Читать книгу The Clue of the Silver Key - Edgar Wallace - Страница 5

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The trailer lost his quarry in Oxford Street and wandered disconsolately onward. A sort of homing instinct led him towards Regent's Park. Naylors Crescent was a magnificent little side street leading from the outer circle. It was very silent, its small, but stately, houses were in darkness.

Mr. Tickler—such was his peculiar name—stopped before No. 17 and looked up at the windows. The white blinds were drawn down and the house was lifeless. He stood, with his hands thrust into his pockets, blinking at the green door that he knew so well, at the three worn steps leading down, and the hollow steel railway that masons had fixed into the stonework to allow the easy descent of a bath-chair.

Inside was wealth, immense, incalculable wealth, and a stupid old man on the verge of the grave. Outside were poverty and resentment, the recollection of the rigours of Pentonville Prison, a sense of injustice. Old Lyne slept on the first floor. His bed was between these two high windows. That lower window marked the study where he sat in the daytime. There was a safe in the wall, full of useless old papers. Old Lyne never kept money in the house. All his life he had advertised this habit. A burglar or two had gone to enormous trouble to prove him a liar and had got nothing for their pains.

There he was, sleeping in luxury, the old rat, under featherweight blankets specially woven for him, under a satin coverlet packed tight with rare down, and here was he, Horace Tom Tickler, with a pinch of silver in his pocket.

But, perhaps he was not there at all? That was an old trick of his, to be out when everybody thought he was in, and in when they thought he was out.

He walked up and down the quiet cul-de-sac for nearly an hour, turning over in his mind numerous schemes, mostly impracticable, then he slouched back towards the bright streets and coffee stalls. He took a short cut through the mews to reach Portland Place, and the most astounding luck was with him.

A policeman walking through Baynes Mews heard the sound of a man singing. It was, if his hearing gave a right impression, the voice of one who had gone far in insobriety, and the voice came from a tiny flat, one of the many above the garages that lined each side of the mews. Time was when they were occupied exclusively by coachmen and chauffeurs, but the artistic and aristocratic classes had swamped these humble West End habitations, and more than half of the new population of Baynes Mews were people who dressed for dinner and came home from parries and night clubs, their arms filled with gala favours, some of which made strange and distressing noises.

There was nothing in the voice to indicate anything more startling than normal inebriety. The policeman would have passed on but for the fact that he saw a figure sitting on the step of the narrow door which led to the little flat above.

The officer turned his electric lamp on the sitter and saw nothing which paid for illumination. The little man who grinned up at the policeman was, as the officer said to his sergeant later, "nothing to write home about." He was red-faced, unshaven, wretchedly shabby. His collar might have been white a week before; he wore no tie and his linen, even in the uncertain light of the lamp, was uncleanly.

"'Ear him?" He jerked his head upward and grinned. "First time it's ever happened. Soused! What a mug, eh? Gettin' soused. He slipped me tonight, an' I'd never have tailed him—but for this bit of luck.... 'Eard him by accident.... Soused!"

"You're a bit soused yourself, aren't you?"

The policeman's tone was unfriendly.

"I've had three whiskies and a glass of beer. Does a man of the world get soused on that, I ask you?"

The voice upstairs had died down to a deep hum.

At the far end of the mews a horse was kicking in his box with maddening irregularity.

"A friend of yours?"

The little man shook his head.

"I don't know. Perhaps; that's what I got to find out. Is he friendly or ain't he?"

The policeman made a gesture.

"Get out of this. I can't have you loungin' about. I seem to know your face, too. Didn't I see you at Clerkenwell Police Court once?"

This officer prided himself on his memory for faces. It was his practice to say that he could never remember names, but never forgot faces. He thought he was unique and his remark original, and was not conscious of being one of forty million fellow citizens who also remembered faces and forgot names.

The little man rose and fell in by the officer's side.

"That's right." His step was a little unsteady. "I got nine munce for fraud."

He had in truth been convicted of petty larceny and had gone to prison for a month, but thieves have their pride.

Could a man convicted of fraud be arrested under the Prevention of Crimes Act because he sat in the doorway of a mews flat? This was the problem that exercised the mind of the constable. At the end of the mews he looked round for his sergeant, but that authority was not in sight.

A thought occurred to him.

"What you got in your pocket?"

The little man stretched out his arms.

"Search me—go on. You ain't entitled to, but I'll let you."

Another dilemma for the policeman, who was young and not quite sure of his rights and duties.

"Push off. Don't let me see you hanging around here," he ordered.

If the little man argued or refused he could be arrested for "obstruction," for "insulting behaviour," for almost anything. But he did nothing.

"All right," he said, and walked off.

The policeman was tempted to recall him and discover the identity of the singer. Instead, he watched Mr. Tickler until he was out of sight.

The hour was a quarter to two in the morning. The patrol marched on to the point where his sergeant would meet him. As for Mr. Tickler, he went shuffling down Portland Place, looking in every doorway to find a cigarette end or cigar butt, which might have been dropped by returning house-holders.

What a tale to tell if he could sell the information in the right quarter! Or he could put the "black" upon the singer. Blackmail gets easy money—if there is money to get. He stopped at a stall in Oxford Circus and drank a scalding cup of coffee. He was not entirely without funds and had a bed to go to and money for 'bus fare, if the 'buses were running.

Refreshed, he continued his way down Regent Street and met the one man in the world he would willingly have avoided. Surefoot Smith was standing in the shadow of a recessed shop window, a stocky man, in a tightly buttoned overcoat. His derby hat was, as usual, on the back of his head; his round face ruddier than Mr. Tickler's was impassive. But for the periodical puffs of smoke which came from his big briar pipe he might have been a statue carved out of red brick.

"Hey!"

Reluctantly Tickler turned. He had been quick to identify the silent watcher. By straightening his shoulders and adding something of jauntiness to his stride he hoped to prevent the recognition from becoming mutual.

Surefoot Smith was one of the few people in the world who have minds like a well-organised card index. Not the smallest and least important offender who had passed through his hands could hope to reach a blissful oblivion.

"Come here—you."

Tickler came.

"What are you doing now, Tickler? Burglary, or just fetching the beer for the con. men? Two a.m.! Got a home?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ah, somewhere in the West End! Gone scientific, maybe. Science is the ruin of the country!"

Rights or no rights, he passed his hands swiftly over Tickler's person; the little man stretched out his arms obediently and smiled. It was not a pretty smile, for his teeth were few and his mouth large and lop-sided. But it was a smile of conscious virtue.

"No jemmy, no chisel, no bit, no gat." Surefoot Smith gave Mr. Tickler absolution.

"No, Mr. Smith; I'm runnin' straight now. I'm going after a job tomorrow."

"Don't waste my time, boy," said Surefoot reproachfully. "Work! You've read about it. What kind of thieving do you do now? Whizzing? No, you're not clever enough."

Tickler said a bold thing. The lees of wine were still sizzling within him.

"I'm a detective," he said.

If Surefoot Smith was revolted he did not betray his emotion.

"Did you say 'defective' or 'detective'?" he asked.

He might have asked further questions, but at that moment a pocket lamp flashed twice from the roof of the building he was watching. Instantly the roadway seemed to be covered by the figures of overcoated men converging on the building. Surefoot Smith was one of the first to reach the opposite sidewalk.

A loud rapping on the door told Mr. Tickler all he wanted to know. The place was being raided—a spieling club, or maybe worse. He was grateful for the relief and hurried on his way. At Piccadilly Circus he paused and considered matters. He was quite sober now and could review the position calmly; and the more he thought, the more thoroughly he realised that he had allowed opportunity to slip past him.

He turned and walked along Piccadilly, his chin on his chest, dreaming dreams of easy money.