The Joker

Edgar Wallace

Chapter 1

 

MR STRATFORD HARLOW was a gentleman with no particular call to hurry. By every standard he was a member of the leisured classes, and to his opportunities for lingering, he added the desire of one who was pertinently curious.

The most commonplace phenomena interested Mr Harlow. He had all the requisite qualities of an observer; his enjoyment was without the handicap of sentimentality, a weakness which is fatal to accurate judgement.

Leonardo da Vinci could stand by the scaffold using the dreadful floor as his desk; and sketch the agonies of malefactors given to the torture. Mr Harlow, no great lover of painters, thought well of Leonardo. He too could stop to look at sights which sent the average man shuddering and hurrying past; he could stop (even when he was really in a hurry) to analyse the colour scheme in an autumn sunset, not to rhapsodise poetically, but to mark down for his own information the quantities of beauty.

He was a large man of forty-eight, fair and slightly bald. His clean-shaven face was unlined, his skin without blemish. Pale blue eyes are not accounted beautiful and the pallor of Mr Harlow's eyes was such that, seeing him for the first time, many sensitive people experienced a shock, thinking he was sightless. His nose was big and long, and of the same width from forehead to tip. He had very red, thick lips that seemed to be pouting even when they were in repose. A rounded chin with a dimple in the centre and unusually small cars, completes the description.

His powerful car was drawn up by the side of the road, its two near wheels on the green verge, and Mr Harlow sat, one hand on the wheel, watching the marshalling of the men in a field. In such moments of contemplative reveries as these, splendid ideas were born in Stratford Harlow's mind, great schemes loomed out of the nowhere which is beyond vision. And, curiously enough, prisons invariably had this inspirational effect.

They were trudging now across the field, led by a lank warder, cheerful, sunburnt men in prison uniform.

Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!

The convicts had reached the hard road and were coming towards him. The leading warder glanced suspiciously at the well-dressed stranger, but the gang were neither abashed nor distressed by this witness of their shame. Rather, they carried themselves with a new perkiness as though conscious of their value as an unusual spectacle. The first two files glanced sideways and grinned in a friendly manner, half the third file followed suit, but the second man looked neither left nor right. He had a scowl on his face, a sneer on his thin lips and he lifted one shoulder in a shrug of contemptuous defiance, delivered, as the watcher realised, not so much towards the curious sightseer, but the world of free men which Mr Harlow represented.

Twisting round in his seat, he watched the little column filing through the Arch of Despair and out of sight through the gun-metal gates which he could not see.

The motorist stepped on the starter and brought the car round in a half-circle. Patiently he manoeuvred the long chassis until it headed back towards Princetown. Tavistock and Ellenbury could wait a day—a week if necessary. For here was a great thought to be shaped and exploited.

His car stopped noiselessly before the Duchy Hotel, and the porter came running down the steps.

'Anything wrong, sir?'

'No. I thought I'd stay another day. Can I have the suite? If not, any room will do.'

The suite was not let, he learnt, and he had his case carried upstairs.

It was then that he decided that Ellenbury, being within driving distance, might come across the moor and save him the tedium of a day spent in Tavistock. He picked up the telephone and in minutes Ellenbury's anxious voice answered him.

'Come over to Princetown. I'm staying at the Duchy. Don't let people see that you know me. We will get acquainted in the smoke-room after lunch.'

Mr Harlow was eating his frugal lunch at a table over-looking the untidy square in front of the Duchy, when he saw Ellenbury arrive: a small, thin, nervous man, with white hair. Soon after the visitor came down to the big dining-room, gazed quickly round, located Mr Harlow with a start, and sat himself at the nearest table.

The dining-room was sparsely occupied. Two parties that had driven up from Torquay ate talkatively in opposite corners of the room. An elderly man and his stout wife sat at another table, and at a fourth, conveying a curious sense of aloofness, a girl. Women interested Mr Harlow only in so far as they were factors in a problem or the elements of an experiment; but since he must classify all things he saw, he noticed, in his cold-blooded fashion, that she was pretty and therefore unusual; for to him the bulk of humanity bore a marked resemblance to the cheap little suburban streets in which they lived, and the drab centres of commerce where they found their livelihood.

He had once stood at the corner of a busy street in the Midlands and had taken a twelve-hour census of beauty. In that period, though thousands upon thousands hurried past, he had seen one passably pretty girl and two that were not ill-favoured. It was unusual that this girl, who sat sidefaced to him, should be pretty; but she was unusually pretty.

Though he could not see her eyes, her visible features were perfect and her complexion was without flaw. Her hair was a gleaming chestnut and he liked the way she used her hands. He believed in the test of hands as a revelation of the mind. Her figure—what was the word? Mr Harlow pursed his lips. His was a cold and exact vocabulary, lacking in floweriness. 'Gracious,' perhaps. He pursed his lips again. Yes, gracious—though why it should be gracious… He found himself wandering down into the roots of language, and even as he speculated she raised her head slightly and looked at him. In profile she was pleasing enough, but now—

'She is beautiful,' agreed Stratford Harlow with himself, 'but in all probability she has a voice that would drive a man insane.'

Nevertheless, he determined to risk disillusionment. His interest in her was impersonal. Two women, one young, one old, had played important parts in his life; but he could think of women unprejudiced by his experience. He neither liked nor disliked them, any more than he liked or disliked the Farnese vase, which could be admired but had no special utility.

Presently the waiter came to take away his plate. 'Miss Rivers,' said the waiter in a low voice, in answer to his query. 'The young lady came this morning and she's going back to Plymouth by the last train. She's here to see somebody.' He glanced significantly at Mr Harlow, who raised his bushy eyebrows.

'Inside?' he asked, in a low voice.

The waiter nodded. 'Her uncle—Arthur Ingle, the actor chap.'

Mr Harlow nodded. The name was dimly familiar. Ingle?… Nosegay with a flower drooping out… and a judge with a cold in his head.

He began to reconstruct from his association of ideas.

He had been in court at the Old Bailey and seen the nosegay which every judge carries—a practice which had its beginning in olden times, when a bunch of herbs was supposed to shield his lordship from the taint of Newgate fever. As the judge had laid the nosegay on the ledge three little pimpernels in the centre had fallen on to the head of the clerk. Now he remembered! Ingle! An ascetic face distorted with fury. Ingle, the actor, who had forged and swindled, and had at last been caught. Mr Stratford Harlow laughed softly; he not only remembered the name but the man, and he had seen him that morning, scowling, and shrugging one shoulder as he slouched past in the field gang So that was Ingle! And he was an actor.

Mr Harlow had come back especially to Princetown to find out who he was. As he looked up he saw the girl walking quickly from the room and, rising, he strolled out after her, to find the lounge empty. Selecting the most secluded corner, he rang for his coffee and lit a cigar.

Presently Ellenbury came in, but for the moment Mr Harlow had other interests. Through the window he saw Miss Rivers walking across the square in the direction of the post office and, rising, he strolled out of the hotel and followed. She was buying stamps when he entered, and it was pleasing to discover that her voice had all the qualities he could desire.

Forty-eight has certain privileges; and can find the openings which would lead to twenty-eight's eternal confusion.

'Good morning, young lady. You're a fellow guest of ours, aren't you?'

He said this with a smile which could be construed as fatherly. She shot a glance at him and her lips twitched. She was too ready to smile, he thought, for this visitation of hers to be wholly sorrowful.

'I lunched at the Duchy, yes, but I'm not staying here. It is a dreadful little town!'

'It has its beauty,' protested Mr Harlow.

He dropped sixpence on the counter, took up a local time-table, waited while the girl's change was counted and fell in beside her as they came out of the office.

'And romance,' he added. 'Take the Feathers Inn. There's a building put up by the labour of French prisoners of war.'

From where they stood only the top of one of the high chimneys of the prison was visible.

She saw him glance in that direction and shake his head.

'The other place, of course, is dreadful-dreadful! I've been trying to work up my courage to go inside, but somehow I can't.'

'Have you—' She did not finish the question.

'A friend—yes. A very dear friend he was, many years ago, but the poor fellow couldn't go straight. I half promised to visit him, but I dreaded the experience.'

Mr Harlow had no friend in any prison.

She looked at him thoughtfully.

'It isn't really so dreadful. I've been before,' she said, without the slightest embarrassment. 'My uncle is there.'

'Really?' His voice had just the right quantity of sympathy and understanding.

'This is my second visit in four years. I hate it, of course, and I'll be glad when it's over. It is usually rather—trying.'

They were pacing slowly towards the hotel now.

'Naturally it is very dreadful for you. You feel so sorry for the poor fellows—'

She was smiling; he was almost shocked.

'That doesn't distress me very much. I suppose it's a brutal thing to say, but it doesn't. There is no'—she hesitated—'there is no affection between my uncle and myself, but I'm his only relative and I look after his affairs'—again she seemed at a loss as to how she would explain—'and whatever money he has. And he's rather difficult to please.'

Mr Harlow was intensely interested; this was an aspect of the visit which he could not have imagined.

'It would be dreadful if I liked him, or if he was fond of me,' she went on, stopping at the foot of the hotel steps. 'As it is, we have a business talk and that is all.'

With a friendly nod she passed into the hotel ahead of him. Mr Harlow stood for a long time in the doorway, looking at nothing, his mind very busy, and then he strolled back to his cooling coffee; and presently fell into discussion; about the weather and the crops with the nervous little man who awaited his coming.

They were quite alone now. The car parties had vanished in noisy confusion; the old gentleman and the stout old lady were leaving the hotel on a walking excursion as he had come in.

'Is everything all right, Ellenbury?'

'Yes, Mr Harlow,' said the little man eagerly. 'Everything is in perfect shape and trim. I have settled the action that the French underwriters were bringing against the Rata Company, and—'

Suddenly he was stricken to silence. Following the direction of his staring eyes, Mr Harlow also looked out of the window. Eight convicts were walking down the street in the direction of the railway station; Mr Harlow looked and pointed.

'Not a very pleasant or an agreeable sight,' he said. In his oracular moments his voice was very rich and pleasant. 'Yet one, I think, to which the callous people of Princetown are quite accustomed. These men are being transferred to another prison, I imagine. Do you ever realise what your feelings would be if you had been, say, the leader of that gang, they used to be chained like wild beasts—'

'For God's sake, stop!' said the little man hoarsely. 'Don't talk about it, don't talk about it!' His trembling hands covered his eyes. 'I had a horror of coming here,' he said, in a voice that was scarcely audible. 'I've never been before… the car passed that terrible archway and I nearly fainted!'

Mr Harlow, one eye on the door, smiled indulgently. 'You have nothing to fear, my dear Ellenbury,' he said in a paternal voice. 'I have in a sense condoned your felony. In a sense,' he emphasised carefully. 'Whether a judge would take the same view, I do not know. You understand the law better than I. This much is certain; you are free, your debts are paid, the money you stole from your clients has been made good and you have, I think, an income which is, shall we say, satisfactory.'

The little man nodded and swallowed something. He was white to the lips, and when he tried to lift a glass of water his hand shook so that he had to put it down again. 'I'm very grateful,' he said. 'Very—very grateful… I'm sorry-it was rather upsetting.'

'Naturally,' murmured Mr Harlow.

He took a notebook from his pocket, opened it with the greatest deliberation and wrote for five minutes, the little lawyer watching him. When he had finished he tore out the sheet and passed it across the table.

'I want to know all about this man Arthur Ingle,' he said. 'When his sentence expires, where he lives in London or elsewhere, his means and especially his grudge against life. I don't know what it is, but I rather suspect that it is a pretty big one. I should also like to know where his niece is employed. Her name you will find on the paper, with a query mark attached. I want to know who are her friends, what are her amusements, her financial position is very important.'

'I understand.' Ellenbury put the paper carefully in a worn pocket-book. And then, with one of his habitual starts: 'I had forgotten one thing, Mr Harlow,' he said. 'On Monday last I had a visit at my office in Lincoln's Inn Fields from the police.'

He said the last two words apologetically as though he were in some way responsible for the character of his caller. Mr Harlow turned his pale eyes upon his companion, made a long scrutiny of his face before he asked: 'in what connection?'

'I don't know exactly,' said Ellenbury, who had a trick of reproducing at a second's notice all the emotions he described. 'It was rather puzzling.' He screwed up his face into an expression of bewilderment. 'You see, Mr Carlton did not come to any point.'

'Carlton?' demanded Harlow, quickly for him. 'That's the man at the Foreign Office, isn't it?'

Ellenbury nodded.

'It was about the rubber fire. You remember the fire at the United International factory? He wanted to know if Rata had any insurance on the stock that was burnt and of course I told him that as far as I knew, we hadn't.'

'Don't say "we,"' said Mr Harlow gently. 'Say the Rata Syndicate hadn't. You are a lawyer acting for undisclosed principals. Well?'

'That was all,' said Ellenbury. 'He was very vague.'

'He always is vague,' interrupted Harlow with a faint smile, 'and he's always unscrupulous—remember that, Ellenbury. Sub-Inspector James Carlton is the most unscrupulous man that Scotland Yard has ever employed. Some day he will be irretrievably ruined or irretrievably promoted. I have a great admiration for him. I know of no man in the world I rate higher in point of intelligence, acumen and—unscrupulousness! He has a theory which is both admirable and baffling. Which means that he has the right theory. For rectitude is the most baffling of all human qualities, because you never know, if a man is doing right, what he will do next. I think that is almost an epigram, Ellenbury: you had best jot it down, so that if ever you are called upon to write my biography you may have material to lighten its pages.' He looked at his watch. I shall be at Park Lane at eleven o'clock on Friday night, and I can give you ten minutes,' he said.

Ellenbury twiddled his fingers unhappily.

'Isn't there a risk—to you, I mean?' he blurted. 'Perhaps I'm stupid, but I can't see why you do… well, why you take chances. With all your money—'

Mr Harlow leaned back in the cushioned seat, amusement faintly visible in his pale eyes.

'If you had millions what would you do? Retire, of course. Build or buy a beautiful house—and then?'

'I don't know,' said the older man vaguely. 'One could travel… '

'The English people have two ideas of happiness: one comes from travel, one from staying still! Rushing or rusting! I might marry but I don't wish to marry. I might have a great stable of race-horses, but I detest racing. I might yacht—I loathe the sea. Suppose I want a thrill? I do! The art of living is the art of victory. Make a note of that. Where is happiness in cards, horses, golf, women-anything you like? I'll tell you: in beating the best man to it! That's An Americanism. Where is the joy of mountain climbing, of exploration, of scientific discovery? To do better than somebody else—to go farther, to put your foot on the head of the next best.'

He blew a cloud of smoke through the open window and waited until the breeze had torn the misty gossamer into shreds and nothingness.

'When you're a millionaire you either get inside yourself and become a beast, or get outside of yourself and become a nuisance to your fellows. If you're a Napoleon you will play the game of power, if you're a Leonardo you'll play for knowledge—the stakes hardly matter; it's the game that counts. Accomplishment has its thrill, whether it is hitting a golf ball farther than the next fellow, or strewing the battle fields with the bodies of your enemies. My thrill is harder to get than most people's. I'm a millionaire. Sterling and dollars are my soldiers—I am entitled to frame my own rules of war, conduct my forays in my own way. Don't ask any further questions!'

He waved his hand towards the door and Mr Ellenbury was dismissed; and shortly afterwards his hired car rattled loudly up the hill and past the gates of the jail. Mr Ellenbury studiously turned his face in the opposite direction.

Chapter 2

 

SOME EIGHT months later there was an accident on the Thames Embankment. The girl in the yellow raincoat and the man in the black beret were of one accord—they were anxious, for different reasons, to cross the most dangerous stretch of the Embankment in the quickest possible space of time. There was a slight fog which gave promise of being just plain fog before the evening was far advanced. And through the fog percolated an unpleasant drizzle which turned the polished surface of the road into an insurance risk which no self-respecting company would have accepted.

The mudguard of the ancient Ford caught Aileen Rivers just below the left elbow, and she found herself performing a series of unrehearsed pirouettes. Then her nose struck a shining button and she slid romantically to her knees at the feet of a resentful policeman. He lifted her, looked at her, put her aside with great firmness and crossed to where the radiator of the car was staring pathetically up a bent lamp-post.

'What's the idea?' he asked sternly, and groped for his notebook.

The young man in the beret wiped his soiled face with the back of his hand, a gesture which resulted in the further spread of his griminess.

'Was the girl hurt?' he asked quickly.

'Never mind about the girl; let's have a look at your licence.'

Unheeding his authoritative demand, the young man stalked across to where Aileen, embarrassed by the crowd which gathered, was assuring several old ladies that she wasn't hurt. She was standing on her two feet to prove it.

'Waggle your toes about,' suggested a hoarse-voiced woman. 'If they won't move, your back's broke!'

The experiment was not made, for at that moment the tall young man pushed his way to the centre of the curious throng.

'Not hurt, are you?' he asked anxiously. 'I'm awfully sorry—really! Didn't see you till the car was right on top of you.'

A voice from the crowd offered advice and admonition.

'You orter be careful, mister! You might 'a' killed somebody.'

'Tell me your name, won't you?'

He dived into his pocket, found an old envelope and paused.

'Really it isn't necessary, I'm quite unhurt,' she insisted, but he was also insistent.

He jotted down name and address and he had finished writing when the outraged constable melted through the crowd.

'Here!' he said, in a tone in which fierceness and reproach were mingled. 'You can't go running away when I'm talking to you, my friend! Just you stand still and show me that licence of yours.'

'Did you see the blue Rolls?' demanded the young man. 'It was just ahead of me when I hit the lamp-post.'

'Never mind about blue Rolls's,' said the officer in cold exasperation. 'Let me have a look at your licence.'

The young man slipped something out of his pocket and held it in the palm of his hand. It was not unlike a driver's licence and yet it was something else.

'What's the idea?' asked the policeman testily.

He snatched the little canvas-backed booklet and opened it, turning his torch on the written words.

'Humph!' he said. 'Sorry, sir.'

'Not at all,' said Sub-Inspector James Carlton of Scotland Yard. 'I'll send somebody down to clear away the mess. Did you see the Rolls?'

'Yes sir, just in front of you. Petrol tank dented.'

Carlton chuckled. 'Saw that too? I'll remember you, constable. You had better send the girl home in a taxi—no, I'll take her myself.'

Aileen heard the proposal without enthusiasm. 'I much prefer to walk,' she said definitely.

He led her aside from the crowd now being dispersed, authoritatively. And in such privacy as could be obtained momentarily, he revealed himself.

'I am, in fact, a policeman,' he said; and she opened her eyes in wonder.

He did not look like a policeman, even in the fog which plays so many tricks. He had the appearance of a motor mechanic, and not a prosperous one. On his head was a black beret that had seen better days; he wore an old mack reaching to his knees; and the gloves he carried under his arm were black with grease.

'Nevertheless,' he said firmly, as though she had given oral expression to her surprise, 'I am a policeman. But no ordinary policeman. I am an inspector at Scotland Yard—a sub-inspector, it is true, but I have a position to uphold.'

'Why are you telling me all this?'

'He had already hailed a taxi and now he opened the door. 'You might object to the escort of an ordinary policeman,' he said airily, 'but my rank is so exalted that you do not need a chaperon.'

She entered the cab between laughter and tears, for her elbow really did hurt more than she was ready to confess.

'Rivers—Aileen Rivers,' he mused, as the cab went cautiously along the Embankment. 'I've got you on the tip of my tongue and at the back of my mind, but I can't place you.'

'Perhaps if you look up my record at Scotland Yard?' she suggested, with a certain anger at his impertinence.

'I thought of doing that,' he replied calmly; 'but Aileen Rivers?' He shook his head. 'No, I can't place you.' And of course he had placed her. He knew her as the niece of Arthur Ingle, sometime Shakespearean actor and now serving five years for an ingenious system of fraud and forgery. But then, he was unscrupulous, as Mr Harlow had said. He had a power of invention which carried him far beyond the creative line, but he was not averse to stooping on the way to the most petty deceptions. And this in spite of the fact that he had been well educated and immense sums had been spent on the development of his mind, so that lie might distinguish between right and wrong.

'Fotheringay Mansions.' He fingered his grimy chin. 'How positively exclusive!'

She turned on him in sudden anger. 'I've accepted your escort, Mr—' She paused insultingly.

'Carlton,' he murmured; 'half-brother to the hotel but no relation to the club. And this is fame! You were saying?'

'I was going to say that I wished you would not talk. You have done your best to kill me this evening; you might at least let me die in peace.'

He peered through the fog-shrouded windows. 'There's an old woman selling chrysanthemums near Westminster Bridge; we might stop and buy you some flowers.' And then, quickly: 'I'm terribly sorry, I won't ask you any questions at all or make any comments upon your plutocratic residence.'

'I don't live there,' she said in self-defence. 'I go there sometimes to see the place is kept in order. It belongs to a-a-relation of mine who is abroad.'

'Monte Carlo?' he murmured. 'And a jolly nice place too! Rien ne va plus! Faites vos jeux, monsieurs et mesdames! Personally I prefer San Remo. Blue sky, blue sea, green hills, white houses—everything like a railway poster.' And then he went off at a tangent. 'And talking of blueness, you were lucky not to be hit by the blue Rolls; it was going faster than me, but it has better brakes. I rammed his petrol tank in the fog, but even that didn't make him stop.'

Her lips curled in the darkness. 'A criminal escaping from justice, one thinks? How terribly romantic!'

The young man chuckled.

'One thinks wrong. It was a millionaire on his way to a City banquet. And the only criminal charge I can bring home to him is that he wears large diamond studs in his shirt, which offence is more against my aesthetic taste than the laws of my country, God bless it!'

The cab was slowing, the driver leaning sideways seeking to identify the locality.

'We're here,' said Mr Carlton; opened the door of the taxi while it was still in motion and jumped out.

The machine stopped before the portals of Fotheringay Mansions.

'Thank you very much for bringing me home,' said Aileen primly and politely, and added not without malice: 'I've enjoyed your conversation.'

'You should hear my aunt,' said the young man. 'Her line of talk is sheer poetry!'

He watched her until she was swallowed in the gloom, and returned to the cab.

'Scotland Yard,' he said laconically; 'and take a bit of a risk, O son of Nimshi.'

The cabman took the necessary risk and arrived without hurt at the gloomy entrance of police headquarters. Jim Carlton waved a brotherly greeting to the sergeant at the desk, took the stairs two at a time, and came to his own little room. As a rule he was not particularly interested in his personal appearance, but now, glancing at the small mirror which decorated the upturned top of a washstand, he uttered a groan.

He was busy getting the grease from his face when the melancholy face of Inspector Elk appeared in the doorway.

'Going to a party?' he asked gloomily.

'No,' said Jim through the lather; 'I often wash.'

Elk sniffed, seated himself on the edge of a hard chair, searched his pockets slowly and thoroughly.

'It's in the inside pocket of my jacket,' spluttered Carlton. 'Take one; I've counted 'em.'

Elk sighed heavily as he took out the long leather case, and, selecting a cigar, lit it.

'Seegars are not what they was when I was a boy,' he said, gazing at the weed disparagingly. 'For sixpence you could get a real Havana. Over in New York everybody smokes cigars. But then, they pay the police a livin' wage; they can afford it.'

Mr Carlton looked over his towel. 'I've never known you to buy a cigar in your life,' he said deliberately. 'You can't get them cheaper than for nothing!'

Inspector Elk was not offended. 'I've smoked some good cigars in my time,' he said. 'Over in the Public Prosecutor's office in Mr Gordon's days—he was the fellow that smashed the Frogs—him and me, that is to say,' he corrected himself carefully.

'The Frogs? Oh, yes, I remember. Mr Gordon had good cigars, did he?'

'Pretty good,' said Elk cautiously. 'I wouldn't say yours was worse, but it's not better.' And then, without a change of voice: 'Have you pinched Stratford Harlow?'

Jim Carlton made a grimace of disgust. 'Tell me something I can pinch him for,' he invited.

'He's worth fifteen millions according to accounts,' said Elk. 'No man ever got fifteen million honest.'

Jim Carlton turned a white, wet face to his companion. 'He inherited three from his father, two from one aunt, one from another. The Harlows have always been a rich family, and in the last decade they've graded down to maiden aunts. He had a brother in America who left him eight million dollars.'

Elk sighed and scratched his thin nose.

'He's in Ratas too,' he said complainingly.

'Of course he's in Ratas!' scoffed Jim. 'Ellenbury hides him, but even if he didn't, there's nothing criminal in Ratas. And supposing he was openly in it, that would be no offence.

'Oh!' said Elk, and by that 'Oh!' indicated his tentative disagreement.

There was nothing furtive or underhand about the Rata Syndicate. It was registered as a public company, and had its offices in Westshire House, Old Broad Street, in the City of London, and its New York office on Wall Street. The Rata Syndicate published a balance sheet and employed a staff of ten clerks, three of whom gained further emoluments by acting as directors of the company, under the chairmanship of a retired colonel of infantry. The capital was a curiously small one, but the resources of the syndicate were enormous. When Rata cornered rubber, cheques amounting to five millions sterling passed outward through its banking accounts; in fact every cent involved in that great transaction appeared in the books except the fifty thousand dollars that somebody paid to Lee Hertz and his two friends.

Lee arrived from New York on a Friday afternoon. On the Sunday morning the United Continental Rubber Company's stores went up in smoke. Nearly eighteen thousand tons of rubber were destroyed in that well-organised conflagration, and rubber jumped 80 per cent in twenty-four hours and 200 per cent in a week. For the big reserves that kept the market steady had been wiped out in the twinkling of an eye, to the profit of Rata Incorporated.

Said the New York Headquarters to Scotland Yard: Lee Hertz, Jo Klein and Philip Serrett well known fire bugs believed to be in London stop See record NY 9514 mailed you October 7 for description stop Possibility you may connect them United Continental fire.

By the time Scotland Yard located Lee he was in Paris in his well-known role of American Gentleman Seeing the Sights.

'It doesn't look right to me,' said Elk, puffing luxuriously at the cigar. 'Here's Rata, buys rubber with not a ghost of a chance of its rising. And suddenly, biff! A quarter of the reserve stock in this country is burnt out, and naturally prices and shares rise. Rata's been buying 'em for months. Did they know that the United was going west?'

'I thought it might have been an accident,' said Jim, who had never thought anything of the sort.

'Accident my grandmother's right foot!' said Elk, without heat. 'The stores were lit up in three places—the salvage people located the petrol. A man answering the description of Jo Klein was drinking with the night watchman the day before, and that watchman swears he never saw this Jo bird again, but he's probably lying. The lower classes lie easier than they drink. Ten millions, and if Harlow's behind Rata, he made more than that on the rubber deal. Buying orders everywhere! Toronto, Rio, Calcutta—every loose bit of rubber lifted off the market. Then comes the fire, and up she goes! All I got to say is—'

The telephone bell rang shrilly at that second, and Jim Carlton picked up the receiver.

'Somebody wants you, Inspector,' said the exchange clerk.

There was a click, an interval of silence, and then a troubled voice asked:

'Can I speak to Mr Carlton?'

'Yes, Miss Rivers.'

'Oh, it's you, is it?' There was a nattering relief in the voice. 'I wonder if you would come to Fotheringay Mansions, No. 63?'

'Is anything wrong?' he asked quickly.

'I don't know, but one of the bedroom doors is locked, and I'm sure there's nobody in there.'

Chapter 3

 

THE GIRL was standing in the open doorway of the flat as the two men stepped from the elevator. She seemed a little disconcerted at the sight of Inspector Elk, but Jim Carlton introduced him as a friend and obliterated him as a factor with one comprehensive gesture.

'I suppose I ought to have sent for the local police, only there are—well, there are certain reasons why I shouldn't,' she said.

Somehow Jim had never thought she could be so agitated. The discovery had evidently thrown her off her balance, and she was hardly lucid when she explained.

'I come here to collect my uncle's letters,' she said. 'He's abroad… his name is Jackson,' she said breathlessly. 'And every Thursday I have a woman in to clean up the fiat. I can't afford the time; I'm working in an office.'

They had left Elk staring at an engraving in the corridor, and it was an opportunity to make matters a little easier, if at first a little more uncomfortable, for her.

'Miss Rivers, your uncle is Arthur Ingle,' said Jim kindly, and she went very red. 'It is quite understandable that you shouldn't wish to advertise the fact, but I thought I'd tell you I knew, just to save you a great deal of unnecessary—' He stopped and seemed at a loss.

'"Lying" is the word you want,' she said frankly. 'Yes, Arthur Ingle lived here, but he lived here in the name of Jackson. Did you know that?' she asked anxiously.

He nodded.

'That's the door.' She pointed.

The flat was of an unusual construction. There was a very large dining-room with a low-timbered roof and panelled walls, from which led three doors—one to the kitchenette, the other two, she explained, to Arthur Ingle's bedroom and a spare apartment which he used as a lumber room. It was the door of the lumber room which she indicated.

Jim tried the handle; the door was fast. Stooping down he peered through the keyhole and had a glimpse of an open window through which the yellow fog showed.

'Are these doors usually left open?'

'Always,' she said emphatically. 'Sometimes the cleaning woman comes before I return. Tonight she is late and I'm rather early.'

'Where does that door lead?'

'To the kitchen.'

She went in front of him into the tiny room. It was spotlessly clean and had one window, flush with that which he had seen through the keyhole of the next room. He looked down into a bottomless void, but just beneath was a narrow parapet. He swung one leg across the sill, only to find his arm held in a frenzied grip by the girl.

'You mustn't go, you'll be killed!' she gasped and he laughed at her, not ill pleased, for the risk was practically nil.

'I've got a pretty high regard for me,' he said, and in another instant he had swung clear, gripped the lower sash of the second window and had pulled himself into the room.

He could see nothing except the dim outlines of three trunks stacked one on top of the other. He switched on the light and turned to survey the confusion. Old boxes and trunks which, he guessed, had been piled in some order, were dragged into the centre of the room to allow the free operation of the vanished burglar. Recessed into the wall, thus cleared, was a safe the door of which was open. On the floor beneath was a rough circle of metal burnt from the door—it was still hot when he touched it—by the small blowlamp that the burglar had left behind him.

He unlocked the door of the room and admitted Elk and the girl.

'That's good work,' said Elk, whose detached admiration for the genius of law-breakers was at least sincere. 'Safe's empty! Not so much as a cigarette card left behind. Good work! Toby Haggitt or Lew Yakobi—they're the only two men in London that could have done it.'

The girl was gazing wide-eyed at the 'good work'. She was very pale, Jim noticed, and misread the cause.

'What was in the safe?' he asked.

She shook her head.

'I don't know—I didn't even know that there was a safe in the room. He will be terrible about this!'

Carlton knew the 'he' was the absent Ingle. 'He won't know for some time, anyway—' he began, but she broke in upon his reassurance.

'Next week,' she said; 'he is being released on Wednesday.'

Elk scratched his chin thoughtfully. 'Somebody knew that,' he said; 'he hadn't a partner either.'

Arthur Ingle was indeed a solitary worker. His frauds had been unsuspected even by such friends as he had in his acting days—for they had covered a period of twelve years before his arrest and conviction. To the members of his company he was known as a bad paymaster and an unscrupulous manager; none imagined that this clever player of character parts was 'Lobber & Syne, Manufacturing Jewellers, of Clerkenwell,' and other aliases that produced him such golden harvests.

'It was no fault of yours,' said Jim Carlton; and she submitted to a gentle pat on the shoulder. 'There's no sense in worrying about it.'

Elk was examining the blowlamp under the electric light.

'Bet it's Toby,' he said, and walked to the window.

'That's his graft. He'd make a cat burglar look like a wool-eatin' kitten! Parapets are like the Great West Road to Toby—he'd stop to manicure his nails on three inches of rotten sandstone.'

The identity of the burglar worried Jim less than it did the girl. He had the brain of a lightning calculator. A hundred aspects of the crime, a hundred possibilities and explanations flickered through his mind and none completely satisfied him. Unless—

The Splendid Harlow was on the way to becoming an obsession. There was no immense sum of money to be made from discovering the secrets of a convicted swindler.

That there was money in the safe he did not for one moment believe. Ingle was not the type of criminal which hid its wealth in safes. He credited him with a dozen banking accounts in fictitious names, and each holding money on deposit.

They went back into the panelled dining-room. The apartment interested Jim, for here was every evidence of luxury and refinement. The flat must have cost thousands of pounds to furnish. And then he remembered that Arthur Ingle had been convicted on three charges. Evidence in a number of others, which must have produced enormous profits, was either missing or of too shaky a character to produce. This apartment represented coups more successful than those for which Arthur Ingle had been convicted.

'Do you know your uncle very well?'

She shook her head.

'I knew him better many years ago,' she said, 'when he was an actor, before he—well, before he got rich! I am his only living relation.' She raised her head, listening.

Somebody had knocked at the outer door.

'It may be the charwoman,' she said, and went along the passage to open the door.

A man was standing on the mat outside, tall, commanding, magnificent in his well-cut evening clothes. His snowy linen blazed and twinkled with diamonds; the buttons on his white waistcoat were aglitter.

It was part of the primitive in the man, so that she saw nothing vulgar in the display. But something within her shrank under his pale gaze. She had a strange and inexplicable sensation of being in the presence of a power beyond earthly control. She was crushed by the sense of his immense superiority. So she might have felt had she found herself confronted by a tiger.

'My name is Harlow—we met on Dartmoor,' he said, and showed a line of even teeth in a smile. 'May I come in?'

She could not speak in her astonishment, but somebody answered for her.

'Come in, Harlow,' drawled Jim Carlton's voice. 'I'd love to have your first impression of Dartmoor; is it really as snappy as people think?'

Chapter 4

 

MR. HARLOW'S attitude towards this impertinent man struck the girl as remarkable. It was mild, almost benevolent; he seemed to regard James Carlton as a good joke. And he was the great Harlow! She had learnt that at Princetown.

You could not work in the City without hearing of Harlow, his coups and successes. Important bankers spoke of him with bated breath. His money was too liquid for safety: it flowed here and there in floods that were more often than not destructive. Sometimes it would disappear into subterranean caverns, only to gush forth in greater and more devastating volume to cut new channels through old cultivations and presently to recede, leaving havoc and ruin behind.

And of course she had heard of the police station. When Mr Harlow interested himself in the public weal he did so thoroughly and unconventionally. His letters to the press on the subject of penology were the best of their kind that have appeared in print. He pestered Ministers and commissioners with his plans for a model police station, and when his enthusiasm was rebuffed he did what no philanthropist, however public-minded, has ever done before.

He bought a freehold plot in Evory Street (which is not a stone's throw from Park Lane), built his model police headquarters at the cost of two hundred thousand pounds, and presented the building to the police commissioners. It was a model police office in every respect. The men's quarters above the station were the finest of their kind in the world. Even the cells had the quality of comfort, though they contained the regulation plank bed. This gift was a nine days' wonder. Topical revues had their jokes about it; the cartoonists flung their gibes at the Government upon the happening.

The City had ceased to think of him as eccentric, they called him 'sharp' and contrasted him unfavourably with his father. They were a little afraid of him. His money was too fluid for stability.

He nodded smilingly at Jim Carlton, fixed the unhappy Elk with a glance, and then: 'I did not know that you and my friend Carlton were acquainted.' And then, in a changed tone: 'I hope I am not de trop.'

His voice, his attitude said as plainly as words could express: 'I presume this is a police visitation due to the notorious character of your uncle?' The girl thought this. Jim knew it.

'There has been a burglary here and Miss Rivers called us in,' he said.

Harlow murmured his regrets and sympathy. 'I congratulate you upon having secured the shrewdest officer in the police force.' He addressed the girl blandly.

'And I congratulate the police force'—he looked at Jim—'upon detaching you from the Foreign Office—you were wasted there, Mr Carlton, if I may be so impertinent as to express an opinion.'

'I am still in the Foreign Office,' said Jim. 'This is spare-time work. Even policemen are entitled to their amusements. And how did you like Dartmoor?'

The Splendid Harlow smiled sadly. 'Very impressive, very tragic,' he said. 'I am referring of course to Princetown, where I spent a couple of nights.'

Aileen was waiting to hear the reason for the call; even though her distress and foreboding she was curious to learn what whim had brought this super-magnate to the home of a convict.

He looked slowly from her to the men and again Jim interpreted his wishes; he glanced at Elk and walked with him into the lumber room.

'It occurred to me,' said Mr Harlow, 'that I might be in a position to afford you some little help. My name may not be wholly unknown to you; I am Mr Stratford Harlow.'

She nodded.

'I knew that,' she said.

'They told you at the Duchy, did they?' It seemed that he was relieved that she had identified him.

'Mine is rather a delicate errand, but it struck me—I have found myself thinking about you many times since we met—that possibly… I might be able to find a good position for you. Your situation, if you will forgive my saying as much, is a little tragic. Association with—er—criminals or people with criminal records has a drugging effect even upon the finest nature.'

She smiled. 'In other words, Mr Harlow,' she said quietly, 'you're under the impression I'm rather badly off and that you would like to make life easier for me?'

He beamed at this. 'Exactly,' he said.

'It is very kind of you—most kind,' she said, and meant it. 'But I have a very good job in a lawyer's office.' He inclined his head graciously. 'Mr Stebbings has been very good to me—'

'Mr ——?' His head jerked on one side. 'Stebbings—of Stebbings, Field & Farrow—surely not! They were my lawyers until a few years ago.'

She knew this also.

'Quite good people, though a little old-fashioned,' he said. 'Then of course you have heard Mr Stebbings speak of me?'

'Only once,' she confessed. 'He is a very reticent man and never talks about his clients.'

Harlow bit his lip in thought. 'An excellent fellow! I have often wondered whether I was wrong in taking my affairs from him. I wish you would mention that to him when you see him. I understood you were working in the office of the New Library Syndicate?'

She smiled at this. 'It's curious you should say that; their offices are in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but next door.'

'Ah!' he said. 'I see how the mistake arose,' and added quickly: 'A friend of mine who knows you saw you going into—er—an office; and obviously made a mistake.'

He did not tell her who was their mutual friend, and she was not sufficiently interested to inquire.

This time the knock at the door was more pronounced.

'Will you excuse me?' she said. 'That is my cleaner, and she is rather inclined to tell me her troubles. I may keep you waiting a little while.'

She left him and he heard the sounds of a door opening, as Jim Carlton and Elk came back into the dining-room.

'A very charming young lady that,' said Mr Harlow.

'Very,' said Jim shortly.

'Women do not interest me greatly'—the Splendid Harlow picked a tiny thread of cotton from his immaculate coat and dropped it on the floor. 'They think along lines which I find it difficult to follow. They are emotional, too—swayed by momentary fears and scruples… '

The sound of voices in the passage, one high-pitched and complaining:

'… what with the fog and everything, miss, it's lucky I'm here at all… '

A shabby figure passed the open door, followed by Aileen.

'I suppose you don't know Ingle, Mr Harlow?' Jim was examining the photograph on the mantelpiece. 'A long-firm swindler; clever, but with a kink even in his kinkiness! Believes in revolution and all that sort of thing… blood and guillotines and tumbrils; the whole box of tricks—'

Something made him look round.

Mr Stratford Harlow was standing in the centre of the room, gripping the edge of a small table to keep him upright.

His face was white and haggard and drawn; and in his pale eyes was a look of horror such as Jim Carlton had never seen in the face of a man. Elk sprang forward and caught him as he swayed and led him to a big settee. Into this Stratford Harlow sank and leaning forward, covered his face with his hands.

'Oh, my God!' he said as he rocked slowly from side to side and fell in a heap on the ground.

The colossus had fainted.

Chapter 5

 

'A LITTLE heart trouble,' said Mr Harlow, smiling as he set down the glass of water. 'I'm terribly sorry to have given you so much trouble, Miss Rivers. I haven't had an attack in years.'

He was still pale, but such was his extraordinary self-control that the hand that put down the glass was without a tremor.

'Phew!' He dabbed his forehead with a silk handkerchief and rose steadily to his feet.

Elk was engaged in the prosaic task of brushing the dust stains from his knees and looked up.

'You'd better let me take you home, Mr Harlow,' he said.

Stratford Harlow shook his head.

'That is quite unnecessary—quite,' he said. 'I have my car at the door and a remedy for all such mental disturbances as these! And it is not a drug!' he smiled.

Nevertheless, Elk went with him to the car.

'Will you tell my chauffeur to drive to the Charing Cross power station?' was the surprising request; and long after the car had moved off in the fog Elk stood on the sidewalk, wondering what business took this multi-millionaire to such a venue.

They evidently knew Mr Harlow at the power station and they at any rate saw nothing remarkable in his visit.

The engineer, who was smoking at the door, stood back to let him walk into the great machinery hall, and placed a stool for him. And there for half an hour he sat, and the droning of the dynamos and the whirr and thud of the great engines were sedatives and anodynes to his troubled mind.

Here he had come before, to think out great schemes, which developed best in this atmosphere. The power and majesty of big wheels, the rhythm of the driving belts as they sagged and rose, the shaded lights above the marble switchboards, the noisy quiet of it all, stimulated him as nothing else could. Here he found the illusion of irresistibility that attuned so perfectly to his own mood; the inevitable effects of the inevitable causes. The sense that he was standing near the very heart of power was an inspiration. This lofty hall was a very home of the gods to him.

Half an hour, an hour, passed, and then he rose with a catch of his breath, and a slow smile lit the big face. 'Thank you, Harry, thank you.'

He shook the attendant's hand and left something that crinkled in the hard palm of the workman. A few minutes later he drove through brilliantly illuminated Piccadilly Circus and could offer a friendly nod to the flickering and flashing lights whose birth he had seen and whose very brilliance was a homage to the steel godhead.

To be thoroughly understood, Mr Stratford Harlow must be known.

There had been five members of the Harlow family when Stratford Selwyn Mortimer Harlow was born, and they were all immensely rich. His mother died a week later, his father when he was aged three, leaving the infant child to the care of his Aunt Mercy, a spinster who was accounted, even by her charitable relatives, as 'strange'. The boy was never sent to school, for his health was none of the best and he had his education at the hands of his aunt. An enormously rich woman with no interest in life, she guarded her charge jealously. Family interference drove her to a frenzy. The one call that her two sisters paid her, when the boy was seven, ended in a scene on which Miss Alice, the younger, based most of her conversation for years afterwards.

The main result of the quarrel between Miss Mercy and her maiden sisters was that she shut up Kravelly Hall and removed, with her maid Mrs Edwins, to a little cottage at Teignmouth. Here she lived unmolested by her relatives for seven years. She then went to Scarborough for three years and thence to Bournemouth. Regularly every month she wrote to her two sisters and her bachelor brother in New York; and the terminology of the letters did not vary by so much as a comma:

"Miss Mercy Harlow presents her compliments and begs to state that The Boy is in Good Health and is receiving adequate tuition in the essential subjects together with a sound instruction in the tenets of the Protestant Faith."

She had engaged a tutor, a bearded young man from Oxford University (she deigned to mention this fact to her brother, with whom she had not quarrelled), whose name was Marling. There came to the ears of Aunt Alice a story which called into question the fitness of Mr Marling to mould the plastic mind of youth. A mild scandal at Oxford. Miss Alice felt it her duty to write, and after a long interval had a reply:

"Miss Mercy Harlow begs to thank Miss Alice Harlow for her communication and in reply begs to state that she has conducted a very thorough and searching enquiry into the charges preferred against Mr Saul Marling (B.A. Oxon) and is satisfied that Mr Marling acted in the most honourable manner, and has done nothing with which he may reproach himself or which renders him unfit to direct the studies of The Boy."

This happened a year before Miss Mercy's death. When nature took its toll and she passed to her Maker, Miss Alice hastened to Bournemouth and in a small and secluded cottage near Christchurch found a big and solemn young man of twenty-three, dressed a little gawkily in black. He was tearless; and indeed, his aunt suspected, almost cheerful, at the prospect of being freed from Miss Mercy's drastic management.

The bearded tutor had left (Mrs Edwins, the maid, tearfully explained) a fortnight before the passing of Miss Mercy.

'And if he hadn't gone,' said Miss Alice with tight lips, 'I should have made short work of him. The Boy has been suppressed! He hasn't a word to say for himself!'

A council was held, including the family lawyer, who was making his first acquaintance with Stratford. It was agreed that The Boy should have a flat in Park Lane and the companionship of an elder man who combined a knowledge of the world with a leaning towards piety. Such was found in the Rev. John Barthurst, M.A., an ex-naval chaplain.

Miss Edwins was pensioned off and the beginning of Stratford's independent life was celebrated with a dinner and a visit to Charley's Aunt, through which roaring farce he sat with a stony face.

The tutelage lasted the best part of a year; and then the quiet young man suddenly came to life, dismissed his worldly and pious companion with a cheque for a thousand pounds, summoned Mrs Edwins to be his housekeeper; and bought and reconstructed the Duke of Greenhart's house in Park Lane.

And thenceforward Mr Harlow's name began to appear in the records of important transactions. Family fortunes dropped into his lap. Miss Mercy had been fabulously rich. She had left him every penny of her fortune, with the exception of £100 to Lucy Edwins in recognition of her faithful service, realising that she will not regard this sum as inadequate in view of the great service I rendered to her.' Then Miss Henrietta died; and when the death duties were paid there was the greater part of two millions. Miss Alice left more. The bachelor uncle in New York died a comparative pauper, leaving a beggarly six hundred thousand.

Mr Harlow's house was a rather ugly three-storey building which occupied a small island site, possibly the most valuable in Park Lane, though the actual entrance was not in that exclusive thoroughfare, but in the side street. He opened the door with a key and walked into the hall. The door to the library faced him. There were some letters on the table, which he scanned through rapidly, opening only one. It was from Ellenbury; and just then Mr Harlow was annoyed with Ellenbury; he had supplied erroneous information about Aileen Rivers, and had made him look a fool.

He read the letter carefully, and then dropped it in the fire and watched it turn black.

'A useful man, but a thought too anxious. It was a mistake perhaps to keep him so taut. He must be let down,' Mr Harlow decided. A little of his own confidence must be infused into his helper. Too great a desire to please, too present a fear of failure: those were Ellenbury's weaknesses.

He pressed an ivory bell on his desk, sat down, reached to the wall, slid back a panel and took out a small black bottle, a siphon and a glass. He poured out barely more whisky than was enough to cover the bottom of the tumbler, and filled it to the top with soda-water. The glass was half-empty when Mrs Edwins, his housekeeper, came in without knocking. A tall, yellow-faced woman, with burning black eyes, she showed nothing of the slowness or decrepitude that might have been expected in a woman near seventy.

'You rang?'

Miss Mercy's maid of other days had a voice as sharp and clear as a bugle note. She stood before the desk, her hands behind her, her eyes fixed on his.

'Yes,' he said, turning over his letters once more. 'Is everything all right?'

'Everything.'

Like a bugle note and with some of a bugle's stridency.

'Couldn't we keep a servant in the house?' she asked. 'The hours are a little too long for me. I didn't get to bed until one o'clock yesterday, and I had to be up at seven to let them in.'

It was a curious fact that no servants slept at No. 704, Park Lane. There was not a house of its size, or an establishment of such pretensions, in all the country where every servant slept out. Mr Harlow's excuse to his friends was that the room space was too valuable for servants, but he denied this by hiring an expensive house in Charles Street for their accommodation.

'No, I don't think it is necessary,' he said, pursing his lips. 'I thought you understood that.'

'I might die, or be taken ill in the night,' said Mrs Edwins dispassionately, 'and then where would you be?'

He smiled. 'It would be rather a case of where would you be, I think.' he said in excellent humour. 'Nothing has happened?'

She considered her answer before she replied. 'Somebody called, that was all,' she said, 'but I'll tell you about that afterwards.'

He was amused. 'A good many people call. Very well—be mysterious!'

He got up from his chair and walked out of the room, and she followed. There was a tiny elevator in the hall, big enough for two, but she declined this conveyance.

'I'll walk,' she said, and he laughed softly.

'You were complaining about feeling tired just now,' he retorted as he closed the grille before the little lift.

He pressed the top button, the elevator moved swiftly and noiselessly upwards and came at last to a stop on the third floor, where he stepped out to a square-carpeted landing from which led two doors. Here he waited, humming softly to himself, until the woman came in sight round the bend of the stairs.

'You're an athlete,' he said pleasantly and, jerking out a pocket-chain, selected a small key and opened the door on the left.

It was a big and artistically furnished apartment, lit from the cornice by concealed light and from the floor by two red-shaded lamps. In one corner of the room was an ornate wooden bed of red lacquer decorated with Chinese paintings in gold. At a small Empire desk near one of the windows, which were heavily curtained, sat a man. He was almost as tall as Stratford Harlow; and the features which would have arrested the attention of a stranger were his big, dome-shaped forehead and the long golden-yellow beard which, in spite of his age—and he must have been as old as Harlow himself—was untinged with grey.

He was reading, one thin hand on his cheek, his eyes fixed upon the book that lay or the desk, and not until Mr Harlow spoke did he look up.

'Hallo, Marling!' said Stratford Harlow gently.

The man leaned back in his chair, closed the book, mechanically marking his place with a thin tortoise-shell paper-knife.

'Good evening,' he said simply.

'Time you had your walk, isn't it?'

There was a second door in the room and towards this Mr Harlow glanced.

'Yes, I suppose it is,' said the man, and rose.

He wore a short dressing-jacket of dark blue velvet; his feet were encased in red morocco slippers. His glance strayed back to the closed book as though he were reluctant to have his reading interrupted.

'The Odes of Horace,' he said; 'an English translation, but full of errors.'

'Yes, yes,' smiled Mr Harlow. 'It's rather late for Horace.'

The woman was standing by the door, stiffly erect, her hands folded in front of her, her dark eyes on her master.

'Do you know who you are, my friend?' he asked.

The bearded man put his white hand to his forehead.

'I am Saul Marling, a graduate of Balliol,' he said.

Mr Harlow nodded.

'And—anything eke?' he asked.

Again the hand went up to the dome-shaped forehead.

'I forget… how absurd! It was something I saw, wasn't it?' he asked anxiously.

'Something you saw,' agreed Mr Harlow, 'just before Miss Mercy died.'

The other heaved a sigh.

'She died very suddenly. She was very kind to me in all my little troubles. Awfully suddenly! She used to sit on the chair talking to you, and then one night after dinner she fell down.'

'On the floor,' nodded Mr Harlow, almost cheerfully. 'But you saw something, didn't you?' he encouraged. 'A little bottle and some blue stuff. Wake up, Marling! You remember the little bottle and the blue stuff?'

The man shook his head.

'Not clearly… that was before you and Mrs Edwins took me away. I drank the white powders—they fizzed like a seidlitz powder—and then… '

'To the country,' smiled Harlow. 'You were ill, my poor old fellow, and we had to prescribe something to quieten you. You're all right?'

'My head is a little confused—' began the man, but Harlow laughed, caught him almost affectionately by the arm and, opening the narrow door, led his companion up a flight of steep stairs. At the top of this was another door, which Mr Harlow unlocked. They were on the roof of Greenhart House, a wide, flat expanse of asphalt confined within a breast-high parapet. For half an hour they walked up and down arm-in-arm, the bigger man talking all the time. The fog was thick, the street lamps showed themselves below as patches of dull yellow luminosity.

'Cold? I told you to put on your scarf, you stupid chap!' Mr Harlow was good-humoured even in his annoyance.

'Conic along, we'll go down.'

In the room below he fastened the door and gazed approvingly round the comfortable apartment. He took up one of the eight volumes that lay on a table. They still wore the publishers' wrappers and had arrived that day.

'Reading maketh a full man—you will find the Augustan histories a little heavy even for a graduate of Oxford, eh? Good night. Marling—sleep well.'

He locked the door and went out on to the landing with Mrs Edwins. Her hard eyes were fixed on his face, and until he spoke she was silent.

'He's quite all right,' he said.

'Is he?' Her harsh voice was disagreeable. 'How can he be all right if he's reading and writing?'

'Writing?' he asked quickly. 'What?'

'Oh, just stuff about the Romans, but it reads sensible.'

Mr Harlow considered this frowningly. 'That means nothing. He gives no trouble.'

'No,' she said shortly. 'I get worried,' she went on, 'but he's quiet. Who is Mr Carlton?'

Harlow drew a quick breath. 'Has he been here?'

She nodded. 'Yes—this afternoon. He asked me if I was Miss Mercy's old maid—she must have died soon after he was born.'

'He's older than that—well?'

'I thought it was queer, but he said he'd been asked to trace Mr Saul Marling.'

'By whom?'

She confessed her ignorance with a look. 'I don't know; but it was a proper inquiry. He showed me the papers. They were from Eastbourne. I told him Marling was dead. "Where?" he said. "In South America," I told him.'

'Pernambuco,' emphasised Mr Harlow, 'in the plague epidemic. Humph! Clever… and unscrupulous. Thank you.'

She watched him pass into the elevator and drop out of sight, then she went into the second room that opened from the landing. This too, was pleasantly furnished. Turning on the lights she sat down and opened a big chintz bag.

From this she took an unfinished stocking and adjusted her knitting needles. And as her nimble fingers moved, so did her lips.

'Pernambuco-in the plague epidemic,' she was saying.

Chapter 6

 

AILEEN RIVERS lived in Bloomsbury, which had the advantage of being near her work. She had spent a restless night, and the day that followed had been full of vexation. Mr Stebbings, her immediate chief, was away nursing a cold; and his junior partner, with whom she was constantly brought into contact that day, was a tetchy and disagreeable man, with a habit of mislaying important documents and blaming the person who happened to be most handy for their disappearance.

At six o'clock in the evening she locked up her desk with a sigh of thankfulness, looking forward to a light dinner and an early bedtime. Through her window she had seen the car drawn up by the kerb, and at first had thought it was waiting for a client, so that she was a little surprised, and by no means pleased, when, as she came down the steps of the old-fashioned house where the office was situate, a young man crossed the broad sidewalk towards her and lifted his hat.

'Oh, you!' she said in some dismay,

'Me, or I, as the case may be; I'm not quite certain which,' said Jim Carlton. 'And your tone is offensive,' he said sternly. 'By rights Elk or I should have been interviewing you at all sorts of odd hours during the day.'

'But what on earth can I tell you?' she asked, exasperated. You know everything about the burglary—I suppose that is what you mean?'

'That is what I mean,' said Jim. 'It is very evident that you know nothing about policemen. You imagine, I suppose, that Scotland Yard says "Hallo, there's been a burglary in Victoria. How interesting! Nobody knows, anything about it, so we'll let the matter drop." You're wrong!'

'I'm much too hungry to talk.'

'So I guessed,' he said. 'There is an unpretentious restaurant at King's Cross, where the sole bonne femme is worthy only of the pure of heart.'

She hesitated. 'Very well,' she said a little ungraciously. 'Is that your car? How funny!'

'There's nothing funny about my car,' he said with dignity, 'and it is not my car. I borrowed it.'

It was a clear night of stars and there was a touch of frost in the air and, although she would not have admitted as much for untold wealth, she enjoyed the short run that brought them to the side entrance of a large restaurant filled with people in varying stages of gastronomic enjoyment.

'I have booked a table,' he said, piloting her through an avenue of working jaws to a secluded corner of the annexe.

The atmosphere of the place was very satisfying. The pink table-lamps had a soothing effect, and she could examine him at her leisure. In truth it had been one of the sources of irritation of that very unhappy day that she could not quite remember what he looked like. She knew that he was not repulsive, and had a misty idea that he was rather good-looking, but that his nose was too short. It proved on inspection to be of a reasonable length. His eyes were blue and he was a little older than she had thought. Half her disrespect was based on the illusion of his youth.

'Now ask all your horrid questions,' she said as she took off her gloves.

'Number one,' he began. 'What did Harlow offer you when I so discreetly withdrew last night?'

'That has nothing to do with the burglary,' she answered promptly. 'But as it wasn't very important, I will tell you. He offered me a position.'

'Where?' he asked quickly.

She shook her head.

'I don't know. We didn't get as far as that; I told him I was perfectly happy with Mr Stebbings—who, by the way, used to be the lawyer of the Harlow family.'

'Did you tell him that?' He thrust his head forward eagerly.

'Why, no—he told me, though of course I knew,' she said. 'He knew, the moment I mentioned Stebbings's name.'

'Was he impressed?' he asked after a pause and she laughed.

'How ridiculous you are! Seriously, Mr—'she paused insultingly.

'Carlton,' he murmured; 'half-brother to the hotel but no relation to the club.'

'You worked that one last night,' she said.

'And I shall work it every night you pretend to forget my name! Anyway, it is a confession of crass ignorance which no modern young woman can afford to make. I am one of the most famous men in London.'

'I think I've heard you say that before,' she said mendaciously. 'Now tell me seriously, Mr Carlton—'

'Got it!' he murmured.

'What do you want to know about the burglary?'

'Nothing,' was the shameless reply. 'As a matter of fact, I have saved you a great deal of trouble by supplying headquarters with all the details they need. Your uncle emerges tomorrow; do you know that?'

'Tomorrow?' she said, with a pang of apprehension.

'And Elk is going to meet him and take some of the sting out of his anger. I suppose he will be very angry?'

'He'll be furious,' said the girl, troubled. And then, with a quick sigh, 'I'll be awfully glad when he has "emerged," as you call it. He allows me two pounds a week for my trouble, but I can well spare that.'

'Arthur Ingle ought to be ashamed of himself to drag you into the light which shines so brightly upon the unjust,' he said. 'There is only one thing I want to know about him, and perhaps you can tell me—was your uncle a great speculator?'

'I don't think so. But really I don't know. He never spoke to me about any investments. Is that what you mean?'

'That is just what I mean,' said Jim. He found it difficult to put the question without offence. 'You've had interviews with him and I dare say you've discussed his business to some extent. I shouldn't ask you to betray his confidence and I don't suppose for one minute you will. Did he ever talk about foreign gilt-edged investments?'

She was shaking her head before he finished the question.

'Never,' she said. 'I don't think he knows much about them. I remember the first time I saw him at Dartmoor he told me he didn't believe in putting money in shares. Of course, I'm well aware he has money, but you know that, too, and I suppose it is stolen money that he's—'

'Cached—yes,' said Jim.

He was very serious. It was the first time she had seen him in that mood and she rather liked it.

'Only one more question. You don't know that he is in any way connected with a firm called Rata?'

And, when she confessed that she had never heard of such a firm, his seriousness was at an end.

'And that's the whole of the questionnaire, back page and everything!'

He leaned back to allow the burly waiter to place the dish on the table. 'Sole bonne femme is good for the tired business girl. Will you have wine, or just the Lord's good water?'

After this he became his old flippant self. He made no further allusion to her uncle; and if he talked a great deal about himself, it was interesting, for he talked shop, and Scotland Yard shop is the second most interesting in the world. He lived at his club.

'I'd better give you the telephone number in case you ever want me.' He scrawled the address on the back of the menu and tore off the corner.

'Why should I want you?'

'I don't know. I've just got a feeling that you might. I'm a hunch merchant—do you know what a hunch merchant is?'

She could guess.

'Premonitions are my long suit, telepathy my sixth sense, and I've got a hunch… perhaps I'm wrong. I hope I am.'

Once or twice he had looked at his watch, a little furtively, she thought, yet it seemed that he was prepared to break any appointment he had made, for he lingered over his coffee until she brought a happy evening to an abrupt close by putting on her gloves. As they were driving back to her rooms: 'I haven't asked you very much about yourself. That is the kind of impertinence which really scares me,' he said, 'but I gather that you're unmarried—and unengaged?' he asked.

'I have no followers,' she said without embarrassment, 'and I hope that confession will offer no encouragement to the philandering constabulary!'

He chuckled for fully a minute.

'That's good,' he said at last.' "Philandering constabulary" is taken into use for special occasions. You're the first woman—'

'Don't!' she warned him.

'—I've ever met with a real sense of humour,' he concluded. 'I'm sorry to disappoint you.'

'I wasn't disappointed. I expected something banal,' she said. 'My house is the third on the left… thank you.'

She got down without assistance and offered her hand, and as he looked past her towards the door of the house:

'The number is 163,' she said, 'but you needn't write unless you've something very policey to write about. Good night!'

Jim Carlton was smiling all the way to Whitehall Gardens and his sense of amusement still held when he followed the footman into Sir Joseph Layton's study.

The words 'Joseph Layton' are familiar to all who carry passports, for he was the Foreign Secretary, a man of slight figure and ascetic face; and possibly the most cartooned politician in Britain.

He looked up over his big horn-rimmed glasses as Jim came in. 'Sit down, Carlton.' He blotted the letter he had been writing, inserted it with punctilious care into an envelope, and addressed it with a flourish before he spoke. 'I've just come back from the House. Did you call before?'

'No, sir.'

'Humph!' He settled himself more easily in his padded chair, put the tips of his fingers together, and again scrutinised the detective over his glasses. 'Well, what are the developments?' he asked, and added: 'I've seen the cables you sent me. Curious—very curious indeed. You intercepted them?'

'Some of them, sir,' said Jim. 'A great deal of the correspondence of the Rata Syndicate goes through other channels. But there's enough to show that Rata is there preparing for a big killing. I should imagine that every big broking house in the world has received similar instructions.'

Sir Joseph unlocked a drawer of his desk and, pulling it open, took out a number of sheets of paper fastened together by a big brass clip. He turned the leaves slowly.

'I suppose this one is typical,' he said.

It was a message addressed to Rata Syndicate, Wall Street: 'Be ready to sell for 15 per cent. drop undermentioned securities.'

Here followed a long list that covered two pages of writing, and against each stock was the number to be sold.

'Yes,' said Sir Joseph, stroking his little white moustache thoughtfully. 'Very peculiar, very remarkable! As you said in your letter, these are the very stocks which would be instantly affected by the threat of war. But who on earth are we going to fight? The International situation was never easier. The Moroccan question has been settled. You read my speech in the House last night?' Jim nodded. 'Upon my word,' said Sir Joseph, 'I think I was very careful to avoid anything like unjustifiable optimism, but, searching the world from East to West, I can see no single cloud on the horizon.'

Jim Carlton reached out, took the papers and read them through carefully.

'I think,' said the Foreign Minister with a twinkle in his eye, 'you have at the back of your mind the vision of some diabolical conspiracy to embroil the world in war. Am I right? Secret agents, traffic in secret plans, cellar meetings with masked and highly-placed diplomats?'

'Nothing so romantic,' smiled Jim. 'No; I wasn't brought up in that school. I know how wars are made. They grow as storms grow—out of the mists that gather on marshlands and meadows. Label them "the rising clouds of national prejudice," and you've got a rough illustration.'

'Come now, Mr Carlton, who is your ideal conspirator? I'm sure I know. You think Harlow is behind Rata; and that he has some diabolical scheme for stirring up the nations?'

'I think Harlow is behind most of the big disturbances,' said Jim slowly. 'He's got too much money; can't you get some of it away from him?'

'We do our best,' said the Foreign Minister dryly; 'but he is one of the few people in England who can look the sur-tax collector in the eye and never quail!'

Jim went back to Scotland Yard expecting to find Elk, but learned that that intelligent officer had left earlier in the evening for Devonshire. He was to meet Ingle on his release from prison and accompany him to town. And Inspector Elk's mission was certainly not on Aileen's behalf, nor had he any humanitarian idea of preparing the convict for news of the burglary.

The first idea (and this proved to be wrong) was that there was a reason and a mind behind this crime. Something had been taken of such value as justified the risk.

The sudden appearance of Harlow in the flat immediately after the crime had been committed had convinced Carlton that his visit was associated with the safe robbery. Harlow should have been at a City banquet—Jim had been trailing him all that day, and had known his destination. Indeed, his name had appeared in the morning newspapers as having been present at the dinner. And yet, within an hour of the accident on the Embankment, Harlow had turned up at Fotheringay Mansions, and had not deigned to offer an excuse for his absence from the dinner, although Jim was sure he knew that he had been trailed.

The early morning found Inspector Elk shivering on the wind-swept platform of Princetown. There were very few people in the waiting train at that hour; a workman or two on their way to an intermediate station, a commercial traveller who had been detained overnight and was probably looking forward to the comforts of Plymouth, comprised the list. It was within a minute of starting time, and he was beginning to think that he had wasted his time getting up so early, when he saw two men walk on to the platform.

One was a warder, and the other a thin man in an ill-fitting blue suit. The warder disappeared into the booking-office and came back with a ticket, which he handed to the other.

'So long, Ingle!' said the officer, and held out his hand, which the ex-convict took grudgingly.

Ingle stepped into the carriage and was turning to shut the door when Elk followed him and the recognition was immediate. Into the keen eyes of Arthur Ingle came a look of deep suspicion.

'Hallo! What do you want?' he asked harshly.

'Why, bless my life, if it isn't Ingle!' said Elk with a gasp. 'Well, well, well! It doesn't seem five years ago—'

'What do you want?' asked Ingle again.

'Me? Nothing! I've been up to the prison making a few inquiries about a friend of one of those mocking birds, but you know what they are—it was love's labour lost, so to speak,' said Elk, lighting a cigar and offering the case to his companion.

Ingle took the brown cylinder, smelt it and, biting off the end savagely, accepted the light which the detective held for him. By this time the train was moving and they were free from any possibility of interruption.

'Let me see: I heard something about you the other day… What was it?' Mr Elk held his forehead, a picture of perplexity. 'I've got it!' he said. 'There was a burglary at your flat.'

The cigar dropped from the man's hand.

'A burglary?' he said shrilly. 'What was stolen?'

'Somebody opened the safe in your locker room—'

Ingle sprang to his feet, his teeth bared, his eyes glaring. 'The safe!' He almost screamed the words. 'Opened the safe—damn them! They're not satisfied with sending me to five years of this hell, but they want to catch me again, do they… ?'

Elk let him rave on until, in his rage, the man's voice sank to a hoarse rattle of sound.

'I hope you didn't lose any money?'

'Money!' snarled the man. 'Do you think I'm the kind who puts money in a safe? You know what I lost!' He pointed an accusing finger at the detective. 'You fellows did it! So that's why you're here, eh? A prison gate arrest, is it?'

'My dear, good man!' Elk was pained. 'I don't know what you're talking about! You're no more under arrest than I am. You could walk out of that door as free as the air, if the train wasn't moving.' And then he asked: 'What did they pinch?'

It was a long time before the man recovered himself. 'If you don't know I'm not going to tell you,' he said. 'Some day—' He ground his teeth and in his eyes glared; the fires of fanaticism. 'You, and the like of you, call me a thief!' His voice rose again as he talked rapidly. 'You branded me and put me into prison—segregated me from my kind… a pariah, a leper! For what? For skimming off a little of the stolen cream! For taking a little of the money wrested from sweating bodies and breaking hearts! It was mine—mine!' He struck his chest with a bony fist, his eyes blazing. 'The money belonged to me—to my fellows, to those men there!' He pointed back to where, beyond the brow of a rise, lay the grim prison building. 'I took it from those fat and greasy men and I'm glad of it! One jewel less for their horrible women; one motor-car fewer for their slaves to clean!'

'Great idea,' murmured Elk sympathetically.

'You! What are you? The lackey of a class,' sneered Ingle. 'The hired torturer—the prison-feeder!'

'Quite right,' murmured Elk, listening with closed eyes.

'If they found those papers they've something to think about—do you hear?—something to spoil their night's sleep! And if there is sedition in them I'm willing to go back to Princetown.'

Elk opened his eyes quickly. 'Oh, was that what it was?' he asked, disappointed. 'Revolution stuff?'

The man nodded curtly.

'I thought it was something worth while!' said Elk, annoyed. 'Silly idea though, isn't it. Ingle?'

'To you, yes. To me, no,' snapped the other. 'I hate England! I hate the English! I hate all middle-class people, the smirking self-satisfied swine! I hated them when I was a starving actor and they sat in their stalls with a sneer on their overfed faces… ' He choked.

'There's a lot to be said for fat people,' mused Elk. 'Now take Harlow-though you wouldn't call him a fat man.'

'Harlow!' scoffed the other. 'Another of your moneyed gods!' Evidently he remembered something, for he stopped suddenly.

'Moneyed gods—?' suggested Elk.

'I don't know.' The man shook his head. 'He may not be what he seems. In there'—he jerked his head backwards—'they say he's crook to his back teeth! But he doesn't rob the poor. He takes it in large slabs from the fat men.'

'If that's so, I've nothing to say. He's on the side of law and order,' said Elk gently. 'A man who hands out police stations as Christmas presents can't be wholly bad!'

By the time the train pulled into Plymouth station, Detective-Inspector Elk was perfectly satisfied that there was nothing further to be learnt from the man. He went to the post office and sent a telegram to Jim which was short and expressive.

'Revolution stuff. Nothing important.'

He was on the same train that carried Mr Ingle to London, but he did not occupy the same compartment, except for half an hour after the train flashed through Bath, when he strolled into the carriage and sat down by the man's side; and apparently he was welcome, for Ingle started talking.

'Have you seen anything of my niece? Docs she know about the burglary? I think you told me, but I was so angry that I can't remember.' And, when Elk had given him the fullest particulars: 'Harlow! Why did he come? He met Aileen at Dartmoor, you say?' He frowned and suddenly slapped his knee. 'I remember the fellow. He was sprawling in his car by the side of the road when we came back from the field that day. So that was Harlow! Does he know Aileen?' he asked suspiciously.

'They met at Dartmoor; that's all I know.' Ingle gave one of his characteristic shrugs.

'I suppose he's running after her? She's a pretty sort of girl. With that type of man, money's no object. She's old enough to look after herself without my assistance.' So this Utopian left Aileen Rivers to her fate.

Chapter 7

 

HE HAD wired from Plymouth asking her to call at the flat that night, and she arrived just as he had finished a dinner he had cooked for himself.

'Yes, I've heard about the burglary,' he said, cutting short her question. 'They've got nothing that was worth a shilling to them, thank God! Why did you call in the police?'

And then he had a shock.

'Who else should I have called in—a doctor?' she asked.

It was the first time he had met her in a period of freedom. She had had her instructions to look after the flat, smuggled out of prison by a discharged convict; and their talks during the brief visiting hours had been mainly on business.

'What does one usually do when a burglary is discovered?' she asked. 'I sent for the police—of course I sent!'

He stared at her fiercely, but she did not flinch. It was his eyes which dropped first.

'I suppose it's all right,' he said, and then: 'You know Harlow, don't you?'

'I met him at Dartmoor, yes.'

'A friend of yours?'

'No more than you are,' she said; and he had his second shock. 'I'm not going to quarrel with you, and I don't see why you should want to be rude to me,' he snapped. 'You've been useful, but I've not been ungenerous. Harlow is a friend of yours—'

'He called here on the night of the burglary to offer me a job,' she replied, without any visible evidence other rising anger. 'I met him at Princetown and he seemed to think that because of my relationship with you, I should find it rather difficult to get employment.'

He muttered something under his breath which she did not catch and it occurred to her that she had cowed this bullying little man, though she had had no such intention.

'I shall not want you any more.' He took out his pocket-book, opened it and extracted a banknote. 'This is in the nature of a bonus,' he said. 'I do not intend continuing your allowance.'

He expected her to refuse the money and he was not wrong.

'Is that all?' she asked. She did not attempt to take the note.

'That is all.'

With a nod she turned and walked to the door. 'The charwoman is coming tonight to clean up,' she said. 'You had better make arrangements for her to stay on—but I suppose you've already made your plans.'

Before he could reply, she was gone. He heard the street door slam after her, took up the money and put it back in his case; and he was without regret for, if the truth be told, Mr Arthur Ingle, despite the largeness of his political views, was exceedingly mean.

There was a great deal for him to do: old boxes to open and sort, papers and memoranda to retrieve from strange hiding-places. The seat of the big settee on which Aileen had sat so often waiting for the cleaner to finish her work, opened like a lid and here he had documents and, in a steel box, books that might not have come to light even if the police had been aware of the flat at the time of his arrest, an had made their usual search.

Ingle was a man of wide political activities. No party man in the sense that he found a party to match his own views; rather, he was one of those violent and compelling thinkers who are unconsciously the nucleus of a movement. His grudge against the world was a sincere one. He saw injustice in the simplest consequences of cause and effect. His opinions had not made him a thief; they had merely justified him in his disregard for the law and his obligation to society.

Imprisonment had made him neither better nor worse, had merely confirmed him in certain theories. Inconsistently, he loathed his prison associates, men who had been unsupported by his high motives in their felonies. The company of them was contamination. He hated the chaplain; and only one inmate of that terrible place touched what in him still remained tender. That was the old, blind horse who had his stable in the prison, and whose sight seemed to have been destroyed by Providence that he might not witness the degradation of the superior mammals that tramped the exercise ring, or went trudging and shuffling up the hill and through the gates.

He was the one man in the prison who was thankful when the cell door closed on him and the key turned in the lock.

The foulness of these old lags, their talk, their boasts, the horrible things that may not be written about… he could not think back without feeling physically sick. In truth he would not have stretched out his hand if, by so doing, he could have opened those cell doors and released to the world the social sweepings whom it was his professed mission to salve.

His work finished, he lit a cigarette, fitted it carefully into an amber holder and, adjusting the cushions, lay down on the settee and smoked and thought till the telephone bell roused him and he got up.

The voice that spoke to him was quite unfamiliar. 'Is that Mr Ingle?'

'Yes,' he said shortly.

'Will you make a sacrifice of your principles?' was the astonishing request, and the man smiled sourly.

'What I have left, yes. What do you wish?'

It might be an old friend in need of money, in which case the conversation would be short. For Arthur Ingle had no foolish ideas about charity.

'Could you meet me tonight on the sidewalk immediately opposite Horse Guards Parade?'

'In the park, you mean?' asked Ingle, astonished. 'Who are you? I'll tell you before you go any further that I'm not inclined to go out of my way to meet strangers. I'm a pretty tired man tonight.'

'My name is—' a pause—'Harlow.'

Involuntarily, Ingle uttered an exclamation.

'Stratford Harlow?' he asked incredulously.

'Yes, Stratford Harlow.'

There was a long pause before Arthur Ingle spoke. 'It's rather an extraordinary request, but I realise that it isn't an idle one. How do I know you're Harlow?'

'Call me up in ten minutes at my house and ask for me,' said the voice. 'Will you come?'

Again Mr Ingle hesitated. 'Yes, I'll come,' he said. 'At what time?'

'At ten o'clock exactly. I won't keep you hanging about this cold night. You can get into my car and we'll drive somewhere.'

Ingle hung up the telephone a little bewildered. He was a cautious man and after ten minutes had expired he put through the number he discovered in the phone directory, and the same voice answered him. 'Are you satisfied?'

'Yes, I'll be there—ten o'clock,' he said.

He had two hours to wait. The charwoman did not arrive till nine. He gave her instructions, made arrangements for the following day; and went back to the dining-room to think out the extraordinary request which Stratford Harlow had made of him. And the more he thought, the less inclined he as to keep the appointment. At last he turned to his writing table, took out a sheet of paper and scrawled a note.

"DEAR MR HARLOW,

"I am afraid I must disappoint you. I am in such a position, being an ex-convict, that I cannot afford to take the slightest risk. I will tell you I frankly that what I have in my mind is that this may be a frame-up organised by my friends the police, and I think that it would be, to say the least, foolish on my part to go any farther until I know your requirements, or at least have written proof that you have approached me.

"Yours sincerely,

"ARTHUR INGLE."

He put the letter in an envelope, addressed it, and marked in the corner in bold letters 'By hand. Urgent.' Even now he was not satisfied. He went to the telephone to call a district messenger, but he did not lift the receiver. His curiosity was piqued. He felt he must know, with the least possible delay, just why Stratford Harlow had summoned Arthur Ingle, late of Dartmoor convict establishment. And why should the meeting be secret? A man of Harlow's standing would not lose caste, even if he sent for him to go to his house. He came to a sudden resolve, pitched the letter on to the table, went into his bedroom and changed into a dark suit.

By the time he had climbed into his overcoat he was satisfied that he was taking the wisest course. The char-woman was in the kitchen and he opened the door to pass his last admonition. She was on her knees, scrubbing-brush in hand, and he looked down into a long, weak face over which strayed lank wisps of grey-black hair.

'I'm going out. You needn't wait. Finish your work and be here in the morning before eight,' he barked and slammed the door on this inconsiderable member of the proletariat and went down the stairs in a spirit of adventure that made him feel almost young.

As the Horse Guards clock was chiming the three-quarters he came into Birdcage Walk and turned along the lonely footpath that runs parallel with the House Guards and flanks the broad parade ground. There was no hurry; he fell into a gentle stroll, fast enough to keep him warm and to avoid any suspicion of loitering within the meaning of the act.

It could not be a frame-up, he had decided. A man of Harlow's character would hardly lend himself to such a plot; and in his heart of hearts, for all his bitter gibes at the police, he did not believe seriously in the prison legend of innocent men being trapped by cunning police plots.

He looked at his watch under a street standard; it was five minutes to ten, and he strolled back the way he had come, and stopped immediately in a line with the gates that closed the arch of the Horse Guards. As he did so a car came noiselessly along the sidewalk from the direction of Westminster.

It stopped in front of him and the door opened.

'Will you come in, Mr Ingle?' said a low voice; and without a word he stepped inside, pulling the door close after him and sank down on a soft seat by the side of a man who, he at once recognised, was that Splendid Harlow, whose name, even in Dartmoor, symbolised wealth beyond dreams.

The car, gathering speed, turned into the Mall, swung round towards Buckingham Palace and across the Corner into Hyde Park. It slackened speed now, and Stratford Harlow began to talk…

For an hour the car moved at a leisurely pace round the Circle. Sleet was falling. Ingle listened like a man in a dream to the amazing proposition which his companion advanced.

He, at any rate, sat in comfort. Inspector Jim Carlton, following in an aged convertible was chilled and wet, and the highly sensitive microphone which he had placed in Harlow's car failed to transmit the talk it was so vital he should hear.

Arthur Ingle arrived home at his flat soon after eleven. The cleaner had gone and he was glad; dull clod and unimaginative as she was she yet might have read and interpreted the light that shone in his eyes or have sensed the exultation of his heart.

Brewing himself some coffee, he sat down at his desk and in to make notes. Once he rose and, entering his bedroom, turned on the light above his dressing-table and stared at himself for five minutes in the glass. The scrutiny seemed to afford him a certain amount of satisfaction, for he; smiled and returned to his notemaking.

That smile did not leave his lips; and once he laughed out loud. Evidently something had happened that afforded him the most exquisite happiness.

Chapter 8

 

'Could you please come and see me in the lunch hour?—A.R.'

JIM CARLTON looked at the 'A.R.' blankly before he placed 'A' as indicating Aileen—he was under the impression that she spelt her name with an 'E'. It had been delivered at Scotland Yard by a messenger half an hour before he arrived. Literally he was waiting on the mat when she came out; and she seemed very glad to see him.

'You will probably be very angry that I've sent for you about such a little thing,' she said, 'and you're so busy—'

'I won't tell you how I feel about it,' he interrupted, 'or you'll think I'm not sincere.'

'You see, you are the only policeman I know and I don't know you very well, but I thought you wouldn't mind. Mrs Gibbins has disappeared; she didn't go home last night nor the night before.'

'I'm thrilled,' he said. 'And her husband fears the worst?'

'She hasn't a husband; she's a widow. Her landlady came in to see me this morning. She's dreadfully upset.'

'But who's Mrs Gibbins?'

'Mrs Gibbins is the charwoman at Uncle's flat. Rather a wretched-looking lady with untidy hair. I'm rather worried about it because she's a woman without friends. I called up my Uncle's flat this morning and he was almost polite, and told me that she didn't arrive yesterday morning and she hasn't been there today.'

'She may have met with an accident,' was his natural suggestion.

'I've telephoned to the big hospitals, but nothing has been heard of her. I want you to tell me what I can do next. It's such a little matter that I'll listen meekly to any rude comment you care to think up!'

He was not interested in Mrs Gibbins; the case of a lonely woman who disappears as from the face of the earth was so common a phenomenon in the life of any great city that he could hardly work up enthusiasm for the search. But Aileen was so concerned that he would have been a brute to have treated her request lightly; and after lunch, the day being his own, he went to Stanmore Rents in Lambeth, a little riverside slum and made a few inquiries at first hand.

Mrs Gibbins had lived there, the slatternly landlady told him, for five years. She was a good, sober, honest woman, never went out, had no friends, and subsisted on what she earned and a pound a week which was paid to her quarterly by some distant relation. In fact, she was due to receive the money on the following Monday. Her chief virtue was that she paid her rent every Monday morning and gave no trouble.

'Do you mind if I search her room?'

The landlady wished that and showed him the way; it gave her a nice feeling of authority to be present during the operation.

Jim was shown into a small back room, scrupulously clean, with a bed and a sort of home-made hanging cupboard that had been fixed in one corner and was shrouded by a cheap curtain. Here was the meagre wardrobe of the missing charwoman: a skirt or two, a light summer coat that had seen its brightest days, and a best hat. He tried the chest of drawers and found one drawer locked. This he opened with the first key on his own bunch, to the awe and admiration of the landlady. Here was proof of the woman's affluence—a post office bank-book showing £87 to her credit, four new £1 Treasury notes, and a threadbare bag with a broken catch.

Inside this were one or two proofs of the vanity of the eternal feminine—a greasy powder-puff, a cheap trinket or two, and between lining and outer cover a folded paper of some sort.

It had not got there by accident, he saw, when he carried the bag to the light, for it was carefully sewn into the lining. He took out his pocket knife and, picking the stitches, extracted what he thought was one sheet of paper, lightly folded. When he opened the paper out he found there were two sheets.

The landlady ducked her head sideways in an effort to catch a glimpse of the writing, but Jim was aware of this manoeuvre.

'Do you mind going downstairs,' he asked politely, 'and seeing if you can find in your ash-can—'

'Dustbin,' corrected the lady.

'Whatever it is, the envelope of any letter addressed to Mrs Gibbins?'

By the time she returned from her profitless task the papers had disappeared, and Jim Carlton was sitting on the narrow window ledge, a cigar between his teeth and he was examining the threadbare carpet with such intentness that the landlady was certain that he had discovered some blood-stains.

'Eh?' He woke from his dream with a start. 'You can't find it? I'm sorry. What was it I asked you to get? Oh, yes, an envelope. Thank you. I found it in the bag.'

He relocked the drawer, and with another glance round the apartment came down the treacherous stairs.

'You don't think she's drownded herself, sir?' asked the landlady tremulously.

'No. Why? Did she ever threaten to commit suicide?'

'She's been pretty miserable for some time, poor dear!' The woman wiped a tear from her cheek, and the fascinated Jim observed that the spot where the apron had been rubbed was perceptibly cleaner.

'No, I don't think she has—committed suicide,' he said. 'She may turn up. If she does, will you send me a telegram?'

He scribbled his name and address on a blank that he found in his pocket and gave her the money for its dispatch.

'I know there's something wrong,' insisted the tearful lady. 'Foul play or something. She bought some stuff to make up into a dress; I've got it in my kitchen—it only came the night before last.'

She showed him the package, which was unopened.

'My niece was coming in yesterday morning to show her how to cut it out,' continued the woman, 'but, of course, Mrs Gibbins didn't come home, and my niece lives over in Peckham, and it's a long drag here—'

'Yes. I suppose so,' said Jim absently.

He walked down the noisome street, got into the car that was waiting at the end, and went slowly back across Westminster Bridge to his room.

Elk was not in and, even if he had been, Jim was not in the mood for consultation. He spread out on the table the papers he had taken from Mrs Gibbins's bag and read them carefully, jotted down a few particulars and, refolding them, put them in his pocket-book. He passed the next hour dictating letters to the last people in the world one would have imagined would be interested in the disappearance of a charwoman.

Aileen did not expect to see him again that day and was surprised, almost pleasurably, when he walked into the outer office and sent in his name. She was on the point of leaving and the office boy, impatient to be gone, misinterpreted the colour that came to her cheeks.

'You'll be getting me a very bad name, Mr Carlton,' she said as they went into the street together.

'Did I tell you that my front name was Jim, or James, as the case may be?' he asked. 'Shall we try something more snappy in the restaurant line? I know a place in Soho—'

'No, I think I'll go home now.'

'I wanted to talk to you about our Mrs Gibbins,' he said flippantly, though he was not feeling at all flippant. 'And I told our people that I can be found there if I am wanted.'

'Have you had any news?' she asked; and he guessed by her penitent tone that she had altogether forgotten the existence of the charwoman. At any rate she did not demur when he handed her into the car and she accepted his restaurant, dingy though it was, without protest.

They were passing from the street when Jim heard his name called and, looking round, saw a headquarters man.

'Came through just after you left, sir.'

Jim read the hastily-written phone message.

'I'll be back in an hour,' he said, and followed the girl who was waiting for him in the vestibule.

When they were seated: 'I want to ask you: was Mrs Gibbins in the flat that night your uncle's safe was burgled?'

She considered. 'No, she wasn't there; at least, she oughtn't to have been there. She came later, you remember. I opened the door to her.'

'Oh!' he said, and she smiled.

'What does "Oh!" mean?' And then quickly: 'You don't think she was the burglar, do you?'

'No, I don't think that,' he said; his tone was very grave—she wondered why. 'Tell me something about her; was she well educated?'

Aileen shook her head.

'No, she was rather illiterate. I've had many of her notes, and they were scarcely decipherable. The spelling was—well, very original.'

'Oh!' he said again, and she could have boxed his ears.

'Well, that's that!' he said at last. 'I don't think that even your uncle, with his well-known passion for humanity, will so much as shed a silent tear. She was just nothing, nobody—a wisp of straw caught up in the wind and deposited God knows where! Stale fruit under the dustman's broom. Horrible, isn't it? Think of it! All the theatres will soon be crowded and people will be screaming with laughter at the antics and clowning of the comedians! There will be a State ball at the Palace and tonight happy men and women will I be dancing on a hundred floors. Who cares about Mrs Gibbins?'

He was very serious, and a minute before he had been almost gay.

'The passing of a friendless woman is a small thing.' He rubbed his nose irritably. 'And now it is a big thing!' he said, raising a warning finger and looking at her. 'Mrs Gibbins is stirring the minds of eighteen thousand London policemen, who if need be would have the support of the whole Brigade of Guards and every one of these dancers, diners and theatregoers would move with one accord and not rest day or night till they found the man who struck her down and dropped her poor, wasted body in the waters of the Regent's Canal!' She half rose, but he motioned her down. 'I've spoilt your dinner and I've spoilt my own, too,' he said.

'Dead?' she whispered. He nodded. 'Murdered?'

'Yes… I think so. They took her out of the canal a few minutes before I left the office, and there were marks to show that she'd been bludgeoned. I had the news just before I came in. What was she doing near the Edgware Road—in Regent's Park, let us say? Give her two days to drift as far.'

The waiter came and stood at his elbow in an attitude of expectancy. The girl shook her head. 'I can't eat.'

'Omelettes,' said Jim. 'That isn't eating; it's just nourishment.'

Arthur Ingle had the discomfort of a police visitation, but he knew nothing of Mrs Gibbins, knew much less indeed than his niece.

'I have seen the woman, but I shouldn't recognise her.'

This accorded with the information already in their possession, and the two detectives who called had a whisky-and-soda with him and departed.

The landlady of the Rents could say no more than she had said on the previous afternoon to Sub-Inspector Carlton.

Jim went down himself to see this worthy soul; and he had a particular reason, because on that morning, 'regular as clockwork,' came the envelope which contained Mrs Gibbins's quarterly allowance; and that lady was rather in a fluster, because the letter had not arrived.

'No, sir, it was never registered, that's why I feel so awkward about it. People might think… but you can ask the postman yourself, sir.'

'I've asked him,' smiled Jim. 'Tell me, where were those letters posted? You must have seen the date-stamp at some time or other.'

But she swore she hadn't; she was not inquisitive, indeed regarded inquisitiveness as one of the vices which had come into existence with reading newspapers. She did not explain the connection between the popular press and the inquiring mind, though it was there plain to be seen.

The local police inspector had cleared the wardrobe and drawers of all portable articles, including the bag.

'I told him you found a paper in the bag, but he couldn't see it, sir, though he searched high and low for it.'

'There wasn't a paper to find,' said Jim untruthfully.

His position was a delicate one. He had withdrawn important evidence from what might perhaps be a very serious case. There was only one course to take and this he followed.

Returning to Scotland Yard, he requested an interview with the Commissioners, explained what he had done, told them frankly his suspicions and asked for the suppression of the evidence he held. The consultation was postponed for the attendance of a representative of the Public Prosecutor, but in the end he had his way, and when the inquest was held on Annie Maud Gibbins the jury returned an open verdict, which meant that they were content with the statement that the deceased woman had been 'found dead', and expressed no opinion as to how she met her fate—a laudable verdict, since no member of the jury, not even the coroner, nor the doctors who testified with so many reservations, had the slightest idea how the life of Mrs Gibbins, the charlady, had gone out.

Chapter 9

 

AILEEN RIVERS was annoyed, and since the object of her annoyance lived in the same room, and to use a vulgar idiom, under the same hat as herself, a highly unsatisfactory state of affairs was produced. She was annoyed because she had not seen Mr James Carlton for a week. But she was furious with herself that she was annoyed at all. Mr Stebbings, that stout lawyer, had reached an age when he was no longer susceptible to atmosphere, yet even he was conscious that his favourite employee had departed in some degree from the normal. He asked her if she was not well; and suggested that she should take a week off and go to Margate. The suggestion of Margate was purely mechanical; he invariably prescribed Margate for all disorders of body and mind, having been once in the remote past cured of the whooping cough in that delightful town. It was not Margate weather, and Aileen was not Margate-minded.

'I remember'—Mr Stebbings unfolded several of his heavy chins to gaze meditatively at the ceiling—'many years ago suggesting to Miss Mercy Harlow—ahem!—'

It occurred to him that the girl would not know Miss Mercy Harlow and that the name would be without significance; for the great heights to which the living Harlow had risen were outside his comprehension.

'You used to act for the Harlows once, didn't you; Mr Stebbings?'

'Yes,' said Mr Stebbings carefully. 'It was—er—a great responsibility. I was not sorry when young Mr Stratford went elsewhere.'

He said no more than this, which was quite a lot for Mr Stebbings, but by one of those coincidences which are a daily feature of life she came again into contact with the Harlow family.

Mr Stebbings was dealing with a probate case. A will had been propounded in the court, and was being opposed by a distant relative of the legator. The question turned on whether, in the spring of a certain year the legator had advanced certain money to one of the numerous beneficiaries under the will with the object of taking him out of the country.

Aileen was sent to inspect the cash book, since it was alleged the money had been paid through the lawyers. She found the entry without a great deal of difficulty, and, running down the index to discover if she had missed any further reference, her finger stopped at the words:

'Harlow—Mercy Mildred. Harlow-Stratford Selwyn Mortimer.'

She would not have been human if she had not turned up the pages. For a quarter of an hour she pored over the accounts of the dead and gone Miss Mercy, that stern and eccentric woman, and then she saw an item 'To L. Edwins, £125.' An entry occurred four months later: 'To L. Edwins, £183 17s. 4d.' She knew of Mrs Edwins, and had seen a copy of Miss Mercy Harlow's will—she had looked it up after the Dartmoor meeting, being momentarily interested in the millionaire.

She turned to Stratford's account, which was a very small one. Evidently, Mr Harlow made no payments through his lawyers. If an opportunity had occurred she would have asked Mr Stebbings for further information about the family, though she was fairly sure that such a request would have produced no satisfactory result.

Deprived of this interest, Aileen was thrown back upon the dominating occupation of life—her amazement and disapproval of Aileen Rivers in relation to Mr James Carlton.

He knew her address: she had particularly told him the number. Equally true it was that she had asked him only to write on official business. By some miracle she had not been called to give evidence at the inquest and she might, and did, trace his influence here. But even that could not be set against a week's neglect.

'Ridiculous' (said the saner part other, in tones of reprobation). 'You hardly know the man! Just because he's been civil to you and has taken you out to dinner twice (and they were both more or less business occasions), you're expecting him to behave as though he were engaged to you!'

The unregenerate Aileen Rivers merely tossed her head at this and was unashamed.

She could, of course, have written to him: there was excuse enough; and she actually did begin a letter, until the scandalous character of her behaviour grew apparent even to Aileen II.

Saturday passed and Sunday; she stayed at home both days in case—

He called on Sunday night, when she had given up—well, if not hope, at any rate expectation.

'I've been down to the country,' he said.

She interviewed him in the sitting room, which her landlady set aside for formal calls.

'Couldn't you come out somewhere? Have you dined?'

She had dined.

'Come along and walk; it's rather a nice night. We can have coffee somewhere.'

Her duty was to tell him that he was taking much for granted, but she didn't. She went upstairs, got her coat and in the shortest space of time was walking with him through Bloomsbury Square.

'I'm rather worried about you,' he said.

'Are you?' Her surprise was genuine.

Yes, I am a little. Didn't you tell me Mrs Gibbins used to confide her troubles to you?' There was a note of anxiety in his voice.

'She was rather confidential at times.'

'Did she ever tell you anything about her past?'

'Oh, no,' said Aileen quickly. 'It was mostly about her mother, who died about four years ago.'

'Did she ever tell you her Christian name—her mother's, I mean?'

'Louisa,' answered the girl promptly. 'You're awfully mysterious, Mr James Carlton. What has this to do with poor Mrs Gibbins?'

'Nothing, except that her name was Annie Maud, and the letters containing the money, which came to her quarterly, were addressed to "Louisa," 14 Kennet Road, Birmingham, and readdressed by the postal authorities. A letter came this morning.'

'Poor soul!' said the girl softly.

'Yes.'

It was surprising how well she understood him, remembering the shortness of their acquaintance. She knew, for example, when he was thinking of something else—his voice rose half a tone.

'Isn't that strange? Do you remember my telling you of the eighteen thousand policemen and the Brigade of Guards, and the whole congregation of the blessed? And now they are all agitated because Mrs Gibbins's mother was named Louisa! That discovery—I shouldn't have asked you, because I knew it already—proved two things: first, that Mrs Gibbins committed a crime some fifteen years ago, and secondly, that this is the second time she's been dead!'

He suddenly relaxed and laughed softly.

'Don't tell me,' he warned her. 'I know just the fictional detective whom I am imitating! The whole thing is rather complicated. Did I say coffee or dinner?'

'You said coffee,' she said.

The popular restaurant into which they went was just a little overcrowded and after being served they lost no time in making their escape.

They were passing along Coventry Street when a big car rolled slowly past. The man who was driving was in evening dress… they saw the sheen of his diamond studs, the red tip of his cigar.

'Nobody on earth but the Splendid Harlow could so scintillate,' said Jim. 'What does he do in this part of the world at such an hour?'

The car turned to the right through Leicester Square and passed down Orange Street at a pace which was strangely majestic. It was as though it formed part of and led a magnificent procession. The same thought occurred to both of them.

'He should really travel with a band!'

'I was thinking that, too,' laughed the girl. 'He frightened me terribly the night he came to the flat. I mean, when I opened the door to him. And I'm not easily scared. He looked so big and powerful and ruthless that my soul cowered before him!'

They passed up deserted Long Acre; it was too early for the market carts to have assembled, and the street was a wilderness. Suddenly the girl found her hand held loosely in Jim Carlton's. He was swinging it to and fro. The severer side of Miss Aileen Rivers closed its eyes and pretended not to see.

'I've got a very friendly feeling for you,' said Jim huskily. 'I don't know why, but I just have. And if you talk about the philandering constabulary, I will never forgive you.'

Three men had suddenly debouched from a side street; they were talking noisily and violently and were moving slowly towards them. Jim looked round: the only man in sight was walking in the opposite direction, having passed them a minute or so before.

'I think we'll cross the road,' he said. He took her arm, and, quickening his step, led her to the opposite sidewalk.

The quarrelling three turned back and Jim stopped. 'I want you to run back to the other end of Long Acre and fetch a policeman,' he said in a low voice. 'Will you do this for me? Run!'

Obediently she turned and fled, and as she did so one of the three came lurching towards him.

'What's the idea?' he said loudly. 'Can't we have an argument without you butting in?'

'Stay where you are, Donovan,' said Jim. 'I know you and I know just what you're after.'

'Get him,' said somebody angrily, and Jim Carlton whipped out the twelve inch length of jambok that he carried in his pocket and struck at the nearest man. As the flexible hide reached its billet the man dropped like one shot. In another second his two companions had sprung at the detective; and he knew that he was fighting, if not for his life, at any rate to save himself from an injury which would incapacitate him for months.

Again the jambok reached home; a second man reeled.

And then a taxicab came flying down Long Acre with a policeman on each footboard…

'No, not Bow Street,' said Jim, 'take them to Cannon Row.'

Aileen was in the taxicab, a most unheroic woman, on the verge of tears.

'I guessed what they were after,' said Jim, as they were driving home. 'It is one of the oldest tricks in the world, that rehearsed street fight.'

'But why? Why did they do it? Were they old enemies of yours?' she asked, bewildered.

'One,' he said. 'Donovan.' He carefully avoided her second question.

The presence of Mr Harlow in his lordly car was no accident. The car which passed down Orange Street was ostensibly carrying him to Vira's Club, but there was a short cut which brought him through St Martin's Lane to the end of Long Acre before the two walkers could possibly reach there. What was more important was that it was very clear to Jim that he and the girl were under observation, and had been followed that night from the moment he left the club where he lived, until the attack was delivered.

The reason for the hold-up was not difficult to understand, even supposing he ruled out the very remote possibility that it was associated with Mrs Gibbins's death. And that he must exclude, unless he gave Mr Harlow credit for supernatural powers.

He saw the girl to her boarding house and went back to Scotland Yard, to find a telegram awaiting him. It was from the detective force of Birmingham, and ran:

'Your inquiry 793 Mrs Louisa Gibbins, deceased. Letter which came to her regularly every quarter, and which was subsequently readdressed to Mrs Gibbins, of Stanmore Rents, Lambeth, invariably had Norwood postmark. This fact verified by lodger of late Mrs Gibbins of this town. Annie Maud Gibbins's real name, Smith. She married William Smith, a platelayer on Midland Railway. Further details follow, Hooge. Ends.'

A great deal of this information was not new to Jim Carlton. But the Norwood postmark was invaluable, for in that suburb of London lived Mr Ellenbury. Further details he would not need.

But before that clue could be followed, Jim Carlton's attention was wholly occupied by the strange behaviour of Arthur Ingle, who suddenly turned recluse, declined all communication with the outside world and, locking himself in his flat, gave himself to the study of cinematography.