He told himself there must be a mistake somewhere, and then he recognized there could not be. Impossible to doubt the truth of the landlady’s story, and the identity of Alice Yates with Slimmy Alice of the Soho streets had been fully established.
“That’s why she’s going blind,” the landlady said, “and good reason too.”
“She knows?” Bobby asked.
“She’s been told plain enough. Anyone can see how red and swollen her eyes are, and the way she blinks and puts up her hand to clear her sight – spiders’ webs she says she sees and has to brush away.”
“Couldn’t she wear glasses?”
“She won’t. She says she sees better without, and glasses would make no difference, they told her at the hospital, so long as she goes on the way she does.”
Bobby sat still and silent. He closed his eyes for a moment, as if to realize what blindness meant, and then quickly opened them again, ridiculously afraid that if he did not he might never be able to. There were two pictures before his mind: that of a woman lightly profaning the deep mystery of sex by offering it for sale in the market place, that of a woman leading a life of such dull, fantastic toil with so rigid a determination as she knew must involve the loss of what is to many more than life itself.
He did not understand how it was possible to reconcile them.
CHAPTER 20
A DISCOVERY
Bobby was generally a sound sleeper. But tonight he found himself restless, his mind a tumult of many thoughts. The routine of his daily work had made him familiar enough with the discovery of the vice that masked itself as virtue, of the crime that sheltered behind the appearance of the most strict respectability. But how interpret this disclosure of what appeared so dull and drab and secret a heroism in one about whom such dark suspicions clustered, whose past was known to be of a kind to exclude her from decent society? What meaning could be given to a tale of toil so hidden, to all appearance so purposeless, and yet witnessing to a resolve and strength of will approaching the superhuman?
His sitting room was on the ground floor, and next morning, while eating his breakfast, he kept his door half open and listened intently till presently he heard upon the stairs a step so light he nearly missed it, and was only just in time to see Alice passing through the hall on her way to her office.
“Oh, good morning,” he said, holding out his hand in greeting, and as instinctively she took it, he turned hers a little round to the light and saw there three tiny scars upon the wrist.
“It was you, then,” he said.
“What was?” she asked, making that gesture he had noticed previously of moving her hand before her eyes, as if to clear away something floating there before them.
“I heard a story the other night,” he answered, “a story of a girl whose wrist was burned by a lighted cigarette on the Embankment near a coffee stall.”
She made no answer, but she fixed those red and swollen eyes of hers upon him as though all her life were burning there, burning itself away. For a longer or a shorter time they stood so, and he was aware of an impulse to put up his hands, as if to defend himself against an actual blow, so much did the fierceness in her eyes resemble one. She took her glance from him, and he was relieved, and without speaking a word she moved on towards the door. He said:
‘‘Won’t you tell me? I believe I might help you if you would tell me.”
She seemed to hesitate. She paused. Without looking back, she said over her shoulder in that low, husky voice of hers:
“Tell you what?”
“Why you don’t care that you are going blind,” he answered.
He had an impression that she trembled a little. It passed, and she walked on. The door closed softly behind her, and Bobby was alone in the hall. He went back to his unfinished breakfast and found that he had no more appetite.
“That was pretty brutal of me,” he thought, and he tried to excuse himself with the usual metaphor of the surgeon’s knife, and found it sufficiently unconvincing.
But when later on he arrived at Scotland Yard and reported his landlady’s story, he found little interest taken in it.
“A bit of sewing’s always a way women can earn a bit extra, and lots of them seem to like the job, too,” observed Ferris cheerfully. “Nothing more to it.”
“But it looks, sir,” Bobby protested, “as if she were deliberately sacrificing her sight.”
Ferris remained quite unconvinced.
“Not her,” he said confidently. “No one would do that – not likely, not much. She’ll stop her sewing long before there’s any real danger of that happening. Mustn’t pay too much attention to landladies’ gossip.” He added thoughtfully: “Very likely she’s been told to keep busy so as to keep her off the streets and giving the show away.”
“But wasn’t there a report,” Bobby objected, “that she had been seen hanging about Leicester Square or somewhere up that way?”
“So there was,” admitted Ferris, “once or twice – mixing up again with her old pals apparently.”
“Well, then,” Bobby muttered, faced again with this absolute contradiction between the wanton and lawless life of the street and the bitter, unrelenting toil of the needle.
“Or maybe, if you ask me,” Ferris added, “it’s just a plan to give her an excuse for keeping an eye on you. Being careful to remember to keep the door locked when you’re having a bath?”
Bobby said he always did that, and, besides, everyone knew a detective-sergeant was far too small game to be worth powder and shot.
“An inspector now,” he said abstractedly, “an inspector might be worth going gunning for”; and Ferris changed the subject with some haste.
It seemed he had to tell of an important discovery just made, one so interesting, significant, and important, indeed, that before it this incomprehensible yarn of a girl sacrificing her sight by working all hours of the day and night lost all meaning.
“You remember,” Ferris said, “the A.C. had the Embankment lousy with occasionals on the lookout for your shadow Mr. Smith. A washout, of course; bound to be. I could have told him that at once. If the shadow man was even half as smart as your story made out, he would fall to it at once what was on and just fade away till the A.C. took his occasionals off again – putting salt on a bird’s tail idea, if you ask me. I suppose the A.C. saw that at last and had another idea – a real brainstorm this time,” admitted Ferris reluctantly, for a thing like that one does not care to say about an Assistant Commissioner, whose rank should alone be a safe protection against such doubtful things as brainstorms – as it generally is, if their subordinates can be believed. “What he did,” said Ferris with reluctant approval, “was to have ’em all trailed.”
“All?” repeated Bobby, a little uncomfortably.
“The whole blessed lot,” Ferris told him, “whose names have been mentioned – every one of ’em. Mr. Chris Owen, who bought bits of china where one death happened, and what was he doing there? Mrs. Ronnie Owen, widow, who found hubby had been carrying on with another woman while making up to her again, and known to have owned a leopard-skin coat same as worn by woman at the inquest. Also your Alice Yates and Dr. Beale and Percy Lawrence and the whole lot, in fact. Chris Owen is in the country at the moment, valuing some big nob’s collection. Mrs. Ronnie Owen doesn’t seem to go out much except to friends or a bridge club she belongs to. Percy Lawrence is still doing his fifteen miles every evening heel and toe, in and out and in again. Dr. Beale hasn’t budged from where he lives. Your pal Alice never goes anywhere except to and from her office, and her stunt every night of watching Percy pass without any sign to show they even see each other.”
“Well, then,” said Bobby, relieved.
“Haven’t noticed,” asked Ferris, “that I didn’t mention Mr. Richard Norris? Well, it looks like he’s the goods all right enough.”
“Norris?” repeated Bobby incredulously. “You mean that?”
“Looks like it,” Ferris said. “Mr. Richard Norris
, living in style in a swell flat off Park Lane out of his earnings as a writer about golf.”
“He does a lot on the Stock Exchange, too,” Bobby said quickly. “I believe he gets inside information, and has done well with it.”
“Met that yarn before,” remarked Ferris unbelievingly; “the way they all account for money there’s no accounting for. Besides, there’s information that the firm of stockbrokers he used to deal with have done nothing much for him for months. He may have taken his business to another firm, but they think they would have known it if he had. They gave him special terms, too, apparently. And he’s been seen visiting the L.B. & S.C.S. office near Green Dragon Square.”
“Yes, I know. That seemed queer,” Bobby admitted.
“What’s a lot queerer,” Ferris said, “is that he has been trailed two successive nights down along the Embankment. He was wearing a coat with the collar turned up and his hat pulled down over his eyes, and once or twice he was seen talking to down-and-outs. Prowling about half the night he was, and what for? And if it’s not to find the next to take a bath, what is his game?”
“If it’s like that,” Bobby said slowly, “it can’t be Dr. Beale they intend to be their next?”
“Two strings to their bow, if you ask me,” suggested Ferris. “Dr. Beale first, and then after him the next to be any likely bloke picked up off the Embankment. This is a long-range affair if it’s anything at all.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” agreed Bobby.
“Everything worked out and made ready months beforehand; months, too, spent training on the next for the bath so it’ll go off all right and no nasty questions at the inquest,” Ferris continued. “There was another conference yesterday afternoon, you know. It seems to be pretty well agreed now that the idea was to take a bucket-shop fake – quite smart. There is no attempt to do bucket-shop business – profits in that line too small for our birds, risk too great, run too short before the people you’ve diddled start complaining. So what business they did was perfectly genuine and honest, only precious little of it. But it’s easy enough to enter all kinds of transactions with all kinds of people out of dreamland. It’ll all look genuine enough, even if most likely it wouldn’t stand up to close investigation by experts, but then there’s no risk of that with no one to make complaints and no one with any reason to demand an inquiry. Every bit good enough to show at an inquest on a poor chap drowned accidentally in his bath to prove no financial cause for suicide; good enough, too, to let an insurance assessor have a squint at, because, though he may smell a rat, he won’t see any chance of coaxing it into a trap – and not too awfully keen either on making a stink that’ll scare off clients and no certainty of proving anything. No insurance company wants a stink if they can help it, and, unless the case is dead clear, no use to scare possible clients into thinking they may get murdered if they insure, or to get a name for being difficult about payments. Given a year or two between each case for making preparation and faking the books and documents required, and a suitable stray picked up off the Embankment no one was likely to miss or make any inquiries about – it must have looked a cinch, cast iron. And, at £20,000 or so each time, a pretty paying game. And that,” concluded Ferris, “if you ask me, is what your shadow man now identified as Mr. Richard Norris is doing on the prowl every night on the Embankment – picking out the next.”
“If it’s Norris,” Bobby said, “then the others are cleared?”
“Not half they aren’t,” retorted Ferris with vigour. “This is a big affair – conspiracy. If you ask me, as likely as not they’re all in it, the whole caboodle. Norris as chief, perhaps, the other two helping, and Percy Lawrence and Alice Yates employed as covers. And where the evidence is going to come from I don’t know. Norris does the brainwork, most likely, and he’ll have a perfectly good alibi for the job itself. Death in your own bath – how is that brought home to anyone? Happens often enough innocent enough.”
Bobby thought so, too, and as he sat there deep in thought he wondered where in this strange and dark story there fitted in the tale he had heard of a woman sewing silently day after day, week after week, in a solitary and dreadful toil she knew must in the end cost her her sight.
CHAPTER 21
MAGOTTY MEG
The authorities at Scotland Yard were beginning to grow distinctly uneasy.
The exhumation of the bodies of the other two victims of what was coming to be known at the Yard as “The Bath Mysteries” had been carried out with great secrecy, but the post-mortem examinations had revealed no other cause of death than the accidental drowning recorded in the verdicts at the respective inquests. In the William Priestman body signs were found to indicate alcoholic excess and the probable use of drugs, but, then, it had been mentioned at the inquest that Priestman had been leading a very dissipated life for the few months before his death. At the time, too, a supply of veronal had been found in his possession. More significant – of curious interest, indeed – was the fact that a trifling deformity was noticed in the left foot, and that a similar deformity had been recorded as present in the person who had presented himself for medical examination in the name of Ronald Oliver when the insurance on that personage’s life was being taken out. It was probable, therefore, that Priestman, of much the same physical type as Ronnie Owen, had acted as substitute for him.
But, however suspicious this and other circumstances might seem, there did not at present appear much possibility of carrying the cases further. Only as regarded Ronnie Owen was there any proof that murder had in fact been committed, and there, too, but little chance existed of discovering satisfactory evidence to fix the guilt. Suspicion seemed to point now here, now there, and as several of those engaged in the investigation were inclined to think, both here and there with equal reason. But how to find the conclusive proof an English jury requires was for the present a problem to all seeming beyond solution.
“Of course, there’s this Norris bird’s prowling about the Embankment that may lead to something some day,” one man remarked at one of the numerous conferences that were held to discuss the case, “and we know he’s living in style with no visible income – that’s always a pointer. Then we know Mrs. Ronnie Owen had had access to poison, there’s evidence she knew more about her husband than she let on, and jealousy is always a possible motive; but all that’s miles from proof, and how after all this time can we get her identified with the woman who appeared at the inquest, or check up on her movements the day of the murder? And we know Mr. Chris Owen was hanging round the Islington flat at the time, but that doesn’t prove much except opportunity, and there seems no way of tracing the insurance money to him. It may quite well be that Lawrence is working the whole stunt with this Alice Yates girl to help – or they may be just stalking horses themselves. There’s the fact, too, that Norris seems to be connected with the L.B. & S.C. Syndicate affair, and that Lawrence is as well, except that nothing is known of any of the concerns and none of them has done much business. But there’s no crime in that, or else half the City today would be in jail. It looks like a complete dead end, and no wonder, when it all happened months ago. Dead cold trails lead to dead ends.”
“Resignations,” said the Assistant Commissioner, who was presiding, “resignations will be three a penny.”
They all agreed, gloomily. They envisaged a burst of public wrath at official slackness and apathy; they saw screaming headlines in the press, a burst of furious correspondence descending upon members of Parliament, newspapers, and themselves; they all knew well that a starving tiger that has tasted blood is easier to control than the public in one of its fits of righteous – and hysterical – indignation. But none of them knew what to do about it.
The junior in rank present said timidly:
“There’s the Dr. Beale angle. That may lead somewhere if we watch it. We know there’ve been attempts already to get him to insure his life in favour of Lawrence.”
“A philosopher johnny,” observed the A.C. thoughtfully, �
�is just about the easiest mark there is.”
And on that point, too, they were all agreed.
The A.C. looked round sternly.
“The business of the police force of this country,” he declared, “is to protect law-abiding citizens even more than to bring criminals to justice.”
Once more they were all in complete and even enthusiastic agreement. Having expressed that agreement with nods of the head and low, acquiescent murmurs, they all set to work to discuss how far it would be possible to use Dr. Beale’s known connection with Percy Lawrence and the Berry, Quick Syndicate as a means of taking any prospective murderers in the act and before they had accomplished their purpose. It was pointed out that so long as Dr. Beale remained in his own home he was safe enough, and that therefore no action need be taken to convey to him that warning which would naturally and inevitably lead to the complete breaking off of almost the only known means of keeping in any way in touch with the suspected persons, or of discovering anything about their contemplated activities.
“No risk in his taking a bath in his own home,” they decided, and one man added: “There will have to be a careful watch kept to make sure we get warning if he comes up to town any time. I suppose the locals can be trusted to do that?”
“Oh, very efficient force,” commented the A.C.; and then, after a little further talk, Bobby was called in and questioned with some asperity, for apprehension had lent an edge to all their nerves. No one knew what to make of his report that Alice Yates was binding herself to such terrific toil as to endanger even her sight, but it was also agreed that the fact, if it were a fact, could have no bearing on the investigation in hand. As for Percy Lawrence’s nightly pedestrian exercises, those, it seemed likely, had some significance which the careful watch being kept upon him would certainly reveal in time.
“Though what can be the object in walking fifteen miles or so at top speed every night,” observed the A.C., “goodness knows – unless it is to annoy motorists. Every report, almost, talks about his walking lap bang across the road, and making cars draw up on their tails to avoid him, almost as though he didn’t even see them. As for the Yates girl, she doesn’t stick to her sewing quite so closely as all that. Here’s a report of her having been seen again with her old associates, and another of her having spent all one evening with – er –” said the A.C. with some distaste – “Magotty Meg. Who is Magotty Meg ? Has she no – er – normal name to be used in – er – official reports?”
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