Was she scared of something?
The other had dropped into a chair. It was a big, deep armchair that invited one to lie back in it and relax. Only Sherry Carfax wasn’t relaxed.
She sat on the edge of the chair, her slim legs drawn under her. She was tense, the way she sat, her hands restless.
Miss Frayle frowned.
When she had first arrived, Sherry had been excited, eager. She was still excited, but now it seemed a nervous excitement. She looked definitely frightened. Miss Frayle realized the change had happened from the moment she had spoken of the death of Charles Gresham. She remembered she had described it in some detail. She was about to question Sherry and to reassure her. But before she could speak, the other was talking.
“Someone telephoned me this afternoon. It was a man with a sort of snuffly voice. And a Cockney accent. He asked me if I was interested in what had happened at Sir Hugh Albany’s flat. I admitted I was. Then I asked him who he was and what he wanted.”
She paused. Miss Frayle said eagerly:
“Yes, yes! What did he say to that?”
Sherry gave her a quick look.
“He told me not to worry who he was. ‘I’ve got some information for anyone who’s willing to pay for it,’ he said. Then he went on that if I met him with five hundred pounds, he’d tell me who was in Hugh’s flat when Stefan Zusky was murdered. He said he saw the man——”
“Saw the man?”
Miss Frayle could not help the interruption.
Sherry nodded and went on:
“He saw him and heard the shot.”
Miss Frayle’s expression changed. It lost its eagerness. It grew dubious, then frankly sceptical.
“That old story!” She assumed a look of worldly scorn (copied unashamedly from Doctor Morelle). “It’s one any cheap crook can put over with the idea of getting easy money. After all,” she persisted judiciously, “the murder’s been in the papers. He’s read all about the attack on Sir Hugh. And everyone knows you’re engaged to him. It would be simple enough for a crook to make up some story——”
“No.”
Sherry stopped her abruptly. “It’s not as simple as that. This man more or less proved he was there.”
“How could he?”
“You know the flat underneath Hugh’s?”
Miss Frayle cast her mind back. She recalled something the other had said about the flat below Albany’s being occupied by a young man called Ward. He was away and the flat was empty.
Sherry nodded. “That’s exactly what this man said. He admitted he’d had his eye on it as a—a ‘crib’ for some time. He said he was actually in the flat below Hugh’s when he saw someone go up the fire-escape. He had just broken in by the fire-escape himself. He heard footsteps, he said, and crouched down behind the window and watched. He saw this person—it was a man—clearly as he went up to Hugh’s flat.”
“Who was it?”
“He wouldn’t tell me any more. He said he told me enough to show he knew what he was talking about. If I wanted to know anything more, I’d have to pay him five hundred pounds in small notes.”
“What did you arrange?” Miss Frayle asked. “Did you agree to pay him?”
“It was that or nothing. He told me if I didn’t think it worth my while, he’d just keep his mouth closed. Let the police get on with it best they could. He said he wouldn’t telephone me again. If I didn’t turn up with the cash, nobody would know anything. And he rang off.”
There was a tense silence.
“Turn up where?” Miss Frayle finally asked.
“At Wapping. Seven o’clock tonight,” Sherry answered her. “Wapping Old Stairs.”
“Oh, dear—oh, dear me!”
Miss Frayle gave a little shiver. “What a place!” she groaned. “So eerie. It’ll be dark. Pitch dark, I know it! An exaggeration of every crime-book ever written!”
In spite of herself and her obvious nervousness, Sherry smiled faintly.
“It sounds a pretty sinister spot,” she admitted. “But I didn’t have time to argue. He told me to come alone. I said I wouldn’t—I was too frightened. He said I could bring a friend, but if I brought the police with me he’d know, and he wouldn’t be there. I thought of you, Miss Frayle.” She hesitated, then asked simply: “Would you come with me?”
Chapter Thirty-Two – Wapping Old Stairs
“Oh!”
Miss Frayle’s voice was blank.
Her mind ran back over the past events, two of them outstandingly touched with horror. She had discovered Zusky. And then, this afternoon, Charles Gresham. Now she was being urged to set out on another adventure. To meet a self-confessed criminal, her only companion to be a frightened girl who carried the sum of five hundred pounds.
She had often been down to London’s water-front, but always in company with Doctor Morelle. So far as the romance of that locality was concerned, she preferred to find it in books or at the cinema. Both of which, she invariably discovered, presented a far from accurate and realistic picture.
Wapping Old Stairs. She visualized the dark, dank alley-way flanked by high black walls, and the hump of stone steps that led down to the mournful lapping of the river. Wapping Old Stairs—at night, too. Miss Frayle shivered involuntarily and glanced at Sherry’s pale, set face.
A faint smile touched the girl’s lips.
“You needn’t come if you don’t want to. I confess I’m frightened, too. I wasn’t until you told me about Gresham’s murder. It’s that that makes it all the more menacing. It seems just as if the murderer, whoever he is, knows everything that goes on. But even though I’m scared, I’m going. I’ve made up my mind. Whatever he may have been involved in, I love Hugh. I can’t rest until I know what the threat is that hangs over him.”
That got Miss Frayle.
A wave of sympathy engulfed her. Behind her horn-rimmed spectacles, her eyes grew misty. If the Doctor could have analysed her feelings at that moment, he would undoubtedly have been nauseated. But in this mysterious affair of murder, blackmail and violence, sordid enough and unpleasant as it was, Miss Frayle clung sentimentally to the romance between her friend and Sir Hugh Albany.
She looked earnestly at Sherry Carfax. There was no doubt about it—whether or not she, Miss Frayle, made the journey to Wapping, Sherry would go.
“Have you got the money?” she asked.
From a large hand-bag with a shoulder-strap the other took some packets of notes.
“The banks were closed and it was difficult to get such a large sum quickly,” she said. “But I got on to my jewellers. They lent me the money.”
When you were well off, it was as easy as that, Miss Frayle thought fleetingly. Then she made up her mind.
“I’m coming with you. I couldn’t let you go alone. And in any case, I don’t see how anything more frightening can happen!” And added fervently: “I hope!”
By all the rules, there should have been a murky, yellow fog swirling eerily over the river. But in fact it was a singularly clear evening.
Nevertheless, it was dark enough. Presently there would be a moon to lighten the sky, but now it hung over London, a vast black celestial dome spangled with a scattering of stars.
The tide was running in. The river was busy, its ebony surface reflecting the jewelled lights of tugs and lighters, chugging in ghostly swirls of white. Strings of barges lay quiescent, slumbering monsters, dark, primeval shapes against the blacker walls of the high wharves, docilely awaiting loading or unloading.
Wapping High Street was a chasm engorged between over-hanging walls, lighted at long intervals by old-fashioned lamps. There was little traffic now—pedestrians were few and far between. It was a study in grey light and stark shadow, over which hung reminders of the heavy, exotic atmosphere engendered by centuries-old shipments of spices from the four corners of the world.
“It’s a bit overdone!” Sherry Carfax whispered to Miss Frayle, as they hurried along the deserted, stone-paved street. “Like a fil
m-set. Too eerie to be real!”
“I—I suppose so,” Miss Frayle gulped. “I wish we were seeing it from the one-and-threes!”
She was, as she frankly admitted to herself, afraid. What made it worse was that she didn’t quite know what she was afraid of. She tried to tell herself it was simply because of the rather sinister surroundings. They did play their part. She would not have felt like this if their rendezvous with the mysterious cat-burglar had been in the middle of Piccadilly.
Not that she regretted having accompanied Sherry. It would have been unthinkable to have allowed her to come here alone. All the same, Miss Frayle ardently wished she might have the reassuring presence of Doctor Morelle beside her. Even at the cost of having to endure his sarcasm had he detected—as he unfailingly would—her timorousness.
Abruptly the great wall of a warehouse, beneath whose lowering frown they hurried, gave way to a public house. It made an oasis of genial humanity in this desert of uncertain shadows. Yellow light gleamed warmly from the windows. Within, a piano jangled with tinny gaiety. The heartening sound of voices reached their ears.
Their footsteps slowed, as if reluctant to leave this small radius for the bleakness beyond. Then Miss Frayle tightened her hand on Sherry’s arm.
“There it is, along there,” she said. “That second lamp, I think. I know the Stairs are somewhere in that direction.”
Suddenly a door of the public house swung open.
The light fell clear on them. The man framed in the doorway stared at them a moment. He was a creature of average height, but drooping, with drooping eyes and drooping mouth—even his clothes seemed to droop on him—and his arms drooped by his sides. He stared at them indifferently, then in a nasal voice threw over his shoulder:
“Garn, it ain’t rainin’! I said it wasn’t.” He went in again, the door swinging after him.
It was so unexpected, the way that door had swung open, that it set Miss Frayle’s already tense nerves jangling. She almost screamed out when Sherry said, a quiet tense voice in her ear:
“I think that was him!”
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear me!” Miss Frayle stammered. “Do you really? Why?”
“It sounded like the voice over the telephone.”
Her tone was curiously level and quiet.
“He’ll follow us, if it is. D’you think we ought to go back?”
She thought wistfully of the lights and the cheerfulness they had left behind them. But Sherry impelled her on.
“What’s the use? He wouldn’t be sure I was the one he’d arranged to meet. The appointment was at the Old Stairs.”
They hurried on.
Fifty yards on a lamp gave out a sickly yellow-green light in a feeble effort to beat back the darkness. When they reached it, they saw it was at the entrance to a narrow, gloom-filled alley, hardly more than a crevice, through which they would have to creep. Faintly discernible in the narrow passage-way was a flight of stone steps leading up, then down the other side, the far side of which was lost in a black void.
“This is it.”
It seemed to Miss Frayle her voice was coming out of the top of her head. She glanced at her watch, peering short-sightedly at it in the glimmer from the lamp. It was exactly seven o’clock. In the distance, across the unseen river, clocks began to chime.
“We’ll wait on the steps to make sure.”
Still Sherry’s voice was quiet, controlled.
In spite of her own fear, Miss Frayle glanced curiously at her, wondering how she could apparently be so assured. Then she saw the other’s face was deadly white, her mouth tightly compressed, that she had keyed herself to the last degree of nervous endurance.
It made her feel a little ashamed and, as they crossed into the shadows that engulfed the worn stone steps, her hand tightened on Sherry’s arm again. She said, in a voice none too steady:
“Don’t worry—we’ll be all right. We’ll see it through.”
Sherry nodded silently.
They ascended to the top. The alley led on for a dozen yards to the other side of the steps which ran down to the river. The tide was still flowing in, but slowly. It was nearly full. Some twenty or so steps down they felt and heard rather than saw the dark water swirling by, whispering, slapping, gurgling.
Far down-river a ship’s siren bellowed moodily like a great, sleepy animal being awakened. Out towards midstream a large tug chugged upwards with the tide, a shadowy mass for a moment, then nothing more than a moving jewel of light. A pilot boat sped down on the far side, on its way to a big ship. Beyond it the lights of Rotherhithe twinkled, remote as a distant land.
For a minute or two they stared into the blackness, illumined only by occasional shimmering lances of gold reflected on the dark tide.
Then suddenly below them where the water lapped and crept up the steps came a faint bump and scrape. Something rattled softly.
Miss Frayle’s fingers dug into Sherry’s arm. They waited tensely. There was a silence. Then, in a few seconds, another faint bump.
Miss Frayle sighed.
“It’s only a moored boat, I think. Swinging on the tide. I can’t see anything——”
She broke off with a little gasp as behind them, where the lamp gleamed at the entrance, a footstep sounded. They turned quickly, saw a dim figure flitting swiftly across the pool of uncertain light into the shadows of the alley. For a second the light gleamed on him. Both recognized him.
It was the man who had come out of the public house and watched them pass by. He crossed to the fringe of shadow where the street-lamp scarcely reached, and stood against the wall waiting, his white blur of face looking expectantly towards the steps.
“Come on,” Sherry whispered.
Chapter Thirty-Three – Voice In The Dark
Miss Frayle was not sorry to put the dark, sinister, chuckling river behind her. She moved down the steps again, keeping close to Sherry.
The man watched their approach, moving away from the wall, his back to the light and facing the steps. He continued to droop, yet there was about him an air of tense watchfulness.
“I’m Sherry Carfax.”
The man flicked her a quick glance, then looked suspiciously at Miss Frayle. He jerked his head towards her.
“Who’s this?”
“A friend—I told you I wouldn’t come here alone.”
He grunted. His expressionless eyes were fixed on Miss Frayle, and she gulped. A most unpleasant-looking man, she thought. There was something mean and weasely about him. A nasty little small-time crook, certainly a coward, but sure of himself at the moment because he had only two young women to deal with.
“Where’s the doings?”
“I’ve brought the money all right.”
He licked his lips, then he rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth.
“’And it over,” he said hoarsely.
Sherry shook her head. “When you’ve given me the information you promised.”
Miss Frayle marvelled at the clear firmness of her voice.
“And ’ave you runnin’ orf for the cops the minute I told yer? I don’t trust no one. ’Alf now or the deal’s orf!”
Sherry hesitated.
“Very well.”
She opened her hand-bag. Miss Frayle, making a vaguely defiant gesture at him, managed to say in a tight little voice:
“And don’t you make any mistakes, like trying to snatch the rest and running away.”
He stared at her venomously, muttered something, then grabbed the packet of notes Sherry handed him. He glanced at them swiftly, pulled one out and rubbed it between finger and thumb. He held it up to the light, then, with a grunt of satisfaction, thrust the money into his pocket.
“Okay.”
He plunged immediately into his story. “I bin watchin’ that crib in Jermyn Street some time. That’s my lay, round there. Toffs is careless, and they got the doings. That crib was dead easy, with that fire-escape. I seen the toff wot lives on the third floor go off in a taxi
coupler days afore. I knowed ’e’s goin’ to be away some time—’e’s got plenty of luggage. So I just waits me time. Well, this evening I’m telling you of, when the copper’s passed on ’is beat, I slip up the fire-escape.”
He paused and threw a suspicious glance round him. A ship’s siren hung on the night and died away. He resumed:
“Then when I’m openin’ the winder I ’ear a car pull up. ’Arf a minute later, footsteps is follerin’ me up the fire-escape. I just manages ter get the winder open and ’op in.”
He halted for dramatic effect. Then wiped his hand across his mouth.
“I watches,” he continued hoarsely. “Someone else on a lay, I thinks. And, blimey, I was right. The feller comes up quick, but not ’urryin’.”
Another pause while his rat-like gaze flicked over them.
Miss Frayle could scarcely breathe. There was no doubting the veracity of the man’s words. It was evident by his manner he was speaking the truth.
“I saw ’im,” he said. “Saw ’is face more clear even than wot I can see yours now . . .”
And then suddenly, on the steps behind Miss Frayle and Sherry, a footstep scraped softly. The man’s head jerked up, his eyes staring.
“Don’t turn round. Remain exactly as you are without moving!”
From the darkness behind, the voice sounded metallic, full of ugly menace.
The little crook’s jaw dropped so that his mouth hung wide. His eyes strained towards the steps. Then he swore bitterly at Miss Frayle and Sherry. “You done it on me,” he whined. “You done me——”
“You’ve done yourself!”
The voice from the darkness was impersonal. Not daring to move, Miss Frayle and Sherry remained with their backs turned, motionless.
“Remember?” the horrible tones went on softly. “You said if I changed my mind about paying you I’d find you at Wapping Old Stairs at seven. And here I am—a little early—to pay you. But not what you asked——”
“No!” The little crook’s voice rose to a scream. “For Gawd’s sake, guv’nor, don’t shoot! Don’t——!”
There was a single, sharp report. From behind the two girls a stab of flame spat out.
Menace for Dr. Morelle Page 18