Читать книгу The Sinister Man - Edgar Wallace - Страница 13

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THERE were times when Ralph Hallam's mind went back to the days of romance, and conspirators, cloaked and masked, met in underground cellars to plan their dark deeds. Certainly there was the advantage of safety in that picturesque method—and Ralph played safe all the time. Such meetings gave to the leaders an anonymity which must have been comforting.

This thought occurred to him as he went slowly up the stairs that led to No. 3, the largest of the private dining-rooms that the Café Fornos had to offer to its clients. For luncheon these rooms are very seldom bespoke, but once a month Dr. Hallam gave a little party where business men could meet, discuss politics, theatres, the contemporary events of sport, and when the coffee and liqueurs were served and cigar cases came to light, and when, moreover, the waiters had withdrawn, the peculiar business which brought them together.

As Ralph stood in the doorway, smiling and nodding to the waiting guests, he decided that he had never seen an assembly that looked less like a meeting of conspirators. They were stoutish business men, lovers of good living, middle-aged, slightly or completely bald; men in the sober habiliments of their class. Jarvie of Birmingham greeted him warmly and looked past him, seemingly expecting a companion.

"The old man couldn't get away," said Hallam easily. "He's not particularly well."

He shook hands with the half-dozen of guests and took his seat. No. 3 had an outer and an inner door, and when at last the waiter had placed his cigar-boxes and liqueur bottles on the buffet and had withdrawn, Hallam walked to the doors, turned the key in both and came back to his chair.

Instantly the company relaxed and the atmosphere changed. It was as though, for the past hour, everybody had been playing apart, and all that had been said and done was an act from a dull comedy.

Without preamble Hallam spoke.

"There are three new consignments, the largest in London, the second largest at Hull—"

"Bonded or through the customs?" somebody asked.

"Out of bond, of course," replied Hallam. "Jarvie, you will arrange the distribution. It is consigned to Stanford's Birmingham address. The second came into Avomnouth yesterday and goes forward to Philadelphia."

"What about this Greek they caught at Cleveland?" asked Jarvie, and it was clear that this question was on the lips of the whole company, for there followed a babble of questions.

"You need not worry about him, and the story of the American police tracing a doctor and a City merchant is all bunk. Some imaginative reporter invented that. No, that isn't our trouble. Bickerson—"

"Hasn't anybody tried to straighten Bickerson?" asked a voice. "A couple of thousand would put him quiet."

Ralph shook his head.

"I know Bickerson: he's not that kind. And if you straightened him, he'd slack down, and the higher up people would put another man into the case, and he'd have to be straightened," said Hallam "The only man you need worry about is Tarn, who is getting cold feet. And Soyoka," he added.

There was a glum silence at this. Soyoka was the spectre that walked at every man's elbow, the terror of the unknown. They were business men, each with his little bolt hole, his alibi, his ready explanation if the police by accident hit upon his story, and behind each was a reputation for commercial integrity that could not be gainsaid. Moral considerations did not concern them. That they were marketing a vile poison that wrecked men and women and drove them to insanity, hardly counted. They were marketing a commodity which paid enormous profits and for which there was an increasing demand.

"Soyoka?"

Jarvie took his cigar from his mouth, looked at it thoughtfully and put it back. He was a heavy-browed man with a fringe of hair above his collar and a shining head.

"There's room for Soyoka," he said.

"So I think," nodded Hallam, "but he doesn't share the view that there is room for two. Now I'm going to tell you fellows something. Old Tarn is certain that his boss is either Soyoka or Soyoka's leading agent!"

"His boss? Who is he?" asked Jarvie, scowling at his chief.

"Major Amery."

Ralph saw the eyes of the beetle-browed man open wide.

"Amery?" he said incredulously. "Not Paul Amery?"

"Why, do you know him?" demanded the other.

Mr. Jarvie was whistling softly.

"Paul Amery! I wonder if it's the same? It's not Paul Amery of the Indian Political Service, by any chance? The man who got into trouble at Shanghai?"

In his excitement Ralph pushed back his chair from the table.

"Let us hear this," he said. "You've got the man right enough. Do you know him?"

Jarvie shook his head.

"No, I don't know him, but one of my managers knew him very well. We have a branch house in Shanghai: we export Brummagem goods and that kind of truck; and my manager, who came back a year ago on sick leave, was full of him—he is not by any chance connected with Tarn's firm, is he?"

"He is Amery & Amery," said Ralph. "His uncle left him the business some time back."

Again Mr. Jarvie whistled.

"I only know what my man told me. It appears that Amery was lent by the Indian Government to the Board of Control, or whatever they call it, in Shanghai. In Shanghai, as you probably know, there are three or four millionaire families that have made their money out of opium smuggling and running guns to the rebels. He was sent up to keep an eye upon the arms gang but got into the opium commission and had to leave suddenly. I don't know the rights of it, but my man says he was caught in the act of passing out opium. There was a tremendous scandal. There was a veiled reference to the case in the Shanghai press, but of course no reference to Amery, because these Europeans in Shanghai are pretty clannish. All that was known was that his name was taken off the roll of members of the French Club, and he disappeared by the first mail-boat. It was the gossip of the place that he was working with Soyoka, who has a pretty vivid reputation in the China Sea. There was also talk of his having knifed a Chinese policeman who was going to give him away. They say he's better that the best knife-thrower that ever starred in a circus. Learnt it up in Nepal, and never carries any other weapon. What makes Tarn think he's Soyoka?"

"Something he said to him," replied Ralph, "some threat of his. If he is Soyoka's man—"

"If he is Soyoka's man," interrupted Mr. Jarvie, "he's more dangerous than a bagful of rattlesnakes." He looked meditatively at Ralph. "Isn't there a way you could fix a fellow like that?" he asked.

"How do you mean—'fix'?" demanded Ralph bluntly, conscious that the curious eyes of the party were on him.

"I don't mean anything illegal," said Mr. Jarvie virtuously, and he again examined his inspiring cigar. "But I think, if a fellow like that had a bit of a shock... well, he'd go carefully and probably save us a few uncomfortable minutes."

This was evidently generally agreed. Somebody at the far end of the table murmured:

"Not illegal, of course," though his tone hardly convinced.

"There is only one way to stop Soyoka—if he is Soyoka," said Ralph coldly, "and that is to put him beyond the power of troubling us. Does anybody mean that?"

Nobody apparently did mean that, for the company murmured a soothing denial.

"No, what I mean," said Jarvie, who hesitated so long that apparently he was not quite sure of what he did mean, "is that, if he can't be straightened, he ought to be—frightened."

He puffed at his cigar and looked up at the ceiling.

"I don't know much about London: I'm a provincial man myself: but I'm told that there are places in this town where you could hire a man to beat up your own grandmother for a ten-pound note. Personally, I do not approve of violence: it is foreign to my nature. But there must be people who—ah—could scare—that is the word, scare—Amery."

It was four o'clock when the luncheon party broke up, and Ralph went downstairs alone. In the vestibule he saw a very plump pleasant-looking gentleman being helped on with his greatcoat. At first he could not believe the evidence of his eyes, and then, glancing through the doorway, he saw a very sedate Rolls draw slowly up to the kerb, and a footman alight and open the door.

"Why, Tupperwill," he said, "you're in a strange part of London!"

Mr. Tupperwill, proprietor of Stebbing's Banking Corporation, looked round leisurely. Every movement of his was deliberate, and his round blue eyes lit up in a stare of recognition.

"My dear doctor," he murmured, "extraordinary—most extraordinary! A queer place for Stebbing's indeed, a very queer place!"

In the City of London, Stebbing's Bank was respected without being considered. A survival of one of those private banking corporations that had come into existence in the early part of the eighteenth century, its business was comparatively small and its clientele extremely select. Stebbing's had resisted the encroachments of the great joint stock companies and maintained its independence largely on the tradition established by its founder, who in the early days of the firm had gone to prison for contempt of court rather than produce books which would have incriminated one of his clients. For generations men with great names put private accounts at Stebbing's—accounts which their confidential secretaries never scanned; for even the owners of great names have affairs and businesses of a peculiarly private kind, and Stebbing's flourished by its very secrecy.

Mr. Tupperwill, its present proprietor, was wont to boast that he had not an employee under the age of fifty, though he himself was on the breezy side of thirty-five, a stout, youthful-looking man, with a large face, many chins, and hands of exceeding plumpness.

"Heavy luncheons are anathema to me," He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a little pile of silver and, selecting sixpence, handed it to the unsatisfied cloakroom attendant with a benevolent smile. "Anathema maranatha!* But some of my clients are rather sybaritic. 'Sybarite,' as you probably know, is the name given to the people of Sybaris, an ancient town of Greece, the citizens of which were given to self-indulgence and luxury."

[* An allusion to 1st Corinthians 16:22: "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha." In this context "anathema" means "cursed" and "maranatha" means "the Lord is coming." The passage as a whole means that if you warn people of the judgment to come and they laugh in your face, then they are choosing to go to Hell by their own free will.—RG]

He said this with an air of revealing a mystery which hitherto had not been made public. This passion for passing on information was one of his characteristics, and it may be said that, in nine cases out often, he really did convey information to the City men with whom he was mostly brought into account.

Ralph had his private account with Stebbing's, and in a way could claim a sort of friendship with the banker, who was a member of two of his clubs. If he had one drawback it was his mild interest in medicines—a source of embarrassment to Ralph, who had almost forgotten his early training.

The fat man sighed heavily as he pulled on his gloves.

"A glass of milk and a few crackers constitute my normal lunch, and I shudder to contemplate the effect that lobster mayonnaise would have upon my system. You're not coming my way?"

Ralph was walking with him to the open door of his car.

"No, I'm not coming your way, though I shall be in your neighbourhood to-morrow or the next day."

Mr. Tupperwill shivered.

"I commiserate with you," he said. "The City lacks aestheticism—a cult which, as you may know—"

He stopped suddenly, looked along the crowded sidewalk, and his fat chin wagged downward.

"The cosmopolitan character of our streets at this period of the year is always to me a fascinating and interesting feature."

Following the direction of his eyes, Ralph saw a man standing on the edge of the kerb; a slim little man, in a grey felt hat and violent yellow gloves. His face turned at that moment.

"A Chinaman!" said Hallam in surprise.

"A Chinaman," agreed the other soberly, "one Feng Ho, the bodyguard and fidus achates Asiaticus of one Major Amery, an astonishing gentleman."

Before Ralph had recovered from his astonishment sufficiently to ask what the banker knew of Paul Amery, the glistening car was threading its way through the traffic, on its way to the inaesthetic purlieus of Old Broad Street.

The Chinaman was looking steadfastly toward him, but made no move to approach, and presently, when Ralph began to walk in his direction, he turned and moved swiftly away and was lost to sight in the crowd.

Feng Ho, Amery's man! It was the first time Ralph had heard of the Chinaman, and he wanted to get a closer view of him. If all that he had heard that day was true...

But Feng Ho had disappeared, and, looking at his watch, Ralph remembered that he had promised to make a call on his wife. He was paying the cabman at the entrance of Herbert Mansions when, looking round, he saw another cab stop a little distance down the road. A man got out. It was Feng Ho!

Ralph did not hesitate. He went toward the second cab, and the Chinaman awaited his coming with an expressionless face.

"I want a word with you, my friend."

Feng Ho's head bent slightly.

"When I came out of the Fornos a quarter of an hour ago, you were standing on the sidewalk, obviously watching me. Not content with that, you have followed me here. Now what is your little game?"

Feng Ho's grin was as expansive as it was unsightly.

"Little game? I have no little game," he said blandly. "I merely come this way; perhaps to-morrow I go some other way."

"You're making a call—where?" asked Ralph roughly.

Feng Ho lifted his thin shoulders in a shrug.

"That is not good English politeness," he said. "There is a policeman," he nodded in the direction of a patrol. "Perhaps you will send for him and say: 'Take this Chinaman and put him in the cooler. His name is Feng Ho, he is a Bachelor of Science and he has followed me.' Mr. Hallam, you cannot go anywhere in London without following somebody."

"Why do you follow me?" asked Hallam, ignoring the logic of the statement.

Again that little shrug.

"I am bachelor of science, interested in phenomena. My speciality is —crime! Not only do I like to attend the court when a man comes up before the judge and hear the story, but I wish to see the crime when it is committed. A depraved and morbid ambition, Mr. Hallam, but you as doctor of medicine will understand."

"What crime do you expect to see here?" asked Hallam, watching him narrowly.

"Murder," was the startling reply.

"Murder!" Ralph wondered if the man were joking, but there was no trace of a smile on his immobile face.

"Murder," repeated Feng Ho, his face beaming. "When Soyoka kills you, I desire to be near, so that I may see ingenious methods employed. That he may kill antediluvian gentleman Tarn is possible, or sprightly Miss Marlowe, but that he will inevitably and completely kill you, you shall find!"