“Nice cheery nest of eggs you’ve tumbled on in this Berry, Quick Syndicate,” he said. “We told off Jones to take care of Lawrence, and he’s rung up to say he’s fairly sure he’s recognized Lawrence, just as you said. Didn’t you report something about having got his fingerprints?” Bobby was just beginning to explain that he had left them with the fingerprint department when there came a knock at the door, and there appeared a messenger with a report from it. For the system is so complete it takes no more than a minute or two either to identify those prints already registered or else be sure they are not there.
Ferris, too accustomed to this promptitude and accuracy even to notice it, took the report and glanced through it rapidly.
“That’s right,” he said, “it’s what Jones said. The prints on the cigarette case are identical with those of a man named Percy Lawrence, a bank clerk, sent up for five years for embezzlement, awarded twelve strokes of the cat for an aggravated assault on a warder shortly after reception, sentenced to an additional two years for attempted murder of another convict, served the full five years without remission of a day, but given a free pardon for the additional two years partly because he stopped a runaway horse that was heading straight for a group of wives and children of the warders and partly because fresh evidence showed that the other convict he nearly murdered had not only asked for it, but it was a pity he hadn’t got it. Probably the affair with the runaway horse made some of the warders go into the other business more carefully. They couldn’t let him off the cat, though, because he had already had it. Well, they say the worst of prison is its soul-destroying monotony, but Lawrence seems to have had a lively enough time.”
“He wasn’t released till he had served his full time, then?” Bobby asked. “He wasn’t on ticket of leave at all?”
“No; full term served,” agreed Ferris, “for the first sentence and a free pardon for the second. We had no more to do with him, and apparently he never came under notice again until now. Embezzlement, attempted murder, aggravated assault – lively sort of record. I don’t wonder he’s described as ‘reckless and sullen, desperate character, dangerous.’”
Bobby did not answer. He was trying to reconcile the picture thus presented in the official records with the quiet-voiced, slow-spoken, dull-eyed personality he had interviewed that afternoon, withdrawn from the world, as it were, and lost apparently in gloomy contemplation of the past. He found it difficult; he almost wondered if, in spite of the evidence of the fingerprints, two different men were not concerned. But that was not possible. Fingerprints are conclusive. Or was it that prison had so broken the spirit of this once “dangerous” and “reckless” man as to have reduced him to the automaton he seemed today? But, then, there was that background of dark horror against which his figure seemed to be outlined afresh.
“Jones,” continued Ferris, “followed him to a house in a street off the Edgware Road. Lawrence went in with a key as if he lived there, and Jones phoned us he would wait for further instructions. It’s time he rang up now – that’s him most likely,” he added, as the phone bell rang.
It was in fact a call Jones had put through from a Bayswater phone booth, and Ferris looked discontented as he listened.
“He’s given Jones the slip,” he explained to Bobby. “Says Lawrence came out after about an hour and went off west towards Notting Hill, walking very fast. Jones thinks he knew he was being followed. He walked slap across a traffic-stream lights had just released, as if he were trying to get himself killed or daring Jones to follow. Jones says the motorists are still most likely using language about it. Anyhow, he got away with it, and Jones says he didn’t want to commit suicide by attempting to follow. Instead he went back to the house Lawrence had left. It’s a lodging house and Lawrence has had rooms there for two years. Jones got the landlady talking. She describes Lawrence as a very quiet gentleman, never complains, gives no trouble; the nicest lodger she ever had, in fact. She’d jump a bit if she knew his little record, though. It seems he is out every evening from eight to eleven, when he comes in and goes straight to bed. So what we’ve to do next is to find out what’s his little game, and where he spends those three hours every night.”
“I can’t understand,” Bobby said, ‘‘why he put his finger-prints on my cigarette case the way he did. I feel certain he understood and did it on purpose.”
“Thought you had recognized him, and wanted to show he didn’t care,” suggested Ferris. “Just the sort of defiance his record suggests. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ sort of thing. We shall have to be careful he’s not armed if we have to pick him up, or there’ll be a vacancy or two in the force most likely.”
“Is there anything in about the girl typist?” Bobby asked.
“Oh, yes,” Ferris answered. “We told Tommy Ryan to look after her. He knew her at once. Name of Alice, surname to taste; just at present, apparently, it’s Yates; better known as Slimmy Alice to distinguish her from Fatty Alice, another of the same sort but dead now – they don’t last long. Slimmy generally described herself as a film actress when run in. Probably her film acting amounts to her having tried to get Connie’s to put her name down, and being refused because they spotted her at once for what she is.”
“I never thought of her as being one of that kind,” Bobby said.
“Oh, some of them look as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths,” Ferris answered. “They’re the worst. Slimmy Alice has been sent up once or twice for short terms – soliciting and so on. About eighteen months ago she had to appear as a witness against her bully, who had been beating her up and got run in for it. Of course, she swore as black and blue as she was herself that he had nothing to do with it. Our man had made it all up out of his own head for fun and to pass the time. So they had to let him off.”
“Was it Lawrence?” Bobby asked.
“No, a fellow named Watson – Sandy Watson, fine boxer once before he went to the bad; tough as they make ’em. Most likely he had a hand in kicking that man to death down Shadwell way last year, but we couldn’t prove it. He’s dropped Slimmy Alice now and taken on another girl with more pep and go to her – does well out of her, too, they say. Nothing been heard of Slimmy lately. But it’s Notting Hill where she has a room now, and it seems she goes out every evening but is always back in good time. We’ll have to check up on that, too, to find out what they’re both up to.”
“Lawrence seemed to me so sort of dead and lost,” Bobby said, “it doesn’t seem as if he could be up to anything much. Just as if he – he –”
Ferris was frankly amused.
“Put on,” he said. “Put on to put you off. When you’ve been as long at this job as I have, you’ll know the more that sort look as if they weren’t up to anything, the more sure it is they are. Never trust appearances, my boy.”
CHAPTER 13
A CONFERENCE
That evening, by the time Bobby had finished writing out his report he had a goodly pile of manuscript completed; and, as it was long past post time, and as it was necessary the report should be in the hands of authority first thing in the morning, and as he knew a good deal better than to make a request for a messenger that would at that time of night probably have been refused and certainly have been highly unpopular, he had to convey it to the Yard in person.
Altogether it was well on in the small hours before he got to bed; and then it was in a mood of considerable depression that he retired, for his duty had compelled him to point out that his cousin, Chris Owen, cousin to himself and to the dead Ronnie Owen, had recently invested three several sums of £20,000 in a commercial concern, even though there did not appear the slightest reason for identifying those sums with the amounts paid by the insurance companies in the different cases under consideration. So, too, he had felt it necessary to mention that Norris had shown a somewhat odd early knowledge of Ronnie’s death that also seemed to have happened very conveniently for his hopes of marriage with the widow, though Bobby had been careful to add tha
t all this seemed too vague to be regarded as ground for suspicion. It was with considerable relief that later on in his report he had been able to draw emphatic attention to the past history of Percy Lawrence and of his girl associate, Alice Yates. Nor had he forgotten to remark on the coincidence that the unidentified woman who had claimed to be Ronnie’s wife, and Alice Yates, both possessed a coat described as “leopard skin,” but more likely, in fact, ocelot fur as the fur appeared to have been of good quality.
Early next morning he reported at the Yard, and presently was informed that his proposed plan of operations had been approved. One or two alterations and additions were indicated, one or two details were severely criticised, but all that chiefly because it would never do to let juniors think too well of their own ideas. Youngsters must be kept in their place. But the help Bobby asked for was duly promised, and at any rate it was clear his report was being taken very seriously indeed, and that there was no inclination to regard it as a discovery of a mare’s nest. But he got a severe rap over the knuckles for not having pointed out that the exhumation of Ronnie’s body was necessary, both for the purposes of establishing identity, if that were still possible, and also to ascertain if any other cause of death than drowning could be found. An order to carry out this gruesome task would be applied for, he was told, and probably the same procedure would have, later on, to be adopted with regard to the bodies of the other victims.
The rest of the day, therefore, Bobby spent calling at the offices of the insurance companies concerned, examining the papers there ready for him, securing permission to have them copied, and collating the information so obtained. Not that that amounted to much more than was already known, though Bobby’s conviction was strengthened that the witness describing himself as a clerk who appeared in two of the cases, each time giving a name with the initials “A.B.,” and an address that was not permanent, and of whom it was mentioned once or twice in reports of both inquests that he wore beard and moustache, was certainly the same man; either, Bobby supposed, an accomplice, or possibly the chief conspirator himself. Bobby remembered, too, that Mr. Priestman, the supposed father of the victim in the third case, had also been described as heavily bearded, so possibly he again was identical with these witnesses who had such a trick of vanishing from their given addresses.
Other inquiries were already on foot for obtaining fuller accounts of the inquests held, though these, as it turned out, did not yield any further points of interest. Inquiries were also being made in the City to discover what was known of the Berry, Quick Syndicate; of its director, Mr. Percy Lawrence; and of the various other concerns whereof the names had been mentioned.
All this took time, and documents steadily accumulated, till by the end of the week the dossier of the case was beginning to resemble a small library. The authorities were grateful, though, that since as yet nothing about the case had appeared in the Press, they were spared that avalanche of letters of every sort and kind that in such sensational affairs is apt to descend upon them.
On the Sunday – for Scotland Yard can take scant heed of high days, holidays, and feasts – a special conference was held, presided over by the Assistant Commissioner himself, attended by half a dozen dignitaries, and, for part of the time, by Bobby, who, ordered to be in attendance, was called in presently and questioned and cross-questioned at length. It was a relief to him to find that not much importance seemed to be attached to the coincidence of the successive investments of £20,000 each made by Chris with the amounts paid out by the insurance companies. But a good many questions were asked about Norris’s early rivalry with Ronnie for Cora’s affections, and about the strength of his continuing passion for her, whereof the realization had been made possible, as it seemed, by Ronnie’s death occurring just when the prospect of a reconciliation between husband and wife would have rendered futile all such hopes. Heads were nodded, too, over Norris’s apparent admission that he had had early knowledge of the tragedy, though it was agreed that in the circumstances that knowledge might be, as he claimed, no more than a reasonable inference from probabilities. Bobby had mentioned, too, in his report, having noticed on Norris’s table what looked like correspondence with the Berry, Quick Syndicate as well as the draft prospectus of some concern calling itself the London, Brighton & South Coast Syndicate. From the questions that were asked him, and the remarks made, Bobby soon divined that very careful attention was being paid to what might be called the City end of the inquiry.
Efforts were evidently being made to discover everything possible about the present dealings of the Berry, Quick people, and about the past operations of the other concerns that had been mentioned. But not much success had been achieved. Nobody seemed to know anything much about the Berry, Quick Syndicate, either for it or against it, and as for the London, Brighton & South Coast Syndicate, no trace of it whatever could be found. One stockholder had carried out some orders for the Berry, Quick people, but they had been for comparatively small amounts, with no unusual features about them. In these hard times he had been glad to accept the commissions, and there had been no occasion to ask any questions. As for the other concerns, the E. & O.E. Syndicate, the Yen Developments Syndicate, the Sands Metal Company, they had vanished, and left neither trace nor track behind.
“Only there is this,” pointed out the senior officer who had been conducting this part of the inquiry; “you come across all kinds of funny little odd coincidences. There’s the names, for instance. The E. & O.E. Syndicate – whoever heard of a business calling itself that? The next two aren’t so bad, but now we’ve the Berry, Quick Syndicate; nice name, bury ’em quick, for what looks as if it might turn out a gang of murderers. There seems a sort of infernal, devilish insolence about the whole affair that ‘Berry, Quick’ is typical of. Then in each report of the inquest there’s always a principal witness whose initials are always ‘A.B.,’ and who always lives at Ealing and can never be traced because his address is always an hotel or lodgings or a small flat never really occupied – accommodation addresses, the whole of them, if you ask me. Then there’s an extraordinary resemblance in the figures given. There’s always proof produced that income tax has been paid on profits of about £400 – enough to show there was no financial trouble to suggest suicide and not enough to make the payment heavy. Other figures mentioned, and even the names of clients, seem similar, and, if you ask me, what I say is, it looks as if the books had been very carefully and elaborately faked, with sham entries to show a business that very likely didn’t exist at all.”
“Can that be proved?” asked the Assistant Commissioner.
“No, not without obtaining the actual books and going through them carefully,” answered the other. “Even then, with the lapse of time it might be difficult. Even if I could show a client’s name and address were faked, it wouldn’t go for much. People who deal with bucket shops sometimes use false names and addresses – don’t want their business associates or their families, perhaps, to know what they are doing. It’s all suspicion; no proof, unless we can get more information or all the books to compare. A peep at the Berry, Quick books might be useful,” he added, looking “search warrant” at the Assistant Commissioner as plainly as words could have expressed it.
But the Assistant Commissioner shook his head resolutely.
“Can’t do that at this stage,” he said. “It’s not nearly like far enough advanced yet. If any more deaths in baths occur, we may be able to do something – too late for the poor devil concerned, whoever he may turn out to be. Or if we could identify these other two on whom insurance was paid – William Priestman and Samuel Sands, if those were really their names. We’re working in the dark till we know who they were and how they got mixed up in it. Then there’s this other case said to have happened on the Continent. We haven’t yet traced what insurance company was concerned in that, have we?”
“No, sir, not yet,” answered the same man. “None of those we’ve inquired of seem to know of it.”
“May have b
een a foreign company,” observed the Assistant Commissioner. “However, probably this Dr. Beale will be able to give us full information. He’s not been seen yet?”
“No, sir,” answered Bobby. “I rang up to ask for an interview, but I was told he was away on business in Sweden and would be back early this coming week.”
“We ought to see our way more clearly after you’ve heard what he has to say,” remarked the Assistant Commissioner. “Meanwhile, I don’t see that it is much good proceeding with any attempt to exhume the bodies of Priestman and Sands, though I expect we shall come to it. No one to identify them if we do, for one thing. Different, though, if the doctors find any cause of death other than drowning in Ronald Owen’s case. But you can never tell with doctors. They’ll shy at the simplest thing, and swear up hill and down dale to what anyone would have thought was the merest guess. If they do find any other cause of death beyond drowning, that’ll be clear proof murder was done. If not, what with the coroner’s verdict and the time lapse, it rather looks to me as if we should have to drop it – for the time, anyhow.”
One of the others present referred to the threats Cora was said by Norris to have made against her husband when she first knew the truth. Bobby had been careful to say in his report that these alleged threats rested on Norris’s statement alone, and now he was instructed to make further inquiries to see if Norris’s story could be substantiated.
“I never heard anything of the sort before,” Bobby said.
“Most likely only talk,” agreed the Assistant Commissioner. “All women talk.”
“Sometimes they act, too,” observed someone else, and Bobby ventured to point out that apparently Cora had had no knowledge of where her husband was living and no communication with him save through the advertisements in the Daily Announcer.
“So far as we know, that is,” observed the other; “but put it this way. We know the advertisement was seen and answered. They were in touch again. Suppose he let her know by another letter, or by ringing her up or somehow, what his address was, and suppose she, in an impulsive sort of way – the way women are – felt she couldn’t wait any longer and rushed off to find him, and kiss and make it up then and there. Now we know, too, there was another woman in his life, the one who was at the inquest as Mrs. Oliver. Well, suppose the real Mrs. Owen found out that, while he was thanking God for getting her back again, he had all the time another woman in her place. Perhaps she actually went to the Islington flat and found her there. You can imagine things happening.”
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