by Mark Walker
“I want to see that one!”
“No, you can’t! This one’s mine!”
“But I want to see the scar!”
Brendalynn and Toby had to stifle their laughter.
Sergeant Bellows, unused to the ways of children, was growing flustered. “Children, you’ve got to stick with the one I gave you, and later we’ll trade them round. Everybody gets to see everything! Uh, Mrs. Peach! Can you come here?”
chapter seven
A Crooked Clue or Two
WHILST THE CHILDREN WERE THUS terrorizing Sergeant Bellows, Riggs was tracking down the latest clue discovered near Piccadilly Circus. The detectives had thoroughly scoured the area from St James’s Square to where Michael had lost the lady in black, and had kept closely to the south side of the Circus in tracking the suspect’s route. It was late, with most shops closed, but the nightlife of the great city was in full swing. The detectives had managed to find two major clues: a closed umbrella, bent and broken, and a small piece of the missing pendant’s chain.
Riggs arrived a few minutes later. His eyes were alight at the sight of a small bit of evidence. Sometimes the smallest scraps had proceeded to hang even the most astute criminal. He had the constable shine his torch on the tiny chain as Blaney held it up in the bright light using the penknife.
He turned it around slowly, and Riggs said excitedly, “Ah, look there!” He pointed with his pencil torch to a small smudge on one end of the chain. “We may have something here, a partial fingerprint?”
The detective squinted. “I just can’t tell, sir.”
Riggs smiled. “Very good, gentlemen. We’ll see if this matches the other piece of chain that was found earlier.” He turned to Blaney. “Check back with the lads in the square and see how they’re getting on with the footprints that were found. We need to hurry because of the rain. You know what to do. Then get the piece of chain down to Yard, and we’ll let the lab sort it out first thing tomorrow.” To the constable he said, “Excellent work. Now, either our suspect took the Underground or kept on going. Has the Tube station been checked yet?”
The constable bit his lip. “It was one of the first places we did check, sir. The ticket taker hadn’t seen any lady in black, but then it was coming on the rush hour.”
Riggs considered. “Hmmm. You’d think a widow woman in black with a veil would attract some attention, but just in case, check again. And tomorrow, ask at the shops down there, the flower seller—anyone who might have caught a glimpse of her.”
“Right-o, sir,” replied the constable, and went off to do his bidding.
Riggs turned. The Tube was covered, but the chain had been found before the station entrance. He faced out toward the Circus, looking from the central statue of Eros, then turned to his left. That was Regent Street. To his right, just beyond the Tube station, was the Criterion Theatre.
The wind had picked up slightly, and he could smell rain in the air. Intuition made up his mind, and he walked to his right, around the front of the building. He contemplated the marquee. It was brightly lit, though the theatre was closed or “dark” that night, possibly with rehearsals going on inside for the grand opening being heralded by arty posters, banners, and signs.
OPENS FRIDAY!
THE ALL-STAR MUSICAL
SURE TO BE THE HIT OF THE YEAR!
JOHN FIELGUD, SHEILA VAIN, and LARRY OLIVER as
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S “TRAGIC DANE” in
HAMLET-The Musical!
“Ha!” Riggs let out a harsh barking laugh. Tragic, I’m sure, he said to himself. That might be the understatement of the decade. What on earth would they think of next? How absurd—a musical version of Hamlet. He could just see a line of high-stepping chorus girls behind Hamlet, as he sang some tragic song and juggled poor Yorick’s skull. Riggs laughed again as he examined the façade more closely. The doors seemed to be fastened shut, and there was even a signboard placed in front of them.
FRIDAY NIGHT—SEATING STILL AVAILABLE
TICKETS, BOX OFFICE OPEN 10—6.30
ROYAL BOXES—SOLD OUT!
So the Criterion box office would have still been open at the time of the attack in St James’s. Someone could have seen something. This might or might not be a possibility. There were certainly plenty of places to hide, but with the whole building teeming with actors, musicians, stagehands, and carpenters, it seemed doubtful; or was it? Still, it should be checked into. He would have the Box Office staff interviewed when they opened in the morning. This young Toby and the two chorus girls were going to start working there tomorrow, so maybe Toby could be of help after all. The songbirds, too. Who knows, those two might even be in that chorus line he’d been imagining a few moments before. A brief, lopsided smile appeared on Riggs’s face as he continued east.
Big splats of rain began to spot the pavement before him. He hoped the lads had been able to find more in the way of other evidence, and had been able to make a plaster moulage of the footprints properly before the rain came. Next door to the theatre entrance, he encountered the Criterion Restaurant and Bar. Luckily it had an awning, and he ducked gratefully beneath it as the cloudburst began.
Riggs opened the door into a brilliant scene: warm, inviting, stylized Art Deco mixed with Turkish architecture and gilded mosaics. The after-theatre crowd was already there and the place was buzzing. He hadn’t realized it was getting so late. Glad to see that normal life carries on despite the depression, Riggs mused. He spoke with the headwaiter and the maître de hotel but to no avail, for they had been on since five and had seen nothing of a mysterious lady in black.
Not entirely discouraged, he walked back outside, where it was still raining, and watched the streaming traffic and lights that whizzed past Eros in the center of the Circus. Across the road, flashing signs advertised “It’s Guinness Time—Guinness is Good for You!” “Bovril Schweppe’s Ginger Ale,” and “The 39 Steps,” the new Alfred Hitchcock film Riggs had been itching to see. The sidewalks were peppered with figures scurrying along, huddled under their brollies, and he joined them, only without the brolly. The rain streamed off his hat, but fortunately his glen plaid mac kept him warm and dry. Well, reasonably dry, he thought, as he hitched up the collar.
chapter eight
Fox with a Foggy Tail
RIGGS FOUND HIMSELF DEEPLY intrigued by the theatre and its proximity to St James’s Square. Again, as he passed the entrance of the Criterion, he regarded the marquee. For every front door there was a back door, or in this case a stage door, so he decided to investigate. Swinging his stick, he headed round the corner, down the slope of Regent’s Street, toward the back of the building. Although it was raining steadily now, the angle of the building shielded him slightly, and he hugged it as he tramped along.
At Jermyn Street he turned to his left, and quickly found the rather innocuous stage door at the top of a small stoop with a rail, lit from above by a sickly yellow bulb. Riggs whipped out his pencil flash and ran it over every inch of ground, the edges of the building, and up the steps leading to the door, but he saw absolutely nothing. He tried the door, which was locked, and checking his watch he decided rehearsals must be over for the night. He turned back into the small court, shining the light around the dustbins. He surprised a mangy grey cat sheltering itself from the rain. It hissed at him in protest and failed to yield its spot, so Riggs switched off the flash and stood thinking. It was quieter here, with only muffled sounds from Piccadilly and an occasional tooting of horns. The rain had eased and was turning to light drizzle as fog began forming near the ground.
There seemed nothing more to be done that night, so he decided to head for home. Jermyn Street lay deserted before him, the drizzle and fog making it impossible to see to the end, a single lamp hazily lighting the way.
As he was crossing the road, Riggs suddenly felt a tightening in his belly, and the sixth sense that had become second nature crawled up his spine. His nostrils flared involuntarily, and all his senses were suddenly alert. But ra
ther than tensing when danger was present, he came fully into his element, perfectly relaxed, prepared for anything.
He continued without checking his pace, and anyone observing him would not have noticed any outward change. He twirled his stick casually, sensing an unseen presence; he knew someone was indeed observing him. His heels clacked on the wet pavement and echoed down the narrow street, and he whistled “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo,” confidently but slightly out of key. He paced the whistling and his gait so as to leave tiny spaces in which he could listen, and he soon became aware of other footsteps.
Riggs’s ears literally lay back almost like a hound’s. Straining every auditory fiber and vibration, he determined his pursuer was located on the other side of the road to his right, and about twenty yards behind him.
Abruptly he stopped walking and whistling … and heard the slight scuffle as the man on his tail stopped, too. An amateur? Smiling, he continued the few more steps to where the Dasher was parked at a corner. Key already in hand, he quickly scanned the interior for anyone who might be hiding there, under the top he had put up before leaving the Yard. Assured that there wasn’t, he leapt in. The interior was, if not warm, certainly dry. He started the motor and the Dasher burred to life. He peeled out from the curb in first gear before switching on his headlamps or his wipers. He shifted into second and neared the end of the road, preparing to turn back north toward Piccadilly. Twin lights flashed on behind him. The other car had been parked just beyond his. So there were at least two pursuers.
He was held up by the traffic light at Piccadilly, and just as it changed, he saw the lights of the other car in his twin rear-view mirrors. It was making the last turn off Jermyn Street. Fortunately the auto and pedestrian traffic was light, and Riggs gunned the Dasher round the corner, sending up a spray of water, and shifting into third, he covered the distance back to the Circus in a flash. He eased up, aware of the slick road and dwindling visibility due to the fog, and downshifted again, whisking past Eros to cut back into Glasshouse and pick up the north end of Regent’s Street.
Just as he thought he was free and clear, the hazy headlamps of his pursuers sprang to life behind him. This would call for some fancy driving, but he was sure of his ground there. He could also call on the current weather conditions, using the drizzle and shifting fog to his advantage. He cut right into Soho to begin his little game of hide and seek. As Riggs drove, another part of his mind was considering why he was being followed at all, and that only strengthened his conviction that he was somehow on the right track in associating the Criterion with the events in St James’s Square.
Behind him the fog seemed to glow. Ghostly lights merged as the two fuzzy headlamps of his pursuers burst through the mist and told him he still had a tail.
Now it was time to for him to be the fox and go to ground. He put on a huge burst of speed in fourth gear, taking full advantage of the power of the Dasher’s sixteen cylinders. As he approached the next corner, he shifted down into neutral and slewed into a skid on the rain-slick streets. It was dangerous, but Kelly Riggs held the situation firmly in hand, literally, as he skillfully spun the wheel, reversing direction, finding first gear, then second. At that moment he switched off his lights, careful not to touch the brakes so the red lights didn’t show. Now the Dasher blended with the gloom. He put the car into neutral and coasted to a stop by the curb, letting the engine idle. Within seconds, fog lamps blazing, the black form of what looked like a Lagonda sped by, throwing spray on the Dasher and taking the next corner on two squealing tires.
Riggs smiled grimly and waited a few minutes, checking his mirrors all the while with steely eyes before he pulled away, and turning on only his running lights. He debated whether to go back and work through the night, but decided in the end to go on home. The lab boys wouldn’t have anything to report till mid-morning, at the very earliest. And he might as well get some sleep whilst he could. He never knew when the next dustup would require him to be on his feet for thirty-six or forty-eight hours at a time, or when or where his next respite might come. His decision made, he called into headquarters on the Dasher’s radio that he could be reached at home.
The rain began pouring again. He squinted through the windscreen and turned up the wipers to the third setting, reflecting that the only thing he didn’t much care for about the Dasher was having only three wiper settings. He carefully nosed the roadster up Charing Cross into Tottenham Court Road, then a right at Bedford Square, and another onto Bloomsbury Street, where his small but comfortable bachelor flat lay, just beside the great edifice of the British Museum.
Although he maintained a small lock-up a couple of blocks away where he garaged the Dasher, he parked that night on the street. With a case on, he needed it ready to hand, so he locked the car, trod up the three steps to the checkerboard-tiled stoop, and entered his building.
Upstairs in his comfortably dry flat, he poured a large whiskey, got another glass of cold water to chase it, and turned on the radio. Jessie Matthews was singing “By the Fireside.” She was one of his favorites, and he had to admit to having a small crush on her. He gratefully plopped into an old overstuffed leather chair, kicked off his shoes, and put up his feet up by the heater for a few minutes, drinking in the lilting voice and his whiskey. They played three songs in a row. All thoughts of the case disappeared. He thought about the girl Brendalynn and the children instead. Lovely girl. Then he stood up, yawned, got undressed, and clad himself in flannel plaid pajamas. He brushed his teeth, said his prayers, crawled between the covers and was instantly asleep. But his rest would be short because the next major event in the case would occur less than four hours hence.
chapter nine
The Hand That Never Rests
THAT NIGHT WHILST KELLY RIGGS got some much-needed shuteye, the forces of darkness were hard at work, frantically trying to figure a way out of the shambles of what had occurred that afternoon.
There had indeed been a “hand” at work behind the events that day, with more to come. It was a very large hand. In fact, the biggest gangster organization in London’s East End was the Black and Blue Hand.
This Hand’s fingers had a very long reach, and everything they touched turned to evil. The Hand did not sleep. And the Hand was unforgiving.
Three frightened men sat in a darkened room, huddled round a plain deal table under a single shaded light, drinking whiskey and pondering what to do. Braggs Galloway, Marley Slade, and Lonnie Dirkson were tough-as-nails gangsters in their own right as operative fingers of the Black and Blue Hand, but they lived in daily fear of its Head.
Braggs Galloway, despite his name, was a full-blooded Chinese with a twenty-inch pigtail snaking down his back from under his black wharf hat. Slade had a lantern jaw and long cavernous features under a mop of prematurely white hair. Lonnie Dirkson was wearing a cap over his bald pate, and beneath it, his ruddy face sported a broken nose and a drooping moustache.
There were heavy shadows of despair on the three hollow faces as they asked each other what had gone wrong? The retrieval of the ruby was supposed to have taken place the next day, by a simple exchange. There had been no need for the “frail” to be attacked at all—and in broad daylight no less! Now the plod would come swooping down on them and the boss would be furious. The men were agreed that in the world of the Black and Blue Hand, heads would roll, and they did not want the heads to be theirs.
“Ring Tex now!” ordered Braggs Galloway. Marley Slade was immediately on the phone, asking Tex what he knew of the day’s events. He listened for a couple of minutes, as a rough garble came through the receiver to the others’ ears.
Slade hung up and said, “Even when I spilled the whole thing, Tex swears it wasn’t him! Says he wasn’t anywhere near St James’s, and the whole caper was supposed to happen tomorrow. Says he doesn’t know what happened any more than we do! He’s asking me what happened!”
“So he doesn’t have a glimmer or the dingus?”
“No! Says
he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of it—and he’s put the blame back on us if it goes wrong for him!”
“Hell’s bells!”
“He wants the name of the hospital the frail’s in, and he says he’ll take care of it for the boss tonight,” said Marley Slade thoughtfully.
Lonnie Dirkson thumbed through a telephone directory and a pad of notes, whilst Slade rang to find out the name of the hospital. After ascertaining it was the Portland Hospital for Women, they moved on to a discussion of Pratt’s Pawn and Loan. Next, Braggs Galloway consulted an A-Zed pocket map, noting that Portland Place and the hospital were in section C-2. The Zeppo owned by the Hand and kept in reserve for emergencies might be needed, so preparations were made to have it serviced and ready in its super-secret docking station.
Thus engaged, and now distracted by whisky, they were somewhat startled when the single black telephone on the table rang. Marley Slade regarded it like a bomb set to explode as it rang. Tentatively, he lifted the receiver. His eyes widened in fear, for they all knew who the caller would be.
“Yes, yes, Boss, we’re here,” his voice quavered. “We heard. We don’t know … yes, I mean … I don’t know what happened.” Sweat was running down his forehead. “Yes, yes, I’ll find out! Yes, the librarian’s still alive. Yes, yes … yes. Right, and no loose ends. We understand, uh, yes, I understand.” He listened for another minute before mumbling a final, “Y-yes, yes, Boss,” and hanging up.
He turned to the others. “The boss. As you can imagine, he’s not happy. We’re ‘to tie up loose ends.’” They all knew what that meant. They spoke and schemed for a few minutes before forming a plan, and then Slade was on the phone again to Tex.
chapter ten
The Curse Begins
KELLY RIGGS’S SLEEP WAS broken when his bedside phone rang at 5:02 a.m. Miss Chillglass had died.