Читать книгу The Flying Squad - Edgar Wallace - Страница 9

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"I—" he began, and then he heard the telephone ring in his bedroom.

There were two phones there and a small house-wire. Of the two, one rang with a deep, resonant note, and this was the one that Mark never liked to hear.

He had some excellent agents—excellent in the quality of their services, however deficient they might be in the qualities which are usually associated with excellence, and they invariably called him on a number which was not in the telephone book.

He went out, closing the door behind him.

Ann looked up as Mark McGill came back into the room.

"Will you want me to go to Oxford—or anywhere?"

"I don't know." His voice was sharp, and she looked at him with a little frown of wonder.

"Is anything wrong, Mark?"

"Nothing very much—only one of my people told me that the flyers were out and the police may be coming here."

Mark huddled up in a comer of the settee, his arms folded tightly across his chest, his head bent. He had the appearance of a man in pain. It was Ann who broke the silence.

"Can you rely on the man who phoned? Do you really think the police will come to-night?"

He nodded.

"I don't know where he gets his information," he said at last, speaking slowly, "but I never remember his being wrong." And then, as if he realised the urgency of the situation, he jumped to his feet. "You left the stuff in the car, of course? I'll go down and deal with that—"

"Do you want me?"

He shook his head.

His flat was on the ground floor, and he was in the privileged position of having a private passage-way to the garage at the back. Passing through a narrow passage which opened from the kitchen, and down a short flight of stairs, he opened a door and went into the big garage. He could afford to switch on the lights, for the windows were darkened.

Ann's car stood as it had been when it was backed into the building. With a key he took from his pocket he unlocked the back panel and removed it. He then drew out the square box and the parachute, and, detaching the fastening, rolled the parachute into a ball. He then turned his attention to the box. It had a sliding lid, which was also unfastened with a key. From the interior of the box he removed twenty-five little packets wrapped in thin blue paper. In one corner of the garage was a large galvanised steel receptacle. It was connected to ceiling and floor by a big iron pipe. He opened the steel door and looked carefully inside. To the lower end of the funnel was fitted a cone-shaped plug, which he removed carefully and examined. The plug was of salt, and, having tested this, he returned it carefully to fill the lower part of the funnel. On this he laid the twenty-five packets, very carefully, and re-fastened the door.

He bundled the parachute into a box and carried this back the way he had come, into the kitchen. In place of the usual kitchen range was a tub- shaped steel receptacle, and into the interior he dropped the box containing the parachute, and clamped down the steel lid. Pulling open a sliding panel, he lit a match, and thrust it amidst the shavings that showed through a grating. He waited till the furnace was alight, covered the bars again, slid the panel into its place.

"Now let the flyers come!"

When he returned to the sitting-room he found Ann sitting on a stool before the fire, her face in her hands. She turned her head, and he saw that something had puzzled her.

"Suppose the police came and found—things? What would it mean to us?" she asked. "I've been reading a few leading cases lately. Magistrates very seldom give imprisonment for first offences; usually it's a fine of a hundred pounds. Of course, it would be rather awful for you —I mean the publicity of it—but it wouldn't be terribly scandalous, would it?"

She waited for a reply, and when he did not speak, she went on:

"Mark, you must do a much larger business than I help you with. The packets are so small and the profits hardly seem to pay for the motor-car service. I'm wondering if I'm not more of a danger and a nuisance to you than I'm worth. I know that that isn't the whole of your"—she hesitated—"transactions, but even with a profit of two or three shillings an ounce I hardly seem justified."

For a year Mark McGill had been dreading this curiosity of hers, and for some reason his answer was not so glib as it could have been.

"You're only in on a small section of the business," he said awkwardly. "The organisation is a much larger affair than you can see. It isn't because I want you to fetch and carry—you're useful to me in a dozen other ways, Ann. There are so few people in this game that I can trust. My dear, you know my angle. I've been frank with you all through. Smuggling is as much a breach of the law as burglary. I am not pretending it isn't. I put that point to you—"

"Of course you did, Mark," she said penitently. I "Poor Ronnie was a law-breaker, and so am I. You don't suppose I'm weakening—I glory in it!" She gloried in it, but—

He had not exactly answered her question. Before she could pursue the subject she heard the shrill sound of the house phone in Mark's room, and he went in. He had an arrangement with the hall porter whereby all unusual callers were announced to him. Though he kept a staff of servants, they went off duty after dinner, and he had found that the assistance of the hall porter saved him many useless journeys to the door. She heard him talking in monosyllables, and then he said:

"Yes, all right; show him up." On his desk were two little brass levers that looked like light switches, and when he heard a knock at the outer door he turned over one of these. She heard a deep, gruff voice ask if the owner might come in, and when the foot of the caller sounded in the passage, Mark turned back the switch.

"Come in," he snarled in answer to the loud rapping on the panel of the sitting-room.

The man who swaggered into the room might have been of any age that was between sixty and eighty. His head was completely bald, and the polished dome shone as though it had been waxed. His beard was of a dazzling whiteness, and hung half-way down his waistcoat. Incidentally, it concealed the fact that he wore neither collar nor tie. He was unusually tall and straight, broad of shoulder, powerfully built. In one hand he carried what had once been a white top-hat, but which was now a patchwork of fadings that varied between the palest primrose and the richest brown. A long ulster, slightly ragged at the wrists, covered his massive frame from shoulders to shoes, which were enormous, odd and patched.

He looked round the room with a certain haughty condescension which should have amused, but only added to his awesomeness.

"A good pitch, my boy—I've never seen a better, except perhaps the palace of my friend the Marquis of Bona-Marfosio."

He looked at Ann thoughtfully and stroked his heavy white moustache.

"Do you know the Marquis, my lady? A rare man to hounds, and a deuce of a feller with the wimmin—"

Mark's impatience had not eased.

"What do you want?" he snapped.

Mr. Philip Sedeman put his hat on a chair.

"The cicerone of our little community has been taken ill. A mere nothing, but the members, like the good fellows they are—"

"Taken ill?" asked Mark quickly.

"—deputed me to call upon our admirable patron with the sad information," continued the patriarch, as though he had never been interrupted.

"How long has he been ill?"

The old man looked up at the ceiling.

"It may have been two or three minutes before I volunteered to come along and see you. The cost in omnibus fares was considerable, but that is a matter we will not discuss. A man of my training and experience would hardly wrangle over a question of eightpence, nor, I am bold to say, would a man of your attainments, birth and education."

He looked at the girl with the benignity of a saint.

"What is the matter with him—Tiser, I mean?" asked Mark, eyeing the old man with no favour.

Again Mr. Sedeman sought inspiration from the ceiling.

"An uncharitable mind—and there are many—might describe his symptoms as indistinguishable from delirium tremens," he said gravely. "Personally, I consider it to be no more serious than a very simple souse."

"Souse?" repeated the girl, puzzled.

"Pickled," explained Mr. Sedeman courteously—"He has climbed above the eight mark. I had my doubts as to whether it would be advisable to come to you or whether I should seek out the young lady with whom he is, I believe, on terms of the deepest affection. You may have seen her —she is a suicide blonde."

In spite of the anxiety which Mark's obvious perturbation induced, Ann laughed.

"And what is a suicide blonde?" she asked.

"She dyes by her own hand," said Mr. Sedeman gravely.

Mark's harsh voice broke into her laughter.

"All right, Sedeman, I'll come along," he said, and, walking to the door, jerked it open.

Mr. Sedeman took up his hat, smoothed it very carefully with his greasy elbow, ran his long fingers through his white beard, and sighed.

"The expenses involved, not counting loss of time, are a mere beggarly eightpence," he murmured.

Mark put his hand in his pocket, took out a piece of silver, and almost threw it at Mr. Sedeman; but the old man was in no wise distressed; he favoured the girl with a flourishing bow, strode to the door, and turned.

"Heaven bless thy comings and goings, fair flower!" he said poetically.

"Get out!" snapped Mark, but the patriarch left at his leisure.

"Who is he?" she asked, when Mark had come back from seeing their peculiar visitor to the front door. "Is Mr. Tiser very ill?"

Mark shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know, and care less."

Then he went into his room, and she heard him calling a number. He came away from the instrument to close the door; this was unusual in Mark, who had, she imagined, no secrets from her, and yet had taken this precaution twice in one night.

Ann Perryman was uneasy, and she had tried unsuccessfully during the past month to find the cause for her mental unrest. It was not conscience that was working: she was sure of that. She had no compunction, gloried in her work, but—always there was that but—Mark's arrangement with her was on the strictest business footing; he neither asked nor expected favours; her salary was regularly paid, the bonuses which came her way were modest. Only the cold-blooded regularity of their relationship made this strange life of hers possible.

In many ways Mark was a careful man: he checked petrol consumption, would spend an evening debating the problem of new tyres, and when, as she sometimes did, she went to Paris for "the firm," bringing back with her quite a number of little packages concealed in specially designed pockets, her expenses were in the friendliest way audited, and she was expected to account for all her movements. This latter arrangement she rather resented at first, until he explained that until he knew where she was and what she was doing, he could not be sure that she had escaped the shadowing detectives.

Mark came out of the room, his face as black as thunder.

"There's nothing much the matter with him," he said harshly. "Sedeman saw him come in and thought it was an opportunity for tapping me —I suppose Tiser looked a bit green."

He looked at her thoughtfully.

"I don't know... about that police visit... "

She saw his jaw drop, and he went quickly to the wall. Pushing back a panel, he revealed the green face of a little safe, which he opened, taking out an oblong package.

"I had forgotten this," he said breathlessly. "It ought to go in the container, and yet it can't!"

He looked at the package helplessly, and then at her.

"I ought to get this out of the house."

"What is it?" she asked quickly.

"It's the stuff for Oxford. There's a man there named Mellun, who will be waiting, anyway."

Again he looked at the package irresolutely.

"I don't like to run the risk."

"I'll take it," she said promptly, and before he could protest she was out of the room.

In five minutes she was back in her leather driving-coat. Yet he was reluctant to surrender the package.

"It may be a plant... Sedeman... Bradley—they may all be in it. I don't want you to take the risk."

Yet she knew instinctively he did want her to take the risk, and wanted very badly to have that package out of the house.

"You might slip into your coat and make your way to the Thames Embankment... throw it in the water."

She laughed at his nervousness.

"How stupid!"

She almost wrenched the package from his hand and dropped it into her deep inside pocket.

"If anything happens—I shall be brought into this. Naturally I shall stand by you, and if you bring me into it—"

She stared at him, hardly believing it was he who spoke.

"Of course I shall not bring you into it. Mark. If I am caught it's entirely my own affair."

He turned to relock the safe; she thought it was to conceal some emotion which was expressed in his face—apprehension or—

Mark was puzzling her to-night. Something had happened which had thrown him completely off his balance.