The Copper Box/Chapter 9

HERE were few people about in the big hall of the hotel, but amongst them was the principal hall-porter, who, as I came there, appeared to be handing over his duties to his deputy for the night. An idea occurred to me, and I went up to him, drawing him aside.

“You know Mr. Parslewe?” I asked.

“Mr. Parslewe, sir—yes, sir!” he answered.

“Have you seen him go out this evening?”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Parslewe went out just about eleven, sir—not many minutes before you came in with the young lady.”

“You haven’t seen him come in again?” “Not yet, sir—not been in since then.”

I nodded, and went out into the street. So Parslewe’s business, whatever it was, had been fixed for a late hour, after eleven. He might have gone with us to the theatre, then! Unless, indeed, he had been doing other business at the hotel. But it was no use speculating on these things, my job was to do his bidding. And it was not cowardice on my part that I heartily disliked the doing of it. I had no idea as to the whereabouts of the police station. Parslewe had said it was close by, but I did not know in which direction. I might have inquired in the hotel, but I did not wish the hotel people to know that we were or were about to be mixed up with the police; it might have got to Madrasia’s ears before I got back. There were still people in the streets, I could ask my way. And just then, as I might have expected, a policeman came round the corner, and at my question directed me. Parslewe had been quite correct, the place was close at hand.

I went in, wonderingly, having never been in such a building before, and not knowing what to expect, I had no more idea of what a police headquarters was like than of the interior of an Eastern palace, perhaps less. It was all very ordinary, when I got inside; there was a well-lighted office, with a counter, and tables, and desks; three or four policemen stood or sat about, examining papers or writing in books. One of them, seeing me approach the counter and probably noticing my diffident and greenhorn air, got off his stool, put his pen behind his ear, and came across with an almost fatherly solicitude on his fresh-coloured face.

“Can I see some responsible official?” I asked.

He half turned, indicating a man who wore braid on his closely buttoned tunic, and sat at a desk in the corner.

“Inspector, sir,” he said. “Speak to him.”

He lifted a hinged door in the counter, and I went across to the man in question. He looked up as I drew near, and gave me a swift glance from top to toe. I had a vague sense of thankfulness that I was well dressed.

“Yes!” he said.

I got close to him. Possibly I looked mysterious—anyway, I felt so.

“You know Mr. James Parslewe of Kelpieshaw, near Wooler?” I suggested.

“Yes!”

“Mr. Parslewe is staying at the North Eastern Station Hotel. I am staying there with him. He asked me, in case of a certain eventuality”

He interrupted me with an almost imperceptible smile—amused, I think, at my precision of language.

“What eventuality?”

“In case he was not back at his hotel by midnight, I was to bring and give you this note from him,” I answered, and laid the letter on his desk. “He was not back—so I came straight to you.”

He picked up and opened the letter and began to read it; from where I stood I could see that it covered three sides of a sheet of the hotel notepaper. There was not a sign of anything—surprise, perplexity, wonder—on the man’s face as he read—and he only read the thing over once. Then he folded the letter, put it in his desk, and turned to me.

“Mr. Alvery Craye, I think?” he asked.

“Yes,” said I.

“Do you know what’s in this letter, Mr. Craye?” he went on. “Did Mr. Parslewe tell you its contents?”

“No,” I replied. “But he said I could answer any questions you asked, and, if you go anywhere in consequence of the letter, I could go with you.”

“I’ve only one question,” he remarked. “Do you know what time Mr. Parslewe left the hotel?”

“Yes,” I said. “I found that out. He left just about eleven—a few minutes before, I gathered from the hall-porter.”

He nodded, turned a key in his desk, put the key in his pocket, rose, and asking me to sit down a moment, went across the room and through a door at its farther extremity. Within a couple of minutes he was back again, in company with a man in plain clothes; he himself had put on a uniform overcoat and peaked cap. He made some whispered communication to a sergeant who was busily writing at a table in the centre of the room; then he beckoned to me, and the three of us went out into the night.

At that moment I had not the slightest idea as to our destination. There was a vague notion, utterly cloudy, in my mind that we might be going to some dark and unsavoury quarter of the city; I had been in Newcastle two or three times previously, and in my wanderings had realised that it harboured some slums which were quite as disreputable as anything you can find in Liverpool or Cardiff. But my companions turned up town, towards the best parts of the place. It was quiet in those spacious and stately streets, and the echo of our footsteps sounded eerie in the silence. Nobody spoke until we had walked some distance; then the inspector turned to me.

“Did Mr. Parslewe speak to you of any possible danger, Mr. Craye, as regards what he was after?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you precisely what he did say,” I answered. “He said, ‘Not so much danger as difficulty, though I won’t deny that there may be danger.’ His exact words!”

“Just so,” he remarked. “And he didn’t tell you much more?”

“He told me nothing, except that he was hoping to get hold of a possible something,” I replied. “If you know Mr. Parslewe, you know that on occasion, when it suits him, he can be both vague and ambiguous.”

“I know Mr. Parslewe—well enough!” he answered, with a sly chuckle. “Highly eccentric gentleman, Mr. Parslewe, and uncommonly fond of having his own way, and going his own way, and taking his own line about everything. There isn’t one of his brother magistrates in all Northumberland who isn’t aware of that, Mr. Craye! Then, you have no idea of where we are going just now?”

“No idea whatever!” I answered.

“Well, as he said you could go with us, I may as well tell you,” he remarked, with an other laugh. “We’re going to the house and shop of one Bickerdale, a whitesmith and coppersmith, in a side street just up here. That’s where Mr. Parslewe’s gone.”

Of course, I might have known it! I felt myself an ass for not having thought of it before. But I started, involuntarily.

“The name seems familiar to you,” suggested the inspector.

“Yes, I know it!” I asserted. “I’ve been in that shop. Oh! so he’s there, is he?”

“That’s where we’re to look for him, anyway,” he replied. “But whether we do find him there, or, if we do, under what conditions it’ll be, that I don’t know. However, we’re carrying out his instructions, and here’s the corner of the street.”

I knew that corner well enough, and the street, too. It was there that I had shadowed White Whiskers and the Newcastle solicitor, and thence that I had retreated after my passage at arms with Bickerdale. Presently we stood before the side door of Bickerdale’s shop, the door which presumably led to his house at the rear. There was no light visible through the transom over the door, none in the shop window, none in the windows over the shop. And when the plain-clothes man, in response to the inspector’s order, rang the bell and knocked in addition, no reply came.

It was not until we had knocked and rung three times, each more loudly and urgently, that we heard sounds inside the door. They were the sounds of somebody cautiously drawing back a bolt and turning a key. But no light showed through keyhole or letter-box, or the glass in the transom, and the inspector gave his man a whispered instruction.

“Turn your lamp full on whoever opens the door!” he said. “And get a foot over the threshold.”

I held my breath as the door was opened. It moved back; the plain-clothes man’s light from a bull’s-eye lantern flashed on a frightened, inquiring face looking round the edge of the door.

Weech!

I could have laughed aloud as Weech turned and fled, for he let out a squeal at the sight of us, and bolted for all the world like a frightened rabbit. And, of course, he left the door wide open, and we were at once on his heels, and after him down the passage. He swept aside a curtain, flung open a door behind it, and burst into a well-lighted parlour or living-room with a sharp cry of warning.

“Police!”

I got a full view of the men in that room in one quick glance from between the two policemen as they walked in. There was a table in its centre, an oblong table; at our end of it, with his back to us, sat Parslewe, calmly smoking a cigar; at the other, morose, perplexed, defiant, sat Bickerdale. And behind Bickerdale, leaning against a dresser or side board, stood Pawley!

These three all looked towards us as we entered, each with a different expression. Bickerdale’s face became angry, almost savage; Pawley appeared, after his first glance of surprise, to be intensely annoyed. But Parslewe, half turning, motioned to the inspector and whispered a few words to him; the inspector, his plain-clothes man, and myself remained after that in the doorway by which we had entered, and Parslewe gave his attention to Bickerdale, to whose side, near the fireplace, Weech, still nervous and upset, had made his way round the table.

“Now then, Bickerdale!” he said. “Without any more to do about it, you’ll give me that document—you, or Weech, or both of you! Do you hear—hand it over!”

“No!” exclaimed Pawley. “I object. If there’s any handing over, Mr. Parslewe, it’ll be to me. And as you’ve brought police here, I’d better say at once that”

Parslewe suddenly rose from his chair. He held up his left hand—towards Pawley. There was something in the gesture that made Pawley break off short in his words and remain silent. As for Parslewe’s right hand, it went into his pocket and brought out his cigar case. Silently he handed it to the inspector, motioning him to help himself and to pass it to his man. Then he turned to Pawley again.

“Mr. Pawley!” he said in his most matter-of-fact tones. “It’s very evident to me that you and I had better have a little conversation in strict privacy. Bickerdale!—where have you a spare room?”

Bickerdale turned to Weech, growling something that sounded more like a curse than an intimation. But Weech opened a door in the rear of the room, and revealed a lighted kitchen place, and Parslewe, motioning Pawley to follow him, went within. The door closed on them.

They were in that kitchen a good half-hour. As for those of us—five men—who were left in the sitting-room, we kept to our respective camps. Bickerdale and Weech, at their end of the place, hung together, eyeing us furtively, and occasionally whispering. Weech in particular looked venomous, and by that time I had come to the conclusion that he had bluffed Madrasia and myself very cleverly on the occasion of his visit to Kelpieshaw. As for the inspector and his man and myself, we sat in a line, on three very stiff-seated, straight-backed chairs, smoking Parslewe’s cigars, for lack of anything better to do, and watched and waited. Only once during that period of suspense did any of us speak; that was when the inspector, happening to catch my eye, gave me a quiet whisper.

“Queer business, Mr. Craye!” he said. “Odd!”

“Very,” said I.

He smiled and looked round at his man. But the man was one of those stolid-faced individuals who seem as if nothing could move them; also, he appeared to be relishing Parslewe’s cigar. With this in one corner of his lips he sat immovable, watching the door through which Parslewe and Pawley had vanished. I think he never took his eyes off it; anyway, my recollection of him is as of a man who could sit down and watch a thing or a person for hours and hours and hours, without as much as flickering an eyelid—an uncanny, uncomforting man—doubtless fitted, by some freak of nature, to his trade of sleuth-hound.

As for me, I was wondering all round the affair. What was Parslewe after? What was Pawley doing there? Who was Pawley, anyway? Why, at that juncture, when his reinforcements had come up, did Parslewe want to parley with Pawley? For a parley it was that was going on in that kitchen, without a doubt. We heard nothing; there were no raised voices, no evidence of any angry or wordy discussion. All we heard was an occasional whisper from Weech, a muttered growl from Bickerdale in response. But on the hearth a kettle was singing, and at a corner of the rug, near Bickerdale’s slippered feet, a cat sat and purred and purred....

The door of the kitchen suddenly opened; just as suddenly I saw that whatever had been said, or whatever had taken place in that kitchen, a marvellous transformation had developed in Pawley’s manner. He held open the door for Parslewe, and stood aside deferentially as Parslewe passed him. When he followed Parslewe into the parlour it was with the air of a man who has either met his master or been made subject to some revelation. And it was he who spoke first—in answer to a nod from Parslewe. He turned to Bickerdale.

“Mr. Bickerdale!” he said in suave, placatory tones. “I think you’d better do what Mr. Parslewe asks! I—I’ve had some conversation with Mr. Parslewe, and—and I think that’s what you’d better do, Mr. Bickerdale—just so!”

Bickerdale turned on him with a sudden glare which denoted nothing but sheer surprise. I could see that the man was fairly astonished—amazed.

“Why—why!” he exclaimed. “It was you —you!—that told me just now to do nothing of the sort!”

Pawley smiled in a queer, sickly, deprecating sort of fashion.

“Circumstances alter cases, Mr. Bickerdale,” he said. “I—I didn’t know then what I know now. My advice is, now—do as Mr. Parslewe wants.”

Weech sprang to his feet—an epitome of anger and chagrin.

“But us!” he vociferated. “Us—me and him! What are we going to get out of it? Where shall we profit?” He turned almost savagely on Bickerdale. “Don’t!” he went on. “Don’t you do it! Never mind those fellows over there! there’s no police business in this that I know of, and”

“I’ll give you in charge of the police in two minutes, my lad!” said Parslewe suddenly. “Just to show you”

“Mr. Bickerdale,” said Pawley. “Take my advice! I—I understand—from Mr. Parslewe—you’ll not be a loser.”

Bickerdale gave him a searching look. Then, suddenly, he thrust a hand into his inner breast pocket and drew out a small square envelope, which, with equal quickness, he handed across the table to Parslewe. In its passage, the light from the lamp gleamed upon this envelope; it seemed to me that I saw a crest on the flap.

“Rid of it now, anyway!” growled Bickerdale, sullenly. “Done!”

We were all watching Parslewe. He drew back to a corner of the room, where a second lamp stood on a wall bracket. Beneath this he turned the envelope over, examining it back and front; I saw then that it had been slit open by Bickerdale or Weech, or somebody through whose hands it had passed. And out of it Parslewe drew what seemed to be an ordinary sheet of notepaper. Whatever was written on it, he had read through in a minute. There were six pairs of eyes watching him, but you might as well have hoped to get news out of a stone wall as gain any information from his face; it was more inscrutable and impassive than I had ever seen it. He showed nothing—and suddenly he thrust paper and envelope into his pocket, sat down at the table, pulled out a cheque-book and a fountain-pen, and began to write. A moment later, he threw a cheque across to Bickerdale; then, without a word to him, or to Weech, or to Pawley, he strode out, motioning us to follow.

We made a little procession down town. Parslewe and the inspector walked first; I heard them talking about county business—the levying of a new rate, or some triviality of that sort. The plain-clothes man and I brought up the rear; we talked about the weather, and he told me that he had an allotment garden somewhere on the outskirts and wanted rain for what he had just planted. Presently we all parted, and Parslewe and I went to the hotel and up to the private sitting-room. There was whisky and soda on the sideboard, and he mixed a couple of glasses, handed me one, and drank his own off at a draught. Then, when I had finished mine, he gave me a questioning look.

“Bed, my lad?” he suggested. “Just so! Come on, then—your room’s next to mine; we’ll go together.” We walked along the corridor outside. “Do you want an idea—not an original one—to go to bed with, Craye?” he asked abruptly, as we reached our doors. “I’ll give you one. There are some damned queer things in this world!”

Then, with one of his loud, sardonic peals of laughter, he shook my hand and shot into his room.