The Case of the Threatened King Read online

  “Good afternoon, Countess,” said Wyatt. “I’m sorry to hear that you haven’t been well.” Her gesture indicated that it was of no consequence. “I wondered if you’d had any further word about your daughter.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said in a husky voice.

  “When we came here to see her yesterday, you said she was at dancing school. We knew that she wasn’t, that she hadn’t been there, because we had just come from there. Then a note came that frightened you terribly. I’m certain it concerned Maria, but you insisted that it was from your husband at the embassy.”

  “Well?”

  “We were just over at the embassy. I wanted to talk to the count because I thought he would listen to what I had to say with less emotion than you, but I was told that he was not there. That he had gone up to Scotland.”

  “That’s correct. He went up there last night.”

  “Why?”

  “Because … he had business to take care of up there.”

  “Business? He’s chargé d’affaires at the embassy here, and tomorrow his king is arriving for his first state visit to England. What business could he have that is more important than that?”

  “But the business he went to Scotland to take care of was the king’s business—it was for the king.”

  “It did not concern your daughter?”

  “Of course not. How could it concern her?”

  “Then where is she?”

  “She … she went with him—up to Scotland.”

  “I see.”

  He looked at her steadily, thoughtfully, until she colored faintly and said, “Why are you staring at me that way?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. I was just wondering how I could appeal to you, say what I want to say. I am convinced, Countess, that your daughter Maria has been kidnapped as her friend Sara was. If you will admit it, trust me and tell me what the kidnappers have told you to do, it could help us to find both girls. If you refuse to trust me, continue to insist that nothing is wrong, you will not only endanger both their lives, but much, much more than that.”

  “I tell you there is nothing wrong—absolutely nothing! Now will you please go?”

  “Countess …”

  “Please, please go!”

  Her voice had risen, and it was clear that she was on the verge of hysteria.

  “Of course,” said Wyatt quietly. He bowed, and he and Andrew left.

  “Well,” he said when they were outside, “there’s still no change. We didn’t do any better here than we did at the embassy.” Then, as the cabby pushed the lever that opened the hansom’s low door, “Get in and I’ll take you home.”

  They were silent during the short drive to Rysdale Road. As the hansom drew up under the porte-cochere, the door opened and Matson came out.

  “Good afternoon, Inspector,” he said. “Miss Tillett was hoping you’d be stopping by with Master Andrew. She has a message for you.”

  “Oh, thank you, Matson.”

  Like Matson, Verna must have heard the hansom, for when Andrew and Wyatt went in, she was waiting for them.

  “Dodson was here about a half-hour ago,” she said. “He was going back to the Yard, but, on the chance that you might stop off here, he left a message for you here, too.”

  “Very foresighted of him,” said Wyatt, taking the envelope she held out to him and opening it.

  Verna looked at Andrew. She didn’t say anything but her look asked if there was anything new. He shook his head.

  “Well,” said Wyatt, in a curiously flat voice, “this is interesting. He found Harry the bootblack.”

  “But that’s good, isn’t it?” asked Verna. “I mean, if it was he who picked up the money …”

  “Yes. Under other circumstances it certainly would be good. But Dodson found him at St. Mary’s Hospital.”

  “Was he hurt?” asked Andrew, knowing the answer from Wyatt’s expression and tone of voice.

  “You could call it that,” said Wyatt grimly. “He had been stabbed, was unconscious and it’s doubtful that he’ll live. Whoever sent him to pick up the money apparently wanted to be sure that he wouldn’t be able to make an identification.”

  Wyatt had talked about a rhythm in cases, claiming that things were bound to change for the better. Well, this was no change but just more of the same bad news. Sara had been gone for four days now, and they had no more of a clue to her whereabouts than they had had in the beginning.

  11

  The Tosher

  That night Andrew dreamed about Sara. There was nothing surprising about that; she was, after all, on his mind most of the time. In fact, whenever he wasn’t thinking specifically about something else, he found himself thinking about her, worrying and feeling anxious about her. What was surprising was the form that the dream took and the effect it had on him.

  He dreamed that he awoke and, lying there in bed, heard someone speaking. The voice was familiar but, for a moment, he couldn’t place it until … Of course. It was Sara’s voice!

  “Sara?” he called, sitting up in bed.

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Here.”

  “Where’s here?”

  “Here!” she said with a touch of annoyance, then went on talking to whoever it was she was talking to in a slightly lower voice so that, while he could hear her, he couldn’t understand what she was saying.

  He got out of bed, listening intently, and it was clear that she was not in his room, her room or even in the house. She was outside. He opened the door, hurried down the stairs and out into the garden. When he reached it, he discovered that it was nothing like the actual, daytime garden that surrounded the house, but rather something like the maze at Hampton Court, for it seemed to consist entirely of thick, tall hedges set at odd angles to one another. Since Sara had sounded so annoyed when he called to her, he did not call again but tried to find her by walking toward the sound of her voice. But every time he thought he knew where she was, he would run into a hedge and have to go in a different direction to get around it. Then, when he was close enough to hear what she was actually saying, convinced that she was just on the other side of the hedge ahead of him, he woke up.

  He woke, blinking at the morning sun that had awakened him and smiling. For a moment he was puzzled. He remembered the dream very clearly, and there was nothing about it that should make him feel particularly good because he never did actually find Sara. Then he suddenly realized why he felt the way he did. It was because Sara had sounded so cheerful, completely relaxed and gay, even laughing once or twice.

  Though he was no longer smiling when he stopped in at his mother’s room on his way downstairs for breakfast, he was still in good enough spirits so that she said, “You seem fairly cheerful this morning.”

  “I am.”

  “Any reason for it?”

  “No. It’s just that everything’s been so bad so far that I’ve a feeling something good’s finally going to happen.”

  “That would be a nice change.”

  When he got down to Scotland Yard, Wyatt looked up from the papers on his desk, nodded to him, then looked at him more closely.

  “Well, well. Do you know something I don’t?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Then why do you look as if you’ve been reading Samuel Smiles?”

  “I don’t know. Yesterday you said there was a rhythm to cases. Well, I think that it’s going to change. That something good’s going to happen today.”

  Wyatt continued to look at him. “The Latin word for it is auspex, someone who finds or recognizes favorable auguries or signs, from which we get out word auspicious. Something has happened.”

  “What?”

  “Some of the shoful money has turned up.”

  “The counterfeit money mother left in Regent’s Park?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Where we knew it would eventually—at one of the banks.”


  “But who had it? Who turned it in?”

  “That’s what Tucker’s gone to find out. We’ll know when he gets back. Now be quiet and let me try and do something about some of my other cases.”

  Andrew sat down in one of the hard wooden chairs and tried to control his impatience while Wyatt continued to read the papers in one of the folders on his desk, making an occasional note on a pad. Luckily it was only a few minutes before they heard the sergeant’s heavy tread outside, and he came in.

  “I see the full choir’s here,” he said, glancing at Andrew.

  “Yes,” said Wyatt. “What’s the gen?”

  “It was turned in by someone they knew, the landlord of a pub.”

  “Which pub?”

  “The Four Bells, near Belgrave Dock. The landlord’s name is Cutter, Jem Cutter. He used to be a pug, a pretty useful light heavyweight.”

  “I don’t suppose you were able to go any further than that.”

  “You don’t, eh? You know what time I left here. Where do you think I’ve been ever since?”

  “Bending your elbow somewhere.”

  “If I was, it was in the line of duty.”

  “And?”

  “I went over and talked to Cutter. He was as mean as measles at first. The bank had kept the queer ten bob, and he thought he was out it. So I gave him ten out of me own poddy pocket.”

  “Just like that? You’re a trusting soul.”

  “I am that. I thought the Yard was good for it. Well, that sweetened him up something wonderful, and yes, he remembered where he got the ten. It was from a tosher named Ernie, who’s one of his regulars.”

  “What’s a tosher?” asked Andrew.

  “A scavenger who works in the sewers,” said Wyatt, “picking up odds and ends and sometimes things that are quite valuable. It’s illegal because it’s dangerous. Toshers can be trapped down there and drowned or asphyxiated. But since they’re useful to the police—they often find things we’re looking for, like weapons—we close our eyes and let a few old-timers go on with what they’ve been doing for years. Any idea where we can find this Ernie?” he asked Tucker.

  “At The Four Bells. If not now, then later.”

  Nodding, Wyatt got up. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked Andrew when he got up too.

  “You know very well where. With you.”

  “Do you really think it’s proper for me to take someone of your tender years to a pub?”

  “Since you’ve already done it several times—and the sergeant took me to one yesterday for lunch—it’s too late to worry about it. Besides, you’re going to need me.”

  “Are we?”

  “Yes.”

  “As a loyal Roman, I never argue with an auspex. All right. Come along.”

  Since they couldn’t all ride in a hansom—the sergeant was much too big—Wyatt hailed a four-wheeler on the Embankment and told the cabby where they wanted to go.

  The Four Bells proved to be a typical waterman’s pub, dark and dingy and not too clean. Two seamen, probably wherrymen, sat in one corner smoking short clay pipes, but outside of that, the pub was empty. Even if the sergeant hadn’t told them that the landlord had been a prizefighter, Andrew would have known it from his broken nose and thickened ears. Despite his forbidding appearance, he was quite friendly, waving to the sergeant when they came in; and since it was Tucker who had bought his good will by returning the ten shillings he had thought he had lost, Wyatt sent him over to get pints for the two of them and some ginger beer for Andrew. When he came back, he told them that Ernie had not been there yet, which puzzled the landlord, but when he did arrive the landlord would let them know.

  “This really is important, isn’t it?” asked Andrew.

  “It can be,” said Wyatt. “If this Ernie can tell us where he got the counterfeit ten bob, we will have moved that much closer to whoever sent the ransom note and is holding Sara and Maria.”

  “Are we absolutely certain that whoever it is, is holding Maria too?”

  “Because her mother won’t admit she’s missing? I’ll give you twenty to one that she is missing, and that’s the reason she is.”

  “I suppose it does make sense,” said Andrew. “I mean, if her father’s a count, he’s probably quite rich, and—”

  He broke off as the pub door Opened and a strange-looking old man shuffled in. He was stooped and gray-bearded. He wore a dark watch cap, a long corduroy jacket with enormous pockets, canvas trousers and boots—and he smelled; smelled so malodorously that even though they were across the room from him, Andrew winced. Muttering to himself and clearly in a rage, the old man slammed a coin down on the bar and, when the landlord served him, went off to sit by himself in the far corner of the pub. The landlord caught Tucker’s eye, and the sergeant went over, talked to him for a moment, and then came back.

  “That’s not Ernie,” he said quietly, “but he’s a friend of his. Another tosher named Abner; Cutter says he’ll be able to tell you about Ernie.”

  Wyatt nodded and went over to the old man.

  “Your name’s Abner?”

  “What if it is?”

  “I understand that you’re a friend of Ernie’s.”

  “What?” The old man looked him up and down with fierce blue eyes. “Who the devil are you?”

  “My name’s Wyatt. I’m an inspector attached to Scotland Yard.”

  “Oh, you are, are you? Well, what do you want with me?”

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions about Ernie.”

  “’Strewth! You mean you’re still going on about that? I was with your blue boys at the Pimlico station all morning, and I told them all I knew!”

  “About what?”

  “About Ernie! Isn’t it enough that he’s dead? That—”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said that Ernie was dead. You mean you didn’t know it?”

  “No, I didn’t. When did he die?”

  “I don’t know exactly when, sometime last night. They found his body down near the river this morning. Some murdering sod had stuck a shiv between his ribs.”

  “And the police don’t know who?”

  “No. They kept asking me about it, but I told them I didn’t know anything, never saw him after I left here at six last night.”

  “I see. I’m sorry about it, very sorry.”

  The old tosher had drained his glass, and catching the landlord’s eye, Wyatt jerked his head. When the landlord brought over another gin, Tucker and Andrew came over too, and all three of them remained there as Wyatt continued talking to Abner.

  “He was your friend?”

  “Yes,” said the tosher in a husky voice. “He was me cully.”

  “I told you I’m from Scotland Yard. I’m working on a case that Ernie may have had something to do with. If you can help me, tell me some things I need to know, it may be that I’ll be able to find out who killed Ernie.”

  “I’ll help. I’ll do anything I can to help.”

  “Do you know who gave him the ten bob note he gave Jem Cutter here?”

  “When was this? When did he give it to you?” he asked the landlord.

  “Day before yesterday, kind of latish.”

  “Let’s see. Yes, I think I do know! I’ll bet it was that ratty-looking fellow he was drinking with early in the afternoon!”

  “Can you tell me anything about him?”

  “Just that he was small and dark, with a thin face and a funny kind of smile—the kind that isn’t a smile at all. When I come in, Ernie’s sitting here and drinking with this fellow and he tips me a wink and shakes his head so I go off and sit by myself. Then the fellow goes, and Ernie comes over and he won’t tell me what it was all about but he’s merry as a mouse in a maltbin, and he says the drinks is on him.”

  “Yes, that sounds possible,” said Wyatt. “You can’t tell me any more than that—where Ernie met this man or how?”

  “No,” said Abner.

  “I can tell you his na
me,” said the landlord. “His first name anyway. It was Sam.”

  “How do you know?” asked Wyatt.

  “I didn’t remember him until Abner here said he was kind of ratty-looking and had a funny smile. Then I did—and I also remember going over and having Ernie say, ‘My friend Sam here is paying for these.’”

  “I see. Well, that’s a help.” Wyatt glanced at Tucker, who nodded.

  “You think maybe he’s the one who done old Ernie in?” asked the tosher.

  “I don’t know. We’ll do some checking. Will you be here for a while?”

  “Yes. I ain’t doing no toshing today. Me heart wouldn’t be in it.”

  “I understand. Well, perhaps we’ll see you later.”

  Wyatt settled with the landlord, thanked him, and they went out.

  “Well, Sergeant?” said Wyatt.

  “The description sounds like the one Dodson gave us of the cove who was watching to see that the first ransom note was delivered.”

  “Right. And now we know that his name is Sam. Will you check records again?”

  “As soon as we get back to the Yard.”

  They separated when they got there, the sergeant going to the central records room and Andrew and Wyatt up to the inspector’s office.

  Wyatt had been very quiet while they were in the four-wheeler, and he remained silent for some time after they got to the office, sitting at his desk with his chair tipped well back and staring blankly at a point high up on the wall. Finally, looking sideway at Andrew, he said, “I’m afraid I’m not being very entertaining.”

  “That’s not exactly what you’re supposed to be, is it?”

  “No. I’m supposed to solve crimes, but I’m not doing particularly well in that department either. At least, not with the case I’m most concerned about.”

  “Don’t you think you’re getting anywhere at all with it?”

  “I don’t know. As Tucker said, it looks as if the chap who watched to make sure the ransom note was delivered to your house was the same man that Ernie had drinks with. And of course it was probably he who gave Ernie the counterfeit ten bob that Ernie gave Cutter. But though we’ve got more facts now than we had before, they don’t quite fit together.”