The Pit-Prop Syndicate by Freeman Wills Crofts (readict books TXT) 📕

“I’m Inspector Willis from Scotland Yard,” he said with a sharpness strangely at variance with his usual easygoing mode of address. “See here.” He showed his credentials, at which the manager bowed obsequiously. “I am following that gentleman who was in here inquiring about a room a few minutes ago. I want to know what passed between you.”

The manager, who was a sly, evil-looking person seemingly of Eastern blood, began to hedge, but Willis cut him short with scant ceremony.

“Now look here, my friend,” he said brusquely, “I haven’t time to waste with you. That man that you were talking to is wanted for murder, and what you have to decide is whether you’re going to act with the police or against them. If you give us any trouble you may find yourself in the dock as an accomplice after the fact. In any case it’s not healthy for a man in your position to run up against the police.”

His bluff had more effect that it might have had with an Englishman in similar circumstances, and the manager became polite and anxious to assist. Yes, the gentleman had come about a room. He had ordered lunch in a private room for a party of seven for 1:30 on the following Tuesday. He had been very particular about the room, had insisted on seeing it, and had approved of it. It appeared the party had some business to discuss after lunch, and the gentleman had required a guarantee that they would not be interrupted. The gentleman had given his name as Mr. Hodgson. The price had been agreed on.

Willis in his turn demanded to see the room, and he was led upstairs to a small and rather dark chamber, containing a fair-sized oval table surrounded by red plush chairs, a red plush sofa along one side, and a narrow sideboard along another. The walls supported tawdry and dilapidated decorations, in which beveled mirrors and faded gilding bore a prominent part. Two large but quite worthless oil paintings hung above the fireplace and the sideboard respectively, and the window was covered with gelatine paper simulating stained glass.

Inspector Willis stood surveying the scene with a frown on his brow. How on earth was he to secrete himself in this barely furnished apartment? There was not room under the sofa, still less beneath the sideboard. Nor was there any adjoining room or cupboard in which he could hide, his keen ear pressed to the keyhole. It seemed to him that in this case he was doing nothing but coming up against one insoluble problem after another. Ruefully he recalled the conversation in Archer’s study, and he decided that, whatever it cost in time and trouble, there must be no repetition of that fiasco.

He stood silently pondering over the problem, the manager obsequiously bowing and rubbing his hands. And then the idea for which he was hoping flashed into his mind. He walked to the wall behind the sideboard and struck it sharply. It rang hollow.

“A partition?” he asked. “What is behind it?”

“Anozzer room, sair. A private room, same as dees.”

“Show it to me.”

The “ozzer room” was smaller, but otherwise similar to that they had just left. The doors of the two rooms were beside each other, leading on to the same passage.

“This will do,” Willis declared. “Now look here, Mr. Manager, I wish to overhear the conversation of your customers, and I may or may not wish to arrest them. You will show them up and give them lunch exactly as you have arranged. Some officers from the Yard and myself will previously have hidden ourselves in here. See?”

The manager nodded.

“In the meantime I shall send a carpenter and have a hole made in that partition between the two rooms, a hole about two feet by one, behind the upper part of that picture that hangs above the sideboard. Do you understand?”

The manager wrung his hands.

“Ach!” he cried. “But meine Zimmern! Mine rooms, zey veel pe deestroyed!”

“Your rooms will be none the worse,” Willis declared. “I will have the damage made good, and I shall pay you reasonably well for everything. You’ll not lose if you act on the square, but if not⁠—” he stared aggressively in the other’s face⁠—“if the slightest hint of my plan reaches any of the men⁠—well, it will be ten years at least.”

“It shall be done! All shall happen as you say!”

“It had better,” Willis rejoined, and with a menacing look he strode out of the restaurant.

“The Gresham Hotel,” he called to his driver, as he reentered his taxi.

His manner to the manageress of the Bedford Square hotel was very different from that displayed to the German. Introducing himself as an inspector from the Yard, he inquired the purpose of Archer’s call. Without hesitation he was informed. The distiller had engaged a private sitting-room for a business interview which was to take place at eleven o’clock on the following Tuesday between a Miss Coburn, a Mr. Merriman, and a Captain Beamish.

“So far so good,” thought Willis exultingly, as he drove off. “They’re walking into the trap! I shall have them all. I shall have them in a week.”

At the Yard he dismissed his taxi, and on reaching his room he found the letter he was expecting from Madeleine. It contained that from Beamish, and the latter ran:

“Ferriby, Yorks,

“Saturday.

“Dear Miss Coburn,⁠—I have just received your letter of 25th inst., and I hasten to reply.

“I am deeply grieved to learn that you consider yourself badly treated by the members of the syndicate, and I may say at once that I feel positive that any obligations which they may have contracted will be immediately and honorably discharged.

“It is, however, news to me that your late father was a partner, as I always imagined that he held his position as I do my own, namely, as a salaried official who also receives a bonus based on the profits of the concern.

“With