Читать книгу The Crimson Circle - Edgar Wallace - Страница 14

Table of Contents

AT three minutes to ten the following night, a closed car drove slowly into Steyne Square and came to a halt at the corner of Clarges Street. A few minutes later Thalia Drummond walked into the square from the other end. She wore a long black cloak, and the little hat upon her head was held in its position by a thick veil knotted under her chin.

Without a second's hesitation she opened the door of the car and stepped in. It was in complete darkness, but she could see the figure of the driver indistinctly. He did not turn his head, nor did he attempt to start the car, although she felt the vibration of the engines beneath her feet.

"You were charged at the Marylebone Police Court yesterday morning with theft," said the driver without preamble. "Yesterday afternoon you inserted an advertisement, describing yourself as a newly-arrived colonial, your intention being to find another situation, where you could continue your career of petty pilfering."

"This is very interesting," said Thalia without a tremor of voice, "but you did not bring me here to give me my past history. When I had your letter I guessed that you thought I would be a very useful assistant. But there is one question I want to ask you."

"If I wish to reply I shall," was the uncompromising answer.

"I realise that," said Thalia, with a faint smile in the darkness. "Suppose I had communicated with the police and I had come here attended by Mr. Parr and the clever Mr. Derrick Yale?"

"You would have been lying on the pavement dead by now," was the calm announcement. "Miss Drummond, I am going to put easy money in your way and find you a very excellent job. I do not even mind if you indulge in your eccentricity in your spare time, but your principal task will be to serve me. You understand?"

She nodded, and then realising he could not see her, she said: "Yes."

"You will be paid well for everything you do; I shall always be on hand to help you--or to punish you if you attempt to betray me," he added. "Do you understand?"

"Perfectly," she replied,

"Your job will be a very simple one," went on the unknown driver. "You will present yourself at Brabazon's Bank to-morrow. Brabazon is in need of a secretary."

"But will he employ me?" she interrupted. "Must I go in another name?"

"Go in your own name," said the man impatiently. "Don't interrupt. I will pay you two hundred pounds for your services. Here is the money." He thrust two notes over his shoulder and she took them.

Her hand accidentally touched his shoulder, and she felt something hard beneath his fleecy coat.

"A bullet-proof waistcoat," she noted mentally, and then aloud: "What am I to say to Mr. Brabazon about my earlier experience?"

"It will be unnecessary to say anything, or do anything. You will receive your instructions from time to time. That is all," he added shortly.

A few minutes later Thalia Drummond sat in the corner of the taxi-cab which was taking her back to Lexington Street. Behind her, at intervals, came another taxi-cab which slowed when hers did, but never overtook her, not even when she descended at the comer of the street where her lodgings were situated. And when she turned the key of her street door, Inspector Parr was only a dozen paces from her. If she knew that she was being shadowed, she made no sign.

Parr only waited for a few minutes, watching the house from the opposite side of the roadway, and then; as her light appeared in the upper window, he turned and walked thoughtfully back to the cab which had brought him so far eastward.

He had opened the door of the cab and was stepping in, when somebody passed him on the side-walk; somebody who was walking briskly with his collar turned up, but Inspector Parr knew him.

'Flush', he called sharply, and the man turned round on his heel.

He was a little dark, thin-faced, lithe man, at the sight of the Inspector his jaw dropped.

"Why--why, Mr. Parr," he said, with ill-affected geniality, "whoever thought of seeing you in this part of the world?"

"I want a little talk with you. Flush. Will you walk along with me?"

It was an ominous invitation, which Mr. 'Flush' had heard before.

"You haven't got anything against me, Mr. Parr?" he said loudly.

"Nothing," admitted Parr. "Besides, you're going straight now. I seem to remember you telling me that day you came out of prison."

"That's right," said 'Flush' Barnet, heaving a sigh of relief. "Going straight, working for my living, and engaged to be married."

"You don't tell me?" said the stout Mr. Parr with simulated astonishment. "And is it Bella or Milly?"

"It is Milly," said 'Flush', inwardly cursing the excellent memory of the police inspector. "She's going straight, too. She's got a job at one of the shops."

"At Brabazon's Bank, to be exact," said the inspector, and then turned as though some thought had arrested him. "I wonder," he muttered, "I wonder if that is it?"

"She's a perfect young lady, is Milly," Mr. 'Flush' hastened to explain. "Honest as the day, wouldn't swipe a clock, not if her life depended on it. I don't want you to think she is bad, Mr. Parr, because she's not. We're both living what I might term an honest life."

Parr's placid face wrinkled in a smile. "That's grand news you're telling me, Flush. Where is Milly to be found in these days?"

"She's living in diggings on the other side of the river," said 'Flush' reluctantly. "You're not going to rake up old scandals, are you, Mr. Parr?"

"Heaven forbid," said Inspector Parr piously. "No, I'd like to have a talk with her. Perhaps--" he hesitated, "anyway, it can wait. It was rather providential meeting you, 'Flush'."

But 'Flush' did not share that view, even though he expressed a faint acquiescence.

"So that's it," said Inspector Parr to himself, but he did not express the nature of his suspicions, even when he met Derrick Yale at his club half-an-hour later. And it was a further curious fact, that though they touched every aspect of the Crimson Circle mystery in the long conversation which followed, never once did Mr. Parr mention Thalia Drummond's interview, which, if he had not seen, he had at least guessed.

The two men left early the next morning for the little country town where one Ambrose Sibly, described as an able-seaman, was held on a charge of murder. At his own earnest request, Jack Beardmore was allowed to accompany them, though he was not present at the interview between the two detectives and the sullen man who had slain his father.

A brawny, unshaven fellow, half Scottish, half Swede, Sibly proved to be. He could neither read nor write, and had been in the hands of the police before. This much Parr had discovered from a reference of his fingerprints.

At first he was not inclined to commit himself, and it was rather Derrick Yale's skilful cross-examination, than Inspector Parr's efforts, which produced the confession.

"Yes, I did it all right," he said at last. They were seated in the cell with an official shorthand-writer taking a note of his statement.

"You've got me proper, but you wouldn't have got me if I hadn't been drunk. And whilst I'm confessing, I might as well own up that I killed Harry Hobbs. He was a shipmate of mine on the Oritianga in 1912--they can only hang me once. Killed him and chucked his body overboard, I did, over the question of a woman that we met at Newport News, which is in America. I'll tell you how this happened, gentlemen. I lost my ship about a month ago, and was stranded at the Sailors' Home at Wapping. I got chucked out of there for being drunk, and on top of that I was locked up and got seven days' imprisonment. If the old fool had only given me a month I shouldn't have been here. One night after I came out of prison I was walking through the East End, down on my luck and starving for a drink, and feeling properly miserable. To make it worse, I had the toothache--" Parr met Derrick Yale's eyes, and Derrick smiled faintly.

"I was loafing along the edge of the pavement looking for cigarette ends, and thinking of nothing except where I could get a bit of food and a night's lodging. It was beginning to rain, too, and it looked as though I was going to have another night on the streets, when I heard a voice say, almost in my ear, 'Jump in.' I looked round. A motor-car was standing by the side of the roadway. I couldn't believe my ears. Presently the man in the car said 'Jump in. It's you I mean!' and he mentioned my name. We drove along for a while without his saying anything, and I noticed that he kept clear of all the streets where the big lights were.

"After a bit he stopped the car, and began to tell me who I was. I can assure you I was surprised. He knew the whole of my history. He even knew about Harry Hobbs--I was tried for that killing and acquitted--and then he asked me if I'd like to earn a hundred pounds. I told him I would, and he said there was an old gentleman in the country who had done him a lot of harm, and he wanted him 'outed.' I didn't want to take the job on for some time, but he gave me such a lot of talk about how he could get me hung for Hobbs's murder, and how it was safe, and he'd give me a bicycle to get away on, and at last I agreed.

"He picked me up by arrangement a week later in Steyne Square. Then he gave me all the final particulars. I got down to Beardmore's place soon after it was dark, and hid in the wood. He told me Mr. Beardmore generally walked through the wood every morning, and that I was to make myself comfortable for the night. I hadn't been in the wood an hour when I had a fright. I heard somebody moving. I think it must have been a game-keeper. He was a big fellow, and I only just got a glimpse of him.

"And I think that's about all, gentlemen, except that the next morning the old fellow came in the wood and I shot him. I don't remember much about it, for I was drunk at the time, having taken a bottle of whisky into the wood with me. But I was sober enough to get on to the bicycle, and I rode off. And I should have got away altogether, if it hadn't been for the booze."

"And that is all?" asked Parr, when the confession had been read over and the man had affixed a rough cross.

"That's all, guv'nor," said the sailor.

"And you don't know who it was who employed you?"

"Not the faintest idea," said the other cheerfully. "There's one thing about him, though, I could tell you," he said after a pause. "He kept using a word that I've never heard before. I'm not highly educated, but I've noticed that some men have favourite words. We had an old skipper who always used the word 'morbid'."

"What was the word?" asked Parr.

The man scratched his head. "I'll remember it and let you know," he said, and they left him to his meditations, which were few, and probably not unpleasant.

Four hours after, the jailor took Ambrose Sibly some food. He was lying on his bed, and the jailor shook him by the shoulder.

"Wake up," he said, but Ambrose Sibly never woke again.

He was stone dead. And in the tin dipper, half-filled with water, which stood by his bed, and with which he had slaked his thirst, they found sufficient hydrocyanic acid to kill fifty men.

But it was not the poison which interested Inspector Parr so much as the little circle of crimson paper which was found floating on the top of the water.