Читать книгу The Hand of Power - Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

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OUTSIDE the East India Dock Gates lies an area of squalor and meanness which has no exact parallel in any other part of London. It is a district of poor, jerry-built streets, wherein every house is exactly like every other house, save that it is difficult to distinguish which is the grimier.

Lyme Street, which lies midway between Silvertown and Canning Town, was once distinguished by the existence within its narrow length of five distinct public-houses, all of which did a noisy trade. Temperance reformers cited Lyme Street as an object lesson and a terrible example. Visiting social reformers from other lands were led fearfully to its dingy purlieus, and novelists and playwrights sought, amidst its foul approaches, the mise en scène for such deeds of depravity as were necessary to the development of their creations.

Of all the saloons that disgraced a civilised city, The Full Rigged Ship was the worst, and when this infamous house of the crimp and the harpy was purchased by The Christian Society and converted into a Temperance Home for Sailors, there was rejoicing amongst the enemies of drink.

For fourteen years the directors of "Theyome" (as it was called locally) fought a desperate fight to establish an attractive oasis in a desert of sin. All that mortal men could do, they did. There were lectures on Booze, and lectures on Gardens and how to cultivate them; there were most innocuous concerts that began with a hymn and ended with a benediction, and addresses on The Child: What Will He Become? And in spite of all these counter-attractions to the sinful saloons, the heavy trade and the bulk of patronage went to The Five Bells and The Dog Watch and similar alcoholic institutions, where nobody lectured except on the miserable pay of sailormen, and all concerts ended in a free-for-all fight which brought out the police reserves.

Eventually the uplift society "farmed" the home to a knowledgeable ex-purser, who ran it on lines that more nearly approached the seaman's ideal, in spite of his bonded undertaking that no intoxicating liquid should pass the threshold. A club license enabled him to serve surreptitious drink, and, human nature being what it is, the whisper, well circulated, that you could get a drop of good stuff at "Theyome" brought a new patronage, and in the little doorway through which innocent children had tripped to recite to the dazed marine, you could take your secret potion from sin-stained hands.

Chief of the new patrons of the establishment was Captain Harvey Hale, seventy-five by fifty coarse inches of muscle and bone; a red-faced, fishy-eyed, heavy-jawed skipper, without either ship or ticket, for he it was who piled the S.S. Gravalla on to the Dame rocks and stood in thirty-seventy for insurance which the underwriters refused to pay.

It was a grievance which Captain Hale ventilated in moments of insobriety.

"Twelve months' hard labour—for what?" he bellowed. "For losing a ship that was a floating wreck. And me that thought first of my men and had every boat overhauled before we left Sunderland! And lifebelts all in good order and everything! 'Wilfully casting away my ship'! Not a life lost, mind you, and me the last to go over the side in accordance with regulations!"

He did not refer to certain earlier exploits that had come before the court which tried him: of a trial in Calcutta for manslaughter, of a court of inquiry at Seattle for cargo-broaching, and similar irregularities which had been investigated in other latitudes.

"Maybe they'll engage you as a rum-runner," suggested Taylor, the new host of The Home.

Captain Harvey Hale pondered that possibility. "Maybe that's it," he said, "and I'll do it!"

He glanced up at the clock.

"Expecting anybody?" asked the other, and Captain Hale looked at his companion suspiciously.

"Maybe," he said.

He took a letter from his pocket and read, and was in the act of replacing it when he changed his mind, and passed it across to Taylor.

"What do you make of that?" he asked.

Mr. Taylor fixed his glasses and read the typewritten note.

"I can give you a good job with plenty of money, if you're willing to take on an unusual task, that will involve you in personal danger. Will you come out of the Sailors' Home in Lyme Street at 10.30? My agent, Mr. Smith, will be waiting for you."

"What do you make of that?" asked Hale. "Rum-running," said the other promptly. "There's a syndicate in London that is making a fortune out of shipping booze to the States."

Captain Hale pursed his thick lips.

"Doesn't sound like rum-running to me, though you may be right. A poor sailor has got to take what he can get nowadays. Why, I remember the time when I was offered—"

He was boastfully reminiscent and talkative, till, looking up, he saw the hands of the clock at the half-hour, and, rising, threw some money on the table.

"Don't go following me, Taylor," he said ominously, and Mr. Taylor, whose curiosity had been aroused, and who had already made up his mind that he would judge for himself the character and appearance of Hale's visitor, very wisely changed his mind.

There was nobody outside the club when Captain Harvey Hale went on to the street, but opposite he saw a man walking slowly up and down, and the red glow of his cigar suggested that he was the promised agent, for cigars are uncommon, except among American and Scandinavian seamen. After a moment's hesitation he crossed the road in the direction of the stranger, who turned and walked to meet him.

"You're Captain Hale? I am the man you are expecting. Will you walk with me?"

Hale glanced at him curiously. There was nothing in the appearance of the man to suggest that he was engaged in any sinister project.

"Where shall we go?" he grunted.

"Mr. Smith," who evidently knew the neighbourhood, said tersely:

"Across the railroad, toward North Woolwich."

It was he who decided the route, and they reached the stretch of road that led past the sugar factory without encountering more than half-a-dozen people, who were too engrossed in their own business to notice the tall sea captain and his companion.

"This place will do," said the man, and stopped midway between two light standards. "Hale, you're broke; you're just out of prison, and you look like going back again unless you can find a ship. I'll be frank, Captain, and I expect the same from you. You were tried in Calcutta for' killing a young apprentice, and it was suggested in evidence that you had two hundred pounds from the boy's stepfather to finish him. The jury disagreed and you escaped. If you did that for two hundred, how far would you go for five thousand pounds?"

"To hell—and through," said Harvey Hale promptly. "Who do you want killed?"

The stranger laughed.

"My friend, that is a big question, easy enough to ask, but hard to answer."

"I'm not going back to prison again if I can help it," growled the big man. "That's not my life. Give me any kind of job—rum-running—" he paused, inviting confirmation, but the stranger shook his head.

"I'm not interested in rum-running," he said, and Hale was momentarily taken aback.

"I don't care what it is," he said at last. "Give me a job with five thousand in it, and there's nothing I'll stop at. I mean what I say. I've never gone back on my promise. Look what they did to me over the sinking of that ship. I could have got the owner twenty years, but I didn't blab; and when I went in to see him this morning to get a look at the money, he threatened to call the police."

"You went to him this morning to work a little blackmail," said the other coolly. "You got a thousand to keep your mouth shut at the trial, and, like a fool, you handed it over to the lady you called your wife."

"If ever I get hold of her—" began Hale, with an oath.

"I daresay you'll treat her rough. But you won't: she's skipped to Canada—I know all about you, Hale; I've been studying you for the past month or two. Now the question is, are you going to work for me?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"Anything and everything. Can you drive a car?"

"There isn't a car that was ever built—" began Hale.

"You may be useful in that respect. And here is another point: you suggested just now that you'd commit murder for five thousand. If that's a bluff, I may call it. You'll get five thousand, and you will be asked to do things which will mean a sentence of penal servitude if you're caught. But it isn't five thousand that you're getting, Hale, if the scheme for which we want you goes through; it is fifty thousand, and a free transportation to a country where you'll never be recognised, and from which you will not be extradited."

Harvey Hale was sober now.

"Fifty thousand!" he said hoarsely. "You don't mean that?"

"I mean that and nothing less. Five thousand certain; you can touch the money at the rate of a thousand a week. And fifty thousand if we can pull off our big job. Are you game?"

Hale held out his big paw.

"Is there anything worse than murder?" he asked. "Because, if there is, I'll do it!"

There was a silence, then:

"Walk with me," said the stranger abruptly, and turned his footsteps towards North Woolwich. "I suppose you know few people in town—few well-known people, I mean?"

"I know a judge and a lawyer or two," said Hale bitterly, "but I don't know any of the swells."

"You will probably be brought into contact with a few," his new employer continued, "and I will give you the names of some you must avoid like the plague. Do you know Lord Lowbridge? Of course you don't. He is a particularly dangerous man, who had better be left alone."

"I'm not likely to meet any lords," growled the other.

"You never know, but keep out of the sight of him. He is never to know that you're employed by me—is that understood? Now here are your instructions. You will leave the house where you're staying, buy some clothes and make yourself presentable, and then take the first train for Newton Abbot—that is in Devonshire. You will put up at a small hotel, giving out that you are a sea captain who is thinking of buying a farm. You will be able to buy a second-hand car somewhere in the neighbourhood."

"What am I supposed to do with that?" asked Hale, thoroughly interested now.

"You'll get acquainted with all the roads out of Newton Abbot and across the moor; work your way to Exeter, and possibly we shall ask you to purchase a moor cottage, but it is too early to talk of that. When we want you, you will know."

He stopped under the light of a street lamp, took something wrapped in tissue paper from his waistcoat pocket, opened it carefully and displayed a small, five-pointed star. It was enamelled green, and in the centre was a golden inscription.

"Keep that," he said. "Show it to nobody—do you understand? In due course you will find a very good use for it. There is one other thing, Hale: in Plymouth there is a branch of a society called The Proud Sons of Ragusa." "I've heard about that; lots of seafaring men go in for it. They run a lottery scheme—" began Hale, but the other interrupted him.

"Join up, either in your own or any other name. If you're too well known in Plymouth, go to Penzance and join the lodge there. You will find plenty of men who will propose you."

"What's the idea?" asked Hale, peering down suspiciously into the man's face.

"The first idea is that you do as you're told," was the sharp answer. "That seems a pretty good idea to me; how does it strike you?"