Читать книгу The Shadow Crook - Aidan de Brune - Страница 8

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The two men stood against the line of buildings, watching the girl walk swiftly away. In a few moments she turned the corner into Millington-street and was lost to sight.

"Perhaps the Shadow Crook is still in the house," suggested Mason slowly; turning to face the door the girl had come out of.

"But there was no one else in there." Branston spoke excitedly. "I have been on the watch ever since he entered and there has not been a soul about the place."

For a second the detective hesitated. He wanted to follow the girl, yet if the newspaper-man spoke correctly, it was more important to continue the watch on the house. The Shadow Crook was a menace who had to be caught as soon as possible.

"Will you follow the girl?" The journalist broke on the detective's meditations. "I'll wait here, or rather, I'll try and get into the house and find if he's still there."

"Too dangerous." Mason decided. "Come along. Here, take this." He pulled the blackjack from his belt and passed it to the newspaper-man. "Don't use it unless you are attacked and then hit for all you're worth."

He led the way across the road into the darkness of the doorway. There he hesitated a moment and pulled out his electric torch. The beam of light showed the outlines of a small room, sparsely furnished. On the left-hand side facing the door, were the stairs to the upper storey. Beside the stairway in the lower room, was a door, evidently opening into the kitchen.

There was no one in the room. A quick glance around and Mason ran quickly, and silently, up the stairs to the small landing. A door was immediately opposite the top of the stairs. From the landing a narrow passage ran round the stairs to the front rooms. The police officer was making for the door immediately opposite him when Branston caught his arm.

"Not there, Mason." The journalist whispered eagerly. "He'll be in the room where he can overlook the street."

Mason saw the force of the argument and turned immediately to the front rooms. One of the doors stood ajar. For a minute he listened for the breathing of a sleeper, then hearing nothing, pushed open the door and entered. There was no one there. He turned quickly to the other room, to find it also empty, In a few strides he came to the door of the room opening directly opposite the top of the stairs. Here, again, he found no one; the bed bad not been disturbed.

What did it mean? The house appeared deserted. Yet Branston had stated he had seen the Shadow Crook enter it. With a grunt of disgust, Mason slipped down the stairs to the ground-floor and made a thorough search. A few minutes and he was convinced the house was empty.

The Shadow Crook had entered the house and a woman had come out of it! With a call to the journalist, who had again ascended the stairs, Mason sped into the street, in hot pursuit of the woman. He must catch up to her. It was evident that with her lay the solution of the mystery.

Turning into Millington-street he had to reduce his run to a fast walk. The street was well-filled with people, and even at his slower pace lowering faces turned towards him, suspiciously. If he had continued to run the word would have quickly passed he was a "dick" on the trail of some crook and every obstacle would have been put in his path, even to mob violence.

He came to the foot of the steps leading up from Woolloomooloo to Victoria-road, Darlinghurst. A quick glance up them and he continued in the direction of King's Cross. As he turned the corner into William-street he saw a slight, girlish figure, dressed in complete black, step from the pavement and commence to cross the square.

Mason slackened his pace, to keep the girl in sight. He believed this was the girl he had seen coming out of the house in Amersham-street. He would see where she was going. She might lead him to the lair of the Shadow Crook.

The girl arrived at the opposite pavement and turned to the right, a few paces, to Walcott-road. A couple of hundred yards down the road she crossed and entered a short, blind lane at the end of which stood a big pile of flats. She entered the wide, main doors and went immediately to one of the lifts.

The detective watched the lift disappear upwards, then stepped back on to the pavement and looked up at the façade of the building. Over the door, in big gilt letters, were the words "Innesfail Mansions." A contemptuous smile came on the officer's lips as he read the title. Massive, well-lit and finely appointed, Innesfail Mansions bore an unenviable reputation among the members of the N.S. Wales Police Department. Nearly all the flats were let to the demi-mondaines of Sydney, yet so strict was the management that not once had occasion been given for the officially longed-for raid.

Who was this woman who had come out of the house in Amersham-street to Innesfail Mansions? Mason stood before the building puzzling his problem. When he had sped up Woolloomooloo in pursuit of the girl a vague idea had been in his mind that he was chasing a man disguised in woman's clothes. The few yards he had walked behind the girl had dispelled that theory. She was certainly all girl, and he had only the assumed belief of the newspaper-man that the Shadow Crook had entered the Amersham house. That theory was not sufficient for him to call up forces from the nearest police station and raid the place. All he could do was to watch. If she did not come out within a reasonable time he must assume she lived there; and that Branston had, in some way, been deceived.

On the fifth floor of the building the girl had left the lift and walked down a long corridor to the door of a flat, bearing the number "37." For a moment she stood, leaning against the door, watching back along the corridor with wide, frightened eyes. She knew she had been followed from Amersham-street and feared her pursuer. For some minutes she remained on watch, then turned and pressed her finger on the electric push-button.

The lights in the flat, seen through the glass panels of the door, were suddenly extinguished. The girl tapped sharply on the glass and the door swung open.

"What's the matter, Norma?" The question was asked in an old man's quavering voice. "What made you ring the bell like that? You frightened me."

"I—I thought I was followed." The girl pressed into the small hall and shut the door, firmly, holding her hand against it for some seconds.

"Followed? You don't think—"

"I mustn't think." The girl touched the light-switch on the wall. "If I stop to think I shall go mad."

Her eyes travelled, almost wildly, around the room until they rested on the form of the old man, leaning against the wall. Her eyes softened and she moved to his side, linking her arm in his.

"What is it, dad? Are you not happy here?"

"Happy!" The old man turned his weak grey eyes on the girl's dark beauty with a perplexed look. "Oh, I'm happy enough, Norma, except—It's all so strange—for the present."

"Hush! Don't talk like that!" A sharp note crept into the girl's voice. "You're not to think of—of that."

"Can I help it?" The old man suffered himself to be led into the dining-room, to the table spread with supper for two persons. "I want to think—to think where—"

"That will come." The girl walked to the table and filled two wine-glasses. "Drink this, dad. It is—is one way to forgetfulness and, Heaven knows, both of us can do with that."

"You're a good girl, Norma." The old man sank into one of the big leather lounge chairs. "It was you made it possible. I had thought and thought, but I could not get beyond—"

"It was you found Mayne—Frederick Mayne," the girl, interposed. "Without him—"

"It was you who taught me what to say to Mayne." The old man mumbled over his glass.

"What did I do?" There was self-scorn in the girl's voice. "All I did was to take his daughter, and give her some of the idleness and luxury I despise and loathe."

"He would not have done it for less."

"No!" The girl paused for a long time. "I am not repenting. Isla is a sweet child. I am quite fond of her."

"But, if anyone discovers? If they knew. If they guess, her father is a convict—"

"Was!" The girl broke into his sentence. "You forget, dad, Frederick Mayne, the convict, is dead."

"No, no!" The old man sprang to his feet. "Don't say that! Frederick Mayne was released from gaol just a week ago. It was Stacey Carr who died in the infirmary, at Bathurst."

"Does it matter?" The girl made a weary gesture. "Frederick Mayne received his price and died happy. He told me he knew I would keep my promise—that his daughter would be given a home of luxury and shielded from the world as the daughter of a convict. He died, caring little that the headstone in the prison grave yard would bear the name of Stacey Carr."

"Hush! Oh, hush!"

"Why hush? We are alone here. Our only neighbours in these buildings are the women who have yet come to walking the street for their living. Dad! Dad! You are free-free! That is all I care for. That and—"

"And your husband, Norma?"

"My husband A jealous unfaithful, middle-aged watchdog!" the girl laughed scornfully. "Don't talk of him, dad. Tell me, what are you going to do?"

"What of my jewellery shop, Norma?"

"It is as you left it. The old man, Sydney Warton is in charge.

"You must get rid of him, Norma."

The girl sat forward, clasping her hands on the whiteness of the table cloth. A little puckered frown came between her brows.

"That will be difficult." She paused, and then continued: "I made a mistake when I put Sydney Warton in the shop, dad. Already he considers the place his own. If I discharge him and put another man there, he—"

"Yes?"

"He may go to the police." The girl finished her sentence in a low voice. "Dad, can't you remember anything about the jewels? Oh, think, think!"

"How can I think here?" Stacey Carr swept his hand around him, vaguely. "I want to be in the old place where—where things happened. Perhaps, then—"

"That man must go," Carr continued, with the obstinacy of old age.

"I will try, dad, but you must have patience. Perhaps there is a way."

"There must be one." The old man was gesticulating wildly. "Norma! Norma! How am I to find the Kynaston sapphires unless I get back to my old shop?"

"Hush, dad! Hush!"

"Why 'hush'?" Stacey Carr strode up and down the room, excitedly. "Don't you know there was a time when I had forgotten them—when I groped about in dread darkness with but one spot of light to guide me. Oh, yes. I know what happened. I remember lying in the hospital, my head bandaged in a big ball of white linen. I remember you coming to me, asking where I had hidden the sapphires and—"

"And, the White Trinity."

"Yes. And the White Trinity. And I laughed, for I did not know what you meant. Then they took the bandages from my head and rough men led me away—and they were always asking where the sapphires and the White Trinity were, and—and I laughed at them—for—for I thought—I thought—"

"Dad, be quiet! You are exciting yourself."

"They took me away—to prison. Day after day they came to me and asked me to tell them what I had done with the sapphires and the pearls, until I almost came to believe I had the jewels. Day after day, night after night, I brooded over those jewels others knew of, but I had forgotten. Again I was ill and they took me to the infirmary. They said it was the blow on my head but I knew different. It was because I had thought and thought, until—"

"Dad! What is the good of going over all that again?"

"Good?" The old man crossed the room and stood beside the girl. "Good, child? Ye-s, good, because now I can remember."

"You remember where you put the jewels? You can go and find them?"

"No." Carr shook his head slowly. "Not yet has that knowledge come to me. But Norma, I know of the jewels. When I shut my eyes I can see them plainly. They are real, real; just as if I had them in my hands."

"The pearls were sick, dad."

"Yes." The old man groped forward with his hands, as if blind. "Yes, I can sea them, the three pearls strung together with the wisp of iridescent pearl-substance. I took them from the box in which he had carried them across the continent. They hung from my fingers—and he asked me what was the matter with them. I told him. I told him they would never be well, for long. They were the product of chance—a freak of nature and, like all freaks, born to suffering. He, the Jew, asked me to cure them so that he might sell them to someone who knew not their frailty."

"What become of them, dad?" The girl was sitting forward, whispering the words in the intensity of her emotions.

"What became of them?" Carr passed his hand before his eyes, perplexedly. "I—I cannot remember. If I but could—"

"Dad, surely—"

"Peace, child." Carr drew himself up to his full height. "Was it not to discover the hiding place of the jewels I plotted and planned to get away from the gaol? Was it not for the jewels entrusted to me that I bribed Frederick Mayne with a life of luxury, at your hands, for his child? I offered him all I had to offer and you—you my child, made good my words. It was not the work of a day or a week, but we accomplished even that. He was dying, just as the end of his servitude approached. For the sake of our plan he kept his mortal illness from the prison doctors. At last the day came when we had to act. We exchanged cells and with the cells our identities. He went to the infirmary the next day and I answered to his name. A few days and they put me from the gates. Frederick Mayne had served the sentence of imprisonment on him. Stacey Carr lay in the prison infirmary, awaiting the last dread call."

"But the jewels, dad; the jewels?"

In the agony of her expectation the woman wrung her hands.

"The jewels!" Stacey Carr turned to face his daughter, a quiet smile on his lips. "Have patience, Norma, have patience. But a few more days and I will find them. Clear that man from the shop so that I may be once more amid the old, beloved things and I shall remember; yes, I shall remember."

For a minute there was silence, broken by the discordant "brr" of the electric bell. Norma was on her feet in a moment, her body tensed, the nails of her hands biting deep into her palms.

"Who's there? Father, you must go to your room. You must not be seen."

Until the old man had disappeared through the door Norma stood in the centre of the room facing towards the small hall. Who had rung the bell? Who could have come to the flat? There was no one who knew that she had rented this hiding-place amid the loose women of the city.

Yet, someone had rung the bell! Who had guessed her secret? What new danger threatened? Blindly, she remembered the feeling of someone following which she had felt when she entered the doors of the building. She had waited and watched, but had discovered nothing. Now, the old feeling of dread returned, reducing the fine courage that had upheld her during the past weeks to a trembling fear.

A glance around the room and she picked up the wine-glass her father had used and threw it into the waste-paper basket. Then, almost unable to control her trembling limbs, she went into the hall.