can easily be proved by a test,” remarked Ulyett, and in fact the test later on proved that, as it chanced, both Macklin's blood and Waveny's belonged to the same, and smallest, class known, one including only about ten per cent of the population.

Waveny went on to deny with still more heat that he had been in hiding. He had simply been away on a motor trip.

“Who with?” demanded Ulyett. “None of your friends knew anything about you, and your car is in your garage and has been all the time.”

“I didn't use my own car,” Waveny explained sulkily, “and I wasn't with friends exactly. I was feeling a bit down, I wanted to get away from people, and my aunt made a suggestion and offered to pay and so I said all right.”

“What were you feeling down about?” demanded Ulyett, and presently it came out, after a good deal of stammering, hesitation and fencing, that Waveny had had a letter from Olive, making it quite plain that, much as she appreciated his attentions, and greatly as she felt honoured by them, she thought it would be better for them both if they saw as little of each other as possible for the future. It was then, on receipt of this letter, that he had gone out to her cottage and found in it, as he believed, a burglar. A struggle had ensued, he had knocked the supposed burglar out, he had been afraid he had killed him, and in a panic, hearing someone approaching, possibly another of the burglars, he had run for it.

He admitted he had had a pistol with him and had fired two or three shots, but only, he insisted, in the hope of frightening his opponent. Under pressure he admitted he had taken the pistol with him with some idea of committing suicide at Olive's feet. But he was rather glad now it hadn't got that far, and perhaps it never would, only perhaps Olive, at the sight of the revolver, since such a threat would have convinced her of his desperate plight, might possibly have relented.

“It was her beastly letter,” he complained. “You would have thought she never wanted to see me again.”

Ulyett grunted, as if he thought that was no subject for wonder, and wanted to know next what the aunt's suggestion had been.

“She said I ought to study the proletariat,” Waveny explained.

“The – how much?” asked Ulyett.

“The proletariat,” repeated Waveny simply. “You see, it's this way. Hitler was one of 'em, and see where he is. So was Mussolini, and look at him. Then take that Etrurian fellow – the Redeemer they call him. Been in an asylum for the cure of drug addicts and all that, and see where he is. Then take our own man, Oswald Mosley – always been a rich man and has a rich man's ideas all through – and look at him, or rather, as aunt said, you can't, because he simply isn't there, not visible, except as a bit of chalk on a wall. So aunt said it was a chance for me to catch on where he had got off.”

“Good God,” said Ulyett.

“Why? asked Waveny, and when Ulyett did not answer he went on: “Besides, she had been hearing gossip about bad company and all that rot and being mixed up with the Macklin murder, though of course I wasn't, and so she said I must take it on, and she said she would cut me off with a shilling unless I did what she told me, and to keep out of the way for a time till the Macklin affair had settled down, and meanwhile I could study the proletariat so as to be ready to go into Parliament.”

“Parliament?” repeated Ulyett in a faint voice.

“All our family do,” explained Waveny. “It's a bore, but you have to before you join the Cabinet.”

“The Cabinet?” murmured Ulyett, whose eyes by this time had nearly started out of his head.

“All our family do,” Waveny explained once more, “and aunt said the best way to get in touch with the proletariat and a good start to study their way of thinking and understand them and their ways was to go one of those motor excursion trips – you know ‘Visit the Wye in an Arm-Chair' or ‘See the Lakes at Sixty m.p.h.' Aunt said it was that sort of proletariat that really counted, because of course what she called the workhouse end don't matter one way or the other.”

Ulyett looked round helplessly. Everyone within earshot was listening in awed silence. Ulyett said:

“My God!”

“Why?” asked Waveny. “You said that before,” he complained, and added thoughtfully: “People often do when I talk to them.”

“Means they think you ought to go into the Church,” suggested Ulyett. “Well, Mr. Waveny, I suppose you can give us details of this trip of yours?”

“Oh, yes,” agreed Waveny, “it was one aunt chose herself, and of course I had to let her because she was paying. It was ‘The Cathedrals of England in Quick Time'. I can't think where they all come from,” added Waveny, sighing. “Why, some days we did two, morning and afternoon.”

It seemed that Waveny's whereabouts during the last few days was now fully explained. Evidently his aunt had wanted to get him out of the way of any awkward questioning and avoid further possible gossip but not having wished to explain her fears to Waveny had hit on this pretext of a kind of preliminary political training.

But though the details given proved where Waveny had been during the time the police were searching for him, there was nothing to prove an alibi for the moment when Olive had heard the dying man's voice whispering to her over the 'phone and then those sounds she had described as like those made by a book falling to the floor. His own story was that he had had a message over the 'phone to tell him to go to Euston to meet his aunt, unexpectedly arriving in town. But when he arrived there was no sign of her and after waiting for the next train on the chance of her coming by that he had returned home. He had gone to Euston by bus, expecting that his aunt as usual would have a hired Daimler waiting for her, and he had returned home by the same method. He had in fact no proof of his story, and he had no explanation to offer of the presence of his hat and stick at The Manor.

Ulyett looked very glum, for he hated arresting prominent and well-to-do people who could employ K.C.'s of great fame and extraordinarily loud voices. He said glumly to Bobby:

“No alibi. Thin yarn altogether. Hat, stick, on the spot. He may be a Cabinet Minister some day, but meanwhile we've got to pull him in all right.”

“Well, sir, if I may say so,” Bobby answered, “there's the ink on the finger I mentioned before. If I may explain, sir –”

But Ulyett was staring at him, open-mouthed.

“Good lord, of course,” he said. “Ferris told me at the time. I remember now.”

The ‘twin wolves' had never fallen, as Mr. Troya would have said, to providing a cabaret show. To distract attention from a meal of serious and artistic composition by music of the same rank was merely, he said, to prove all concerned unworthy of both. And for such a meal an accompaniment of jazz or even of light dance tunes – imagine consuming ‘faisan aux loups jumeaux' to jazz! – was simply further proof of the slow disintegration of civilization and of culture.

It was therefore only the attraction of the food, the cooking, and the wine that made the ‘Twin Wolves', despite the fact that it was situated such a long, long way from Piccadilly, almost as popular as a rendezvous for supper as for lunch or dinner. Late as was the hour by now, supper parties were still in progress on the first floor, guests were still lingering over wines of quality at such reasonable prices as no other establishment could rival, and in the side streets adjoining, a recognized parking place, still waited a string of cars of which almost every second one was either a Rolls Royce, a Daimler, or some other in the four-figure group.

Ulyett, as he and Bobby alighted from their own car, looked a little uncomfortably at this display of sumptuous vehicles, uncomfortably, too, at the restaurant itself.

“Suppose we are wrong?” he said, “a bit of an ink-stain isn't much to go on.”

Bobby knew that and made no answer. One has to take one's risks.

“Suppose he isn't here?” Ulyett said again.

“Sure to be unless we are wrong,” Bobby answered, “and if we are, then it doesn't matter where he is.”

Ulyett looked at Bobby with annoyance. All very well to talk in that light way of being wrong. What did a mere detective-sergeant risk? A bit of a telling off and possibly a delayed promotion. But a superintendent! For a superintendent's motto has to be: Never wrong, and those are words that are hard to live up to.

But Bobby, with all the horrible impulsiveness of youth, was already making for the restaurant door, and Ulyett sighed and followed. They entered and a waiter came forward to meet them. It was, he began deprecatingly, a little late, and Ulyett cut him short.

“That's all right,” he said. “We aren't here to feed. Police business. Mr. Troya here?”

“He is in his office perhaps?” Bobby suggested. “This way, sir,” he added to Ulyett, for he did not want either any delay or a warning given to Troya, and he was fairly certain Troya, if on the premises at all, would be in his office.

On the door of it there hung a notice Engaged but of that they took no notice. Bobby opened the door and they went in. There were two people in the room: Troya himself sitting before a gas fire with a glass of wine in his hand and a half empty bottle by his side and Madame Troya seated at the table. Even at that moment Bobby noticed that the wine was a cheap and rather fiery Chianti, for Mr. Troya's own palate, in spite of the reputation of his restaurant, was one that preferred the more violent emotions. Madame Troya was apparently busy with the accounts and the receipts of the evening. She was a tall, stout, commanding-looking woman with an authoritative air that left little doubt who was the senior partner. It was she who sprang to her feet and came quickly to meet them while Troya himself sat still and frozen, his glass half way to his lips, terror and dismay showing plainly on every feature.