A diligent search had been made for evidence of firearms, and, as a matter of precaution, to the circulation of the description of the wanted man had been added the warning: ‘May carry a pistol.’ But there was no proof that he carried anything of the sort. Neither cartridge nor cartridge box was found and, except for the knife, no arms whatsoever.
In the bottom of the cupboard they had unearthed a cardboard box bearing a Lyons label, which was filled with bundles of white cotton gloves, and in another part of the room half a dozen squares of twill into which eyeholes had been roughly cut. To the edge of each was fastened a strip of whalebone and a piece of elastic; the whalebone kept the mask rigid, and the elastic obviously fitted over the ears. Except for the eye-holes they might have been parts of the hangman’s ghastly equipment.
White Face was well found in all matters pertaining to dress. There were two new long black coats, obviously of foreign make, three pairs of rubber goloshes, only one pair of which had been used and, most curious of all, a dummy automatic pistol. It was the kind that is used in theatres, was made of wood, and was a lifelike representation of the real article. Until he had picked it up in his hand and had felt its lightness, Mason had been absolutely certain that it was the real thing.
In his own mind he was convinced that White Face had no other weapon and that this was the gun he carried on his unlawful occasions, the weapon which had cowed crowded restaurants and nightclubs, and had reduced porters and waiters to trembling jelly.
Elk was half dozing in the room when Mason entered. ‘Do you know what I think, sir?’
‘You thinking, too?’ growled Mason. ‘All right, I’ll buy it.’
‘There’s one man who is going to get White Face acquitted. You can look at it any way you like, but it comes back to the same thing. You couldn’t work a conviction against him—if Lamborn sticks to his story.’
‘Oh!’ Mason’s face fell. ‘Lamborn—that’s the pickpocket. H’m!’
He pondered on the matter for a long time.
‘You’re quite right, Elk,’ he said at last. ‘In the face of what that dirty little thief has said it would be very difficult to get a verdict. When I say “we couldn’t”, we mightn’t. It’s a shade of odds how the jury would take it.’
‘The jury,’ said Mr Elk oracularly, ‘is a body or institution which gives everybody the benefit of the doubt except the police. Juries don’t think; they deliberate. Juries—’
‘Don’t let us get clever,’ said Mason. He went out through the charge-room (where he borrowed a key), down a passage lined on one side with yellow cell doors, and stopped before No. 9, pulled back the grating and looked in. Mr Lamborn was lying uneasily on a plank bed, two blankets drawn up over his shoulders. He was awake, and at the movement of the grating lifted his head.
‘Hallo, Lamborn! Sleeping well?’
The thief blinked at him, swung his legs clear of the plank and sat up.
‘If there’s a law in this country, Mason, you’re going to get fired out of the force for this what I might call outrage!’
‘Invincible soul,’ said Mason admiringly.
He put the key in the lock and turned it.
‘Come out and have some coffee with me?’
‘Poisoned?’ asked Lamborn suspiciously.
‘A little strychnine—nothing serious,’ said Mason.
He conducted his prisoner along the corridor, handed over the key of the cell to an amused gaoler and ushered Lamborn into the little room. At the sight of Elk’s bandaged head the prisoner brightened visibly.
‘Hallo! Had a coshing?’ he asked. ‘Prayers are answered sometimes! I hope you’re not seriously injured, Mr Elk?’
‘He means,’ interpreted Elk, ‘that he hopes I’m fatally injured. Sit down, you poor, cheap, butter-fingered whizzer.’
‘I shouldn’t like to see you killed—flowers ain’t cheap just now.’
Lamborn sat, still smirking, and when the inevitable coffee was brought, half filled a cup with sugar.
‘Got the murderer?’ he asked pleasantly.
‘We’ve got you, Harry,’ said Mr Mason in the same tone, and Lamborn snorted.
‘You couldn’t prove anything against me, except by the well-known perjury methods of the London police. I dare say you’ll put half a dozen of your tame noses in the box and swear me life away, but Gawd’s in his heaven!’
‘Where did you learn that bit?’ asked Mason curiously.
Lamborn shrugged his shoulders theatrically.
‘When I’m in stir I only read poetry,’ he explained. ‘The book lasts longer because you can’t understand it.’
He sipped noisily at his coffee, put down the cup with a clatter and leaned towards Mason.
‘You haven’t got a chance of convicting me. I’ve been thinking it out in the cell.’
Mason smiled pityingly.
‘The moment you start thinking, Harry, you’re lost,’ he said. ‘It’s like putting a cow on a tightrope. You’re not built for it. I don’t want to convict you.’
His tone changed: he was so earnest that he carried conviction even to the sceptical hearer.
‘All I wanted then, and all I want now, is that you should tell the truth. Have you ever known me to take all this trouble to get a little whizzer a couple of months’ hard labour? Use your sense, Lamborn! Does a Superintendent of Scotland Yard, one of the Big Five, come down here to Tidal Basin and waste his night trying to get a conviction against a poor little hook like you? It would be like calling on the Navy to kill an earwig!’
Mr Lamborn was impressed. The logic was irresistible. He rubbed his chin uneasily.
‘Well, it does seem funny,’ he said.
‘Funny? It’s ludicrous! There must have been some reason why I wanted you to tell me this, and some reason why I should promise to withdraw the charge against you. You’re wide, Lamborn—as wide as any lad in this district. Use your common sense and tell me why I should take all this trouble if I hadn’t something behind it.’
Lamborn avoided his eyes. ‘It does seem funny,’ he said again.
‘Then laugh!’ growled Elk.
The man was not listening; he was frowning down at the table, obviously making up his mind. He made his decision at last.
‘All right, guv’nor, it’s a bet!’
He put out his hand and Mason gripped it, and that grip was a pledge, an oath and a covenant.
‘I dipped him—yes. I saw him drop and I thought he was soused. I went over and I was knocked out to find he was a swell.’
‘He was lying on his side, his face away from the lamp, wasn’t he?’ asked Mason.
The man nodded.
‘Just tell me what you did—one moment.’
He raised his voice and called for Bray.
‘Lie down there, Bray.’ He pointed to the floor. ‘I want to reconstruct Lamborn’s petty larceny.’
Mr Bray looked with some meaning at Elk.
‘Elk can’t lie down because of his head,’ said Mason irritably.
Bray went down on his knees and stretched himself, and Lamborn stood over him.
‘I flicked open his coat—so. I put my hand in his inside pocket—’
‘Left side or right side?’ asked Mason.
‘The left side. Then I hooked his clock—his watch, I mean—with my little finger—like this.’
His hands moved swiftly. There happened to be a pocket-case in Mr Bray’s inside pocket. It also happened to contain the photograph of a very pretty girl, which fell on the floor. Bray retrieved it quickly and made a wrathful protest.
‘And he’s married!’ was Elk’s shocked murmur.
Bray went very red.
‘All right, you can get up.’
Taking a sheet of paper out of a drawer, Mason began writing quickly. When he had finished he handed the sheet to Lamborn, who read it over and eventually affixed his sprawling signature to the statement.
‘Why did you want to know, guv’nor?’ he asked. ‘What’s my
robbery got to do with the murder?’
Mason smiled.
‘You’ll read all about it in one of the evening papers—I’ll try to arrange that your photograph’s published.’
Elk laughed hollowly.
‘What’s the matter with his fingerprints?’
‘But why do you want me to tell, Mr Mason?’
Mason did not explain.
‘Release this man, Bray. Mark the charge “withdrawn”. You’ll have to attend the police court tomorrow morning, but you needn’t go into the dock.’
‘It’s the only part of it he knows,’ said Elk sotto voce.
Lamborn shook hands forgivingly with the chief and with Elk.
‘One thing, Harry,’ said Mason, and the released prisoner paused at the door. ‘You’ll be given back all your possessions except the jemmy we found in your pocket. I didn’t tell you, but I was putting a felony charge against you in the morning— “Loitering with intent”. Congratulations!’
Lamborn made a hurried exit from the police station. Until morning came he lay in his bed, puzzling to find a solution of the strange philosophy of Superintendent Mason, and could discover no answer that was consistent with his knowledge of English police methods.
CHAPTER XVII
LAMBORN had hardly left before the superintendent came into the charge-room hurriedly and the police reporter heard his name called.
‘Michael, this young lady of yours—what was she at the clinic?’
‘I believe she acted as Marford’s secretary,’ said Michael, surprised. And then, anxiously: ‘You’re not going to see her tonight, are you?’
Mason was undecided.
‘Yes, I think I will. Somebody ought to be told about the doctor—I mean, somebody that matters. Besides, she may give us some very valuable help.’
‘What help could she give you?’ asked Michael suspiciously.
Mason rolled his head impatiently.
‘If you imagine I’m waking her up in the middle of the night on any old excuse for the sake of seeing her in her négligée, you’re flattering me. I’m out to find all the threads that lead to and from everybody who has played a part in this crime,’ he said. ‘I want to know who were Marford’s friends, who were his enemies, and I can think of nobody else who can tell me. She can, because she worked with him, and Elk’s got an idea that he was sweet on her.’
‘Rubbish!’ said Michael scornfully. ‘I don’t suppose he ever looked at her twice.’
‘Once is enough for most men,’ said Mason. ‘Are you going to take me up and introduce me?’
When they were huddled up under heavy rugs, for a cold wind made an open car a death trap, Michael gave expression to his fears.
‘It’s going to be a terrible shock to Janice—Miss Harman.’
‘Call her Janice: it sounds more friendly. Yes, I suppose it is. Marford is a fellow who got a lot of affection and sympathy without asking for it.’
‘His body hasn’t been found?’
Mason shook his head.
‘And it won’t be, in spite of the blood. If he’d been dead, White Face would have left him, wouldn’t he?’
It was the first encouraging statement Mason had made.
Bury Street was lifeless when the car drew up before the flat, and it was a quarter of an hour before they could arouse the porter. Mason identified himself, and the two men climbed up to the first floor.
The maid was a heavy sleeper; it was Janice who heard the bell and, getting into her dressing-gown, opened the door to them. The first person she saw was Mason, whom she did not recognise.
‘Don’t be worried, Miss Harman. I have a friend of yours with me.’
And then she saw Michael and her alarm was stilled. She took them into the drawing-room, went off to wake her maid (there was something old-ladyish about Janice, Michael decided), and came back to the drawing-room to learn the reason for this visitation.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got rather bad news for you, Miss Harman,’ said Mason.
Invariably he adapted his tone to the subject of his speech, and he was so melancholy that she thought he could have come only on one subject, the murder of Donald Bateman.
‘I know. Mr Quigley has told me,’ she said. ‘You want to ask me about the ring? I gave it—’
He shook his head.
‘No. Dr Marford has disappeared.’
She stared at him.
‘You mean—he is not hurt?’
‘I hope not,’ said Mason. ‘I sincerely hope not.’
It was remarkable to Michael that this man, whom he had regarded as a stout, unimaginative and fairly commonplace officer of police, could tell the story with such little offence, and suppress so much without losing any of the main facts. She listened: the news was less shocking than that of Bateman’s death, but it left her with a deeper heartache, for Marford was one of the ideals which experience and disillusionment had left undisturbed.
‘The trouble is, we know nothing about the doctor or any of his friends, and we don’t know where to start our inquiries. You were his secretary—?’
‘No, not his secretary,’ she corrected. ‘I kept the accounts of the clinic, and sometimes of the convalescent home, and I was helping him to get Annerford ready—he has been trying for a year to open a tuberculosis institute for the children of Tidal Basin.’
‘Where is Annerford?’ asked Mason, and she told him and described the work which the doctor had set himself to do.
He had planned greatly, it seemed; had, in one of the drawers of his desk, blueprints of a princely building. His appeal to the wealthy public was already typewritten, and he had discussed with her many of the details.
‘Now, Miss Harman,’ said Mason, ‘you know the people of the clinic. Is there anybody there who had a grudge against the doctor, or did he have any great friend there—man or woman?’
She shook her head.
‘There was an elderly nurse and one or two occasional helpers. The staff at Eastbourne consisted of a matron and a nurse. He was trying to raise money to enlarge these homes,’ she said; ‘it was always a source of distress to the doctor that the places were understaffed, but they cost an awful lot of money.’
‘There was nobody at any of these places—the clinic, the home at Eastbourne or at Annerford—who was in the doctor’s confidence?’
She smiled at this.
‘Not at Annerford. No, I know of nobody. He had no friends.’ Her lip quivered. ‘You don’t think…any harm has come to him?’
Mason did not reply.
‘Did Bateman have any friends?’ he asked.
She considered the question.
‘Yes, there was a man who came over with him from South Africa, but he never mentioned his name. The only other person he seemed to know was Dr Rudd.’
Mason opened his eyes wide. ‘Dr Rudd?’ he said. ‘Are you sure?’
She nodded. She told him the story of the dinner and Bateman’s perturbation when he had seen the doctor, resplendent in evening dress.
‘That certainly beats me. Where could he have met Rudd?’ said Mason. ‘All gay and beautiful, was he—the doctor, I mean? Yes, I knew he knocked about a little bit in the West End, but I didn’t realise—h’m!’
He looked down at the carpet for a long time, deep in thought.
‘Yes,’ he said suddenly. ‘Of course. I understand now. Naturally he didn’t want to meet Rudd.’
He looked at Michael quizzically.
‘Are you going to stay to breakfast?’ he asked, and Michael returned an indignant denial.
‘You’d better go down to Tidal Basin and wait for me. I’m only calling at Scotland Yard to check up a few dates; I’ll be with you in an hour. I’m sending a police car back—you can use that.’
White Face waited patiently for daylight. He had changed his clothes, and the suit he wore now would attract no attention when he lined up at Forest Gate for his char-a-banc ticket to the coast. Once or twice he went in to see his unwilling companion,
and on each occasion found the doctor sleeping peacefully.
From his pocket he took an evening paper which he had not had time to read before. There was quite a lot about White Face, of course. He was a star turn in those days. Great authors, who catered exclusively for the intelligentsia, stepped down from their high pedestals to speculate upon what one called ‘this amusing malefactor’. The Howdah affair was still topical. There was a revival of the ‘Devil of Tidal Basin’; some gross plagiarist had attempted to revitalise the myth, but it needed Michael Quigley’s skilful touch to make it live.
He dropped the paper on to the table, walked out into the open and stood listening. From far away he could hear the sound of distant motor-cars, and whilst he stood there, he saw a white magnesium rocket, probably a Verey light, flame in the air and die. So the police had put on the barrage! He knew that signal. A suspected car had been seen, and the white flare was the order to the nearest police control to stop and search it. Ingenious people, the London police, in their quiet untheatrical way. Very difficult, very dangerous to fool with. And yet they were not men of education—just common policemen who had raised themselves out of the rut, established their own little hierarchy, and attained by some extraordinary method a complete efficiency.
He did not despise them nor did he fear them. The odds against his escaping were twenty to one—there was enough of the gambler in him to fancy his chance.
No man who was wanted, and whose photograph was procurable, had ever escaped from England. Perhaps some did, but the police never admitted the exceptions.
As he came back along the passage he heard a faint voice call from the open door of the darkened room.
‘Can I have some water, please?’
He carried a glass in to the doctor, who drank it and thanked him.
‘You’re in considerable danger, my friend. I hope you realise that?’ said the voice from the sofa weakly.
‘My dear doctor, I have been in danger for quite a long time—go to sleep, and don’t worry about me.’
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