by Frank Froest
It had been Detective-Inspector Ansoll who had met Coyne at Euston and warned him that London was an unhealthy place for prolonged residence. Coyne, who had never been convicted in his life though he had had some narrow escapes, smiled blandly, declared that the officer had made a gross mistake, and passed on.
He had some reason for his confidence, since those introductions were genuine. It is astonishing how far personality and nerve can carry one in the remote corners of the earth. Moreover, acquaintance with many detective bureaux, and the knowledge that the victim of a confidence-man—whether he has merely bought a ‘stolen’ razor from a man in the street or a ‘gold’ mine with a questionable title from an urbane City man—rarely has the courage to talk about his folly afterwards, had brought him to despise threats. England is a free country, and it is a delicate business to interfere with a person merely because he has a reputation.
Yet Coyne had not been long in London before he felt the influence of the machine. There was no overt act to which he could take exception. If he had not known the quality of his own nerves he might have supposed that his imagination was betraying him. Somehow he was beset by an atmosphere of all-pervading watchfulness until all his plans threatened to go awry.
Now, in fact, there was nothing miraculous in Scotland Yard’s arrangements for ‘covering’ him—merely large resources and common sense. There were half a dozen men who did little else than glean details of his daily life—in the hotel smoking-room, among the servants, among his acquaintances. Coyne was too big a fish for Ansoll to take any risks, and the men he had put on to deal with the ‘con’ man had been picked with care. It was not easy work this method of trying to follow the mobile fluctuations of a subtle man’s brains. Yet in the end some hint of his intentions must inevitably materialise. Not till they had proof that he had committed some illegal act could they do anything else.
All this simmered through the ‘con’ man’s brain as he sat moodily in his big sitting-room with an iced-drink and a big cigar after his fruitless attempt to terrorise Ansoll. The kindly eyes were hard and his jaw was set. He was not, he told himself, going to be put out of the game—not if they turned a thousand bone-headed bulls to try and stack the deck against him. Once he had carried his plans through, he could laugh at them and his victims. The chief obstacle in his path was the man who was organising the opposition campaign—Ansoll. In which Wolf Coyne made an error of supposition, for Scotland Yard is never dependent on any one man.
He touched the bell.
‘I’ll get him,’ he muttered viciously, ‘I’ll get him.’ On the soft-footed valet who answered his summons he turned abruptly.
‘Get me a telegraph form,’ he ordered.
Within an hour afterwards he had a visitor—an old young man who moved with stealthy alertness, and whose eyes were incessantly roving to and fro. He gripped a clean-shaven chin and nodded guardedly to the ‘con’ man as he was ushered in, but not a word did he speak till the door had again closed behind the servant.
‘Say bo,’ he declared at last. ‘Is it really you? You certainly are making good, Wolf, since I saw you last. This is some luxury.’ His eyes wandered appreciatively about the chamber.
‘How are you, Freddie?’ said the other genially. ‘Sit down. You got my wire all right?’ He rose, crossed the room, and turned the key in the door.
‘I got your wire,’ agreed Freddie, picking up the cigar-case which lay on a table and helping himself. ‘I guess there’s something moving.’ He crossed his legs and struck a match. ‘Well, you know I’ve always admired your talents, Wolf, though if you’ll forgive me saying so, you’re a little too inclined to play a lone hand. You need a partner to balance you like—to help with the heavy work. I’m somewhere around it, eh?’
‘Don’t pull any of that dope on me,’ said Coyne sharply. ‘What I want you for is no partnership gag. You’ll get paid for what you do, and it won’t take you a couple of hours. It’s worth just a hundred to me and not a penny more. That’ll perhaps save argument.’
‘You always was harsh, Wolf,’ said Freddie in hurt remonstrance. ‘What are you going to pull out of it? What’s the stunt anyway?’
‘I’m going to pull out of it just what I can make,’ snapped Coyne. ‘You’ll get a hundred—and easy money at that—or you’ll get nix. Now listen. Been on the boards lately?’
‘The stage,’ lamented Freddie, ‘is infested with knights. There’s no chanst in the legitimate, and demean myself to vaudeville—’
‘Cut it out,’ advised Coyne. ‘Do you know Ansoll—the boss bull of the 14th Division?’
‘Do I know you?’ retorted Freddie. ‘Why, Ansoll is the friend of my youth, my long-lost uncle. Hasn’t he pulled me twice, once because I stood outside a bank wondering what I would do if I had all the money that was in the safe, and once—But say, if he’s on to you count me out of the game.’
‘You’re yellow,’ sneered Coyne. ‘I thought you had some nerve, Freddie. But if you can afford to throw away a hundred jimmies …’ He crossed over and laid a hand on the locked door.
‘Don’t be hasty,’ urged Freddie. ‘Tell me what it is and I’ll consider.’
Coyne resumed his seat. ‘It’s simple enough. There’s not a ha’p’orth of risk in it for you. All I want you to do is this …’
Freddie’s solemn face expanded in a grin as he listened. He nodded his head in delighted appreciation.
‘You’re sure a top-liner, Wolf!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s the nuttiest move I’ve heard for a long time. You put him in bad and you have your swell witnesses, an’—lor’ lumme, I’d like to see his face when you open out on him.’
‘That’s all right then. You’ll be on hand seven-forty-five to the minute. And mind, Freddie, no soaking. Here’s a fiver. Get down to it.’
Luck is a great handmaid to the detective—though he invariably has her on a lead. She must not be confused with coincidence, for example. It was no blind luck that had caused the clerk at the desk to scratch his head when a visitor applied for Mr Arthur. That was due to the persuasions of a couple of very ordinary-looking young men who for many days past had spent much time loitering in the palm court of the Palatial Hotel.
Nor was it luck that they happened to be there. That was a very simple precaution of Ansoll’s. The only piece of luck in the whole business was that Wolf Coyne should have overlooked their possible presence. Thereafter everything became more or less inevitable.
For while Coyne and his satellite were planning the downfall of the inspector, a man in one of the telephone boxes below was talking over the wire to Ansoll. And when Flash Freddie, actor by profession, and what the United States calls ‘sneak’ by vocation, stepped out of the elevator and moved jauntily on to the rubber-paved courtyard, he had no supicion that the young fellow who looked like a bank clerk and brushed by him was at all interested in his mission.
He whistled cheerfully as he turned into the Strand and bent his steps westward. The young bank clerk dropped farther and farther behind, but an acute observer might have noticed that his relative position to Freddie was maintained by a heavy-jawed man who, if suddenly addressed, might have answered to the name Jimmie. And ten yards behind Jimmie Cotterill, smiling and bland, a red rose in his button-hole, strode Detective-Inspector Ansoll.
The procession maintained its order till Freddie turned down a street off Charing Cross Road. Then Ansoll closed up on Cotterill and the two moved up on Freddie. His foot was in a doorway when the inspector’s hand dropped lightly on his shoulder. One glance he took, and then recoiled with every evidence of dismay and terror.
‘Well, Freddie!’ said Ansoll. In the quiet, gentle voice the other man read a menace that did not exist.
‘Gawd, Mr Ansoll!’ he cried. ‘You scared me.’
‘Sorry,’ apologised Ansoll. ‘You don’t mind a joke, old son?’ He linked his arm lovingly with that of his quarry, and Cotterill ranged up on the other side.
Freddie made a half-hearted attempt to
disengage his arm. This encounter was altogether too pat upon his interview with Wolf Coyne to be to his taste. He was almost superstitious about it. But the ruling gambit of the crook came automatically to his lips.
‘There’s nothing you’ve got up against me. You lemme go. You ain’t no business to interfere with me.’
‘Freddie!’ remonstrated the inspector. ‘You seem frightened of something. What’s the matter with you? We only want to buy you a drink. You never used to be as shy as this.’ His grip tightened.
‘I’m not frightened,’ declared the other, raising his voice so that there should be no mistake. ‘What I got to be frightened about? Only I’ve got an appointment. You’ve got no right to hold me up like this. I’ll report you.’
‘Report away,’ agreed Ansoll. ‘We like it. But come and have a drink all the same.’
Somehow Freddie found himself impelled away from the costumier’s. The prospect of the drink did not entice him. He was possessed by too wholesome a fear even for that. His restless eyes sought vainly for enlightenment in the inspector’s face. It wore an air of beaming benevolence.
In the cellar-like saloon of a near-by public-house Freddie found himself seated on a high stool with a detective on each side. Ansoll paid for drinks, and his unwilling guest found the taste of a liqueur brandy grateful and comforting. Ansoll talked idly in general. When Cotterill insisted on a second round Freddie was a little less suspicious of their motives. With a brand-new five-pound note burning in his hip-pocket he was not to be outdone in hospitality, and again the barman replenished the glasses. Freddie began to see how he had misjudged his hospitable companions. By the fifth round he was calling Cotterill ‘Jimmie’, and had dropped the ‘Mr’ when he addressed Ansoll. It escaped his notice that since the second round they had confined themselves to temperance beverages.
‘You’re a good sort, Anse’. I sort o’—hic—thought you had it in for me. My mistake. Y’ heard o’ the sweat-box, eh? No ’fence. Same again?’ He put down his empty glass.
‘Same again,’ said Ansoll. ‘No, Freddie, the third degree don’t go in London. We’re all for pleasant methods. Own up now. We’ve never put a crooked deal up on you, have we?’
Freddie gravely shook his head. ‘No. I don’t owe you no grudge. When you’ve been after me you’ve always played the straight game. But—hic—say, Anse’—he hooked a couple of thin fingers on to the inspector’s middle waistcoat button—‘you folk want somethin’ outa me now.’ He leered cunningly sideways. ‘That’s so. I ses to meself—hic—when I lamped y’ firsta all, “Anse’s got something on—something doing, eh?” I was a bit peeved ’cos I’d gotta’ ’pointment—matter of hundred jimmies t’ me boy. But I’m glad I missed it now, because—hic—because you’re a good f’llah. Have another?’
‘Sure. That appointment now. Something to do with me, was it?’
Freddie grinned confidingly. ‘Y’ betcha shirt it was. Say, Anse’, some of the boys are savin’ it up for you. But I’m not in it now. I’m goin’ back to Wolf Coyne and tell him to count me out. You’re a good f’llah—better f’llah than Wolf any day. Let him keep his hundred.’
Ansoll raised a lemonade and angostura to his lips and took a slow drink. Over Freddie’s head he saw Cotterill deliberately close one eye. That was all the sign that either was vitally interested in Freddie’s babble.
‘H’m,’ commented the inspector. ‘Wolf’s gunning for me, is he? Well, I wish him luck.’
‘He’s a mean man. He thinks he’s got it all under his own thatch—’stead of calling in those that’s forgotten more of the game than he ever knew. Told me I was yellow, he did—me yellow.’ His half-fuddled wits were working a grievance against the ‘con’ man. ‘But you’re a good f’llah. I’ll show him whether I’m yellow—him and his swell suckers.’ He scowled at the fresh drink which had been placed in front of him.
Ansoll pulled at his reddish moustache. ‘Called you yellow, eh? I suppose that hundred pounds was so you might try and croak me. Why on earth Wolf Coyne should be putting it across me, I don’t know.’
‘Croak y’,’ Freddie laughed scornfully. ‘No, I don’t fall for that sort of business. I’m nobody’s fool to run my head into a rope. No, it’s like this, Anse’. You’re crowding Wolf, and he’s a man that don’t like to be crowded. So he fixed it with me to play a little game with you—something that’d keep you too busy thinking about yourself to interfere with him till he made a get-away. Now, Anse’, you’re a good f’llah, Wolf was going to give me a hundred of the best—what’s it worth to you if I put you wise?’
Ansoll stiffened. He stood up, and his smiling familiarity vanished. ‘You’re talking through the back of your head, Freddie,’ he sneered. ‘I thought you had more sense than to pitch me a cock-and-bull story like that. Say, honest now, have you ever met Wolf Coyne in your life? What do you think of him, Jimmie?’
Cotterill humped his shoulders scornfully. ‘What you take us for, Freddie? Just a couple of piecans? Want to make a fiver by telling us a tale? Try it on someone else, my lad.’
Freddie gulped angrily. This change from good fellowship to rank incredulity had been well-timed. Too ready an eagerness would have made him anxious to extract terms, or, worse still, might have aroused his slumbering suspicions. But this attitude of the officers was nicely calculated to make a nearly drunken man blurt out all he knew. Freddie eyed them in fierce resentment.
‘Telling the tale, am I? Don’t know Wolf Coyne, don’t I? You bulls think you’re mighty smart—I don’t think. Would you believe it if I was to tell you …’
Twenty minutes later he was being whirled in a taxi-cab towards King Street. To his protests both detectives listened with no trace of emotion.
‘It’s all right, old son,’ said Jimmie Cotterill soothingly. ‘We’re not going to hurt you. We’re just going to hold you safe till you’re feeling better. A nice, strong, hot cup of coffee is all you want—then a stiff soda water. Now, you cheer up and you’ll be as right as rain.’
They put him in the detention room at King Street—‘detained for inquiries’ was the official explanation—and adjourned to the dingy little C.I.D. office on the second floor. There they sank into chairs facing each other, and the little wrinkles round the corner of Ansoll’s eyes grew more intense. He gave a short cackle of laughter.
‘Wolf Coyne is It.’ He chuckled. ‘The one and only It. He meant having me. But I think the surprise packet he held for me will be nothing to his astonishment when he finds it go off in his hand. Now, Jimmie, we’ve got to get busy.’ He reached for the desk telephone. ‘Give me C.I.—Ansoll speaking.’
With the dismissal of Flash Freddie, Coyne felt that the Ansoll problem was in a fair way of being settled. It had been a flash of inspiration—almost of genius—that had shown him the way out. He regretted now the access of temper that had made him seek out the inspector and show a gun. In that he felt he had been foolish. But this—this was different—something worthy of the man who, before the week was out, would, barring accidents, be worth a hundred thousand pounds.
He chuckled to himself as he dressed for dinner. He had that touch of vanity in which most criminals, big, and little, are alike—though, unlike smaller men, he was content with his own admiration of himself.
As his man brushed him down he gave a glance at himself in the glass, and with a satisfied nod moved to the private room he had ordered for dinner. He did credit to his tailor, and his tailor was worthy of him. His wanderings and a certain natural ability had given him an air. He was distinguished even without the three orders that dangled on his lapel—a man of whom you might be sure at first glance as standing in front rank of whatever profession or society he adorned.
He welcomed his guests—there were only three—with that charm of manner that had stood him in good stead in multifarious enterprises. If you had raked London you would not have found three persons less likely to be duped by an adventurer than those whom Coyne was entertaining. There was L
ord Dalgaren, millionaire, owner of fifty thousand acres in Yorkshire and two hundred in London, and reputed one of the best business men in the House of Lords; Sir Henry Palton, builder of the big enterprise that shrieked at you from every hoarding ‘Palton’s Preserves’; and young Rupert Dainton, M.P., who had been left £15,000 a year and a big political future.
It was over the coffee that business was introduced. Up till then Coyne had given no indication that this was any more than a matter of hospitality. He lit a cigar with dainty care.
‘Well, Palton,’ he said, ‘I’ve had a cable today. You people have had plenty of time to make sure of my credentials. This ought to be fixed up now, or before we know it we’ll be pushed aside. These American Republics are slippery folk to deal with. We don’t want anyone to get ahead of us.’
Palton adjusted a pair of eyeglasses and looked gravely over their rims at his host. ‘It would have been better if you’d got the concession signed before we put up the money, Mr Arthur. Of course I can understand the difficulties of the position, but—’
Coyne drummed on the table absently. It was Dainton who struck in. ‘My dear Palton, we’ve been over that ground a dozen times among ourselves. It isn’t as if it was a gamble. It’s a perfectly reasonable proposition.’
The ‘con’ man interrupted. ‘I want to be clear with you gentlemen. You perfectly understand that I don’t risk a penny of my own money. I would like you to be in on this, but of course if there is any difficulty about raising the money, I can take the proposal elsewhere. If you had my experience of South America you would know you can’t do these sort of things on hot air. You can get this concession to build a railway through one of the biggest South American republics if you are prepared to put up a hundred thousand as a guarantee that you really will build. It seems, as Mr Dainton says, perfectly reasonable. If we were the only people on the market—’