Читать книгу Clubfoot the Avenger - Valentine Williams - Страница 5

CHAPTER I. THE PURPLE CABRIOLET

It was a wet night. The rain fell in torrents. The low archway leading into Pump Yard, Saint James’s, framed a nocturne of London beneath weeping skies. The street beyond was a shining sheet of wet, the lamps making blurred streaks of yellow on the gleaming surface of the asphalt. Within, on the rough cobbles of the yard, the rain splashed and spurted like a thousand dancing knives.

On either side of the small square cars were drawn up in two long lines, the overflow from the lock-ups of the garage set all round the yard. At the open door of a plum-coloured cabriolet, his oilskins shining black in the pale rays of a gas-lamp above his head, a policeman stood, peering over the shoulder of a man in a raincoat who was busying himself over something inside the car. Behind him a glistening umbrella almost completely obscured the form of another man who was talking in whispers to a gnome-like figure in overalls, a sack flung over his head and shoulders in protection against the persistent rain.

Presently from the direction of the street came the grating of changing gears, the throb of an engine. Blazing head-lights clove the hazy chiaroscuro of the yard and a car, high-splashed with mud, drove slowly in. It stopped, the hand-brake jarred, and, with a jerk, the headlights were extinguished. A young man in a heavy overcoat laboriously disentangled himself from behind the driving-wheel and stepped out from under the sopping hood, stretching his legs and stamping his feet as though stiff with cold.

On catching sight of him, the man with the umbrella fussed up. He disclosed a face that was grey with apprehension.

“Whatever do you think has happened, Major Okewood?” he said in a hoarse whisper. “There’s a dead man in the Lancia there!”

He jerked his head backwards in the direction of the cabriolet.

The newcomer, who was vigorously rubbing his numbed hands together, glanced up quickly. He had a lean, clever face with very keen blue eyes and a small dark moustache. Of medium height, he looked as fit as nails.

“What is it, Fink?” he demanded. “A fit or something?”

Fink, who was foreman of the garage, shook his head impressively.

“It’s a suicide. Leastwise, that’s what the doctor says. Poisoned hisself. There’s a bottle on the mat inside the car!”

“Oh!” exclaimed the young man, interested. “Who is it? One of your customers?”

“Never set eyes on him before nor yet the car. He’s a poorly dressed sort of chap. I think he jest crawled in there out of the wet to die!”

“Poor devil!” Okewood remarked. “Who found him?”

“Jake here,” said Fink, indicating the dripping goblin at his side. “He had to open the door of the Lancia to get by, and blessed if he didn’t see a bloke’s boot sticking out from under the rug!”

The gnome, who was one of the washers, eagerly took up the tale.

“It give me a proper turn, I tell yer,” he croaked. “I lifts the rug and there ‘e wor, lyin’ acrorst the car! An’ stiff, Mister! Blimey, like a poker, ‘e wor! An’ twisted up, too, somethink crool! ‘Strewth! ‘E might ‘a’ bin a ‘oop, ‘e wor that bent! An’ ‘is fyce! Gawd! It wor enough to give a bloke the ‘orrors, strite!”

And he wiped his nose abstractedly on the back of his hand.

The young man walked across the yard to the purple car. The doctor had just finished his examination and had stepped back. The torch-lamp on the constable’s belt lit up the interior of the Lancia. Its broad white beam fell upon a figure that was lying half on the floor, half on the seat. The body was bent like a bow. The head was flung so far back that the arched spine scarce touched the broad cushioned seat, and the body rested on the head and the heels. The arms were stretched stiffly out, the hands half closed.

As the old washer had said, the face was, indeed, terrible. The glazed eyes, half open, were seared with fear, but, in hideous contrast, the mouth was twisted up into a leery, fatuous grin. He was a middle-aged man, inclining to corpulence, with a clean-shaven face and high cheek-bones, very black eyebrows, and jet-black hair cut en brosse. He was wearing a long drab overcoat which, hanging open, disclosed beneath it a shabby blue jacket and a pair of old khaki trousers.

“Strychnine!” said the doctor–he held up a small medicine bottle, empty and without a label. “That grin is very characteristic. The risus sardonicus, we call it. And the muscles are as hard as a board. He’s been dead for hours, I should say. When did the car come in?”

“Round about five o’clock, George said,” the foreman replied. “A young fellow brought it. Said he’d be back later to fetch it away. My word! He’ll get a nasty jar when he turns up!”

“Have you any idea who the dead man is?” Okewood asked the doctor.

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