by Frank Froest
‘You were still a reserve possibility in my mind this morning, but I saw Jimson first. He was in a blue funk over the dagger trick, and it was then I got my first line on the case. I must have been muzzy not to think of it before. The whole thing was a frame-up from the inside—the mysterious letters put in his pocket, the spilling of the poisoned milk, the dagger through the desk—it was as clear as noon. More than that, the melodrama of the dagger showed that the whole murder business was a bluff. Someone wanted to frighten Jimson out of the country—quick. That meant somebody he’s got his hooks into, and just as I’d made up my mind the answer came pat. You called on Jimson—I don’t know what pretext you made, but it was clear that you had come to see how he took it.’
‘I don’t quite see—’ interrupted Sir Melton.
‘No. I’m coming to the other points. For one thing all the time I was with you, although you knew I was a police officer, you never evinced any curiosity as to my business. You knew what I was on.
‘I had a man on observation outside Jimson’s flat and when we went out I passed him the knife. With a manufacturer’s name on it, it was perfectly simple to find out the retailers who handled it, and then get descriptions of recent purchasers—and one fitted you. You bought a Colt at the same time. Incidentally, I passed word to find Jimson’s servant—no very difficult matter.
‘When you told me your story of blackmail, I ’phoned through to the Yard to collect Gabrielle and Lightning Fred and bring them along to the flat.’ He paused to light his pipe. ‘What happened there, you know. It wasn’t perhaps my strict duty, but still …’
XV
FOUND—A PEARL
IN a snarling, twisting heap the three men rolled into the gutter. The half-dozen spectators, who quickly grew into forty or fifty, lifted no finger to help. They seemed, with that curious lack of initiative which so often seizes London crowds, to regard the fight as an abstract spectacle in which it would be impertinent to interfere.
Quex, overmatched and fighting with dynamic energy, wasted no breath in appeals for aid. He jabbed his elbow under one man’s jaw and tore away a thumb that was pressing relentlessly on his eyeball. With a quick twist he became for a moment uppermost in the tangle. He had struggled to his knees before they again pulled him down, and, snapping like a wild dog, he felt his teeth meet in one man’s hand.
A wolfish ejaculation of pain punctuated the grunts of the struggle, and a kick that would have smashed an ordinary man’s ribs caught him in the chest. He went numb and sick and the vigour of his resistance relaxed. Someone in the crowd gave an involuntary cry as a knife flickered in the dim lamplight. He shut his eyes in helpless anticipation of the blow he could not avert.
‘Where is it?’ demanded a voice. ‘It’s your last chance—quick.’
He opened his eyes and laughed defiantly. ‘I’ll see you burn first,’ he said with an oath. ‘You’ll swing for this—’
‘Here’s the police,’ said a sharp voice from the crowd, and Quex felt the weight that was pressing him to the ground relax. His two assailants had pushed their way through the crowd and the quick sound of their footsteps was dying away in the distance ere a big constable had reached the prostrate man.
‘What’s all this?’ he asked.
Quex sat up slowly and tried mechanically to brush the mud from his light coat. Someone picked up his battered hat and passed it to him. He accepted the officer’s helping hand and rose dizzily to his feet.
‘It’s all right, constable,’ he said quietly. ‘Just a little joke of some friends of mine. They were having a game.’
‘Game!’ It was the shrill voice of a woman in the crowd. ‘They were going to murder. I see a knife. If the pleece ’adn’t come—’
‘That’s right,’ interpolated half a dozen other voices.
The constable wheeled swiftly. He had observed the ruffled evening dress under Quex’s overcoat and he was puzzled. He jerked a note-book out of his breast pocket.
‘Queer thing it looks to me,’ he commented. ‘If you say it was a lark, I can’t do anything. However, I’d better have your name and address, and you and you.’ He indicated the woman who had spoken and another person. ‘Now, sir.’
Quex frowned. He stooped forward as though to brush his coat, in reality to hide his hesitation. ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘John Blake, Hotel Splendid, will find me. Good-night, officer.’ He strode abruptly away.
But it was not to the Hotel Splendid that he made his way. Once clear of the throng he hailed a taxi and gave an address at. Balham. He let himself in with a latch-key and went up to the sitting room of the furnished apartments he rented on the second floor. There he stretched himself in an armchair and felt himself tenderly.
‘A close thing, John, my boy,’ he said aloud. ‘I oughta have carried a gatt. I didn’t think they’d be so close on to me. Never mind—they didn’t get it.’
He put his fingers casually in his waistcoat pocket and an epithet sprang from his lips as they came away empty. With furious haste he searched the rest of his pockets knowing all the time that it was hopeless.
‘Gone!’ he swore. ‘Those blighters have done it!’
His lips compressed in a wicked straight line. Going through to the adjoining bedroom he pulled a suit-case from under the bed and rummaged till he found an automatic. Pressing it open he slipped in a clip of cartridges and flung the weapon on the bed while he proceeded to change out of his stained evening dress.
John Quex could be an ugly man when he was roused.
Garton, divisional detective inspector of the 13th division, was looked upon at headquarters as a coming man. He had some of the qualities with which the traditional detective is endowed, and more than that he had a complete understanding of the possibilities and limitations of the machinery of the Criminal Investigation Department. Where other men succeeded by dour determination and a steady remorseless sifting of facts, he had a genius for swiftly discarding non-essentials and putting through an investigation at a gallop. A hard, tenacious man, who would not swerve a hair’s breadth from what he conceived his duty, he yet had a natural geniality which made him not disliked even among those whose sphere of operations was liable to be curtailed by his activities.
Being a business man it was his habit to drop office affairs punctually at six each evening unless there were special reasons for staying on. Between nine and ten he would drop in again on the off-chance of anything having arisen that needed immediate attention. So it was that he hit with little loss of time on the matter of the pearl.
He had been to the local variety show and in an interval strolled casually over to the station. In the uniformed inspectors’ room he nodded genially to the senior man on duty.
‘Nothing doing my way?’ he observed.
The other shook his head. ‘Nothing doing, Mr Garton. Bit of a row down near the Green Dragon.’ He closed a heavy folio book in which he had been writing and came over to the counter. ‘Funny thing rather. Couple of roughs tried to lay out a man in evening dress—a real rough house until the man on the beat turned up. Two of ’em did a bolt leaving the third on the ground. He told our man it was a joke. All the same he’d been pretty badly beaten up, and the people in the crowd said they’d tried to knife him.’ He moved to his desk and took out something which he passed to Garton. ‘After he’d gone someone found this on the ground. If it’s the real thing it’s worth something, but I guess it’s a fake.’
The detective examined the object with curiosity and an alert light leapt into his face.
‘Say, Greig, this is a pearl all right, all right. Send it round to the jeweller’s on the corner for me, will you, to make sure. I’d like someone to go and rake out a couple of my men—Hewitt and Blackson will do. Where’s the constable who first got on to this?’
‘On his beat. I’ll have him fetched. You on to something?’
Garton smashed his hand down on the counter. ‘If I’m any guesser that pearl is worth something running into thous
ands. I smell something in this, Greig. I really do.’
For a while things began to stir at the police-station. Garton hustled himself and his subordinates with cold enthusiasm. A hurried telephone call to the Hotel Splendid made certain that no guest named Blake was there and the local jeweller confirmed the genuineness of the pearl while diffidently hesitating to express a value. Garton had little use for intuitions and deductions while he was ‘getting organised’.
In two hundred police-stations tape machines ticked out a report and inquiries. Men pored over the files of ‘Informations’ for any description of a missing pearl. Persons who had witnessed the fight near the Green Dragon were sought out and gave the usual vague and conflicting descriptions of the men concerned.
At half an hour before midnight Hewitt, Garton’s right-hand sergeant, stretched his arms above his head and yawned wearily. ‘It’s a dead trail,’ he observed. ‘Can’t see that we can do anything more tonight, sir. It isn’t as if we were sure a robbery had been committed. For all we know there may be some quite natural explanation of the whole thing.’
Garton looked up from the ‘Special Release Notices’ he was studying. ‘Sure thing you’re getting tired,’ he said a trifle acidly. ‘Now I’m just getting interested. I couldn’t rest with this on my mind. I want to know. Let’s go take a walk. That’ll freshen you up.’
Hewitt reached stiffly for his hat and coat. ‘I’m no slacker, sir,’ he retorted. ‘All the same, I’d like to know what we are looking for.’
‘Why,’ said Garton with simplicity, ‘for the man who dropped the pearl, of course.’
It was one thing to hunt John Quex; it was another to be hunted by him. He was barely forty and looked less; yet for the school in which he had graduated that was a ripe old age. There were few of his fraternity left. Sudden death in one form or another had cut the majority of them off. Some few had had their lives prolonged by long terms in penitentiaries; some like Quex had had the foresight to drop out of New York. On the whole, the career of a gunman in New York is not conducive to longevity.
Many years and much experience had passed over Quex’s head since the days when he had been a champion among the ‘strong arms’ of the East Side. He had long learnt that patience and subtlety in crime were of more avail that the fiercest and quickest revolver fusillade. Yet he retained still some of the old instinct for battle.
His way led citywards. Suburban passengers on the electric car never dreamed that the neatly dressed man, quietly absorbed in an evening paper, was bound upon a murder quest. Why should they? He had neither the low forehead nor the big jaw of the desperado. A man less likely to make trouble never travelled from Balham.
At Blackfriars he changed for the Underground and when at last he emerged at Aldgate Station both hands were plunged deeply in his overcoat pockets and he walked alertly. His eyes dodged to and fro among the foot passengers, as a man who is determined not to be taken unawares.
Half a dozen times he twisted in and out of mean streets bordering the Commercial Road and at last came to a pause before a shabby three-storeyed house. It was noticeable that he used his left hand to knock and ring in a peculiar combination. His right hand was still deep in his pocket.
The door swung back creakily and an unshaven man in jersey and belted trousers peered at the visitor doubtfully for an instant.
‘Hello, Dick,’ said Quex amiably. ‘How’d she go?’
‘It’s you, is it? Come along in. There’s a little faro school upstairs. Y’ know the way?’
Quex waited as the other shut the door. ‘Seen anything of Big Mike tonight?’ he asked.
Dick twisted the stub of an anaemic cigarette with his tongue. ‘Sure. ’E’s bin ’ere some time. Come in with Jimmie Alford.’
Quex clicked his tongue against his cheek and followed the door-keeper up to the first floor to a room thick with tobacco smoke. At the top of a long table a squint-eyed man in shirt sleeves presided at a faro ‘lay-out’. His eyes flickered momentarily to the newcomer and he nodded dispassionately. Then he turned a fresh card. No one else was interested enough in the visitor to raise a head.
Quex was smiling as he moved towards the table. He touched a stockily built man who was sitting by the operator on the shoulder.
‘Well, Mike,’ he said in a hard metallic voice. ‘I’ve come after you, you see.’
The man he addressed swerved round, fists clenched, and his chair toppled over with a crash. Quex had taken two paces backwards and his pistol showed in his hand. He was still smiling.
‘Didn’t expect me, didn’t you?’ he went on. ‘Keep where you are, you lumbering stiff, or I’ll bump you off just now. And you, Jimmie Alford, don’t you move. I was an easy mark an hour or two ago, wasn’t I? I fell for you, didn’t I?’
There was something more than consternation in the faces of the two men to whom he spoke. Mike was a picture of surprise. His mouth gaped and his bleary eyes watched the muzzle of the weapon as though fascinated.
The keeper of the gambling house recovered his wits first. ‘Here, that don’t go here, Jack,’ he remonstrated. ‘Put that gun away. If you’ve got any difference with these gents you settle it somewhere else.’
‘Don’t you bat in on this, Soapy,’ advised Quex sharply. ‘I’m talking to my old partners there.’ His eyes were glowing though his speech was soft enough. ‘Now Mike, what about it?’
Mike made no answer. Like Quex he had been reared in a school where resource was everything. The why or how of Quex’s appearance had little immediate concern for him. The gas, for reasons which every gambling house keeper will appreciate, was close to the dealer’s hand. Mike’s arm scarcely seemed to move and in an instant the place was in blackness. Almost in the same movement he dropped forward on hands and knees like a runner at a starting point.
Two vivid splashes of flame split the blackness and there was a cry from the panic-stricken punters. They were used to fists, to heavy tongued belts—even to knives on occasion—but gun-play was carrying a dispute too far. Mike leapt towards the flashes like a panther, a wicked sheath-knife in his hand. He struck viciously at emptiness and cautiously flattened himself out again. The tense breathing, the hurried shuffling of men’s feet ceased.
Uncertain whether his adversary might still be waiting in the darkness with weapon poised, Mike lay still, every muscle tense. Heavy footsteps at last sounded on the stairs and someone within the room scraped a match. The gas flared up and Mike rose to his feet. Soapy dropped the match from between his fingers.
‘Can you beat that?’ he said helplessly. ‘Can you beat it?’
At the table Alford was leaning forward, his hand pressed to his left shoulder. The groan he had repressed while there was a danger of a recurrence of the firing now broke from his lips.
‘He got me, Mike,’ he said. ‘The dog got me.’
They were the only three left in the room. Without the formality of a knock the door was thrust open. A huge figure seemed to fill the room and behind loomed the form of a uniformed constable.
Soapy tried to smile ingratiatingly. ‘It’s all right, Mr O’Reilly,’ he said with suave huskiness. ‘There ain’t nothin’ wrong.’
O’Reilly had been too long a detective in the East End to waste words. ‘So you say,’ he agreed. ‘That’s why those other blokes ran out. Who’s been doing the shooting up?’ His eyes rested on the faro box. ‘Anyway, we’ll take you along. We’d been wondering where you’d pitched your faro joint for a long time, Soapy.’
There are lucky detectives as there are lucky generals, and Garton was usually kissed by the imp of fortune in any campaign he undertook. If his luck was analysed, however—a matter in which critics never took trouble—it would usually be found to have a background of brains and work. He had reflected that whether the men concerned in the affray were honest men or crooks there might be some significance in the proximity of the Green Dragon. So it was that with the reluctant Hewitt by his side he happened into the saloon of that ho
stelry ten minutes before closing time and leaning on the counter put the usual question to his aide.
‘Mine’s a Scotch,’ said Hewitt.
‘Why, here’s Phyllis,’ said Garton. He winked at the girl behind the bar. ‘How are you, my dear? Do you still love me or have you trampled on another heart? Let’s have two Scotches, Phyllis.’
The girl behind the bar giggled. ‘Go on with you.’
‘She gives me the boot,’ lamented Garton. ‘Hewitt, my life is ruined.’ He caught her hand as she placed the drinks in front of him. ‘Phyllis, did you ever have your fortune told?’ He traced a line on her palm with his finger. ‘Now listen. There’s a fair man and a dark man—’
She tried to wrench her hand away. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she protested. ‘It’ll be closing time in a minute and you’ll have to go without your drinks.’
‘Never mind the drinks,’ persisted the inspector. ‘If you don’t believe I can read fortunes I’ll prove it to you. Take tonight. At about nine o’clock there were two men here—or was it three?’ He appeared to study the palm intently. ‘I can’t quite make it out. Anyway one of ’em was a particular pal of yours—a man in the jewellery line.’ He was no longer watching her hand but her face. She had changed colour and suddenly wrenched her hand free.
‘It’s all nonsense,’ she declared stiffly. ‘And anyway it’s closing time.’
‘All right, Phyllis, we’re going,’ said Garton lightly. He lifted his hat. ‘Good-night, my dear. See you again soon.’
Outside Hewitt shrugged his shoulders grimly. ‘For a family man, sir, if I may say so, you made the going there,’ he commented. ‘I don’t quite get the idea.’
‘I’d hate to be without you sometimes,’ said Garton evasively. ‘Why, Hewitt, didn’t you see the ring that girl was wearing? Look here, I’m afraid it’s too late after all to push our luck tonight but bright and early tomorrow morning I want that girl’s name, the post-mark of all the letters she gets, and the names and addresses on all the letters she sends out. Get me. You can handle it yourself or put young Wren on it if you like, but it’s got to be done.’