"Excuse me, sir." Sergeant Higgins, rather breathless, was standing at Superintendent Harper's side. The superintendent, jerked from the train of thought he was following, looked startled. "Message just come through for you from headquarters, sir.
Laborer reported this morning saw glare as of fire.
Half an hour ago they found a burnt-out car near a quarry.
Venn's Quarry about two miles from here.
Traces of a charred body inside."
A flush came over Harper's heavy features.
He said, "What's come to denshire? An epidemic of violence?"
He asked, "Could they get the number of the car?"
"No, sir.
But we'll be able to identify it, of course, by the engine number.
A Minoan Fourteen, they think."
Chapter 22
Sir Henry Clithering, as he passed through the lounge of the Majestic, hardly glanced at its occupants. His mind was preoccupied. Nevertheless, as is the way of life, something registered in his subconscious. It waited its time patiently.
Sir Henry was wondering, as he went upstairs, just what had induced the sudden urgency of his friend's message.
Conway Jefferson was not the type of man who sent urgent summonses to anyone.
Something quite out of the usual must have occurred, decided Sir Henry.
Jefferson wasted no time in beating about the bush. He said,
"Glad you've come... Edwards, get Sir Henry a drink... Sit down, man.
You've not heard anything, I suppose?
Nothing in the papers yet?"
Sir Henry shook his head, his curiosity aroused.
"What's the matter?"
"Murder's the matter.
I'm concerned in it, and so are your friends, the Bantrys."
"Arthur and Dolly Bantry?" Clithering sounded incredulous.
"Yes; you see, the body was found in their house." Clearly and succinctly, Conway Jefferson ran through the facts.
Sir Henry listened without interrupting.
Both men were accustomed to grasping the gist of a matter.
Sir Henry, during his term as commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, had been renowned for his quick grip on essentials.
"It's an extraordinary business," he commented when the other had finished. "How do the Bantrys come into it, do you think?"
"That's what worries me.
You see, Henry, it looks to me as though possibly the fact that I know them might have a bearing on the case. That's the only connection I can find.
Neither of them, I gather, ever saw the girl before. That's what they say, and there's no reason to disbelieve them. It's most unlikely they should know her.
Then isn't it possible that she was decoyed away and her body deliberately left in the house of friends of mine?"
Clithering said, "I think that's far-fetched."
"It's possible, though," persisted the other.
"Yes, but unlikely.
What do you want me to do?"
Conway Jefferson said bitterly,
"I'm an invalid.
I disguise the fact, refuse to face it, but now it comes home to me.
I can't go about as I'd like to, asking questions, looking into things.
I've got to stay here meekly grateful for such scraps of information as the police are kind enough to dole out to me.
Do you happen to know Melchett, by the way, the chief constable of Radfordshire?"
"Yes, I've met him."
Something stirred in Sir Henry's brain.
A face and figure noted unseeingly as he passed through the lounge. A straight-backed old lady whose face was familiar.
It linked up with the last time he had seen Melchett.
He said, "Do you mean you want me to be a kind of amateur sleuth?
That's not my line."