Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 45

And d.i.c.k, seeing only those who addressed him, dropped into the seat.

"Don't hurry yourself, Mr. Bellamy. What'll you have?" asked Finucane.

"Brandy--whisky?"

"Tea," interrupted d.i.c.k. "A potful--and awfully strong."

"See to that, will you, sergeant?" said Finucane.

The man left the room, and d.i.c.k spoke again.

"There are things I must tell you before I slack off." Then, a little more alert, he looked round him, and for the first time saw Caldegard glowering at him across the table with fierce curiosity.

"I didn't see you, sir," he said, his heart warming to the old man's piteous face, "or I'd have told you before I spoke to anyone else that Miss Caldegard is perfectly well, though she's a bit done up."

"Where is she?" asked the father, new lines of joy making havoc of a mask scored by inelastic sorrow.

"In bed, I think. Asleep, I hope. If you'll let me get a few bits of information off my chest for the police, I'll tell you all about it--how I found her, how brave and clever she's been--lots of things."

Then the bright spark came into the tired eyes again, as they searched the face of the father of Amaryllis--the spark which Amaryllis says, comes always just before he says something nice.

But Caldegard spoke first.

"You've had a devilish bad time of it, my boy," he said.

"Nothing to what you've been through, sir. It's h.e.l.l, I know, when one can't do anything."

Caldegard stretched his hand across the table. d.i.c.k turned from his grasp to see Randal pouring terrific black tea into a thick white cup.

When he had swallowed three burning gulps of it, he began:

"That's Melchard," he said, pointing. "This bundle of letters I took off him. Amongst them you'll find useful information. Read 'em now, superintendent. You'll find there's a flat in Bayswater, where two or three of his crowd in the illicit drug traffic are expecting him to-morrow morning. That's the important one--the thick mauve paper."

And he drank more tea, while Finucane ran eager eyes over the letter.

"Good G.o.d!" he said, rising. "Go on with your tea, Mr. Bellamy--not your story. Back in three minutes."

He pushed an electric b.u.t.ton, and almost ran from the room.

"You see, sir," said d.i.c.k to Caldegard, "as we were coming home in the train from our little day out, poor Miss Caldegard was so tired that she said I must find her a fairy G.o.dmother directly we reached town. So I took her straight to the only lady of that rank whom I know. I dare say you know her too--it's Lady Elizabeth Bruffin. George Bruffin's an old friend of mine--Mexico--and his wife's a connoisseur in pumpkins and rat-traps."

Since all London that season was talking of the two Bruffins, and every newspaper, in direct ratio to the badness of its paper and print, was scavenging for paragraphs, true or false, concerning the "palatial home"

in Park Lane, neither Caldegard nor Randal Bellamy could conceal round-eyed astonishment.

"But Amaryllis? Did she look--well, anything like----"

"Like me?" asked d.i.c.k, grinning all over the better side of his twisted face. "Well, sir, she hasn't been knocked about, you know. But her rig did her certainly less justice than mine does me. Nothing on earth could make her look like a tough, and the sun-bonnet certainly had an----"

But Finucane was with them again.

"Excuse me behaving like Harlequin in the pantomime, gentlemen," he said. "Now, Mr. Bellamy."

"Can you take advice?" asked d.i.c.k.

"From you, Mr. Bellamy," said Finucane, "who wouldn't?"

"I'm so sleepy that if I don't give it now, I may forget it. Properly handled, that dirty thing in the chair there will give his show away.

Keep him to-night as a drunk and disorderly. Better have a doctor to him. I tasted the stuff. Tomorrow I'll swear a dozen charges against him--burglary, abduction, instigation to murder, attempts to kill; and when he hears 'em read over, he'll be putty in your fingers."

"Thanks," said Finucane.

"Next: ring up the police and the station-master at Todsmoor. Tell 'em to keep tight hold of the man who fell out of the train between Harthborough and Todsmoor at five-forty p.m. and of the bloke that was with him, suspected of throwing him out."

Finucane paid his guest the compliment of obeying without question.

As he hung up the receiver,

"The man's in hospital, all right," he said, "broken collar-bone. I was just in time to prevent them from letting the other go. They're to hold him on a charge of throwing his pal out."

"I did that," said d.i.c.k. "At least, I scared the bird off his perch."

Again Finucane rang.

"And I'll send this one," he said, "to his nest."

When Melchard had been removed, d.i.c.k gave his three listeners a rapid and, as their faces and exclamatory comment testified, a vivid sketch of his adventure from his detection of the perfume which pervaded the alcove in Randal's study and the corroboration of his suspicions given by Melchard's attempted alibi in the letter to Amaryllis, to the time when his train pulled out of Todsmoor station; and, in the course of his narrative, he laid on the table, each at its historic point, his _pieces de conviction_.

Having told how Amaryllis had fainted at the sight of Ockley with the knife-point protruding from the back of his neck, he extracted the Webley from his overcrowded pocket.

"That," he said, "is the man's gun, which Miss Caldegard found for me."

Later, he produced Mut-mut's baag-nouk, laying it, talons upward, beside the Webley.

"That was strapped to his hand. I gave him the first of my two shots before he jumped, the second I put through his head as he lay scrabbling in the car."

At this point there entered the room a stout, bearded man with careworn face and irritable expression. Finucane rose respectfully, but the new-comer made a motion waiving ceremony, sat in the nearest chair, and became one of the audience.

d.i.c.k, never observing the addition, continued his tale in a voice monotonous with fatigue.

In their turn he added to the display the Malay's revolver, with which he had captured Melchard, and Melchard's automatic.

And, after telling them how he had forced his prisoner to drink,

"I couldn't bring the bottle--no room," he said, patting his shrinking pocket. "The tangle-foot all went down the p.u.s.s.yfoot's neck, so I left 'Robbie Burns' in the car. By the way, don't forget to ring up about that car. Old Mut-mut cut the cushions to ribbons; that bit of evidence might save my neck."

Finucane smiled pleasantly.

"You seem to have left a trail of coroner's inquests behind you," he said.