J. Farjeon - Murderer’s Trail

COLLINS CRIME CLUB

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain for Crime Club by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1931

Copyright © Estate of J. Jefferson Farjeon 1931

Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2016

Cover background images © shutterstock.com

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008155919

Ebook Edition © August 2016 ISBN: 9780008155926

Version: 2016-06-28

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1: Invisible Fingers

Chapter 2: Ben Versus Ghosts

Chapter 3: The Stomach of a Ship

Chapter 4: Confidences in the Dark

Chapter 5: What Happened at Hammersmith

Chapter 6: The Third Officer

Chapter 7: The Faggis Jigsaw

Chapter 8: In the Captain’s Cabin

Chapter 9: Cross-Examination

Chapter 10: The Man with the Sack

Chapter 11: On the Boat Deck

Chapter 12: Hanging Over Space

Chapter 13: Grim Preparations

Chapter 14: Re-Enter Faggis

Chapter 15: Death Tries Again

Chapter 16: Six in a Boat

Chapter 17: The End of the Voyage

Chapter 18: The Landing

Chapter 19: The Mountain Track

Chapter 20: Arrival at the ‘First Hotel’

Chapter 21: The Conference in the Hut

Chapter 22: The Binding of Ben

Chapter 23: The Chamber of Horrors

Chapter 24: Spain Intervenes

Chapter 25: How Mr Sims Killed Ben

Chapter 26: Life Grows Worse and Worse

Chapter 27: The End of the Bridge

Chapter 28: Through the Night

Chapter 29: In a Spanish Bedroomio

Chapter 30: En Route for Villabanzos

Chapter 31: Exchange Is No Robbery

Chapter 32: Ben’s Passenger

Chapter 33: Flying Knives

Chapter 34: Confidences in a Cellar

Chapter 35: An Official Visit

Chapter 36: ‘The Last Resort’

Chapter 37: The Events on the Road

Chapter 38: The Battle in the Cellar

Chapter 39: The Fruits of Actions

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‘Now, then,’ frowned the policeman, ‘where have you come from?’

The human scarecrow, of no address and with only half a name—the half he had was Ben, and the other half had been lost years ago—removed his eyes from the poster he had been staring at. The poster said, ‘Old Man Murdered at Hammersmith,’ and it was a nasty sight. But the policeman wasn’t much improvement. Policemen were blots on any landscape.

Where had he come from? Queer, how the world harped upon that unimportant question! As a rule it was an Embankment seat, or a coffee-stall, or a shop where they sold cheese, or an empty house where one could pass a night rent free. What did it matter? But the nosey-parker world seemed to think it mattered, and was always worrying him about it. Policemen in particular.

‘Didn’t you hear me?’ demanded the policeman. ‘Where’ve you come from?’

‘Not ’Ammersmith,’ answered Ben.

His eyes wandered back to the poster. The policeman’s frown increased. Bent on being a nuisance, he persisted, with a tinge of sarcasm:

‘Quite sure of that?’

Faint indignation stirred within the scarecrow’s meagrely-covered breast. That was another thing about the world. Ben couldn’t do anything, but the world was always accusing him of everything!

‘Orl right, ’ave it yer own way,’ he said, with a sarcasm that far exceeded the constable’s. ‘I was walkin’ by ’im and I didn’t like ’is ’ead, so I chopped it orf.’

‘I suppose you think that’s funny?’ inquired the policeman.

‘Yus,’ retorted Ben. ‘There’s nothink like a nice little murder ter mike yer larf!’

Then the policeman decided that, unless the interview were concluded, the law stood a good chance of losing its superiority in the encounter without gaining anything in return; so, uttering a warning generality against the dangers of loitering and of back-chat, he leisurely adjusted his belt, turned, and trudged away.

Ben shivered. Despite the way in which he stuck up to them, policemen always made him shiver in his secret heart. If they never did anything to him, they always carried the threat! It wasn’t only the policeman, however, that made Ben shiver as he stood blinking in the gloaming. He had holes in his clothes, and the gloaming got through. There was a place on his knee open to three square inches of breeze. He had torn it on a nail seven weeks ago, and it occurred to him that it was about time to try and bump into someone with a needle and cotton. After seven weeks, the spot was getting cold.

But, even more than the holes and the policeman, the poster made Ben shiver. At first he had stared at the words vaguely. You know—as one does, when one is hard up for hobbies. Then the words impressed themselves upon his mind, with all their unpleasantness. This murderin’ business—it wasn’t no joke! Yet Ben had made a joke about it, as he often did about the things that scared him most. He had suggested that he had committed the murder himself, and had cut the old man’s head off! There was a nasty idea! And suppose the policeman had believed him …

‘Oi!’ he gasped.

Somebody had blundered into him. He hit out wildly—the rule is to hit first and to think afterwards—but his fists went wide, and the somebody toppled in between them. For an amazing moment he held the somebody in his arms. It was an amazing moment because the somebody wasn’t in the least like the somebody he had expected to find there. It was a rather small somebody who clung to him, limply, gasping; a somebody with a bit of hair that tickled his cheek, and a little ear, and a rather nice sense of soft warmth. Then the amazing moment passed, and the somebody shot away from him in a panic.

Ben saw her more distinctly now. He saw her eyes, bright with fear, and the flutter of her heaving breast, and her slender legs, slim and taut, beneath her short brown skirt. For an instant she stood there, poised before the grim background, ‘Old Man Murdered at Hammersmith.’ The word ‘Murdered’ leered between her knees, and ‘Hammersmith’ between her ankles. Pretty ankles, alive with grace and elasticity. Then the ankles got to work, twisted as though suddenly touched by electricity, and bore their owner round a corner.

‘’Ere! ’Arf a mo’!’ called Ben.

But the girl had vanished.

Ben decided that it was time he did a bit of vanishing. The sensation was creeping over him that unpleasant things were happening, and that invisible fingers were stretching towards him to draw him in. He knew the signs. He’d been drawn in before. He’d been drawn into cupboards and coffins and corpses, into cellars and wells and dark passages, and had been tossed about by the invisible fingers like a blinkin’ shuttlecock! Well, he wasn’t having any more of it. All he wanted was a quiet life, same as he’d heard about, and he meant to get it, if there wasn’t an old man left alive in Hammersmith!