Читать книгу Big Foot - Edgar Wallace - Страница 5

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THE Temple, on a day in early summer, with a blue sky overhead, is a very pleasant and drowsily restful place. For there are rooks in Temple Gardens, and the green leaves of the trees that wave their branches over the worn flagstones are translucent in the sunlight, and the fountain splashes musically. The grim fronts of ancient buildings, so menacing in the thin fogs of February, take on a bland beauty of their own, so that hurrying lawyers in their grey wigs and long black gowns hesitate on the threshold of their own offices in momentary doubt as to whether or not they have, in a moment of aberration, wandered into some strange and more charming locality than that to which use has accustomed them.

Jim Ferraby, strolling at leisure from Fleet Street to his rooms in King's Bench Walk, paused by the fountain to rescue a small girl's hat from destruction, and passed on, whistling softly, his hands deep in his pockets, his brow unruffled, a good-looking and contented young man on the indiscreet side of thirty.

He reached the walk, paused again on the stone steps of his chambers, and surveyed, with evidence of approval, the silvery stretch of river visible from this point. Then he slowly mounted the gloomy stairs, and, stopping before a heavy black door, pulled a massive key from his pocket and inserted it in the huge lock.

He was twisting the key when he heard the door open on the opposite side of the landing, and, looking round, flashed a smile at the girl who stood in the open doorway.

"Morning, Miss Leigh," he said cheerfully.

The girl nodded. "Good morning, Mr. Ferraby."

Her voice was very soft and curiously sweet. It was Elfa Leigh's voice which had first attracted him to old Cardew's secretary. He agreed with himself that this too was the principal attraction; and the fact that she had the kind of face that artists draw but men seldom see, and a straight figure which was lovely in spite of its slimness; that she had grey eyes set wide apart and almost Oriental in the slant and depth of them had nothing to do with his interest in the sole member of Mr. Gordon Cardew's office staff.

Their acquaintance, extending over a year, had begun on that dusty landing, and had progressed with a certain primness.

There was really no reason why old Mr. Cardew (he was really fifty-eight, but fifty-eight is very old to the twenties) should have an office in King's Bench Walk, for he was a nonpractising member of his profession. Once upon a time the firm of Cardew and Cardew had enjoyed a clientele unequalled in quality and wealth in the whole of London. They had been agents for great estates, trustees of vast properties, legal representatives of powerful corporations, but during the war the last of the Cardews had grown weary of his responsibilities and had transferred his clients to a younger and, as he said, more robust firm of solicitors. He might have followed the traditions of the profession and taken a partner, preserving the name of a house that had existed for one hundred and fifty years. He preferred to wash his hands of his practice, and the large gloomy office on King's Bench Walk was now exclusively devoted to the conduct of his own prosperous affairs—for Mr. Gordon Cardew was a man of some substance.

"I suppose you won your case and the poor man has gone to prison?"

They stood now in opposite doorways, and their voices echoed across the hollow hallway.

"I lost my case;" said Jim calmly, "and the 'poor man' is now, in all probability, drinking beer and sneering at the law he cheated."

She stared at him.

"Oh...I'm sorry!...I mean, I'm not sorry that the man is free, but that you lost. Mr. Cardew said he was certain to be convicted. Did the other side bring fresh evidence? What a shame!"

She talked cold-bloodedly of 'the other side', as lawyer's clerk to lawyer.

"The other side brought fresh evidence," said Jim deliberately. "Sullivan was acquitted because I prosecuted him. The truth is, Miss Leigh, I have a criminal mind, and all the time I was talking against him, I was thinking for him. It is the first case in which I have ever appeared for the State, and it will be the last. The judge said in his summing up that my speech for the prosecution was the only reasonable defence that the prisoner had made. Sullivan should have gone to jail for a year, instead of which he is going about the country stealing ducks."

"Ducks?...I thought it was a case of attempted burglary?"

She was puzzled.

"I quoted an ancient non sequitur. I'm a ruined man, Miss Leigh—I have the brain of a master criminal combined with the high moral outlook of a Welsh revivalist. From now on I'm just a nameless official at the office of the Public Prosecutor."

She laughed softly at his solemn declaration, and at that moment came a firm step on the stair and, looking down, Jim saw the shining top of Mr. Cardew's immaculate hat.

A grave, esthetic face, eyes that gleamed good-humouredly from under shaggy brows, a punctilious neatness of attire, and a pedantic exactness of speech—that was Mr. Gordon Cardew.

His furled umbrella was under his arm, his hands were clasped behind him as he came up the stairs, and momentarily his face was clouded. Looking up, he saw the young man.

"Hullo, Ferraby, your man got off, they tell me?"

"Bad news travels fast," growled Jim. "Yes, sir: my chief is furious!"

"And so he should be," said Cardew, with the ghost of a smile in his fine eyes. "I met Jebbings, the Treasury counsel. He said...well, never mind what he said. It isn't my business to make bad feeling between members of the Bar. Good morning, Miss Leigh. Is there any urgent business? No? Come in, Ferraby."

Jim followed the lawyer into his cosily furnished room. Mr. Cardew closed the door behind him, opened a cigar-box and pushed it towards the young lawyer.

"You're unfitted for the job of prosecuting the guilty," he said with a quizzical smile: "Socially and financially, there is no reason why you should follow a profession at all. So I don't think, if I were you, that I should worry very much about what happened at the Central Criminal Court today. I am naturally interested in the case, because Mr. Stephen Elson is a neighbour of mine—a somewhat overbearing American gentleman, a little lacking in polish but a good fellow, they tell me. He will be annoyed."

Jim shook his head helplessly. "I've a kink somewhere," he said, in despair. "My sympathies are on the side of law and order, and in the office I gloat over every hanging I've brought about. In court my intellect was working double shifts to discover excuses for this brute—excuses that I myself would have advanced if I was in his position."

Mr. Cardew smiled reprovingly. "When a prosecuting lawyer gets up and casts doubt upon the infallibility of the finger-print system—"

"Did I?" asked Jim, flushing guiltily. "Lord! I seem to have made a hash of it!"

"I think you have," was the dry response. "You don't drink port so early in the morning?" And, as Jim declined, Cardew opened a cupboard, took out a black and dusty bottle, carefully wiped a glass and filled it with ruby-coloured liquid.

"I have yet another interest in Sullivan," he said. "As you probably know, I am—er—something of a student of anthropology. In fact, I rather flatter myself that there is a good detective wasted in me. And really, when one sees the type of man who occupies important positions in the police force, one wishes that the system was reorganized so that persons of ripe experience and—er—erudition could find an opportunity for exercising their talents. We have a man in charge of my division who is simply..."

Words failed him. He could only shrug helplessly, and Jim, who knew Superintendent Minter, concealed his amusement. It was common knowledge that Sooper had a most profound contempt for all amateurs and theorists: it was the attitude of the good workman towards the indifferent artist. And on one occasion he had been offensive (Mr. Cardew described it as "boorish") over a matter of anthropology.

"Man, ye're childish!" snarled Sooper, when Mr. Cardew had mildly suggested that a cracked voice and a bright, hard eye were inseparable from a certain type of criminal. Mr. Cardew often said that such an unpardonable act of rudeness was difficult to forgive.

Jim was wondering what was the reason for this unexpected invitation into Cardew's private office—it was his first visit, though he had known the lawyer off and on for five years—and that the invitation had a special meaning was obvious from the older man's behaviour. He was obviously worried—and nervous, pacing the room with irresolute steps, and stopping now and again to adjust some paper on his desk or to move a chair to a different position.

"All the way up to town you have been in my mind," he said suddenly, "and I have been wondering whether or not I should consult you. You know my housekeeper, Hannah Shaw?"

Jim remembered very well, the sulky-faced woman, who spoke in monosyllables, and who, ever since he had spoken well of Sooper, had never made any attempt to hide her dislike for him.

Mr. Cardew was eyeing him keenly. "You don't like her," he stated, rather than asked. "She was rather annoying to you the last time you came, eh? My chauffeur, who is something of a gossip, told me that she had snapped at you. Undoubtedly she is snappy and dour, and a most disagreeable person. But she suits me in many ways, and is, moreover, a legacy from my dear wife—she took her out of an orphan asylum when she was a child, and Hannah has been practically brought up in my home. With all respect I might liken her to one of those Aberdeen terriers that snaps at everybody except his master."

He put his hand in his pocket, took out a leather case, opened it and showed some papers, and finally spread one on the table.

"I am taking you into my confidence," he said, and looked up again at the door to see if it was closed. "Read this."

It was a sheet of common paper. It bore no address or date of any kind. There were three hand-printed lines of writing, which ran:

'I have warned you twice.

This is the last time.

You have driven me to desperation.'

The note was signed "Big Foot".

"Big Foot? Who is Big Foot?" asked Jim, as he read the note again. "Your housekeeper has been threatened—she showed you this?"

Mr. Cardew shook his head. "No, it came into my possession in a curious way. On the first of every month Hannah brings me the household bills, places them on the desk in my study, and I write out cheques for the tradesmen. She has a habit of carrying bills around in her pocket and her bag, and scrambling them together at the last moment—she is the reverse of methodical. This letter was in the folds of a grocer's bill: she must have taken it hurriedly from her bag without realizing that she was giving me a private letter."

"Have you spoken to her?"

Mr. Cardew frowned and shook his head.

"No," he hesitated, "I haven't. In a clumsy way I have hinted to her that, if she is ever in any kind of trouble, she must come to me, but Hannah just snarled at me—there is no other word, she snarled! It was—well, not to put too fine a point upon it, impertinent." He sighed heavily. "I hate new faces," he said, "and I should be very sorry to lose Hannah. If she had adopted another attitude, I should, of course, have told her of my discovery. And now, to be perfectly honest, I am scared to tell her that one of her letters is in my possession. We have had one serious disagreement over a stupid joke of hers. The next will end our association. What do you make of the letter?"

"From a blackmailer of some kind," suggested Jim. "The letter is written with the left hand with the object of disguising the writing. I think you ought to ask her for an explanation."

"Ask Hannah?" repeated Mr. Cardew in tones of alarm. "Great heavens, I dare not! No, the only thing I can do is to keep my eyes open, and at the first opportunity, when I get her in an amiable mood—and she is amiable at least twice a year—broach the subject—"

"Why not consult the police?" asked Jim.

Mr. Cardew stiffened. "Minter?" he suggested icily. "That uncouth, unimaginative policeman? Really, my dear fellow. No, if there is any mystery in the matter, I think—I rather think—that I am capable of probing the thing to its depths. And there is a mystery outside of, or consequent upon, this letter."

He looked at the door, behind which his innocent secretary was working, and lowered his voice.

"As you know, I have a little bungalow on the foreshore of Pawsey Bay. It used to be an old coastguard station. I bought it for a song during the war, and have spent some very pleasant hours there. I go there very seldom nowadays, and usually I give my servants the use of the place. In fact, my secretary, Miss Leigh, had it for a week last year, and went down with some girl friends. Most unexpectedly, Hannah came to me this morning and asked if she could have the bungalow from Saturday to Monday. She has not been there in years; she hates the place, and told me as much only a week ago. Now I'm wondering whether that sudden trip to the coast has not something to do with the letter."

"Have her watched," suggested Jim, "by private detectives," he made haste to amend his suggestion.

"I have considered that," replied Cardew thoughtfully, "but I am loath to spy on her. Remember she has been in my service for nearly twenty years. Of course, I've given her permission, though I am a little worried in view of these facts. Usually Hannah spends her spare time driving about the country in an old Ford—my chauffeur taught her to drive some years ago—so that it isn't a change of air she wants. I pay her well; she could afford to stay at a good hotel, and there is no reason whatever why she should go to Pawsey, unless, of course, it is to meet this mysterious Big Foot. Do you know, I sometimes think that she is a little..." he tapped his forehead.

Jim was still wondering why he had been consulted: he now learnt.

"I am giving a little dinner-party on Friday at Barley Stack, and I want you to come down and—er—use your eyes. Two heads are better than one. You may see something which escaped me."

Jim's mind was busy hunting up excuses when Cardew went on: "You won't mind meeting Miss Leigh socially? My secretary I mean—she is coming down to index a new library I bought the other day at Sotheby's. A complete set of Mantagazza's works...."

"I'll be delighted," said Mr. James Ferraby with great heartiness.