Читать книгу The Joker - Edgar Wallace - Страница 4

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SOME EIGHT months later there was an accident on the Thames Embankment. The girl in the yellow raincoat and the man in the black beret were of one accord—they were anxious, for different reasons, to cross the most dangerous stretch of the Embankment in the quickest possible space of time. There was a slight fog which gave promise of being just plain fog before the evening was far advanced. And through the fog percolated an unpleasant drizzle which turned the polished surface of the road into an insurance risk which no self-respecting company would have accepted.

The mudguard of the ancient Ford caught Aileen Rivers just below the left elbow, and she found herself performing a series of unrehearsed pirouettes. Then her nose struck a shining button and she slid romantically to her knees at the feet of a resentful policeman. He lifted her, looked at her, put her aside with great firmness and crossed to where the radiator of the car was staring pathetically up a bent lamp-post.

'What's the idea?' he asked sternly, and groped for his notebook.

The young man in the beret wiped his soiled face with the back of his hand, a gesture which resulted in the further spread of his griminess.

'Was the girl hurt?' he asked quickly.

'Never mind about the girl; let's have a look at your licence.'

Unheeding his authoritative demand, the young man stalked across to where Aileen, embarrassed by the crowd which gathered, was assuring several old ladies that she wasn't hurt. She was standing on her two feet to prove it.

'Waggle your toes about,' suggested a hoarse-voiced woman. 'If they won't move, your back's broke!'

The experiment was not made, for at that moment the tall young man pushed his way to the centre of the curious throng.

'Not hurt, are you?' he asked anxiously. 'I'm awfully sorry—really! Didn't see you till the car was right on top of you.'

A voice from the crowd offered advice and admonition.

'You orter be careful, mister! You might 'a' killed somebody.'

'Tell me your name, won't you?'

He dived into his pocket, found an old envelope and paused.

'Really it isn't necessary, I'm quite unhurt,' she insisted, but he was also insistent.

He jotted down name and address and he had finished writing when the outraged constable melted through the crowd.

'Here!' he said, in a tone in which fierceness and reproach were mingled. 'You can't go running away when I'm talking to you, my friend! Just you stand still and show me that licence of yours.'

'Did you see the blue Rolls?' demanded the young man. 'It was just ahead of me when I hit the lamp-post.'

'Never mind about blue Rolls's,' said the officer in cold exasperation. 'Let me have a look at your licence.'

The young man slipped something out of his pocket and held it in the palm of his hand. It was not unlike a driver's licence and yet it was something else.

'What's the idea?' asked the policeman testily.

He snatched the little canvas-backed booklet and opened it, turning his torch on the written words.

'Humph!' he said. 'Sorry, sir.'

'Not at all,' said Sub-Inspector James Carlton of Scotland Yard. 'I'll send somebody down to clear away the mess. Did you see the Rolls?'

'Yes sir, just in front of you. Petrol tank dented.'

Carlton chuckled. 'Saw that too? I'll remember you, constable. You had better send the girl home in a taxi—no, I'll take her myself.'

Aileen heard the proposal without enthusiasm. 'I much prefer to walk,' she said definitely.

He led her aside from the crowd now being dispersed, authoritatively. And in such privacy as could be obtained momentarily, he revealed himself.

'I am, in fact, a policeman,' he said; and she opened her eyes in wonder.

He did not look like a policeman, even in the fog which plays so many tricks. He had the appearance of a motor mechanic, and not a prosperous one. On his head was a black beret that had seen better days; he wore an old mack reaching to his knees; and the gloves he carried under his arm were black with grease.

'Nevertheless,' he said firmly, as though she had given oral expression to her surprise, 'I am a policeman. But no ordinary policeman. I am an inspector at Scotland Yard—a sub-inspector, it is true, but I have a position to uphold.'

'Why are you telling me all this?'

'He had already hailed a taxi and now he opened the door. 'You might object to the escort of an ordinary policeman,' he said airily, 'but my rank is so exalted that you do not need a chaperon.'

She entered the cab between laughter and tears, for her elbow really did hurt more than she was ready to confess.

'Rivers—Aileen Rivers,' he mused, as the cab went cautiously along the Embankment. 'I've got you on the tip of my tongue and at the back of my mind, but I can't place you.'

'Perhaps if you look up my record at Scotland Yard?' she suggested, with a certain anger at his impertinence.

'I thought of doing that,' he replied calmly; 'but Aileen Rivers?' He shook his head. 'No, I can't place you.' And of course he had placed her. He knew her as the niece of Arthur Ingle, sometime Shakespearean actor and now serving five years for an ingenious system of fraud and forgery. But then, he was unscrupulous, as Mr Harlow had said. He had a power of invention which carried him far beyond the creative line, but he was not averse to stooping on the way to the most petty deceptions. And this in spite of the fact that he had been well educated and immense sums had been spent on the development of his mind, so that lie might distinguish between right and wrong.

'Fotheringay Mansions.' He fingered his grimy chin. 'How positively exclusive!'

She turned on him in sudden anger. 'I've accepted your escort, Mr—' She paused insultingly.

'Carlton,' he murmured; 'half-brother to the hotel but no relation to the club. And this is fame! You were saying?'

'I was going to say that I wished you would not talk. You have done your best to kill me this evening; you might at least let me die in peace.'

He peered through the fog-shrouded windows. 'There's an old woman selling chrysanthemums near Westminster Bridge; we might stop and buy you some flowers.' And then, quickly: 'I'm terribly sorry, I won't ask you any questions at all or make any comments upon your plutocratic residence.'

'I don't live there,' she said in self-defence. 'I go there sometimes to see the place is kept in order. It belongs to a-a-relation of mine who is abroad.'

'Monte Carlo?' he murmured. 'And a jolly nice place too! Rien ne va plus! Faites vos jeux, monsieurs et mesdames! Personally I prefer San Remo. Blue sky, blue sea, green hills, white houses—everything like a railway poster.' And then he went off at a tangent. 'And talking of blueness, you were lucky not to be hit by the blue Rolls; it was going faster than me, but it has better brakes. I rammed his petrol tank in the fog, but even that didn't make him stop.'

Her lips curled in the darkness. 'A criminal escaping from justice, one thinks? How terribly romantic!'

The young man chuckled.

'One thinks wrong. It was a millionaire on his way to a City banquet. And the only criminal charge I can bring home to him is that he wears large diamond studs in his shirt, which offence is more against my aesthetic taste than the laws of my country, God bless it!'

The cab was slowing, the driver leaning sideways seeking to identify the locality.

'We're here,' said Mr Carlton; opened the door of the taxi while it was still in motion and jumped out.

The machine stopped before the portals of Fotheringay Mansions.

'Thank you very much for bringing me home,' said Aileen primly and politely, and added not without malice: 'I've enjoyed your conversation.'

'You should hear my aunt,' said the young man. 'Her line of talk is sheer poetry!'

He watched her until she was swallowed in the gloom, and returned to the cab.

'Scotland Yard,' he said laconically; 'and take a bit of a risk, O son of Nimshi.'

The cabman took the necessary risk and arrived without hurt at the gloomy entrance of police headquarters. Jim Carlton waved a brotherly greeting to the sergeant at the desk, took the stairs two at a time, and came to his own little room. As a rule he was not particularly interested in his personal appearance, but now, glancing at the small mirror which decorated the upturned top of a washstand, he uttered a groan.

He was busy getting the grease from his face when the melancholy face of Inspector Elk appeared in the doorway.

'Going to a party?' he asked gloomily.

'No,' said Jim through the lather; 'I often wash.'

Elk sniffed, seated himself on the edge of a hard chair, searched his pockets slowly and thoroughly.

'It's in the inside pocket of my jacket,' spluttered Carlton. 'Take one; I've counted 'em.'

Elk sighed heavily as he took out the long leather case, and, selecting a cigar, lit it.

'Seegars are not what they was when I was a boy,' he said, gazing at the weed disparagingly. 'For sixpence you could get a real Havana. Over in New York everybody smokes cigars. But then, they pay the police a livin' wage; they can afford it.'

Mr Carlton looked over his towel. 'I've never known you to buy a cigar in your life,' he said deliberately. 'You can't get them cheaper than for nothing!'

Inspector Elk was not offended. 'I've smoked some good cigars in my time,' he said. 'Over in the Public Prosecutor's office in Mr Gordon's days—he was the fellow that smashed the Frogs—him and me, that is to say,' he corrected himself carefully.

'The Frogs? Oh, yes, I remember. Mr Gordon had good cigars, did he?'

'Pretty good,' said Elk cautiously. 'I wouldn't say yours was worse, but it's not better.' And then, without a change of voice: 'Have you pinched Stratford Harlow?'

Jim Carlton made a grimace of disgust. 'Tell me something I can pinch him for,' he invited.

'He's worth fifteen millions according to accounts,' said Elk. 'No man ever got fifteen million honest.'

Jim Carlton turned a white, wet face to his companion. 'He inherited three from his father, two from one aunt, one from another. The Harlows have always been a rich family, and in the last decade they've graded down to maiden aunts. He had a brother in America who left him eight million dollars.'

Elk sighed and scratched his thin nose.

'He's in Ratas too,' he said complainingly.

'Of course he's in Ratas!' scoffed Jim. 'Ellenbury hides him, but even if he didn't, there's nothing criminal in Ratas. And supposing he was openly in it, that would be no offence.

'Oh!' said Elk, and by that 'Oh!' indicated his tentative disagreement.

There was nothing furtive or underhand about the Rata Syndicate. It was registered as a public company, and had its offices in Westshire House, Old Broad Street, in the City of London, and its New York office on Wall Street. The Rata Syndicate published a balance sheet and employed a staff of ten clerks, three of whom gained further emoluments by acting as directors of the company, under the chairmanship of a retired colonel of infantry. The capital was a curiously small one, but the resources of the syndicate were enormous. When Rata cornered rubber, cheques amounting to five millions sterling passed outward through its banking accounts; in fact every cent involved in that great transaction appeared in the books except the fifty thousand dollars that somebody paid to Lee Hertz and his two friends.

Lee arrived from New York on a Friday afternoon. On the Sunday morning the United Continental Rubber Company's stores went up in smoke. Nearly eighteen thousand tons of rubber were destroyed in that well-organised conflagration, and rubber jumped 80 per cent in twenty-four hours and 200 per cent in a week. For the big reserves that kept the market steady had been wiped out in the twinkling of an eye, to the profit of Rata Incorporated.

Said the New York Headquarters to Scotland Yard: Lee Hertz, Jo Klein and Philip Serrett well known fire bugs believed to be in London stop See record NY 9514 mailed you October 7 for description stop Possibility you may connect them United Continental fire.

By the time Scotland Yard located Lee he was in Paris in his well-known role of American Gentleman Seeing the Sights.

'It doesn't look right to me,' said Elk, puffing luxuriously at the cigar. 'Here's Rata, buys rubber with not a ghost of a chance of its rising. And suddenly, biff! A quarter of the reserve stock in this country is burnt out, and naturally prices and shares rise. Rata's been buying 'em for months. Did they know that the United was going west?'

'I thought it might have been an accident,' said Jim, who had never thought anything of the sort.

'Accident my grandmother's right foot!' said Elk, without heat. 'The stores were lit up in three places—the salvage people located the petrol. A man answering the description of Jo Klein was drinking with the night watchman the day before, and that watchman swears he never saw this Jo bird again, but he's probably lying. The lower classes lie easier than they drink. Ten millions, and if Harlow's behind Rata, he made more than that on the rubber deal. Buying orders everywhere! Toronto, Rio, Calcutta—every loose bit of rubber lifted off the market. Then comes the fire, and up she goes! All I got to say is—'

The telephone bell rang shrilly at that second, and Jim Carlton picked up the receiver.

'Somebody wants you, Inspector,' said the exchange clerk.

There was a click, an interval of silence, and then a troubled voice asked:

'Can I speak to Mr Carlton?'

'Yes, Miss Rivers.'

'Oh, it's you, is it?' There was a nattering relief in the voice. 'I wonder if you would come to Fotheringay Mansions, No. 63?'

'Is anything wrong?' he asked quickly.

'I don't know, but one of the bedroom doors is locked, and I'm sure there's nobody in there.'