“Listen to me, Tisdall,” Grant said between gasps, “poison is a fool’s trick. We’ll get you soon enough to give you an antidote, and all that will happen is that you’ll suffer hell’s pain for nothing. So think better of it!”
But still the door resisted them.
“Fire axe!” Grant said. “Saw it when we came up. On wall at the end of the passage. Quick!”
Sanger fled and in eight seconds was back with the axe.
As the first blow of it fell, a half-dressed and sleepy colleague of Tisdall’s appeared from next door and announced, “You mek a noise like thet you hev the cops een!”
“Hey!” he added, seeing the axe in Sanger’s grasp. “What the hell you theenk you do, eh?”
“Keep away, you fool! There’s a man in that cupboard committing suicide.”
“Suicide! Cupboard!” The waiter rubbed his black hair in perplexity, like a half-awakened child. “That is not a cupboard!”
“Not a cupboard!”
“No, that is the what you call eet—leetle back stairs. For fire, you know.”
“God!” said Grant, and made for the door.
“Where does it come out—the stairway?” he called back to the waiter.
“In the passage to the front hall.”
“Eight flights,” Grant said to Sanger. “Lift’s quicker, perhaps.” He rang. “Williams will stop him if he tries to go out by the door,” he said, searching for comfort.
“Williams has never seen him, sir. At least I don’t think so.”
Grant used words he had forgotten since he stopped campaigning in France.
“Does the man on duty at the back know him?”
“Oh, yes, sir. That’s what he’s there for, to stop him. But Sergeant Williams was just waiting for us.”
Words failed Grant altogether.
The lift appeared.
Thirty seconds later they were in the hall.
The pleased expectancy on Williams’ pink face told them the worst. Williams had certainly not intercepted anyone.
People were arriving, people were departing, people were going to tea in the restaurant, people were going to eat ices in the sun lounge, to drink in the bar, to meet other people and go to tea at Lyons—the hall of the Marine was American in the catholicity of its inhabitants. To make oneself noticeable in that assembly it would be necessary to stand on one’s hands and proceed so.
Williams said that a young brown-haired man, without a hat and wearing a tweed jacket and flannels had gone out about five minutes previously. In fact, two of them had gone out.
“Two of them! You mean together!”
No, Williams meant that two separate men answering to that description had gone out in the last five minutes. If it came to that, here was another.
Yes, there was another. And watching him, Grant was filled with a despair that ran up from his feet like a wave hitting him and flooding his whole being. Yes, indeed there would be others. In Kent alone at this moment were ten thousand men whose description corresponded to Tisdall’s.
Grant pulled himself together and turned to the ungrateful task of forming a police cordon.
10
That was the biggest scoop of Jammy Hopkins’s life. The other papers that evening appeared on the street with horrifying photographs of the mob at Golders Green—Medusa-like heads, close-up, screaming into the camera: dishevelled Furies with streaming locks and open mouths clawing each other in an abandon of hate—and thought that they were doing rather well. Nothing, surely, was as important today as the Clay funeral. And their photographers had done them proud. They could afford to be pleased.
But not for nothing had Hopkins trailed Grant from Wigmore Street, to the Orient offices, and from the Orient offices to the Temple, and from the Temple to the Yard. Not for nothing had he cooled his heels round the corner while his paid henchman kept watch on the Yard and gave him the sign when Grant left. Not for nothing had he followed him all the way to Westover.
“CLAY MURDERED,” announced the Sentinel posters. “CLAY MURDERED: ARREST!” And the crowds milled round the excited newsboys. And in the other offices there was tearing of hair, and much talk of sacking. In vain to point out to irate editors that Scotland Yard had said that when there was publishable news they should be told. What were they paid for, the editors would like to know? Sitting on their behinds waiting to be called up, and given official scraps of information? What did they think they were? Tote officials?
But Jammy was in high favour with the powers who signed his pay cheque. Jammy settled into residence at the Marine—much more palatially than Grant, who also had a bedroom there but was to spend most of his life in the immediate future at the police station—and gave thanks to the stars which had ordained so spectacular an end for Christine Clay.
As for Grant, he was—as he had known he would be—snowed under with information. By Tuesday noon Tisdall had been seen in almost every corner of England and Wales, and by tea-time was beginning to be seen in Scotland. He had been observed fishing from a bridge over a Yorkshire stream and had pulled his hat suspiciously over his face when the informant had approached. He had been seen walking out of a cinema in Aberystwyth. He had rented a room in Lincoln and had left without paying. (He had quite often left without paying, Grant noticed.) He had asked to be taken on a boat at Lowestoft. (He had also asked to be taken on a boat at half a dozen other places. The number of young men who could not pay their landladies and who wanted to leave the country was distressing.) He was found dead on a moor near Penrith. (That occupied Grant the best part of the afternoon.) He was found intoxicated in a London alley. He had bought a hat in Hythe, Grantham, Lewes, Tonbridge, Dorchester, Ashford, Luton, Aylesbury, Leicester, Chatham, East Grinstead, and in four London shops. He had also bought a packet of safety-pins in Swan and Edgars. He had eaten a crab sandwich at a quick lunch counter in Argyll Street, two rolls and coffee in a Hastings bun shop, and bread and cheese in a Haywards’ Heath inn. He had stolen every imaginable kind of article in every imaginable kind of place—including a decanter from a glass-and-china warehouse in Croydon. When asked what he supposed Tisdall wanted a decanter for, the informant said that it was a grand weapon.
Three telephones kept ringing like demented things, and by post, telegram, wireless, and personal appearance the information poured in. Nine-tenths of it quite useless, but all of it requiring a hearing: some of it requiring much investigation before its uselessness became apparent. Grant looked at the massed pile of reports, and his self-control deserted him for a little.
“It’s a big price to pay for a moment’s lack of wit,” he said.
“Cheer up, sir,” said Williams. “It might be worse.”
“Might be worse! Would you tell me what occurrence would, in your opinion, augment the horror of the situation?”
“Oh, well, so far no nut has come to confess to the crime, and waste our time that way.”
But the nut arrived next morning.
Grant looked up from inspecting a dew-drenched coat which had just been brought in, to see Williams closing the door mysteriously and mysteriously advancing on him.
“What is it, Williams?” he asked, his voice sharp with anticipation.
“The nut,” Williams said.
“The what?”
“The