CHAPTER XXXII.
A BREAKFAST PROPOSAL
A thin white mist overhung the park and shrouded the deserted stretch of Rotten Row, and the one or two riders who had come out at this early hour for their constitutional merely served to emphasize the desolation of the place.
One of these horsemen was Sir John Hason, Chief Commissioner of Police, who made it a practice to ride before breakfast, and he neither expected nor invited company. He was, therefore, surprised and a little annoyed when a horseman came up from behind him and, checking his mount to a walk, fell in by Sir John’s side.
“Hallo, Larry,” said John Hason in surprise. “This is an unexpected apparition! I thought you were a ghost.”
“I shall be that, too, one of these fine mornings,” said Larry, “unless I’m jolly careful. I knew you would be riding, so I hired a hack from the local livery stable and came out. Besides,” he said, “I want a change of air and I want to talk outside the stultifying atmosphere of your office.”
“Anything new?” asked Sir John.
“There was an attempt at assassination last night, but that’s so usual that I hate reporting it as a novelty,” said Larry, and told the story of the two-o’clock visitation.
“It’s the queerest case I’ve ever heard about,” said Sir John Hason thoughtfully. “Not a day passes but somebody new comes in. You still attach importance to the charwoman?”
Larry nodded.
“You know London better than I, John,” he said, for between him and his old schoolmate there was no formality on such occasions as this. “Who is Judd?”
“Oh, Judd!” laughed the Commissioner. “I don’t think you need worry your head about him. He is a man of some standing in the City, though I seem to have heard that his brother was rather a waster. The Judds practically own all the shares in the Greenwich Insurance Company. It is not a very big concern, but it has successfully resisted every attempt on the part of the insurance trusts and the big companies to absorb it. That shows character which I admire. They inherited the shares from their father and built up what looked to be a very shaky concern into a fairly prosperous business.”
“I was looking at the board of directors last night,” said Larry. “It is in the Stock Exchange year-book. I sat up after everybody had gone to bed and tried to puzzle things out. Do you know that John Dearborn is a director of that company?”
“Dearborn the dramatist?” asked Hason quickly. “No, I did not know. Of course, the directors in a company like that,” he smiled, “are merely the nominees of Judd. Judd is a very good fellow, I am told, and spends a lot of money in charity. He practically supports the Home which Dearborn is running. He may have been given an ornamental directorship in order to bring in a little money to his institute.”
“I thought of that, too,” nodded Larry. “Who is Walters?”
“Never heard of him,” said John Hason.
“He’s another director of the Company, and also an ornamental person, I should imagine. And Cremley? Ernest John Cremley, of Wimbledon.”
“He is most certainly an ornamental person,” said the Commissioner. “I know him slightly, a man with very little brains and an insatiable appetite for cards. Why do you ask?”
“Because these two men are also directors of the Macready Theatre Syndicate,” said Larry quietly. “Judd’s name does not appear, but there is another strange name, which is probably a nominee of his.”
“Where are we getting to?” asked the Commissioner.
“We’re getting here,” said Larry, reining in his horse and bringing it round so that he stood side by side and facing his chief, “that Judd controls the theatre where Dearborn’s plays are produced. So there is some association between Judd and the superintendent of the Blind Mission in Paddington.”
Sir John digested this fact before he spoke.
“I don’t see that there is anything particularly blameworthy about that,” he said; “after all, Dearborn is only the victim of Blind Jake, and from what you told me in your report last night, Judd is the victim of nobody except our friend Flash Fred. I can well understand why the doctor wanted to save his brother’s name,” he went on. “Judd adored that younger brother of his, thought he was the finest fellow in the world. I have never seen a case where brothers entertained such affection one for the other. The week David Judd died the doctor shut himself up and would not see anybody. What the----!”
The Commissioner’s note of startled surprise was justified, for Larry had suddenly brought round his horse and was riding furiously across the park, taking no small risk from the low railings he leapt.
He had seen a figure, unmistakably tall, muffled to the chin in a pea-jacket, slouching along the path that led to one of the gates of the park.
The man heard the gallop of hoofs and ran as straight and as swift as a deer, gained the gates and ran out into the street. The gate was too small for Larry to ride his horse through, and he flung himself off and, leaving his mount to his own devices, he ran out into the street. He saw no more than a car pull away from the kerb and move rapidly eastward.
He looked around for a cab, but there was none in sight, and with a shrug he came back, found his horse, mounted and trotted slowly back to where Sir John was sitting.
“Where the devil did you go?” asked Sir John.
“I saw a gentleman I am most anxious to meet,” said Larry a little breathlessly. “One Blind Jake, who was taking his morning constitutional in the park, with his car waiting to pick him up like a perfect gentleman. If I had had a gun I would have given Tarling another Daffodil Mystery to solve. I should have been glad to find flowers for Blind Jake!”