Mr Campion and Others

THE CASE OF THE WIDOW-4

When at last he had come to himself his apparatus had been smashed and his precious black pocket-book, which held his calculations and which he always kept under his pillow, had gone.

At this point he had broken down completely and had been led away by Papulous’s man. Mr Gervaise Papulous then took the floor. He looked pale and nervous and there was an underlying suggestion of righteous anger and indignation in his manner which was very impressive.

‘I won’t waste time by telling you how appalled I am by this monstrous attack,’ he began, his fine voice trembling. ‘I can only tell you the facts. We were alone in this house last night. Even my own man slept out in the village. I arranged this to ensure ideal conditions for the experiment. The landlady reports that the doors were locked this morning and the house had not been entered from the outside. Now you see what this means? Until last night only the inventor and I knew of the existence of a secret which is of such great importance to all of you here. Last night we told you, we took you into our confidence, and now. . . .’ he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, we have been robbed and my friend assaulted. Need I say more?’

An excited babble of protest arose and Mr Jerome seemed in danger of apoplexy. Papulous remained calm and a little contemptuous.

‘There is only one thing to do,’ he said, ‘but I hesitated before calling in the police, because, of course, only one of you can be guilty and the secret must still be in the house, whereas I know the publicity which cannot be avoided will be detrimental to you all. And not only to yourselves personally, but to the firms you represent.’

He paused and frowned.

‘The Press is so ignorant,’ he said. ‘I am so afraid you may all be represented as having come here to see some sort of faking process—new brandy into old. It doesn’t sound convincing, does it?’

His announcement burst like a bomb in the quiet room. Mr Jerome sat very still, his mouth partly open. Somebody began to speak, but thought better of it. A long unhappy silence supervened.

Gervaise Papulous cleared his throat.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I must either have my friend’s note-book back and full compensation, or I must send for the police. What else can I do?’

Mr Jerome pulled himself together.

‘Wait,’ he said in a smothered voice. ‘Before you do anything rash we must have a conference. I’ve been thinking over this discovery of yours, Mr Papulous, and in my opinion it raises very serious considerations for the whole trade.’

There was a murmur of agreement in the room and he went on.

‘The one thing none of us can afford is publicity. In the first place, even if the thing becomes generally known it certainly won’t become generally believed. The public doesn’t rely on its palate; it relies on our labels, and that puts us in a very awkward position. This final development precipitates everything. We must clear up this mystery in private and then decide what is best to be done.’

There was a vigorous chorus of assent, but Mr Papulous shook his head.

‘I’m afraid I can’t agree,’ he said coldly. ‘In the ordinary way M. Jessant and I would have been glad to meet you in any way, but this outrage alters everything. I insist on a public examination unless, of course,’ he added deliberately, ‘unless you care to take the whole matter out of our hands.’

‘What do you mean?’ Mr Jerome’s voice was faint.

The tall man with the deeply lined face regarded him steadily.

‘Unless you care to club together and buy us out,’ said Mr Papulous. ‘Then you can settle the matter as you like. The sum M. Jessant had in mind was fifteen thousand pounds, a very reasonable price for such a secret.’

There was silence after he had spoken.

‘Blackmail,’ said Mr Campion under his breath and at the same moment his glance lighted on Mr Papulous’s most outstanding feature. His eyebrows rose and an expression of incredulity, followed by amazement, passed over his face. Then he kicked himself gently under the breakfast table. He rose.

‘I must send a wire to my principal,’ he said. ‘You’ll understand I’m in an impossible position and must get in touch with Mr Thistledown at once.’

Papulous regarded him.

‘If you will write your message my man will despatch it from the village,’ he said politely and there was no mistaking the implied threat.

Campion understood he was not to be allowed to make any private communication with the outside world. He looked blank.

‘Thank you,’ he said and took out a pencil and a loose-leaf note-book.

‘Unexpected development,’ he wrote. ‘Come down immediately. Inform Charlie and George cannot lunch Tuesday. A. C. Fellowes.’

Papulous took the message, read it and went out with it, leaving a horrified group behind him.

Mr Thistledown received Mr Campion’s wire at eleven o’clock and read it carefully. The signature particularly interested him. Shutting himself in his private room, he rang up Scotland Yard and was fortunate in discovering Superintendent Oates at his desk. He dictated the wire carefully and added with a depreciatory cough:

‘Mr Campion told me to send on to you any message from him signed with his own initials. I don’t know if you can make much of this. It seems very ordinary to me.’

‘Leave all that to us, sir.’ Oates sounded cheerful. ‘Where is he, by the way?’

Mr Thistledown gave the address and hung up the receiver. At the other end of the wire the Superintendent unlocked a drawer in his desk and took out a small red manuscript book. Each page was ruled with double columns and filled with Mr Campion’s own elegant handwriting. Oates ran a forefinger down the left-hand column on the third page.

‘Carrie . . . Catherine . . . Charles. . . .’

His eye ran across the page.

‘Someone you want,’ he read and looked on down the list.

The legend against the word ‘George’ was brief. ‘Two’, it said simply.

Oates turned to the back of the book. There were several messages under the useful word ‘lunch’. ‘Come to lunch’ meant ‘Send two men’. ‘Lunch with me’ was translated ‘Send men armed’, and ‘Cannot lunch’ was ‘Come yourself’.

‘Tuesday’ was on another page. The Superintendent did not trouble to look it up. He knew its meaning. It was ‘hurry’.

He wrote the whole message out on a pad.

‘Unexpected developments. Come down immediately. Someone you want (two). Come yourself. Hurry. Campion.’

He sighed. ‘Energetic chap,’ he commented and pressed a bell for Sergeant Bloom.

As it happened, it was Mr Gervaise Papulous himself who caught the first glimpse of the police car which pulled up outside the lonely little hotel. He was standing by the window in an upper room whose floor was so flimsily constructed that he could listen with ease to the discussion taking place in the lounge below. There the unfortunate experts were still arguing. The only point on which they all agreed was the absolute necessity of avoiding a scandal.

As the car stopped and the Superintendent sprang out and made for the door, Papulous caught a glimpse of his official-looking figure. He swung round savagely to the forlorn little figure who sat hunched up on the bed.

‘You peached, damn you!’ he whispered.

‘Me?’ The man who had been calling himself ‘Jessant’ sat up in indignation. ‘Me peach?’ he repeated, his foreign accent fading into honest South London. ‘Don’t be silly. And you pay up, my lad. I’m fed up with this. First I do me stuff, then you chloroform me, then you bandage me, then you keep me shut up ’ere, and now you accuse me of splitting. What you playing at?’

‘You’re lying, you little rat.’ Papulous’s voice was dangerously soft and he strode swiftly across the room towards the man on the bed, who shrank back in sudden alarm.

‘Here—that’ll do, that’ll do. What’s going on here?’

It was Oates who spoke. Followed by Campion and the sergeant he strode across the room.

‘Let the fellow go,’ he commanded. ‘Good heavens, man, you’re choking him.’

Doubling his fist, he brought it up under the other man’s wrists with a blow which not only loosed their hold but sent their owner staggering back across the room.

The man on the bed let out a howl and stumbled towards the door into the waiting arms of Sergeant Bloom, but Oates did not notice him. His eyes were fixed upon the face of the tall man on the other side of the room.

‘The Widow!’ he ejaculated. ‘Well I’ll be damned!’

The other smiled.

‘More than probably, my dear Inspector. Or have they promoted you?’ he said. ‘But at the moment I’m afraid you’re trespassing.’

The Superintendent glanced inquiringly at the mild and elegant figure at his side.

‘False pretences is the charge,’ murmured Mr Campion affably. ‘There are certain rather unpleasant traces of blackmail in the matter, but false pretences will do. There are six witnesses and myself.’

The man whose alias was The Widow stared at his accuser.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded, and then, as the answer dawned upon him, he swore softly. ‘Campion,’ he said. ‘Albert Campion . . . I ought to have recognized you from your description.’

Campion grinned. ‘That’s where I had the advantage of you,’ he said.

Mr Campion and the Superintendent drove back to London together, leaving a very relieved company of experts to travel home in their own ways. Oates was jubilant.

‘Got him,’ he said. ‘Got him at last. And a clear case. A pretty little swindle, too. Just like him. If you hadn’t been there all those poor devils would have paid up something. They’re the kind of people he goes for, folk whose business depends on their absolute integrity. They all represent small firms, you see, with old, conservative clients. When did you realize that he wasn’t the real Gervaise Papulous?’

‘As soon as I saw him I thought it unlikely.’ Campion grinned as he spoke. ‘Before I left town I rang up the publishers of the Papulous monograph. They had lost sight of him, they said, but from their publicity department I learned that Papulous was born in ’72. So as soon as I saw our friend The Widow I realized that he was a good deal younger than the real man. However, like a fool I didn’t get on to the swindle until this morning. It was when he was putting on that brilliant final act of his. I suddenly recognized him and, of course, the whole thing came to me in a flash.’

‘Recognized him?’ Oates looked blank. ‘I never described him to you.’

Mr Campion looked modest. ‘D’you remember showing off to a very pretty girl I brought up to your office, and so far forgetting yourself as to produce an advertisement from an evening paper?’ he inquired.

‘I remember the ad,’ Oates said doggedly. ‘The fellow advertised for a kids’ entertainer. But I don’t remember him including a photograph of himself.’

‘He printed his name,’ Campion persisted. ‘It’s a funny nickname. The significance didn’t occur to me until I looked at him this morning, knowing that he was a crook. I realized that he was tricking us, but I couldn’t see how. Then his face gave him away.’

‘His face?’

‘My dear fellow, you haven’t spotted it yet. I’m glad of that. It didn’t come to me for a bit. Consider that face. How do crooks get their names? How did Beaky Doyle get his name? Why was Cauliflower Edwards so called? Think of his forehead, man. Think of his hair.’

‘Peak,’ said the Superintendent suddenly. ‘Of course, a widow’s peak! Funny I didn’t think of that before. It’s obvious when it comes to you. But even so,’ he added more seriously, ‘I wonder you cared to risk sending for me on that alone. Plenty of people have a widow’s peak. You’d have looked silly if he’d been on the level.’

‘Oh, but I had the advertisement as well,’ Campion objected. ‘Taken in conjunction, the two things are obvious. That demonstration last night was masterly. Young brandy went in at one end of the apparatus and old brandy came out at the other, and we saw, or thought we saw, the spirit the whole time. There was only one type of man who could have done it—a children’s party entertainer.’

Oates shook his head.

‘I’m only a poor demented policeman,’ he said derisively. ‘My mind doesn’t work. I’ll buy it.’

Campion turned to him. ‘My good Oates, have you ever been to a children’s party?’

‘No.’

‘Well, you’ve been a child, I suppose?’

‘I seem to remember something like it.’

‘Well, when you were a child what entertained you? Singing? Dancing? The Wreck of the Hesperus? No, my dear friend, there’s only one kind of performer who goes down well with children and that is a member of the brotherhood of which Jessant is hardly an ornament. A magician, Oates. In other words, a conjurer. And a damned good trick he showed us all last night!’

He trod on the accelerator and the car rushed on again.

The Superintendent sat silent for a long time. Then he glanced up.

‘That was a pretty girl,’ he said. ‘Nice manners, too.’

‘Leonie?’ Campion nodded. ‘That reminds me, I must phone her when we get back to town.’

‘Oh?’ The Superintendent was interested. ‘Nothing I can do for you, I suppose?’ he inquired archly.

Campion smiled. ‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘I want to tell her she owes me two pounds.’