Читать книгу The Clue of the Silver Key - Edgar Wallace - Страница 7

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In five minutes there were a dozen policemen round the cab, holding back the crowd which had gathered, as crowds will gather at any hour of the day or night in London. Fortunately, a police sergeant had been at Marlborough Street, attending to a drunk, and he was on the spot within a few minutes.

"Shot at close quarters by a very small-bore pistol," was his first verdict after a casual examination.

In a very short time the ambulance arrived, and all that was mortal of Horace Tom Tickler was removed. A police officer started up the engine of the taxi and drove it into the station yard for closer inspection. The number had already been taken. Scotland Yard had sent a swift car to find the owner, a taxi driver named Wells.

Dick Allenby had not been specifically invited to the investigations, but had found himself in conversation with Surefoot Smith at crucial moments of the search, and had drifted with him to the police station.

The man had been shot in the cab; they found a bullet hole through the leather lining of the hood. The body, Smith thought, had sagged forward to the ground and the legs had been lifted in the approved gang style.

"He was probably still alive when he was on the floor. The murderer must have fired a second shot. We have found a bullet in the floor-board of the cab."

"Have you found the driver?" asked Dick.

"He's on his way."

Mr. Wells, the driver, proved to be a very stout and thoroughly alarmed man. His story was a simple one. He had got to the garage where he kept his car a little before 2 o'clock. The door of the garage was closed. He left the cab outside, which was evidently a practice of his, for the cleaner, who would come on duty at six o'clock and prepare the cab for the day's work. He could leave it outside with impunity, because cabs are very rarely stolen; they are so easily identified and so useless to the average car thief that they are very seldom "knocked off." His garage was in a stable yard off the Marylebone Road.

So far as he was concerned, he had a complete alibi, for, after leaving the cab, he had gone to the nearest police station to deposit an umbrella and a pocket-book which had been left by a previous passenger. A policeman had seen him leave the car, and to this policeman he had brought the lost property, which he had afterwards deposited at the station. It was a very lonely yard, and, unlike such places, was entirely without inhabitants, the garages forming part of a building which was used as a furniture store.

It was seven o'clock, and the West End was alive with market cars, when Dick drove home to his flat at Queen's Gate. It was curious that the only impression left on him was one of relief that Mary had not walked across the road to the cab and opened the door, as she might have done, and made the hideous discovery. The car had been parked outside the club twenty minutes before the discovery; the driver had been seen to leave the taxi and walk towards Air Street.

The earliest discovery that had been made was that the taxi flag was down and a sum of seventeen shillings was registered on the clock. This gave the police approximately the period between the murder being committed and the body being found.

Late that afternoon Surefoot Smith called on Dick Allenby.

"Thought you'd like to know how far we've got," he said. "We found a hundred one-pound notes in this bird's pocket."

"Tickler's?"

"How did you know his name was Tickler?" Surefoot Smith regarded him with suspicion.

Dick did not answer immediately.

"Well, the odd thing is, I recognised him when I saw him. He used to be a servant of my uncle's."

"You didn't tell me that last night."

"I wasn't sure last night; I wasn't sure, in fact, until I saw the body lifted out. I don't know very much about my uncle's business, but I understand this man was fired for stealing, about six or seven years ago."

Surefoot nodded.

"That's right. I'd come to give you that bit of information. I saw old Lyne this morning, but, bless you, Scotland Yard means nothing to him. Your uncle, is he?" He nodded again. "Congratulations!"

"What did he say?" asked Dick, curious.

Surefoot Smith lit his huge pipe.

"If you think he broke down, I am here to put you right. All he could remember about Tickler was that he was a scoundrel, and anyway we knew that. A hundred one-pound notes! If there had only been a fiver amongst them it might have been easy."

He cleared a space on a crowded bench and perched himself upon it.

"I wonder who the fellow was who took him for a ride? American, I'll bet you! That's what's worrying me—science coming into crime!"

Dick laughed.

"According to you, Surefoot, science is responsible for all crime."

Mr. Smith raised his eyebrows enquiringly.

"Well, isn't it? What's science done? It's given us photography to make forgery easy, aeroplanes to get thieves out of the country, motor-cars for burglars. What's wireless done? I've had four cases in the West End in the last six months of fellows who used wireless to rob people! What's electricity done? It helps safe smashers to drill holes in strong rooms! Science!"

Dick thought there was very little evidence of applied science in the taxicab murder, and said so.

"It might have been committed in a horse cab."

"The driver couldn't have left a horse," was the crushing retort. "I'll bet you this is the first of many."

He reached out and put his hand on the oblong steel box that lay on the bench near him.

"That's science, and therefore it's going to be used by criminals. It's a noiseless gun——"

"Was the pistol last night noiseless?" asked Dick.

Surefoot Smith thought a moment, and then:

"Have you got any beer?" he asked.

There were a dozen bottles under one of the benches. Dick had many visitors who required refreshment. Surefoot Smith opened two and drank them in rapid succession. He was a great drinker of beer, had been known to polish off twenty bottles at a sitting without being any the worse for it, claiming, indeed, that beer intensified his powers of reasoning.

"No," he said, and wiped his moustache carefully with a large red handkerchief; "and yet we have seen nobody who heard the shots. Where were they fired? That cab could have been driven somewhere in the country. There are plenty of lonely places where a couple of shots would not be noticed or heard. You can go a long way in a couple of hours. There were rain marks on the windscreen and mud on the wheels. There was no rain in London; there has been a lot just outside of London."

He reached mechanically under the bench, took out a third and a fourth bottle and opened them absent-mindedly.

"And how did you find my noble relative?"

"Friend of yours?" asked Surefoot.

Dick shook his head.

"Well, I can tell you what I think of him."

Mr. Smith described Hervey Lyne in a pungent sentence.

"Very likely," agreed Dick Allenby, watching his beer vanish. "I'm hardly on speaking terms with him."

Again Surefoot wiped his moustache with great care.

"This fellow Tickler—you had a few words with him, didn't you, about five years ago?"

Dick's eyes narrowed.

"Did Mr. Lyne tell you that?"

"Somebody told me," said Surefoot vaguely.

"I kicked him out of my flat, yes. He brought father an insulting message from my uncle, and supplemented it with a few remarks of his own."

Surefoot got down from the bench and brushed himself carefully.

"You ought to have told me all this last night," he said reproachfully. "It might have saved me a bit of trouble."

"I also might have saved myself four bottles of beer," said Dick, slightly irritated.

"That's been put to a good use," said Surefoot.

He examined the odd-looking air-gun again, lifted it without difficulty and replaced it.

"That might have done it," he said.

"Are you suggesting I killed this fellow?" Dick Allenby's anger was rising.

Surefoot smiled.

"Don't lose your temper. It's not you I am up against, but science."

"It certainly is a gun," said Dick, controlling his wrath; "but the main idea—I don't know whether you can get it into your thick head——"

"Thank you," murmured Surefoot.

"—is that this should be put to commercial use. By exploding an ordinary cartridge, or nearly an ordinary cartridge, in this breech, I create a tremendous air pressure, which can be just as well used for running a machine as for shooting a gaol-bird."

"You knew he'd been in gaol?" asked Surefoot, almost apologetically.

"Of course I knew he'd been in gaol—two or three times, I should imagine, but I only know of one occasion, when my uncle prosecuted him. If I were you, Surefoot, I'd go to Chicago and learn something of the police methods there——"

"There ain't any," interrupted Surefoot decidedly. "I've studied the subject."

As Surefoot Smith walked towards Hyde Park he observed that all other events in the world had slumped to insignificance by the side of the taxicab murder. Every newspaper bill flamed with the words. One said "Important Clue"; he wasted a penny to discover that the clue was the first news that a hundred pounds had been found in the dead man's pocket, a fact which had not previously been revealed.

The antecedents of Wells had been investigated during the day and he had been given a clean bill by a man whose chief desire was to find the most damning evidence against him.

Smith was due at Scotland Yard for a conference at four o'clock. He hated conferences, where people sat round and smoked and expressed extravagant views on subjects they knew nothing about. But on this occasion, the first time for many years, he arrived promptly and had the satisfaction of finding that his four colleagues were as barren of ideas as he. They knew—and this was no discovery—that there was a possibility that this was a new type of crime which might become prevalent. Desperadoes had before now stolen cars, but had confined their operations to minor out-of-town burglaries.

There was one scrap of news. A policeman patrolling Portland Place from one of the mews behind had identified the body as that of a man to whom he had spoken at a quarter to two, and this tallied with Smith's own knowledge, for it was at two o'clock that he had seen Tickler walking down Regent Street from the direction of Portland Place.

Curiously enough, though a familiar phenomenon to police investigators, the policeman had said nothing about the drunken man in whose voice Tickler had been interested. Nor, in his report, had he given so much as a hint of that part of the conversation which revealed his knowledge of a man against whom he had had a grudge, and who might conceivably have had as deep an animosity towards him.

"This tells me no more than I know," said Surefoot, putting down the report. "Except that it is not true that Tickler ever had nine months; all his sentences were shorter. Who was it killed this poor little hound? He was broke, or nearly broke. I saw him stop to pick up a cigarette from the sidewalk just before he came up to me. Who picked him up in the stolen cab, and why?"

Fat McEwan leaned back in his well-filled chair and blew a trumpet of smoke to the ceiling.

"If there were such things as gangs you could guess it in once," he said despairingly. "But there are no gangs. This man was not even a nose, was he, Surefoot?"

Surefoot shook his head. "A nose" is a police informer, and Tickler had never been that.

"Then why the dickens should he have been killed? Tell me that."

This was a fair summary of an hour's discussion. Surefoot Smith went down to his little office entirely unenlightened. He found a number of letters, and one that had been posted at Westminster and had been delivered that afternoon. The envelope was dirty; his address was scrawled in an illiterate hand. He tore open the envelope and took out a sheet of paper, obviously extracted from a memorandum book of the cheaper kind. In pencil were the words:

"If you want to know who killed poor Mr. Tickler you'd better go and have a talk with Mr. L. Moran."

Smith looked at the letter for a long time, and then:

"Why not?" he asked himself aloud.

There were a great many things about Mr. Moran that he could never quite understand.