A Queen's Error Part 7

Presently the inspector came out.

"We've decided to detain you, Mr. Anstruther," he said, "until we can find out a little more about this affair. Just come over here."

"Look here, Mr. Inspector," I said, "if you intend to detain me without sufficient reason, you'll find it an awkward matter." The inspector looked a trifle uncomfortable.

"We shall have to take our chance of that," he said, rather sullenly, "we've only got our duty to do, Mr. Anstruther. You can have bail, I should think."

"Bail!" I repeated, "how am I to get bail? I don't know a soul in the town."

The inspector shrugged his shoulders and motioned me into a railed s.p.a.ce in the centre of the office.

There was no help for it, so I went and placed myself as he desired in the little dock, and a constable standing there obligingly clamped down a rail behind me to keep me there. Then the doctor, who, it turned out, was some official in the town, gave a garbled version of the whole affair, which I found it useless to try and contradict, as I was told to hold my tongue. The inspector's version of the affair was even more insulting than the doctor's. He did not hesitate to express his opinion that I was a very suspicious person, probably a lunatic at large. When asked if I had anything to say, my remark summed up the situation, tersely, in a few words.

"This is a parcel of d--d rot!" I said.

Then they searched me.

The inspector simply gloated over Saumarez' revolver when I turned it out of my pocket, and this feeling rose to an absolute thrill of triumph when he discovered that one of the chambers had been discharged.

In my heart, I was thankful that I had sent those two packets and the key to my lawyers.

While the inspector was hanging fondly over Saumarez' gla.s.s eye, which one energetic young constable had furraged out of the corner of my waistcoat pocket, an idea struck me which ought to have occurred to me before.

I had come to Bath with a letter of introduction to a certain doctor, a Dr. Mainwaring; I would send for him.

"Look here, Mr. Inspector," I said, "when you've quite finished rattling me about, I have two suggestions to make. One is to send some of your men to try if they can find the old lady whose throat has been cut, and the other is to send for Dr. Mainwaring, who knows me. I warn you that if you lock me up you will get into trouble."

At the mention of Dr. Mainwaring, Dr. Redfern, who was still there, p.r.i.c.ked up his ears.

"Dr. Mainwaring!" he repeated. "Do you know him?"

"I came here about ten days ago," I answered, "with a letter of introduction to him from Sir Belgrave Walpole. I've no doubt that he will be able to tell you something about me."

He turned to the inspector.

"Don't you think you had better send a man up to Royal Crescent," he said, "to ask Dr. Mainwaring? There _may_ be a mistake, you know. It would be safer."

I could see that the inspector was very unwilling to admit the possibility of a mistake; he was, however, overruled by the man who was writing in the book, and who appeared to be a person in authority.

"Shapland," he said to a waiting constable, "go up to Dr. Mainwaring's and ask if he knows a person of the name of Anstruther."

"You'd better take one of my cards there with you," I suggested, "then he'll know who you mean."

The inspector gave me a scathing look, but gave the man one of the cards out of my case.

I think they were undecided then as to whether they would lock me up or not, but eventually made up their minds on the side of prudence.

I was allowed to sit by the fire.

Within half an hour a motor came puffing up to the police station, and Dr. Mainwaring entered.

"My dear Mr. Anstruther," he inquired breathlessly, "whatever is the matter?"

In a few brief sentences I unloaded the burden of my wrongs.

"Why, there must be some mistake!" cried Mainwaring. "I'll just go off and see the chief constable, he's a particular friend of mine."

When he had gone, the faces of my guardians grew visibly longer; one of them fetched me an armchair out of the office.

The chief constable soon put matters right.

"This gentleman is staying at the Magnifique," he announced, "he is well known to Dr. Mainwaring, and, in fact, the doctor will answer for his appearance; what more do you want, Mr. Inspector?"

The inspector wanted nothing more.

Within five minutes I was sitting by a glorious fire in a private room at the Magnifique, discussing the whole matter with the chief constable and Dr. Mainwaring.

But before I left the station, I put a query to Inspector Bull, junior.

"What have you done about the old lady?" I asked.

The officer a.s.sumed some shreds of dignity, even in his discomfiture.

"You may have thought us a bit forgetful, sir," he observed, "but I a.s.sure you, both the railway stations have been under careful observation from the time of my being able to touch a telephone."

"Thank you," I said; but it appeared to me that under the circ.u.mstances they might just as profitably have watched the Pump Room or the Baths.

CHAPTER V

ARRESTED

Being left to myself after thoroughly thrashing out the whole case with Dr. Mainwaring and the chief constable, who both agreed with me that the circ.u.mstances were the most extraordinary they had ever heard of, I sat down to consider matters by myself.

Here was I, a country gentleman of moderate estate, trying to eke out a smallish income by literature, plumped down into the centre of as fine a tangle of mystery as ever came out of the _Arabian Nights Entertainments_.

I got up and looked at myself in the gla.s.s, and saw there a clean-shaven tall man of thirty whose black hair was already turning white at the temples; about my grey eyes, alas, there were already crows' feet, the price I had paid, I suppose, for taking honours at Oxford.

I sat down again and thought deeply.

"Bill Anstruther," I said to myself, "you're in for it. You've consented to receive the confidences of that old lady, who, poor soul, was in the direst need of help and friendship without doubt when she called you in the night before last. You're bound in honour to go through with it, and try to help her, or at any rate carry out her wishes, be she dead or alive."

Thus I reasoned, and in this, it seemed to me, my duty lay. Obviously the first thing to do was to obtain possession of the packets again and ascertain their contents. I knew, of course, that they were directed to me and possibly contained some request of the old lady. I marvelled very much what the connection between her and the man with the gla.s.s eye could possibly be, but could form no guess even in the matter. It was very evident that he was a bloodthirsty scoundrel, and I had little doubt in my own mind that it was he who had wounded her, perhaps unto death.

While I thought of it, I decided to go down to the office and make inquiries concerning Saumarez.

I found he had left during the morning.