Mister Big

by Gerald Verner

  “This man, Carlin, to give him his right name, was a crook almost from the time he was born,” Mr. Budd explained in an interview with Colonel Blair. “He used to smuggle dope and a man named Paget found him out. Carlin killed him, makin’ it look as if John Stayner was guilty.

  “Paget an’ Stayner were partners in a cattle ranch in Canada, and it was here that Carlin first met ’em. When John Stayner’s wife died, Stayner came to England with his partner, Paget, for a holiday, and also to find a school for his daughter, Margaret. Nobody knew either of ’em in England. When Stayner was arrested for Paget’s murder, he took the name of ‘William Sutton’ and he was sentenced in that name. He did this to save any stigma attaching to his daughter, although he was quite innocent of the crime.

  “It was easy for Carlin to get possession of all Stayner’s papers and assume his identity. Paget had left his share of the ranch to his partner, Stayner, so Carlin when he established his identity as Stayner, was fairly well-off. He put a manager in to run the ranch an’ drew the profits. The headquarters of Carlin’s dope campaign was a warehouse in Upper Thames Street. He owned the freehold but immediately Stayner was sentenced, he sold it to a mythical Henry Goodchild, in reality himself, and then had it transferred again to another fictitious name, the object bein’ to stop anyone from tracin’ that he was the real owner.

  “In his new identity as John Stayner, he had sent the little girl, Margaret, to school and she believed that he was her real father. Stayner had told him once that she would inherit a great deal of property and over two million pounds when she was twenty-one an’ he had decided that as soon as she reached that age he would get her to sign a will in his favour and then kill her.

  “Meanwhile, he began to build up his criminal connection. As John Stayner he became an M.P. an’ under this cloak of respectability he worked up his organisation, until he became known as Mister Big, the unknown planner behind the larger crimes. He was clever, an’ he took every precaution to ensure that his identity was unknown to the crooks he employed.

  “He had sent Margaret to a school in Germany to get her out of the way, and it was while he was over there to see her, that he met Jameson. Jameson was experimentin’ in a method of makin’ synthetic cocaine, and Carlin saw what an opportunity such a discovery would make to his drug business. He had almost given it up because of the risk an’ difficulty of smugglin’ the stuff into the country. But if it could be manufactured it was different.

  “He learned that Jameson was coming to England for a holiday, met him an’ took him to the warehouse in Upper Thames Street. Here he kept him a prisoner, chained in the cellar, forcing him to perfect his process. He kept him under the influence of the drug as well, but Jameson managed to get free by corrodin’ the chain attached to his ankle with a strong acid. He escaped from the warehouse with the fixed intention of findin’ his friend, Trent. He reached the flat more dead than alive. Carlin, comin’ home from the House, saw him in Victoria Street and recognised him. It must’ve given him a shock to see him enterin’ the very block of flats where he himself lived.”

  Mr. Budd paused and cleared his throat.

  “The steps he took you know, sir,” he continued. “He killed Jameson while Trent had gone to fetch the doctor. Then he went up to his own flat and waited until he could slip down the stairs an’ pretend that he’d just come in. But the taxi-driver, who knew him, had seen him follow Jameson into the buildin’. He had to silence him, too, and it was a piece of luck for him that the arrival of the girl prevented him talkin’ for the moment.

  “Carlin had sent her into a carefully prepared trap. She didn’t know it but he had got it all fixed. Carlin killed the taxi-driver on his way up to his flat. It was a risk but he had to take it. That’s when I first began to wonder about him.”

  “You seem to have cleared it up fairly well,” remarked Colonel Blair. “I don’t quite see why he should have gone to all that trouble at the cottage. He could easily have got the girl to sign the will without all that dramatic nonsense.”

  “Well, you see, sir,” explained Mr. Budd. “He knew the story of the will was known. He realised that if the girl died after leavin’ him her fortune, he’d be suspected. So he concocted that story about the cottage bein’ watched an’ the cut wire an’ the rest of it. His idea was to make me a witness to the fact that he had nothin’ to do with whatever happened to the girl. Mister Big was the man responsible. That’s what he wanted us to believe.”

  “And what about the men who helped him?” asked the Assistant Commissioner. “They must have known? They’d have put the black on him for the rest of his life.”

  “I don’t think any of those men would have lived after they’d finished the job,” said Mr. Budd quietly.

  There was a long silence and then the stout superintendent looked across the neat desk at his superior with a faint twinkle in his sleepy eyes.

  “Somethin’ ought to be done for Sergeant Leek, sir,” he remarked.

  Colonel Blair raised his eyebrows slightly.

  “Why?” he demanded.

  “The loss of his reputation among the crim’nal classes,” said Mr. Budd. “I made him turn crook. I sent him to night clubs an’ such places to drink champagne an’ eat caviar an’ sell diamond rings at a low price so that it’ud get around to this feller Mister Big’s ears, that Leek was crooked an’ willin’ to accept bribes.”

  “Good heavens!” gasped the scandalised Colonel Blair. “What came of it?”

  Mr. Budd chuckled.

  “A feller paid Leek twenty pounds to tell him that we were goin’ to raid a flat in Maida Vale on the night we raided the place in Upper Thames Street. I’ve given it to the Police Orphanage. I think if we hadn’t got Mister Big before we should’ve got him through Leek. The day I was shot at outside here, I had Leek watchin’ the entrance in a laundry van. He lost the man who fired the shot, but he did some good work when he followed that feller Gould down to Godalming.”

  “Champagne and caviar!” Colonel Blair smoothed a hand across the neat greyness of his hair. “The expense! And the reputation of the police force . . .”

  “It’s Sergeant Leek, I’m thinkin’ about, sir,” said Mr. Budd sadly. “He’s goin’ to miss all that high livin’ . . .”

  “And a very good thing too,” said the Assistant Commissioner.

  *

  Four people sat down to dinner at a secluded table in a little restaurant in Soho. They were a party of laughing people for over six months had elapsed since the tragic night at Willowbend cottage.

  Margaret looked radiant. She had overcome all Gordon’s objections to marrying a rich woman, and, indeed, had practically proposed to him herself.

  “If you don’t marry me,” she had threatened. “I’ll give everything away! Now, don’t be silly!”

  “It’ll be like marrying the Bank of England,” said Gordon, “but if that’s what you wish . . .?”

  “I do!” declared Margaret.

  “We’re getting married on the ninth,” said Gordon. “Margaret thinks that long engagements are a mistake.”

  Colin Dugan, looking unusually clean and tidy, grinned.

  “Much better get the thing over and done with,” he said. “Once it’s done you can’t get out of it.”

  “That’s just the kind of thing you would say!” declared Eileen Barnard indignantly.

  “Don’t you agree with me?” Colin looked surprised. “Anyway, I think the ninth’s an excellent date. Why not make it a foursome?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Gordon. “Who are the other two?”

  “Me and Eileen!” said Colin calmly and ungrammatically.

  Eileen stared at him.

  “Why you haven’t even asked me,” she began.

  “Haven’t I?” said Colin. “Oh, well, here goes. What about it, eh?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” she began.

  “Listen, woman!” said Colin. “You’ll marry me on the ninth—and like it!”

 
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