An Old Betrayal

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Lord John Dallington was unmistakably in better health. Lenox watched him stride down a wide central passage at Scotland Yard just after four o’clock. “Jenkins will be another moment,” Lenox told his young associate.

“Is he bringing a constable with him, I hope?” asked Dallington.

“Two.”

“Who are these four gentlemen we mean to visit, then? Old college mates of Godwin’s?”

Lenox read out the names that Skaggs had given him. “Mark Troughton. Albert Walworth. Jeremiah Smith. St. John Walker.”

“They sound a dreary lot.”

“Let us hope they are dreary enough not to fire a pistol upon us, at any rate.”

“True, I should hate to die just when I no longer feel like ten-day-old soup.” Then, cheered by a thought, he said, “But perhaps they’ll hit the constables!”

“Come now, Dallington.”

“Only a joke.”

They visited Mark Troughton first, and Skaggs had been correct; he was not the man for whom they were searching. They apologized to him and returned to the Yard’s large, rather ratty carriage.

The remaining three gentlemen all, by coincidence, resided within a few streets of each other in Bloomsbury. The first they visited was St. John Walker — his forename pronounced Sinjun, one presumed. As they approached his door, Lenox felt a patter of anxiety in his chest. He braced himself.

The result of their inquiry here was disappointing, too. Walker was a tall, very thin person, with enormous red ears like bell pulls. When they explained their visit he replied that, instead of murdering and thieving, he occupied his time by buying antiquities and reselling them on the secondary market. “I’ve very sorry you’ve got the wrong man,” he said.

“It’s not your fault,” Dallington told him glumly.

“I had never supposed it to be, but I can understand that it must be an exasperation to you nevertheless.”

“Thank you, Mr. Walker,” said Jenkins and motioned the two constables, hearty beef-fed lads with high hopes of making the arrest, to retreat down the steps of the house.

That left two men: Walworth and Smith. “Skaggs notes that Smith is the handsomest of the lot,” said Lenox.

“Ah, Rupert Skaggs, noted judge of beauty,” said Dallington.

Lenox smiled. “I suggest we leave him for last.”

Walworth was out. He lived in a gloomy set of apartments, largely unadorned, with a single servant, a young and jumpy valet who introduced himself as Albert Wrightswood. “You’re both called Albert?” Lenox asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“He must sound mad when he speaks to you,” Dallington said. “It’s as if he’s telling himself to fetch his pipe or lay out his clothes. ‘Albert, you’ve done first-rate work today.’ Eh?”

The junior Albert smiled weakly, the presence of five strange men from Scotland Yard evidently having dampened his appetite for witticisms at his own expense. “Perhaps, sir.”

There was something Lenox didn’t like in the young man’s edginess, however. “Where is your employer?” he asked.

“Out upon a social call, sir.”

“Do you know where?”

“At the Biblius Club, I believe, sir.”

Lenox and Dallington glanced at each other. “I know it,” said Lenox. “He is a member?”

“Yes.”

“We shall seek him there.”

When they left, however, Lenox, in a whisper, suggested that they watch the door for a moment. Sure enough, Albert Wrightswood appeared a few moments later, all in haste to be gone. Jenkins sent one of the constables along with cab money to follow him.

The party from Scotland Yard was down to four in number, therefore, when they knocked upon the door of Jeremiah Smith. It belonged to a lovely alabaster town house overlooking Bedford Square.

Jenkins wasn’t pleased. “This hardly has the appearance of the residence of a gentleman who needs to commit fraud to buy a hat.”

“Perhaps his frauds have run pretty large,” said Dallington.

A white-haired housekeeper answered the door and led them into a drawing room, where they waited for three or four tense minutes. At last Jeremiah Smith entered the room, face serious — and confirmed all of Jenkins’s fears. It was not the man from Gilbert’s.

They made their hasty apologies and, without needing to consult each other about the decision, made for the Biblius Club, and Albert Walworth.

The club’s steward acknowledged that he was in, and after a perfunctory objection to their intrusion upon a private clubhouse, which Jenkins immediately squashed, he led them upstairs to the club’s back library, overlooking the garden.

“What is on the third floor now?” asked Lenox to the steward in a low voice, as they walked. “I know the society that was there has been disbanded.”

“Yes, that was a terrible set-to. The Biblius Club uses the space now — and got it very cheaply, because nobody wanted to rent the rooms of the September Society. Here we are, gentlemen. Mr. Walworth, you have visitors. Impertinent visitors.”

Indeed, here Walworth stood, and the last of Lenox’s hope dissolved. Jeremiah Smith had not been remarkably handsome, but in comparison with poor Albert Walworth, who had a bulbous nose and eyebrows the size and texture of two voles, he was like one of the ancient Greek gods, returned to modern times. For the fourth time they went through the same apology, which Walworth, befuddled, managed half to accept.

Out upon the street Lenox sighed and made his own apology. “I am sorry, gentlemen.”

“It was worth the effort,” said Dallington loyally.

“Perhaps the two of you would like a cup of tea?” asked Lenox.

Jenkins hesitated, plainly out of sorts, but then, manners winning out, assented. Soon they were all in a carriage bound for Hampden Lane.

As usual, Lenox was greeted by a raft of telegrams, many of them to do with Parliament. One of them, however, bore the return address of Skaggs. This he tore open as Dallington and Jenkins settled themselves into armchairs.

Misidentified forty-one, forty-three STOP addresses and names appended STOP Apologies Skaggs

Lenox handed this note to Dallington, who read it and passed it on to Jenkins.

“What sort of code is this?”

Lenox explained: Skaggs had dismissed forty of the names on his initial list, reserved judgment about the four they had just visited, and had all but certain confirmation on three: the forty-first, — second, and — third names on his list. Apparently his certainty had been misplaced, however, and when he had gone back to check those three he had discovered the fact.

“It’s two new names,” said Lenox. “If you have the energy to go out again.”

“We’ve sent Constable Hardy home.”

“I’ll go,” said Dallington. “Though I might swallow down a sip of that tea first.”

Twenty minutes later the three men were in Lenox’s carriage, bound for Belgravia. The first address was in Dalton Mews; the name of the man who lived there was Leonard Wintering. It did look rather a more promising location in which to find their impostor, a dingy building in an otherwise affluent street, no steward or porter or housekeeper at the door to greet them.

“The third floor,” said Lenox, looking down at the telegram. “The door is marked with Wintering’s last name.”

“I look forward to apologizing to him for infringing upon his privacy,” said Jenkins. “It will be our fifth apology of the day. Mrs. Jenkins will be delighted that I am so promiscuous with the things.”

Lenox ignored this sarcasm and led them up the stairs. He was using no special caution, until, on the landing below the third story, Lenox suddenly felt a sense of unease. “Stop,” he said.

“What is it?” asked Dallington in a low voice.

“Do you smell that?”

Both men turned their noses up into the air. “Someone has built a fire,” said Jenkins. “It’s cold out, after all.”

“No — that is cordite you smell, not a wood or gas fire. A gun was fired here today.”

Dallington and Jenkins looked at each other and nodded. “Carefully, then,” said Jenkins and went ahead of them, leading the way up to the third floor and Wintering’s door.

He knocked at it. “Delivery!” he announced in a confident voice.

There was no answer. “Try again,” whispered Dallington.

Jenkins repeated the ruse. “Delivery!”

“See if the door is open,” said Lenox.

It was. They crept inward, single file, down a shadowy front hall, closing the door behind them. Jenkins had his small revolver out. The smell of cordite was strong here; there was no noise inside, nobody moving toward or away from the door.

“He’s killed again, and fled,” said Jenkins.

Suddenly there was a hammering on the door that they had closed behind them, and all three men jumped, startled, at the same time. “Hellfire below,” said Dallington. “What was that?”

“Delivery!” a voice called out.

Lenox’s heart was racing. “We look inside before we go to the door,” he said and, seeing that Jenkins wavered, strode with a purposeful step down the hall.

“Delivery!” shouted the voice again, and there was a fist on the door.

They came into a large living room, blue with evening light. Nobody was in it. In the corner of the room was a door, leading to a bedroom. “Follow me,” said Lenox.

Here, where the smell of gunfire was so intense that it might have been only moments old, they saw it: the body of Leonard Wintering, long and lean, flung back on the unmade bed, one leg dangling off, a small bullet hole in its temple. Leonard Wintering — or, as he had called himself in Gilbert’s, that day, Archie Godwin. He had not killed again; he had been killed, this time.

“My God,” said Jenkins.

It was Dallington who had already looked away, back down the hallway. “Do we wait it out? Or do we go to the door?” he asked.

“We go to the door,” said Lenox.