The Whispering Lane/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
THE MYSTERIOUS WORD
Having collected such information as was possible under present foggy conditions, Hustings proceeded to deal with the same as best he could. The trail, faint as it was, led him to London—to that London-under-London, of which, according to Jenny Walton, the dead man had been a secret citizen. And, how ever doubtful he might have been of her probity in several ways, the woman’s statements proved to be correct in this instance. In the lawyer’s opinion she was withholding important details, judging from the significance of her final remark in the library. Nevertheless, so much as she had admitted was valuable and capable of proof. Dick learned this from Bender.
The individual answering to this name was a shabby, under-sized man, with the mask of a fox and the squeaky cry of a field-mouse. His dingy frock-coat and baggy striped trousers were the last word in misfits, and he wore a battered silk hat, pulled well down over his wholly bald cranium. With his many pockets stuffed with papers, and always carrying a bulgy umbrella, Mr. Bender sidled, rather than walked, constantly turning his cunning eyes downwards, upwards, sideways, in search of possibilities. He was a born Paul Pry, searching out secrets from the sheer love of making those secrets his own, and was utilizing his inquisitive instincts, as an inquiry agent, for the betterment of his fortunes. A brother-solicitor had recommended him to Hustings as a useful sleuth-hound, and Hustings had hired him promptly to look with those cunning eyes into the none-too-clean past of Dr. Cuthbert Slanton.
Naturally the young man would have infinitely preferred to work single-handed, but his one and only visit to Old Wung’s opium-den, impressed him thoroughly with a sense of his incompetence as an amateur detective. An expert in gutter doings was needed, and he found such a one in Bender. The wary little fox was just the unscrupulous searcher-into-other-people’s affairs which the lawyer required for his purpose. Within four days from the date of hiring, Mr. Bender proved his value, since he learned more in that time than Dick could have learned in a month. And the fourth day saw him sidling into the office of Hustings, Warry & Son, to make his report. The senior partner of the firm received him in a lordly room of a Georgian-fashionable house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and greeted him with mingled relief and impatience. “I thought you were never coming,” snapped out that harassed young man.
Bender deposited his small person in the depths of a comfortable chair, placing on the carpet his hat and umbrella: one on one side, one on the other. “Ah youth, Mr. Hustings, sir, youth. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“And the horse is the noblest of all animals,” retorted Dick, sitting at his writing-table to snatch up an ivory paper-cutter and fidget. “Don’t quote copybook maxims to me. What have you found out?”
In no wise disturbed by this brusque reception, Bender leaned back with folded arms and fast-closed eyes. “I can talk better when they’re shut,” he squeaked, “seeing, as it were, inside my head, Mr. Hustings, sir,” and he began his recital in a monotonous tone of voice, shrilly clear.
The recital took some time and covered a considerable space of ground, so Dick curbed his impatience to listen intently. In the capacity of an out-of-door patient, Bender had become friendly with one of the Plantagenet Hospital nurses, and, in some mysterious way, had learned from her that Slanton was a respectable, clever and reliable house-surgeon. Owing to his reticent character and saturnine looks, added to an unsympathetic manner, he was by no means popular, being regarded rather as a Robot than as a man. But his reputation was unblemished, his assiduity, as a doctor, great, and he was high in favour with the authorities. If he had a fault, it was his habit of going away, sometimes for a day, sometimes for a night, more often than any other member of the staff. Twice or thrice his superiors had remonstrated with him, disapproving of these frequent and desultory holidays. But on each occasion Slanton had grimly offered his resignation. It was never accepted, since his scientific attainments were so great, and his medical capabilities so proven. Beyond the eccentricity of his many disappearances, which he disdained to explain, there was nothing against him. His doings were finally accepted as the usual freakishness of genius. “And now?”—questioned Dick when Bender arrived at this point.
“Oh, now, Mr. Hustings, sir,” said the little man, opening his eyes, “those in the hospital verify the proverb that the herd turn on the wounded deer. As there was nothing too good for Mr. Slanton, now there is nothing too bad. He was murdered, they say, as a reward of his evil-doing. Secret vice has been the cause of his downfall. I won’t tell you, Mr. Hustings, sir, what they say about Miss Danby. It might hurt your feelings.”
“They believe her to be guilty?”
“Oh yes. And credit her with being as vicious as her victim.”
“And the tattooing?”
“They say that the branded name was just what the tattooed name described him to be.”
“And all this upon what grounds?”
“None, save the evidence at the inquest. The wounded deer, Mr. Hustings, sir. And another proverb—any stick is useful to beat a scamp.”
“I never heard that proverb, Mr. Bender. Well they are right about Slanton being a scamp: but their opinion of Miss Danby is wrong. She is the victim of circumstances, and it’s up to you and to me to prove her so. Go on!”
Bender closed his eyes again and went on, this time passing from the light into the shadow. That is, he descended into the underworld, and crept along the crooked paths used by the dead man when indulging in his secret lusts. These led to thieves’ kitchens, to police-sought dancing-saloons, to opium-dens and such-like unsavoury haunts of animal gratification. In this place and that the prowling little fox had collected damning information, which revealed only too truly the Mr. Hyde side of Slanton’s complex character. With his strong will, powerful physique, and command of money, the man had dominated those wastrels of civilisation who ministered to his vicious tastes. But all the details of the man’s doings were so general, and so far from leading up to the point which Hustings wished to reach, that he interrupted Bender impatiently, “All this is interesting, but not sufficiently so to me. Did you come across anyone likely to have murdered the man?”
“Well, no, sir. He made many enemies, owing to the way in which he snatched women from this man and that. But they were all afraid of their tyrant, as he was a scientific fighter, and fought on all and every occasion. In the kingdom of the Blind, the one-eyed is king,” said Bender, in his proverbial way of talking, “but Slanton had two eyes and knew how to use them.”
“What about Old Wung?”
“He hated Slanton and once tried to knife him. I spent several hours in his den, but could learn nothing. Besides,” went on Bender, taking much the same view as Aileen, “a Chinaman wouldn’t have tattooed a Biblical name like Cain on Slanton’s forehead.”
“I have heard that before,” Dick nodded, sapiently, “but surely Slanton ran some chance of being blackmailed?”
Bender nodded in his turn. “One man tried that, Mr. Hustings, sir. He followed the doctor home”
“To the hospital?”
“No, sir—to a cottage the doctor rented at Hampstead. Slanton had him arrested for burglary, and the man got two years.”
“Oh!” Dick remembered what Jenny had confessed, “was the man’s name Bill?”
“Yes, Mr. Hustings, sir. Bill Tyson.”
“I see. Probably that was why Slanton got Jenny the job with Miss Danby. He was sorry that he robbed the girl of her man, and sought to make amends.”
Bender wagged his bald head solemnly, “You told me all about that girl, sir, when engaging me to handle the matter. And then you admitted that, on her own confession, she had been sent to spy upon Miss Danby. Dr. Slanton only did what he did do, Mr. Hustings, sir, because the girl was useful to him in that capacity. No! No! The leopard cannot change his spots, nor the Ethiopian his skin,” ended the little man, sententiously, “there was no good in the man.”
“There lives some soul of good in all things evil,” retorted Dick, adopting Bender’s favourite method of illustrating his points by quotations.
“Not with this man, sir, not with this man. He only reaped what he had long sown, and deserved all he got. A cold-blooded scientist on the surface, Mr. Hustings, sir: but underneath a very hot-blooded animal.”
“You can’t mix oil and water,” said Dick, dryly.
“In this case I think I can, sir. Dr. Slanton was a Palaeolithic man, with the veneer of our present Cainozoic civilisation.”
“I never knew that you were so learned, Bender.”
“I keep my eyes open and my brain filled, sir. And now”
“Yes, now?” Dick rose with a dismal foreboding of failure, “what now? Nothing you have told me is of any use towards solving the mystery of the Fryfeld crime. And four days out of the eight are gone. When Miss Danby appears before the magistrate I’ll have no fresh evidence to help her.”
“I didn’t tell you everything, sir,” said Bender, wriggling out of his chair.
“Eh?” Hustings wheeled. “Why—what—well?”
“You told me of the last word which Miss Danby heard Dr. Slant on speak.”
“Yes. Whispering! Well?”
“Well, Mr. Hustings, sir, I used that word again and again, both in the hospital and down in the under world. But without success. Then I remembered that you hinted to me that Dr. Slanton had been a Spiritualist.”
“I did. I had an idea that the word had something to do with his spiritualistic philanderings, from its being dinned into my ears, persistently. I daresay you thought I was talking nonsense.”
“Not nonsense, sir; not nonsense. There are more things in heaven and earth”
“Yes! Yes! I know that well-worn quotation,” broke in Dick, testily, “get on.”
“With your permission, sir. Well then, I knew three or four spiritualists—mediums. I have been attracted to searchings into the unknown in my time.”
“And found a mare’s nest,” scoffed the lawyer contemptuously.
“Not in this case, sir,” squeaked Bender, indignantly. “I asked many questions about Dr. Slanton, and learned that he was a well-known figure in Spiritualistic circles. He was always seeking to penetrate the veil”
“Well, well, well!”
“Near his cottage at Hampstead, sir, lives a famous medium—Mrs. Grutch, who was frequently consulted by him. It is strange that I should know her, and that she should have known him, seeing that you are employing me to search into the mystery of his death. Mrs. Grutch consulted the Spirits, and”
“And learned nothing that can be used in a court of law. Bender, Bender, you ought to know better than that.”
“Mrs. Grutch knows better, sir. She is waiting without. With your permission” and Bender trotted towards the door.
“Oh damn it, I don’t want any séance rubbish here, man.”
“You need not fear, Mr. Hustings, sir. Mrs. Grutch always refuses to give sittings to unbelievers. Still,” advised Bender with his hand on the door, “it would be to your advantage to see her.”
Dick sat down resignedly, as all this seemed to him to be a waste of time. “Oh have her in, Bender: have her in.”
Like magic the little man disappeared, and reappeared in an equally magical manner with a bulky female at his heels. “Mrs. Grutch!” he squeaked, as the ponderous lady rolled heavily into the room, “and, Mr. Hustings!” thus introducing lawyer and client with due formality.
“Please seat yourself, Mrs. Grutch!” said Dick, gravely. “I’m glad to see you.”
“Are you now?” queried Mrs. Grutch, subsiding like a spent billow into the nearest chair. “I never should have thought it, pleasant young gentleman as you are. Never! For Bender, here, tells me that you are an unbeliever.”
“I keep an open mind,” observed the young man, dryly.
“Well now, if that isn’t something comfortable to hear!” and Mrs. Grutch, placing two fat hands on two fat knees, smiled amiably.
She was a woman both broad and tall, also stout, and with a small-featured face, so neat and trifling that it looked ridiculously out of keeping with her huge body. With a pug-nose, a rabbit-mouth, and a narrow forehead, she likewise possessed two little piggy eyes of greenish-grey, with which she sharply surveyed the world, as she conceived it to be. And her conception was that the world should supply her with all the comforts and, if possible, all the luxuries of civilisation. Her complexion was fair and freckled, her hair smooth and sandy, so she would have seemed quite a meek, retiring person, but for the searching observance of her pin-point eyes. Clothed in a voluminous black silk dress, partially concealed by a profusely-beaded dolman and wearing an ancient bonnet, adorned with jet flowers, she suggested a respectable charwoman. But no charwoman would have worn so many coloured beads and mystic charms, not to speak of earrings, rings, brooches and bracelets. Her whole person twinkled with these: rattling and jingling with every movement. Hustings gathered all this at a glance, then asked a leading question. “What do you know, Mrs. Grutch?”
“Money is money,” stated the stout lady, less irrelevantly than might be supposed, and with a knowing leer.
“Oh, I shall make it worth your while.”
“And the amount, sir?” Mrs. Grutch became respectful to the holder of the purse.
“That depends upon the quality of your information.”
Bender nodded approvingly. “No use buying a pig in a poke,” said Bender.
After some reflection Mrs. Grutch spoke persuasively. “A fiver now, sir. Eh?”
“If what you can tell me is worth that amount, you shall have it,” assented Dick.
“It’s worth more, sir,” exclaimed the woman, and so vehemently that her many ornaments rattled alarmingly, “but there—I was never a greedy mouth. Take all you can get and be thankful, is always my motto.”
Hustings nodded impatiently. “What do you know?”
“I know Dr. Slanton,” asserted the lady, impressively.
“The man is dead: you mean that you did know him.”
“Nothing of the sort,” said the famous medium, loftily, “you, being an unbeliever, can put it in that ignorant way if you like, and no offence meant. But he is more alive than we are. And”—she embraced the whole room in one swift glance—“there he is, listening to us talking! Over there,” she pointed.
“You might ask him to talk himself,” urged Dick, ironically, “and explain.”
“He isn’t permitted to do that,” stated Mrs. Grutch, now in an attitude of intent listening. “Justice will be done, when justice is done.”
“And the sun, rising in the east, sets in the west,” retorted Dick, crossly. “You are too obvious, Mrs. Grutch. Ask your invisible friend what is the meaning of the last word Miss Danby heard him utter.”
“I don’t need to do that, sir. I can help you by physical means. It is my opinion that he”—she jerked her head to indicate the invisible victim—“was drawn to his death by that very word.”
“Oh!” Hustings smiled disbelievingly, “and I suppose you will say that it was Dr. Slanton who kept shouting that word incessantly in my ear.”
“I do say it,” declared Mrs. Grutch, so energetically that the charms and beads jingled again, “follow up that word and you’ve got him.”
“Got who?”
“Him!—the man who killed the flesh but not the spirit.”
“How do you know that the criminal is a man?”
“The spirit, now in this room, tells me so.”
“Then Miss Danby is innocent?”
“As a babe unborn!” said Mrs. Grutch, with clinching emphasis and renewed rattlings, “a man did it and for doing it a man will suffer.”
“There, you see, Mr. Hustings, sir,” struck in Bender, triumphantly, “I told you it was important to interview Mrs. Grutch.”
“Tush!” Dick spoke contemptuously, “She has said nothing which would be accepted as evidence in a court of law. I want facts: not this crazy spirit-chatter, which is all double-Dutch to me. Your fiver is in danger, Mrs. Grutch.”
“I think not sir. There’s more to come. If I can tell you what the word means, and why he said it when casting off his body, you’ll pay won’t you?”
“If the word will lead me to the truth—certainly.”
“Well then,” said Mrs. Grutch, slowly and impressively, “he wanted to say two words, but could only get out one. ‘Whispering’ he said; but didn’t add ‘Lane!’ It was Whispering Lane he wanted to say.”
"And would have said if Miss Danby hadn’t run away,” observed Bender, quickly.
"Whispering Lane!” echoed Dick, mystified, "what’s that?”
"It’s a place where spirit manifestations are taking place,” explained the medium, now on her own ground and briskly business-like. "For some three to four months they have been going on, as is well-known in Spirit circles. Not wishing publicity, which the Friends on the Other Side don’t like, we have kept this to ourselves, investigating it privately. That’s why you haven’t seen any mention of it in the newspapers. Drat ’em for meddling busybodies,” said Mrs. Grutch wrathfully, and with an indignant jingle of her ornaments.
Seeing that his patron looked more mystified than ever, Bender took on the conversation, opening it with a proverb, as usual. "Silence is golden,” he quoted sententiously, "so for your golden silence, I shall give my silver speech.”
"Fire ahead then!” Dick resigned himself to the little man’s eccentricities, glancing sideways at Mrs. Grutch, who looked rather offended in thus being set aside. "You don’t mind, do you?” he asked her, abruptly.
"Oh, no, sir,” she snorted, with a glare which belied her denial. "I was never one to talk, unless so requested. But of course”—she cajoled—"the fiver?”
"Will be yours when the story is finished. Go on, Bender.”
Thus adjured, Bender spoke his mind. "On the outskirts of the village of Wessbury, near Chelmsford, and at the end of a deeply-sunken and leafy lane, there stands a bungalow, inhabited by Mr. and Mrs. Brine, for some years before the war. They were greatly attached to one another, and when the husband was killed in action, the wife took his death so much to heart that three months later she committed suicide. This being a sin, she is condemned to haunt the place looking for him, but never finding him.”
“Does she haunt the bungalow as well as the lane?” inquired Dick, sceptically.
“Sometimes one, sometimes the other,” burst out Mrs. Grutch, determined to lead the conversation, “she has been heard in both places.”
“Heard in both places?”
“She’s never seen,” explained the medium with a mysterious look, “only her wailing voice is heard in the lane on certain nights.”
“Wind in the trees,” suggested Hustings, with a shrug.
“Wind doesn’t talk like human beings,” insisted Mrs. Grutch, “you may scoff your worst, sir, being an unbeliever, but I have heard the voices myself.”
“What do they say—or rather what does she say?”
The stout lady immediately screeched like a banshee: “Where are you—oh my darling, where are you? Edgar! Edgar! Edgar! Where, oh where?” then dropping her voice to its ordinary pitch she went on, “I heard those words myself.”
“In the bungalow?”
“In the lane, sir, although I did visit the bungalow to investigate. And I must say that Mrs. Jerr gave me every assistance, just as she gave to our other Believers, when they went down to help the poor spirit to find rest.”
“Mrs. Jerr?”
“The old lady who rents the bungalow from its present owner, Mr. Simon Chane, he having bought the property after the suicide of Mrs. Brine,” gabbled the medium, all in one long breath, “like yourself, she is an unbeliever, yet even she admits to hearing the voices—noises she calls them.”
“And how does Mrs. Jerr explain the phenomenon?”
“Scoffs at it,” said Mrs. Grutch, sadly, “talks of wind in the trees, and a stray parrot, screeching what it’s picked up, as parrots do.”
“Mrs. Brine did have a pet parrot, you mentioned, Mrs. Grutch,” struck in Bender, doubtfully, “and it may have picked up her wailing for her dead husband.”
“Don’t you be an unbeliever, Bender,” cried Mrs. Grutch, vehemently, “it’s spirit-talk—I know it is. A message from the Summer-world.”
“Scarcely a message,” remarked Dick, dryly, “seeing that it is directed to no one in the flesh. But”—Hustings turned his face inquiringly to Bender—“what has this queer story to do with Dr. Slanton’s death?”
“He was a spiritualist, Mr. Hustings, sir,” said the little man eagerly, “and having heard of this phenomenon, he must have gone down to examine it. As he spoke of The Whispering Lane—for it is plain to me that he would have added Lane had Miss Danby waited to listen—I think he was drugged and branded there: afterwards being taken to Fryfeld, so that Miss Danby might be implicated in the matter.”
“That is a very far-fetched theory,” mused Dick, stroking his chin perplexedly, “but there is something in what you suggest. I’ll go down to Wessbury myself, and see what I can learn. Are the voices”—he looked at Mrs. Grutch—“heard every night?”
“Only on certain nights, Mrs. Jerr says, but I don’t know, myself, what particular nights. You may hear them: you may not. Spirits,” ended Mrs. Grutch loftily, “are not to be dictated to by mere flesh and blood.”
“Do you know positively that Dr. Slanton went down to investigate?”
“No I don’t, sir. But many of our Believers went, and when I told him about the matter—for I was the first to tell him—he said he would like to see into things for himself. But whether he went, or whether he didn’t, I can’t be sure. I never meddle with what isn’t my business.”
“Slanton must have gone to Wessbury, Mr. Hustings, sir,” insisted Bender, “else why should The Whispering Lane have dwelt so strongly in his mind as to make him speak about it, when just recovering from the drugging?”
“Yes! I agree, Bender. There is your fiver, Mrs. Grutch.” Dick passed along a Bank of England note to the medium, who grabbed it greedily. “Your information is worth all the spirit-chatter you favoured me with.”
Mrs. Grutch surged upward from the depths of her chair, with a pitying glance at the sceptic. “You can’t make a blind man see, nor a deaf man hear, so why waste time in doing either? But he knows”—she pointed to the corner of the room, where an invisible Slanton was supposed to be standing—“and he is glad that you are going to revenge him.”
“On Miss Danby?” said Hustings, contemptuously.
“The Spirit has no wish to harm Miss Danby. It’s the man who drugged him and branded him and strangled him, he wants to be caught and hanged. There! I’ve said my say. Take it or leave it!” and she rolled tumultuously jingling towards the door.
“One moment, Mrs. Grutch,” Dick called after her, “what is Mrs. Jerr like?”
“A very affable lady: well-to-do and keeps a servant.”
“And the servant?” asked the solicitor, smiling at the woman’s answer.
“A Chinaman—Wu Ti,” said Mrs. Grutch, and rolled out of the room.
“Wu Ti!” gasped Dick. He recalled Jenny’s naming of Slanton’s enemies.