THE WHODUNIT COLLECTION: British Murder Mysteries (15 Novels in One Volume). Charles Norris Williamson

a chair. Sit down. I want you with your back to me. That's right. Now put your arms behind your back and keep still."

      Cincinnati Red felt something encircle his wrists and a lashing was dextrously drawn tight. An involuntary cry escaped him. Ling finished the knot and, stepping in front, swung a smashing blow at the bound man's face.

      "That's on account," he said fiercely. "If you don't keep still you'll get what's coming to you." He thrust his face, contorted with passion, close to that of the "con "man and Cincinnati shivered. "I can't do all I'd like to," he went on, "but I'll pay the bill in full some other time you bet I will."

      He stooped and tied Cincinnati's ankles to the chairlegs as effectively as he had bound his wrists. Then he lifted chair and all and staggered with it into the front room. He placed it by the curtained window and stood for a moment breathless. Cincinnati was no light weight.

      "Now listen to me," he said incisively. "I'm going to turn up the lights and draw the curtains back so that your head and shoulders can be seen from the street. Your detective pals will be in sight somewhere and they'll be pleased to see you. I shall be behind the door and don't forget I'll plug you good if you play foxy. You've got to shake your head to them see? Convey to them that everything isn't quite ready. You know how to do it. Lean a bit forward as though you were talking to somebody they can't see. It's up to you to keep 'em stalled off for a quarter of an hour."

      He slipped the curtains back and retreated to the doorway, out of the direct line of sight of anyone in the street. Cincinnati cast a casual glance out on the pavement and made a motion with his head as Ling had directed.

      He had a vision of Weir Menzies posed precariously on the iron railings four feet away. There was a smashing of glass as the detective leapt and the "con" man heard a vehement oath from Ling, followed by two sharp reports in quick succession.

      Menzies tore furiously through one of the broken panes at the window fastenings. Presently he flung up the sash and half leapt, half tumbled within. Congreve stayed without long enough to put a whistle to his lips in swift summons and appeal and then followed his chief.

      Cincinnati Red had fainted with a bullet wound in his shoulder.

Chapter XVII

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      The chief inspector hurled himself blindly across the room. When a man is shooting at short range it is advisable to get at him as quickly as possible. But Ling had no intention of waiting. His plans had miscarried somehow it was of no immediate importance how. The chief thing was to get away.

      He took the stairs three steps at a time and flung up the landing window and cocked one leg through. The back of the house looked sheer on to a builder's yard twenty feet below. He poised himself, swore as he found that a portion of his clothing had become entangled in a nail in the window and turned momentarily. Menzies saw his silhouette outlined against the window for a second and the pistol flamed again.

      "The back door, Royal," he roared as he apprehended the pursued man's purpose. "Get to the back door."

      Then Ling leapt. It was a desperate feat in the darkness, but the crook's luck held. He fell heavily on his feet and hands, straightened himself and waved a hand lightly in the direction of the window. "Sorry I can't stop," he cried. "Give my love to Cincinnati," and disappeared at a dog trot behind piles of bricks and stacks of drain pipes.

      Weir Menzies drew a long breath. There were passages in the comminatory service which occurred to him as doing justice to the occasion, but he maintained an eloquent silence. Words were too feeble. He could hear Royal striking matches and muttering softly to himself, and the sound made him feel better. He descended slowly.

      "All right," he said as he met his breathless subordinate. "I know. There isn't any back way, of course. You can't think of these things when you're in a hurry. The tradesmen's entrance is in the basement in front. He wouldn't have risked his neck had there been any other way."

      "He got away, then?" said the sergeant. Menzies remembered that he always had considered one of Congreve's shortcomings a lack of tact. He answered shortly :

      "Jumped six or seven yards. Don't look at me like that. If I'd been a lightweight I might have followed him, but I'm getting too old for such foolishness. Who's that at the door?"

      "I blew my whistle, sir; I expect it's the uniform men. He can't have got far. We might run a cordon round the neighbourhood."

      "Oh, talk sense," retorted Menzies sharply. "He may be a couple of miles away before we can get the men. Hello, what's this?"

      He held up his left hand. It was dripping with blood. He walked closer to the light and examined it. with dispassionate curiosity. "That's funny," he commented. "I must have got a rap across the knuckles with a bullet." He wrapped his handkerchief around the injured hand. "Go and open the door or those fools'll have it down. I'm going to have a talk with Cincinnati."

      The peril of capture in which Ling had been placed had not been due entirely to luck. His fertile resources had conceived a plan for a strategic retreat and was intended to combine business with pleasure business in that Cincinnati was to keep the attention of the detectives, while allowing him comparatively ample time, to confound the active pursuit and pleasure so far that he had turned the tool of the police against themselves.

      There was only one flaw in this scheme and that flaw had all but proved fatal the supposition that the detectives would have implicit confidence in the good faith of the "con "man. To one unprejudiced or not tensely strung up by an emergency it might have seemed an unlikely hypothesis. Weir Menzies might use a crook, but he never made the mistake of trusting one.

      A doubt had crept into Menzies' mind at the very moment he arrivecl at the Petit Savoy and observed that Hallett was no longer with the "con "man. How nearly he had been to acting then in spite of Cincinnati's dictated note no one but Royal knew. Against his instincts he had waited, but he had made up his mind to afford little rope to Ling. So it was that he had wasted no time when they had entered the house. The latter part of Ling's stage management had been entirely futile. For once in a while the chief inspector let intuition carry him on.

      Able now for the first time to see Cincinnati's predicament, he gave a grave nod of comprehension. Some of the methods which Ling had employed became clear to him. He cut the cords and slit away the sodden dress coat at the shoulder. As deftly and gently as a woman he examined it.

      "A clean flesh wound," he murmured. "Nothing much to hurt there. An inch or two lower and there would have been no need to hunt for evidence to hang Ling."

      Royal had admitted a uniformed sergeant. "I haven't troubled about the cordon, sir. It seems that a builder's yard runs into a street backing on this. I have sent a couple of men round there."

      "Right you are. It might as well be done as a matter of form. They'll not see anything of Ling, though. He'd got this all cut and dried and if we'd been a little later getting in we'd not have had a ghost of a notion which way he'd gone at all. If you've got a spare man out there, sergeant, you might send for a doctor. This chap's caught it."

      Cincinnati Red opened his eyes and smiled uncertainly. "Thought Ling was a better shot," he murmured.

      "Hello, you've come round, have you?" asked Menzies. "Sorry for you, Cincinnati. How he came to miss me at that distance is more than I can fathom. I'm big enough."

      The "con "man's smile broadened. "Say, you don't know Ling, do you? He wasn't shooting at you; he meant it for me, all right." He winced with pain as he moved slightly. "He always pays his scores, does Ling. I guess I'll have something to say next time we meet. If your people hadn't taken my gun away!

      He had me covered from the moment he saw me."

      "I suspected that," said Menzies. "How'd you slip Mr. Hallett?"

      "Me? Slip Hallett?" repeated Cincinnati.

      "That's what I said."