Читать книгу The Dark Eyes of London - Edgar Wallace - Страница 7

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FLASH FRED looked upon the intruder, a picture of comical amazement.

“You don’t lose no time, do you?” The protest was forced from him, and Larry laughed softly.

“For carrying concealed weapons, you’re pinched, Fred.”

“It’s no crime in this country,” growled the other, putting up his gun.

By this time Dr. Judd had recovered himself.

“You know our friend, Mr. Grogan,” he said easily. “He’s a member of our amateur dramatic society, and we were practising a scene from the Corsican Brothers. I suppose it looked rather alarming.”

“Thought it was Julius Cæsar,” said Larry dryly. “The scene between Cassius and Brutus, though I don’t remember the gun play.”

The doctor looked at Flash Fred and then at Larry.

“I’m afraid I don’t know you,” he said. He was still rather white, but his tone had recovered its good nature.

“I am Inspector Larry Holt from Scotland Yard,” said Larry. “Now seriously, Dr. Judd, are you charging this man with anything?”

“No, no, no,” said Judd with a laugh. “Honestly, we were only doing a little harmless fooling.”

Larry looked from one to the other. The managing director of an insurance company, even a small company, does not fool with a known criminal.

“You know this man, I suppose?”

“I’ve met him several times,” said Judd easily.

“You know also that he’s a member of the criminal classes, and that he is in fact ‘Flash Fred,’ who has served penal servitude in this country and a term of imprisonment in France?”

The doctor said nothing for a while.

“I’m afraid I guessed that too,” he said in a low voice, “and in consequence my association with the man must seem rather curious to you—but I cannot explain.”

Larry nodded. The one perturbed person in the room was Flash Fred. He was in an agony of apprehension lest Dr. Judd told his secret and the reason for his visit. But Judd had no such intention.

“You can go now,” he said curtly, and Fred, trying to summon up some of his old swagger, lit a cigar with a hand that trembled, and Larry watched the operation.

“You want ‘Nervine for the Nerves,’ Fred,” he said. “I saw a chemist’s shop open at the corner of the street when I came along.”

Fred walked out with a pitiable attempt at indifference, and Larry watched him go. Then he turned to the doctor.

“I’m sorry I came in at such an inconvenient moment,” he said, “though I don’t think you were in any danger. Fred gets all his fine dramatic effects by pulling, not by shooting.”

“I don’t think so either,” said the doctor with a laugh. “Sit down, Mr. Holt. I certainly didn’t expect to see you. I work rather late here at nights.”

“There was nobody down below when I came,” said Larry, “and that is my excuse for coming up unannounced.”

The doctor nodded.

“I sent the commissionaire out to buy me some cigarettes, and here he is.”

There was a tap at the door and the commissionaire came in and laid a packet on the table in confirmation.

“Now what can I do for you?” asked Judd, as he took a cigarette from the packet and lit it. “I suppose it is the Stuart case? I’ve seen one of your men to-day.”

Larry nodded.

“It is the Stuart case,” he said. “I wanted a few additional details. I’ve only just taken charge of the business, and interrupted my investigation of the—remains, in order to see you before you left the office.”

“I know very little,” said the doctor, smoking comfortably. “He came with me to the theatre the night before last. A queer, quiet, reticent man, I met him quite by accident. As a matter of fact, I was in a car that collided with his taxicab and I was slightly injured; he called upon me, and that is how the friendship began—if you can call it a friendship.”

“Tell me about the night before last,” asked Larry, and the doctor looked up at the ceiling.

“Now let me think. I can give you the exact time almost, for I am a somewhat methodical person. I met him at the entrance to the theatre at seven-forty-five, and we both went into Box A. That is the last box on the left, or O.P. side. The box is on a level with the street, the stalls and pit being below the level. We sat there through two acts, and then, just before the curtain came down on the second act, he made an excuse and went out of the box, and he was never seen again.”

“None of the attendants saw him?”

“No,” said the doctor, “but that, I think, is easily explained. It was a first night, and, as you know, the attendants are very interested in the action of a play, and fill the doorways and the entrances to gangways, looking at the stage, when of course they should be attending to their business.”

“Did you know he was Stuart, a semi-millionaire?” asked Larry.

“I hadn’t the slightest idea,” said the doctor truthfully. “I knew nothing whatever about his past life except that he had come from Canada.”

Larry was disappointed.

“I hoped I was going to get a lot of information from you,” he said. “Nobody seems to have known Stuart, and naturally I thought that you would have been in his confidence.”

“Neither I nor his bank manager was in his confidence,” said the doctor. “It was only this morning that I heard from the manager of the London and Chatham that he was a client of theirs. We knew absolutely nothing of him except that he had plenty of money.”

A few minutes later Larry was walking down Bloomsbury Pavement, and he was a very thoughtful man. What had Flash Fred been doing in that office? What was the significance of that flashing of the revolver and the white face of Dr. Judd? It was another little mystery, into which he had not time to investigate, and any way it was no concern of his. Ahead of him, his iron-shod stick tapping the pavement, was a man who walked slowly and deliberately. Larry passed him, and, waiting for a cab which he had signalled, saw him again.

“Blind,” he noted casually, not interrupting his thought of Fred and the doctor.

But he had no time for side trails and side issues, and, entering the cab, he drove to Westminster.

He was not going back to the Yard immediately. First he had a gruesome little duty to perform. At the Westminster mortuary, whither the cab had taken him, he found two Scotland Yard officers awaiting him.

The examination of the body was a brief one. The only mark was an abrasion of the left ankle, and then Larry began an inspection of the clothing, which had been placed in an adjoining room.

“There is the shirt, sir,” pointing to a garment which had been roughly folded. “I can’t understand those blue marks on the breast.”

Larry carried the garment under a light. It was a dress shirt, rough dried, and the purple specks on the breast were clearly visible.

“Made by an indelible pencil,” said Larry, and in a flash remembered the missing pencil-case. But what meant those specks, which formed three rough lines of indecipherable pothooks and hangers?

And then the solution came to Larry, and quickly he turned the dress front inside out and uttered an exclamation. Written on the inside were three lines, and it was the indelible pencil markings which had soaked through that had caused the speckly appearance of the front of the shirt.

The water had made the purple pencil markings run, but the words were distinct.

“In the fear of death I, Gordon Stuart, of Merryhill Ranch, Calgary, leave all my possessions to my daughter, Clarissa, and I pray the courts to accept this as my last will and testament.—Gordon Stuart.”

Underneath was written:

“It is now clear to me that I have been betrayed by——”

There followed a letter which looked like an “O,” but at this point the writing abruptly terminated.

Larry raised his eyes and met those of his subordinate.

“Here is the strangest will that has ever been made,” he said in a hushed voice.

He put down the shirt and walked back to the mortuary chamber, and again examined the body. One hand was clenched, and evidently this fact had been overlooked by the doctors. Using all his strength, he forced the fingers apart, and something fell with a tinkle to the stone floor. He stooped and picked it up. It was a broken sleeve-link of a peculiar pattern. The centre was of black enamel, the rim was of tiny diamonds. He made a further inspection, without discovering anything new.

Then he looked at his companion, and his forehead was wrinkled. What did this mean? What association had all these circumstances with each other? They could be connected, he felt sure of that—the strange encounter between Flash Fred and Dr. Judd, the will on the shirt, and now this new clue. An atmosphere of impenetrable mystery enveloped this case like a fog behind which strange and inhuman shapes were moving, dimly glimpsed and as dimly suspected.

Murder!

He knew it, he felt it—every shadowy shape he passed on his way to his office whispered the word “Murder!”