Читать книгу The Cat Burglar and Other Stories - Edgar Wallace - Страница 3

Table of Contents

Old Tom Burkes used to say to Elsah, his daughter: "Easy grabbing is good grabbing. Nobody was ever ruined by taking small profits."

After his eighth whisky old Tom was rather oracular. He would sit before the fire in the shabby little dining-room at Elscombe Crescent (Mayfair by telephone, Bayswater by bus), and pass across such cultured pearls of wisdom.

"You can't expect millionaires to marry—especially if they've been married before. This Poynting's got money and a family. Families are always a just cause an' impediment. If he wants to make you happy by givin' me a directorship—let him."

So that when, in a moment of mental aberration, Colonel J.C. Poynting pressed upon her for acceptance the emerald bar which caused all the trouble, Elsah accepted. She made some faint protest... One shouldn't (she murmured) accept such a present even from so dear a friend unless... unless...

Colonel Poynting did not fill the gap. He was an infatuated old gentleman, but for the moment infatuation was held in check by an uneasy-sense of family.

"You'd better insure that," said Elsah's wise father. "It's worth three thousand if it is worth a cent."

Prudently, Elsah followed his advice—which was also unfortunate.

Most unfortunate of all, a few weeks later Colonel Poynting very nervously requested her to return the bar—his daughter had asked to see it... he would return it to Elsah.

"Perhaps," said her cynical parent.

That night the bar was stolen. It was taken from her dressing-table by some person or persons unknown. This information she conveyed to the Colonel by express letter. The Colonel replied in person, arriving in a taxi and a state of nervous perspiration. Accompanying him was a detective.

And that was where the real trouble started. For the detective asked horrid questions, and Elsah wept pitifully, and the Colonel not only comforted her but proposed marriage. On the whole, it would have been better if he had been content with the loss of the emeralds.

Now, here is a point for all mystery-mongers to note. Up to the moment the loss of the emerald bar was reported. Miss Dorothy Poynting had never considered Elsah as anything more than a safe dancing partner for fathers, and knew nothing whatever about the bar having been given to that enterprising lady.

The two shocks came almost simultaneously. Dorothy Poynting's reactions to the announcement were rather inhuman and wholly at variance with Colonel Poynting's ideas of what a daughter's attitude should be when he condescends—there is no other word for it, or at any rate the Colonel could find no other word—to inform her that he contemplated marrying again.

He told her this at dinner, stammering and coughing and talking quite fiercely at moments, though at other moments he was pleading.

"She's rather young, but she's a real good sort. If you feel... um...that you'd be happier away... elsewhere... living somewhere else, you can have the flat in Portland Place, and of course Sonningstead is yours..."

Dorothy surveyed her father thoughtfully. He was good-looking, in a way—pink of skin, white-haired, slim, invariably tailor-right. She wished he was fat; there is nothing quite as effective as a noticeable rotundity for reducing the conscious ego.

He was very vain about his waist and his small feet and nicely modeled hands. They were twiddling now with the spotless gardenia in his buttonhole.

"Elsah Burkes is a dear girl," defiantly. "You may not like her: I hardly expected that you would. It is a tremendous compliment to me that she should, so to speak, sacrifice her—um—youth..."

"It may also be a tremendous compliment to the Poynting Traction Company," said Dorothy gently.

He was infuriated. He told her so. He was so mild a man that she had no other means of knowing.

"I'm simply furious with you! Because a gel's poor... I'm sorry I consulted you..."

She smiled at this. How annoyingly she could smile! And she dusted her white georgette lap before she rose, took a cigarette from the table and lit it.

"Dear old darling," she said, waving the smoking thing airily, "would you have told me if you had not to explain how dear Elsah came to be robbed of a large emerald bar—mother's bar? You had to explain that away—"

"There is no need whatever " he began, with well-modulated violence.

She waved him to comparative quiet.

"It was in all the newspapers. The moment I saw that Elsah had lost an emerald bar I was suspicious. When I saw the photographs, I knew. With all your money, daddy, you might have bought her a bushel of emeralds. It was intensely heartless and vulgar to give away a jewel that was my mother's. That is all." She flicked ash into the fireplace. "Also—don't get vexed with me—it was singularly prudent of Elsah to insure the bar the moment it came into her possession."

"You are going too far," said her father in his awful voice.

"As far as Portland Place, if you go on with this absurd marriage. Or perhaps I'll go out into the world and do something romantic, such as work for my living."

John Venner came in at that moment. Elsah and he arrived together.

She was rather tall and Junoesque—which means on the way to plumpness—red- haired, white-skinned, flashing-eyed.

"That woman," said Dorothy, in a critical mood, "has made radiance a public nuisance."

She said this to John Venner: he was rather charitable. Nothing quite exasperates a woman so much as misapplied charity. And it is invariably misapplied when employed in the defense of another woman.

John was a Guardsman, a nicely mannered young man who had so much money that he could never marry well.

"I think you're deuced unkind to old Elsah," he said.

With difficulty Dorothy remembered that she was a lady.

Elsah had similar views. She asked her future step-daughter whether they might go to Dorothy's bedroom and have a real heart-to-heart talk. Dorothy checked an inclination to suggest the meat pantry.

"Because you see, darling"—Elsah sat picturesquely on the bed and exhibited her nice legs—"I must get right with you! I know you loathe me, and I told Clarence—"

"Who's Clarence?" asked the dazed Dorothy.

"Your dear daddy," cooed Elsah.

"Good God!" said Dorothy, shocked. "I never realized that! Well, you told Clarence—"

Elsah swallowed something.

"I told your dear father that he mustn't expect you to... well..."

"Hang out the flags?" suggested Dorothy.

"That's rather vulgar, isn't it!" Elsah would not have been human if she had failed to protest. "I do hope you and I are going to be great friends. Won't you come round and dine one night with father and me? He's such a dear..."

All that sort of stuff.

Dorothy listened and wondered, as Elsah told her of the terrible shock it had been to her when she found the bar had vanished, and of what perfect dears the insurance people had been. She had no intention then of calling on Elsah or her father. Two days later, without rhyme or reason, she made her appearance at Elscombe Crescent. Elsah was out, but her plump father was in.

"Cer'n'ly," murmured Mr. Burke drowsily. "Show'rin... who d'ye say 'twas!"

He had been celebrating at luncheon the forthcoming prosperity to his family. Conscious that somebody had come into the room, he jerked himself into semi- wakefulness.

"Elsah, old girl," he droned, "as I've off'n said, grab whils' the grabbin's good."

He said other things, and Dorothy stood stock-still and listened until Mr. Burkes began to snore.

Not in dark cellars with blanketed windows and secret exits do great robber gangs hold their meetings; behind no tiled doors with guards within and without do they confer across a greasy table, with loaded revolvers and bright knives at hand to deal with intruders.

Old Tom Burkes had never possessed a pistol in his life, and he regarded the employment of knives, bright or otherwise, as "foreign." He had, in his unregenerate youth, employed a length of lead piping on the helmeted head of a policeman, but he was not proud of the exploit.

The robbers' cave for the moment was the rather ornate restaurant of Emilio, which is near to the Strand. It was a place of bright lights, in the rays of which silver and glass glittered on snowy napery; there were flowers set in rather florid German-silver cornucopias on every table, and behind the red plush seats that ran along the wall, large mirrors on which landscapes and things were painted so extensively that a lady could not see herself powdering her nose except by dodging between obese swans and glittering minarets.

The robber fare was crème duchesse, sole au bonne femme, and poulet curry au casserole.

Tom had black coffee to follow; Morgan, being younger and less opulent, seized the opportunity to order pêche melba at another man's expense.

Tom fetched a plethoric sigh, tapped off the ash of his cigar into the coffee saucer, and made another regretful reference to "Lou."

"What a woman!" he said.

There was both admiration and awe in his tone. He was stout and bald. His red face was rather furrowed; in his prominent blue eyes at the moment was a hint of tragedy. Morgan, being younger, was less easily harrowed by the misfortune of his fellows. He was a mean-faced man of thirty, painfully thin, with large red hands that were mostly knuckle.

"If she'd stuck by her friends," he said, "them that was her real friends, she'd have been out and about, havin' dinner with us—"

"Lunch," murmured Mr. Burkes. "And at the Carlton. Lou believed in the best. Ah!"

He sighed again.

There was more than a hint of sycophancy in "Slip" Morgan's attitude and speech. They called him "Slip" because he was slippery, and because he was so thin that legend had it he had once slipped through the most closely set steel bars that ever protected a bank vault.

"Lou was thoughtless," said Tom, himself very thoughtful. "She was too confident. She was inclined, if I might say so, to forget her jewties. I said to her only a month ago: 'Lou, I want you for a big job, so keep yourself free- -round about New Year's Day. There's grand money in it, and I can't work without you.'—"

Mr. Morgan uttered impatient sounds.

"I'd have thought " he began.

Tom did not want to know what he thought.

"She told me she'd got a job to do for Rinsey, and I told her he was a careless worker, an' warned her. I gave her fifty on account—the money's lost, but I don't mind that, Slip—and I got to work to make the job sweet." He groaned, deliberately it seemed, for he took his cigar from his mouth. "And now, with this footman feller givin' me all I wanted, where the devil is Lou?"

Slip hastened to supply the information.

"Don't be a pie-can," said Mr. Burkes testily. "I know she's in Holloway. Six months ain't much, and she ought to have got a laggin'. But where'm I goin' to find The Gel!"

Slip smiled.

"It's nothin' to laugh about," said Tom. His sourness was justified.

"I got her," said Slip simply.

Tom removed his cigar again.

"You got her?" skeptically. "Maggie Swarty or Gay Joyler or one of them lot! Is anybody goin' to think they're ladies? You want your head shaved!"

"T got her," said Slip again, and added: "A lady."

Tom's nose wrinkled.

"What you think's a lady an' what is a lady is about the differentest thing that ever happened," he said.

But Slip was not offended.

"This one's a real lady. She's pretty and young and plays the pianner," he said impressively. "And she's on the crook, and is ready for anything except funny business."

"Except what?"

"Funny business—love-makin', hand-holdin', cuddlin'," said Mr. Morgan comprehensively.

Tom looked at him suspiciously.

"I ain't tried," Slip was in haste to assure his superior. "One of the other lodgers asked her to go to the pictures. She told him to go to hell!"

"A lady!" murmured Mr. Burkes, closing his eyes like one in pain.

"She's a lady. I got sweet with the maid who looks after her room, and what do you think I found out?"

Tom shook his head, and Slip searched in his pocket and produced fantastically shaped pieces of paper which he maneuvered so that they formed the torn half of a note-sheet.

Mr. Burkes laboriously extracted his pince-nez, fixed them to his nose, opened his mouth (as he did when he was thus engaged), and read:

"Send back the brooch, and no further action will be taken..."

"Written on good paper," said Mr. Burkes, an authority on such matters, "by a woman—she's a maid or something. That's why you thought she was a lady."

Slip argued with great earnestness, and in the end Tom was half convinced. There was an admitted difficulty as regards the approach, but Slip, a man of tact and resource, was confident that all obstacles would be overcome.

Miss Mary Smith was not an easy proposition. Since she had taken a certain jewel from Elsah Burkes' dressing-table, she had been living in retirement, with three thousand pounds' worth of emeralds pinned, if not in the vacuity of her heart, on the garment which enfolded it.

She had changed her lodgings as often as she had changed her name, once with great rapidity, when Elsah had located her and had come later, bearing an offer of forgiveness in exchange for the big green bar. Unfortunately, she did not bear the message which Mary required.

It would be rather awkward, mused Mary Smith, as she sat on the edge of her bed in a Bloomsbury lodging, if Miss Burkes really did put the police on her track; but, on the other hand, how could Elsah explain certain matters... ?

To her cogitations intruded the deferential knocking of the parlor- maid.

"Yes?" asked Mary Smith imperiously.

The maid entered.

"The gentleman says could he have a few words with you?"

She slid a card across the table. Mary read, and was unimpressed:

Mr. Featherlow-Morgan. New Amsterdam Board of Control.

There was a vagueness about Mr. Morgan's exact status which she overlooked. She went down to a hole in the wall of the entrance lobby [which was known as the lounge.

Mr. Morgan understood women: shilly-shallying was a mistake that led to failure. He believed in the direct or knock-out method.

"Good evening, miss," he said respectfully. "I'd like to have a few words with you."

She waited.

"I never beat about the bush"—Slip could not afford to lose time. "Heard about Miss Burkes? I'll bet you haven't! I'll bet you don't know her!"

"You've won your bet," said Mary Smith calmly. "Aren't you awfully excited?"

Such a response was naturally disconcerting. Happily he could cover his momentary confusion. He groped wildly in an inside pocket, brought out a red morocco case, and flicked it open. Between visiting-cards, of which he carried a variety, was a newspaper cutting. This he drew out and flourished at her.

"Read that," he commanded.

Mary Smith took the slip. He saw her brows gathered in a puzzled frown. Then she started to read aloud:

"...with every suit we present an extra pair of pants warranted wear-resisting..."

"You're reading the wrong side of the paper," said Slip testily. She turned the cutting over.

"The police are searching for an emerald bar, which was stolen from Miss Elsah Burkes' dressing-table, possibly by cat burglars, last week, and have circulated the following description of the missing jewelry... The bar is worth £3000, and the insurance underwriters are offering a reward of £200 for its recovery. Miss Burkes, who is engaged to be married to Colonel Poynting, the shipping magnate, says that although the property is insured, it has a sentimental value which is beyond calculation."

She handed the cutting back.

"Sentiment is the ruin of the leisured classes," she said, and he laughed admiringly. It was not a pleasant laugh, being a succession of "huh-huhs" that ended in a violent cough.

"That's the way to look at it. Do you know Colonel Poynting?"

She first hesitated, then nodded.

"Do you know his house in Park Lane—ever been there?"

"I know the house very well," she said. Her eyes were asking questions.

"I am a plain man " he began, and she nodded, he thought a little offensively, and for a moment was thrown out of his stride. "What I mean to say is, that there's no sense in beating about the bush."

"You did say it, some time ago," she said.

Very few women could rattle Slip Morgan. She did.

"You're on the hook and so am I," he said firmly. "I know all about that emerald bar that you've got pinned on your—"

"Don't let us be indelicate," said Mary Smith. "Yes, you know all about it? Well?"

"If you want a hundred pounds for an hour's work, the job's waiting for you. All you've got to do is to go to Colonel Poynting's house. We'll fake a card of invitation. Just walk about amongst the swells, and give a certain friend of mine the office when he can come in. Do you see what I mean?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "The only thing that's pretty clear is that you want me to go to Mr. Poynting's house, and that of course I shan't do. In the first place " She paused, and shook her head again. "No, I can't do it."

Slip smiled. They still had the ^lounge" to themselves, but the chances were that they would not enjoy this privacy for long.

"I'll tell you what," he said confidentially. You think you'll be recognized?" And, when she agreed, he patted her lightly on the arm. She brushed her sleeve so ostentatiously, so deliberately, that he did not repeat this gesture of friendliness and comradeship.

"It's the fancy-dress ball " he began.

"0h!"

Evidently she knew all about the fancy-dress ball, for he saw her mouth open a little.

"0f course, masks! How amusing!" She looked at Slip with a new interest. "Your friend is on the hook, you said? Does that mean he's hanged or he's going to be hanged! Or do I understand that your friend is not exactly honest?"

"Don't be comic," said the inelegant Mr. Morgan, "and don't play the dairymaid on me. Innocence is all very well in its place. The question is, will you do it—there's a hundred pounds for you—fifty down and fifty after the job?"

She was pinching her lower lip, looking at, and slightly through, Slip Morgan.

"Do I understand that your friend is going to?" She waited for him to suggest the proper phrase, which he did.

"He's going to do a job at Colonel Poynting's house in Park Lane."

"And that I'm to go inside and signal—how?"

"Through the winder," said Slip. "It's easy.

You just stroll up to the winder—"

""Window," she murmured.

"'Winder's' good enough for me," he snarled. "Pull out a handkerchief and sort of rub your nose with it. But you mustn't do that till Colonel Poynting gives away the prizes for the first fancy dress, because everybody will be down in the drawing-room then. Now do you get me?"

She had got him. And once she was interested, she became almost enthusiastic. She arranged to meet Mr. Thompson that night (Tom Burkes' temporary nom de guerre). She would go, she thought, as a pierrot or a pierrette.

"It isn't exactly original," she said.

"That doesn't matter," replied Slip, "so long as it's clean."

So were arranged the preliminaries of one of the neatest cat burglaries that had ever been engineered. Upstairs in Mr. Poynting's study was a safe, and in that safe he kept a considerable sum of money.

Park Lane is not, as some people imagine, a center of wild and hectic gaiety. It is a thoroughfare mainly inhabited by people who are rich enough to live somewhere else. Year in and year out their white blinds are drawn, their furniture is shrouded in holland sheeting. A vulgar few live in their houses, but as a rule they do not give parties. Colonel Poynting's fancy-dress ball was, therefore, so unusual an event that the police hardly knew where to park the cars.

The Colonel received his guests at the head of the big staircase, and he was arrayed, spiritually and materially, in the toga of a Roman father, as he explained to the worried young Guardsman, who wore nothing more symbolical than a dress suit. The Colonel explained between speeches of welcome addressed to his arriving guests.

"I neither know nor care where Dorothy has gone," he said firmly. "You saw the letter she wrote to Elsah—or rather, started to write?—• How d'ye do! How d'ye do!—Happily, I came into the library when she had been called away to the telephone, and read it.—Glad to see you, Lady Carl... how d'ye do!—No daughter of mine can tell my fiancee—order her, in fact—to give up her father—"

"He's an awful old bounder," said Mr. Venner mistakenly.

"I'm referring to myself," said the Colonel. "I mean Dorothy's father—not Elsah's father... how d'ye do! I'm glad to see you... No, Venner; I will not have it... how d'ye do. Miss... um... ?"

The newcomer was a masked lady, who flashed a smile and waved a hand before she disappeared.

"What good legs that girl's got!" said the Colonel. "Terribly good legs!... As I was saying, she left my house, and I've reason to believe that she is persecuting poor Elsah—the dear girl says nothing, but I can guess. If I could only get at Dorothy... ah, darling!"

Darling looked rather worried, and this in spite of the assurance of her parent that she had nothing to worry about. So far as he was concerned, he would keep sober until after the ceremony. Not that this troubled her. She drew the Roman father to a convenient alcove, and a host of clowns and devils and Venetian ladies arrived unwelcomed.

"Yes, my dear"—the Colonel patted her hand— * everything is in order. I had the license from the Bishop's office this afternoon. Have your baggage at Victoria... Simplon Express—you know Italy? A glorious place!"

For the moment Italy meant less to Elsah than a pint of pure mud.

"Dorothy hasn't... written?" She was rather breathless, showed appropriate symptoms of nervous apprehension (she was honoring Ophelia in the matter of costume) and a tenseness which he understood.

"You need not trouble your pretty head about my foolish child," he said. "She has neither written nor called."

And here a gathering of Mephistopheles, pierrots, Henry the Eighths, and a Gentleman of the Regency at the head of the stairs sent him to perform the host's duties.

The masked girl sought no friend. She found malicious pleasure in the sight of a disconsolate young Guardsman equally unattached. She danced with a Romeo, a pre-historic man, and a Lord Nelson, and was depressed by the spectacle of an Ophelia in the arms of a Roman father.

Colonel Poynting's fancy-dress ball was an annual affair; the prize- giving for the best costume had developed into a ritual. At half-past eleven the three sycophantic friends who made the choice led the modest Ophelia to the cleared center of the ballroom.

"My friends!"

The Roman father cleared his voice and stroked the moustache which had come into fashion since the days of Augustus.

"My friends, on this joyous occasion—er—and on the eve of what may be the turning-point of my life, I have great pleasure in awarding as a prize a replica of that jewel which was so unhappily lost by the fair choice of the judges."

A disinterested observer might have demanded (and many who were not disinterested did ask sotto voce) whether Colonel Poynting had foreknowledge of how the judging would go.

"This replica—"

"Why not have the original, daddy?"

The Colonel turned with a jump. The masked lady was unmasked.

"Dorothy!" he squeaked. "Really...!"

Slowly she held something to view. It was the emerald bar.

"If the insurance has been paid to your lady friend," she said, "This belongs to the underwriters."

"Where... where did you find it?" stammered the Colonel.

Dorothy looked at the crowd of revellers, stepped nearer to her father, and lowered her voice.

"It was never lost," she said—only the Colonel and the pallid Elsah heard; "I found it in her bedroom—between mattress and overlay—and Mr. Burkes was foolish enough to tell me how useful the insurance money would be!"

"That's a lie!" gasped Elsah. "You're—you're—"

The Colonel stopped her. He was as dignified as a toga and a wreath of roses would allow him to be.

"I will hear no word against Elsah," he said. "We are to be married tomorrow."

Dorothy stared at him.

"But, daddy, not until you make inquiries... you must wait..."

Colonel Poynting smiled.

"My dear," he said, almost playfully, "in my safe upstairs, and in my cash- box, is a little piece of paper signed by the Bishop of London. Come, come, my dear; tell Elsah you're sorry that you made such a ridiculous charge."

"In your cash-box?" she said slowly.

Turning, she walked to the window, drew aside the heavy curtains, and waved her hand.

"My dear!" said her father, in alarm. He thought for a moment that she contemplated suicide and was taking farewell of the world.

"Now let everybody sit down and talk," said Dorothy, coming back to the group. "Tommy Venner—do something for me! Call everybody in—servants, everybody."

The Colonel moved uneasily. "You're not going to make a scene..." Dorothy laughed.

"I'm going to drink the health of my friend Tom," she said mysteriously.

Just off Park Lane a taxi was waiting. Tom Burkes strolled negligently towards and entered the vehicle. As the cab drove off, Slip Morgan, who had been waiting nervously in the dark interior, asked a question.

"There it is," said Tom, and dropped the heavy cash-box on the floor. "That gel's a good worker. I'll hand it to her."

"Gels'll do anything for me," said Slip complacently.