Читать книгу The White Lie - Le Queux William - Страница 6

The day had been hot and stifling in London – one of those blazing days when the tar on the roadway perfumes the air, the dry pavements reflect back the heat into one’s face, and the straw-hatted Metropolis – or the portion of it that is still in town – gasps and longs for the country or the sea.

The warm weather was nearly at an end, and most holiday-makers were back again. London’s workers had had their annual fortnight long ago, and had nearly forgotten it, and now only principals were away golfing, taking waters at Harrogate, Woodhall Spa, or in the Scotch hydros, or perhaps travelling on the Continent.

From the high-up windows in Shaftesbury Avenue, close to Piccadilly Circus, Ralph Ansell looked down upon the busy traffic of motor-buses, taxis, and cars, the dark-red after-glow shining full upon his keen, clean-shaven face.

He was already dressed to go out to dinner, and as he stood in his cosy bachelor rooms – a pleasant, artistic little place with soft crimson carpet, big, comfortable, leather arm-chairs, and a profusion of photographs, mostly of the fair sex, decorating mantelshelf and walls – his brows were narrowed and he blew big clouds of cigarette smoke from his lips.

Suddenly the door opened and a man, shorter and rather thick-set, also in evening clothes, entered. He was evidently French, and possessed neither the good looks nor the elegance of Ansell.

“Ah! my dear Adolphe!” Ralph cried in French, springing forward to welcome him. “I hardly expected you yet. Your train from Paris was not late – eh? Well, how goes it?”

“Infernally hard up – as usual,” was his visitor’s reply, as he tossed his black overcoat on to the couch, flung his soft felt hat after it, and then sank into a chair. “Why all this emergency – eh?”

The man who spoke was of low type, with black, rather curly hair, sharp, shrewd eyes like his friend’s, ears that lay slightly away from his head, and a large, rather loose, clean-shaven mouth. Between his eyes were three straight lines, for his brow wore a constant look of care and anxiety. He did not possess that careless, easy, gentlemanly air of Ansell, but was of a coarser and commoner French type, the type one meets every day in the Montmartre, which was, indeed, the home of Adolphe Carlier.

Ansell walked to the door, opened it as if to ascertain there was no eavesdropper, and, closing and locking it, returned to his friend’s side.

“I sent for you, my dear friend, because I want you,” he said, in a low voice, gazing straight at him.

“Anything good?” asked the other, stretching out his legs and placing his clasped hands behind his head wearily.

“Yes, an easy job. The usual game.”

“A jeweller’s?”

Ansell nodded in the affirmative.

“Where?”

“Not far from here.”

“Much stuff?”

“A lot of good stones.”

“And the safe?”

“Easy enough with the jet,” Ansell answered. “You’ve brought over all the things, I suppose?”

“Yes. But it was infernally risky. I was afraid the Customs might open them at Charing Cross,” Carlier replied.

“You never need fear. They never open anything here. This is not like Calais or Boulogne.”

“I shan’t take them back.”

“You won’t require to, my dear Adolphe,” laughed Ansell, who, though in London he posed as a young man of means, was well known in a certain criminal set in Paris as “The American,” because of his daring exploits in burglary and robbery with violence.

A year before, this exemplary young man, together with Adolphe Carlier, known as “Fil-en-Quatre,” or “The Eel,” had been members of the famous Bonnemain gang, to whose credit stood some of the greatest and most daring jewel robberies in France. For several years the police had tried to bring their crimes home to them, but without avail, until the great robbery at Louis Verrier’s, in the Rue des Petit-Champs, when a clerk in the employ of the well-known diamond dealer was shot dead by Paul Bonnemain. The latter was arrested, tried for murder, and executed, the gang being afterwards broken up.

The malefactors had numbered eight, six of whom, including Bonnemain himself, had been arrested, the only ones escaping being Carlier, who had fled to Bordeaux, where he had worked at the docks till the affair had blown over, while Ansell, whose dossier showed a very bad record, had sought refuge in England.

The pair had not met since the memorable evening nine months before, when Ansell had been sitting in the Grand Café, and Carlier had slipped in to warn him that the police had arrested Bonnemain and the rest, and had already been to his lodgings. Two hours later, without baggage or any encumbrance, he had reached Melun in a hired motor-car, and had thence left it at midnight for Lyons, after which he doubled his tracks and travelled by way of Cherbourg across to Southampton, while Carlier had, on that same night, fled to Orleans.

Part of the proceeds of the robbery at the diamond merchants had been divided up by the gang prior to Bonnemain’s arrest – or rather the fifty thousand francs advanced by the Jew broker from Amsterdam to whom they always sold their booty. Therefore both men had been possessed of funds. Like others of their profession, they made large gains, but spent freely, and were continually short of money. Old Bonnemain, however, had brought burglary to a fine art, and from the proceeds of each coup he used to keep back a certain amount out of which to assist the needy among his accomplices.

Ansell, in addition, had a second source of revenue, inasmuch as he was on friendly terms with a certain Belgian Baron, who, though living in affluence in Paris, was nevertheless a high official of the German Secret Service. It was, indeed, his habit to undertake for the Baron certain disagreeable little duties which he did not care to perform himself, and for such services he was usually highly paid. Hence, when he fled to London, it was not long before a German secret agent called upon him and put before him a certain proposal, the acceptance of which had resulted in the death of Dick Harborne.

The young adventurer threw himself into the arm-chair opposite to where Adolphe Carlier was seated, and in the twilight unfolded his scheme for a coup at a well-known jeweller’s in Bond Street, at which he was already a customer and had thoroughly surveyed the premises.

“I expected that you had some new scheme in hand,” Carlier said at last, in French, after listening attentively to the details of the proposition, every one of which had been most carefully thought out by the pupil of the notorious Bonnemain. “On arrival this afternoon I put up at the Charing Cross Hotel – so as to be handy if we have to get out quickly.”

“Good. Probably we shall be compelled to move pretty slick,” Ansell said, in English. Then, after a few moments’ pause, he added: “Do you know, my dear Adolphe, I have some news for you.”

“News?”

“Yes. I’m going to be married in November.”

“Married!” echoed Carlier, staring at his friend. “Who’s the lucky girl?”

“She’s French; lives here in London; smart, sweet – a perfect peach,” was his answer. “She’ll be a lot of use to us in future.”

Carlier was silent for a few moments.

“Does she know anything?” he asked in a low, serious voice.

“Nothing.”

“What will she say when she knows?”

“What can she say?” asked Ansell, with a grin.

“She’s not one of us, I suppose?”

“One of us? Why, no, my dear fellow. I’ll introduce you to-morrow. You must dine with us – dine before we go out and do the job. But she must not suspect anything – you understand?”

“Of course,” replied the young Frenchman. “I’ll be delighted to meet her, Ralph, but – but I’m thinking it is rather dangerous for you to marry an honourable girl.”

“What?” cried the other, angry in an instant. “Do you insinuate that I’m not worthy to have a decent, well-brought-up girl for a wife?”

“Ah! you misunderstand me, mon vieux. I insinuate nothing,” replied Carlier. “I scent danger, that is all. She may turn from you when – well – when she knows what we really are.”

Ansell’s mouth hardened.

“When she knows she’ll have to grin and bear it,” was the answer.

“She might give us away.”

“No, she won’t do that, I can assure you. The little fool loves me too well.”

“Is that the way you speak of her?”

“Every girl who loves a man blindly is, in my estimation, a fool.”

“Then your estimation of woman is far poorer than I believed, Ralph,” responded Carlier. “If a girl loves a man truly and well, as apparently this young lady loves you, then surely she ought not to be sneered at. We have, all of us, loved at one time or other in our lives.”

“You’re always a sentimental fool where women are concerned, Adolphe,” laughed his companion.

“I may be,” answered the other. “And I can assure you that I would never dare to marry while leading the life I do.”

“And what better life can you ever hope to lead, pray? Do we not get excitement, adventure, money, pleasure – everything that makes life worth living? Neither you nor I could ever settle down to the humdrum existence of so-called respectability. But are these people who pose as being so highly respectable really any more honest than we are? No, my dear friend. The sharks on the Bourse and the sharp men of business are just as dishonest. They are thieves like ourselves under a more euphonious name.”

Carlier smiled at his friend’s philosophy. Yet he was thinking of the future of the girl with whom he was, as yet, unacquainted – the girl who had chosen to link her life with that of the merry, careless, but unscrupulous young fellow before him. They were bosom friends, it was true, yet he knew, alas! how utterly callous Ralph Ansell was where women were concerned, and he recollected certain ugly rumours he had heard, even in their own undesirable circle.

They spoke of Jean again, and Ralph told him her name.

“We will dine there to-morrow night,” he added. “Then we will come on here, and go forth to Bond Street at half-past eleven. I’ve watched the police for the past week, and know their exact beat. Better bring round the things you’ve brought from Paris in a taxi to-morrow morning.”

The “things” referred to were an oxy-acetylene gas-jet, and a number of the latest inventions of burglarious tools – indeed, all the equipment of the expert safe-breaker.

That night the pair went forth and dined at the Café Royal in Regent Street, and afterwards went to the Palace Theatre, finishing up at a night club in Wardour Street. Then, on the following morning, Carlier returned, bringing with him the heavy but unsuspicious-looking travelling trunk he had conveyed from Paris.

In the evening Ralph and he went to the Provence Restaurant, but, to their disappointment, Jean was not there. She had been home, but had left half an hour later to go to Balham to visit one of her fellow-assistants at the Maison Collette who was dangerously ill. She had taken with her some fruit and flowers.

Annoyed at her absence, Ralph had suggested the Trocadero for dinner.

“It’s better than in this wretched little hole,” he added to Carlier, in an undertone. “And we’ll want a good dinner before we get to business,” he added, with a sinister grin.

So they had wished old Libert a merry bon soir, and were driven in a taxi along to the Trocadero grill-room, where, amid the clatter of plates, the chatter, and the accompanying orchestra, they found themselves in their own element.

At half-past ten they ascended to Ansell’s flat, and each had a stiff brandy-and-soda and a cigar.

Both men were expert thieves, therefore it was not surprising that, by half-past two o’clock next morning, wearing cotton gloves and dark spectacles to hide the glare from the jet, they stood together before the great safe at the back of Matheson and Wilson’s, the well-known jewellers, and while Ansell put up his hand and cleared shelf after shelf of magnificent ornaments, Adolphe expertly packed them away into the small black canvas bag he held open.

Those were breathless, exciting moments. The jet had done its work. It had gone through the hardened steel plates like a knife through butter, and the door, believed to be burglar-proof, stood open, displaying wonderful diamond tiaras in cases, ropes of pearls and paper packets containing uncut gems worth a huge amount.