Читать книгу The Squealer - Edgar Wallace - Страница 9

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THOUGH Joshua Collie and Inspector Barrabal had never met, there was a constant correspondence between them, which had begun as the result of Joshua’s masterly handling of the Edmonton murder and the deductions that he formed, which “were of the very greatest service to Scotland Yard,” according to one of Mr. Barrabal’s amiable letters. Twice Joshua had called upon the inspector and twice had been rebuffed. For Barrabal was the shyest man that had ever walked a beat. It is true he had only walked a beat for two years, after which his peculiar abilities had brought him his promotion to the Record Department of Scotland Yard; but even that experience had not entirely destroyed his natural diffidence.

He sat late one night in his office in New Scotland Yard, and before him was a typewritten minute of six pages which told him all that he already knew about the Graeme murder—indeed, he had made sensible contributions to the minute’s contents.

Inspector Elford came in while, with his forehead in his hands, he was perusing for the sixth time this typewritten account.

“I’ve found Larry’s dugout,” said Elford. “He has a room in Trinity Square, Borough.”

“Did you search it?” asked the other, without looking up.

“There was nothing to search. He’d cleared out everything and had removed his belongings in two suitcases on the day of the murder. Cook’s had issued the tickets to Germany, and, as you know, we found the suitcases in the Victoria luggage room.”

Barrabal leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms, and yawned.

“What a fool, and what an unusual fool!” he said. “The last man in the world I should have expected to try that feud stuff.”

“He was very morose in prison—you read the Governor’s report?” asked Elford. “I’ve seen men like that go that way before. You saw him the night he was arrested, and you saw him again the next morning, didn’t you?”

Inspector Barrabal nodded.

“What did he tell you in the morning?”

“Quite a lot of things, but only one of interest.” Barrabal was in his usual uncommunicative mood.

Elford stroked his long beard, walked to the window and peered out on to the Embankment.

“I saw the usual yellow envelope, private and confidential, on your desk at eight o’clock when I looked in,” he said. “Was it a squeal?”

“A big one,” said Barrabal, “and a pretty interesting one, too.”

He crossed to the safe, took out a box, and showed his assistant the latest contribution to the sum of the Squealer collection.

“The same portable Remington, the same paper.” Elford, a short-sighted man, held the paper under the light of the table lamp.

Three diamond bar brooches, four emerald and diamond rings, seven ear drops (diamond), the proceeds of the robbery at the Berners Street jewellery store, will be transferred to-night. To-morrow I will give you information as to where they can be found.

“Which means,” said Barrabal, “that The Squealer has made his bid for the property and so far it hasn’t been accepted. He doesn’t expect it to be accepted, either, but he’s hanging on in case the stuff falls into his hands. If it does, we shall hear no more about it. We’ve had one or two cases like that, where a recalcitrant thief has changed his mind.”

“Where did you get that word ‘recalcitrant’?” asked Elford, fascinated.

“In a dictionary,” said Barrabal.

He had an hour’s work to do before he left the office, and, turning up his coat collar, walked out into the wretched night.

He saw a man standing under a lamp post on the Embankment, and as he turned left to follow the line of the Embankment, the loiterer took one step toward him. Though Barrabal could not see his face, he knew the man was peering at him, and his nose went down till it touched the edge of his upturned collar. It seemed as though the stranger would speak, but evidently he changed his mind and moved abruptly away, though not before Barrabal had recognized him. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the figure walking across the road toward Westminster Bridge, and the detective turned back to the Yard, and had the good fortune to find a detective sergeant leaving Cannon Row police station. Together they hurried across the road, and presently Barrabal saw his man.

“Tail him up,” he said laconically. “I want to know where he lives, and exactly what is his real occupation. Report to me by ’phone at my flat at seven-thirty to-morrow morning.”

The detective sergeant’s task was a comparatively easy one. South of the Thames, the man who had been watching Scotland Yard boarded a tram and, secure in the knowledge that he would not be recognized, the sergeant followed him. At the crossroads at the Elephant and Castle the tram stopped, and with another glance at his quarry the sergeant resumed his study of the evening newspaper. As the tram started he looked up. To his amazement, the man, who had been sitting in a corner near the door, had disappeared.

He was off the car in a moment and looked round. There was no sign of his man, and he cursed aloud. And then, as he stood, hesitating, on the edge of the sidewalk, somebody plucked him by the side, and he looked round into a familiar face.

“Hullo, Collie!” he said, recognizing the reporter, a constant visitor to Scotland Yard. “Did you see——”

“The gentleman you are looking for,” said Mr. Collie gently, “has just vanished into the bowels of the earth, like, if I may use the expression, an unquiet spirit. In other words,” said Mr. Joshua Collie with relish, “he has taken the Tube.”

“Do you know him?” asked the astonished sergeant.

Mr. Collie nodded.

“I am slightly acquainted with him, and in ordinary circumstances I could feel quite friendly toward him. But at the moment he annoys me most intensely.”

“Who is he?” asked Sergeant Brown.

Mr. Collie beamed at him, but pretended not to hear.

“How did you know I was ‘tailing’ him?” asked the exasperated officer.

“Because I was also ‘tailing’ him,” said Mr. Collie calmly. “In fact, I boarded the tramcar very soon after you. I’m surprised that you did not notice me.”

He seemed not at all disappointed that his shadowing had ended so unsatisfactorily. He himself descended to the railway platform a few minutes after, glancing anxiously at the big station clock as he entered the train.

Frank Sutton had a secretary, who dined in a restaurant in Haymarket every night and took her supper at a cheaper restaurant in Coventry Street after the picture houses had discharged their audiences, for Miss Millie Trent was a passionate fan. All this, Joshua had discovered by patient and subterranean investigations. It had been his experience that pleasant-faced men of sixty, with a gentle manner, can become acquainted even with strangers much more readily than men who are less favoured in the matters of years and innocent expression. But though he waited until midnight, Miss Trent did not put in an appearance.

She had been, she told an unappreciative John Leslie, to the first night of a musical comedy. She always chatted as she opened the morning correspondence, and Leslie had acquired the difficult art of listening without hearing.

She was a woman of forty-four, rather pinched of face but pretty, with fine eyes and skin and naturally red hair. She must have been a very vivid, almost beautiful, creature once, Leslie thought: Millie often hinted as much.

“I wonder you don’t go out more at nights, Captain Leslie. I never see you up West.”

“Eh?” He looked up with a start from his own correspondence.

“I was saying, I wonder you don’t go out more at nights. I suppose you’re a family man?”

“I’ve told you a dozen times that I’m not married,” said John Leslie shortly, and resumed his examination of the letter in his hand.

“That doesn’t stop your being a family man,” she said outrageously. “If it’s as lonely for a bachelor as it is for a—well, a spinster—I pity you! I’ve seen every bad film that ever came out of Hollywood this last month, and some I’ve seen twice. I’d much rather be sitting at home in my little flat with somebody to talk to, or listening to somebody talking.”

“Buy a wireless set,” he said without looking up, or he might have seen her lips tighten.

“If you think you’re the only person that’s ever given that advice, you’re mistaken,” she said, a little acidly. “That’s what Mr. Sutton says when I tell him how dreadfully lonely it is in London.”

Leslie put down his letter.

“How long have you known Mr. Sutton?” he asked.

She raised her eyes to the ceiling.

“Fourteen years,” she said at last. “I was with him in this business, and I was with him when he was managing a dry-goods store in Rio de Janeiro; and of course I was with him before that in Leeds, when his father was alive—old William Sutton.”

This was the first time she had ever given the history of her association with the house of Sutton.

“They’re a pretty old family, are they? You’re very fond of Sutton, aren’t you?”

She shrugged her rather shapely shoulders.

“I don’t know about ‘fond’: I like him,” she said. “Employers are not human; or, if they are—well, they’re not your employers for long, if you’re wise.”

He smiled at this.

“He’s two years older than I: you wouldn’t think it. He looks such a kid. And in some ways he is a kid, too: anybody can fool him—he listens to every hard-luck tale that’s told him. It must have cost him thousands.”

There was a long silence after this, which she broke.

“Do you know Rimington Mansions?—they’re off the Harrow Road,” she asked. “I’ve got a new flat on the ground floor. It’s rather nice: there are no hall porters to spy on your comings in and goings out.”

He raised his eyes now and looked at her.

“That would be very attractive to anybody who would be ashamed to visit you,” he said deliberately, and he saw the pink come into her face, and for a moment her eyes blazed with anger.

She covered her fury with an hysterical little giggle.

“You’re a queer man,” she said, with a slight emphasis on the last word.

A few minutes later, she flounced out of the room, and John Leslie permitted himself the luxury of silent laughter.

Yet he did not dislike Millie Trent. There was something about her that attracted him: a certain rough honesty and straightforwardness which might well cloak innumerable meannesses, though he thought she was obviously sincere.

He hurried through his work, for it was Tuesday, and on Tuesday afternoons Beryl Stedman went to Hyde Park Crescent for a singing lesson, and it was her practice to walk from Marble Arch and across Green Park to Queen Anne’s Gate—she might have made for a nearer station, and could well have afforded to forego that little extra piece of exercise, for she played golf almost every day; but of late she had found it a convenient and not unpleasant promenade.

He was waiting among the wind-blown leaves when he saw her come quickly through the gates and cross the road toward him. Her greeting had lost something of its spontaneous gaiety—was almost formal, he thought, and his heart sank.

“Well, was there a terrible row?”

“With Uncle Lew?” She shook her head. “No. He is rather a dear, he never quarrels with me.”

“I suppose he mentioned the enormity of my conduct?”

She looked at him oddly.

“He mentioned you,” she said. “In fact, he told me quite a number of things about you that I wish I hadn’t known.”

If she expected him to shake under this unspoken accusation, she was disappointed.

“That sounds very ominous,” he said coolly. “What did he tell you?”

She did not answer for a long time, and then there was a break in her voice.

“I wish I’d known—not that it would have made any difference in our friendship. Why did you do it? Why—why on earth did you do it? A man like you!”

“You are now referring to my unfortunate criminal past?” he asked her, in a tone of irony that made her wince.

“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” she said, almost breathlessly. “Uncle Lew said you had been in prison in this country. Is that true?”

He nodded.

“Perfectly true—I have even been in prisons in other countries: in South Africa, for example—tell Lew that,” he answered instantly. “And I would ask you to believe that I was not the victim of evil machinations. I myself was responsible for every hour of imprisonment I served.”

“Oh!” That was all she said, until they were nearing Hyde Park Corner.

“I’m terribly sorry you are so upset about this, and I feel the worst kind of brute.” His voice was softer than she had known it to be. “I should like you to still—trust me. That is asking a lot, I know.”

“You mean you’re going straight now?” She looked him in the eyes.

“I am going straight now,” he agreed, and most unexpectedly she slipped her arm in his. She said nothing, but the pressure of locked arms, the sweet intimacy of that second, took away his breath, and she felt the arm within hers tremble.

“I’m so glad,” she breathed, “and—and—I’ve got something to tell you, John.”

Every word was an effort. His heart stood still almost as he anticipated what was coming next.

“I am going to be married—next week,” she said. “Isn’t it—isn’t it awful!”