Читать книгу For Information Received - Edgar Wallace - Страница 4

Table of Contents

JOHNNY KELLY, in the outward guise of a gentleman of leisure, stood on the corner of Rue de la Paix and the Boulevard des Italiennes, and he was chewing a toothpick in his contemplative fashion. So he might have stood at the corner of Piccadilly and Shaftesbury Avenue, indicating with a wave of his white-gloved hand this way or that to the bewildered country visitor. For years and years ago he had served his apprenticeship in the uniformed constabulary.

Only now he was in evening dress and apparently wholly dissociated from the police force—though in this respect appearance lied, as any international crook could have testified, for Johnny Kelly, or "J. K." as they called him, was the cleverest inspector of the "Special Branch"—an unobtrusive force which Scotland Yard maintained in all the great capitals. The date was May 1919, and the conditions were ideal for introducing one who more than any other stood perpetually between the snares of Paris and its orders. He strolled a few paces along the deserted pavement—it was after the dinner-hour and the thick stream of traffic moved slowly on the other sidewalk. For here sat those connoisseurs in humanity, the clients of the Café de la Paix. They sat four deep facing the street, and above them the lights glowed and glittered, and the furled red and white sun-blind furnished a suggestion of decoration and festivity.

Johnny had often stood outside the Equitable Building and watched dusk fall over Paris. Mingling with the stars which hung in the dusky were millions of green stars and new constellations which spring had brought, for they were budding leaves on the branches of invisible trees, a trick of the arc lights which caught the emerald of the new green and toned the grey branches into the greyer dusk.

Mr. Kelly threw a professional glance along the Boulevard des Italiennes. The Café Americaine was a blob of light. To the left a golden slit marked the entrance to the Olysia, where rough houses might not be expected for hours yet, when the underground café was packed with moist humanity and the "private" dance hall where five franc champagne and women who looked cheaper got going.

He rolled his toothpick to the other corner of his mouth and nodded slightly to an officer of the Surete who approached him.

"Hello, M'sieur Kelly," said that individual, "your man has not turned up yet?"

Johnny shook his head.

"Tigiliki won't come himself," he said; "he's not the kind of fellow who would take a risk—your people are sure that he is up to his old game?"

"Certain," said the other emphatically. "He has a man named Smith working for him. If you can catch him we will put him over the border to-night."

Kelly nodded and resumed his lonesome vigil. It was a night for thought only. Johnny Kelly's thoughts were of a girl.... He sighed and eyed the stars again with a little twinge of pain.

In the very corner of the mass which packed the sidewalk before de la Paix, sat two bad men. They sat at a little table under the glass screen, and they talked across their sirops in low tones. They were both men of middle age, grey at the temple, and one was bald. Lex Smith was the notable leader of this pair. To describe them both as bad men is perhaps a little ungenerous to Solomon Levinsky, the second member of the party. He was a pale man with large, white hands. They were large because Nature made them so, they were white because he had been employed in the King's Prison at Portland in "light clerical duties."

Lex Smith regarded his friend with good-natured contempt.

"There never was a good crook with a conscience, Solly," he said; "a crook with a conscience is a bad crook. It don't pay anyway. Look at you. You've been doing five years in an English jug and why—"

"Because I wouldn't double-cross a pal," growled the other shortly; "but that's nothing to do with it, Lex. This kind of job you are putting up to me I don't want, and that's a fact."

"Well, you were in stripes—"

"Arrows," corrected the other grimly; "big, black, broad arrows, Lex."

"Don't make me a liar for the sake of a little error of description," pleaded Lex Smith; "it doesn't matter how you were decorated anyway. You were jailed whilst I was in Switzerland making good money, living in the best hotels, old pal—the Kaiserhof and the Beau Rivage—with wine at every meal, eh? And that's just the kind of life you can have for the next ten years. Now be wise. I've got you to France. I've done everything I can for you, and I need not even take you into this job at all. It's a one-man job and no sharings, but because I like you, Solly—"

"I only knew the girl slightly," interrupted Levinsky, "we had rooms in the same boarding-house—I knew her father."

"So much the better," said Lex Smith; "you will be able to pull some of that soft stuff about the old man—how you used to play nap together on the dear old farm—"

He looked at his watch—a large golden machine set with flashing stones that glittered in the light of the overhead lamps.

"She will be here in ten minutes, and you have got to make up your mind."

Solly was biting his nails thoughtfully.

"Who is this fellow that wants her?" he asked.

"He's a prince," said Lex Smith enthusiastically "He's got a flat on the Avenue Victor Hugo that's got Sarah Bernhardt's boudoir looking like a junk-shop. He's got a villa at Beaulieu that you couldn't describe and keep your reputation for veracity."

"And he's black," said Solomon bluntly.

"Not black," protested Lex Smith carefully, "he's lived in a sunny clime, and I guess it has kinder tanned him. His name's Tigiliki, and he calls himself Mr. Tigiliki, though his father was a prince in his native land, which is Ceylon. And he's worth millions of real money, Solly, made it out of tea, and selling his ancestral estates to the hated British planters. He is dark," he confessed, "and he's not what I might call a beauty, but he's got a heart of gold."

Solomon Levinsky shifted uneasily in his chair, and with a jerk of his head summoned a white-aproned waiter. He did not speak till the man returned with the Cognac, and had carefully measured two portions into the empty glasses.

"Give us the real strength of it again," he said.

"I met him in Switzerland," explained Lex, "and that is where I saw her. She was at the Red Cross Headquarters looking after those fool prisoners. Tigiliki saw her one day on the lake and went clean crazy over her, used to send her flowers, candies, and that kind of stuff to her hotel by the car-load."

"And she turned him down?" suggested Levinsky.

"Good and hard," said the cheerful Lex, "say, every morning when the post came, the hotel used to shake. She complained to the Red Cross people, and they passed the word to the British Commissioner or Ambassador, or whatever the guy is, and they put Tigiliki over the frontier into France, having no further use for the same. I came with him. I was sort of attached to him. I saw Molly once, but I knew there was nothing to be gained by persuasion. She is as crazy about a man who was killed in the last attack on Cambrai, and what do you think he was?"

The other shook his head.

"A cop!" said Lex contemptuously, "a low-down copper. Can you beat it!"

"He was killed?"

"Well, as a matter of fact," explained Lex, choosing his words carefully, "he was dead to her. She got a wire saying he was killed, and a printed casualty list. It cost me 250 francs to get the casualty list printed, but the wire was less expensive. Wouldn't you have thought she would have done something desperate? That's where I came in, to advise her, but apparently some old hen in the Red Cross Service supplied all the sympathy she wanted."

"But didn't she write to him?" asked Solomon, "she could find out—"

"There had been a quarrel. She was in Switzerland unknown to the fellow, which I only found out by accident by talking to a girl pal about this affair."

"What do you expect me to do?" asked Levinsky sullenly.

"When she comes you are to have been in the British Army and fought like Hell. You saw Private Johnny Kelly die, and you have some letters in your possession written by him to her. Do you understand?"

Solomon nodded.

"A car will be waiting at the corner of the Rue de la Paix. That looks like it," he nodded his head to a large limousine with bright headlights which was drawn up on the deserted corner opposite. "She will go away with you, and you are to keep her sweet till you reach your destination."

"Where will that be?" asked the other.

"God knows!" said Lex cheerfully, "but it will be somewhere where a Son of Araby hands you a wad of bills, and takes delivery of the goods. You needn't count them because Tigiliki is dead straight where money is concerned. There will be five hundred mile notes, and I shall expect you back at midnight."

Again a pause.

"Fifty-fifty I suppose?"

"Would I offer you any less?" demanded Lex, "here she is!"

He jumped to his feet and his hat flew off.