‘I would, if I were a printer of slush, but, unfortunately, I’m not,’ said Jeffrey Legge with a smile.
‘You’re not, of course,’ the other hastened to say. ‘I wouldn’t dream of suggesting you were. But with your vast circle of acquaintances – and, I’m sure, admirers – you may perhaps be able to convey my simple little illustration. I don’t like to see rabbits in cages, or birds in cages, or anything else behind bars. And I think that Dartmoor is so – what shall I say? – unaesthetic. And it seems such a pity to spend all the years in Devonshire. In the spring, of course, it is delightful; in the summer it is hot; in the winter, unless you’re at Torquay, it is deplorable. Good morning, Mr Legge.’
He bowed low to the girl, and, bowing, his spectacles fell off. Stooping, he picked them up with an apology and backed away and they watched him in silence till he had disappeared from view.
Chapter 19
‘What do you think of him for a busy?’ asked Jeffrey contemptuously.
She did not answer. Contact with the man had frightened her. It was not like Lila to shiver in the presence of detectives.
‘I don’t know what he is,’ she said a little breathlessly. ‘He’s something like a . . . good-natured snake. Didn’t you feel that, Jeffrey?’
‘Good-natured nothing,’ said the other with a curl of his lip. ‘He’s worse than Golden. These big corporations fall for that kind of man. They never give a chance to a real clever busy.’
‘Who was Golden?’ she asked.
‘He was an old fellow too. They fired him.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘And I was responsible for firing him. Then they brought in Mr J. G. Reeder with a flourish of trumpets. He’s been on the game three years, and he’s just about as near to making a pull as he ever was.’
‘Jeff, isn’t there danger?’ Her voice was very serious.
‘Isn’t there always danger? No more danger than usual,’ he said. ‘They can’t touch me. Don’t worry! I’ve covered myself so that they can’t see me for overcoats! Once the stuff’s printed, they can never put it back on me.’
‘Once it’s printed.’ She nodded slowly. ‘Then you are the Big Printer, Jeff?’
‘Talk about something else,’ he said.
When Emanuel returned, as he did soon after, Lila met him at the gate and told him of Reeder’s visit. To her surprise, he took almost the same view as Jeff had taken.
‘He’s a fool, but straight – up to five thousand, anyway. No man is straight when you reach his figure.’
‘But why did he come to Jeff?’ she asked.
‘Doesn’t everybody in the business know that Jeff’s the Big Printer? Haven’t they been trying to put it on him for years? Of course he came. It was his last, despairing stroke. How’s the boy?’ he asked.
‘He’s all right, but a little touchy.’
‘Of course he’s a little touchy,’ said Emanuel indignantly. ‘You don’t suppose he’s going to get better in a day, do you? The club’s running again.’
‘Has it been closed?’
‘It hasn’t exactly been closed, but it has been unpopular,’ he said, showing his teeth in that smile of his. ‘Listen.’ He caught her arm on the edge of the lawn. ‘Get your mind off that shooting, will you? I’ll fix the man responsible for that.’
‘Do you know?’ she asked.
It was the first time he had ever discussed the matter calmly, for the very mention of the attack upon Jeff had hitherto been sufficient to drive him to an incoherent frenzy.
‘Yes, I know,’ he said gratingly. ‘It was Peter Kane, but you needn’t say anything about that – I’ll fix him, I tell you.’
‘Jeff thinks it was –’
‘Never mind what Jeff thinks,’ he said impatiently. ‘Do as I tell you.’
He sent her into the house to brew him a cup of tea – Emanuel was a great drinker of tea – and in her absence he had something to say to his son.
‘Jeff, there’s a big call for your stuff,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a letter from Harvey. He says there’s another man started in the north of England, and he’s turning out pretty good material. But they want yours – they can place half a million on the Continent right away. Jeff, what Harvey says is right. If there’s a slackening of supply while you’re ill, the busy fellows are going to tumble to you.’
‘I’ve thought of that,’ said Jeffrey. ‘You can tell anybody who’s interested that there’ll be a printing next week.’
‘Are you well enough to go up?’ asked his father anxiously.
Jeffrey nodded, and shifted himself more erect, but winced in the process.
‘Reeder’s been here: did she tell you?’
Emanuel nodded.
‘I’m not worried much about Reeder. Down in Dartmoor he’s a bogey, but then, they bogey any man they don’t know. And they’ve got all sorts of stories about him. It’s very encouraging to get near to the real thing.’
They laughed together, and for the rest of the day discussed ways and means.
Jeffrey had said no more than was true when he had told the girl he was well covered. In various parts of the country he had twelve banking accounts, each in a different name, and in one of the safe deposits, an enormous sum in currency, ready for emergency.
‘You’ve got to stop some time, I suppose,’ said his father, ‘but it is mighty tempting to carry on with those profits. It’s a bigger graft than I ever attempted, Jeff.’ And his son accepted this respectful tribute with a smirk.
The old man sat, his clasped hands between his knees, staring out over the sea.
‘It has got to end some day, and that would be a fine end, but I can’t quite see how it could be done.’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked the other curiously.
‘I’m thinking about Peter – the respectable Mr Peter Kane. Not quite so respectable in that girl’s eyes as he used to be, but respectable enough to have busies to dinner, and that crook, Johnny Gray – Johnny will marry the girl, Jeff.’
Jeffrey Legge winced.
‘She can marry the devil so far as I’m concerned,’ he said.
‘But she can’t marry without divorcing you. Do you realise that, my son? That’s the law. And she can’t divorce you without shopping you for bigamy. That’s the law too. And the question is, will she delay her action until Johnny’s made a bit, or will she start right in? If she gives me just the time I want, Jeff, you’ll have your girl and I’ll have Peter Kane. She’s your wife in the eyes of the law.’
There was a significance in his words that made the other man look at him quickly.
‘What’s the great idea?’ he asked.
‘Suppose Peter was the Big Printer?’ said Emanuel, speaking in a tone that was little above a whisper. ‘Suppose he was caught with the goods? It could be done. I don’t mean by planting the stuff in his house – nobody would accept that; but getting him right on the spot, so that his best friend at Scotland Yard couldn’t save him? How’s that for an idea?’
‘It couldn’t be done,’ said the other immediately.
‘Oh, couldn’t it?’ sneered Emanuel. ‘You can do any old thing you want, if you make up your mind to do it. Or if you’re game to do it.’
‘That wouldn’t get me the girl.’
Emanuel turned his head slowly toward his heir.
‘If they found the Big Printer, they’ll have to find the big printing,’ he said deliberately. ‘That means we should all have to skip, and skip lively. We might have a few hours start, and in these days of aeroplanes, three hours is four hundred miles. Jeff, if we are caught, and they guess I’ve been in this printing all the time, I shall never see outside again. And you’ll go down for life. They can’t give you any worse than that – not if you took the girl away with you.’
‘By force?’ as
ked the other in surprise. The idea had not occurred to him.
The father nodded.
‘If we have to skip, that’s the only thing for you to do, son. It’s no offence – remember that. She’s your wife.’ He looked to left and right, to see if there was the faintest shadow of a chance that he would be overheard, and then: ‘Suppose we ask Peter and his girl and Johnny Gray to dinner? A nice little dinner party, eh?’
‘Where?’ asked the other suspiciously.
‘In Room 13,’ said Emanuel Legge. ‘In Room 13, Jeff boy! A nice little dinner. What do you think? And then two whiffs of sleep stuff –’
‘You’re mad,’ said the other angrily. ‘What’s the good of talking that way? Do you think he’s going to come to dinner and bring his girl? Oh, you’re nutty to think it!’
‘Trust me,’ said Emanuel Legge.
Chapter 20
Walking down Regent Street one morning, Johnny Gray saw a familiar face – a man standing on the kerb selling penny trinkets. The face was oddly familiar, but he had gone on a dozen paces before he could recall where he had seen him before, and turned back. The man knew him; at any rate, his uncouth features twisted in a smile.
‘Good morning, my lord,’ he said. ‘What about a toy balloon for the baby?’
‘Your name is Fenner, isn’t it?’ said Johnny with a good-humoured gesture of refusal.
‘That’s me. Captain. I didn’t think you’d recognised me. How’s business?’
‘Quiet,’ said Johnny conventionally. ‘What are you doing?’
The man shrugged his enormous shoulders.
‘Selling these, and filling in the time with a little sluicing.’
Johnny shook his head reprovingly. Sluicing in the argot indicates a curious method of livelihood. In public wash-places, where men strip off their coats to wash their hands for luncheon, there are fine pickings to be had by a man with quick fingers and a knowledge of human nature.’
‘Did you ever get your towelling?’ [footnote: flogging]
‘No,’ said the other contemptuously and with a deep growl. ‘I knew they couldn’t, that’s why I coshed the screw. I was too near my time. If I ever see old man Legge, by God I’ll –’
Jimmy raised his fingers. A policeman was strolling past, and was eyeing the two suspiciously. Apparently, if he regarded Fenner with disfavour, Johnny’s respectability redeemed the association.
‘Poor old flattie!’ said Fenner as the officer passed. ‘What a life!’
The man looked him up and down amusedly.
‘You seem to have struck it, Gray,’ he said, with no touch of envy. ‘What’s your graft?’
Johnny smiled faintly.
‘It is one you’ll find difficult to understand, Fenner. I am being honest!’
‘That’s certainly a new one on me,’ said the other frankly. ‘Have you seen old Emanuel?’ His voice was now quite calm. ‘Great fellow, Emanuel! And young Emanuel – Jeffrey – what a lad!’
There was a glint in his eyes as he scrutinised Johnny that told that young man he knew much more of recent happenings than he was prepared to state. And his next words supported that view.
‘You keep away from the Legge lot, Captain,’ he said earnestly. ‘They are no good to anybody, and least of all to a man who’s had an education like yours. I owe Legge one, and I’ll pet him, but I’m not thinking about that so much as young Jeff. You’re the fellow he would go after, because you dress like a swell and you look like a swell – the very man to put slush about without anybody tumbling.’
‘The Big Printer, eh?’ said Johnny, with that quizzical smile of his.
‘The Big Printer,’ repeated the other gravely. ‘And he is a big printer. You hear all sorts of lies down on the moor, but that’s true. Jeff’s got the biggest graft that’s ever been worked in this country. They’ll get him sooner or later, because there never was a crook game yet that hadn’t got a squeak about it somewhere. And the squeak has started, judging by what I can read in the papers. Who shot him?’ he asked bluntly.
Johnny shook his head.
‘That is what is known as a mystery,’ he said, and, seeing the man’s eyes keenly searching his face, he laughed aloud. ‘It wasn’t me, Fenner. I’ll assure you on that point. And as to me being a friend of Jeff’ – he made a wry little face – ‘that isn’t like me either. How are you off for money?’
‘Rotten,’ said the other laconically, and Johnny slipped a couple of Treasury notes on to the tray. He was turning away when the man called him back. ‘Keep out of boob,’ he said significantly. ‘And don’t think I’m handing round good advice. I’m not thinking of Dartmoor. There are other boobs that are worse – I can tell you that, because I’ve seen most of them.’
He gathered up the money on the tray without so much as a word of thanks, and put it in his waistcoat pocket.
‘Keytown Jail is the worst prison in England,’ he said, not looking at his benefactor but staring straight ahead. ‘The very worst – don’t forget that. Gray. Keytown Prison is the worst boob in England; and if you ever find yourself there, do something to get out. So long!’
The mentality of the criminal had been a subject for vicarious study during Johnny’s stay in Dartmoor, and he mused on the man’s words as he continued his walk along Regent Street. Here was a man offering advice which he himself had never taken. The moral detachment of old lags was no new phenomenon to Johnny. He had listened for hours to the wise admonitions and warnings of convicts, who would hardly be free from the fusty cell of the prison before they would be planning new villainies, new qualifications for their return.
He had never heard of Keytown Jail before, but it was not remarkable that Fenner should have some special grudge against a particular jail. The criminal classes have their likes and their dislikes; they loathed Wandsworth and preferred Pentonville, or vice versa, for no especial reason. There were those who swore by Parkhurst; others regarded Dartmoor as home, and bitterly resented any suggestion that they should be transferred to the island prison.
So musing, he bumped into Craig. The collision was not accidental, for Craig had put himself in the way of the abstracted young man.
‘What are you planning, Johnny – a jewel robbery, or just ringing the changes on the Derby favourite?’
Johnny chuckled.
‘Neither. I was at that moment wondering what there was particularly bad about Keytown Jail. Where is Keytown Jail, by the way?’
‘Keytown? I don’t remember – oh, yes, I do. Just outside Oxford. Why?’
‘Somebody was telling me it was the worst prison in England.’
‘They are all the worst, Johnny,’ said Craig. ‘And if you’re thinking about a summer holiday, I can’t recommend either. Keytown was pretty bad,’ he admitted. ‘It is a little country jail, but it is no longer in the Prison Commissioners’ hands. They sold it after the war, when they closed down so many of these little prisons. The policy now is to enlarge the bigger places and cut out these expensive little boobs that cost money to staff. They closed Hereford Jail in the same way, and half a dozen others, I should think. So you needn’t bother about Keytown,’ he smiled bleakly. ‘One of your criminal acquaintances has been warning you, I guess?’
‘You’ve guessed right,’ said Johnny, and advanced no information, knowing that, if Craig continued his walk, he would sooner or later see the toy pedlar.
‘Mr Jeffrey Legge is making a good recovery,’ said the detective, changing the subject: ‘and there are great rejoicings at Scotland Yard. If there is one man we want to keep alive until he is hanged in a scientific and lawful manner, it is Mr Jeffrey Legge. I know what you’re going to say – we’ve got nothing on him. That is true. Jeffrey has been too clever for us. He has got his father skinned to death in that respect. He makes no mistakes – a rare quality in a forger; h
e carries no slush, keeps none in his lodgings. I can tell you that, because we’ve pulled him in twice on suspicion, and searched him from occiput to tendo achilles. Forgive the anatomical terms, but anatomy is my hobby. Hallo!’
He was looking across the street at a figure which was not unfamiliar to Johnny. Mr Reeder wore a shabby frock-coat and a somewhat untidy silk hat on the back of his head. Beneath his arm he carried a partially furled umbrella. His hands, covered in grey cotton gloves (at a distance Johnny thought they were suede), were clasped behind him. His spectacles were, as usual, so far down his nose that they seemed in danger of slipping over.
‘Do you know that gentleman?’
‘Man named Reeder, isn’t it? He’s a busy.’
Craig’s lips twitched.
‘He’s certainly a busy of sorts,’ he said dryly, ‘but not of our sort.’
‘He is a bank-man, isn’t he?’ asked Johnny, watching Mr Reeder’s slow and awkward progress.
‘He is in the employ of the bank,’ said the detective, ‘and he’s not such a fool as he looks. I happen to know. He was down seeing young Legge yesterday. I was curious enough to put a man on to trail him. And he knows more about young Legge than I gave him credit for.’
When Johnny parted from the detective, Mr Reeder had passed out of sight. Crossing Piccadilly Circus, however, he saw the elderly man waiting in a bus queue, and interestedly stood and watched him until the bus arrived and Mr Reeder boarded the machine and disappeared into its interior. As the bus drew away, Johnny raised his eyes to the destination board and saw that it was Victoria.
‘I wonder,’ said Johnny, speaking his thought aloud.
For Victoria is the railway station for Horsham.
The Casefiles of Mr J. G. Reeder Page 12