We went all along the paling till it turned, and we turned with it by a little lane with a hedge on the other side. It was nice to see a lane again, after coming through the very middle of London. Then the paling turned once more, and we followed it all round those fields. We could see from the shape of that dark procession of willows, and from a twisty mist, that a stream ran through the fields; and presently we came to where it ran under the paling, and Linley stopped and looked at where it came through, and we saw that it was well wired. It was a very still night, and the mist lying over the stream was motionless, and the twigs of the willows were still as a hand held out to say Hush, and there was no sound in the fields but men coughing, now and again as we passed them. Then Linley drew out a folded copy of a newspaper from his pocket, and carried it in his hand, waving it slightly as he walked, and after a while the coughing stopped.
‘You’ve cured their cough,’ I said.
But he didn’t understand me, so I was quiet again.
We walked away, and came to the streets once more, and went for a long time in silence. Then Linley said: ‘I can’t see how they are going to do it. But I suppose we shall see tomorrow.’
‘I don’t see how they did any of it,’ I said.
‘Well,’ said Linley, ‘the poisoning was easy enough, and the time that that waiter arrived at the Meateaters’ Club probably dates the beginning of it. He had been there ten months. Very likely the crook that is doing all this got out of prison a little while before that. He wouldn’t take long to make his plans; he’d have gone over and over them during his stay in prison, where poor Cambell and Island probably helped to put him. And there wouldn’t be much difficulty in putting the explosive into the wall of Piero’s one night; a mere matter of burglary, and in a house that no one was particularly guarding: Piero’s have some valuable billiard-tables there, but nothing else of any importance, and billiard-tables scarcely lend themselves to burglary.’
‘But how did they send the explosive off?’ I asked.
‘Ah; that was the big job,’ said Linley. ‘And, as it wasn’t done by wires, it must have been done by wireless.’
‘But they found no transmitting-set,’ I pointed out, ‘in any of those houses.’
‘It might have been anywhere,’ said Linley, ‘so long as it was at the other end of a telephone.’
And then the magnitude of the plot began to strike me.
‘But they wouldn’t think of anything as elaborate as that,’ I said.
‘It’s usually the simple things that happen,’ said Linley, ‘and they should all be tried first; but if it isn’t one of them, why then …’
And then we came to our tram, and said no more about that strange plot that had already killed two men and was waiting for yet another.
Next morning Linley told me at breakfast that the game was to begin at 2.30. ‘They had the ground well-watched last night,’ he said, ‘and I don’t see how it could have been possible for anyone to have got in and hidden there, and today everyone who goes in will have to go through the gate with a ticket.’
‘Shall I go and buy a revolver?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said Linley. ‘That was all very well in the days of Sherlock Holmes, when you could have dragged a small cannon behind you if you had felt that you wanted one. But the world has got more complicated. More licences needed. It was probably a happier world before it learned to fill in forms. But there it is, and it will probably never go back to those days now. No, no revolvers, Smethers. But keep your eyes open.’
Of course Linley was perfectly right: he always was. But it rather took the excitement out of it to think that we were only going to watch. Well, we should have been able to do no good after all, if we had had revolvers; or machine-guns for that matter.
We didn’t eat much of a lunch. Linley seemed too busy puzzling things over, and I was too excited. Then we went off to the football-ground. We took a taxi this time. We showed our tickets at the gate and were passed in, and no sooner were we inside than we saw an inspector in uniform. ‘Cold night, last night,’ Linley said to him. And the inspector only laughed.
That paling was very strong and high, and spiked at the top: it wouldn’t have been an easy job to get in overnight, to hide there among the willows; and with all those men that there had been coughing in the mist and reading newspapers outside, it would have been impossible. The game had just begun, and we walked along the back of the crowd, looking for Ulton. Most of the men in the crowd seemed to have their hands behind their backs, with walking-sticks or umbrellas in them; and I began to notice that, just as we went by, a stick or umbrella would give a tiny jump. It was a suspicious crowd. It was well organized certainly: the only thing I was a bit uneasy about was whether its suspicions were quite selective enough: if they suspected the right one, whoever he was, when he should come along, or would it be the other way about: that was what I was wondering. And then I thought what cheek it would be if he did come, among all those police, to murder one of them. And cheek was just what he had, or he wouldn’t have sent that threat to Scotland Yard, and carried out already two-thirds of it. Then we saw Inspector Ulton, and Linley went up to him and asked him which was Holbuck. The name of Holbuck excited the crowd near us a good deal, and they began making little signals to watch us, but Ulton gave them a nod to stop them, and pointed out Holbuck to Linley. He was a big fellow, easily recognized, playing full back. I watched the game, especially Holbuck’s part in it; but the ball was away with the forwards, and Holbuck doing nothing as yet. Linley watched the crowd.
After a while Linley turned to me and said in a low voice: ‘They’ll be cleverer than me if they get through.’
‘What? The railings?’ I said.
‘No,’ said Linley; ‘that crowd. Or the railings either for that matter.’
‘Then how will they do it?’ I asked.
‘They won’t do it,’ said Linley.
He was wrong there.
At last the ball came to Holbuck, and he kicked it three-quarter way down the field. It came back and he got it once more. This time he kept it to himself for a few yards, and then one of the other side charged him. Holbuck got the ball again, and dribbled it forward, getting it right past several of them; he went half-way up the field with it, going fast; and then he fell dead.
Well, I needn’t tell you there was some stir. To begin with it was what half the crowd were watching for; and now it had happened before their eyes; and the half of the crowd that weren’t watching for it were not much less surprised. They got a doctor and Holbuck was dead right enough, and they arrested the man that had charged him shortly before. All this time Linley stood perfectly silent.
‘What do you make of it?’ I said after a while.
‘I don’t know,’ said Linley. ‘The people round here are suspecting us.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘We’re strangers to them. Don’t talk,’ he said.
So I shut up.
We saw Inspector Ulton again, hurrying past. Linley went up to him. ‘Well, it’s happened,’ said Linley.
But Ulton was cross, and said little, if anything at all. He had made the most careful plans and had just been defeated, and had lost a good life over it into the bargain.
‘He’ll come and see us,’ said Linley to me.
And then we left with the crowd. I got the impression that we were followed at first, though it’s hard to be sure of that in a crowd. And then I had the impression that someone we passed had conveyed the idea, ‘They’re all right. Leave them