Читать книгу THE MAELSTROM & THE GRELL MYSTERY (British Mystery Classics) - Frank Froest - Страница 12

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Jimmie Hallett had run into Weir Menzies in the police court corridor after the magistrate had formally remanded "William Smith." The detective threw up his hands quickly in the attitude of one parrying a blow.

"Don't hit me, Mr. Hallett," he implored. "I've got a weak heart."

Jimmie grinned a little shamefacedly. He had not been quite sure how the detective chief would take the assault on the shadowers of Miss Greye-Stratton. He brazened it out. "Well, what are you going to do about it?" he demanded.

Menzies caught him through the arm and pulled him, into a small room set apart for consultations between lawyers and clients. "I suppose you know that men have got six months for less than you did this afternoon. You can't knock police officers about with impunity, you know."

There was an underlying current of seriousness in his jocular tone which Jimmie could not fail to perceive. He ran his hand through his hair. "I'll see you," he said, adopting the language of the poker table. "What are you driving at?"

"This." The detective laid a thick forefinger on the palm of his left hand. "You've got sense, Mr. Hallett, and you've had experience. Now I've gone into your credentials and I believe you're straight. But I'm not going to stand for any funny business. I'm investigating a case of murder and anyone that stands in the way is liable to get hurt. Now don't interrupt. Let me finish. I don't know whether you were putting up a grand-stand play after lunch to win the girl's confidence or if she talked you over."

He paused enquiringly. Hallett pressed his lips together firmly. "Go on," he said.

"Right. You were butted into this at the start and I've tried to treat you fairly. Don't you forget murder's a dirty thing, however you look at it. I don't say Miss Greye-Stratton's not straight, but she knows a deuce of a sight more than she ought to or than she's telling us. She's got something up her sleeve. She's no fool, for all her pretty face. She seems to have taken a fancy to you. Do you know why?"

The other shook his head, although he had a very good idea what Menzies was going to say. His face was impassive.

"For the same reason that the man we've got below tried to get you this morning. You're an important witness. She wants to shut your mouth and to find out how much you really do know."

Jimmie laughed outright. "You're wrong there. She's not asked me a single question. All the talking was on her side."

Then he realised that he had fallen into a trap. Not that Menzies gave any obvious indication of triumph. He merely stroked his moustache serenely. "Well, I don't know that I'm far wrong. She wouldn't be too quick. So she talked, did she? What did she say?"

The young man was not to be caught off guard a second time. "It will all be stale to you. She repeated what she said she had already told you."

"All the same, there may be something new," persisted the detective. "Let's have it."

"If you like to let me have a look at her statement I'll tell you if there's anything fresh I can add," parried Jimmie.

Menzies raised his eyebrows. "I think I see," he said. "I'd consider this a lot if I were you. Why, man, can't you see she's playing with you. Confidence for confidence is an old trick. She has known you a matter of hours, and here she is pitching a tale to you as though you were an intimate friend. I trust you you trust me! That's what it comes to. Now why not play our game instead of hers. If she's innocent you won't hurt her, but if she's got her pretty fingers in the tar--"

Hallett became conscious of a smouldering rage at the innuendo of the comfortable, ruddy-faced detective. He did not realise that he was being deliberately provoked for a purpose. Menzies wanted to discover without doubt his attitude to the girl.

"Cut it out," he advised curtly. And then more quietly: "I think you entirely misjudge the lady. If I've only known her for a few hours, I guess I'm a better judge of her type than you."

"Bearings a bit hot, eh?" smiled Menzies. "It's no good getting angry with me. I'm clumsy, but I mean well. I hate to see a man stepping into trouble. And you'll find trouble on your hands pretty soon, believe me. If I were you I think I'd carry a life-preserver or advertise that you didn't see the man who killed Greye-Stratton."

Hallett had taken a quick turn or two about the room, his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets. He came to a sudden halt. "What do you mean by that?"

Weir Menzies had a well-worn briar pipe in one hand and a tobacco pouch in the other. He methodically filled the pipe before answering. "Only from what I have gathered the lady's in with a tough mob. I'll know more about 'em by to-morrow, but I don't want you laid out before I've picked up all the ends. I've warned you. You must do as you like. Only don't go believing she's a little blue-eyed saint, that's all."

Jimmie's temper, held in till now, continued to rise. Whether it was the implication that he was being made Miss Greye-Stratton's cats-paw, or the suggestion that the radiant girl was the willing accomplice of a gang of criminals, he did not stop to analyse. He was wroth with Menzies because he did not know by intuition what was plain to him that if she was acting a part it was for the sake of someone else. He regretted now that he was bound not to divulge anything she had told him.

"I guess you're a fool, Menzies," he sneered. "You're barking up the wrong tree."

Menzies took the handle of the door. "You think so, do you? Well, we'll let it go at that." He swung the door open. "I suppose the lady told you she was married?"

He spoke casually as though by an after-thought, but he was quick to observe the change that passed over Jimmie's face. "That's a lie," he blurted out. "You've got something at the back of your head."

The detective swung the door to again and took something from his pocket. "Look at that," he said, and smoothed a sheet of paper before Hallett's eyes.

Jimmie read it over twice, unable at first to completely grasp its significance. It was an attested copy of a marriage certificate between Peggy Greye-Stratton and Stewart Reader Ling.

"She didn't tell you about this," went on the detective levelly. "That may alter your idea that she intends to play straight with you."

Jimmie was struggling with a tangle of thoughts. "Who is Ling?" he demanded.

"A crook of the crookedest. He ran a wholesale factory for forged currency notes in the United States ten years ago. That was broken up and he did five years in Sing Sing. He has been at the back of a lottery swindle since he came out and Lord knows what else. We'd lost sight of him till I happened to get hold of this copy. That's the kind of man who's the husband of Miss Greye-Stratton."

"How did you find this out?"

Menzies puffed reflectively. He had no intention of completely exposing his hand. He was certain that Peggy Greye-Stratton was the woman who had given Hallett the cheques and that the latter had deliberately refrained from identifying her. Moreover, he was also convinced that she had told the young man something at lunch, though whether she was, as he affected to believe, using him as a tool he was not in his own mind certain. The more he considered the more he felt that she held the key to the mystery if only she could be induced to speak. With him, with any official of police, she would be on her guard. Hallett, if he could be persuaded, was the one man who might win her confidence without exciting suspicion. So long as his sympathies remained with her he was unlikely to be persuaded. Therefore, if possible, his sympathies had to be alienated.

"Just common sense," growled Menzies, "ordinary common sense. I learned that she had a wedding-ring though she didn't wear it sent up to Somerset

House to inspect the registry of marriages, and got this half an hour ago." He laid a hand gently on the young man's shoulder. "Better do as I advise. Anyway, take care of yourself."

He did not wait for an answer, but moved softly out of the room. He was wise enough to know when to stop. To say more might be to spoil things. Hallett might safely be left to his own reflections.

Hallett was a man whose brain as a rule worked very clearly. But now he was confused, and he strove vainly to reconcile reason with inclination. It seemed ages since the episode of the fog, years since he had looked into the pale oval of Peggy Greye-Stratton's face at lunch. Spite of the convincing proof of the marriage certificate, he could not think of her as a married woman. Anyway, he told himself, if Menzies was right in that it did not follow that all his inferences were right. He had felt the ring of honesty in the story she had told him. And yet the idea of the detective was plausible enough. He could see where things dovetailed. If she were stringing him she had been acute enough to tell him a series of half-truths. If she were a willing accomplice, as Menzies supposed, there was reason enough why she should mislead him. He had met female adventuresses before pretty, cultivated women, some of them but he had not been impressed by them as he had been by her. But then the circumstances were different.

He pondered the matter as he drove back to his hotel. Suppose he did accept Menzies' version and he admitted to himself that there was a considerable weight of probability in that point of view. He could not see, however, why in that event he should become an unpaid amateur detective. The thought of spying on Peggy Greye-Stratton, adventuress or not, was entirely distasteful to him. He had no interest in the investigation. He had been dragged into the affair entirely by accident. Let the police do their work themselves.

It was in this mood that he arrived at his hotel and repulsed the newspaper men who were still blockading the entrance. He avoided the public rooms. He wanted to be alone. He went up to his private sitting-room.

There it was that a note was brought to him. He tore it open and glanced at it mechanically. But at once his interest was aroused. It had been scribbled in pencil, apparently in haste :

"I am in trouble. For God's sake come and help me. I don't know to whom else to appeal. Call at 140 Ludford Road, Brixton, as soon as you can, but alone. Ask for me."

There was no signature, but Hallett needed none. He had never seen Peggy Greye-Stratton's writing, but the small, neat characters were beyond doubt to him.

His resolution to stand aside was already being put to the test. He held the note in his hand while he recalled Menzies' warnings. He was an important witness. Already one attempt had been made to secure his silence. Was this a trap?

Yet, on the other hand, if the girl was being used to secure his silence, she could not know that he had changed his decision to stand by her. She must suppose the conversation at lunch would have made her believe that he had allied himself on her side. No, the letter was certainly genuine.

He impressed the address on his memory, and tearing the letter into little bits, dropped them into the wastepaper basket. Then he searched in his kit-bag till he found, at the bottom, a small automatic revolver and a packet of cartridges. He loaded the weapon carefully and dropped it in his jacket pocket.

He had no idea where Brixton was, but a study of a street map gave him its location. He did not want to have to ask questions. He had come to have too much respect for Menzies' methods in following up a trail for that. For the same reason, when he went out into the Strand he turned abruptly in his walk once or twice.

The useful little book of maps issued by the Underground railways helped him on his next course. He went into a tube station and booked for Hampstead. At Leicester Square he changed for Piccadilly Circus.

There he changed for Kennington Oval. By the time he emerged into the sunlight he was satisfied that if there had been any shadowers on his trail he had thrown them off.

He had selected the Oval Station because the map had shown him that the district lay on the verge of Brixton. He was about to hail a taxi when his eye caught the label on one of the big electric cars swinging by. He jumped aboard.

Ludford Road proved to be a quiet road of small houses buried away at the back of Brixton Town Hall. It was a street that might very well have been inhabited solely by moderate salaried city clerks retired, unobtrusive, and respectable semi-detached villas with neat squares of gardens behind iron railings. It was no street of mystery.

Hallett walked to the door of No. 140 and pressed the bell. It opened promptly, revealing a plump, pleasant-faced little woman with shrewd eyes and a strong mouth. Jimmie, whose right hand had been gripped round the automatic in his jacket pocket, removed it hurriedly and lifted his hat.

"I wish to see Miss Olney, if I may," he said.

The woman shook her head. "You have made a mistake. There's no one of that name lives here," she said, and Jimmie's last shred of suspicion vanished. If the note had been sent for a trap there was evidently no anxiety for him to walk into it.

"Pardon me. Miss Greye-Stratton, I should have said. My name is Hallett."

She smiled and flung the door wide. "Oh, yes. She is expecting you. Will you come in?"

Jimmie passed into the narrow little hall and the door shut.