Читать книгу Nighthawks! - John G. Brandon - Страница 12

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IT was one of the axioms of ‘The Yard,’ at any rate amongst the lower ranks of the C.I.D. that a man who received from Divisional-Superintendent Dallenby an assignment to accompany, or in any way co-operate with him in any piece of departmental work, could bemoan his sour luck with considerable cause.

It was right enough doing an odd round, or even a special assignment with one of the big bugs, but when it came to a man who snapped his orders as if a fellow were a born fool, and answered a civil question with grunts which might mean anything, well, an hour or two of that was plenty and too much. Unquestionably Divisional-Superintendent Dallenby, though one of the cleverest men in the service, was a hard, rigid, unbendable man.

A character which would have received hearty corroboration from any of the unfortunate crooks in whom the grim-faced ‘Super’ had suddenly taken punitive interest. ‘Steely-eyed and steely-hearted,’ was their bitter, all-enveloping phrase for him. When Dallenby got his white, sharp-looking teeth into a ‘wanted,’ male or female, their squeals did not cause him any undue worry.

Which was a strange thing. With most men of the police, the apprehension of the law-breaker is purely a matter of business; just a job of work to be approached in a spirit of absolute impersonality, with a perfectly dispassionate mind. But Divisional-Superintendent Dallenby appeared to be imbued with a personal fanatic hatred of every individual of that class who came under his hands. Often those who worked with him speculated upon what lay behind this implacable hostility, but Dallenby was not the man to be asked questions.

Curiously enough, for some reason never discovered by Frayne, the Divisional-Superintendent showed more kindliness of feeling towards him than to any of his subordinates. Whether it was that as a keen and zealous officer himself, he respected the brilliant, special work which had brought such rapid promotion to the younger man, or, again, that it was one of those curious cases of attraction between exact opposites, he never could tell. But the fact remained that not only did he see little, if any, of the Superintendent’s unpleasant side; but, indeed, always found him ready to proffer a friendliness never exhibited in any other direction.

Having left the indefatigable ‘Harry the Slink’ to his job of locating the whereabouts of one or other of the two mysterious strangers, Inspector Frayne strolled along in the direction of Oxford Street. Not that he had any particular motive in making that thoroughfare an objective, save that it had long been his custom, when possible, to give at least one hour of the evening to the vicinity where dwells the foreign sojourner in our midst. And as by far the most important part of his labours was occasioned by such sojourners, he liked to keep tail on them; in particular to know just what newcomers, male or female, had surreptitiously crept into the flock with what he humorously called ‘home-made’ passports. And such invaders were far more numerous than the uninitiated would have given credit for. For his purpose he usually worked leisurely along and through the gridiron of streets between Regent Street and Greek Street, Soho.

He was strolling along Frith Street when a quiet voice hailed him softly from a darkened doorway—a voice he recognized instantly as that of the Divisional-Superintendent. It was like him, he thought, to be out ferreting about personally upon some job he could have assigned to a competent man, and himself taken it easy. Whatever there was to be said about the ‘Super,’ he was no highly placed slacker. He knew his job and did it the whole of his waking hours.

‘Well,’ he inquired when Frayne had pulled up and joined him in the shadows of the doorway, ‘anything fresh opened out in this dope business?’

In the darkness the younger man shook his head.

‘No, sir. And in my opinion they won’t attempt to run the next consignment. They’ve landed all their stuff and got it well away to the distributing points. The pedlars have got it. It will trickle back into London—our London through so many channels that a clear-cut case is impossible unless they make some big error. As I see it, we’ll have to wait. I’m only putting in my time worming things out that I knew before, and following up new threads that I believe to be put out for us to follow. At any rate they lead nowhere. With all due respect, sir, I’m personally of the opinion that my stopping on the job at this time is a mistake. I’m keeping these dope-running birds on the qui vive, when they should be allowed to lull themselves into false security. They’ll be far more likely to make a slip of some kind when the next lot is run if they’re not harried all the time.’

It was a moment or two before Dallenby answered.

‘I think you’re right,’ he agreed slowly. ‘We’ll give them rope enough to hang themselves before they run the next lot. There are plenty of other things on hand for you to get at. I’ll walk along with you for a bit.’

At one corner he stopped suddenly, regarding with stony eyes a group of vivacious, gesticulating foreigners. Which is to say that the feminine portion were vivacious enough; voluptuous, vividly-coloured young women, for the most part with glittering, bella donna’d eyes in which gleamed a variety of emotions. Their men were a raffish, oily-haired crew whose narrowly-set black eyes held that restless furtivity of expression, which left the experienced ones watching them in no doubt as to what quality of citizen they were. They moved along, voices rising gradually towards acrimonious heights, then drifted, two by two, into the doorway of what was no doubt licensed as a social club. Frayne, watching his superior curiously was amazed at the bitterness of his expression.

‘You’re not over-fond of those places, sir,’ he ventured, as much for something to say as anything else.

‘I’m not. If it wasn’t that they’re a kind of general address where we can round them up when we want them, there wouldn’t be one open if I had my way. That kind of shop is nothing but a haunt for vicious continental criminals. Where would your dope pedlars be if it wasn’t for places of distribution like that—and others higher up? And there are worse sides of them than just that.’

Frayne said nothing. There was something strangely fanatic in the Superintendent’s manner, in the incisively driven words that bit in like acid to make a man wonder. Not for the first time Dick Frayne found himself wondering if there really were anything in that personal contention he had heard so often argued about the ‘Super’? He studied the big, frowning face for a second or two. It was set, and sombre, with a far-away look in the eyes, as though some grim thought had momentarily taken possession of him.

His eyes wandered thoughtfully along the pavement. Coming towards them from the direction of Oxford Street was a girl of not more than five and twenty years, her handsome face thick with paint, her eyes surrounded with black smudges from her bedaubed lashes. Long, perfectly moulded, silk-clad legs showed to inches above her knees, and the flimsy material of her frock showed her form as plainly as though she were divested of every stitch. The upper part of her attire, equally scant, and perfectly sleeveless, revealed her firm, rounded breasts. They swayed from side to side with every mincing step she took upon ridiculously high-heeled shoes. Of underclothing one could have conceived her to be entirely innocent.

But it was her eyes that arrested instantly the attention of both men. Dead eyes, under heavy, sleepy-looking lids; yet eyes that glittered metallically, almost unnaturally, behind their dullness. The eyes of a drug addict—a cocaine fiend.

As she passed them she threw a long look, at once appraising and inviting in their direction. Automatically her pace slackened and a long, white-toothed smile broke through her heavily carmined lips. The Superintendent thrust his big face forward and peered steadily into hers. It was not a gesture of sheer truculence, but that of a man who wanted to find her real features under the mask of paint and powder which bedaubed them. She gave a little startled cry, the smile vanished, the unnatural glitter fled from her eyes and into them came a look of terror. Without a word she scuttled on, as fast as the high-heeled shoes would carry her.

For a moment Frayne, wondering mightily, thought that Dallenby was going to follow and pull her up; but if any such thought had been in the Superintendent’s mind, he checked it.

‘You saw those eyes,’ he said suddenly.

Frayne nodded. ‘Cocaine,’ he said. ‘An English girl too by the look of her, and not more than one or two and twenty.’

‘There’s the whole point of these cursed places—these dance and drink dens,’ Dallenby said, in his old gruff style. ‘She’s only a youngster. Not so long since she was probably a dearly-loved daughter; even, later, perhaps, a happy young wife. For all we can say to the contrary there may be one, perhaps two decent men eating their hearts out with anxiety to know what’s become of her.’

‘That’s more than probable,’ Frayne agreed; then tentatively, ‘She seemed to know who you were, sir.’

The Superintendent grunted.

‘She’s seen me before,’ he growled. ‘Warned her more than once. Tried to scare her off, but it doesn’t seem to work.’

‘I suppose,’ Frayne suggested slowly, ‘that hunger can dominate even fear of the law.’

‘Hunger!’ The word came like an ejaculation; then a short, grim laugh left the Superintendent’s lips. ‘Aye; and some flash bully who lays low when trouble’s about and who controls the cocaine supply can dominate everything for her. Everything on earth—poor wretch!’ Again he gave that grim, ugly laugh. ‘If the powers that be handled them the way I’d like, we’d soon have a cleaner London.’

‘And what would your method be, sir?’ Frayne asked politely, although he had a very clear idea of the answer.

‘Deport!’ He spat the word like the crack of a whip. ‘No fines—they laugh at them; their profits are too big to worry about paltry fines. Sentence and deport. The ones that creep back again, penal and deport again. In under a year there wouldn’t be one of these dance-drink-and-dope dens, or an ounce of “snow” left in London. But,’ he concluded grimly, ‘we seem too scared of foreign countries these days to handle even their crooks without gloves on.’

He moved along grumbling under his breath in the direction of Regent Street. Frayne, as much out of curiosity as to what the ‘Super’s’ next move would be, paced along beside him. More than once during their perambulation Dallenby half halted, eyeing inimically just such another group as that one which had at first aroused his ire, but beyond scrutinizing closely each and every female of them, he did nothing.

Opposite a certain well-lit and imposing-looking portico, from the suddenly opened doors of which came the strains of a jazz band, they stood still in the shadows and watched a young gentleman and two ladies bundle out of a taxi after a somewhat heated altercation with its driver. All three had supped with the maximum of enjoyment and the minimum of discretion. The first argument being satisfactorily settled, they moved inward—to be halted at the portals by an agitated commissionaire of huge proportions. He, it appeared, was entirely dubious in the matter of entrance.

Expostulation, argument, altercation—ending suddenly with the appearance of the short, fat figure of M. Diantuolos. A policeman strolled up, his eye open for possible eventualities. Those watching were left in no doubt whatsoever as to the Greek’s opinion as to the argument in progress. He was finality itself—as immutable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. No entrance. Having delivered himself of this ukase, he turned upon his heel and disappeared. The gargantuan commissionaire blew for another taxi, herded the disgruntled trio into it and majestically waved the vehicle out of his sight.

‘That’s the first time I’ve ever seen money turned away from one of those dives,’ grumbled the Superintendent. He beckoned the uniformed man to him. ‘Who runs this place now?’ he asked.

‘A man named Diantuolos, sir,’ he was told. ‘Greek, I fancy. Runs it dead straight—so far. Big people go there.’

‘Give ’em time enough and they’re all the same,’ growled the Superintendent. ‘I’ll take a quiet look over it one of these nights,’ he promised grimly. He and his companion moved on. ‘Though, come to think of it,’ he amended, ‘I think that’s a job more in your line than mine. I don’t cut much shine in evening dress. I’m plain policeman and look it, whatever I’ve got on. It’s the last thing any one would take you for.’

It was a little later, at a conjunction of four dark alleyways that suddenly there came running into the road a policeman. He was a very young man, a fine, fresh-looking country lad, one would have said; but at the present, moment in the light of the lamp-post he paused uncertainly under, his colour was blanched to a curious grey, and upon the youthful face was an expression of startled horror. Undoubtedly he had been suddenly brought face to face with something to momentarily unnerve him. The eyes of both C.I.D. men had instantly read the signs plain upon his features.

‘What’s wrong there?’ Dallenby snapped.

‘A young ’un. Scared to death.’

Before the officer could move they were across the road to him.

‘What’s wrong?’ the Superintendent demanded.

The constable stared at him vacantly a moment. He had never encountered the C.I.D. Divisional-Super before. Then his eyes fell upon Frayne whom he did know by sight. Instantly he stiffened and saluted. To the Inspector who smiled in a friendly way at him, he addressed himself:

‘I—I think it’s murder, sir!’

‘Murder!’

The ejaculation came from both men as one voice, then:

‘Where?’ from the Superintendent.

Silently the constable pointed back into the darkness out of which he had hurried.

‘Part of my beat, sir,’ he volunteered. ‘I nearly tripped over—over it huddled in a corner of the wall. My sergeant’s there now. He sent me to ring for the ambulance and surgeon—the sergeant, he thinks——’

But neither of his superiors had waited to hear what the sergeant thought. A moment later they were alongside that officer who was bent over a human heap, huddled, as they had been told, in a corner of the wall. The first flash of Frayne’s torch showed him the broad back of a man with a bullet hole immediately below the left shoulder—shot right through the heart, he told himself, and at close range from behind. The cleanly-cut black hole in the coat, from which the black viscid blood still oozed slowly, was scorched for an inch or more around. The shot had been fired at less than a foot from the unfortunate man’s back.

‘Life extinct?’ the Superintendent questioned.

‘Yes, sir. But I should say not a minute before my chap stumbled on him. The hands were still warm when I got to him.’

‘Shot in the back, point-blank,’ Frayne ventured. ‘Bullet must have penetrated the heart instantly.’

The Superintendent nodded.

‘Murder right enough. Your man would be on beat within fairly close distance? He heard no pistol shot fired?’

‘Nothing, sir. I couldn’t have been more than a hundred yards off myself. I heard nothing.’

‘For the matter of that, sir, we couldn’t have been out of ear-shot ourselves,’ Frayne reminded the Superintendent. He took another thoughtful look at that dark, ugly hole. ‘I’d swear this was never made by anything less than a thirty-eight calibre gun. That gives a loud report. If the body was still warm when the sergeant got to it, all three of us should have heard it—and the constable as well.’

‘That’s so, Frayne,’ the Superintendent agreed thoughtfully. ‘We certainly should have. Yet not one of us did. That’s curious.’

‘How about the murderer having a silencer on his weapon?’ Frayne suggested.

‘That will be about it, I fancy.’

By the Superintendent’s instructions they stood now in darkness waiting the arrival of the ambulance and medical man. Not that there was anything to be hoped for by the arrival of the latter gentleman—if ever anything was dead, this poor huddled heap of flesh and blood was. But the Super did not want the usual curious crowd to be attracted by a light.

Frayne, waiting, found himself wondering what the face of the unfortunate man would be like. They had not turned the body over, and in the position it had crumpled into the head had sunk face downwards almost to between his knees and still covered by a broad felt hat, completely obscured the features. As soon as the medico came and professionally pronounced the man dead, they would move him, of course.

It looked like a pretty case, this. Unquestionably a deliberated, cold-blooded and, by the shot in the back, treacherous murder. And in the spot chosen for it, there would be nothing to help. The wall against which the murdered man had sunk was of brick; the very lane itself was cobble-stoned down to a drain in the centre. No finger-prints here; no spoor of a boot or shoe to aid. And, somehow he questioned if any later search of the man’s clothes would reveal any clue to identification. Yes; it would be a case after his own heart.

The light of the motor ambulance showed at the bottom of the alley, he could hear the voice of the constable directing from the running-board. He touched the Superintendent upon the arm and drew him a little apart.

‘You were agreeing with me just now, sir, about leaving the dope case stand until they try to run another shipment,’ he said quietly.

‘Well?’

‘I’d very much like to handle this case, sir—unless, of course, you wish to take it yourself. There are certain things about it that appeal to me strongly—if you think well of the idea.’

A moment or two Dallenby thought in silence.

‘Murder in the division is up to me, of course,’ he said presently. ‘But with what I have already in hand, I don’t see how I’m to give the time to it. Very well, Frayne—go ahead. There’s one thing, you’re on it right from the start. You know as much about things as any one else does.’

But with the coming of the doctor and the careful straightening out of the body which followed, Inspector Frayne found, to his intense astonishment, that he knew just a little more than any one else there did. For the man who had been shot down from behind was no other than the Man with the Egg-shaped head!