Man with the Dark Beard (22 page)

The chemist came forward to meet them. It appeared to be a one man shop, small and stuffy, smelling strongly of drugs. The chemist also was small and bespectacled.

“Mr. Rendal?” the inspector said inquiringly.

“Certainly!” The chemist looked a trifle surprised. “Can I do anything for you, sir?”

The inspector handed him a card. 

“It is just a little help I want, Mr. Rendal. Can you carry your mind back to last February, – the 27th of last February?”

The chemist turned his head away, looking at the card before answering, and paused a moment.

“Yes, I remember the 27th of last February.”

“Will you tell me what fixes it in your memory?”

Again there was that odd hesitation.

“Well, that day, there was an accident a little lower down the street, a woman – a Mrs. Monnet – was knocked down and brought into my shop, where a doctor who was passing attended her.”

“His name?” the inspector questioned abruptly.

“Dr. John Bastow! The same who was murdered a few days later.” The chemist looked at the two men over the top of his glasses. “It was the same – I believe I have a card of his still. If you would not mind waiting a few minutes perhaps I could find it.”

The inspector held up his hand.

“No matter. We know that it was that Dr. Bastow. Now I want you to tell me just what happened that day.”

Mr. Rendal began more glibly this time.

“Well, Mrs. Monnet was carried into my little sitting-room and Dr. Bastow attended to her there. She was seriously but not dangerously injured, and in a little time her husband, who had been sent for, was able to move her to a nursing home. That is all that occurred that day.”

“Did you see any more of Dr. Bastow?”

“Yes. He came in the next day. He had lost a memorandum-book, and he thought that in the confusion caused by the accident and the removal of Mrs. Monnet he might have laid it down and forgotten it. However, we had seen nothing of it, but as it was rather important we instituted a vigorous search. Dr. Bastow stopped in the shop and looked at my books, particularly the one in which I entered the sale of poisons. I do very little in this way, so my book went back for years, to long before the passing of the new poisons act. Dr. Bastow seemed very much interested in it.”

“Ah, poisons! That would interest Dr. Bastow,” the inspector said, taking out his notebook. “Now, Mr. Rendal, this may be of great importance. I need not warn a man of your position to be careful. Please tell me exactly what Dr. Bastow did and said with regard to your poison sale book?”

“He did nothing but turn the pages over,” Rendal said, taking off his glasses and wiping them “He had almost reached the beginning when he came to the entry that arrested his attention. It recorded the purchase of a considerable quantity of arsenic, for gardening purposes, by a William Taylor. He had signed for it, of course, and Dr. Bastow seemed extraordinarily interested in his signature. He asked me to describe Mr. Taylor, and I did so to the best of my ability.”

“Please tell us what this Taylor was like. How was it that you came to remember him after so long a time had elapsed?” the inspector questioned.

The chemist looked away from his interlocutor.

“Dr. Bastow asked me that. I can only tell you what I told him. Mr. William Taylor impressed me because he was so very unlike most of the people who come into the shop.”

“Can you give me any sort of description?” the inspector went on.

Mr. Rendal coughed.

“Well, most of my customers are of the poorer class. It is very seldom that I get anyone like Mr. William Taylor, who was unmistakably a gentleman. That really fixed him in my mind. That and his good looks, for he really was good-looking – big and fair with a pleasant manner. I took quite a fancy to him. Dr. Bastow made me give his description over and over again.”

“Should you know him if you saw him now?” the inspector questioned.

“Well, he must be a good deal altered. It is more than ten years ago.” Mr. Rendal hesitated.

“Have you ever seen him since?”

“I am not sure – I think I have – a month or two later.” Rendal was wiping the dew from his glasses; he did not look up.

“Where?”

“The Fleet Street end of the Strand,” Rendal said uneasily.

“You are sure it was the same man?” There was an under-note of triumph in the inspector's voice that made Harbord look at him.

“No, not sure. I couldn't be. I was not near enough. But I think it was he.”

“How old was he?”

“Between thirty and forty, I should think.”

The chemist leaned on his counter and looked out at the passers-by. The thought struck Harbord that he would have been glad if one of them had been a customer and so made an interruption. But no one came into the little shop and the inspector pursued his inquiries.

“Have you any reason to think that this man, this customer, does not always go by the name of William Taylor?”

The chemist replaced his glasses and began to play with a box of patent pills on the counter, peeling bits of paper off absent-mindedly.

“Dr. Bastow said the writing was disguised. Naturally, that made me think a bit.”

“Naturally!” Stoddart leaned over the counter till his head was very near the chemist's. “And have you ever thought you knew or guessed any other name William Taylor might be known by?”

Rendal began to tremble.

“I do not know anything, inspector. And as to guessing – well, I never heard that guessing was evidence. Guessing wrong might land a man in the Law Courts.”

The inspector straightened himself.

“Quite right, Mr. Rendal. I am glad you are careful. Your identification of Mr. Taylor will be all the more valuable when you are called upon to make it, as you probably will be in the course of the next few weeks. You will please hold yourself in readiness. As for the entry in your book, I shall want that too.”

The chemist made no rejoinder; his face had turned a curious grey tint, and he barely responded to the inspector's “Good morning” as the two detectives left the shop.

“Another step on the way,” the inspector said as he hailed a taxi. “Still, there is a lot to be done if we are to save Wilton. But, however the trial ends, I will never stop till I have got the rope around the neck of the real criminal.”

“Mrs. Carr's testimony appeared to clear Wilton of any complicity in Bastow's murder, and this of Rendal's should help,” Harbord said thoughtfully. “Then Alice Downes says that she never saw the bag and the pistol at the flat.”

“Quite,” the inspector agreed. “But you have to recognize first that, even if Wilton were being tried for the murder of Bastow and Mrs. Carr were in the box, the fact that she is Mrs. Carr would considerably discount the value of her evidence. And she would be recognized at once –it would be impossible to keep her real name out of the papers. Secondly, Alice Downes's evidence in the Wilton case is merely negative. She didn't see the pistol or the bag in the flat. That does not prove that they were not there. She says herself that she seldom went into Wilton's room, and never saw the wardrobe door open. When Wilton was ill, Mrs. Wilton did all the waiting on him. That sort of thing won't help Wilton much. I had one bit of luck this morning, though. You know I have always been puzzled as to how the cloak-room ticket got into Wilton's pocket, in a coat which he swears he had not worn for months?”

“I know,” Harbord assented. “It has been rather a stumbling-block, unless one of the servants put it there –or Basil Wilton himself. I must confess that my faith has wavered sometimes.”

“Well, it need not,” the inspector said t shortly. “The housemaid at Wilton's brother's house remembered yesterday –after swearing all along that no one had been upstairs but the inmates of the house –that a day or two after Wilton's arrival a man came to see after the gas. It appears that the Gas Company undertakes, for a small fee, to keep the burners, mantles, etc., in order. She noticed his coming because another man had been only three days before. But he explained this by saying that some special kind of burner was needed in one of the rooms.”

“I suppose the man would be in a sort of uniform?” Harbord interposed.

“She said he wore the Company's cap, as she calls it. And he had a book, but she didn't look at that, and she was uncertain about the cap when pressed. But the point is: I went to the Gas and Coke Company's office, and found that no second man had been sent, and no special burner ordered or supplied. The girl left the man in the room and of course he could have put a ticket anywhere or have done what he liked. I feel no doubt that it was just to plant the ticket there that he went up.”

“Why didn't the girl think of this before?” Harbord questioned.

“Says she never gave the man another thought until I was questioning her yesterday. Doesn't remember anything about him now except that he looked oldish, and is sure she wouldn't know him again. The girl's a fool!” the inspector finished.

“Well, her evidence won't be much good for the trial by itself. We must concentrate on the dark beard.”

“That is like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Harbord rejoined. “I have visited so many hairdressers' shops in the past few weeks, without any success, that I am beginning to think the murderer, whoever he is, made it himself.”

The inspector shook his head. “No, it was too well done to be the work of an amateur. If we could find out where it was made and for whom, I firmly believe that we should have solved both the secret of Dr. Bastow's death and the Hawksview Mansions Mystery. One great difficulty is that it may not have been made in London or even in England at all. Also, it may have been done years ago, and the maker may be dead. But I heard last night of a man who does a great deal of work, in a small way, for theatrical folks. He has a little shop in a street off the Strand at the back of Drury Lane. That is where I am making for now.” As he spoke, he stopped the taxi at Charing Cross. “We will get out here.”

The two men threaded their way across the traffic of the Strand.

Harbord had known, ever since he came into the Hawksview Mansions Case, that Stoddart held a very strong opinion with regard to Basil Wilton's innocence. It was one that Harbord himself was not altogether inclined to share. There were times when he felt that the evidence against Wilton was too strong to be disproved, and he had not had Stoddart's experience in the Bastow Mystery. There were alternative moments when he felt that certain suspicions of Stoddart's which he had fathomed must be well-founded. The inspector was not the sort of man to take fancies without any cause.

Stoddart did not speak again as they turned up by the side of Charing Cross, along Chandos Street, and then across to Maiden Lane. From there they dived into that labyrinth of back streets that lies between Covent Garden and Drury Lane. The inspector wound his way in and out, at last coming to a standstill before a dust-begrimed little shop that surely must have been a survival of the old Seven Dials.

“This is our goal.”

Harbord looked up. The name of Simon Lesson told him nothing, but the quaint, old-fashioned bow window held various examples of the hairdresser's art. The door was another survival. Divided into halves, one closed, the top one open. The inspector put his hand over and unlatched the bottom one. A curious, old bell tinkled, and an old man with a funny, wrinkled face and a hump-back got up from his seat behind the counter.

“Mr. Simon Lesson?” the inspector began politely.

“At your service, sir,” the little man said with an elfish grin. “Anything I can do for you in the way of make-up will give me the greatest pleasure. I may say that some of the greatest actors of our time – of all time – have availed themselves of my poor skill and have expressed themselves satisfied.”

“I am quite sure they would be,” the inspector agreed. “It is just a little information I want from you this morning. But if you will glance at my card, Mr. Lesson –”

The little man took the card. The grin died off his wizened face.

“I don't know what your business may be, gentlemen, but I have always kept myself to myself. I have never been called in question by the police.”

“That also I am sure of,” the inspector returned. “It is your help we want, Mr. Lesson. I am told that you are the only man in London who can be of any assistance to us.”

As he spoke he put a paper-bag that he had been carrying on the counter and, opening it, produced the brown beard that had been found in the bag at the station. He held it up.

“Can you tell us anything about this, Mr. Lesson? We are particularly anxious to find the maker. Not that there is any trouble threatening him – far from it. But we must find out for whom it was made.”

Simon Lesson took the beard in his hand. He scrutinized it carefully, he held it up to the light, then, screwing a magnifying-glass in one eye, he bent over it, while the other two men watched him in silence.

At last he looked up.

“I had nothing to do with the making of this, gentlemen, if that is what you want to know.”

An expression of keen disappointment crossed the inspector's face, but he smoothed it out directly.

“It is a wonderfully good thing, Mr. Lesson, and I was told that you were the only man in London capable of manufacturing such an article.”

“In London, eh?” the hunch-back ejaculated. “But suppose it was not made in London, or I should say by anyone who is in London now?”

“Mr. Lesson, I can see that you know something about it,” the inspector said, his tone insensibly changing. “I can assure you that in no way does it mean trouble to the maker of this. It is just that we may be able to ascertain something about the buyer. I must request you to speak out.”

The stress he laid on the word “request” gave it the force of a command.