Читать книгу The Feathered Serpent - Edgar Wallace - Страница 7

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THE man had been shot down like a dog from behind. Leicester looked at him, stared paralysed at the figure. Mechanically he drew from the hand the card it held...the Feathered Serpent!

As he fell, the man's watch had shot from his pocket, and something else. Leicester Crewe gazed stupidly at a square, flat purse, that had a familiar appearance. What a fool Joe was! So he still carried that souvenir! Reaching over the prostrate figure, he retrieved the little leather case, and passed it behind him.

'It's very curious...heard no shot,' he mumbled. 'Take this, Paula...put it in the fire or something, before the police come.'

The purse was taken from his hand. He did not turn his head to see who his companion was; did not even realise, when he heard a soft, horrified voice say:

'Shall I telephone for the police?...Is he hurt, Mr. Crewe?' He blinked up at Daphne Olroyd.

'Oh, you!' he said dully.

And then he saw Paula sitting limply on a hall chair, her face white and haggard under the make-up.

'Yes, please...telephone.'

Hurrying feet sounded on the stairs that led to the servants' quarters; the footman came into the hall as Daphne went flying up the stairs to her own room. She was dressed for the street, and was on the point of departure when she had been an unwilling witness of the tragedy.

Calling the police station, she told her incoherent and disjointed story: something had happened which she imperfectly understood. She felt that the police sergeant at the other end of the line must have thought she was mad. And then she remembered the untidy young journalist, and after a moment's hesitation searched the directory for the number of his newspaper. She heard herself switched through to the reporters' room, and almost immediately Peter's voice growled:

'Hallo! What do you want? Who is it?'

She was not much more lucid in describing than she had been to the police...a dreadful thing has happened...I think the man is dead...he had a card in his hand. Do you remember the Feathered Serpent?'

'Where are you speaking from?' interrupted Peter quickly.

'Mr. Crewe's house. The man is called Farmer—I'm almost sure, but I didn't see his face—it is horrible...!'

'Is he dead?' asked Peter. 'He had a card, did he? The Feathered Serpent? I'll come up right away.'

And then, in a panic, she remembered.

'Please don't tell Mr. Crewe that I told you about this!'

'Trust me,' said Peter's buoyant voice.

She had never realised how joyous it could sound.

Then she heard her name called sharply, and ran down the stairs. 'Paula has fainted—she's in the library—look after her.' Crewe's voice was husky, his manner wild, he seemed on the point of collapse.

There was a little group about the stricken man. Apparently one of the footmen had some knowledge of first-aid, and he was examining the wound. She heard him say something about 'through the heart,' and shuddered as she ran into the library and closed the door behind her.

The woman was lying on the sofa, a pallid, limp figure. Daphne looked at her helplessly. She had never had to deal with fainting ladies, but she seemed to remember that one ought to put their heads between their knees, and this she did...gingerly. Whether it was her treatment, or whether Paula was on the point of recovery when Daphne arrived, she opened her eyes and looked strangely at the girl.

'Joe's killed,' she said, and, covering her face with her hands, fell into a fit of hysterical weeping.

Afterwards, sorting out her nightmare memories, Daphne had an idea that she went in search of Crewe and called him into the room. His face was twitching nervously; his pale eyes wandered from the weeping Paula to the girl. For the moment he was incapable of definite thought or action.

'You'd better get out,' he said at last. 'Go down through the servants' entrance and get away through the mews. The police will be here in a few minutes—'

'Couldn't I be of any service?'

For some reason the question seemed to irritate him.

'Service?' he snarled. 'What use are you?...I don't want you around. And listen, Miss Olroyd: if the police ask you questions about whether Farmer was a frequent visitor here, you're to tell them he wasn't—do you understand? I've had business transactions with him naturally, because I am an investor, but he was no friend of mine—I never knew him until last year.'

And then he seemed to remember their previous conversation. 'You're leaving me, aren't you? Well, you'd better leave at once. I'll send you a cheque for your salary.

He almost hustled her out of the room, and she was in the foggy street before she even tried to find an explanation for his extraordinary anxiety.

A small crowd had gathered from heaven knew where at the foot of the steps, and as she came through the narrow thoroughfare which led from the mews, she saw the police tender dash up and half a dozen men tumble out. An ambulance followed almost immediately, and then came a taxi, and Peter Dewin jumped to the pavement before the machine had stopped. She called him by name and he turned.

'Hallo! I was hoping you were out of the place. What happened?'

She told him as much as she knew. She had been upstairs in her little work-room, preparing to go home, when, as she had put the light out, she had seen a car drive up to the door. Her little office was above the hall, a small room next to one which was Mr. Crewe's office proper. Immediately afterwards she had begun her descent of the stairs. The hall was in darkness and she had moved a little cautiously. Mr. Leicester Crewe was mean in little matters, and was something of a crank where electric light was concerned.

She had come to the hall as he opened the door, and she had heard the thud of a man falling. And then Mr. Crewe's voice had asked for a light, and she had seen the sprawling figure lying on the floor.

'Oh!' she said suddenly.

'What is it?' he asked.

'He gave me this purse—told me to put it in the fire or something. I think he thought I was Mrs. Staines. Will you give it to him?'

He took the flat purse from her hand and slipped it into his pocket. His cab was still waiting, as he was reminded by the driver. 'You toddle home,' said Peter. 'Take my cab.'

And then he asked her where she lived. She had a small flat in a residential block near Baker Street, a place of street-singers and mechanical piano-players. Peter slipped some silver into the driver's hand, gave him his instructions and came to the closed door of the taxi.

'Do you mind if I come and see you tonight? Have you the inevitable aunt living with you?'

'Not even the inevitable aunt,' she said. 'I am quite alone, and you can only call at the risk of my reputation.'

He thought at first she was serious, till she laughed.

'Come by all means.' And then: 'I am keeping you from your work.'

He waited till the cab had turned slowly in the road and disappeared before he elbowed his way through the little crowd and ascended the stairs. He recognised the burly figure of Chief Inspector Clarke standing in the hallway, and apparently the recognition was mutual. The detective came out on to the steps.

'I've nothing to give you yet, Dewin,' he said. And then: 'How did you hear about this? We've only just arrived.'

'A little bird told me,' said Peter. 'Is he dead?'

Clarke nodded.

'You'd better see me in the morning,' and he said it in such a tone that Peter knew there was no use in arguing.

He already possessed, however, more information than the inspector imagined. He had that important end of a murder story, the name of the dead man. Moreover, he knew where he had lived. He had occupied a flat in Bloomsbury; Peter had been there several times, and was aware that Farmer lived alone except for an elderly woman who acted as housekeeper and cook and controlled the daily charwomen who were brought in to keep the apartments in order.

Now a newspaper man is as honourable an individual as one could hope to find, always providing he is not investigating a case of wilful murder. Peter's intention, as a chance-found cab crawled through the fog eastward, was to reach the flat before the police, secure by hook or by crook a clue that would throw a light upon the crime; and to do this, he was prepared to sacrifice whatever reputation he had for honesty or straight dealing.

The housekeeper was an old acquaintance, and it was his good fortune to find her on the point of leaving the flat. She was going, she said, to the pictures. Mr. Farmer did not expect to be home until late. She added it was her night off.

'That's all right, Mrs. Curtin,' said Peter easily. 'I'll wait for him.'

The aged Mrs. Curtin admitted him without a qualm. It was not unusual for Farmer's friends to arrive before their host, and Peter was allowed privileges which were denied to other of Farmer's friends.

He waited till the door closed on the old woman, and then he began a rapid search of the apartment. The flat consisted of four rooms and a kitchen opening from a narrow passage, which led to the microscopic hall and the front door. That nearest the kitchen was the dining-room, and yielded nothing but an added respect for the dead Farmer as a connoisseur of good wine. Next to this was the housekeeper's room, which he did not attempt to investigate. The other two rooms were what was evidently Farmer's bedroom, and what a more learned man would call his study, but which Joe Farmer had preferred to describe as his 'den.'

It was the largest room in the flat, and was furnished expensively but in execrable taste. In one corner of the room, and in striking contrast to the gilt and silk brocades of furniture and hangings, was a plain pine desk with a roll top. This he tried and found locked. But plain pine desks with roll tops are built to a pattern, and the first of his keys that he tried turned the lock. He pushed up the sliding top and began a systematic investigation of the desk.

Though semi-illiterate, Farmer was a man of method. He found a thick wad of returns from his various saloons and other enterprises, neatly stacked in pigeon-holes; there were also what were obviously private account books filled with the man's sprawling writing; but what interested the reporter was a drawer which had evidently been built into the desk after its delivery. It was fastened with a patent lock, but by an amazing chance the key was fitted into the lock, and it almost seemed, from evidence which he afterwards discovered, that some time that day Joe Farmer had been examining the contents of the drawer.

He turned the key, pulled open the receptacle, and found it to be steel-lined with a hinged lid of the same metal. There was no lock to this, and, lifting the cover, he was surprised to find that the drawer contained only two folded papers. These he opened and examined.

The first was an architect's plan of what was evidently intended to be a great block of working-class flats. Peter growled his disappointment. He knew that Joe Farmer had his finger in many speculative pies. Evidently this building scheme was one in which he was interested.

The second document consisted of two sheets of foolscap, paged 3 and 4. Nos. 1 and 2 were missing. From the manner in which it was set out and the terminology, it was evident that these two sheets formed part of a deposition taken in a criminal case. They ran:

...the said William Lane was known to me as a dealer in bad money. In America it is known as 'phoney,' in England as 'slush.' I had made the acquaintance of William Lane in a public-house, the 'Rose and Crown,' of which I was lessee. He told me he had been a sailor and had not often been in England, and he asked me whether I would like to buy some good slush. He said he was a printer and could get me all the fivers I wanted, and that he had passed twenty of these in the West End without detection. I thought he was joking, and I told him I would never dream of committing a crime. He passed the matter off with a laugh, but two days afterwards, when I was in the West End, he came into my private bar and asked the bartender if he would change a five-pound note, and the bartender took the money and gave him change, reporting the circumstances to me on my return that evening. I thought nothing of it till that evening when I was making up my accounts and putting the takings ready to bank. I then remembered the conversation I had had with William Lane, and examined the note more carefully. It seemed perfectly genuine, but I was not satisfied, and as soon as the banks opened I took the five-pound note to the Tidal Basin branch of Barclay's and asked the cashier whether it was genuine. He told me that it was a forgery and that there had been several complaints, and special warnings issued by the police concerning the large number of forged notes in circulation. I took the note at once to Divisional Inspector Bradbury and told him of the conversation I had had with William Lane, and of how he had boasted he could give me notes that would defy detection. The inspector told me to say nothing, and placed a detective on duty in my bar. William Lane did not return, and on the 17th I was informed by the inspector that his house had been raided and that machines for printing forged notes had been discovered.

In cross-examination by the prisoner: It was not true that William Lane had only been to the public-house once to change the five-pound note, and that no conversation had taken place about forgeries. It was not true that the statement he had made in examination-in-chief was a tissue of falsehoods invented by him.

Re-examined by Counsel for the Crown: It would not be accurate to say that he was a friend of Lane's. He had only spoken to him two or three times, and knew him only as a habitue of the 'Rose and Crown.' He did not even know whom he was living with or where he was living, or who were his friends.

Here the manuscript ended. Apparently somewhere was a page missing, and Peter made a very careful examination of the remaining pages, but without success. And then by chance he turned over the second of the sheets and found, pencilled on the back, what was evidently a continuance of the evidence. It was in Joe Farmer's indecipherable handwriting, but it was legible enough to Peter:

I am sure that the man was William Lane because just above his left wrist was the scar of an old knife wound which he said had been inflicted by a negro on one of his ships.

At the bottom of the sheet were three scrawled lines in blue pencil:

A. Bone died 14th February, 1922. Harry the Barman, 18 bis Calle Rosina, B.A., very ill.

Peter Dewin's eyes were bright with excitement. Without hesitation he folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket, took up the plan and opened it again, and was returning it to the drawer when he saw the architect's name and the date, 1917. Why should Joe Farmer keep this plan all these years? Here was a point from which a new line of investigation might start. The plan followed the deposition in his pocket; and at that moment there came a sharp rat-tat at the door. Peter gave a last look round, closed the drawer and pulled down the roll-top desk, before he opened the front door to Inspector Clarke.

The big man's face changed at the sight of the reporter. 'You're a quick worker,' he said. 'Who's here?'

'I'm here,' said Peter calmly. 'The old lady who looked after Farmer has gone to the pictures—there is something pathetic about the attraction of the movies for the lower orders, Clarke.'

'Stop your fooling,' said Clarke, as he entered, followed by a subordinate. 'And turn over anything you've found which is likely to be of value to the police!'

'To tell you the truth,' lied Peter, 'I've only just arrived, and I was contemplating a little burglary when your knock brought me back to the paths of virtue.'

Clarke grunted something uncomplimentary about the morals of reporters, and began a rapid search of the room, Peter moving meekly in his wake.

'I suppose you've opened this desk and gone through every paper?' said the inspector, deftly clicking back the lock and pushing up the cover.

Peter looked pained, as the inspector stooped and picked a blue pencil from the floor.

'Did you drop this?' he asked sardonically.

So the note on the back of the paper had been written recently—why? He had looked for the pencil on the desk, and had not thought to search the carpet. Possibly he had knocked it down in his examination, but it was more likely that Farmer had dropped it. It was a new blue pencil, recently pointed; the little chips of wood dislodged in the sharpening process were visible, and the open penknife on the desk still bore lateral blue marks to testify that it had only been that day brought into use.

'No sign of Feathered Serpents,' said Clarke, when he had completed his search. He was prepared to release a few items of information. 'Farmer was shot dead with an automatic pistol fitted with a silencer. We found a spent cartridge in the middle of the road. He came in a taxicab—the cab was seen at the corner of Grosvenor Square by a police officer as it turned into Grosvenor Street. Crewe thought it was a small car, but his description tallies with the policeman's. The man who killed Farmer was either travelling in that taxi or was the driver. That's for publication, Peter. What isn't for publication—and I'm telling you this in case you get on to it by accident—is that Crewe had a talk with Farmer on the phone half an hour before he was killed. Farmer said he'd got some information about this Feathered Serpent business, and was coming to tell.'

'Why should they be mutually interested in the Feathered Serpent?' asked Peter.

The inspector looked at him thoughtfully.

'That's a bluff question. You know darned well that both Crewe and Farmer have had these cards. What is the Fleet Street theory about the Serpent?'

Peter shook his head.

'We haven't taken it seriously. It's too much like the invention of a sensational novelist—those things don't really happen; you know that, Clarke.'

'This murder has happened right enough,' said Clarke grimly. He was still suspicious, and as they walked into Bloomsbury Square he asked:

'You found nothing—'

'I found nothing that could possibly assist the police,' said Peter promptly.

'Which means,' said Clarke after a moment's thought, 'you found nothing you'd give to the police which was likely to help another newspaper to get on to the big story. I'd be doing my duty if I hauled you into Tottenham Court Road police station and "fanned" you.'

By the time Peter had reached his newspaper office he had settled in his mind what line he should adopt in his story of the crime. A few additional details had arrived, and substantially the story he told was the one which appeared in every other journal on the following morning.

Summer and winter, Peter usually spent his weekend at a little cottage on the Godalming road. He would have welcomed the chance of thinking out a fantastic problem in the quiet of the country, but there was no long week-end for Peter Dewin, and he went home to his Kensington lodgings, a baffled and bewildered young man.

Crime, as Peter understood it from long experience, was a very commonplace and unromantic thing. He had yet to report a murder that carried with it the glamour of romance. In nine cases out of ten there was no relief from sordidness, and the business of crime detection was a grim and ugly one, which had none of the bright spots that are found in the inventions of imaginative writers.

He was well acquainted with that variety of fiction where last warnings, mysterious letter-writings, and the appearance at odd places and times of bizarre symbols figured prominently. But hitherto his acquaintance with these exciting phenomena had been restricted to certain police court proceedings against bands of juvenile desperadoes with their secret signs and passwords and petty depredations; somehow he could not associate such happenings with grown criminals.

He was sitting on his bed, taking off his boots, when he remembered with a start the little purse that Daphne had given to him, and he took it from his coat pocket. It was a flat pouch of pliable leather, the flap fastening with a catch button; there was something hard inside. A key, he knew before he put in his finger and took it out, and with it a slip of paper.

The key obviously fitted a patent lock; it was rather small, and had upon the thumb-piece the numbers 7916. It had once borne some sort of inscription, but this had been filed off at some period, obviously by an amateur hand.

He examined the paper; it bore two lines of letters:

F.T.B.T.L.Z.S.Y. ________________ H.V.D.V.N.B.U.A.

It was either a code, or the key to a code. The paper was old; the lettering was in ink, which had already begun to fade.

He searched the purse carefully for a further clue, but there was none, nor did it bear any markings. He was about to replace the purse in his pocket when, for some reason which he never understood, he changed his mind and slipped it under his pillow, and continued his undressing. Dead tired as he was, his head had hardly touched the pillow before he was asleep.