John Carr - The Plague Court Murders

I explained all this to Halliday. First he brooded, ruffling the hair at his temples. Then he turned a flushed, grim, rather eager face.

"By Jove, Blake, if you can get him-! You understand, we're not investigating mediums now: we're only going to a supposedly haunted house...."

"Who says it's haunted?"

There was a pause. You could hear tangled motor-horns shrilling and squawking outside the windows.

"I do," he said quietly. "Can you get in touch with this detective-fellow at once?"

"I'll 'phone him." I got up, stuffing the newspaperinto my

pocket. "I shall have to tell him something of where we're going, you know."

"Tell him anything. Tell him-stop a bit! If he knows anything about London ghosts," said Halliday grimly, "just tell him 'the house in Plague Court'. That'll fetch him."

The house in Plague Court! As I went out to the lobby and the telephone, some dubious memory stirred, but I could not place it.

Masters' slow, deep voice was a pleasant sanity over the telephone.

"Ah!" said he. "Ah, sir? And how are you? Haven't seen you in a dog's age. Well, and is anything on your mind?"

"A good deal," I told him, after the amenities. "I want you to go ghost-hunting. Tonight, if you can manage it."

"Hum!" remarked the unsurprised Masters, as though I had asked him to go to the theater. "You've hit my weakness, you know. Now, if I can manage it.... What's it all about, then? Where are we to go?"

"I've been instructed to tell you 'the house in Plague Court'. Whatever that means."

After a pause, there came over the phone a distinct whistle.

"Plague Court! Have you got anything?" Masters inquired, rather sharply. He sounded startlingly professional now. "Has it anything to do with that business at the London Museum?"

"I don't know what the devil you're talking about, Masters. What's the London Museum got to do with it? All I know is that a friend of mine wants me to investigate a haunted house, tonight, if possible, and bring an experienced ghost-layer along. If you'll come here as soon as you can, I'll tell you all I know. But `London Museum'-"

Another hesitation, while Masters clucked his tongue. "Have you seen today's paper, then? No? Well, have a look at it. Find the account of the London Museum business, and see what you make of it. We thought that `lean man with his back turned' might have been somebody's imagination. But maybe it wasn't.... Yes, I'll catch the tube-you're at the 'Noughts-and-Crosses', you say? - right! I'll meet you there in an hour. I don't like this business, Mr. Blake. I don't like it at all. Good-by."

My pennies clinked in the telephone, and were gone.

II

WE HEAR OF A LEAN MAN, AND GO ON AN ERRAND

AN HOUR afterwards, when the porter came in to tell us that Masters was waiting in the Visitors' Room, Halliday and I were still talking over that notice we had missed in the morning paper. It was one of a series of feature articles headed: "Today's Strange Story -No. 12."

STRANGE THEFT AT LONDON MUSEUM

Weapon Missing From "Condemned Cell"

Who Was the "Lean Man with His Back Turned"?

At the London Museum, Lancaster House, Stable Yard, St. James's, there occurred yesterday afternoon one of those thefts of relics sometimes committed by souvenir-hunters; but in this case the circumstances were unusual, puzzling, and the cause of some apprehension.

A history of blood and villainy surrounds many of the exhibits in the basement of this famous museum, where are displayed Thorp's Models of Old London.

In one large room, used mostly for the display of prison relics, is a life-size model of a condemned cell at old Newgate Prison, made of the bars and timbers from the original cell. On the wall-unticketed-hung what is described as a crudely fashioned steel dagger about eight inches long, with a clumsy hilt and a bone handle on which were cut the letters L.P. It disappeared yesterday afternoon between 3 and 4 o'clock. Nobody knows the thief.

Your correspondent visited the place, and confesses he received a start at the realism of the condemned cell. The whole room is grim enough-low and duskily lighted. There is the original grated door of Newgate, ponderous in rusty bolts, salvaged in 1903. There are manacles, leg-irons, huge, corroded keys and locks, cages, torture-instruments. Occupying one wall, in neat frames, are bills and popular broadsides of old executions from several centuries-all bordered in black, printed in smeary type, with a grisly woodcut showing the butchery, and the pious conclusion, "God Save the King."

The condemned cell, built into one corner, is not for children. I say nothing of a real "prison smell" which seems to cling to it; of the real terror and despair conveyed by this rotting hole. But I want to congratulate the artist who made that shrunken-faced wax effigy in its rags of clothes, which seems to start up off the bed as you look inside.

Still, it is all one to ex-Segt. Parker, who has served as attendant here for eleven years. And, this is what he says:

"It was about three o'clock in the afternoon. Yesterday was a `free day' and there were lots of children. I could hear a party of them going through the next rooms, making a good deal of noise.

"I was sitting near the window, some distance away from the cell, looking at a newspaper. It was a dull day, foggy, and the light bad. So far as I thought, there was nobody else in that room."

Then Sergeant Parker had what he can only describe as a "Queer feeling." He looked up. And, though he had thought there was nobody else in the room:

"There was a gentleman standing at the door of the cell over there, with his back to me, looking in.

"I can't describe him, except that he was very lean, and had darkish clothes on. He seemed to be moving his head slowly, and sort of jerkily, as though he wanted to take a good look at the cell but had trouble with his neck. I wondered how he had got there without my hearing and supposed he had come through the other door. I went back to my paper again. But I kept getting that queer feeling; so, to satisfy myself, just before all the children came in, I went over and looked into the cell.

"First I couldn't tell what was wrong, and then it struck me: that knife, hanging up over the effigy, was missing. Of course, the man was gone, and I knew he had got it, and I reported it."

Sir Richard Meade-Browne, curator of the museum, commented later:

"I trust you will broadcast, through the columns of your newspaper, an appeal for public cooperation to stop this vandalism of valuable relics."

The dagger, Sir Richard stated, was listed as the gift of J. G. Halliday, Esq., and was dug up in 1904 on the grounds of a property belonging to him. It is conjectured to have been the property of one Louis Playge, Common Hangman of the Borough of Tyburn in the years 1663-65. Being of doubtful authenticity, however, it was never exhibited as such.

No trace, of the thief has been found. Detective-Sergeant McDonnell, of Vine Street, is in charge.

Now all this was, if you will, a journalist's stunt; a penny-a-liner's way of making copy on a dull day. I read it first standing in the lobby of the club, after I had telephoned to Masters, and then I wondered whether I ought to show it to Halliday.

But I put it into his hands when I returned to the smoking-room, and watched his face while he read it.

"Steady!" I said. For the freckles began to start out against his changing face as he read it; then he got up uncertainly, looked at me for a moment, and threw the paper into the fire.

"Oh, that's all right," he said. "You needn't worry. This only relieves my mind. After all - this is human, isn't it? I was worrying about something else. This man Darworth, this medium, is behind it; and the plan, whatever it is, is at least human. The suggestion in that blasted article is absurd. What's the man trying to say?-that Louis Playge came back after his own knife?"

"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?"