weaving the net

That evening Triffitt got Burchill’s address from Carver, and next day he drew a hundred pounds from the cashier of the Argus and went off to Calengrove Mansions. In his mind there was a clear and definite notion. It might result in something; it might come to nothing, but he was going to try it. Briefly, it was that if he wished—as he unfeignedly did wish—to find out anything about Burchill, he must be near him; so near, indeed, that he could keep an eye on him, acquaint himself with his goings and comings, observe his visitors, watch for possible openings, make himself familiar with Burchill’s daily life. It might be a difficult task; it might be an easy task—in any case, it was a task that must be attempted. With Markledew’s full consent and approval behind him and Markledew’s money-bags to draw upon, Triffitt felt equal to attempting anything.

The first thing was to take a quiet look at Burchill’s immediate environment. Calengrove Mansions turned out to be one of the smaller of the many blocks of residential flats which have of late years arisen in such numbers in the neighbourhood of Maida Vale and St. John’s Wood. It was an affair of some five or six floors, and judging from what Triffitt could see of it from two sides, it was not fully occupied at that time, for many of its windows were uncurtained, and there was a certain air of emptiness about the upper storeys. This fact was not unpleasing to Triffitt; it argued that he would have small difficulty in finding a lodgment within the walls which sheltered the man he wanted to watch. And in pursuance of his scheme, which, as a beginning, was to find out exactly where Burchill was located, he walked into the main entrance and looked about him, hoping to find an address-board. Such a board immediately caught his eye, affixed to the wall near the main staircase. Then Triffitt saw that the building was divided into five floors, each floor having some three or four flats. Those on the bottom floors appeared to be pretty well taken; the names of their occupants were neatly painted in small compartments on the board. Right at the top was the name Mr. Frank Burchill—and on that floor, which evidently possessed three flats, there were presumably no other occupants, for the remaining two spaces relating to it were blank.

Triffitt took all this in at a glance; another glance showed him a door close by on which was painted the word “Office.” He pushed this open and walked inside, to confront a clerk who was the sole occupant. To him, Triffitt, plunging straight into business, gently intimated that he was searching for a convenient flat. The clerk immediately began to pull out some coloured plans, labelled first, second, third floors.

“About what sized flat do you require?” he asked. He had already looked Triffitt well over, and as Triffitt, in honour of the occasion, had put on his smartest suit and a new overcoat, he decided that this was a young man who was either just married or about to be married. “Do you want a family flat, or one for a couple without family, or——”

“What I want,” answered Triffitt readily, “is a bachelor flat—for myself. And—if possible—furnished.”

“Oh!” said the clerk. “Just so. I happen to have something that will suit you exactly—that is, if you don’t want to take it for longer than three or four months.” He pulled forward another plan, labelled “Fifth Floor,” and pointed to certain portions, shaded off in light colours. “One of our tenants, Mr. Stillwater,” he continued, “has gone abroad for four months, and he’d be glad to let his flat, furnished, in his absence. That’s it—it contains, you see, a nice sitting-room, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a small kitchen—all contained within the flat, of course. It is well and comfortably furnished, and available at once.”

Triffitt bent over the plan. But he was not looking at the shaded portion over which the clerk’s pencil was straying; instead he was regarding the fact that across the corresponding portion of the plan was written in red ink the words, “Mr. Frank Burchill.” The third portion was blank; it, apparently, was unlet.

“That is really about the size of flat I want,” said Triffitt, musingly. “What’s the rent of that, now?”

“I can let that to you for fifty shillings a week,” answered the clerk. “That includes everything—there’s plate, linen, glass, china, anything you want. Slight attendance can be arranged for with our caretaker’s wife—that is, she can cook breakfast, and make beds, and do more, if necessary. Perhaps you would like to see this flat?”

Triffitt followed the clerk to the top of the house. The absent Mr. Stillwater’s rooms were comfortable and pleasant; one glance around them decided Triffitt.

“This place will suit me very well,” he said. “Now I’ll give you satisfactory references about myself, and pay you a month’s rent in advance, and if that’s all right to you, I’ll come in today. You can ring up my references on your ’phone, and then, if you’re satisfied, we’ll settle the rent, and I’ll see the caretaker’s wife about airing that bed.”

Within half an hour Triffitt was occupant of the flat, the cashier of the Argus having duly telephoned that he was a thoroughly dependable and much-respected member of its staff, and Triffitt himself having handed over ten pounds as rent for the coming month, he interviewed the caretaker’s wife, went to a neighbouring grocer’s shop and ordered a stock of necessaries wherewith to fill his larder, repaired to his own lodgings and brought away all that he wanted in the way of luggage, books, and papers, and by the middle of the afternoon was fairly settled in his new quarters. He spent an hour in putting himself and his belongings straight—and then came the question what next?

He was there for a special purpose—that special purpose was to acquaint himself as thoroughly as possible with the doings of Frank Burchill. Burchill was there—he was almost on the point of saying, in the next cell!—there, in the flat across the corridor; figuratively, within touch, if it were not for sundry divisions of brick, mortar, and the like. Burchill’s door was precisely opposite his own; there was an advantage in that fact. And in Triffitt’s outer door (all these flats, he discovered—that is, if they were all like his own, possessed double doors) there was a convenient letter slit, by manipulating which he could, if he chose, keep a perpetual observation on the other opposite. But Triffitt did not propose to sit with his eye glued to that letter slit all day—it might be useful at times, and for some special purpose, but he had wider views. And the first thing to do was to make an examination, geographical and exhaustive, of his own surroundings: Triffitt had learnt, during his journalistic training, that attention to details is one of the most important things in life.

The first thing that had struck Triffitt in this respect was that there was no lift in this building. He had remarked on that to the clerk, and the clerk had answered with a shrug of the shoulders that it was a mistake and one for which the proprietor was already having to pay. However, Triffitt, bearing in mind what job he was on, was not displeased that the lift had been omitted—it is sometimes an advantage to be able to hang over the top rail of a staircase and watch people coming up from below. He stored that fact in his mental reservoirs. And now that he had got into his rooms, he proceeded to seek for more facts. First, as to the rooms themselves—he wanted to know all about them, because he had carefully noticed, while looking at the plan of that floor in the office downstairs, that Burchill’s flat was arranged exactly like his own. And Triffitt’s flat was like this—you entered through a double door into a good-sized sitting-room, out of which two other rooms led—one went into a small kitchen and pantry; the other into the bedroom, at the side of which was a little bathroom. The windows of the bedroom opened on to a view of the street below; those of the sitting-room on to a square of garden, on the lawn of which tenants might disport themselves, more or less sadly, with tennis or croquet in summer.

Triffitt looked out of his sitting-room windows last of all. He then perceived with great joy that in front of them was a balcony, and that this balcony stretched across the entire front of the house. There were, in fact, balconies to all five floors—the notion being, of course, that occupants could whenever they pleased sit out there in such sunlight as struggled between their own roof and the tall buildings opposite. It immediately occurred to Triffitt that here was an easy way of making a call upon your next door neighbour; instead of crossing the corridor and knocking at his door, you had nothing to do but walk along the balcony and tap at his window. Filled with this thought Triffitt immediately stepped out on his balcony and inspected the windows of his own and the next flat. He immediately saw something which filled him with a great idea. Both windows were fitted with patent ventilators, let into the top panes. Now, supposing one of these ventilators was fully open, and two people were talking within the room in even the ordinary tones of conversation—would it not be possible for an eavesdropper outside to hear a good deal, if not everything, of what was said? The idea was worth thinking over, anyway, and Triffitt retired indoors to ruminate over it and over much else.

For two or three days nothing happened. Twice Triffitt met Burchill on the stairs—Burchill, of course, did not know him from Adam, and gave him no more than the mere glance he would have thrown at any other ordinary young man. Triffitt, however, gave Burchill more than a passing look—unobtrusively. Certainly he was the man whom he had seen in the dock nine years before in that far-off Scottish town—there was little appreciable alteration in his appearance, except that he was now very smartly dressed. There were peculiarities about the fellow, said Triffitt, which you couldn’t forget—certainly, Frank Burchill was Francis Bentham.

But on the third day, two things happened—one connected directly with Triffitt’s new venture, the other not. The first was that as Triffitt was going down the stairs that afternoon, on his way to the office, at which he kept looking in now and then, although he was relieved from regular attendance and duty, he met Barthorpe Herapath coming up. Triffitt thanked his lucky stars that the staircase was badly lighted, and that this was an unusually gloomy November day. True, Barthorpe had only once seen him, that he knew of—that morning at the estate office, when he, Triffitt, had asked Selwood for information—but then, some men have sharp memories for faces, and Barthorpe might recognize him and wonder what an Argus man was doing there in Calengrove Mansions. So Triffitt quickly pulled the flap of the Trilby hat about his nose, and sank his chin lower into the turned-up collar of his overcoat, and hurried past the tall figure. And Barthorpe on his part never looked at the reporter—or if he did, took no more heed of him than of the balustrade at his side.

“That’s one thing established, anyway!” mused Triffitt as he went his way. “Barthorpe Herapath is in touch with Burchill. The dead man’s nephew and the dead man’s ex-secretary—um! Putting their heads together—about what?”

He was still pondering this question when he reached the office and found a note from Carver who wanted to see him at once. Triffitt went round to the Magnet and got speech with Carver in a quiet corner. Carver went straight to his point.

“I’ve got him,” he said, eyeing his fellow-conspirator triumphantly.

“Got—who?” demanded Triffitt.

“That taxi-cab chap—you know who I mean,” answered Carver. “Ran him down at noon today.”

“No!” exclaimed Triffitt. “Gad! Are you sure, though?—is it certain he’s the man you were after?”

“He’s the chap who drove a gentleman from near Portman Square to just by St. Mary Abbot church at two o’clock on the morning of the Herapath murder,” replied Carver. “That’s a dead certainty! I risked five pounds on it, anyway, for which I’ll trouble you. I went on the lines of rounding up all the cabbies I could find who were as a rule on night duty round about that quarter, and bit by bit I got on to this fellow, and, as I say, I gave him a fiver for just telling me a mere bit. And it’s here—he’s already given some information to that old Mr. Tertius—you know—and Tertius commanded him to keep absolutely quiet until the moment came for a move. Well, that moment has not come yet, evidently—the chap hasn’t been called on since, anyhow—and when I mentioned money he began to prick his ears. He’s willing to tell—for money—if we keep dark what he tells us. The truth is, he’s out to get what he can out of anybody. If you make it worth his while, he’ll tell.”

“Aye!” said Triffitt. “But the question is, what has he got to tell? What does he know?—actually know?”

“He knows,” replied Carver, “he actually knows who the man was that he drove that morning! He didn’t know who he was when he first gave information to Tertius, but he knows now, and, as I say, he’s willing to sell his knowledge—in private.”

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