Читать книгу We Shall See! - Edgar Wallace - Страница 5

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I MIGHT explain about myself, that I was on sick leave as the result of a very bad gruelling I had received when I arrested the Canning Town murderer. It will be remembered by most of the readers that we ran our man to earth on Wanstead Marshes, I and Constable Flannatty, and that our gentleman had an iron bar which he used to some purpose until Flannatty with a chance blow from his truncheon put him to sleep.

The sick leave—the Commissioner insisted on my taking it, though Inspector Jennings at that time my chief, was averse to my having any such rest—had been useful in many ways. It had given me leisure to look up old friends and to write my little commentary on Lombroso’s “Delinquent Woman.”

I might say in passing that I was at Oxford, and was intended for the diplomatic service, when the death of my father and the necessity for earning a living took me to Scotland Yard, where my father’s old friend, Sir John Jordan, offered me his influence to enter the higher services of the Criminal Investigation Department. I was qualifying for promotion at this time and the commentary on Lombroso’s work would, I knew, sensibly increase my chance of breaking into the close circle of the Political Branch. I never imagined, when I walked out from the Yard with my leave granted how that leave would be employed, and how it would end.

“What do you think of George?” asked Billy when we were alone again.

“A dangerous man,” said I. “You were saying that he ‘ smashed ’ that jeweller’s in Regent Street?”

Billy waved the subject out of existence.

“Don’t let us talk shop,” he said, “besides, everything you hear in this office is confidential. Anyway, you would never convict George. He would prove ten alibis. To get on to a more congenial subject—how is the Honourable Jennings?”

“Jennings?” I asked in surprise. “Do you know him?”

“Do I know him!” scoffed Billy. “I certainly know him. He’s not a great friend of yours, is he?”

“Not very,” said I.

Jennings was one of those narrow-minded men of the old school, who learn nothing and forget nothing. I have found the people who label themselves ‘ the old school,’ are consistent only in their prejudices.

"As a matter of fact, he was in this office two days ago. He is a great friend of a client of mine, Mr. Thomson Dawkes.”

I nodded. I knew Dawkes by repute, and I knew also that Jennings was rather proud of the acquaintance with this wealthy man. He had been at Dawkes's country house and had shot his coverts and he was never tired of dragging into his conversation the names of the illustrious people whom he had met under Dawkes’s palatial roof.

“I suppose it would be indiscreet to ask you why Dawkes is a client of yours?” I asked. “He is not married.”

Billington looked at me with that odd twinkle in his eye which I know so well.

"Maybe not,” , he said. “At any rate, it isn't a marital affair, unless it is a projected alliance which distresses him.”

He took away the handkerchief, and put the revolver in the drawer.

“You can ask anything you like, Mont, in this office,” he said. “I suppose you are not free for a week or two—you couldn’t get leave?”

“I have leave,” I said. “That is why I am here.” And then I told him about my holiday.

“That’s fine,” said Billy. “I think there is no man I'd rather have with me than you. Mont, do you remember that night when the Germans bombed the ridge, and you and I were sitting in a cold, cold dugout . . .”

He plunged into a chain of reminiscences. It seemed curious to me that we should laugh and jest about those terrible days and agonising nights, but so it is, I suppose, with human nature. If we could live in the emotional heights which we reached in the hectic days of war, I doubt whether life would be worth living, even if it were possible.

He changed the subject as abruptly as he had commenced, and had branched into another matter whilst my mind was still groping after the identity of the colonel, whom he had insisted upon recalling.

“Thomson Dawkes, of course, you know,” he said. “He is a man-about-town, a gambler and, I should think, a bit of a blackguard. He came to me on the recommendation of Sir Alfred Cawley who is by way of being a friend of his, though Cawley is a decent, honest man.”

Billy shifted round in his seat and put his feet up on the desk as he lit a cigar and passed the box to me. Billy has never had manners and invariably helps himself first.

“The story begins,” he said, “when Dawkes was at Monte Carlo in the early spring of last year. He had been playing at the tables at trente et quarante and having won about forty thousand francs, had quit for the day. As you know, the rooms have a peculiar fascination for students of humanity as Dawkes claims to be. He idled the rest of the time watching the other players, and his attention was particularly devoted to a girl whom he had noticed playing at the same table.

“According to Thomson, she was a very pretty girl. In fact, he raves about her. She was plainly and not very fashionably dressed, and the remarkable thing was that she was playing a heavier game than anybody else at the table. That is to say, she was staking maximums, making double coups on the black and inverse, or on the red and couleur, as the case may be. Evidently she was following some system because she had a whole sheet of complicated figures before her, which she consulted.

“The girl lost steadily, with a coolness and sang-froid and an absence of all emotion, which excited first the admiration and then the wonder of Mr. Thomson Dawkes, who is no slouch at gambling either. She played steadily from two in the afternoon until five and from seven in the evening until midnight when the circle closed.

On the day when she came under the notice of Dawkes he. discovered from people who had been sitting at the table, and from a friendly croupier, that she had lost two million francs, which is a colossal sum.”

I nodded.

“And wants a bit of losing,” I said. “The table must have run very badly against her.”

“I think it did,” said Bill. “As the rooms were emptying Dawkes spoke to her. It is a friendly way which one has at Monte Carlo, where one knows everybody’s business, and also everybody’s financial position. He commiserated with her upon her losses. Now, as you know, people are not stiff and stand-offish at Monte Carlo. In fact, they are quite the reverse. To Dawkes’s surprise the girl returned him a cold answer, disengaged herself from his conversation and went to her hotel, which was the Hotel de Paris, the swagger hotel opposite the Casino.

“Dawkes was piqued. He rather fancied himself as a squire of dames, and he was naturally annoyed. He made inquiries at the hotel and found that she was a Mademoiselle Hicks, which I am perfectly certain is an assumed name and really is equivalent to X.

“The next afternoon he was very careful to watch for her, intending to pay closer attention to the system she was working, but she did not arrive. He found that she had left that morning by the mail train for Calais. Who she was, nobody knew. She had no friends. She did not discuss her business or take any man or woman into her confidence. Dawkes, who is a persistent sort of person, pursued his inquiries still further and discovered that she had gone away, leaving behind her a handbag, of which he secured possession. It was a cheap thing, with an imitation tortoiseshell rim, and was apparently new. It was the sort of thing you can buy in London for 7s. 6d. Now, ladies who go gambling and losing £40,000 (which was the rate of exchange at that time) in a visit to Monte Carlo, do not as a rule come equipped with cheap clothing and etceteras. There was nothing in the bag except a little French money, two hotel bills, receipted, and the half of a third-class return ticket between Brixton and Victoria. These also were inconsistent with the extraordinary losses which the girl had endured and with the abundance of money which apparently she commanded.”

“It sounds to me as though the young lady had access to somebody else’s money,” I said, and Billy nodded.

“That is Dawkes’s theory too, but we shall see! Whose money could it be? How can a girl of the class and character which Dawkes imagines her to be, lay her hands upon ready money without exciting suspicion, and do it, not once, but at regular intervals.”

“At regular intervals?” I repeated in surprise.

“I’ll tell you,” said Billy. “Dawkes came back to England and then went for a short business trip to New York. On his return he landed at Cherbourg, having booked a sleeper from Paris to Monte Carlo by wireless. He reached the Gare de Lyons just in time to catch the Riviera express and, being tired, he went straight to bed and to sleep. In the morning, when he rose and strolled into the corridor, the first person he saw sitting on one of the folding seats was the mysterious Miss X, looking as neat and as calm and as self-possessed as usual. She did not recognise him, or, if she did, she showed no sign of her recognition. He did not make the mistake of attempting to force his acquaintance upon her, and it was not until the second night after their arrival at Monte Carlo that he spoke to her at all.

“She had been playing and winning almost as heavily as she had been losing on her previous visit.

“‘You have had a lot of luck,’ said Dawkes, and she looked up at him startled. He is rather a tall man, you remember.

“‘Yes,’ she replied hurriedly. ‘I have had very good luck to-day. The table has been running black!’

“‘And to-morrow it will run red,’ said Dawkes with a smile, and the girl looked at him gravely.

“‘I don’t think so,’ she replied very seriously. “The day after to-morrow it will run red in the morning and black in the afternoon.’

“And the extraordinary thing was that that is exactly how the luck ran at the trente et quarante table. Dawkes tried to pursue the friendship, but the girl did not seem to be particularly struck on him, which shows what a discerning and intelligent young woman she was. By this time, I gather, Mr. Thomson Dawkes was very keen on the girl, not as a problem, but as an individual woman. He sent flowers to her room, and did his best to persuade her to take a motor-car drive on the Grande Corniche and through Nice to Grasse, where all the foolish tourists go to buy the perfume they can buy more cheaply in London. But she was not at all anxious to accept his invitation.”

“What happened after that,” said Billy thoughtfully. “I do not know, but I can guess. Dawkes is very vague about his attitude to the girl, but emphatic as to the girl’s attitude toward him. It is certain that there was an incident where she shut her door in his face, but why Dawkes was there, and how he came to place himself in such a humiliating position, he skips in his narrative.”

“We can guess all that,” said I, and Billy nodded.

“At any rate, she went away from Monte Carlo with a large parcel of money, leaving a very sick and sore Mr. Thomson Dawkes behind her, and that’s the story,” he ended as abruptly as usual.

“What is your job, then?” I asked in surprise, for I had expected some more startling denouement.

“My job is to discover who is Miss X,” he said. “What is her job of work, where she gets her money, et cetera.”

“And with this information Mr. Dawkes is going to—” I paused expectantly, but at that moment came an interruption.

The door was flung open and a big man came in, panting heavily, for he had run up the stairs.

“There she is! There she is!” he cried breathlessly, and waved his arms towards the window.

“Look! Now is your chance, Stabbat I There she is, right opposite your door, my boy!”

Billington ran to the window and threw up the sash.

“Where?” he asked.

“The girl with the blue hat, standing in front of the jeweller’s. Do you see her?”

Billington shaded his eyes.

It was a warm, sunny day, and the office faced south-west.

“I see her,” he said slowly.

“She’s going into the shop,” said the big man excitedly. “Now you’ve got her, Stabbat!”

Bill paused irresolutely and stretched out his arms to press the bell on the wall. I have often remembered that movement, the lithe figure of Billington Stabbat reaching across the desk, his arm extended, his finger-tips hesitating on the bell-push.

If he had only pressed that bell this story would not have been written. Thomson Dawkes might have been spared the knife of the surgeon, Billy Stabbat would never have seen the interior of a prison cell, and Sir Philip Frampton would still be attending his quarterly bank conventions.

Billy hesitated.

“I’ll go myself,” he said.

Yet, if he had rung for Levy Jones!