Читать книгу THE MAELSTROM & THE GRELL MYSTERY (British Mystery Classics) - Frank Froest - Страница 20

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The chief inspector hurled himself blindly across the room. When a man is shooting at short range it is advisable to get at him as quickly as possible. But Ling had no intention of waiting. His plans had miscarried somehow it was of no immediate importance how. The chief thing was to get away.

He took the stairs three steps at a time and flung up the landing window and cocked one leg through. The back of the house looked sheer on to a builder's yard twenty feet below. He poised himself, swore as he found that a portion of his clothing had become entangled in a nail in the window and turned momentarily. Menzies saw his silhouette outlined against the window for a second and the pistol flamed again.

"The back door, Royal," he roared as he apprehended the pursued man's purpose. "Get to the back door."

Then Ling leapt. It was a desperate feat in the darkness, but the crook's luck held. He fell heavily on his feet and hands, straightened himself and waved a hand lightly in the direction of the window. "Sorry I can't stop," he cried. "Give my love to Cincinnati," and disappeared at a dog trot behind piles of bricks and stacks of drain pipes.

Weir Menzies drew a long breath. There were passages in the comminatory service which occurred to him as doing justice to the occasion, but he maintained an eloquent silence. Words were too feeble. He could hear Royal striking matches and muttering softly to himself, and the sound made him feel better. He descended slowly.

"All right," he said as he met his breathless subordinate. "I know. There isn't any back way, of course. You can't think of these things when you're in a hurry. The tradesmen's entrance is in the basement in front. He wouldn't have risked his neck had there been any other way."

"He got away, then?" said the sergeant. Menzies remembered that he always had considered one of Congreve's shortcomings a lack of tact. He answered shortly :

"Jumped six or seven yards. Don't look at me like that. If I'd been a lightweight I might have followed him, but I'm getting too old for such foolishness. Who's that at the door?"

"I blew my whistle, sir; I expect it's the uniform men. He can't have got far. We might run a cordon round the neighbourhood."

"Oh, talk sense," retorted Menzies sharply. "He may be a couple of miles away before we can get the men. Hello, what's this?"

He held up his left hand. It was dripping with blood. He walked closer to the light and examined it. with dispassionate curiosity. "That's funny," he commented. "I must have got a rap across the knuckles with a bullet." He wrapped his handkerchief around the injured hand. "Go and open the door or those fools'll have it down. I'm going to have a talk with Cincinnati."

The peril of capture in which Ling had been placed had not been due entirely to luck. His fertile resources had conceived a plan for a strategic retreat and was intended to combine business with pleasure business in that Cincinnati was to keep the attention of the detectives, while allowing him comparatively ample time, to confound the active pursuit and pleasure so far that he had turned the tool of the police against themselves.

There was only one flaw in this scheme and that flaw had all but proved fatal the supposition that the detectives would have implicit confidence in the good faith of the "con "man. To one unprejudiced or not tensely strung up by an emergency it might have seemed an unlikely hypothesis. Weir Menzies might use a crook, but he never made the mistake of trusting one.

A doubt had crept into Menzies' mind at the very moment he arrivecl at the Petit Savoy and observed that Hallett was no longer with the "con "man. How nearly he had been to acting then in spite of Cincinnati's dictated note no one but Royal knew. Against his instincts he had waited, but he had made up his mind to afford little rope to Ling. So it was that he had wasted no time when they had entered the house. The latter part of Ling's stage management had been entirely futile. For once in a while the chief inspector let intuition carry him on.

Able now for the first time to see Cincinnati's predicament, he gave a grave nod of comprehension. Some of the methods which Ling had employed became clear to him. He cut the cords and slit away the sodden dress coat at the shoulder. As deftly and gently as a woman he examined it.

"A clean flesh wound," he murmured. "Nothing much to hurt there. An inch or two lower and there would have been no need to hunt for evidence to hang Ling."

Royal had admitted a uniformed sergeant. "I haven't troubled about the cordon, sir. It seems that a builder's yard runs into a street backing on this. I have sent a couple of men round there."

"Right you are. It might as well be done as a matter of form. They'll not see anything of Ling, though. He'd got this all cut and dried and if we'd been a little later getting in we'd not have had a ghost of a notion which way he'd gone at all. If you've got a spare man out there, sergeant, you might send for a doctor. This chap's caught it."

Cincinnati Red opened his eyes and smiled uncertainly. "Thought Ling was a better shot," he murmured.

"Hello, you've come round, have you?" asked Menzies. "Sorry for you, Cincinnati. How he came to miss me at that distance is more than I can fathom. I'm big enough."

The "con "man's smile broadened. "Say, you don't know Ling, do you? He wasn't shooting at you; he meant it for me, all right." He winced with pain as he moved slightly. "He always pays his scores, does Ling. I guess I'll have something to say next time we meet. If your people hadn't taken my gun away!

He had me covered from the moment he saw me."

"I suspected that," said Menzies. "How'd you slip Mr. Hallett?"

"Me? Slip Hallett?" repeated Cincinnati.

"That's what I said."

"He slipped me, you mean," retorted the other querulously. "That's how it was that the whole thing started. There was a girl with Ling. Hallett knew her and carted her away through a side-door just before you came in. I thought it was part of the programme."

Menzies lifted his hat and scratched his hair with the brim the while he regarded Cincinnati with a steady stare. Jimmie Hallett had spoilt things again. There was some excuse for the bitterness with which his thoughts dwelt on that young man, who seemed to have the faculty of making himself a continual stumbling block to the investigation. Menzies had something of a taste for romance in fiction. He even had no objection to it in real life as a general rule. But he hated it when it became entangled in his business, as it often did. One can as little be certain of what a woman will do as of what a man infatuated with a woman will do.

The expression of chagrin on the chief inspector's face faded as quickly as it had arisen. "Well, not exactly," he said with nonchalance. "He didn't do quite what I wanted him to. Still, never mind. Here's something else I wanted to ask you." He pulled a photograph from his pocket the inevitable official full and side face. "Do you recognize this man?"

Cincinnati surveyed the photograph. "Sure," he answered. "That's ' Dago Sam ' that I told you about he's in Ling's lot."

"Thanks." The detective put the photograph back in his pocket. "I won't worry you any more now. I'll leave you to look after things here a bit, Royal. I've got several things I want to do and I mean to have a night's rest for once."

Yet, in spite of his intentions it was well after midnight before he sought the repose afforded by Magersfontein Road, Upper Tooting. His way lay first to the residence of a well-known coroner who lived in so inaccessible a portion of North London that even a taxi driver had difficulty in locating his residence. Mr. Fynne-Racton was a white haired, ruddy cheeked, little man whose calling in no way corresponded with his appearance. Although his name was well known to the general public his chief capacities were known most fully in a more select circle the Microscopical Society.

He peered over his spectacles at the tiny fragment of cloth and the single thread which Weir Menzies took from an envelope. "Certainly, certainly, Mr. Menzies," he said. "I'll do my best and let you know. I wish you'd have come to me earlier. Of course I can guess that these things are concerned in the case we're all talking about. I won't ask questions, though eh?"

"I might want you as an expert witness," explained the detective.

"And I might be asked if you gave me any suggestion," said Fynne-Racton. "Yes, yes, I understand. I'll do my best, Mr. Menzies. I hope it will be satisfactory. Good-night, good-night."

Menzies spent half an hour and a little longer at Scotland Yard and so home to bed and slumbers that did credit to his nerves. At breakfast the next morning one result of his labours stared him in the face as he opened his favourite morning paper. A double column portrait of "William Smith "appeared on the splash page and big letters in the heading propounded the query:

"DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN? IF SO, TELL THE POLICE.

"The above is a photograph of the mysterious prisoner now under arrest for a murderous attempt on the life of Mr. James Hallett, who, it will be remembered, is one of the chief witnesses in the case of the murder of Mr. Greye-Stratton. He refuses to give any account of himself and the police are anxious to trace his antecedents so that the full facts, whether for or against him, may be brought out when he is tried."

Menzies could be disingenuous when he liked. Though even the omniscient reporter did not know it, he had no longer much doubt on the subject of William Smith, or "Dago Sam," as he preferred to think of him. The hint given by the "con "man, even if later questions failed to amplify it, would probably prove sufficient to dig out all the personal history that was wanted. Nevertheless there was no reason for allowing either Gwennie Lyne or Ling to know how much he knew of their confederate. The apparently earnest search by newspaper might help to blind them as to how far the investigation had progressed.

He threw the paper aside and accompanied by Bruin walked reflectively round the garden with a sharp eye for caterpillars. Ten minutes before his usual time, he put on his hat and coat, flicked away an imaginary spot of dust from his boots, kissed his wife, and caught the city-bound car.