The Beard of the Prophet Read online

  It was funny where the ‘sooper’ had got to. Perhaps he’d gone down to the inn after beer. The sergeant strongly disapproved of alcoholic drink.

  He finished his frugal meal, and picked up an old magazine, which he found in the room. He was still reading when at half-past nine the door opened and Mr. Budd came in.

  “Where have you been to?” he demanded. “I’ve been lookin’ for you everywhere.”

  “I didn’t think you’d want me, so I went for a walk,” answered Leek. “Was it anythin’ important?”

  “Oh, no!” said Mr. Budd sarcastically. “Just an inquiry into this murder.”

  “Well, I’d been ’angin’ about all day,” said the sergeant, “and nobody seemed to want me. Why didn’t you say there might be somethin’ doin’?”

  “I was afraid it might interfere with your evenin’s enjoyment,” said the stout superintendent. “I want you to find all the people stayin’ in this house, with the exception of the servants, round ’em up in the drawin’ room, and keep ’em there until I tell ’em they can go.”

  “What’s up?” demanded Leek curiously.

  “The balloon will be pretty soon!” said Mr. Budd complacently. “Now, get along downstairs and do as I tell you.”

  * * * *

  The divisional inspector was on the point of going home when the telephone call that Mr. Budd had suggested might possibly occur came through.

  “I’ve got it all worked out,” said the slow, sleepy voice. “If you’ll come along up to the Manor House, I think I can show you how the impossible can be made possible.”

  “D’you mean you’ve discovered the how?” said Hadlow excitedly.

  “I think I have,” answered Mr. Budd. “Come along up.”

  The inspector was interested and lost no time. The call had come through at a quarter past ten, and at half-past he was talking to Mr. Budd in the latter’s room.

  “It’s very simple,” said the stout superintendent. “It was the clock that gave me the idea.”

  “The clock?” repeated Hadlow. “How in the world could that tell you? I don’t see how a clock can explain a person making himself invisible.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you do,” said the superintendent. “As a matter of fact, it doesn’t. The person didn’t make himself invisible.”

  “Then what did he do?” said the exasperated Hadlow. “If he wasn’t invisible, somebody would have seen him.”

  “Anybody could have seen him,” said Mr. Budd, a slight twinkle in his sleepy eyes.

  “But nobody did see him,” protested the baffled inspector. “You didn’t see him and Sergeant Leek didn’t see him.”

  “We didn’t see him,” explained the superintendent, “because we didn’t look in the right place. If we’d looked in the right place, we should have seen him, all right. He didn’t do anythin’ supernatural. But he did do something that was remarkably clever.”

  Hadlow’s patience was exhausted.

  “Well, tell me,” he said. “How did he get in and out of that room without being seen?”

  “He didn’t!” said the fat detective, with irritating calmness. “He didn’t get in and out of that room without bein’ seen for the very simple reason that he was never there!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE HOW AND THE WHY

  The divisional inspector stared at the complacent Mr. Budd in stupefied bewilderment.

  “But if he wasn’t there,” he protested, when he could find his voice, “how did he kill Hayles?”

  “There you are, that’s the clever part of it,” said the stout man. “He not only killed Hayles, but he left his beard behind.”

  Hadlow made a gesture of despair.

  “I give it up,” he said.

  “Well, I’ll give you a practical demonstration,” said Mr. Budd. “Come along to the study.”

  He took the inspector downstairs, turned into the corridor, and taking a key from his pocket unlocked the door of the room in which old Reuben Hayles had met his death. He reached for the switch.

  “Now,” he said, as the light came on, “take a look round. The place is exactly as it was last night.”

  Hadlow looked round keenly and discovered that the stout superintendent’s words were true. With the exception of that sprawling figure on the rug, the room was exactly the same. Even the window had been opened. He went over to it, and looked out. In contrast to the previous night, the sky was clear and the moon was just rising, a round yellow ball low on the horizon, rather like a gigantic Chinese lantern.

  “Well,” he said, “what next?” as Mr. Budd stood silently by and watched him.

  “Next,” said the fat detective, “I’m goin’ to ask you to sit down on the edge of the bed there, and whatever happens you’re not to move. Now listen very seriously to this, Hadlow. Whatever happens, don’t move! If you do, you may get hurt.”

  “All right,” promised the inspector. “I won’t move. What are you going to do?” he asked in surprise, as his companion went ponderously to the door.

  “I’m goin’ to leave you for a minute or two,” said Mr. Budd, “and by the time I come back you’ll know just how Reuben Hayles died.”

  He disappeared, shutting the door behind him, and the bewildered Hadlow was left alone. He took his seat gingerly on the edge of the bed and stared about him, wondering what was going to happen next. There was something queerly uncomfortable about sitting in that lighted room in which a man had come by his death, waiting.

  There was scarcely a sound in the house. The screech of an owl from outside came faintly to his ears, but nothing more. Dead silence!

  He looked at the oblong patch that marked the window and instinctively he felt that the phenomenon he was about to witness would come from there. And presently it did. Swiftly and without warning.

  He heard the faintest rustle, and then a black object came hurtling through the open window—a silent, rushing missile.

  With an exclamation, Hadlow half started to his feet, and then there was nothing. The window was blank once more.

  The inspector’s pent-up breath left his lips in a harsh sigh. He had seen, and yet he still didn’t understand. The thing had come and gone with lightning speed. He was itching to go to that open window and look out, but he remembered Mr. Budd’s words and remained where he was, stifling his curiosity and trying to curb his impatience.

  A footstep sounded in the corridor, the handle turned softly, and the big man came into the room.

  “Well,” he said, “did you see it?”

  “I saw it,” said Hadlow. “What was it?”

  “Three pounds of hard iron,” answered Mr. Budd grimly. “The thing that struck Reuben Hayles and crushed the front of his skull like an eggshell.”

  “But what happened to it?” demanded Hadlow. “I still don’t understand.”

  “Well, now come with me, and I’ll show you the neatest murder machine that was ever conceived by the brain of man.”

  “Where are we going?” muttered the inspector.

  “Upstairs again,” said the stout superintendent,

  Hadlow thought they were going back to his room, but he quickly discovered that this was not their destination. Mr. Budd paused before he reached it, opened a door on the right, and signed to his companion to enter. The inspector did so.

  “Whose room is this?” he demanded.

  “The room of the man who killed Hayles,” said Mr. Budd, “It’s immediately over his bedroom, as I expect you’ve guessed. Now look here.”

  He went over to the open window, and Hadlow saw, resting on the floor, the iron weight attached to a thin, strong wire.

  “See that hook?” said Mr. Budd, pointing to a hook that had been screwed into the top of the window frame. “I put that there. He’d taken away the one he’d used last night, but the hole was there.”

  Still Hadlow didn’t quite understand, although a glimmer was seeping into his brain.

  “Don’t you see?” said Mr. Budd. “Look at the
oak tree.”

  “What’s the oak tree got to do with it?” demanded the inspector,

  “He fastened the weight to the end of the wire,” explained the big man carefully, “and measured the wire so that when the other end was attached to this hook the weight hung down so that it was exactly level with the head of a man of the height of Reuben Hayles standing in the window below. And then he took a piece of twine, fastened that, too, to the weight, passed it over that branch of the oak tree, and brought the end of the twine back to the window of his room. Then he pulled the whole thing up out of sight among the leaves. Got me?”

  Hadlow nodded.

  “All he had to do,” went on Mr. Budd, “was to wait until the victim was standin’ in the window below and cut the twine. The weight came rushin’ down with almost the force of a bullet on the end of its wire, swung in through the open window, and hit Reuben Hayles a smashin’ blow on the forehead. The force of the blow sent him staggering backwards, and he collapsed in the middle of the room. The weight, of course, immediately swung out again, and the man waitin’ above pulled it quickly up. There was nothin’ to be seen. Nothin’ but a dead man in the room below, and no means to show how he’d been killed.”

  “Good lord! What a diabolical arrangement!” breathed Hadlow, and Mr. Budd nodded.

  “Yes, it was diabolical and clever,” he said.

  “But,” the inspector frowned, “how did he insure that Hayles would go to the window? He might not have gone near it, or the window might have been closed.”

  “He knew the window wouldn’t be closed,” said Mr. Budd. “I’ve been talkin’ to Murley, and I understand that it was Mr. Hayles’ habit to leave that window open day and night in all weathers. How he arranged for certain that Hayles would go to the window, is, I think, one of the cleverest touches of all. You remember the beard?”

  Hadlow, who in the excitement had forgotten, stared.

  “The beard?” repeated Mr. Budd. “The false beard. He hung it on the end of a thread and dropped it down so that it would swing in the open window. Naturally, when Hayles came into the room and put on the light, and saw such an extraordinary thing danglin’, he went over to examine it. He had it in his hand when the weight was released, and that’s why it was there when we found him.”

  “But why a beard?” said Hadlow.

  “Why not?” retorted Mr. Budd. “I think he had at the back of his mind an idea that he would clutch the beard and have it in his hand when he was found. It ’ud help to create the illusion which he wanted—that someone had actually been in the room and struck the blow.”

  “But when was all this arranged?” said the inspector. “It must have been prepared beforehand. He must have needed a ladder to get up the oak tree.”

  “Oh, yes!” said Mr. Budd. “It was all prepared beforehand. It was all waitin’ there right through Saturday. But the wire and the thread were so fine that you couldn’t see them unless you were lookin’ for ’em. And who would expect to look for such a thing?”

  “And who—who occupies this room?”

  He looked round.

  “The feller we’re goin’ down now to arrest,” said Mr. Budd. “The fellow who planned not only one murder, but two. There was another one in his mind, but it wasn’t goin’ to look like murder. It was goin’ to look like justice. The man who tried to frame Kathleen Travers by puttin’ that weight in her wardrobe—Mr. Geoffrey Dinwater!”

  * * * *

  Mr. Budd sat in the Assistant-Commissioner’s office on the Monday afternoon and listened with gratification to the words of praise which Colonel Blair had offered in connection with his efforts at Liddenhurst.

  “The astounding thing to me,” said the grey-haired, dapper man, “is that you cleared the whole thing up in such a short time. Excellent work, Superintendent—excellent!”

  The big man’s heavy face flushed faintly.

  “I thought at one time I was goin’ to fall down on it,” he said. “And I believe I would have done if it hadn’t been for the clock.”

  “The clock?” said the puzzled Assistant-Commissioner, who had heard nothing about a clock.

  “There was a grandfather clock in the hall,” explained Mr. Budd. “One of those big things with weights and a pendulum. I’d just found that three-pound weight, and was puzzlin’ over the mystery of that room, when I saw the pendulum, and it gave me the idea.”

  “Dinwater, of course, was after the money,” said Colonel Blaír.

  “Oh, yes!” answered the superintendent. “The money was at the back of it. When he confessed, after we’d cornered him and shown him exactly how he’d done the trick, he admitted that he’d got into a hell of a mess with moneylenders, and worse things, and didn’t know which way to turn. Then his uncle showed him one of them stupid letters from Thane, and he began to wonder if he couldn’t use it as a cloak for his own ends.”

  “But the whole object was to implicate the girl,” said the colonel.

  “The object was general mystification and a good alibi for himself,” corrected Mr. Budd. “The girl could be attended to after. With her out of the way he became next of kin, and naturally the money would have gone to him.”

  “But I don’t see,” protested the Assistant-Commissioner, frowning, “how be was going to get the girl out of the way. Until you discovered how the trick was worked, you couldn’t have arrested her, and once you’d discovered that, it was obvious who’d done the murder.”

  “I don’t think,” said the big man slowly, and his face was grave, “that he was altogether relyin’ on our arrestin’ her. I’ve got an idea from somethin’ he said that Kathleen Travers would have committed suicide, or so it would have appeared. And everybody would have thought she’d done it because she was guilty.”

  “Good heavens!” Colonel Blair stared. “You mean that Dinwater would have—”

  “I think he would,” broke in the superintendent, nodding. “He was a nasty piece of work—a very nasty piece of work! But he was clever—I will say that. It was one of the neatest ideas I’ve ever come across.”

  His fingers went mechanically to his waistcoat pocket, and he produced a cigar before he remembered where he was. Rather embarrassed, he was putting it back when the Assistant-Commissioner stopped him.

  “Smoke if you want to,” he said generously, and with a sigh of content Mr. Budd stuck the cigar between his lips and felt in his pocket for his matches.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gerald Verner (1897-1980) was born John Robert Stuart Pringle in London on 31 January 1897, He was one of the most prolific and successful British writers of detective thrillers. His earliest novels, beginning in the late 1920s, were issued under the pen name of Donald Stuart, particularly his numerous “Sexton Blake” stories. His first novel as Gerald Verner. THE EMBANKMENT MURDER, appeared in 1933, and thereafter Verner became his adopted name, and was used for most of his work, although he continued to write occasionally as Stuart, also adding two other successful pen names, Derwent Steele and Nigel Vane. He published more than 120 novels, and was translated into over 35 languages. Many of his books were adapted into radio serials, stage plays, and films. He also wrote television serials, and one of his original screenplays, DOUBLE DANGER, was used for a 1961 episode of THE AVENGERS.

  One of his most successful characters was Mr. Robert Budd, a Detective Superintendent of the C.I.D. Rather portly, deceptively sleepy-eyed, and seemingly a plodder, Mr. Budd was actually razor-sharp, and solved cases as well as any slick private detective of fiction. He was aided, rather unwillingly at times, by the melancholy and slower-witted Sergeant Leek, the butt of Mr. Budd’s biting sarcasm.

  Verner’s work was frequently compared to that of Edgar Wallace, and he was noted for his exciting, fast-action plots, some of them recognised as classics of the locked-room and “impossible crime” genres.