"Search 'em."
The porter, who was not a film-goer, looked uncomfortably at Evelyn and made protesting noises. The clerk was flustered.
"Well, search him, anyhow. Hop to it."
The porter, who I could have sworn was apologizing under his breath, began gingerly to put his hands in my pockets and take out the collection of articles I had been all night transferring from one costume to the other. The first thing he found was the red-sealed envelope. The second thing he found was that £100 bank-note.
"Gawdlummycharley!" said the porter, opening it out.
"Bring it here," ordered our captor. I am not likely to forget him fingering that bank-note, looking up and down from it in quick jerks of his head, so as never to take his eyes off us. The muzzle of his revolver was dusty, and I think there was a fragment of cobweb inside the barrel; but it was not an object with which anybody was likely to play tricks. Then he looked up in a blaze of triumph.
"That settles it. This note is counterfeit too — yes, and not a very good counterfeit either. Willoughby's hand must have slipped. My lad, we've caught Willoughby's mob right enough."
I peered round at Evelyn. So the note which had been in the newspaper which Mrs. Antrim said she had found in Hogenauer's scullery, — that note, was bad. And it would appear that in some fashion Hogenauer himself bad been twisted into this business of the counterfeit money. The thing was getting to be too much for my staggering wits, and the clerk grinned like a cat from Chester.
"Get to the house-phone," he ordered the porter, "and wake up Mr. Collins. Also 'phone the police station, and tell 'em we've got two of the Willoughby gang on toast. There's a thousand pounds reward out for them. `Kenwood Blake.' `Evelyn Cheyne.' I wonder what your real names are? Don't move or I'll drill you."
"Oh, for God's sake!" I said in some disgust. "Stop that kind of talk and listen to reason. Do we get a chance to explain? This is more serious than you think."
"It can't be more serious than I think," he informed me. "I took a long shot and it's come off. You can explain at the police station." He considered. Without a doubt, there was enough evidence against us to send the Archangel Gabriel to clink; he knew he was right; and he began to see himself as a hero.
"Here," he added thoughtfully. "This is a story that'll interest the outside world. Just to do your duty, you might ring up the `Press' office. It's — it's a story that'll interest every London paper too. I don't think it's too late to get it in; but anyway there'll be room in Stop Press-"
And also a tasty morsel for Major-General Sir Edward Kent-Fortescue Cheyne to read when he opened his paper at breakfast.
"That," I said, "would be fine publicity for the hotel, wouldn't it? Yes, it would. In your eye. Then you'll have neither the reward nor your job. Will you allow us to prove. who we are? Also, do you mind if I take my hands down?"
He studied this. "Right. But put your hands in your pockets and keep 'em there." Then the porter handed him the long red-sealed envelope which vas the will-o'-the-wisp we had been chasing throughout this entire case, and which was now passing irretrievably out of my hands. "What's in this?"
"Just some papers."
"Probably some more counterfeit money."
"Well, why don't you open it and see, then?" I said. I was in such a heat of wild curiosity to know what that envelope contained that, at the moment, I should not have minded if he had read whatever was in it. "Go ahead — open it."
"Trap of some kind, eh?" he said swiftly. He contemplated the envelope. "Anyhow, we'll see later. Here, Frank. Take this envelope downstairs with you and lock it up in the safe."
Good-bye. Good-bye for ever. And there was absolutely nothing that could be done about it. He was handing it to the porter when he stopped and looked more sharply at it. "It's smeared all over," he muttered. "Dirty. Just like… What is the stuff on it? Lamp-black, by George!"
The porter — our apologetic friend Frank, who had a wart on his cheek-opened his eyes and spoke unexpectedly.
"Is 'e?" he inquired with interest. "Lamp-black! Gawdlummycharley, I bought lamp-black for Mr. Keppel last night. He sent me out for it. Nine-pennyworth. Ah."
"I begin to see," observed our captor, and his eyes were shinning. "Keppel! You asked' for him when you came in, and made sure he was out. You didn't make any appointment, or he'd have been in; he's fussy. You got out that window. You walked along the ledge. You got into his room… Frank! Have you got the master-key to the Yale lock on Dr. Keeper's door?"
"Ah," said Frank.
"We're going down there now to have a look. You two march in front of me, and don't try any tricks… Wait! Who's that coming upstairs?"
Momentarily he had glanced towards the door, and that second might have been the time to knock his weapon aside. But I did not attempt it, for at Frank's reply our last hope went up the chimney and all future prospects of a wedding dissolved in smoke. Frank replied that it was p'leece. Frank said that it was Inspector Murchison from the Bridewell — which I took to be police headquarters — and Frank seemed relieved. Our captor let out a relieved whoop and call to the deliverer, while Evelyn shut her eyes. Into the room came the burly man with the bowler hat, whom we had seen at the station. He looked round the group, and surveyed us sardonically. But that was not the end of it. Peering beyond his shoulder, eager and pink of face, trotted Mr. Johnson Stone.
Stone pointed to me.
"That's the man," he said.
Evelyn spoke in a somewhat strangled voice, after a pause. "OOoo, you Judas," she breathed. "So it was a game after all! It was ghost stories you were telling us after all. L. isn't dead. I'll bet you're L. yourself. You set him on us, did you? Well, I hope you're satisfied."
Stone cast up his eyes. For a moment he stared and went pinker. Then he spoke in the same tangled tone.
"So now," he said, "now I'm a Judas, am I? That's fine. That's just dandy. I hereby take a solemn oath that never again, never if I live to be a billion, will I ever put out a helping hand to anybody again. I'll kick 'em in the face! I'll kill 'em! I'll Listen, you lunkheads, why didn't you wait and let me explain?" He put out a hand and seized the inspector by the shoulder, as though to steady himself. "You poor, blithering, blistering….. Listen. The fellow wasn't at the station to arrest you. He never heard of you in his life. He wasn't coming to our compartment to grab you. He was at the train to meet me. He's my son-in-law, you one-horned limbs of a piebald cow, the son-in-law I've been talking about all evening and the one I said could probably help you! But would you listen? No. And now, as far as I'm concerned you can take your envelopes and your Keppels and your Hogenauers, and you can I make a pause here, remembering that scene in the prosaic hotel-room with the ‘Deer Drinking by Moonlight’ on the wall. It marked the change. It marked the crossing of the Jordan and the parting of the roads. It did not mean peace, for there was no peace in this case until the end of it; but at least it meant the end of our flying career as fugitives from justice. Though I was not certain of this at the moment, I know that I had seldom felt such a sense of relief.
Evelyn spoke in a small voice. "Does that mean," she said, "that-er"
"Take it easy," growled Stone. "What kind of a jam have you got into now?"
Murchison glanced at the clerk, and rattled coins in his pocket. "Anything wrong?" he asked casually.
Stone's son-in-law, in essentials, was a sort of older and Anglicized version of Stone himself. Also, there was about him something which reminded me of our friend Humphrey Masters. He was about thirty-five, heavy in the body, square in the jaw, and with light-blue eyes under wrinkled lids, which gave him an older look. When he took off his bowler bat, which is the Force's way of indicating that there is a truce from duty, he showed wiry brown hair standing up like a brush. He had two furrows round the sides of his mouth, and a slow easy way of talking, which again was like Masters. He stood tapping his fingers on his hat, looking almost absently at the clerk; and I guessed that Stone had told him the whole story.