He was silent, and then, with a quick, breath-catching sigh, she smiled again.
“I haven’t come out to lecture you, and I shall not even ask you if, for my sake, you will go straight in the future. Because, Johnny” – she dropped a cool palm on the back of his hand – “I’m not going to do anything like the good fairy in the story-books and try to save you from yourself.”
“I’m saved,” said Johnny with a quizzical smile. “You’re perfectly right: there was no reason why I should be a thief. I was the victim of circumstances. It was possibly the fascination of the game – no, no, it wasn’t that. One of these days I will tell you why I left the straight path of virtue. It is a long and curious story.”
She made no further reference to his fall, and throughout the lunch was her own gay self. Looking down at her hand, Johnny saw, with satisfaction, that the platinum wedding-ring she had worn had been replaced by a small, plain gold ring, ornamented with a single turquoise, and his breath came faster. He had first met her at a gymkhana, a country fair which had been organised for charity, and the ring had been the prize he had won at a shooting match, one of the gymkhana features – though it was stretching terminology to absurd lengths so to describe the hotch-potch of contests which went to the making of the programme – and had offered it to her as whimsically as it had been accepted. Its value was something under a pound; to Johnny, all the millions in the world would not have given him the joy that its appearance upon her finger gave him now.
After luncheon she returned to the unpleasant side of things.
“Johnny, you’re going to be very careful, aren’t you? Daddy says that Jeff Legge hates you, and he is quite serious about it. He says that there are no lengths to which Jeffrey and his father will not go to hurt you – and me,” she added.
Johnny bent over the table, lowering his voice.
“Marney, when this matter is settled – I mean, the release from your marriage – will you take me – whatever I am?”
She met his eyes steadily and nodded. It was the strangest of all proposals, and Jeffrey Legge, who had watched the meeting at the station, bad followed her, and now was overlooking them from one of the balconies of the restaurant, flushed a deeper red, guessing all that that scene meant.
25
On Thursday afternoon, Emanuel Legge came out of the elevator at the Highlow Club, and, with a curt nod to Stevens, walked up the heavily carpeted corridor, unlocked the door of his tiny office and went in. For half an hour he sat before his desk, his hands clasped on the blotting-pad before him, motionless, his mind completely occupied by his thoughts. At last he opened his desk, pressed a bell by his side, and he had hardly taken his fingers from the push when the head waiter of the establishment, a tall, unpleasant-looking Italian, came in.
“Fernando, you have made all the arrangements about the dinner tonight?”
“Yes,” said the man.
“All the finest wines, eh? The best in the house?”
He peered at the waiter, his teeth showing in a smile.
“The very best,’ said Fernando briskly.
“There will be four: myself and Major Floyd, Mr Johnny Gray and Peter Kane.”
“The lady is not coming?” asked Fernando.
“No, I don’t think she’ll be dining with us tonight,” said Emanuel carefully.
When the waiter had gone, he rose and bolted the door and returned to an idle examination of the desk. He found extraordinary pleasure in opening the drawers and looking through the little works of reference which filled a niche beneath the pigeon-holes. This was Jeffrey’s desk, and Jeff was the apple of his eye.
Presently he rose and walked to a nest of pigeon-holes which stood against the wall, and, putting his hand into one, he turned a knob and pulled. The nest opened like a door, exposing a narrow, spiral staircase which led upward and downward. He left the secret door open and pulled down a switch, which gave him light above and below. For a second he hesitated whether he should go up or down, and decided upon the latter course.
At the foot of the stairs was another door, which he opened, passing into the cellar basement of the house. As the door moved there came to him a wave of air so super-heated that for a moment he found difficulty in breathing. The cellar in which he found himself was innocent of furnishing, except for a table placed under a strong light, and a great, enclosed furnace which was responsible for the atmosphere of the room. It was like a Turkish bath, and he had not gone two or three paces before the perspiration was rolling down his cheeks.
A broad-shouldered, undersized man was sitting at the table, a big book open before him. He had turned at the sound of the key in the door, and now he came toward the intruder. He was a half-caste, and, beyond the pair of blue dungaree trousers, he wore no clothing. His yellow skin and his curiously animal face gave him a particularly repulsive appearance.
“Got the furnace going, eh, Pietro?” said Emanuel mildly, taking off his spectacles to wipe the moisture which had condensed upon the lenses.
Pietro grunted something and, picking up an iron bar, lifted open the big door of the furnace. Emanuel put up his hands to guard his face from the blast of heat that came forth.
“Shut it, shut it!” he said testily, and when this was done, he went nearer to the furnace.
Two feet away there ran a box-like projection, extending from two feet above the floor to the ceiling. A stranger might have imagined that this was an air shaft, introduced to regulate the ventilation. Emanuel was not a stranger. He knew that the shaft ran to the roof, and that it had a very simple explanation.
“That’s a good fire you’ve got, eh, Pietro? You could burn up a man there?”
“Burn anything,” growled the other, “but not man.”
Emanuel chuckled.
“Scared I’m going to put a murder point on you, are you? Well, you needn’t be,” he said. “But it’s hot enough to melt copper, eh, Pietro?”
“Melt it down to nothing.”
“Burnt any lately?”
The man nodded, rubbing his enormous arms caressingly.
“They came last Monday week, after the boss had been shot,” said the other. He had a curious impediment in his speech which made his tone harsh and guttural. “The fellows upstairs knew they were coming, so there was nothing to see. The furnace was nearly out.”
Emanuel nodded.
“The boss said the furnace was to be kept going for a week,” said Pietro complainingly. “That’s pretty tough on me, Mr Legge. I feel sometimes I’d nearly die, the heat’s so terrible.”
“You get the nights off,” said Emanuel, “and there are weeks when you do no work. Tonight I shall want you. Mr Jeff has told you?”
The dwarf nodded. Emanuel passed through the door, closing it behind him; and, contrasted with the heat of the room, it seemed that he had walked into an ice wall. His collar was limp, his clothes were sticking to him, as he made his way up the stairs, and, passing the open door of his office, continued until he reached the tiny landing which scarcely gave him foot-hold. He knocked twice on the door, for of this he had no key. After a pause came an answering knock, a small spyhole opened and an inquiring and suspicious eye examined him.
When at last the door was opened, he found he was in a small room with a large skylight, heavily barred. At one end of the skylight was a rolled blind, which could be drawn across at night and effectively veil the glare of light which on occasions rose from this room.
The man who grinned a welcome was little and bald. His age was in the region of sixty, and the grotesqueness of his appearance was due less to his shabby attire and diminutive stature than to the gold-rimmed monocle fixed in his right eye.
In the centre of the room was a big table, littered with paraphernalia, ranging from a small microscope to a case filled with little black bottles. Under the brilliant
overhead light which hung above the table, and clamped to the wood by glass-headed pins, was an oblong copper plate, on which the engraver had been working – the engraving tool was in his hand as he opened the door.
“Good morning, Lacey. What are you working at now?” asked Emanuel, with a benevolent air of patronage appropriate to the proprietor in addressing a favourite workman.
“The new fives,” said the other. “Jeff wants a big printing. Jeff’s got brains. Anybody else would have said, ‘Work from a photographic plate’ – you know what that means. After a run of a hundred, the impression goes wrong, and before you know where you are, there’s a squeak. But engraving is engraving,” he said with pride. “You can get all the new changes without photography. I never did hold with this new method – ‘boobs’ are full of fellows who think they can make slush with a camera and a zinc plate!”
It was good to hear praise of Jeffrey, and Emanuel Legge purred. He examined the half-finished plate through his powerful glasses, and though the art of the engraver was one with which he was not well acquainted, he could admire the fine work which this expert forger was doing.
To the left of the table was an aperture like the opening of a service lift. It was a continuation of the shaft which led from the basement, and it had this value, that, however clever the police might be, long before they could break into the engraver’s room all evidence of his guilt would have been flung into the opening and consumed in the furnace fire.
“Jeffrey’s idea. What a mind!” said the admiring Lacey. “It reduces risk to what I might term a minimum. It is a pleasure working for Jeff, Mr Legge. He takes no chances.”
“I suppose Pietro is always on the spot?”
Mr Lacey smiled. He took up a plate from the table and examined it back and front.
“That is one I spoilt this morning,” he said. “Spilt some acid on it. Look!”
He went to the opening, put in his hand, and evidently pressed a bell, for a faint tinkle came from the mouth of the shaft. When he withdrew his hand, the plate that it held had disappeared. There came the buzz of a bell from beneath the table.
“That plate’s running like water by now,” he said. “There’s no chance of a squeak if Pietro’s all right. Wide! That’s Jeffrey! As wide as Broad Street! Why, Mr Legge, would you believe that I don’t know to this day where the stuff’s printed? And I’ll bet the printer hasn’t got the slightest idea where the plates are made. There isn’t a man in this building who has got so much as a smell of it.”
Emanuel passed down to his own office, a gratified father, and, securely closing the pigeon-hole door, he went out into the club premises to look at Room 13. The table was already laid; a big rose-bowl, overflowing with the choicest blooms, filled the centre; an array of rare glass, the like of which the habitués of the club had never seen on their tables, stood before each plate.
His brief inspection of the room satisfied him, and he returned, not to his office but to Stevens, the porter.
“What’s the idea of telling the members that all the rooms are engaged tonight?” asked Stevens. “I’ve had to put off Lew Brady, and he pays.”
“We’re having a party, Stevens,” said Emanuel, “and we don’t want any interruption. Johnny Gray is coming. And – you can take that look off your face; if I thought he was a pal of yours, you wouldn’t be in this club two minutes. Peter Kane’s coming too.”
“Looks to me like a rough house,” said Stevens. “What am I to do?” he asked sarcastically. “Bring in the police at the first squeal?”
“Bring in your friend from Toronto,” snapped Emanuel, and went home to change.
26
Johnny was the first of the guests to arrive, and Stevens helped him to take off his raincoat. As he did so, he asked in a low voice:
“Got a gun, Captain?”
“Never carry one, Stevens. It is a bad habit to get into.”
“I never thought you were a mug,” said Stevens in the same voice.
“Any man who has been in prison is, ex officio, one of the Ancient Order of Muggery,” said Johnny, adjusting his bow in the mirror by the porter’s desk. “What’s going?”
“I don’t know,” said the other, bending down to wipe the mud from Johnny’s boots. “But curious things have happened in No. 13; and don’t sit with your back to the buffet. Do you get that?”
Johnny nodded.
He had reached the end of the corridor when he heard the whine of the ascending lift, and stopped. It was Peter Kane, and to him, in a low voice, Johnny passed on the porter’s advice.
“I don’t think they’ll start anything,” said Peter under his breath. “But if they do, there’s a nurse at Charing Cross Hospital who’s going to say: ‘What, you here again!’”
As Johnny had expected, his two hosts were waiting in Room 13. The silence which followed their arrival was, for one member of the party, an awkward one.
“Glad to see you, Peter,” said Emanuel at last, though he made no pretence of shaking hands. “Old friends ought to keep up acquaintances. There’s my boy, Jeffrey. I think you’ve met him,” he said with a grin.
“I’ve met him,” said Peter, his face a mask.
Jeffrey had apparently recovered fully from his unpleasant experience.
“Now sit down, everybody,” said Emanuel, bustling around pulling out the chairs. “You sit here, Johnny.”
“I’d rather face the buffet; I like to see myself eat,” said Johnny, and, without invitation, sat down in the position he had selected.
Not waiting, Peter seated himself on Johnny’s left, and it was Emanuel himself, a little ruffled by this preliminary upset to his plans, who sat with his back to the buffet. Johnny noticed the quick exchange of glances between father and son; he noticed, too, that the buffet carried none of the side-dishes for which it was designed, and wondered what particular danger threatened from that end of the room.
By the side of the sideboard, in one corner, hung a long, blue curtain, which, he guessed, hid a door leading to No. 12. Peter, who was better acquainted with the club, knew that No. 12 was the sitting-room, and that the two made one of those suites which were very much in request when a lamb was brought to the killing.
“Now, boys,” said Emanuel with spurious joviality, “there is to be no bickering and quarrelling. We’re all met round the festive board, and we’ve nothing to do but find a way out that leaves my boy’s good name unsullied, if I may use that word.”
“You can use any word you like,” said Peter. “It’ll take more than a dinner-party to restore his tarnished reputation.”
“What long words you use, Peter!” said Emanuel admiringly. “It’s my own fault that I don’t know them, because I had plenty of time to study when I was away ‘over the Alps’. Never been over the Alps, have you, Peter? Well, when they call it ‘time’, they use the right word. The one thing you’ve got there is time!”
Peter did not answer, and it was Jeffrey who took up the conversation.
“See here, Peter,” he said, “I’m not going to make a song about this business of mine. I’m going to put all my cards on the table. I want my wife.”
“You know where Lila is better than I,” said Peter. “She’s not in my employment now.”
“Lila nothing!” retorted Jeffrey. “If you fall for that stuff, you’re getting soft. I certainly married Lila, but she was married already, and I can give you proof of it.”
The conversation flagged here, for the waiter came in to serve the soup.
“What wine will you have, sir?”
“The same as Mr Emanuel,” said Peter.
Emanuel Legge chuckled softly.
“Think I’m going to ‘knock you out’, eh, Peter? What a suspicious old man you are!”
“Water,” said Johnny softly when the waiter came to him.
<
br /> “On the water-wagon, Johnny? That’s good. A young man in your business has to keep his wits about him. I’ll have champagne, Fernando, and so will Major Floyd. Nothing like champagne to keep your heart up,” he said.
Peter watched, all his senses alert, as the wine came, bubbling and frothing, into the long glasses.
“That will do, Fernando,” said Emanuel, watching the proceedings closely.
As the door closed, Johnny could have sworn he heard an extra click.
“Locking us in?” he asked pleasantly, and Emanuel’s eyebrows rose.
“Locking you in, Johnny? Why, do you think I’m afraid of losing you, like you’re afraid of losing Marney?”
Johnny sipped the glass of water, his eyes fixed on the old man’s face. What was behind that buffet? That was the thought which puzzled him. It was a very ordinary piece of furniture, of heavy mahogany, a little shallow, but this was accounted for by the fact that the room was not large, and, in furnishing, the proprietors of the club had of necessity to economise space.
There were two cupboard doors beneath the ledge on which the side dishes should have been standing. Was it his imagination that he thought he saw one move the fraction of an inch?
“Ever been in ‘bird’ before, Johnny?”
It was Emanuel who did most of the talking.
“I know they gave you three years, but was that your first conviction?”
“That was my first conviction,” said Johnny.
The old man looked up at the ceiling, pulling at his chin.
“Ever been in Keytown?” he demanded. “No good asking you, Peter, I know. You’ve never been in Keytown or any bad boob, have you? Clever old Peter!”
“Let us talk about something else,” said Peter. “I don’t believe for one moment the story you told me about Lila having been married before. You’ve told me a fresh lie every time the matter has been discussed. I’m going to give you a show, Emanuel, for old times’ sake. You’ve been a swine, and you’ve been nearer to death than you know, for, if your plan had come off as you expected it would, I’d have killed you.”
Room 13 Page 15