John Carr: The Plague Court Murders

"Masters is coming," I said. "Don't you think it would be better if you told us something about it?"

He shut his jaws hard. "No. You made a promise, and I'll hold you to it. I won't tell you - yet. When we start out for the infernal place, I'll stop by at my flat and get you something which will explain a good deal; but I don't want you to see it now. . Tell me something. They say that a soul on the lower plane, a malevolent one, is always watchful and always cunning. That this one mass of dead evil is always waiting for the opportunity to take possession of a living body, and change the weak brain for its own, just as it infests a house. Do you think, then, that the clot could take possession .. ?"

He hesitated. I can still see him standing in the firelight, a curious deprecating smile on his face, but a fierce stare in his red-brown eyes.

"You're talking rot now," I said sharply. "And you've confused your facts. Take possession! Of what?"

"Of me," said Halliday quietly.

I said what he needed was not a ghost-breaker, but a. nerve-specialist. Then I dragged him off to the bar and saw that he swallowed a couple of whiskies. He was submissive; he even achieved a sort of satirical jollity. When we returned to the newspaper article, as we did again and again, he seemed again his old, lazy, amused self.

Still, it was a relief to see Masters. We found Masters standing in the Visitors' Room: large and rather portly, with his bland shrewd face, his sedate dark overcoat, and his bowler held against his breast as though he were watching a flag-procession go by. His grizzled hair was brushed carefully to hide the bald spot, his jaw looked heavier and his expression older since I had last seen him - but his eyes were young. Masters suggests the Force, though only slightly: something in the dump of his walk, the way his eyes go sharply from face to face, but there is none of the peering sourness we associate with. Public Protectors. I could see that Halliday immediately unbent and felt at ease before his practical solidity.

"Ah, sir," he said to Halliday, after the introductions; "and you're the one who wants a ghost laid?" This time he spoke as though he had been asked to install a radio. He smiled. "Mr. Blake'll tell you I'm interested. Always have been. Now, about this house in Plague Court."

"You know all about it, I see," said Halliday.

"We-ell," said Masters, putting his head on one side, "I know a little. Let me see. It came into possession of your family a hundred-odd years ago. Your grandfather lived there until the eighteen-seventies; then he moved out, quite suddenly, and refused to go back.... And it's been a white elephant ever since, which none of your people have ever been able to let or sell. Taxes, sir, taxes! Bad." Masters' mood seemed to change-smoothly, but with a compelling persuasion. "Now, Mr. Halliday, come! You're good enough to say I can give you a little help. So I know you won't mind returning the favor. Strictly unofficially, of course. Eh?"

"Depends. But I think I can promise that much."

"Just so, just so. I take it you've seen the paper today?"

"Ah!" murmured Halliday, grinning. "The return of Louis Playge; is that what you mean?"

Inspector Masters. returned the smile, blandly. He lowered his voice. "Well, as man to man, now, can you think of anybody - anybody you know, perhaps-any real flesh-and-blood person who might be interested in lifting that dagger? That's my question, Mr. Halliday. Eh?"

"It's an idea," Halliday admitted. Perching himself on the edge of a table, he seemed to debate something in his mind. Then he looked at Masters with shrewd inspiration. "First off, I'll give you a counter-question, Inspector. Do you know one Roger Darworth?"

Not a muscle moved in the other's face, but he seemed pleased.

"Possibly you know him, Mr. Halliday?"

"Yes. But not so well as my aunt, Lady Benning. Or Miss Marion Latimer, my fiancee, or her brother, or old Featherton. Quite a circle. Personally, I am definitely anti-Darworth. But what can I do? You can't argue; they only smile on you gently and say you don't understand."

He lit a cigarette and twitched out the match; his face looked sardonic and ugly. "I was only wondering whether Scotland Yard happened to know something of him? Or that red-headed kid of his?"

Those two exchanged a glance, and spoke without uttering a word. In words Masters only answered, carefully: "We know nothing whatever against Mr. Darworth. Nothing whatever. I have met him; a very amiable gentleman. Very amiable, nothing ostentatious. Nothing claptrap, if you know what I mean.:.."

"I know what you mean," agreed Halliday. "In fact, during her more ecstatic moments, Aunt Anne describes the old charlatan as `saint-like'."

"Just so," said Masters, nodding. "Tell me, though. Hum! Excusing delicate questions and all, should you describe either of the ladies as at all ... hurrum?"

"Gullible?" Halliday interpreted the strange, noise Masters had produced from some obscure depth in his throat. "Good Lord, no? Quite the contrary. Aunt Anne is one of those little old ladies who look soft, and actually are honey and steel-wire. And Marion - well, she is Marion, you see."

"Exactly so," agreed Masters, nodding again.

Big Ben was striking the half hour as the porter got us a taxi, and Halliday told the man to drive to an address in Park Lane; he said he wanted to get something from his flat. It was chilly, and still raining. The black streets were a-dazzle with split reflections of lights.

Presently we pulled up outside one of those new whitestone, green-and-nickel apartment houses (which look somehow like modernistic book-cases) sprouting up amid the sedateness of Park Lane. I got out and paced up and down under the brightly lit canopy while Halliday hurried inside. The rain was blowing over out of the dark Park; and - I don't know how to describe it - faces looked unreal. I was tormented by that sharp, bald image that had been described in the newspaper: a lean man with his back turned, peering into the model of the condemned cell, and moving his head slowly. It seemed all the more horrible because the attendant had referred to him as a "gentleman". When Halliday tapped my shoulder from behind, I almost jumped. He was carrying a flat package wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine, which he put into my hands.

"Don't open it now. It's some facts or fancies concerning one Louis Playge," he said. He was buttoned up in the thin waterproof he affected in all weathers, with his hat pulled over one eye. Also, he was smiling. He gave me a powerful flashlight, Masters being already provided with one; and, when he climbed into the cab beside me, I could feel the pressure of what I thought was another in his side-pocket. I was wrong: it was a revolver.

It is not difficult to talk lightly of horrors when you are in the West End, but I give you my word I was uneasy when we got out among the scattered lights. The tires were singing drowsily on wet streets; and I felt that I had to talk.

"You won't tell me," I said, "anything about Louis Playge. But I imagine it wouldn't be difficult to reconstruct his story, from the account in the newspaper."

Masters only grunted, and Halliday prompted: "Well?"

"The conventional one," I said. "Louis was the hangman, and dreaded as such. The knife, let's say, was the one he used for cutting down his guests.... How's that for a beginning?"

Halliday answered, flatly: "As it happens, you're wrong on both points. I wish it were as simple and conventional as that. What is terror, anyway? What is the thing that you come on all of a sudden, as though you'd opened a door; that turns you tipsy-cold in the stomach and makes you want to run blind somewhere, anywhere, to escape the touch of it?-but you can't, because you're limp as pulp, and. "