Death of a Frightened Editor

by E.

  Doctor Manson nodded slowly as he read. It was obvious to him that each paragraph though, seemingly dashed off in brisk, straight language, had yet been accorded the greatest care in construction so much so that identification for the purpose of any projected libel suit was well-nigh impossible. Yet the person concerned in the paragraphs would be left in no doubt whatever that the writer was referring to them, and must have been of their own intimate circle to have obtained the information on which the paragraph was based.

  The effect of ‘We Would Like to Know’ was to give ample talking points to those class-conscious bourgeoisie on the moral delinquencies of the ‘Idle Rich’ saturated with wine and gorged with red meat!

  The Doctor had waded through three issues of the paper and was starting on a fourth when the telephone rang. He listened to the caller and smiled.

  “Send Mr. Crispin up,” he said.

  The Crime Reporter had not expected to be received. There is a Press Bureau at the Yard with an inspector in charge, and all information for the Press comes through it. The idea is to let crime men on the newspapers know only what the Yard wants them to know; and since the officers in charge of a case can no longer give their favourite (those who extol them as man-hunters!) exclusive information as they did before the establishment of the Press Bureau, crime stories in the papers have become more or less a question of rewriting general ‘hand-outs’, and little else. Crispin, therefore, had asked to see Manson only as a forlorn hope. The Doctor was standing with his back to the fire when the journalist entered.

  “Whisky?” he asked, and poured one out and another for himself. “Good health,” he said.

  “And you—on the Mortensen case,” responded Crispin. “This is the first time I’ve seen you in your natural surroundings, Doctor. A bit different to the time when we had access to the Yard men, and all that was provided for them in their tiny rooms was a table and a couple of chairs. The Yard progresses. This Laboratory of yours, you know, is something of a legend. Seems like a luxury flat to me.”

  “Not the Laboratory, Crispin.” He opened a door. “Quite plainly furnished, you see.” Then he resumed his seat. “And now what can I do for you?”

  Crispin grinned. “That is exactly what I came to ask you,” he said. “What can you do for me? I was in on the ground floor in this case, which is now lingering on. The Press and the public are getting impatient. So far as the Press is concerned, Doctor, the mystery is dying of starvation.”

  “Starvation is a very attenuated process, my friend, and so is investigation of sudden death,” Manson retorted. “At the moment you know as much, or nearly so, as we know. Can’t you bring the vital spark of life into the case again by saying that an arrest is expected shortly?”

  “Is it?” Crispin perked up a little. “Is it?” he asked again. “Why should there be an arrest?”

  “I don’t know,” said Manson, blandly. “But does that matter to crime hounds?”

  “What about the girl you found in Mortensen’s flat?” asked Crispin. “What part does she play in the case?”

  The Doctor eyed him speculatively. “Now, where did you obtain that information?” he asked.

  Crispin laughed. “Found it out, Doctor?”

  “You haven’t used it, have you?”

  “No—not yet.”

  “Which is a very fortunate thing for you, or you might have had a libel case on your hands. She says that she was merely the late Mortensen’s girl friend and had gone to the flat to collect her things. By the way, how is Society going?”

  “Nicely for the next issue, thank you very much. I’ve roped in Laidlaw, a friend of mine, to help. We work in the evenings.” He laughed. “There’s plenty to work on. And it’s as dangerous as high explosive.”

  Manson smiled. “So I should imagine,” he said. “Something like this, I suppose;” he lifted a page from the table, and read:

  “What a naughty story the chambermaid at a Paris hotel could tell if she knew who ‘Miss Jameson’ really is; and would it crib the chances of a debutante now being hawked round for a titled and wealthy husband?”

  “Quite!” said Crispin.

  “Or this one: ‘Who is the peeress who struts round with pearls reputed to be worth £100,000, but are worth, perhaps, £1,000? And what has happened to the real pearls? And what would hubby say if he knew?’”

  “That is the kind of stuff I mean,” said Crispin. “I’m no Mortensen by any means and I hardly know what to do with some of it. It comes in by the bundle.”

  “From servants?”

  “Mostly, yes. But there are others—young ladies and young gentlemen who are guests. And not unknown names, either.”

  “Are they genuine? I mean the paragraphs I have quoted?”

  “I suppose they could be. Probably a lot of them are. But it is more likely that the majority are invented by Mortensen as nice spicy items. It’s an old journalistic trick, you know, these innuendo gossip paragraphs. Nobody is likely to come forward and say the allegations are a lie, and sue for libel. And it makes good reading for the servants’ hall and for the kind of people who buy Society. I’ve had nothing quite like that, though some very spicy bits have come in. By the way, Doctor, that’s one thing that is worrying me. I suppose they send them in for money, and I don’t know how much they’re paid, and how they are paid.”

  “Send for one or two of the contributors and ask them,” Doctor Manson suggested. “Now since you are here, you might as well tell me anything you know.”

  “I’ve told you all I know.”

  “About your fellow travellers? Take, for instance, Edgar.”

  “Bragging blighter, really. Insurance. You know that, of course. He’s general manager of Sesame, one of the larger companies outside the combine.”

  “How much does he brag?”

  “About £10,000 a year’s worth. But he gets £3,000, and keeps a woman on the quiet.” Crispin chuckled. “How do I know? I shared the lady with him—a Rose Simons—until I found out.”

  “Any antipathy to Mortensen?”

  “Only so far as he envied his money. Mortensen was the wealthiest of the bunch, you know.”

  “That reminds me. You outlined Mortensen’s career to me the other day. How much did he earn before he bought Society? How much does a gossip writer earn in the Street of Ink?”

  “More today than he did when Mortensen was a gossip writer. He might have earned £750 a year in those days, but I doubt it.”

  “And expenses, of course?”

  “Yes—within reason. But not much, not on his last paper. The gossip chappies mostly go to invitation engagements, and then dig personal chat from the morgue.”

  “The morgue?” Manson looked surprised. Crispin grinned widely.

  “So there is something you don’t know,” he said. “The morgue, in newspaper language is the library of personal cuttings filed under the names of the persons concerned. Thus, when they die, a column of biography—incidents and anecdotes—can be compiled quickly.”

  “Betterton?” Manson queried.

  “Oh, top class. Brilliant surgeon. Been a specialist for years. Makes, probably, £15,000 or so a year. Gives a lot of time to hospitals free. A bit reserved. Gave all of us in the Pullman medical advice.”

  “What about Starmer?”

  “Financial genius, so they say in the City. Advises his bank on the buying of stocks and shares. Sam Mackie? Well, you know about him. Just a racing man. Second line bookie. Honest as bookies go. And quite good company. Phillips? He’s a stockbroker. He was not quite so friendly as the rest of us. Me, you know. I’m an open book. Been in the Street for years, and hand-in-hand with the Yard for seven years as the Sun’s crime reporter. That’s all, I think.”

  “Except for Mrs. Harrison.”

  “There I can’t help you much, Doctor. She does good work. I’ve seen her name occasionally in the news columns.”

  The door opened and Superintendent Jones pushed his head round the opening.
/>   “Want you, Doctor,” he said, and then saw the journalist.

  “What’s he doin’?” he demanded.

  “Telling me all he knows, and expecting me to do the same for him!” Manson chuckled, grimly. “I shan’t,” he said.

  The superintendent seemed excited about something. Usually he was dull and placidity itself; now he moved quickly across the room, and hopped impatiently from foot to foot. He pointed at Crispin. “Get rid of him,” he suggested. Manson looked surprisedly at him, saw his right eye close.

  “Off you go, Crispin,” he said, and opened the door for him.

  “And use the Press Bureau next time,” snarled Jones.

  Crispin had the last word.

  “It never has anything, Mr. Jones,” he said.

  Manson shut the door and walked back to the fireplace. The superintendent was jangling a bunch of keys inside his right-hand trousers pocket. He teetered about and looked archly at the scientist. There was a rumbling inside him which always came there when he was labouring under excitement; it seemed to be a kind of mental indigestion. Manson regarded him with lively anticipation. The Fat Man, he decided had something on his mind.

  “What’s exciting you, Jones?”

  Jones exploded his secret.

  “You . . . know . . . Mortensen . . . had safe deposit?” he asked, innocently.

  “What!” The Doctor stared. “No. Had he?”

  Jones produced the keys he had been jangling in his pocket. “Mortensen’s,” he explained. “Lookin’ . . . ’em . . . curiosity.” (He meant that he had been inspecting them without any real reason.) “Eyes . . . nearly popped . . . outa head. Saw one” (he singled it out, and thrust it under Manson’s nose). “Safe deposit key.”

  Manson examined the exhibit. It was a plain key of no distinguishable appearance, except that it was not of a pattern associated with keys one usually carries in a pocket.

  “It doesn’t shout the fact, Old Fat Man.”

  “Stake me life . . . safe deposit key,” Jones insisted. “Seen others like it . . . Wouldn’t have moniker written on it . . . case . . . got lost.”

  “There’s sense in that.” Manson shot out a hand to the telephone. The superintendent waved an excited arm. “Done that,” he smirked. Manson put back the phone.

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  Jones eyed him cautiously. He spread his hands and looked apologetic.

  “Are you telling me you’ve been there already?” Manson asked. He seemed a little annoyed.

  “No,” said Jones. “Haven’t been anywhere.”

  “Then where’s the Deposit?”

  “Dunno!” The superintendent’s mood changed from the airy to the disconsolate. “Telephoned . . . and all . . . ’em,” he said. “No name Mortensen . . . any safe deposit.”

  Manson thought it over. “What about Brighton?” he asked.

  “Nor in Brighton nor Hove,” Jones reported.

  “Then it probably is not a safe deposit key.”

  “’Tis!” Jones became stubbornly obstinate.

  “But if he’s not a customer at any one of them, it can’t—”

  He stopped, leaving the sentence in mid-air, so to speak. He reached for his hat.

  “Get a Squad car,” he said. “We’ll do a grand tour.”

  There are a score or so of safe deposits scattered over Metropolitan London. In the security of their interiors which are guarded day and night, are a multitude of small safes—and secrets. And there are superintendents and Chief inspectors of the C.I.D. who would give a lot to be able to let their eyes feast on what is inside some of them. For, in some cases, these safes hold the secrets that would throw open the doors of the Old Bailey dock to men whose names the Yard know, and their crimes; but lack the evidence to put them into the dock. And there are men who know that the inspectors know that evidence only is lacking; they pass the inspectors with a grin of derision.

  Once a chief inspector came across such a safe. He obtained a warrant to open it. Inside he found bank-notes worth £40,000. A detective-sergeant, as a result, started a sentence of seven years penal servitude because of it. Jones recalled the case.

  “That’s where I saw first key like this one,” he said.

  There is one safe deposit in Chancery Lane. For years it looked anything but safe. One of the early bombs of 1941 had hit the building with a direct hit. It demolished it except for the basement, where the safes were placed. They stood like orphans of the storm beneath the level of the road—great blocks of concrete with steel doors, and the safe deposits inside. Until a year ago when the place was rebuilt.

  The Squad car drew up alongside the entrance. Doctor Manson went inside. To the man at the desk he put a question. The man turned up a ledger, ran a finger down the page, and shook his head.

  “No, sir,” he said. “Never had him.”

  “Anywhere else near Covent Garden, Fat Man?” asked Manson, back in the car.

  “Just off Regent Street,” the superintendent said. “Big grey building.” The Squad car dodged through Lincoln’s Inn Fields, into Kingsway, through the Strand and round Trafalgar Square. Doctor Manson was no more than a minute in the building. “No, sir,” had been the answer of the man at the desk.

  Eight times the car sped over London, and eight times the officers took no for an answer. They had now reached Ealing Broadway.

  At the desk of a much less pretentious building than any of the others visited, an alert grey-haired man in uniform looked up, saw the superintendent, and saluted.

  “Hallo, Rogers,” said Jones. “Lor lumme, wondered . . . what happened . . . you. Best sergeant I ever had,” he confided to Manson. “Been here long?”

  “Couple of years, super.” A shadow passed over his face. “Nothing wrong, is there? You and the Doctor here . . .” He waited. Manson put his question, now becoming parrot-like.

  “Yes, sir,” Rogers replied. “We have a Mr. Arthur Moore as a client.”

  “We’d better see the manager,” Manson said. Rogers disappeared through a doorway.

  “Got him!” Jones jubilated.

  Manson nodded. “This,” he said, “ought to give us the key to Mortensen’s dual personality.”

  But it didn’t.

  Rogers returned, opened the desk flap and passed them over to the secretary. “From Mr. Moore, I understand,” the latter said.

  The superintendent corrected him violently. “Not from him. Concerning him,” he snapped. The secretary, a little huffed at the bluntness, stood on his dignity.

  “Perhaps you will tell me exactly what you want,” he said.

  Jones produced a warrant and flourished it. “We will be wanting to see the contents of the safe deposit rented by Mr. Moore,” he announced.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you,” the secretary said.

  “Can’t!” Jones snorted.

  “Why not?” asked Doctor Manson. He indicated the warrant.

  “Because the safe was cleared of its contents yesterday morning.”

  “Damnation and Blast,” roared Jones. “Diddled and—” His voice came abruptly to a halt, as though air had suddenly been denied his lungs. “What . . . what did you say?” he asked, and asked very quietly.

  The secretary, his ears offended by the forceful language of the superintendent, paused. He flicked a speck of fluff from a lapel of his black jacket, and then repeated the statement.

  “Yesterday?” Jones’s voice expressed unbelief.

  “Yesterday morning, I said.”

  “Who by?” asked Doctor Manson. “By myself, personally acting on the instructions of Mr. Moore.”

  “Cor stone the crows,” croaked Jones. “Stone the crows.”

  “Mr. Moore has been dead for three days,” Manson said quietly. “I think we must hear more about this.”

  The secretary swallowed his Adam’s apple. The cloak of indifference which had never well fitted him dropped. He stammered. “Three days,” he repeated. “But that is impossible. I hea
rd from him yesterday morning. I assure you—”

  “You can, quite easily,” Manson reminded him.

  The secretary took the hint. He crossed to a filing cabinet and extracted a folder. It contained several documents. He lifted out one and passed it across.

  “This is the letter,” he said. “You can see for yourself the contents.” Doctor Manson read it, the superintendent looking over his shoulder.

  Dear Sir—I am confined to the house with a chill. It is essential that I have the contents of my safe immediately. Would you be good enough, personally, to put the contents into a large envelope, and hand the same to the authorised messenger, who is carrying this letter.

  The note was signed ‘Arthur Moore’.

  There was a postscript. “As I am obliged to send a messenger, I will not entrust him with my own key, which might get lost and so into unauthorised hands. Please use your master key.”

  Doctor Manson examined the letter. “I notice there is no address. What address did Mr. Moore give when he rented the safe?”

  “Care of the South West and Associated Bank, King William Street, London.”

  “And you carried out the instructions given in the letter?”

  The secretary nodded. “I checked with the messenger who described Mr. Moore to me, went to the safe and opened it with our master key. The contents I placed in a large linen envelope”—he exhibited one, measuring 24 inches by 18—“sealed it and handed it over to the messenger who signed a receipt for it. I will show you the signature presently.”

  “How much money was there in the safe—approximately, of course?”

  “Money, sir? There was no money.”

  “What!” Jones ejaculated.

  “Then what constituted the contents of the safe?” asked Manson.

  “Documents, and a number of envelopes—perhaps 40 of them. Some had initials across the corner.”

  “Did you know the messenger?”

  “No. Not personally. But he was a member of the London and Provincial Messengers Association. In uniform, of course. We often have their messengers come here with written instructions. I remember his number because it is the same as my car registration number—172.”