Battle, Superintendent (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; Detective and mystery stories; Police -- England -- Fiction
"No. He wanted something--I don't know what--told to a friend of his.
Oh! yes, and he mentioned Seven Dials."
"H'm," said Doctor Cassell. "Not a likely neighborhood for one of his
class. Perhaps his assailant came from there. Well, we needn't worry
about that now. You can leave it in my hands. I'll notify the police.
You must, of course, leave your name and address, as the police are
sure to want to question you. In fact, perhaps you'd better come round
to the police station with me now. They might say I ought to have
detained you."
They went together in Bundle's car. The police inspector was a
slow-speaking man. He was somewhat overawed by Bundle's name and
address when she gave it to him, and he took down her statement with
great care.
"Lads!" he said. "That's what it is. Lads practising! Cruel stupid,
them young varmints are. Always loosing off at birds with no
consideration for anyone as may be the other side of a hedge."
The doctor thought it a most unlikely solution, but he realized that
the case would soon be in abler hands and it did not seem worth while
to make objections.
"Name of deceased?" asked the sergeant, moistening his pencil.
"He had a cardcase on him. He appears to have been a Mr. Ronald
Devereux, with an address in the Albany."
Bundle frowned. The name Ronald Devereux awoke some chord of
remembrance. She was sure she had heard it before.
It was not until she was half-way back to Chimneys in the car that it
came to her. Of course! Ronny Devereux. Bill's friend in the Foreign
Office. He and Bill and--yes--Gerald Wade.
As this last realisation came to her, Bundle nearly went into the
hedge. First Gerald Wade--then Ronny Devereux. Gerry Wade's death might
have been natural--the result of carelessness--but Ronny Devereux's
surely bore a more sinister interpretation.
And then Bundle remembered something else. Seven Dials! When the
dying man had said it, it had seemed vaguely familiar. Now she knew
why. Gerald Wade had mentioned Seven Dials in that last letter of his
written to his sister on the night before his death. And that again
connected up with something else that escaped her.
Thinking all these things over, Bundle had slowed down to such a sober
pace that nobody would have recognised her. She drove the car round to
the garage and went in search of her father.
Lord Caterham was happily reading a catalogue of a forthcoming sale of
rare editions and was immeasurably astonished to see Bundle.
"Even you," he said, "can't have been to London and back in this time."
"I haven't been to London," said Bundle. "I ran over a man."
"What?"
"Only I didn't really. He was shot."
"How could he have been?"
"I don't know how he could have been, but he was."
"But why did you shoot him?"
"I didn't shoot him."
"You shouldn't shoot people," said Lord Caterham in a tone of mild
remonstrance. "You shouldn't really. I daresay some of them richly
deserve it--but all the same it will lead to trouble."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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