Читать книгу Nighthawks! - John G. Brandon - Страница 14

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IT was late, very late—or rather very early the next morning—when Dick Frayne left the mortuary where he had been given opportunity of a close inspection of the body and clothing of the murdered man. Beyond that his belief that the shooting had been done with a .38 calibre pistol or revolver had been corroborated upon the extraction of the bullet, also that it had been fired from, at most, a few inches’ distance, nothing whatever had been revealed of the slightest interest to him.

The clothes, though of continental tailoring beyond question of doubt, bore no maker’s tab or button; nothing whatever by which the identity of the person wearing them could possibly be traced. The pockets had been stripped of everything—so much so that it suggested a systematic clearance by whoever had committed the deed. That he had been, physically, a man of the prodigious strength that Frayne had appraised him to be, was amply proven. From that thick, bull-like neck to the very heels he was one mass of bulging muscle. Stripped, the unfortunate man looked far bigger than when clad; to use the term common amongst athletes, he ‘buffed’ well. For all his middle height, he made the burly police officers who handled him look like striplings. He looked, as one of them concisely put it, as though at one time he might have been a professional strong man, or one of those solid persons to be found in continental teams of acrobats, carrying graduated pyramids of performers upon his own shoulders, and for that reason known in the variety profession as ‘bearers.’ Two suggestions made a mental note of by the Inspector, as possible avenues of inquiry. There certainly was, come to examine it closely, something of the ‘pro’ look in the big, fat, clean-shaven face.

Making for his rooms at somewhere towards two o’clock in the morning, he reviewed the whole of the events that had taken place since he had landed in the West End the night before from his fruitless trip up and down river. It had been a long day but he was not tired; nothing, indeed, could have been further from him than sleep at the present moment. His active mind, ready at any moment to start functioning at high pressure upon any sudden new development, was keenly alert now upon this, the first murder case entrusted to him. For in all the special and highly intricate work that had come his way, this was the first chance he had ever had of unravelling a tangled skein upon which human life or death depended. Had he not had the luck to chance upon the Superintendent that night, such a case as this most certainly would not have been handed over to him—good man as he admittedly was.

Since he had been alone in the world he had given up the quiet surburban house in which his mother and himself had lived so many years. A man whose work was mainly in, about, and of the West End, needed, he considered, to be somewhere handy to his own ground. Many a whisper, damning to some long-sought ‘Wanted,’ hidden, rat-like, in a pest-house of Soho or Bloomsbury, comes to the hunter who is always on the ground; the man who lives, eats, sleeps and, in general, has his being in the same atmosphere as the hunted.

And Dick Frayne, unlike many of his fellows never employed, or made use of ‘narks’ or, to employ the term commonly used in police vernacular ‘noses’ to carry to him the first breath of persons, or plottings deep down in the well of the Cosmopolitan Underworld. He had all the straightforward, fair-minded man’s contempt for the creatures, crooks themselves for the greater part, but virtually immune in return for treacherous information of their fellows. And no man, usually, has a greater contempt for them and their kind, than the one who uses the information. But, from his earliest beginnings in the Department, Dick Frayne had had no time for such gentry—or their female counterparts.

Some years before, he had ensconced himself in two comfortable rooms with an old Swiss couple who had an apartment-house in Frith Street. After five years these simple people were firmly of the impression that their gentlemanly first-floor was some scion of nobility, forced by circumstances to go forth and earn his daily bread, by some means not altogether clear to them. In the opinion of the old lady, Mr. Frayne could be engaged in no occupation of a lesser social distinction than banking—this as much as anything else, from the regularity with which he met his household commitments. Upon the other hand, M’sieu held firmly to the idea that bakery provided the principal of subsistence for their star lodger. This theory doubtless emanating from his extremely nocturnal, though quiet, habits. Dick Frayne did not enlighten them.

It was towards this house that he was proceeding, racking his brains as he went upon the mystery of the Man with the Egg-shaped head and, even more, if anything, the personal warning he had already received from the extraordinarily beautiful unknown against both him and his aristocratic-looking companion. As a concatenation of events, it easily eclipsed anything that had ever before come into his experience.

In the first place, who were these two foreigners and what was their business in London? That it was outside the law was fairly obvious by their inimical references to himself—as reported by the mysterious lady of the bohemian café. People, he reflected, do not discuss the police inimically unless they have some private and personal reason for either hating or fearing them. But why he should have been especially favoured by these worthies, he was utterly at a loss to conjecture: he could have sworn that neither of them had at any time crossed his professional path, which needed a bit of thinking out.

To leave that particular—and highly personal—point for a moment, here, scarcely an hour later, one of these dubious gentry was found murdered; and, at that, in a cul de sac which apparently led nowhere. That was a curious side of it; one that opened up a further query: What were the murdered man and, unquestionably, his slayer doing in that particular spot at the time that they must have been there? It seemed to suggest that one man, the victim, was less acquainted with London than was his companion. He had doubtless believed that he was being taken to some particular destination, and had been piloted into that cul de sac by some person he must have trusted implicitly. By that person he had been ruthlessly murdered.

One thing became instantly certain: Harry the Slink had not picked up the trail of this particular one of his two quarries; had he done so the poor devil would probably have been alive now. Whether he had struck upon the trail of the other, the Villain of the Piece, remained to be seen. Upon that point quite a number of possible theories would hang.

He was moving leisurely along lost in a brown study when two voices just ahead of him brought him back to earth: two voices so entirely dissimilar that he glanced curiously at the speakers ahead of him.

He was, he noted, again passing that haunt of which the ‘Super’ wanted information: the club run by the Greek, Diantuolos, and from which they had evidently just emerged. The male of the pair was a burly American who, for his size and weight, moved with remarkable springiness of tread. The light from a lamp-post falling upon one bulbous and wonderfully serrated ‘cauliflower’ ear, gave instant enlightenment. The large American gentleman was, or at any rate had been at some time or other, a boxer; in all probability professional.

His companion was cast in totally different mould. A small person, slim and elegant of figure, whose tiny feet, perched upon extraordinarily high heels literally twittered along the pavement, beside the honest tens in patent shoes worn by her bulky escort. Under a light scarf he saw that she had an aureole of corn-coloured golden hair which, he guessed shrewdly, to have arrived at that particular golden shade by the art of the perrequier. She was obviously, from the bird-like chirping that came back to him, of French nationality—a Parisienne, he would have said without hesitation. The West End, he thought grimly, seemed particularly full of foreigners to-night—not that there was ever any shortage of them in this particular locality of it.

To judge from her gesture-laden volubility, the peroxided daughter of Paris was in a condition of considerable excitement about something. At one point and obviously labouring under intense emotion, she broke out into her native tongue at so rapid a pace that her companion held up a huge, chamois-gloved, protesting hand. At the little distance separating them it looked to Dick Frayne as much like six-ounce boxing glove as anything else.

‘Cut out the parlez-vous, Bright Eyes,’ requested Mr. Devlin. ‘You got a pretty good line on this Ferrondo bug and I’m sure interested; but I’m the horse’s wish-bone when it comes to idle chatter in any other spiel but English. You’re a pretty good kind of li’l’ skirt what I’ve seen of yuh, an’ when you get t’ know me better, you’ll find I ain’t such a bad li’l’ ol’ guy neither. Put me wise to this Ferrondo bird. You know him, and you’re scared of him right up to the back teeth. Well, this is the first time he’s rolled into my young life, and I can’t say I’m so shook on him. He’s at the head of a mighty big thing all right, but he’s got that “Come here, dawg” style, that don’t make for nice smooth workin’ with ‘Chick’ Devlin. We’re all in the same game, as I get it, we do our stuff and collar our rake-off. That kinda stuff gets me peeved, an’ when I’m peeved, babe, I’m just hell in pants. He’ll, mebbe, get wise to that before he’s such a much older.’

There was a tremble in the voice that answered him, Frayne noticed.

‘Oh, M’sieu Cheek,’ it warned, ‘in the name of le bon Dieu be careful! Othaires, they ’ave spoke like that, but ... One there was in particular ... so brave, so strong. Out of the Seine they took him. It was in Paris that I ... I became one of them. Because I am alone, and ’ungry and ah! so wretched! A man I ... Bah! That does not mattaire ... not now. I am nothing ... onlee so small in it, but I am afraid of ’im just the same. His word, it is law. Those who do not obey, or make the blundaire ...’

Dick Frayne, a considerably puzzled man, noticed that again she broke off upon that unmistakable note of fear.

Then the genial, utterly imperturbable voice of the gentleman who called himself ‘Chick’ Devlin wafted back to the Inspector’s ear. This was a decidedly interesting conversation and he made no bones whatever about listening to as much of it as he could possibly bear. Just who Mr. ‘Chick’ Devlin and his Parisian, ‘Bright Eyes,’ or the person alluded to as ‘This Ferrondo bug’ was he had no more idea than the dead, but he would most assuredly give them his attention at the first possible moment. They sounded a remarkably interesting company.

‘Those who don’t jump to it snappy,’ Mr. Devlin was saying, ‘get in all wrong with the Main Guy, hey? Well, well. He cert’nly looks a hard-boiled egg, but they never tol’ me in New York I was teamin’ up with a killer-man. I’ll say it’s a shame!’

‘But it is not ’e ’imself, per’aps, who do these things, M’sieu Cheek. There are others, the Chinamen, per’aps, who do what ’e orders. Ah, so terrible they are, those men. I shiver even to see them.’

‘Aha,’ Frayne thought, his ears tensed now for every word, ‘so there are yellow men in this bright little amalgamation.’

‘Yeh,’ Mr. Devlin drawled back, ‘someway I got it in my bean he didn’t shine out as the star performer when the rough stuff was about. So far as Chows go, babe, when I was on’y fifteen year young I useta go up Mott and Pell Street, and take a bite or two outa their half-caste fightin’ men. I sh’ud worry about them. That’s one of th’ ways me an’ Ferrondo don’t mix. I like a guy who does his own fightin’. Got no time f’r a bimbo that wants other folks t’ go ’round and slug some other guy for him. Like he tries t’ put it over on me t’night with the big Irish feller.’

‘You mean the one they call Capitaine La-ree?’ she inquired quickly.

‘That’s the boy. Over that Ritzy dance-queen. Ferrondo turned dirty when that elegant jane went an’ took the eats with Adair. Wants me t’ go out and get him on th’ quiet, for keeps. I told him some stuff he’ll think about in a day or two, mebbe. I told him I didn’t pack a rod to bump a guy off t’ suit some other guy’s game who was sittin’ pretty round the corner.’

‘Pack a—a rod, M’sieu?’ It was plain that the expression was absolutely unintelligible to her.

Mr. Devlin laughed.

‘Well, if I don’t keep on forgettin’ you ain’t wise t’ good li’l’ ol’ New York’s language. Packin’ a rod, means carryin’ a gun. Anyway, I tell this Ferrondo pretty straight just where he steps off. And I spill him some more that’s good listenin’ for a wise guy. And that’s that Adair, I’ll tell the cock-eyed world, is one tough bird who can take all that’s comin’ his way and reach out f’r more. I’m ain’t a soft bimbo myself, babe; but I dunno I would be achin’t’ carry the trouble to him on a tray. ’N’, anyway, he’s a straight kind of a guy an’ he’s Irish an’ my old man was a Harp from the County Tyrone, so I’m half a Mick myself. So Ferrondo better lay offa that Adair bozo or I might take a share myself. All you gotta do, Bright Eyes, is sit nice an’ quiet, gum your lamps on li’l’ ‘Chick’, and keep y’r ivories clamped tight.’ He changed the line of conversation.

‘And what d’ they figure is your line in the big scheme, kid?’ he asked curiously.

It was a moment before she answered him, and her yellow head drooped. He did not notice it, but a dull, red flush crept under the paint of her face. Then her head lifted suddenly again and, with a little hard laugh, she stared up at him defiantly. But she could not hide from him, or from the silently moving eavesdropper behind them, the tears that were in her voice.

‘My part is to—to find out things,’ she said jerkily; then added with a little catch in the throat, ‘From men. If not in one way ... then in anothaire. Mon Dieu! How tired I am of it all, how sick of the heart, how weary! But if one once commences, it is to go on to the bitter end—or to pay the penalty. And so, M’sieu Cheek, if one is only a woman, and not of ver’ great courage, one goes on ... until the finish it comes ... to release.’

With a quick involuntary sob, she turned a corner and darted off along the street leaving her escort standing there—paralysed astonishment printed across his big face. Before he could move in pursuit she had hailed a taxi passing by and, with a wave of her hand, towards him, sprang in and the cab started off. Dick Frayne, catching a glance of the big fellow’s face as he came sauntering casually along, noticed that there was a certain softness about the humorous blue eyes as they followed her course; a softness that as suddenly went as her vehicle disappeared from sight and, turning, he caught sight of Dick Frayne close upon him.

When opposite Mr. Devlin, the Inspector came to a halt.

‘I wonder could you oblige me with a match?’ he inquired.

Some few seconds the big New Yorker eyed him without response, then an expansive grin broke upon his decidedly pleasant, if somewhat pugnacious looking face.

‘Brother,’ he announced quietly, ‘I cert’nly can oblige with a match. An’ seein’ you ain’t showin’ no signs of anythin’ to light, I can present youse with a cigar which is no flor de cabbage leaf, neither. ’N’, same time I can pass youse out some mighty good advice. If this is th’ pr’lim’nry round to a hold-up, I can do youse more dirt in a couple of minutes than what ’ud happen t’ you in ten wars.’

Dick Frayne grinned in return.

‘Scarcely,’ he observed, and in response to the match-box handed to him, produced his cigarette case.

‘Try one,’ he suggested. ‘Fair exchange is no robbery.’

‘Get a bit and give a bit,’ agreed Mr. Devlin, taking one; then added, ‘It’s th’ poor that helps the poor.’

Whilst these friendly amenities were in progress, a burly, heavy-footed figure moved from a doorway across the street, in which it had evidently been ensconced, crossed the road and proceeded along, keeping in the shadows in an opposite direction to them. Frayne would have picked that footstep out of a hundred—Dallenby. What the deuce was it the Divisional-Superintendent kept on the prowl after, all hours of the day and night?

‘They’s one thing,’ a voice beside him chuckled, ‘you couldn’t miss that guy f’r a cop, not if he wasta get himself up in a lady’s weddin’ dress.’

A criticism which Dick Frayne had to admit to himself was absolutely unarguable.