“Come in. I think that you know everybody here, except one.”
Ronny Eccles strolled in, nodded to Milsom and Richardson, and halted before Poker Moore.
“I believe we’ve met before,” he said. “Now where was it? I know. It was in that waterside saloon in Quebec when I had shore leave from the Mermaid.”
“I don’t remember you,” said Moore bluntly.
“No? Well, that doesn’t surprise me. You were in the middle of a heated argument with the gentleman opposite; the table went over and you both crashed through the glass door. You remember that?”
“Did you see what happened afterwards?” asked Meredith, deeply interested.
“No, I cleared out. You see, it was a first-class rumpus, and I didn’t want the police to come in and start taking names. I was a youngster then and my old man was a stickler for propriety. If he’d read my name in the papers as being mixed up in a gambling row, in a dive like that, he would have laughed at my defence that I was studying low life for my general knowledge paper and would have stopped my leave for six months. The ward-room called him ‘Holy Joe’; he’s an admiral now.”
“Anyway, you were long enough there to remember my friend, Poker Moore?” observed Milsom.
“Yes, I’d never seen poker played before, and I was watching his play. The other chap was half seas over—an excitable young ass—and when this gentleman called his bluff and laid down four aces—well, the youngster threw the cards in his face, accused him of stacking the deal, and went for him. Besides, this gentleman has a face that one doesn’t often see—”
“A caricature of a face, you mean. No offence, Poker.”
“I wouldn’t call it that,” replied Eccles, looking musingly at Moore. “I’d call it an unusual face.”
“Would you recognize the other man if you saw him?” asked Richardson.
“I doubt it. He was a youngster; he was half drunk, and it was getting on for five years ago.”
“I should like to have a word with you alone, sir, before I go,” murmured Richardson to Dick Meredith.
“All right! Sit tight until they go.” Aloud he said, “Jim, I hope that you’ve made it clear to your friend that if he meets this man, Owen Jones, in the street or anywhere else, he must keep his hands off him.”
“Yes, he knows that. I’m giving him a shake-down in my flat until this business is cleared up, and he won’t go out without me. I think that we’d better push along now and get some sleep after our journey. What about you, Mr. Eccles. Can we give you a lift?”
But Ronny Eccles preferred the humble Tube to Hampstead, and took his leave. Dick saw the three of them to the lift, and returned to Richardson.
“Are you beginning to see daylight, sergeant?”
“I think I am, sir, but there is still some way to go before we can act. We must get into touch with Mr. Ralph Lewis.”
“I wish I could help you, but when a man deliberately goes into hiding, what can one do? Stop; there is one hope. Don’t move from this room until I come back. I shan’t be more than five minutes.”
He ran upstairs and tapped at Patricia’s door. He had not much hope of rousing her at such an hour, for probably she was in bed. But at his third knock he heard the sound of slippered footsteps, and the voice he knew so well cried “Who is it?” through the closed door.
“Dick Meredith,” he called through the keyhole. “I must see you for a moment. It is very important.”
The door opened a few inches, and he had a glimpse of Patricia in a pink silk dressing-gown, with the sleep hardly out of her eyes.
“I would never have dared to come at such an hour, but I know you’ll forgive me when I tell you the reason. There is a detective from Scotland Yard down in my rooms. He wants to know Ralph Lewis’s address.”
Patricia opened her eyes very wide. “Why? It must be a mistake.”
“No, he’s explained it to me. Lewis is wanted as a witness in a murder case and they must get his address at once. Do you know it?”
“I do happen to know it, but he gave it me in confidence and told me on no account to give it to anyone else. He sent it only that I might arrange for forwarding his letters. What ought I to do?”
“If the Scotland Yard people insist on having it, I don’t see how you can well refuse.”
“Why can’t they wait till Wednesday when Mr. Vance comes back? I’d far rather that he took the responsibility of giving it.”
“Mr. Vance coming back? What about his parrot?”
The girl shrugged her shoulders hopelessly. “It can’t be helped. I shall have to make a clean breast of it and be given the order of the boot.”
“Rather than that, why not try that other parrot? My friend tells me that it now says ‘Absolutely’ without a fault. At least you can let me bring it round for you to see.”
“Oh, I don’t know—”
It was the first sign of weakening, and Dick resolved then and there to take advantage of it. He felt strongly elated. “Now, if you’ll give me that address I’ll go down to that man from the Yard. I promise not to give it to him unless he satisfies me that it will be to Lewis’s advantage that they should have it.”
“Oh well, if you promise that—his address is Hotel de Normandie, Veules-les-Roses.”
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, sergeant,” said Dick, returning to his room. “I had some difficulty in obtaining the address. If you’ll lend me your note-book, I’ll write it down for you. There! Veules-les-Roses is a little seaside place, not very far from Dieppe. By the way, I could only get the address by promising that it would only be used in a way that would be to Mr. Lewis’s advantage.”
“So it will, sir. I have felt sure for a long time that he was being blackmailed on account of some indiscretion of his youth. Now I think I have the key to the puzzle, but I can get no further until I see Mr. Lewis face to face and get the whole story from him. I can think of nothing that would be of greater advantage to him than to be freed for ever from a blackmailer.”
Nothing further could be done that night. Richardson had the invaluable gift of dismissing his cases from his mind when he went to bed and taking them up afresh in the morning. He went home and slept well. Superintendent Foster found him waiting for him in his room when he reached the office next morning, and listened to his account of what he had learned overnight without interrupting him. They discussed the case in all its bearings, and Foster agreed that Ralph Lewis must be induced to return to England immediately.
“The only question is, who shall go over to fetch him?”
“I thought that you would do that, sir.”
“Did you? I’m expecting to get that extradition warrant for Brown this morning. I shall have to go and fetch him over, and a man can’t be in two places at once.”
“Couldn’t some other officer from Central go over for him?”
“What, let the case go out of the family? No, young man, we’ve borne the burden and the heat: you and I will jolly well see it through. Besides, I shouldn’t be at all surprised to find that, after spending a week with the rats in one of those horrible dungeons in the cellars of the Prefecture, Brown will be talkative on the journey home. I may get something useful out of him. By the way, you haven’t told me whether you traced that telegram that took Poker Moore away to Germany.”
“I did, sir, but I didn’t expect to get much from that. The message was handed in by a boy: it was signed ‘Henry Wilkins, 57 Albemarle Street.’ There is no such number in the street.”
“The usual trick with blackmailers when they send telegrams. Well, I’ll see Mr. Morden, and get authority from him for your journey to Veules-les-Roses, or whatever the place is called. Meanwhile you’d better get on with your report of what you’ve told me.”
Richardson had half finished his report when the messenger called him to the superintendents’ room.
“Mr. Morden is quite worked up over our case. He took me in to see Sir William, who made me go over the whole of the e
vidence, and he’s worked up too. The upshot is that you are to go over to France to-night and bring Ralph Lewis back with you. It didn’t seem to occur to either of them that he might refuse to come with you. They seemed to think that when once he had you to deal with, he would agree to do anything you told him to. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, and don’t let your head swell.”
Chapter Seventeen
THE VILLAGE of Veules-les-Roses, which is largely made up of hotels for summer visitors, lies fifteen miles west of Dieppe. Richardson was relieved to find that a motor-bus was leaving for the coast road half an hour after the arrival of the boat, for he knew that a charge for taxi-hire would be sternly disallowed by the Receiver’s accountant. Throughout the drive he was haunted by the fear that Lewis had moved on and that he would have had his journey for nothing. On arriving at Veules-les-Roses, he determined to walk to the Hotel de Normandie, carrying his suit-case. He stopped at a tobacconist’s to buy a box of matches, and asked the way to the hotel. His pronunciation of the language, which, to say the least, was Britannic, seemed to thrill the woman, for English tourists were becoming increasingly rare in the village, owing to the disastrous fall in the exchange, and his fellow-countrymen had left a good reputation behind them. With elaborate directions from the good woman, whose English was almost as unintelligible as his French, he had little difficulty in finding the hotel—a primitive-looking hostelry which had not yet modernized itself to attract the foreign tourist. A stout lady was sitting behind the desk in the hall; a couple of French children were playing a noisy game of hide-and-seek among the cane chairs in the lounge.
Richardson asked for Mr. Lewis: the lady looked blank: he asked to see the list of guests, adding that he would point out the name he was inquiring for. The lady pushed over to him a sheaf of registration forms which ought to have been filed at the police station, but were not. He ran through them: all were French names, their occupation being given as “commis voyageur,” which Richardson rightly interpreted as “commercial traveller.” It struck him as a strange hiding-place for a wealthy Englishman to choose. And yet—
At last he came upon the form he was seeking: “Lewis; Prénom, Ralph; born in Wales; Age, thirty-five; Occupation, blank.” He showed it to the lady at the desk.
“Ah, Monsieur Levees. If Monsieur had pronounced the name correctly, I should have known. Alas, you cannot see him, monsieur. I have special orders to admit no one to see him.”
“He knows me, madame, and he will blame you if I leave without seeing him,” said Richardson in his broken French. “Give me at least the number of his room.”
The lady was obdurate, but fortunately he had seen the number 27 scrawled in pencil across the form.
“Very well, madame, kindly let me have a cup of coffee in this lounge. Perhaps he will pass through it on his way out.”
It being a matter of principle with all French hotel proprietors never to turn away custom from their doors, the lady shouted for Anne Marie, and a slovenly waitress in felt slippers went off to the kitchen with the order. Richardson consumed his coffee at peace with the world. He had surmounted the first fence: the man was in the hotel and could not get out of it unseen. The immediate question was how long he would have to wait. Fortune favoured him. The children’s game had degenerated into a noisy wrangle in the corridor behind the lounge; piercing screams from the younger members summoned the hand of authority to quell the riot: the mother left her seat at the desk to restore order. This was Richardson’s heaven-sent opportunity. Leaving five francs on the table in payment for his coffee, he slipped out to the staircase and fled upstairs to the landing above, where he had little difficulty in locating No. 27. No member of the hotel staff had seen him.
He knocked gently at the door. A bolt was shot back and it was opened a few inches, revealing the haggard features of Ralph Lewis in pyjamas and slippers and unshaven. He tried to slam the door in Richardson’s face, but police officers are trained by experience to counter this manoeuvre and he found a booted foot in the way. He fell back, panting, and Richardson found himself in the room with the door shut and bolted behind him. He noted that there was no telephone in the room and that he was between Lewis and the bell-push.
“I’m sorry to have to intrude upon you, Mr. Lewis, but I have come all the way from London to see you.”
“I told the people downstairs that I could see nobody,” stammered Lewis. “How did you get the number of my room?”
“It was not the fault of the hotel people that I did. They told me of your order and refused to give me the number of your room. Never mind how I got it. I couldn’t have my journey from London for nothing. Besides, I am here in your own interests —to protect you against serious trouble. You will remember that when I last saw you in London you assured me that you were not being blackmailed. We have since had abundant evidence that you are, and if you will give me a frank account of all that you have gone through, we can undertake to protect you.”
“I haven’t asked for any protection.”
“No, I am quite aware of that, but without knowing it you have been in serious danger, and we were lucky in getting to know of it in time.”
Ralph Lewis had turned very pale and his breath was coming short. “How do you mean in serious danger?” he stammered.
“I mean danger from a man who knew you in Canada as ‘Owen Jones.’ He had come over from Canada to shoot you, and if you had gone on to Stuttgart the other day as you intended, you wouldn’t be alive to-day.”
Ralph Lewis subsided on the bed and hid his face.
Richardson continued, “I know that you are suffering from nerves, like all the victims of black-mailers: otherwise you would not have thought of hiding yourself in a place like this.”
“I came here for a rest. My health is not what it was.”
“Yes, Mr. Lewis, I know that, and I also know more than you think about the cause of your breakdown. When you were travelling in Canada under the name of Owen Jones—”
“Who told you that?”
“A man who met you under that name in Quebec.”
“Has that blackguard told you that?”
“The man I mean is a curious person, but I shouldn’t call him a blackguard. You must remember that evening in the saloon in Quebec—that saloon with a balcony overhanging the river—when you played poker with a man, and accused him of cheating you, and had a fight with him.”
“I see what it is. You needn’t beat about the bush any longer. You’ve been sent out to arrest me for murder. I’ve been expecting this for months.”
“No, Mr. Lewis. I haven’t come out to arrest you for murder or anything else. I’ve come out to hear your version of what happened in that saloon in Canada, and induce you to come home with me.”
“I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it. You must know what they accuse me of. You must have seen the handbills issued by the Quebec police.”
“I have seen a handbill, but it wasn’t issued by the Quebec police or any other police. It’s a forgery.”
“What do you mean?”
“You think that in a fight with a professional gambler named Moore, you pushed him into the river and drowned him. I had a talk with Moore the night before last. He is very much alive.”
Lewis had been sitting on the bed with his face averted. He swung round now and faced Richard-son, his mouth open with astonishment. At last he found his tongue. “You can’t mean the same man. The man I mean fell twenty feet into the river at its deepest part and went under. He couldn’t swim. I think I must have fainted or something: otherwise I should have done something to save him. Anyone would, however low he might have sunk. They were all shouting. Someone pulled me back into the room. That’s the last I remember until I found myself in bed in the hotel. I left Quebec next morning, and I’ve been haunted ever since by the sight of that water swirling in the dark and that awful splash as the man hit the water.”
“Do you remember what the man was like?”
�
�However long I live I shall never forget him. He wasn’t a man you could forget. He was a short, thick-set man with a broad face and dull eyes like a fish.”
“Had he a big head?”
“Yes. I heard one of the men ask him just before we began to play whether he didn’t have to get his hats specially made for him. Another thing I remember about him is that he never took his hat off. He was wearing it on the back of his head when we sat down to play.”
“And they called him ‘Poker Moore’?”
“Yes, or just ‘Poker.’”
“Well, that was the man I was talking to in London the night before last. Look here, Mr. Lewis, as you’ve admitted so much, don’t you think that you had better tell me the whole story from the beginning? What took you out to Canada?”
“My father had died the year before. As his only son, I came in for a good deal of money. He owned a lot of colliery shares, and it was the good time for coal-owners. I was what people would call a rich man in those days, but I’m a poor man now. Well, I thought of standing for the House of Commons and of making politics my career: I knew from my experience in the Oxford Union that I had some gift for stringing words together. I did not know that to succeed in public life one must have the thickest kind of skin, and that Nature hadn’t given me. Well, at that time the shortest road to notoriety seemed to be a first-hand knowledge of the Dominions, and Canada was also a field for the investment of my spare cash. That was how I came to be in Canada.”
“But why did you go there under an assumed name?”
“I went there under my own name, but I had a fatal itch for getting to know the seamy side of life as well as the other, and in my waterside rambles I used the name of Owen Jones whenever I put on the suit of clothes that I kept specially for these rambles. It was then that I first met the man who has ruined me, morally and financially. I met him in the hotel lounge. He was a public-school boy like myself, a few years older than I was, a charming companion and apparently a man of means. When he found that I wanted to study the seamy side of the city, he told me that he knew it inside out, and offered to act as my guide. He called himself ‘Mr. Gordon’ on these excursions; all the saloon-keepers and the loafers seemed to know him. When it came to drinking, I found that he had an extraordinarily strong head for carrying liquor, and, as I found out to my cost, I have a very weak one. Of course I had to be host on these occasions. I tried to be abstemious, but he wouldn’t let me off. He said that ‘glass for glass’ must be the rule, otherwise the people would suspect me of being a reporter in search of scandal for a newspaper.
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