The Man They Couldn't Arrest

"it's not for me to be brave. That's for you. Have told you a dozen times. you never spoke a truer word in your life than when you said it was going to be a case of suicide."

"Bah! You can't get my nerves on the jump. I've been in the game too long. Do you think you're going to get away with it by ranting a sermon at me or trying to pump me up with fear? Not in this life, Valmon Dain."

"What do you want? mercy? It would be useless to you."

"Lyall stood back, breathing heavily.

"Mercy?" he stormed. "I don't want mercy

It isn't yours to give. mercy is mine, I-----"

"Mercy is neither yours nor mine, Mr Lyall. The police are already informed."

"The police!-----What?" he gasped.

"Are already informed. At least, they will be by the time the morning Dawns. The Yard was communicated with by the last post tonight. A simple letter-carded, undated, unsigned. just such a card as I have dispatched to them on thirty-four previous occasions. A warrant would be out for your arrest within ten minutes of the discovery of my corps . I repeat you are in an absolute cul-de-sac."

"You lie! you're trying to twist off the issue again. I want the true explanation of this foul mystery that has been hanging over our heads ever since Marty and his gang went to the Moors. Eh? What is the explanation? Answer me! How do you do it?"

I have nothing to say to you." Dain's voice might have wafted off an iceberg. with his hands pressed out flat on the top of his desk. he sat back and regarded the impassioned face of the murderer with an utter disregard for either his fury or his ferocity.

"You haven't, eh? You won't talk?"

"Not one single word."

Lyall raised the gun and pointed it full into Dain's set face. The muzzle was within twenty inches of Dain's brain. Dain looked back at Lyall, full in the eyes and not even an eyelash quivered.

"Will you talk now?" Lyall shot the word at him.

"I've nothing more to say other than that you are committing suicide."

Lyall, with a face that was suddenly convulsed, squinted down the sights.

"Then blast you, you've asked for it!" he cried.

He pulled the trigger point blank and even as he did so, the room was filled with his ear-piercing shriek of terror.

There was something horrifying, something seemed to have gone wrong with it. It was more like the back flash of a big gun.

Lyall's head went rocketing backwards as though hit by a world's heavyweight prize-fighter. with a look of horrified surprise and agony on his face, his hands clutching wildly at the empty air, he toppled slowly backwards. The pistol dropped with a metallic jar before the body reached the floor.

Dain sat unmoved and watched the body fall. It seemed to sway for a moment, blindly, unsteadily and then slowly collapse, almost as though the life was ebbing from it as it fell. He saw the face as it reeled back. It was ghastly. Part of it was blown away, and on the rest on it the skin was cracked and blackened.

Dain picked up the fallen revolver. He handled it delicately, much as a connoisseur might examine the workmanship of a priceless treasure.

That revolver, with its ghastly trick-action, epitomized the whole thing as he saw it. It was a fraud, a boomerang that came back unknowingly and struck down its wielder. Lyall, in attempting murder, had achieved suicide. It is true the suicide was unwitting. but it was, nevertheless undeniable.

And Dain had only a momentary pang of regret. He felt that he was conscience clear. Murder is not murder when committed in self-defense. It is not even manslaughter. And he had giben Lyall every conceivable chance of realising the hopelessness of his position. Short of actually telling him the particular weapon he held in his hand fired it's bullet backwards, he had impressed upon him every warning he could think of. He had almost rammed them down his neck.

And now it was finished and done with. Lyall was dead, a mute, inglorious corpse with a gaping hole on his head and a death-mask of amazement on his face.

Odd that he should have found a use for that revolver. He had made it one day in answer to the assertion of a friend, an officer in the army ordnance branch. that such a weapon was impossible of construction without been apparent to the first person who pick it up.

He opened the drawer, took our the cardboard box and packed the revolver carefully into it. Then from a wallet he took a new five-pound Bank of England note, issued to him from his bank that afternoon and packed it in above the revolver. That was a neat and added safeguard of his own. The issue of all bank notes is registered in the bank ledgers.

There would be an entry at his bank proving that note was issued to Valmon Dain on that particular day. The entry would be dated. And that some note would be enclosed in a cardboard box which would ultimately find its way back to him. The stamps would be cancelled with a date mark.

The amalgamation of proofs would safeguard him against any wild theory the Yard might promulgate against him.

He tied the box securely with string and sealed each knot with a red wafer on his desk, pressing his right thumb hard into the warm wax. Then he gummed on the label he had already written, affixed three Shilling stamps to it and slipped the package into his pocket.. Crossing over to the far wall, Dain climbed upon the bench. on a level with his head and below the fan was the door of what appeared to be a cupboard about two feet square. It was flush with the wall and tinted the same colour. From the other end of the room it would barely have been distinguishable from the surface of the wall itself.

He opened the door and took out a large steel box from a recess within, disconnecting several electric cables and leads inside the recess before doing so.

The box was heavy, and he handled it with an effort. But with a little exertion he got it across to the floor and carried it outside to the front garden.

Then he returned to the house and for a few minutes was busy getting rid of everything from his person that bore the name of Valmon Dain. Letters, visiting cards, doc.u.ments, pass book, and everything that might prove his real identity in the event of sudden arrest he discarded, finding neat and plausible places for them all in the shelves and drawers of his desk..

Over the way a clock boomed half past midnight as Dain carrying the big box out to the garage, started up the engine of his car and drove quietly into the night.

Passing into the lonely darkness of the Hendon roads, he headed his car for London, where he made his only halt, a brief ten seconds pause at the General post office. There he posted the box containing the revolver, sending it by letter post to ensure its getting the post-mark and hour stamp on it without a minute lost of time.

The greatest and most unshakable proof of his innocence of the murder of Willard Lyall lay in that big steel box. But Dain knew only too well the fallibilities of untended machinery. Any one of a hundred things might have gone wrong with it while Lyall was in that workshop ; the whole delicate inner workings of it might have broken down even before Lyall crept in through the door. And Dain was a man who preferred to have two strings to his bow in everything except one.

For the rest of the night he drove about the main traffic roads leading into and out of London. it was safer than going to an hotel. even one where he was known as Mr.Landring Dent of kingsway. Nobody notices a car slipping silently through the night, but a man knocking up an hotel Porter at half past one in the morning is liable to be remembered at awkward moments.

By the time he got back into town again it was broad day light. He breakfasted at an all night restaurant, and then made his way to his laboratory in kingsway.

The liftman assisted him with his steel box and took him up in the lift. Three minutes after getting into the big room again he had got his dynamos going. In four minutes the needles were ticking up on the high pressure marks, and Dain with his headphones on, was passing quietly up and down the rows of polished dials plugging in his contact keys, striving to pick up certain whispering voices that meant almost life and death to him.