THE MAN IN THE DARK

JOHN FERGUSON

FRONT PAGE MYSTERIES Second Series

P. F. COLLIER & SON COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Copyright, 1928, By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.

Published, June, 1928 Second printing, July, 1928 Third printing, August, 1928 Fourth printing, October, 1928

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

TO F. P. AND P. P.

Book I

THE MURDER IN THE HOUSE AT EALING

CHAPTER I

Along the Embankment the fog was even worse than it had been in the Strand. Kinloch thought it queer that in so short a distance there should be so much difference. But worse it was. The sulphurous taste became intensified, while in addition a new and acrid flavour, probably the river's contribution to the mixture, made its presence felt on the roof of his mouth.

But progress was far easier on the Embankment. Up in the street he barged into and cannoned off some other pedestrian at every step. The handling he suffered! Hands some of them, it is true, gently warding off the impact of body on body; but others there were who thrust one impatiently aside, digging hard with elbows, so that, for a fellow in Kinloch's condition, the street quickly became something like a nightmare. But down on the Embankment, though his advance was still slow and uncertain, he had more room to feel his way, and to breathe freely, for that road was as silent and deserted as a Scottish village street on a Sunday afternoon.

With such sounds as did come the fog, he found, played strange tricks. Some it magnified and others it muffled up. The cough and sneeze of an occasional pedestrian would come quite audibly across the wide road; and while the rumble of a train crossing the bridge sounded like thunder, the chimes of Big Ben striking seven came through the sheeted air refined, as if by increased altitude, into a faint and silvery whispering.

At the foot of Villiers Street, however, he once more stumbled into the stream of hurrying people. Now, at least, there was no risk of missing the Underground. He was jostled inside the vestibule by a quick-footed crowd all going one way, and all equally eager on such a night to reach the shelter of their suburban homes.

As he moved on in the queue towards the ticket grille the sharp tones of the clerk, the smash of coins on the counter and then the scurry of feet running for the stairs made him contrast his own case with that of all these bustling, purposeful people. He had nothing to hurry for. Nobody listened for his latch-key. Time was nothing to him. The fog? He counted on being back in the thick of it within a couple of hours. It was curious how much alone he felt. He went down the stairs, clinging to the hand rail, while numberless people flitted past him, not one of them more to him than a tattoo of rapid feet, swarming for the trains. Yet had he been sensitive enough that feeling of being so alone in the crowd might well have served as a premonition. It was perhaps Fate singling him out, and separating him off from his fellowmen for the strange sequence of events destined to begin that night. Fate seems to work like that, using a man for a purpose he cannot see at the time. He goes down one street rather than another, for no apparent reason, and

something happens in that street which alters the whole of his life.

When Kinloch left the train at Ealing Broadway the fog was still there, coming cold and dank to the face, though some of its more virulent ingredients had gone. After getting the direction from a forlorn but kindly taxi man who must certainly have seen from his clothes that he was not a possible fare, Kinloch set out to grope his way to Albany Road. It was in Albany Road Peter Dunn lived; and on Peter Dunn his hopes were centred. A man who lived in the same doss had looked him up in the medical directory at the municipal library; and it was this same man—a begging-letter writer by profession—who advanced the amount of the fare to Ealing. A sporting fellow he was in his way, for their combined resources did not run to more than the ticket from Charing Cross to Ealing, and even at that it meant the pair must go supperless to bed if Kinloch failed.

It was the first begging call of his life and, though he never doubted about success, the fact that it was an old friend to whom he was applying made the journey very distasteful. This surprised him in a mild way, for he counted himself pretty tough at that time. And so while he stumbled on in the dark, and as if to fortify his resolution, he fell to thinking over Peter Dunn, mentally recounting all the incidents in which, in happier days, he and Dunn had been associated. It was the worst thing he could have done, to think of the old days. It forced up the contrast between what life had been and what it had become; between the lad he looked at in the early days and the man he was at the moment, hardened, bitter, and almost unscrupulous. In a word, while he looked at himself as he once had been he saw himself as he was.

Hugh Abercromby had brought them together, the unforgotten, the unforgettable Hugh, beloved of both. A fine, fresh day in spring it was when he first met Dunn on the links at St. Andrews—all three were third-year students. At first Peter and he had eyed each other askance, like two young dogs jealous of the place the other might have in Hugh's affections. But Dunn proved to have a taste for literature, and though he kept this taste under control, so that it never, as in his own case, interfered with his professional studies, yet it served to draw both together. Many times they fell out, for Dunn was of a queer, dour temper, and his mental processes, if sure, were annoyingly slow in working. Then Kinloch's mind turned to their last meeting. To him, then, that also seemed long ago. It had taken place in the General Hospital outside Boulogne to which he had been brought with his first wound. Coming into the ward Peter must have recognized him as he lay tossing uneasily, that hole in the shoulder making itself a centre of

pain that gathered almost all thought to itself, so that he could give heed to little beyond its small circumference. Unperceived by him, Dunn in his white overalls had seated himself beside the bed in which he lay, feverish and stifled by the hot motionless air and the fire of his wound. Then bending forward Dunn began slowly, and almost in a whisper, to recite certain lines, the first words of which made him jump:

Startled by the familiar words, Kinloch had twisted round to look at this man who from what he said might at that moment have been eavesdropping at the door of his heart. "Peter!" he had cried, recognizing the broad face, so rugged, and the grey eyes bent over him. But Dunn put him down again by laying a hand on his chest.

Well, as has been said, all this, and much more, came back as Kinloch was fumbling his way along those desolate Ealing roads and avenues. One may wonder why these memories gave him no confidence. It is, perhaps, the measure of the abyss into which the man had fallen to say now that such memories daunted rather than encouraged him. The more he remembered and the nearer he got to Dunn's door, the more clearly he saw what he had become. A false pride was in it too. The hash he had made of life, while Dunn had prospered. And—another thing—for the past six years he had heard nothing of Peter Dunn. How much may happen in six years! The truth is he feared to find his old-time friend with a wife and perhaps a family; a settled and sedate medical general practitioner. For, as he used to argue in the old days, in no calling is the change from roystering youth to smug and portly respectability so rapid and complete as in the medical. There lurks something of a poet in the wildness of the medical student; but once that student

becomes a G.P. he treats his poetic soul as a disease; and invariably it yields to treatment. Invariably! The thought made Kinloch pull up short. Peter's wife instantly grew terribly real to him. He visualized Dunn as ill at ease about having to introduce an out-at-elbows friend to her; and he saw the lady herself regarding him with a fixed smile, and hostile eyes, while she wondered whatever the parlourmaid would think.

Then as he stood hesitating in that deserted road, a prey to sickening indecision, struggling between a sense of shame and a knowledge of his pressing needs, the heavy tread of a policeman sounded at his back.

Fate had stepped in and again decided for him. He was, little as he knew it, being pushed on to his destiny, and the choice as to whether he would go on or turn back was now less than ever in his own hands. For as he automatically resumed his walk the following footsteps quickened and a heavy hand descended on his shoulder.

"What are you loitering here for?"

"I have lost my way."

He spoke like a child, confusedly, as one coming back too suddenly from a dream. He was a little frightened. Lost his way! So indeed he had. But long before that night. Some vague perception of this may have added to the bewilderment with which he spoke. This the policeman took for guilt. The walking-stick was dexterously twisted out of Kinloch's nervous hand.

"Gammon! A clearer case of loitering with intent I never saw. Had my eye on you for the last half-hour. You come along."

His grip shifted to the coat collar.

"I am looking for 28 Albany Road," Kinloch protested, now fully awake.

The policeman gave a grunt of scorn.

"Dining there, I suppose."

"No—er—consulting Dr. Dunn."

"Don't try that gaff on me. Dr. Dunn has no patients of your class—except when he acts as our casualty surgeon. Now then!"

He gave Kinloch's arm a twist, and at the same time trod heavily on his left foot. The old Sandy Kinloch fired up momentarily.

"Are you trying to make me a casualty?" he asked, shoving him off.

The man was on him with a bound, in joyful brutality. Kinloch had heard tales of his sort from other unfortunates. The wantonly inflicted pain was probably intended to provoke resistance, which of course would serve as corroboration of any serious charge. Why should a guiltless man resist? Kinloch knew from experience that here and there a type of officer still remains who believes he must produce cases to justify his own existence.

His foot throbbed with pain, but he restrained the natural temptation to prolong the struggle.

"All right," he said. "So long as I see Dr. Dunn it's all one whether you take me to him or bring him to me."

Have you ever tried to make a policeman change his mind? A forlorn hope it usually is. It puzzled Kinloch as to how he succeeded with that animal. Possibly the careless indifference of his last words had an effect; but more probably it was due to the memory of some recent reprimand for an equally wanton arrest. Anyhow the thick fingers gripping his garments at the back of the neck again shifted to his arm. The officer said:

"Albany Road is on our way. We can call in as we pass." But his grasp was less assured than before.

Albany Road indeed proved to be round the next corner, and the man had just pushed open a gate a little way along it when Kinloch heard a door bang. He could not tell whether it meant some one entering or leaving. Hastily he felt at his torn collar and tried to get it down to meet the tie, also damaged by his recent rough handling. Then a voice boomed out from the doorway:

"What is it, officer?"

The policeman pulled his captive forward, half uneasily.

"This man, sir, I got him loitering. Says he knows you, and was coming here."

"Says he knows me, does he? Put your lantern on his face...."

The next moment a cry came.

"Sandy—Sandy Kinloch by all the—" Dunn broke off short. He must with his quick, professional eye at once have observed the other's affliction. The policeman dropped the arm he held as if it had burned his fingers.

"Oh, Sandy, my poor lad, Sandy!" Dunn said in a low voice.

The policeman here returned the walking-stick, and stepped out nimbly for the gate. A mighty relief it was to hear him go. Dunn slipped a hand under his old friend's arm.

"Och, och, come away in," he said.

"But, Peter, your—your wife," the other stammered.

"My what?" he cried, pulling up.

"I'm in rather a disreputable condition. Will she mind?"

"You mean about her chintz chairs and so on, I suppose. Who told you I was married?"

"Nobody; I guessed it."

"A bad guess, Sandy: there's no minx here to mess up my place with china ornaments and female fallals. So wipe your feet on the bass, lad, and step inside."

Dunn has said that he saw at the first glance just what Kinloch's condition was. No doubt this is correct; his professional eye would give him information not so apparent to others. He says, however, that he made no comment at the time on his old-time friend's affliction, though he admits making a joking remark on the length of Kinloch's hair to put him at his ease. This remark the other turned aside, probably because Dunn would not have understood that where Kinloch had lived for the past year there was a prejudice against the owners of close-cropped heads. Most close-cropped heads in Rowton Street were cropped, without their owners' consent, at their country's expense.

In Dunn's cosy study that night, after such a meal as had become no more than a dim memory to him, Kinloch told his story. Much more of it was told than need be set down here. Not so much because of its dull and sordid details, but because it has no direct bearing on what was to follow. The real story in fact only began that night—little as either of the men dreamed so then.

Dunn heard it out in silence, except for an occasional grunt or sign of indignation. When he had finished the doctor hit the coal a resounding blow with the poker, as if he wished it had been Maxtone's head. For Kinloch had rounded off his story by telling him of his experiences with Maxtone. Maxtone was the editor who had turned him down.

At the end of a long silence Dunn's voice broke in plaintively:

"I never could understand why you did it, Sandy."

"Did what?" the other asked, coming back startled from his memories of Maxtone.

"Took up this silly writing business, and wrecked such brilliant prospects."

"Because I couldn't help it, Peter."

Dunn gave a grunt of incredulity.

"I had leanings to poetry myself, once," he said, "but it was one of the few temptations I've found it easy to resist."

Kinloch laughed the first mirthful laugh for many a day.

"Yes, you old pill-pusher, and proud you are of it. But then you will never know the joy of creation—to take up an idea and give it flesh and blood, to see the germ of excellence spring out of nothing."

"Ay—and lead to nothing."

The sharp disgust in this muttered rejoinder was probably due to what seemed the extravagant enthusiasm of the other's previous words. But at that moment, when Kinloch was over-sensitive, and in great need, it came to him suddenly that Dunn was now anticipating an appeal for help, and was half-resentful over it. It was like a cold douche after his mirth. His long lost pride came back, as other things came back that night. He would show Dunn he would ask for nothing. So taking this reproach as a warning, he got to his feet. But Dunn took no notice.

"Well, I must be going," Kinloch said with a flourish.

"Going," he repeated; "going where?"

"To the place this scribbling has led to—a cubicle in a doss in Rowton Street," Kinloch replied bitterly.

Dunn shoved him back in the chair with some violence.

"You needn't be so touchy. If I am angry it is solely for you, Sandy, knowing what your capacities once were. Man, man, but you were aye an unco thin-skinned lad."

Dunn, like many of his race, was accustomed to use the broad dialect of his country whenever he was under the stress of some strong emotion of which he was half ashamed. But well as the other knew this national trait he was too fantastically sensitive by this time to be influenced by that knowledge.

"What is the good of reproaches now?" he said wearily. "After all, as things have turned out, what else could I do but write? What sort of a doctor could I make now, after the war has done with me?"

It was here that Dunn blundered.

"No; but if you had qualified in medicine you would never have been in the fighting line, and so have escaped your present calamity," he persisted.

Kinloch fired up at once.

"Been safe at a base hospital, you mean," he retorted hotly.

After that things somehow went from bad to worse. There is no doubt Dunn had intended to stand by his friend. When the other had leisure, with a cooler head, to think over what happened, he saw that, for he knew that Dunn was not of the sort who give good advice when they mean to give nothing else. Dunn no doubt meant to do probably a good deal more than his friend had hoped for, but on that very account he claimed the right, like the dour Scot he was, to improve the occasion.

The rupture came suddenly, before either was aware. Dunn, hot headed, began to preach at him, and Kinloch, sore and sick with the picture of himself as drawn by his candid friend, stung him with a gibe that smacked of the den from which he had emerged.

Dunn rose in wrath.

"You spoke of a base hospital just now," he cried. "It might have been better for you had you died in that same base hospital; it might have saved you from a base existence."

Both were now on their feet; and this time Dunn made no effort to detain the other. He was breathing heavily, and his keys jingled in a hand trembling with anger as he opened a drawer. But Kinloch rejected the money when he offered it: it was not possible for him to do otherwise after the particular gibe he had used, and the retort Dunn had made to it.

"As you please," he said.

"Fortunately I'm not quite penniless," Kinloch proclaimed with ludicrous dignity and entire untruth. "It would be painful to have to pocket your insult with your money."

"Oh, I did not mean to insult you," the other man said, almost humbly.

Kinloch said nothing.

When they reached the door Dunn gave a sudden exclamation.

"Lord, I had forgotten that!" he cried.

"What?" Kinloch asked, surprised at his sharp exclamation.

"The fog. I can't let you go, Kinloch. It's thicker than ever. Even a beggar's dog would lose his way to-night."

It may have been his unaccustomed use of the surname—never had he been other than Sandy to him—or perhaps his reference to a beggar that touched Kinloch on the raw once more. Without a word he stumbled quickly to the gate.

"Come back, Sandy," Dunn called, following. "On a night like this—"

"Fog makes no difference to me, Dunn," Kinloch cried, as with an affected laugh he slammed the gate.

Touched with remorse the other started after him, but Kinloch hurried away; and it needed but a few steps in that fog to be beyond finding.

Kinloch, indeed, had not gone far in the fog before the awkwardness of the situation pulled him up. It was somewhere after eleven, he was many miles from Rowton Street, and with not a penny in his pocket to get there. Cool enough he was now as he stood against a wall and under a dripping, overhanging tree in that sodden, deserted road. For half an hour he must have leant against that wall dully considering the plight in which his foolish quarrel with Dunn had placed him. His clothes, too, had suffered much in his brief interview with the policeman. Though worn threadbare, his suit had been of good quality originally, and he had always taken care of it. It is extraordinary how important the condition of a last suit becomes to a man who has reached the end of his resources. At an interview with a possible employer boots can be more or less hidden, and a shabby hat can be held negligently behind one's back, but one's suit takes the eye, and supplies the first impression by which most men judge. But these were not thoughts that