Читать книгу Nighthawks! - John G. Brandon - Страница 4

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UPON that pleasantly, if entirely deceptively-named thoroughfare, Fashion Street, situate in the portion of the great jungle of London known as Spitalfields, the rain was beating down. Not, indeed, that all the other squalid tributaries of the main artery. Commercial Street, E., were not receiving precisely the same treatment; they were. For the matter of that, so, equally, were Mayfair, Belgrave Square and other sacrosanct places of residence in the West End. It was a general and entirely impartial deluge and had been since five o’clock, and Flower Street, or Blossom Street or Fleur-de-lis, or any other of the streets of fanciful nomenclature of the vicinity, were receiving no more than their fair share of it.

But it seemed worse there than in other spots more salubrious. They had so many other things in compensation, entirely lacking in the mean streets of Spitalfields; and so rain was rain down there—a hell-conceived business, never to be cursed sufficiently.

So upon this soaking evening the inhabitants of each side of Flower Street lounged dejectedly in their doorways, and glared at the other side as though it were responsible for the unwelcome liquid visitation. With the exception, that is, of the younger generation of both sexes. They, freed from factory and sweat shop, donned their week-end finery and, rain-coated, repaired to the broad pavement of Aldgate for the evening promenade, and would have done so were the heavens falling in one sheet. Adolescence in the East End is tough.

By half-past seven the rain had abated to an unpleasant drizzle, then slowly ceased altogether. A moment or two after that hour the front door of a house in Fashion Street opened, and a man hurried from it along to Brick Lane, and Whitechapel High Street. Or rather, he hurried out of Fashion Street and around the corner of Brick Lane; after that he sauntered in very leisurely fashion along to the main thoroughfare.

Even coated as he was from eyes down to heels, he made a striking figure; an anomaly in that particular neighbourhood of squalid streets. There was a certain native elegance about his movement entirely different to the people about him; soundless, graceful, and also in some indescribable way, stealthy, cat-like. A person this, one would judge who, when occasion demanded, could move with the rapidity of forked lightning.

Although nothing of his countenance was to be seen between the conjunction of turned-down, soft-felt hat and upturned collar but his dark, fiery, and restless eyes, no one, meeting their penetrating glance, would have taken him for an Englishman, or, indeed, of Anglo-Saxon origin in any degree. A dominant personality this man, whatever his breed.

An acute observer would have noticed that, although turned up at the bottoms for protection from the mud, the trousers to be seen under the hem of his overcoat were those of conventional evening dress which made yet another thing to mark him out as a man alone amongst those about him, for by no possibility could he have been mistaken for a waiter going to late work—the only persons to be so garbed in that locality.

It would seem that the leisureliness with which he proceeded was not altogether a matter of aimlessness, for with every step he took, his eyes flashed hither and thither from one side of the road to the other, as though either seeking some one, or keeping close watch amongst those who moved to and from Commercial Street.

At the corner of that thoroughfare he paused, hidden in a deep shadow; yet not so obliterated but that after a minute or two a terrible-looking human derelict who looked to be in the last stages of dirt and destitution, mooched into and through that occupied blot of darkness.

‘When it rains, it snows,’ he muttered cryptically.

‘Four, ninety-four, West,’ were the equally cryptic words given him. He drifted on towards Aldgate and was lost in the crowd.

The tall man in the long overcoat moved, this time swiftly, across the road, and as a taxi crawled past with flag up, sprang lithely into it without the formality of hailing the considerably surprised driver. From the window nearest him he gave his instructions in the tones of a man used to giving orders and having them instantly obeyed.

‘Piccadilly Circus.’

‘Piccadilly. Right, sir.’

It was an entirely altered person who first stopped, then stepped from the vehicle in Shaftesbury Avenue, a hundred yards or so above the Circus. A man in immaculate evening dress, the overcoat now flung widely open. The soft-felt hat was gone—into the pocket of his overcoat probably; in its place he wore an opera-hat. He was also wearing a monocle.

Seen by him literally for the first time, the taximan looked askance at the face of the man who had so unceremoniously boarded him, and who now paid him his fare and a more than liberal tip.

‘An’ I don’t think I should run a long ways to ’ave a barge with you, Lord What’s y’r-name,’ he muttered, as he cranked up again. ‘You’re free an’ ’andy with your tips, but if you ain’t a wicked ’ound underneath—then I never seen one.’

The object of this entirely unsolicited criticism proceeded leisurely along the north side of the Avenue, making, with his erect carriage, perfect tailoring and grooming, a distinguished figure that drew upon itself more than one curious, and admiring, feminine eye.

One who, outwardly at least, might have been taken for such an admirer, floated towards him along the pavement between Wardour and Dean Streets. She was an over-complexioned, vivacious-looking little lady dressed in the height of fashion and a little over, who seemed to have no aversion to exhibiting an extremely shapely pair of silk-clad knees below an excessively abbreviated skirt. Her profession was very, very obvious. As old, very nearly, as Eve herself.

She was humming a gay little French chansonette as she came along, her bright, strongly-blacked eyes roving questioningly, and keenly appraising, over such of the opposite sex whose course brought them into anything like juxtaposition with her. Then, suddenly, she saw the tall, monocled man with the coat upon his arm advancing.

The sight had, seemingly, a tremendous effect upon her. The bright, bird-like face paled under its coating of paint; the gay little song almost died from the red-ripe lips; almost, not quite; with an effort she steadied herself and came on with the same jauntiness as before, but there was the faintest tremor in her voice, and the look which had flashed into her eyes was unmistakably one of fear.

‘Bon soir, m’sieu,’ she greeted, sidling by him and giving him the arch, questioning glance of her trade.

His eyes, now cold, contemptuous, and menacing, took her in from little smart cloche hat to high French heels.

‘Ah,’ he uttered harshly, ‘so the Mam’selle Leonie Malpage is a fool who does not know that when it rains, it snows. I will remember. Get word to the American, Devlin; the others have been notified,’ then instantly added those strange numbers: ‘Four, ninety-four, West.’ He passed on, leaving her moving upon her way mechanically as might one not quite certain of what one is doing. Once she glanced back nervously, but he had crossed the road and turned down a side street. When she herself hurriedly turned a corner out of the Avenue, her breath was coming in quick convulsive sobs. The painted, doll-like face had suddenly gone drawn and haggard.

But whatever the meaning of the words the man had twice spoken that night they had the effect, in this particular instance, of creating a hectically feverish excitement, greater even than the fear inspired by the mere appearance of the man who had uttered them.

For some minutes she stood thinking hard, then at an inordinately quick pace—so much so that at times the pretty silk-clad legs were remarkably near to running—set off by a devious, in-and-out route through ill-lit streets and back cuts.

It was upon emerging from one of them that the eyes of a tall, thick-set elderly man lounging in the dark doorway of a lock-up shop fell upon her. It was at first purely an idle glance, but as she stood hesitating a moment and glancing quickly up and down the street before moving, it changed to one of a deeper, more searching and speculative character.

‘Know that woman?’ he asked abruptly of some person still deeper in the shadowed doorway.

‘Yes, sir. She’s been about the West End for about a year or so now. One of the regulars.’

‘Ever been in our hands?’

‘Not that I know of, sir. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t.’

‘H’m! Wonder what made her run out of that lane like that. When a woman dressed that fashion starts running, there’s either something happened or about to happen. H’m! I’ll keep that lady’s face in mind.’

The first disengaged taxi that came along she hailed, jumped in and was driven rapidly in the direction of Oxford Street.

The grey-haired man grunted.

‘She’ll bear looking into,’ he asserted with the blunt finality of a person of consequence. Equally as bluntly he swung round upon his younger companion. ‘Aren’t you assigned to keep an eye on that wine-dive of Lambrino’s?’ he demanded.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Very well. Get about your business. And don’t give them a dog’s chance to wriggle out. I want that place closed down; the sooner the better.’

Without another word he turned upon his heel and proceeded slowly towards Shaftesbury Avenue. The man he had just left heaved a heart-felt sigh of relief.

The Divisional-Sooper, Dallenby, in Detective Littlewood’s opinion, was one of the things sent to try his men—and by the Lord Harry he did.

But the ‘Soop’ was apparently moving towards some ultimate destination by devious ways though well-defined method. Time and again he debouched suddenly from a main thoroughfare and entered some dirty, half-hidden little rendezvous not worthy of the name of café, and there stood staring with cold, inimical eyes upon the assembled company. One by one he eyed them steadily, speculatively; and while he did so the falling of the proverbial pin might have sounded as the clap of thunder. Where the feminine sex graced the company the silent inquisition was often so protracted that had the fair recipients of his dour attentions screamed aloud from sheer over-taut nerves no one could have been greatly surprised. And then he departed as suddenly and silently as he had appeared.

There were not a few places infinitely more pretentious, places of softly-lit tables where the clientele ate their food to the soft strains of a musical trio or quartet, where the appearance of the stolid serge-clad figure in the doorway, his hard eyes moving slowly from individual to individual caused a sudden and complete cessation of conversation. Some few there might be, there by pure chance, who would stare back in annoyance at the excessively rude man to whom the manager was so obsequious, but not many. His departure, just as at poorer places, was usually the signal for very genuine sighs of relief.

Eventually his progress brought him to the corner of Old Compton and Wardour Streets. In another of those shadows he seemed so fond of he stood and glanced at the illuminated dial of his wrist-watch.

‘Nothing to-night,’ he muttered and turned slowly back into Wardour Street. Before he had gone a hundred yards a youth, a semi-ragged, wholly underfed stripling, caught up with him.

‘Missed y’ at the other place, guv’nor,’ he wheezed in a ghastly husk which spoke volumes as to the condition of his lungs.

‘You’ll do that once too often,’ was the uncompromising reply.

‘Couldn’t help it. I ’ad to get up from Aldgate.’

Dallenby shot him a keen, penetrating glance.

‘Well?’ he demanded.

‘I was nosin’ about the corner of Brick Street when I heard a ol’ schnorrer give the orffice to a bloke in a dark doorway. “When it rains, it snows,” he says, an’ t’other bloke says: “Four, ninety-four, West.” ’

The Superintendent’s brows screwed together.

‘ “Four, ninety-four West! When it rains it snows.” What’s that mean? Doesn’t sound sense.’

‘I’d never a’ took any notice of it on’y later I was pokin’ about Aldgate St. Mary Station keepin’ an eye out for that Becky Oisenbaum y’ want for ...’

‘Shut up,’ snapped Dallenby.

‘... that girl y’ want, when I see the same ol’ schnorrer watchin’ about him. I took a good liker at ’im an’ then I spotted sunnink. His ’air an’ whiskers wasn’t real. They was a fake.’

‘Ah!’ It was a soft long-drawn note. ‘Well?’

‘ ’E ’angs about until a dark, foreigngy-lookin’ bloke comes along and I seen the old ’un give ’im a sign. ’E walks so ’e come close to ol’ whiskers an’ I ’eard ’im git the same orffice: Four, ninety-four West.’ “When it rains, it snows,” the other bloke says just same as before. Then ’e ’ops it up Whitechapel an’ the foreigngy-lookin’ bloke nips into the station and takes a tram for Oxford Circus. I’m in right be’ind ’im, so I ’ears where and tails ’im up. But ’e slipped me in one o’ them little streets be’ind Oxford Circus station. So I ’urried on to pick you up.’

‘ “Four, ninety-four, West.” “When it rains, it snows,” ’ the Superintendent repeated ruminatively. ‘H’m! You’d know the old schnorrer if you saw him in that get-up again?’

‘Pick ’im aht of a thousan’,’ was the confident reply.

‘Get a sight of the man who first passed the numbers, pass-word—whatever it is?’

The ‘nose’ shook his head.

‘Never ’ad a ’ope the way ’e was ’id, ’ceptin’ ’e ’ad on a slouch ’at that come down near t’ the collar of e’s overcoat. I on’y seen that when ’e ’opped acrost the road to a taxi. But the other two I’d know anywhere. And them was the words: “Four, ninety-four, West.” An’ the other blokes says, “When it rains, it snows.” ’

For the second time the Superintendent repeated them slowly, as though fixing them in his memory.

‘Right,’ he snapped. ‘Get back East and keep your eyes and ears open. And if you don’t want to find out what it’s like “inside” watch that the next man you tail doesn’t slip you as this one did to-night. The instant you hear this Four, ninety-four, West again, or pick up either of those men, stick to them and report to me when you can. Now clear out.’

Higher up the street from an ill-lit wine shop came the shrill, hysterical laughter of young women. Instantly Dallenby, his eyes narrowed, was on the move towards the place, taking no more notice of the weedy youth beside him than if he had never existed.

‘Well, blimey,’ apostrophized that miserable looking specimen after the long retreating figure, ‘if it ain’t a bleedin’ pleasure to work for you! You’re so genelm’n-like—an’ ’andy wiv y’r money! I don’t think!’

But he took remarkably good care that the subject of his satirical observation did not hear him, and when the Superintendent returned to the street no sign of him was there to be seen.