CHAPTER II

SIR JOHN HASON

FLASH FRED, whose other name was Grogan, had a genuine grievance; for,
after he had been solemnly assured by a reputable officer of the law
that he intended going to Monte Carlo, he had found him on the Paris
boat train, and though he carefully avoided him he knew that Larry was
well aware that they were fellow-passengers.

At Victoria Fred made a rapid exit from the station, not being perfectly
satisfied in his mind that Larry’s business in London was altogether
unconnected with Fred’s own activities. Larry saw the disappearing back
of the crook, and smiled for the first time since he had left Paris.

“Take my things to the flat,” he said to Sunny. “I’m going to Scotland
Yard. I may be home to-night, I may not be home until to-morrow night.”

“Shall I put out your dress things?” said Sunny. All that concerned him
was the gentlemanly appearance of his employer. To Sunny the day was
divided into three parts—tweed, broadcloth and pyjamas.

“No—yes—anything you like,” said his master.

“Yes, sir,” responded the obliging Sunny.

Larry drove straight to the Yard, and had some difficulty in making an
entry, because he was unknown to the local officials; but presently he
was ushered into the big room where Sir John Hason rose from his desk
and came across to meet him with outstretched hand.

“My dear Larry,” he said, “it is awfully good of you to forgo your
holiday. You are a brick! Of course I knew you would come, and I’ve
given you room forty-seven and the smartest secretary I have seen in
Scotland Yard for many a day.”

They were old friends and old school-mates, John Hason and Larry Holt,
and between the two men there was an affection and a confidence which is
rarely found between men in the same profession.

“I don’t know forty-seven,” said Larry, taking off his overcoat with a
smile, “but I’ll be happy to know the smartest secretary in Scotland
Yard. What’s his name?”

“It isn’t a he, it’s a she,” smiled Hason. “Miss Diana Ward, who’s been
with me for about six months and is really the smartest and most
reliable girl I’ve ever had working with me.”

“Oh, a female secretary!” said Larry gloomily, then brightened. “What
you say goes, John; and even this paragon of virtue doesn’t worry me. I
suppose she’s got a voice like a file and chews gum?”

“She _is_ rather unprepossessing, but looks aren’t everything,” said Sir
John dryly. “Now sit down, old man; I want to talk to you. It is about
this Stuart case,” he began, offering his cigarette box to the other.
“We only discovered yesterday that Stuart was a very rich man. He has
been living in this country for nine months at a boarding-house in
Nottingham Place, Marylebone. He was a mysterious individual, who went
nowhere, had very few friends, and was extraordinarily reticent. It was
known, of course, that he had money, and his bankers in London, who
revealed his identity when they discovered he was dead, were in his
secret; that is to say, his secret so far as his identity is concerned.”

“When you say he went nowhere, what do you mean? Did he stay in the
boarding-house all the time?”

“I’m coming to that,” said Sir John. “He did go somewhere, but why,
nobody knows. Every afternoon it was his practice to take a motor drive,
and invariably he went to the same place—to a little village in Kent,
about twenty-five miles out. He left the motor-car at one end of the
village, walked through the place, and was gone for a couple of hours.
We have made inquiries and we have discovered this, that he spent quite
a lot of time in the church, an old Saxon edifice the foundations of
which were laid a thousand years ago. Regularly as the clock he’d return
after two hours’ absence, get into the car, which was hired, and be
driven back to Nottingham Place.”

“What was the name of the village?”

“Beverley Manor,” said the Chief Commissioner. “Well, to resume. On
Wednesday night, departing from his usual practice, he accepted the
invitation of a Dr. Stephen Judd to go to the first night of a new show
at the Macready Theatre. Dr. Stephen Judd is the managing director of
the Greenwich Insurance Company, a small affair and quite a family
concern, but having a pretty good name in the City. Mr. Judd is a genial
person who dabbles in art and has a very beautiful house at Chelsea.
Judd had a box for the first night of the show—which is a perfectly
rotten one, judging by the newspaper notices—Box A. Stuart came, and,
according to Judd, was very restless. In the interval between the second
and third acts he slipped out of the theatre, unobserved, and did not
come back, and was not seen again until we found his body on the Thames
Embankment.”

“What sort of a night was it?” asked Larry.

“Bright in the early part, but rather misty and inclined to be foggy
later,” said Sir John. “In fact, the constable who was patrolling that
particular beat where the body was found reported that it was very thick
between half-past three and half-past four.”

Larry nodded. “Is there any possibility of his having mistaken his way
in the fog and fallen into the water?” he asked.

“None whatever,” replied Sir John emphatically. “Between the hour he
disappeared and half-past two in the morning the Embankment was entirely
clear of fog, and he was not seen. It was a very bright night until that
hour.”

“And here is another curious circumstance,” the Commissioner went on.
“When he was discovered, he was lying on the steps with his legs in the
water, his body being clear—and,” he added slowly, “the tide was still
rising.”

Larry looked at him in astonishment.

“Do you mean to say that he hadn’t been deposited there by the falling
tide?” he asked incredulously. “How could he be there, with his legs in
the water, when the tide was low, as it must have been, when he came
upon the steps?”

“That is my contention,” nodded Sir John. “Unless he was drowned
immediately he left the theatre when the tide was high and was falling,
it seems almost impossible that he could have been left on the steps at
daybreak, when the tide was rising.”

Larry rubbed his chin.

“That’s queer,” he said. “There’s no doubt about his being drowned?”

“None whatever,” replied the Commissioner, and pulled open a drawer,
lifting out a little tray on which were a number of articles. “These
were the only things found in his pockets,” he said. “A watch and chain,
a cigar-case, and this roll of brown paper.”

Larry took up the latter object. It was about an inch in length, and was
still sodden with water.

“There is no writing on it,” said Sir John. “I opened it when it first
came in, but thought it better to roll it back and leave it as it was
for another inspection when it dried.”

Larry was looking at the watch, which was an ordinary gold half-hunter.

“Nothing there,” he said, snapping back the case, “except that it
stopped at twenty past twelve—presumably the hour of his death.”

Sir John nodded.

“The chain is gold and platinum,” mused Larry, “and at the end is
a—what?”

There was a little cylinder of gold about an inch and a half long.

“A gold pencil fitted in here,” said Larry. “Have they found the
pencil?”

Sir John shook his head.

“No, that is all we discovered. Apparently Stuart was not in the habit
of wearing rings. I’ll have these sent to your office. Now will you take
on the case?”

“But what is the case?” asked Larry slowly. “Do you suspect foul play?”

The Commissioner was silent.

“I do and I don’t,” he said. “I merely say that here are the elements of
a terrible crime. But for the fact that he has been found on the steps
with the tide still rising, and it was obviously low when he died, I
should have thought it was an ordinary case of drowning, and I should
not have opposed a verdict of accidental death if the jury reached that
conclusion.”

Larry looked at the watch again.

“It’s strange,” he said, speaking half to himself, and then: “I’ll take
these things into my room, if I may.”

“I expected you would want them,” said the Commissioner. “Now will you
see the body?”

Larry hesitated.

“I’ll see Doctor Judd first,” he said. “Can you give me his address?”

Sir John looked up at the clock over his mantelpiece.

“He will be at his office. He’s one of those indefatigable persons who
work late. Number 17 Bloomsbury Pavement; you can’t miss the building.”

Larry gathered up the tray and moved to the door.

“Now for the unattractive secretary,” he said, and Sir John smiled.