The Ringer, Book 1

by Edgar Wallace

  “Let me see your anonymous letter,” said the doctor.

  He carried the paper to the light and examined the typewritten characters carefully.

  “Written by an amateur,” he said. “You can always tell amateur typists, they forget to put the spaces between the words; but, more important, they vary the spaces between the lines.”

  He pursed his lips as though he were about to whistle.

  “Hum!” he said at last. “Do you rule out the possibility that this letter was written by Meister himself?”

  “By Meister?” That idea had not occurred to Alan Wembury. “But why? He’s a good friend of Johnny’s. Suppose he were in this robbery, do you imagine he would trust John Lenley with the pearls and draw attention to the fact that a friend of his was a thief?”

  The doctor was still frowning down at the paper.

  “Is there any reason why Meister should want John Lenley out of the way?” he asked.

  Alan shook his head.

  “I can’t imagine any,” he said, and then, with a laugh: “You’re taking rather a melodramatic view, doctor. Probably this note was written by some enemy of Lenley’s—he makes enemies quicker than any man I know.”

  “Meister,” murmured the doctor, and held the paper up to the light to examine the watermark. “Maybe one day you’ll have an opportunity, inspector, of getting a little of Mr. Meister’s typewriting paper and a specimen of lettering.”

  “But why on earth should he want Johnny Lenley out of the way?” insisted Alan. “There’s no reason why he should. He’s an old friend of the family, and although it’s possible that Johnny has insulted him, that’s one of Johnny’s unpleasant little habits. That’s no excuse for a civilised man wanting to send another to penal servitude—”

  “He wishes Mr. John Lenley out of the way”—Lomond nodded emphatically. “That is my eccentric view. Inspector Wembury, and if I am an eccentric, I am also a fairly accurate man!”

  After the doctor left, Alan puzzled the matter over without getting nearer to the solution. Yet he had already discovered that Dr. Lomond’s conclusions were not lightly to be dismissed. The old man was as shrewd as he was brilliant. Alan had read a portion of his book, and although twenty years old, this treatise on the criminal might have been written a few weeks before.

  He was in a state of indecision when the telephone bell in his room shrilled. He took up the instrument and heard the voice of Colonel Walford.

  “Is that you, Wembury? Do you think you can come up to the Yard? I have further information about the gentleman we discussed last week.”

  For the moment Alan had forgotten the existence of The Ringer. He saw now only an opportunity of taking counsel with a man who had not only proved a sympathetic superior, but a very real friend.

  Half an hour later he knocked at the door of Colonel Walford’s room, and that moment was one of tragic significance for Mary Lenley.

  CHAPTER 13

  John Lenley, after a brief visit to his house, where, behind a locked door, he packed away carefully a small cardboard box, had gone to town to see a friend of the family.

  Mary came home to an empty flat. Her head was aching, but that was as nothing to the little nagging pain at her heart. The little supper was a weariness to prepare—almost impossible to dispose of.

  She had eaten nothing since breakfast, she remembered, and if she had failed to recall the fact, the queer and sickly sensation of faintness which had come over her as she was mounting the stone steps of Malpas Mansions was an unpleasant reminder of her abstinence.

  She forced herself to eat, and was brewing her second cup of tea when she heard a key turn in the lock and John Lenley came in. His face was as black as thunder, but she had ceased to wonder what drove Johnny into those all too frequent tempers of his. Nor was there need to ask, for he volunteered the cause of his anger.

  “I went out to the Hamptons’ to tea,” he said, as he sat down at the table with a disparaging glance at its meagre contents. “They treated me as though I were a leper—and those swine have been entertained at Lenley Court times without number!”

  She was shocked at the news, for she had always regarded the Hamptons as the greatest friends of her father.

  “But surely, Johnny, they didn’t—they weren’t horrible because of our—I mean because we have no money?”

  He growled something at this.

  “That was at the back of it,” he said at last. “But I suspect another cause.”

  And then the reason flashed on her, and her heart thumped painfully.

  “It was not because of the Darnleigh pearls, Johnny?” she faltered.

  He looked round at her quickly.

  “Why do you ask that?—Yes, it was something about that old fool’s jewellery. They didn’t say so directly, but they hinted as much.”

  She felt her lower lip trembling and bit on it to gain control.

  “There is nothing in that suggestion, is there, Johnny?” It did not sound like her voice—it was a sound that was coming from far away—a strange voice suggesting stranger things.

  “I don’t know what you mean!” he answered gruffly, but he did not look at her.

  The room spun round before her eyes, and she had to grasp the table for support.

  “My God! You don’t think I am a thief, do you?” she heard him say.

  Mary Lenley steadied herself.

  “Look at me, Johnny!” Their eyes met. “You know nothing about those pearls?”

  Again his eyes wandered. “I only know they’re lost! What in hell do you expect me to say?” He almost shouted in a sudden excess of weak anger. “How dare you, Mary … cross-examine me as though I were a thief! This comes from knowing cads like Wembury … !”

  “Did you steal Lady Darnleigh’s pearls?”

  The tablecloth was no whiter than her face. Her lips were bloodless. He made one effort to meet her eyes again, and failed.

  “I—” he began.

  Then came a knock at the door. Brother and sister looked at one another.

  “Who is that?” asked Johnny huskily.

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t know; I will see.”

  Her limbs were like lead as she dragged them to the door; she thought she was going to faint. Alan Wembury stood in the doorway, and there was on his face a look which she had never seen before.

  “Do you want me, Alan?” she asked breathlessly.

  “I want to see Johnny.”

  His voice was as low as hers and scarcely intelligible. She opened the door wider and he walked past her into the dining-room. Johnny was standing where she had left him, by the little round table covered with the remains of the supper, and the clang of the door as Mary closed it came to his ears like the knell of doom.

  “What do you want, Wembury?” John Lenley spoke with difficulty. His heart was beating so thunderously that he felt this man must hear the roar and thud of it.

  “I’ve just come from Scotland Yard.” Alan’s voice was changed and unnatural. “I’ve seen Colonel Walford, and told him of a communication I received this afternoon. I have explained the”—he sought for words—“the relationship I have with your family and the regard in which I hold it, and just why I should hesitate to do my job.”

  “What is your job?” asked Lenley after a moment of silence.

  “Immediately, I have no business.”—Wembury chose his words deliberately and carefully. “Tomorrow I shall come with a warrant to search this house for the Darnleigh pearls.”

  He heard the smothered sob of the girl, but did not turn his head.

  John Lenley stood rigid, his face as white as death. He was ignorant of police procedure, or he would have realised how significant was Alan’s statement that he did not possess a search warrant. Wembury sensed this ignorance, and made one last desperate effort to sav
e the girl he loved from the tragic consequences of her brother’s folly.

  “I have no search warrant and no right to examine your flat,” he said. “The warrant will be procured by tomorrow morning.”

  If John Lenley had a glimmering of intelligence, and the pearls were hidden in the flat, here was a chance to dispose of them, but the opportunity which Alan offered was not taken.

  It was sheer mad arrogance on Lenley’s part to reject the chance that was given to him. He would not be under any obligation to the gardener’s son!

  “They are in a box under the bed,” he said. “You knew that or you wouldn’t have come. I am not taking any favours from you, Wembury, and I don’t suppose I should get any if I did. If you feel any satisfaction in arresting a man whose father provided the cottage in which you were born, I suppose you are entitled to feel it.”

  He turned on his heel, walked into his room, and a few seconds later came back with a small cardboard box which he laid on the table. Alan Wembury was momentarily numbed by the tragedy which had overwhelmed this little household. He dared not look at Mary, who stood stiffly by the side of the table. Her pallid face was turned with an agonised expression of entreaty to her brother, and it was only now that she could find speech.

  “Johnny! How could you!”

  He wriggled his shoulders impatiently.

  “It is no use making a fuss, Mary,” he said bluntly. “I was mad!”

  Turning suddenly, he caught her in his arms, and his whole frame shook as he kissed her pale lips.

  “Well, I’ll go,” he said brokenly, and in another instant had wrenched himself free of her kiss and her clinging hands, and had walked out of the room a prisoner.

  CHAPTER 14

  Neither Alan Wembury nor his prisoner spoke until they were approaching Flanders Lane Police Station, and then Johnny asked, without turning his head.

  “Who gave me away?”

  It was only the rigid discipline of twelve years’ police work that prevented Alan from betraying the betrayer.

  “Information received,” he answered conventionally, and the young man laughed.

  “I suppose you’ve been watching me since the robbery,” he said. “Well, you’ll get promotion out of this, Wembury, and I wish you joy of it.”

  When he faced the desk sergeant his mood became a little more amiable, and he asked if Maurice Meister could be intimated. Just before he went to the cell he asked, “What do I get for this, Wembury?”

  Alan shook his head. He was certain in his mind that, though it was a first offence, nothing could save Johnny Lenley from penal servitude.

  It was eleven o’clock at night, and rain was falling heavily, when Alan came walking quickly down the deserted stretch of Flanders Lane, towards Meister’s house. From the opposite side of the road he could see above the wall the upper windows; one window showed a light. The lawyer was still up, possibly was interviewing one of his queer clients, who had come by a secret way into the house to display his ill-gotten wares or to pour a tale of woe into Meister’s unsympathetic ear. These old houses near the river were honeycombed with cellar passages, and only a few weeks before, there had been discovered in the course of demolition a secret room which the owner, who had lived in the place for twenty years, had never suspected.

  As he crossed the road, Alan saw a figure emerge from the dark shadow of the wall which surrounded the lawyer’s house. There was something very stealthy in the movements of the man, and all that was police officer in Wembury’s composition, was aroused by this furtiveness. He challenged him sharply, and to his surprise, instead of turning and running, as the Flanders Laner might be expected to do in the circumstances, the man turned and came slowly towards him and stood revealed in the beam of Inspector Wembury’s pocket lamp, a slight man with a dark, bearded face. He was a stranger to the detective, but that was not remarkable. Most of the undesirables of Deptford were as yet unknown to Alan.

  “Hallo! Who are you, and what are you doing here?” he asked, and immediately came the cool answer:

  “I might ask you the same question!”

  “I am a police officer,” said Alan Wembury sternly, and he heard a low chuckle.

  “Then we are brothers in misfortune,” replied the stranger, “for I am a police officer, too. Inspector Wembury, I presume?”

  “That is my name,” said Alan, and waited.

  “I cannot bother to give you my card, but my name is Bliss—Central Detective Inspector Bliss—of Scotland Yard.”

  Bliss? Alan remembered now that this unpopular police officer had been due to arrive in England on that or on the previous day. One fact was certain: if this were Bliss, he was Alan’s superior officer.

  “Are you looking for something?” he asked.

  For a while Bliss made no reply.

  “I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly. Deptford is an old division of mine, and I was just renewing acquaintance with the place. Are you going to see Meister?”

  How did he know it was Meister’s house, Alan wondered. The lawyer had only gone to live there since Bliss had left for America. And what was his especial interest in the crook solicitor? As though he were reading the other’s thoughts, Bliss went on quickly: “Somebody told me that Meister was living in Deptford. Rather a ‘come down’ for him. When I knew him first, he had a wonderful practice in Lincoln’s Inn.”

  And then with an abrupt nod he passed on the way he had been going when Wembury had called him back. Alan stood by the door of Meister’s house and watched the stranger till he was out of sight, and only then did he ring the bell. He had some time to wait, time for thought, though his thoughts were not pleasant. He dared not think of Mary, alone in that desolate little flat, with her breaking heart and her despair. Nor of the boy he had known, sitting on his plank bed, his head between his hands, ruin before him.

  Presently he heard a patter of slippered feet coming across the courtyard, and Meister’s voice asked: “Who is that?”

  “Wembury.”

  A rattle of chains and a shooting of bolts, and the door opened. Though he wore his dressing-gown, Wembury saw, when they reached the dimly lit passage, that Meister was fully dressed; even his spats had not been removed.

  “What is the trouble, Mr. Wembury?”

  Alan did not know how many people slept in the house or what could be overheard. Without invitation he walked up the stairs ahead of the lawyer into the big room. The piano was open, sheets of music lay on the floor. Evidently Meister had been spending a musical evening. The lawyer closed the door behind him.

  “Is it Johnny?” he asked.

  Was it imagination on Alan’s part, or was the lawyer’s voice strained and husky.

  “Why should it be Johnny?” he demanded. “It is, as a matter of fact. I arrested him an hour ago for the Darnleigh pearl robbery. He has asked me to get into communication with you.”

  Maurice did not reply: he was looking down at the floor, apparently deep in thought.

  “How did you come to get the information on which he was arrested, or did you know all the time that Johnny was in this?” he asked at last.

  Alan was looking at him keenly, and under his scrutiny the lawyer shuffled uneasily.

  “I am not prepared to tell you that—if you do not know!” he said. “But I have promised Lenley that I will carry his message to you, and that ends my duty so far as he is concerned.”

  The lawyer’s eyes were roving from one object in the room to another. Not once did he look at Wembury.

  “It is curious,” he said, shaking his head sorrowfully, “but I had a premonition that Johnny had been mixed up in this Darnleigh affair. What a fool! Thank God his father is dead—”

  “I don’t think we need bother our heads with pious wishes,” said Alan bluntly. “The damnable fact is that Lenley is under arrest for a jewel robbery.”

&n
bsp; “You have the pearls?”

  Alan nodded.

  “They were in a cardboard box—there was also a bracelet stolen, but that is not in the box,” he said slowly. “Also I have seen a sign of an old label, and I think I shall be able to trace the original owner of the box.”

  And then, to his astonishment, Meister said: “Perhaps I can help you. I have an idea the box was mine. Johnny asked me for one a week ago. Of course, I had no notion of why he wanted it, but I gave it to him. It may be another box altogether, but I should imagine the carton is mine.”

  Momentarily Alan Wembury was staggered. He had had a faint hope that he might be able to connect Meister with the robbery, the more so since he had discovered more than he had told. The half-obliterated label had obviously been addressed to Meister himself, yet the lawyer could not have been aware of this fact. It was one of the slips that the cleverest criminals make. But so quick and glib was he that he had virtually destroyed all hope of proving his complicity in the robbery—unless Johnny told. And Johnny was not the man who would betray a confederate.

  “What do you think he will get?” asked Maurice.

  “The sentence? You seem pretty certain that he is guilty.”

  Maurice shrugged. “What else can I think—obviously you would not have arrested him without the strongest possible evidence. It is a tragedy! Poor lad!”

  And then all the dark places in this inexplicable betrayal were lit in one blinding flash of understanding. Mary! Wembury had scoffed at the idea that Meister wished to get her brother out of the way. He could see no motive for such an act of treachery. But now all the hideous possibilities presented themselves to him, and he glared down at the lawyer. He knew Meister’s reputation; knew the story of Gwenda Milton; knew other even less savoury details of Meister’s past life. Was Mary the innocent cause of this wicked deed? Was it to gain domination over her that Johnny was being sent into a living grave? This time Meister met his eyes and did not flinch.