Here, half-way into it, he stopped.
There was an unusual noise.
Riddle knew the proper noises of his streets as a man knows street-noises from a familiar room. Anything out of line registered in his mind seconds before he began to think about it. This was not a loud noise, but he tracked it along carefully to where the super-swank number nine thrust its heavy masonry at the moon.
Beside number nine, whose first floor-flat had been occupied by Mr and Mrs Constable, was a tall narrow gate with fancy iron grilling. Behind number nine, Riddle knew, was a deep garden enclosed by high walls; and this gate opened on a little passage leading back to the garden. The gate was now open. It clicked and rattled very slightly in the gusts of wind. Even from a distance, if you kept a sharp eye out, you could see it move. In four years of patrolling this district, Riddle had never known it to be open before.
Mr and Mrs Constable were dead, so they couldn't have opened the gate. The tenant of the ground-floor flat, to Riddle's certain knowledge, was away from home. About the tenant of the top floor, he wasn't sure; that one had been at least until recently in the south of France, and might or might not have returned. But when the top-floor tenant was at home there were always lights and sometimes sounds of revelry. Not a light showed anywhere at number nine; and the gate continued to creak.
Riddle pushed it open and walked back to the garden.
The garden was mostly grass and trees. The thin, clear moon shone down into it, throwing the back of the house into shadow. Riddle could make out that the back of the house was a staring whited sepulchre of whitewash, dingy and peeling; that each floor had a long iron balcony stretching across it, with an ornamental iron handrail and separate sets of stairs leading down, so that each tenant had access to the garden.
Keeping into shadow by the house, Riddle peered out into this garden. He saw Pennik there.
There could be no mistaking that face turned up to the moonlight, the face that had turned and stared through the newspapers in every possible combination of face and profile. A chestnut tree, new and rich with foliage, threw a dense shadow on the edge of the grass; but Pennik - his eyes on the house - moved out from under it. . He was hatless, and his face (perhaps from a trick of the moonlight) looked bloated like a drowned man's. Riddle saw him slide his hand into his pocket and draw something out. Despite the vast whisper of wind in foliage, all sounds were whittled down to such a fine point that- Riddle distinctly heard the click, and saw moonlight run along the blade, as Pennik pressed the button of the clasp-knife.
Then Pennik, slipping the open knife into his pocket, moved out softly towards the house.
P.C. Riddle moved with him - sideways in shadow as Pennik-moved forward. When Pennik put his foot on the first step of the iron stairway, Riddle was close enough to breathe on him. He almost put his hand on Pennik's as the latter took hold of the hand-rail. But Riddle did not do that; he waited until Pennik was half a dozen steps up, and followed.
That grotesque, monkey-like climb in the dark was done in silence. Pennik did not look round. Or at least Riddle hoped it was done in silence. If he had any thought at all, it was a confused shouting to himself that he had been right after all. He ought to have rung up Billy Wynne. Might have done himself a bit of good.
Never mind. Leonard Riddle had his own satisfaction. He could tell 'em a thing or two, if he wanted to. So again Pennik was in two places at once, was he? No, he wasn't. Len Riddle could tell 'em why he wasn't. In London they might know a lot about detective work, but they didn't know anything about poachers...
The iron stairway creaked faintly. Pennik ahead was almost up to the first floor; Riddle could see the windows against the dingy whitewash. Then Pennik stopped, and Riddle also stopped so abruptly that he almost made the whole stairway shake. There was another man on the balcony just over their heads.
Riddle could not make out the face of the other man, who was of medium size and wore a soft hat and had his hand on the rail of the balcony. Riddle had a feeling that he was young; he also had a-feeling that Pennik, as Pennik's head appeared like a jack-in-the-box over the edge of the balcony, gave the other man a shock he refused to acknowledge. The two faced each other, and seemed to brace themselves.
In barely a whisper, so that it was difficult to distinguish the words, Pennik spoke. t
'Good evening, Dr Sanders,' he said.
(Sanders ? Sanders ? Wasn't that name familiar ?)
The young man moved out and stood squarely at the top of the stairs. He also spoke in a whisper.
'What are you doing here?'
'I have come to settle matters, Dr Sanders,' said Pennik.
In the distance, muffled by the night mutter, the bell of St Ald's Church struck the quarter-hour to ten. Pennik, throwing back his head and lifting his wrist, strained his eyes to peer at his wrist-watch in the dark. What he saw seemed to give him great satisfaction.
'Quite correct,' he whispered. 'And what are you doing here, Doctor?'
'I wish I knew,' said the other man, taking a hard grip on the rail of the balcony. 'I wish to God I knew. I wish they'd tell me.'
'I can tell you,' Pennik answered, and made a bound for the top step.
This was where P.C. Riddle acted. He was not dramatic about it; it was not in his nature to be dramatic. He merely took the remaining steps at a couple of long, efficient strides, and tapped Pennik smartly on the shoulder, from behind. At the same time he unhooked the bull's-eye lantern from his belt, switched it on, and turned the beam into Pennik's face as the latter swung round.
‘Now, then,' said P.C. Riddle. 'What's all this?'
The question was rhetorical. What answer he expected he did not know himself. But the last thing he expected was the expression of the face turned round towards him in the beam of his lantern. So stealthy had been Pennik's movements that the result was startling and almost shocking. Pennik's face looked queer and bloated because the man had been crying; crying like a child; crying until his eyelids were puffy and the whites of the eyes showed streaked with pink. He put up a hand to shield those eyes from the light. The corners of his mouth turned down - and he whimpered.
There was a stir of footsteps on the iron plates of the balcony. They were cautious steps, but plain as a noise of rats. The beam of an electric torch appeared and fastened on Riddle.
'What in hell's name are you doing?' muttered a voice, and it seemed impossible to get so much concentrated savagery of exasperation in words spoken under the breath. 'Put out that light!'
Both lights vanished after Riddle had turned his upwards. But what he saw so startled him that he risked one more gleam again afterwards to make sure. The speaker had been Chief Inspector Masters, who pulled his bowler hat down on his head and brushed the light away as though he were brushing something off his face. Beside him stood the old gentleman Riddle remembered from the Lancaster Mews row. Then, on the breezy balcony of a lightless house, P.G. Riddle tried to gather together his wits.
'What is it?' muttered Masters. 'What do you want?'
'Gate open, sir -' replied Riddle automatically. Then the more important matter wormed uppermost. 'I've got Pennik,' he added, and fastened his free hand on Pennik's collar.
'Yes, yes, that's all right. Hop it now, d'ye hear? Hop it! No, stand by; we may need you.'
'Sir, this is Pennik. He's not in Paris. I know how he did it. The same as the poachers did in Lancashire. My dad -'
'Let him go! What do you think you're doing?'
'Begging your pardon, sir. I was going to get in touch with Billy Wynne, but I'd like you to listen to me. They were twin brothers, the finest poaching team that ever devilled the magistrates. Tom and Harry Godden; one of them would clean up Sir Mark Wilman's park under the keeper's nose, but he'd have an alibi because the other would be at the pub with a dozen witnesses to prove -'