Читать книгу The Devil Man - Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

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Charles Peace? The name meant nothing to Dr Mainford. "He's certainly a nasty fellow. Come in and have some coffee. What are you doing in the middle of the night?"

"I'll tell you later." The sergeant stopped to stamp the snow from his feet on the doorstep, and heaved a sigh of relief as he came into the snug warmth of Alan's study.

"Have a look to see that you haven't lost your watch," he said. "Peace is as good a pickpocket as he is a burglar. There's nothing he can't do, from shove-ha'penny to murder. Did he give you any trouble?" Alan laughed.

"A little bit," he said. "I nearly threw him out of the trap."

"I'm glad you didn't try." Baldy was very serious. "That man has got the strength of ten. I went for him once in Sheffield, and it took seven policemen to get him to the station, and then we had to frog-march him."

Alan was not convinced. "He didn't give me that impression. He showed me a revolver when I threatened him."

"A revolver, eh?" said the other quickly. "By gum, I wish I'd known that, I'd have pinched him. I've always heard he carried a pistol, but I never found one on him. How did you come to meet him?"

Briefly Alan told the story of his visit to Madame Stahm, though he made no reference to the beautiful nurse or to the shriek he had heard. When he had finished, Baldy nodded. "Yes, I know all about his fiddle playing. Personally, I know nothing about music and harmony, but I'm told he plays on the stage. In fact, he has been on the stage. Did he tell you anything about wild beasts?"

"Wild beasts?" repeated the startled young doctor. "Is he an animal tamer, too?" he asked ironically.

To his surprise Baldy nodded. "He can tame wild elephants! I've seen him go into a lions' den at Wombwell's menagerie and take a bone from under the nose of a lion. His father was in the animal training business, and so was Peace—that's why he's a good burglar: dogs never bark at him."

"Are you serious?" asked Alan, pausing as he poured out the coffee which the sleepy-eyed Dixon had brought in.

"It's the truth," said Sergeant Eltham. "Dogs never bark at Peace. You can get the most savage retriever and chain him in a kennel outside your door, and Peace will come in in the middle of the night, pat the dog and send him back to sleep. He plays the piano—in fact, there's nothing he can't do in the musical line. And they tell me he can make up poetry." Out of curiosity Alan repeated some of the man's boasts of conquests, and was amazed when Baldy confirmed the little man's claims.

"You wouldn't think it possible, but it's a fact. I could tell you some pretty bad cases—decent women who've left their homes for him. He's lame—did you notice that? And one of his fingers was shot off when he was a boy, and his face—good Lord! Well, you've seen him!"

"He's a pretty old man, isn't he?" Baldy shook his head.

"No, sir. Peace can't be much more than forty-three. He looks seventy, but round about forty is his real age. Did he cry to you about being a poor old man? He always does." He told Alan something of the man's record. He had started as a pickpocket, gone on to be a burglar.

"I pinched him twenty years ago, when he burgled a house in this city. He got a stretch of four years, but that wasn't his first conviction. He got one dose of six years at Manchester, and then went back and got another. In fact, he knows more prisons than any bad character I've ever met with." Alan listened, fascinated.

"He's been out three years now," explained Baldy in answer to his question. "I don't often see him, except when I'm making inquiries about a job, and then he's got an alibi tied to his left ear! Funny you met him tonight. What was he doing at Mrs Stahm's? That's the puzzle." The sergeant ran his fingers through his long beard. "She's very kind and charitable, by all accounts. I think somebody ought to see her and warn her."

Alan shook his head. "I don't think that's necessary," he said quietly. "Madame Stahm has a pretty good idea of the kind of man he is. Now, tell me what you want to see me about."

Baldy sat for a little while, ordering his brief narrative. "Do you remember that fellow I spoke to you about—the foreigner, who disappeared from the Silver Gilt works?"

"Silver Steel." suggested Alan.

Sergeant Eltham brushed aside the correction impatiently. "Whatever it is. Well, it appears he hasn't turned up in Switzerland. His relations have written to Mr What's-his-name—"

"Wertheimer?"

"That's the feller—asking for the allowance he used to make to his sister. What's more, the first man that ran away hasn't been seen at his home since he disappeared from Sheffield. I've got a few facts about the business that you might like to know, doctor. You've been a good friend of mine, and your brain and education have helped me when I've been stuck before." He opened his book, turned the leaves slowly to refresh his memory, closed the book and slipped it in his pocket, and began.

"Over in Switzerland there was a man, whose name I can't exactly remember and can't read, who got an idea he could make steel that wouldn't rust. Which, on the face of it, is absurd and ridiculous. This Professor What's-his-name had a lab—what's the word? It begins with an L."

"Laboratory?" suggested Alan.

The sergeant nodded.

"That's the thing. He was pretty high up in science and he built or borrowed or rented this lab...—the word you said—and got a lot of young professors to come in and help him. They didn't quite make what they were looking for, but they got near enough to it for them to see that they were near the secret. Then one of the young men who were helping the old man bolted to America, and took away with him all the papers and calculations and the likes of that, thinking that he could invent the thing himself and get all the money there was for inventing it."

A light dawned on Alan Mainford. "Is the professor alive?" he asked.

"No," said Baldy. "This feller running away so much upset the old man, Professor What's-his-name, that he took sick and died. Another assistant carried on the work, but the widow of the professor was so suspicious that she kicked him out, and he came to England and started experimenting on his own. That is the man at the Silver Steel works."

"Wertheimer?"

"That's him, Wertheimer. In the meantime the feller that went away to America and opened a sort of lab...—whatever it is—on his own, died. The man at the Silver Steel works heard about this, sent to America and brought over two or three of the head men who had been working for the American fellow, and two out of the three have already disappeared. Wertheimer (don't say I can't remember names) is very upset about it, because he was sure that both these men had the secret of the new steel, and would have worked it out for him if they had remained. What is worrying him is that they may have gone over to this very woman you're speaking about."

"Madame Stahm? Why, of course. Eckhardt was the man who ran away—"

"That's his name," said Baldy, as triumphantly as though he had himself remembered it. "Eckhardt!" And Wertheimer was the dull, stupid man about whom he had been questioned. "I'm going to drive over to see the lady tomorrow," Baldy went on, "and I was wondering if you could lend me your trap."

"I'll lend you my trap, and you can bring back the nurse who is there, a Miss Jane Garden," said Alan quickly. "Have any inquiries been made at Dibdens, where Mrs Stahm is having her experiments made?"

Baldy nodded. "Yes, according to Mr—the Silver Steel man—he's been into that. He's had a chat with Mr Dibden himself, and neither of the two men are employed at the works. My own theory is that they've gone off with girls—they're foreigners, and naturally they run after women."

"I know a few Englishmen who do that," said Alan dryly. "Your friend Peace—"

"Don't call him my friend." Baldy raised his voice protestingly. "There's a dirty little skunk if you like! I remember once he fell into the river; he couldn't swim, but, bless your heart, I said to the people on the bank: 'Don't worry about him: he's born to be hung, and a man who's born to be hung can never be drowned.' It's a funny thing—have you ever noticed it as a medical man?"

"I can't say that I have," said Alan, yawning. "But I still don't know why you go out in the middle of the night to pursue these inquiries of yours."

"The Silver Steel man came round and knocked me up. I've been with him for two hours, and I was so wide awake when he'd gone that I popped round to see if there was a light in the surgery." Alan dozed off that morning with an uneasy consciousness that there was a vital something that he had forgotten to tell the sergeant. In the first hour of waking he realized that that something was—the scream in the night.