Female of the Species Read online

  I went into the dining-room, to find that the rest of his pals had nearly finished. None of the women were down yet, so conversation was non-existent. And ten minutes later we all duly assembled in Tracey’s study.

  “I’ve read this letter twice,” said Drummond, coming straight to the point, “and as I said to Dixon I don’t know whether I’m mad or she is.”

  He looked a bit fine-drawn, I thought, but much less worried than he had done the previous night.

  “I should think the best thing to do is for me to read it aloud to you,” he went on. “The post-mark on the envelope is of no assistance. It was posted in London, and that doesn’t help. Somewhat naturally also there is no address.”

  He spread out the sheets and began.

  “Mon Ami,

  “In case you have forgotten, I wish to recall to your memory the circumstances of our last meeting. A little more than six months ago you may remember we met beside the wreckage of the airship. And I told you then that I knew you had killed Carl. It matters not how I knew: some things are incapable of ordinary explanation. But if it is of any interest to you, I did, as a matter of fact, make further enquiries from people who had been on that last voyage. And from them I learned that I was right, and that you did kill him.

  “Six months ago, Drummond, and during those six months you have never been out of my thoughts for long. There was no hurry, and during a winter spent in Egypt, I have been indulging in the luxury of anticipation. They say it is better than realisation: the next few days should decide that point as far as this particular case is concerned. There was another reason also which necessitated a little delay. Various arrangements had to be made in England – arrangements which took time. These have now been made, and I trust that in the near future you will find them satisfactory.

  “However, I go too fast. The first thing I had to decide was what method I should adopt for punishing you adequately. My revenge, if I was to enjoy it to the full, had to be carefully thought out. I wanted nothing crude”; (I caught Darrell’s eye at that moment) “I wanted something artistic. And above all I wanted something long drawn out.

  “And so your brilliant intellect will at once perceive that no mere death coming suddenly out of the blue could fit into my ideas. You smile, perhaps: you recall that in the past you were frequently threatened with death and that you are very much alive today. Agreed, mon ami; but do not forget the little verse I sent you. Doubtless you have inspected the message contained in it, and it is up to me to prove that that message is no empty boast.

  “For example, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have killed your dear Phyllis yesterday afternoon. And her positively murderous assault on one of my most trusted assistants really made me very angry for a while. The poor man is quite dead.

  “In parenthesis, mon cher, who on earth is the funny little man you left to guard the car when you found it? From the description I’ve heard he’s a new one on me.”

  “Damn the woman!” I spluttered, and even Drummond grinned suddenly. Then he went on.

  “To return, however. It would have been very easy to have killed her, but so far from doing so the dear girl is sitting with me as I write. Not only easy – but just. We should have been all square. But I want more satisfaction than that, Drummond: much more. And so I will come down to my little scheme.

  “In the past your physical strength has always excited my warmest admiration. But I have never been quite so certain about your mental ability. Luck, I think, has entered a good deal into the matter, and though I should be the last person to belittle luck, yet it is apt to affect the issue somewhat unfairly.

  “And so on this occasion I propose to test your brain. Not unduly, I trust, but enough to afford me a certain amount of amusement. Do not be alarmed – your physical strength will be tested also. If you emerge triumphant your dear Phyllis will be restored to your bosom. If on the other hand you fail, then I shall claim my pound of flesh. In other words, what might have so easily been done yesterday afternoon will merely have been postponed.

  “The test is expressed simply by two words: Find Phyllis. You raise your eyebrows: that, you say, is somewhat naturally the test. But wait, mon ami, and I will explain a little further. You have doubtless heard of hidden treasure hunts: perhaps joined in one yourself. This is going to be run on the same rules. You will receive clues which you will interpret to the best of your ability. These clues will lead you to various places, where further clues will await you. They will also lead you to various places where you may or may not enjoy yourself. Things will happen which you may or may not like. In fact, my dear Drummond, to put the matter in a nutshell, you may or may not pull through. As I said, I have made my arrangements with some care.

  “One further word. This little matter is between you and me. I have no objection to your roping in your friends – in fact, the more the merrier. But I don’t want the police butting in. You could not avoid it yesterday afternoon, I know, so you are forgiven for that. But get them out of it now – quickly. Another thing, too. I don’t want Uncle Percival, or whatever he calls himself, asking absurd questions from any of the Broadcasting Centres. If that should happen our little game would cease abruptly. So bear those two points in mind: no police, no broadcasting. And that, I think, is all. You will get your first clue today.”

  Drummond laid down the letter, and lit a cigarette.

  “What do you think of it?” he said.

  “The thing is a fantastic leg pull,” cried Tracey.

  But Drummond shook his head doubtfully.

  “I wonder,” he said. “What do you think, Peter?”

  “That she means every word of it, old boy,” answered Darrell, positively. “That’s no leg pull: it’s damned grim earnest.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Jerningham. “We’re for the trail again.”

  “You mean to tell me,” spluttered Tracey, “that this woman has hidden your wife, and now expects you to go chasing round the country till you find her! Dash it – it’s absurd.”

  “Absurd or not absurd,” said Drummond gravely, “that is exactly what this woman has done. And from what I know of her it’s going to be some chase.”

  He got up, and suddenly, to my amazement, an almost ecstatic grin spread over his face.

  “Gosh! boys,” he said, “if it wasn’t that it was Phyllis, what a glorious time we should have. Why did we never think of it before with Carl? We might have had two or three games in our spare time.”

  Then he became serious again.

  “Look here, Tracey,” he said: “and you, too, Dixon, may I rely on you not to say a word of this even to the ladies? The fewer people who know about it the better. If this came to the ears of a newspaper man, we’d have the whole of Fleet Street on our heels. So – not a word to a soul.”

  “A police-sergeant to see you, sir.”

  The butler was holding the door open.

  “Mind,” said Drummond urgently – “not a word.”

  The officer who had gone with us to the deserted Bentley the previous afternoon entered the room.

  “Good morning, sergeant,” said Drummond quietly. “Found Mr Allbright’s car yet?”

  The policeman shook his head.

  “I’m afraid not, sir,” he said. “May I ask if you have any news of your wife?”

  Drummond frowned suddenly: then he gave a short laugh.

  “Yes – I have. Look here, sergeant – you’re a man of discretion.”

  I looked at him covertly: what tale was he going to tell?

  “Well, sir,” said the officer, with a slightly gratified smile, “they don’t make you a sergeant for nothing.”

  “Precisely,” said Drummond. “Well – the fact of the matter is this. My wife has run away – bolted. With another man.”

  He lit a cigarette with a sort of savage resignation. “I didn’t say so yesterday, but I feared even then that that note that was brought her was from the swine who–”

  He broke o
ff abruptly – words had failed him – and strode to the window.

  “Poor old Hugh,” said Sinclair sadly. “It’s a devilish business. That dirty little sweep of all people, too.”

  Drummond invoked the Deity twice, while the sergeant stared at him blankly.

  “But look here, sir,” he said, “what about all that blood?”

  “That, sergeant,” remarked Drummond, “is the staggering part of the whole business. When my wife rang me up last night to tell me that she had – she had left me, she said – ‘I suppose you’ve found the Bentley by now.’ I said to her – ‘But what about the blood on the grass?’ She said ‘What on earth are you talking about? If it’s a riddle I haven’t got time to buy it now.’ Then she rang off. She knew nothing about it, sergeant – absolutely nothing.”

  The officer’s face was blanker than before.

  “Since then,” went on Drummond, “we’ve been trying to reconstruct what happened. And the only possible conclusion we can come to is this. The car belonging to Mr Allbright was stolen by two or three men. Driving along the road, they came on the deserted Bentley. Well, if they’d steal one car, they’d steal another. So they decided to steal that, too. And then they fell out – why, Heaven alone knows. Probably one of them was already at the wheel of the Bentley – and there was a struggle in which somebody got hit over the head with the spanner. Much harder than was intended. They all became frightened, and bundled the wounded man into the closed car. Of course,” he continued modestly, “it’s only crude amateur deduction: there are doubtless many objections to our theory–”

  “Many,” agreed Darrell, staring out of the window.

  “Which your trained brain will spot,” went on Drummond. “But the great point as far as we are concerned is this. As far as I am concerned, I should say. The whole thing is merely an amazing coincidence. The blood we saw on the road, the blood in Mr Allbright’s car, has nothing to do with my wife’s disappearance. And since I still have hopes that she will realise the error of her way, and come back to me, the last thing I want is to run any risk of hardening her heart by worrying her with police enquiries.”

  “You know my views, Hugh,” said Jerningham.

  “And I damned well don’t want to hear them again,” snapped Drummond.

  “A lounge lizard like that!” cried Jerningham scornfully. “How you can dream of forgiving her I don’t know.”

  “Lounge lizard, gentlemen?” said the bewildered policeman.

  “That’s right, sergeant,” Jerningham pointed an outraged finger at space. “A lounge lizard. A ballroom snake. What matter that his Black Bottom is the best in London?”

  “My Gawd! sir,” gasped the other. “His ’ow much?”

  “What matter, I say?” swept on Jerningham. “Is that a thing which should commend itself to reasonable decent men?”

  “I should ’ardly say so myself, sir,” agreed the sergeant fervently.

  Jerningham paused to recover his breath.

  “What is the gent’s name, sir?” said the sergeant, producing his pencil and notebook.

  “Albert. Albert Prodnut,” said Jerningham, and Drummond sat down abruptly.

  “And his address?”

  “I wish we knew,” answered Jerningham. “If we did, doubtless by this time Captain Drummond would have removed his liver with a rusty penknife. I speak metaphorically.”

  “So you don’t know where he is, sir?”

  “Somewhere on the Continent,” said Drummond in a hollow voice.

  “And your wife, too?”

  Drummond groaned and hid his face in his hands, while Jerningham rose and took the sergeant by the arm.

  “No more now, sergeant,” he whispered confidentially. “He is strung up to breaking point. In a week or two, perhaps. Or a month. And in the meantime you will treat what we have told you as absolutely confidential, won’t you?”

  He propelled him gently towards the door.

  “It’s all very strange, sir,” he said in a worried voice.

  “If you knew Albert Prodnut you’d think it was a damned sight stranger,” said Jerningham feelingly. “One of those strange cases of mental aberration, sergeant – almost I might say of psycho-sclerosis – which baffle the cleverest doctor. Leave him to us now.”

  The door closed behind the harassed officer, and Jerningham held up his two thumbs.

  “Prodnut,” said Drummond weakly. “Why Prodnut?”

  “Why not? It’s very difficult to think of a name when you’re suddenly asked for one. There is a ring of sincerity about Albert Prodnut that carries entire conviction.”

  “Look here, you fellows,” said Tracey seriously, “this is getting beyond a joke. You can’t expect any man out of a lunatic asylum to believe that absurd rigmarole.”

  “We had to say something,” remarked Drummond. “Personally I think we told the tale rather well.”

  “Yes – but what about me?” said Tracey. “It’s a tissue of lies from beginning to end.”

  “We can’t tell the truth,” answered Drummond gravely. “Look here, Tracey, I’m very sorry about this, and I quite appreciate the difficulties of your position. In the bottom of your mind you probably think that that woman’s letter is a bluff. I know it isn’t. We’ve got to keep the police out of this if we possibly can. And I really couldn’t think of anything better on the spur of the moment.”

  “You still mean,” said Tracy amazed, “to take that woman at her word! To go hunting about all over England on clues she sends you, and which will probably lead you nowhere nearer your wife than you are at present!”

  “What else can I do?” cried Drummond. “She’s in the position of being able to dictate terms.”

  Once again the door opened and Parker came in: this time with a telegram on a salver.

  “For you, sir,” he said, handing it to Drummond.

  He tore open the yellow envelope, and as he read the message a look of complete bewilderment spread over his face. “Well, I’m damned!” he muttered. “No answer, thank you, Parker. Listen here, you fellows,” he went on as the butler left the room, “what in the name of fortune do you make of this?

  “My first a horse may draw or even two the rest is found at York and aids the view and when you’ve solved that bit by dint of trying an inn you’ll find where fishermen are lying.”

  “It’s the first clue,” said Jerningham excitedly. “She said you’d get it this morning.”

  “But it’s hopeless,” cried Drummond in despair. “The simplest crossword reduces me to a jibbering wreck. If I’ve got to try and solve these damned things, I’m done before I start.”

  “There are half-a-dozen perfectly good people to help you, old boy,” said Darrell. “Sling the paper over. Let’s put it down as it’s meant to be – in the form of a verse.”

  He scribbled the words on a piece of paper, while we leaned over his shoulder. And even Tracey seemed impressed by this sudden new development.

  “Now then,” said Darrell, “does that make it any better?”

  “My first a horse may draw, or even two;

  The rest is found at York, and aids the view.

  And when you’ve solved that bit by dint of trying,

  An inn you’ll find where fishermen are lying.”

  “If line three is right,” I said, “the first two are a complete clue in themselves.”

  “That’s so,” agreed Tracey. “But what sort of a clue? Is it the name of a man or a town or what?”

  “Let’s assume it’s a town to start with,” said Jerningham. “There’s an inn mentioned in the last line.”

  “What’s found at York?” demanded Drummond gloomily.

  “Ham, dear old boy,” burbled Algy Longworth.

  “And Archbishops,” said Sinclair hopefully.

  “I don’t know that it can be truthfully maintained,” said Tracey mildly, “that either ham or Archbishops aid the view.”

  “Hold hard a bit,” remarked Darrell. “Let’s start at the
beginning. ‘My first a horse may draw, or even two.’ Presumably that means two horses. So it’s a horse-drawn vehicle suitable for one or two horses.”

  “By Jove! Peter, you’re a blinking marvel,” cried Drummond. “Cart, cab, wagon.”

  “You don’t have a two-horse cab,” objected Jerningham.

  “Wagon sounds possible,” said Darrell. “There must be places beginning with Wagon. Got a map, Tracey?”

  “Here’s the Times Gazetteer,” he answered. “By Jove! Wagonmound.”

  “Got it!” shouted Drummond. “There’s bound to be a mound at York.”

  But Tracey was shaking his head.

  “Sorry. I spoke too soon. The darned place is in New Mexico. And that’s the only place beginning with Wagon that’s mentioned.”

  “Hell!” said Drummond, and relapsed into silence.

  “What about Dray,” I remarked. “You speak of a one-horse dray and a two-horse dray.”

  “Stout fellow,” cried Drummond. “Look up Dray, Tracey.”

  “There are about forty Draytons,” he said. “Lots of Draycotts: Drayminster, Drayney.”

  “Drayminster!” I yelled. “Minster, York Minster.”

  “I believe you’ve got it,” said Darrell. “It fits at any rate as far as the first two lines are concerned.”

  “By Jove! you fellows,” cried Jerningham. “Listen here. This is the AA handbook. Drayminster. Population 2,231, Sussex. 55 miles to London. Now brace yourselves for it. Hotel – the Angler’s Rest. We have got it.”

  For a while we all stared at one another too excited to speak. Was there a mistake? Fishermen lying; Anglers’ Rest. No one could say that York Minster was not an aid to the view: a dray could certainly be drawn by one or two horses. It fitted, every clue fitted.

  “Get packed, boys,” cried Drummond. “We lunch at the Angler’s Rest. Gosh! I feel better. We’ve started. Beer, Tracey, old lad – pints of beer. And you and Dixon shall wish us good hunting.”