Читать книгу The Complete Detective Sgt. Elk Series (6 Novels in One Edition) - Edgar Wallace - Страница 21

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The room was a long one, full of dazzling islands of light where shaded lamps above the isolated subeditors’ desks threw their white circles. This room, too, was smirched with black shadows; there were odd corners where light never came. It never shone upon the big bookcase over the mantelpiece, or in the corner behind the man who conned the foreign exchanges, or on the nest of pigeonholes over against the chief “sub.”

When he would refer to these he must needs emerge blinking from the blinding light in which he worked and go groping in the darkness for the needed ‘memorandum.

He was sitting at his desk now, intent upon his work.

At his elbow stood a pad, on which he wrote from time to time.

Seemingly his task was an aimless one. He wrote nothing save the neat jottings upon his pad. Bundles of manuscript came to him, blue books, cuttings from other newspapers; these he looked at rather than read, looked at them in a hard, strained fashion, put them in this basket or that, as the fancy seized him, chose another bundle, stared at it, fluttered the leaves rapidly, and so continued. He had the appearance of a man solving some puzzle, piecing together intricate parts to make one comprehensive whole. When he hesitated, as he sometimes did, and seemed momentarily doubtful as to which basket a manuscript should be consigned, you felt the suggestion of mystery with which his movements were enveloped, and held your breath. When he had decided upon the basket you hoped for the best, but wondered vaguely what would have happened if he had chosen the other.

The door that opened into the tape-room was swinging constantly now, for it wanted twenty minutes to eleven. Five tickers chattered incessantly, and there was a constant procession of agency boys and telegraph messengers passing in and out the vestibule of the silent building. And the pneumatic tubes that ran from the front hall to the subs’ room hissed and exploded periodically, and little leathern carriers rattled into the wire basket at the chief sub’s elbow.

News! news! news!

A timber fire at Rotherhithe; the sudden rise in Consols; the Sultan of Turkey grants an amnesty to political offenders; a man kills his wife at Wolverhampton; a woman cyclist run down by a motorcar; the Bishop of Elford denounces Nonconformists —

News for tomorrow’s breakfast table! Intellectual stimulant for the weary people who are even now kicking off their shoes with a sleepy yawn and wondering whether there will be anything in the paper tomorrow.

A boy came flying through the swing door of the tape-room, carrying in his hand a slip of paper. He laid it before the chief sub.

That restless man looked at it, then looked at the clock.

“Take it to Mr. Greene,” he said shortly, and reached for the speaking-tube that connected him with the printer.

“There will be a three-column splash on page five,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice.

“What’s up?” His startled assistant was on his feet.

“A man found murdered in T.B. Smith’s chambers,” he said.

*

The inquest was over, the stuffy little court discharged its morbid public, jurymen gathered in little knots on the pavement permitted themselves to theorise, feeling, perhaps, that the official verdict of “murder against some person or persons unknown” needed amplification.

“My own opinion is,” said the stout foreman, “that nobody could have done it, except somebody who could have got into his chambers unknown.”

“That’s my opinion, too,” said another juryman.

“I should have liked to add a rider,” the foreman went on, something like this: ‘We call the coroner’s attention to the number of undiscovered murders nowadays, and severely censure the police,’ but he wouldn’t have it.”

“They ‘ang together,” said a gloomy little man; “ — p’lice and coroners and doctors, they ‘ang together, there’s corruption somewhere. I’ve always said it.”

“Here’s a feller murdered,” the foreman went on, “in a detective’s room, the same detective that’s in charge of the Moss murder. We’re told his name’s Hyatt, we’re told he was sent to that room by the detective whilst he’s engaged in some fanciful business in the north — is that sense?”

“Then there’s the Journal,” interrupted the man of gloom, “it comes out this mornin’ with a cock-an’-bull story about these two murders being connected with the slump — why, there ain’t any slump! The market went up the very day this chap Hyatt was discovered.”

“Sensation,” said the foreman, waving deprecating hands, “newspaper sensation. Any lie to sell the newspapers, that’s their motto.”

The conversation ended abruptly, as T.B. Smith appeared at the entrance of the court. His face was impassive, his attire, as usual, immaculate, but those who knew him best detected signs of worry.

“For Heaven’s sake,” he said to a young man who approached him, “don’t talk to me now — you beggar, your wretched rag has upset all my plans.”

“But, Mr. Smith,” pleaded the reporter.

“What we said was true, wasn’t it?”

“‘A lie that is half the truth,’” quoted T.B. solemnly.

“But it is true — there is some connection between the murders and the slump, and, I say, do your people know anything about the mysterious disappearance of that dancing girl from the Philharmonic?”

“Oh, child of sin!” T.B. shook his head reprovingly. “Oh, collector of romance!”

“One last question,” said the reporter. “Do you know a man named Escoltier?”

“Not,” said T.B. flippantly, “from a crow — why? is he suspected of abducting your dancing lady?”

“No,” said the reporter, “he’s suspected of pulling our editor’s leg.”

T.B. was all this time walking away from the court, and the reporter kept step with him.

“And what is the nature of his hoax?” demanded T.B.

He was not anxious for information, but he was very desirous of talking about nothing — it had been a trying day for him.

“Oh, the usual thing; wants to tell us the greatest crime that ever happened — a great London crime that the police have not discovered.”

“Dear me!” said T.B. politely, “wants payment in advance?”

“No; that’s the curious thing about it,” said the reporter. “All he wants is protection.” T.B. stopped dead and faced the young man. He dropped the air of boredom right away.

“Protection?” he said quickly, “from whom?”

“That is just what he doesn’t say — in fact, he’s rather vague on that point — why don’t you go up and see Delawn, the editor?”

T.B. thought a moment.

“Yes,” he nodded. “That is an idea. I will go at once.”

In the holy of holies, the inner room within the inner room, wherein the editor of the London Morning Journal saw those visitors who were privileged to pass the outer portal, T.B. Smith sat, a sorely puzzled man, a scrap of disfigured paper in his hands.

He read it again and looked up at the editor.

“This might of course be a fake,” he said.

“It doesn’t read like a fake,” said the other.

“Admitting your authority on the subject of fakes, Tom,” said T.B., — they were members of the same club, which fact in itself is a license for rudeness,—” I am still in the dark. Why does this — what is his name?”

“Escoltier.”

“Why does this man Escoltier write to a newspaper, instead of coming straight to the police?”

“Because he is a Frenchman, I should imagine,” said the editor. “The French have the newspaper instinct more highly developed than the English.” T.B. looked at his watch.

“Will he come, do you think?”

“I have wired to him,” said the editor. T.B. read the paper again. It was written in execrable English, but its purport was clear. The writer could solve the mystery of Hyatt’s death, and for the matter of that of the Moss murder.

T.B. read it and shook his head.

“This sort of thing is fairly common,” he said; “there never was a bad murder yet, but what the Yard received solutions by the score.”

A little bell tinkled on the editor’s desk, and he took up the receiver of the telephone.

“Yes?” he said, and listened. Then, “Send him up.”

“Is it — ?”

“Monsieur Escoltier,” said the editor. A few seconds later the door was opened, and a man was ushered into the room. Short and thickset, with a two days’ growth of beard on his chin, his nationality was apparent long before he spoke in the argot of the lowly born Parisian. His face was haggard, his eyes heavy from lack of sleep, and the hand that strayed to his mouth shook tremulously.

“I have to tell you,” he began, “about M’sieur Moss and M’sieur Hyatt.” His voice was thick, and as he spoke he glanced from side to side as though fearful of observation. There was something in his actions that vividly reminded the detective of his interview with Hyatt. “You understand,” the man went on incoherently, “that I had long suspected N.H.C. — It was always so unintelligible. There was no such station and—”

“You must calm yourself, monsieur,” said T.B., speaking in French; “ — begin at the beginning, for as yet my friend and myself are entirely in the dark. What is N.H.C., and what does it mean?”

It was some time before the man could be brought to a condition of coherence. The editor pushed him gently to the settee that ran the length of the bay window of his office.

“Wait,” said the journalist, and unlocking a drawer, he produced a silver flask.

“Drink some of this,” he said.

The man raised the brandy to his lips with a hand that shook violently, and drank eagerly.

“C’est bien,” he muttered, and looked from one to the other.

“I tell you this story because I am afraid to go to the police — they are watching the police office—”

“In the first place, who are you?” demanded T.B.

“As to who and what I am,” said the stranger, nodding his head to emphasise his words, “it would be better that I should remain silent.”

“I do not see the necessity,” said the detective calmly. “So far as I can judge from what information I have, you are a French soldier — an engineer. You are a wireless telegraph operator, and your post of duty is on the Eiffel Tower.”

The man stared at the speaker, and his jaw dropped.

“M’sieur!” he gasped.

“Hyatt was also a wireless operator; probably in the employ of the Marconi Company in the west of England. Between you, you surprised the secret of a mysterious agency which employs wireless installations to communicate with its agents. What benefits you yourself may have derived from your discovery I cannot say. It is certain that Hyatt, operating through Moss, made a small fortune; it is equally certain that, detecting a leakage, the ‘Nine Men’ have sent a clever agent to discover the cause—”

But the man from the Eiffel Tower had fainted.

“I shall rely on you to keep the matter an absolute secret until we are ready,” said T.B., and the editor nodded. “The whole scheme came to me in a flash. The Eiffel Tower! Who lives on the Eiffel Tower? Wireless telegraph operators. Our friend is recovering.”

He looked down at the pallid man lying limply in an armchair.

“I am anxious to know what brings him to London. Fright, I suppose. It was the death of Moss that brought Hyatt, the killing of Hyatt that produced Monsieur Escoltier.”

The telegraphist recovered consciousness with a shiver and a groan. For a quarter of an hour he sat with his face hidden in his hands. Another pull at the editor’s flask aroused him to tell his story — a narrative which is valuable as being the first piece of definite evidence laid against the Nine Bears.

He began hesitatingly, but as the story of his complicity was unfolded he warmed to his task. With the true Gaul’s love for the dramatic, he declaimed with elaborate gesture and sonorous phrase the part he had played.

“My name is Jules Escoltier, I am a telegraphist in the corps of engineers. On the establishment of the wireless telegraphy station on the Eiffel Tower in connection with the Casa Blanca affair, I was appointed one of the operators. Strange as it may sound, one does not frequently intercept messages, but I was surprised a year ago to find myself taking code despatches from a station which called itself ‘ N.H.C.’ There is no such station known, so far as I am aware, and copies of the despatches which I forwarded to my superiors were always returned to me as ‘non-decodable.’

“One day I received a message in English, which I can read. It ran —

“‘All those who know N.H.C. call H. A.’

“Although I did not know who N.H.C. was, I had the curiosity to look up H. A. on the telegraph map, and found it was the Cornish Marconi Station. Taking advantage of the absence of my officer, I sent a wireless message, ‘I desire information, L.L.’ That is not the Paris ‘indicator,’ but I knew that I should get the reply. I had hardly sent the message when another message came. It was from Monsieur Hyatt. I got the message distinctly—’Can you meet me in London on the gth, Gallini’s Restaurant?’ To this I replied, ‘No, impossible.’ After this I had a long talk with the Cornishman, and then it was that he told me that his name was Hyatt. He told me that he was able to decode the N.H.C. messages, that he had a book, and that it was possible to make huge sums of money from the information contained in them. I thought that it was very indiscreet to speak so openly, and told him so.

“He asked me for my name, and I gave it, and thereafter I regularly received letters from him, and a correspondence began.

“Not being au fait in matters affecting the Bourse, I did not know of what value the information we secured from N.H.C. could be, but Hyatt said he had a friend who was interested in such matters, and that if I ‘took off’ all N.H.C. messages that I got, and repeated them to him, I should share in the proceeds. I was of great value to Hyatt, because I received messages that never reached him in this way. He was able to keep in touch with all the operations on which N.H.C. were engaged.

“By arrangement, we met in Paris — Hyatt, his friend of the London Bourse, Monsieur Moss, and myself, and Hyatt handed to me notes for 20,000 francs (£800) ; that was the first payment I received from him. He returned to England, and things continued in very much the same way as they had done, I receiving and forwarding N.H.C. messages. I never understood any of them, but Hyatt was clever, and he had discovered the code and worked it out.

“About a fortnight ago I received from him 3,000 francs in notes, a letter that spoke of a great coup contemplated by N.H.C. ‘If this materialises,’ he wrote, ‘I hope to send you half a million francs by the end of next week.’

“The next morning I received this message—”

He fumbled in his pocket and produced a strip of paper, on which was hastily scrawled —

“From N.H.C. to L.L. Meet me in London on the sixth, Charing Cross Station.”

“It was, as you see, in French, and as it came I scribbled it down. I would have ignored it, but that night I got a message from Hyatt saying that N.H.C. had discovered we shared their secret and had offered to pay us £5,000 each to preserve silence, and that as they would probably alter the code I should be a fool not to accept. So I got leave of absence and bought a suit of clothing, left Paris, and arrived in London the following night. A dark young man met me at the station, and invited me to come home with him.

“He had a motorcar at the entrance of the station, and after some hesitation I accepted. We drove through the streets filled with people, for the theatres were just emptying, and after an interminable ride we reached the open country. I asked him where was Hyatt, and where we were going, but he refused to speak. When I pressed him, he informed me he was taking me to a rendezvous near the sea.

“We had been driving for close on three hours, when we reached a lonely lane. By the lights of the car I could see a steep hill before us, and I could hear the roar of the waves somewhere ahead.

“Suddenly he threw a lever over, the car bounded forward, and he sprang to the ground.

“Before I could realise what had happened, the machine was flying down the steep gradient, rocking from side to side.

“I have sufficient knowledge of motorcar engineering to manipulate a car, and I at once sprang to the wheel and felt for the brake. But both foot and hand brake were useless. In some manner he had contrived to disconnect them.

“It was pitch-dark, and all that I could hope to do was to keep the car to the centre of the road. Instinctively I knew that I was rushing to certain death, and, messieurs, I was! I was flying down a steep gradient to inevitable destruction, for at the bottom of the hill the road turned sharply, and confronting me, although I did not know this, was a stone sea wall.

“I resolved on taking my life in my hands, and putting the car at one of the steep banks which ran on either side, I turned the steering wheel and shut my eyes. I expected instant death. Instead, the car bounded up at an angle that almost threw me from my seat. I heard the crash of wood, and flying splinters struck my neck, and the next thing I remember was a series of bumps as the car jolted over a ploughed field.

“I had achieved the impossible. At the point I had chosen to leave the road was a gate leading to a field, and by an act of Providence I had found the only way of escape.

“I found myself practically at the very edge of the sea, and in my first terror I would have given every sou I had to escape to France. All night long I waited by the broken car, and with the dawn some peasants came and told me I was only five miles distant from Dover. I embraced the man who told me this, and would have hired a conveyance to drive me to Dover, en route for France. I knew that N.H.C. could trace me, and then I was anxious to get in touch with Hyatt and Moss. Then it was that I saw in an English newspaper that Moss was dead.”

He stopped and moistened his lips.

“M’sieur!” he went on with a characteristic gesture, “I decided that I would come to London and find Hyatt. I took train, but I was watched. At a little junction called Sandgate, a man sauntered past my carriage. I did not know him, he looked like an Italian. As the train left the station something smashed the window and I heard a thud. There was no report, but I knew that I had been fired at with an air-gun, for the bullet I found embedded in the woodwork of the carriage.”

“Did nothing further happen?” asked T.B.

“Nothing till I reached Charing Cross, then when I stopped to ask a policeman to direct me to the Central Police Bureau I saw a man pass me in a motorcar, eyeing me closely. It was the man who had tried to kill me.”

“And then?”

“Then I saw my danger. I was afraid of the police. I saw a newspaper sheet. It was a great newspaper — I wrote a letter — and sought lodgings in a little hotel near the river. There was no answer to my letter. I waited in hiding for two days before I realised that I had given no address. I wrote again. All this time I have been seeking Hyatt. I have telegraphed to Cornwall, but the reply comes that he is not there. Then in the newspaper I learn of his death. M’sieur, I am afraid.”

He wiped the drops of sweat from his forehead with a shaky hand.

He was indeed in a pitiable condition of fright, and T.B., upon whose nerves the mysterious “bears” were already beginning to work, appreciated his fear without sharing it. There came a knock at the outer door of the office, and the editor moved to answer it. There was a whispered conversation at the door, the door closed again, and the editor returned with raised brows.

“T.B.,” he said, “that wretched market has gone again.”

“Gone?”

“Gone to blazes! Spanish Fours are so low that you’d get pain in your back if you stooped to pick them up.”

T.B. nodded.

“I’ll use your telephone,” he said, and stooped over the desk. He called for a number, and after an interval —

“Yes — that you, Maitland? Go to 375 St. John Street, and take into custody Count Ivan Poltavo on a charge of murder. Take with you fifty men and surround the place. Detain every caller, and every person you find in the house.”

He hung up the receiver. “It is a bluff, as my gay American friend says,” he remarked to the editor, “because, of course, I have no real evidence against him. But I want a chance to ransack that studio of his, anyway.

“Now, my friend,” he said in French, “what shall we do with you?”

The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders listlessly.

“What does it matter?” he said. “They will have me — it is only a matter of hours.”

“I take a brighter view,” said T.B. cheerily; “you shall walk with us to Scotland Yard and there you shall be taken care of.”

But the Frenchman shrank back.

“Come, there is no danger,” smiled T.B.

Reluctantly the engineer accompanied the detective and the editor from the building. A yellow fog lay like a damp cloth over London, and the Thames Embankment was almost deserted.

“Do you think he followed you here?” asked T.B.

“I am sure.” The Frenchman looked from left to right in an agony of apprehension. “He killed Hyatt and he killed Moss — of that I am certain — and now—”

A motorcar loomed suddenly through the fog, coming from the direction of Northumberland Avenue, and overtook them. A man leant out of the window as the car swept abreast. His face was masked and his actions were deliberate.

“Look out!” cried the editor and clutched the Frenchman’s arm.

The pistol that was levelled from the window of the car cracked twice and T.B. felt the wind of the bullets as they passed his head.

Then the car disappeared into the mist, leaving behind three men, one half fainting with terror, one immensely pleased with the novel sensation — our editor, you may be sure — and one using language unbecoming to an Assistant-Commissioner of Police.