“But that’s silly,” said Hambledon.
“Silly or no, it’s happened. You know the prisoner, by the way, one Palmer, a pork butcher from Hoxton, convicted of being a receiver——”
“I remember perfectly. I found some missing documents in his safe and I’ll swear he didn’t know they were there. However, he wasn’t accused of having ’em, so it doesn’t matter. What happened exactly?”
“Well, we discovered that Palmer was a fairly rich man, and, human nature being what it is, rich prisoners are more difficult to keep caged than poor ones. In fact, a rumour got about that an escape was being arranged. A little matter of smoke bombs lobbed into the exercise yard and a rope ladder thrown over at a convenient spot. So we arranged to move him to another jail, and the move was as close a secret as possible. But——”
“I know these close secrets,” said Hambledon sympathetically.
“Don’t we all? Anyway, he was taken away by night—tonight, that is, after dark—in a police car. He had one police escort who was attached to him by a handcuff——”
“Remind me of that again when you’ve finished and I’ll tell you a funny story,” said Hambledon.
“If it’s about the police, I heard it when I was a constable,” said Bagshott.
“No, it’s not that sort of story. But go on.”
“Palmer had this one escort, and there was also a police driver. Constables on point duty throughout the route—they were going to London—were warned to look out for the car. It was duly noted passing the Ace of Spades crossroads at 11:25 p.m., but it never reached the Ewell-Surbiton crossroads. There is no turning off between the two. There was nothing much on the road at the time: a lorry or two, a furniture van—that sort of thing—but nobody reported having seen anything unusual. We have searched all the garages of all the houses between those points but entirely without result.”
“ ‘Like snow upon the desert’s dusty face,’ ” misquoted Hambledon, “ ‘they glimmered for an instant and are gone.’ ”
“It’s not a laughing matter,” said Bagshott rather sharply.
“I know, I know. But I have learned to laugh at things that aren’t. Cheer up, there is doubtless a perfectly simple explanation if only we knew what it was. It is true that I have heard that remark made about the Indian rope trick, but this can’t be in the same class as that.”
“It’s worse, because I’ve never heard of the Indian rope trick being performed by policemen.”
However, Hambledon was perfectly right; there was a simple explanation. The date and time of Palmer’s removal to another jail had leaked out to interested parties and the route they would follow correctly deduced. As the police car entered the stretch of the Kingston by-pass between the Ace of Spades crossroads and the Ewell-Surbiton crossroads, the driver saw ahead of him a furniture van pulled up not very near its own side of the road. There was also a group of people more or less in the middle of the road who were gathered about a prostrate form being apparently tended by one of the group.
“Accident,” said the police driver to himself, and slowed down a little.
A man in the uniform of an R.A.C. scout ran forward and signalled the police car to stop, and though a tiny warning bell rang in the back of the driver’s subconscious mind, he obeyed automatically.
“I say,” said the R.A.C. man, coming up to the driver’s open window, “I wonder if you’d mind——” With that the scout hit the driver on the chin with all his strength, and the policeman closed his eyes and slumped unconscious in his seat. At the same moment another man opened the rear door behind the driver and dealt similarly with the police escort. The driver was pushed over into the other front seat, the man who had hit him got in and drove slowly towards the furniture van. Two more men were flinging open the van’s rear doors and letting the ramp down; the police car was driven up this into the van, and ramp and doors were instantly closed again, with several of the group who had been round the casualty inside as well. The others melted away, including the casualty, who got up and ran for it. The furniture van moved sedately on its way.
“Well done,” said Palmer in a voice shaking with excitement. “Now one of you look through this copper’s pockets for his keys and unlock this——handcuff.”
When the policemen came dizzily to their senses again they were lying on the floor of a small room, handcuffed to each other and to a staple driven into the wall. They blinked at each other and their surroundings, and the light of recollection dawned on the driver’s face.
“I am a fool,” he said, and repeated the remark several times in different terms with lurid embroidery.
“Why?” said his mate.
“Because R.A.C. men go off duty at sundown, and I ought to have known that fellow was phony. I’ll be dismissed the force for this, and serve me right.”
In the meantime things were not going too smoothly with their captors. Palmer’s rescuers, most of whom knew him quite well, naturally wanted their pay on the nail before they parted from him, and Palmer, of course, had no money on him, having just come from prison. One of the gang whom he mistrusted less than the others was accordingly sent to London with instructions where to find the receiver’s little nest egg and to bring it back with him. “There’s bearer bonds there, and notes, mostly fivers,” said Palmer. “Bring the lot.”
The man grinned, fully aware that this was to ensure that none of it stuck to his fingers on the way. He departed for Hoxton on a rather elderly motorcycle at its best speed, since the time was already nearly 2 a.m., and there was a little burglary to be done in the course of his mission. Palmer had hidden his money in the false bottom of the refrigerator in his Hoxton pork shop, which was still carrying on a normal and legitimate business with a manager in charge. Neither the manager nor any of his assistants had any idea that there was anything in the refrigerator besides pig products, and it was therefore necessary to break into the premises and get clear away again before they opened for business. If the job was neatly done no one need ever know that the place had had a visitor during the night at all. Palmer, who was too excited to sleep, spent the time chatting pleasantly with such members of the party as were also awake. He knew them all by repute, but there were one or two among them whom he did not know personally; they had been gathered together from various sources for this enterprise. One of these was a dark bullet-headed man with a condescending manner towards the others, as of one who asked himself what a man of his calibre was doing in this galley.
“Of course,” he told Palmer, “I shouldn’t usually be bothering myself with this sort of stunt, only I hadn’t much on and I thought it might be a bit of a lark. It was too. Very neat idea that of yours, the furniture van,” he added kindly.
“Ah,” said Palmer, expanding comfortably. “Thought that one up years ago when I was reading one of them silly books about convicts escaping from Dartmoor and running like beetles all over the country, ’iding under bushes and living on turnips. If a chap ’ad a fast car ’anging about at the right spot to pick ’im up at the start, I says, well, somebody’s sure to see the car and report it. Well, who cares? Drive it into a furniture van in a quiet spot, and puzzle, find the monkey!”
“What were you in for?” asked the man idly. “Forgery?”
“Good lord, no,” said the horrified Palmer. “I was framed; that’s what it was. Framed. Well, I useter buy some bits of things second’and; I always wanted to be an antique dealer reely, only there isn’t the money in it that there is in pork. Not the turnover, if you get me. Tie up your capital for years in some of them fancy bits, you can, before you gets it back. Still, if I saw a nice bit going I didn’t seem able to keep me ’ands off it. Silly, perhaps, but you know how it is.”
“Just a hobby,” said the dark man, and attended to his fingernails with a pocket file.
“Just that, and a fine mess it’s landed me into. Well, it seems some of my little bits ’ad been stolen some time or another. Well, ’ow was I to know that? Been
through four or five ’ands, maybe, before they reached me. Somebody spotted one of these bits and went to the police about it; I reckon I know who it was too: man I’ve done many a kindness to,” said Palmer with virtuous indignation.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yes, and I’ll tell you one thing,” said Palmer impressively, leaning forward and tapping the table. “When the police come and opened my safe there was one thing in there I never ’ad seen before, and it was not there the las’ time I went to it. Sort of paper case, like.”
“Oh, ah. What’d it got in it? Money?”
“I tells you I don’t know, mister. Never seen it before. There was a plain-clo’es man there made a grab at it pretty quick; it’s my belief he knew it was there. Sort of brown leather satchel thing, it was——”
“Here,” said the dark man, suddenly displaying interest. “What did you say it was like?”
“Flat brown leather satchel case, like what you’d carry papers in, with a brass lock on it.”
“Oh. And the plain-clo’es man grabbed it, did he?”
“P.D.Q. Yes, and I don’t believe he was a busy, either. Not big enough for a copper, for one thing, and ’e ’adn’t the look of one of them gentry, if you get me. Not but what ’e was sharp enough.”
“Listen. Very queer this is, your telling me this. My boss—you wouldn’t know him—had a case like you describe stolen just about the time you were shopped. Got most important papers in it. Private papers. My boss was no end upset about it—went to Scotland Yard and all that,” went on the dark man romantically, “but he never saw hide nor hair of it again. Now if you were to go to him and tell him about this it’ud be a good job for you. He’s always one to help those as help him. Might get you clear out of the country if you could put him on the track of his satchel—if it was his.”
Palmer, who had been wondering how on earth he was to get out of the country, seized upon this but did not show it. “I’m one as is always ready to do a man a good turn,” he said modestly. “It’ud be a queer thing if it was your boss’s case that was in my safe. I don’t see ’ow I’m to get to tell him, though; shall have to be careful ’ow I move about for a bit after this.”
“He lives not far from here; in fact, I took this little place to be handy to him. This is my little place you’re at; we had to stay the night somewhere while things were being fixed up,” said the man, tactfully referring to Palmer’s payment for results. “Keeps a big private loony-bin; Morley Park’s the name of it. He’s got a well-known loony doctor in charge; Goddard, his name is, Dr. Goddard. You’d be surprised the people he’s had there.”
“Goddard. And where’s this place, d’you say? Morley Park is it?”
“ ’Bout two and a half miles that way,” said the dark man indicating the east. “Cross the railway line and you’re there. Big park and all that.”
“Oh, ah? Might pop across there later on when we’ve finished ’ere. What sort of a chap is this boss of yours?”
But the dark man was evasive in his replies, and the conversation languished. The time lagged heavily; Palmer became sleepy and dozed in his chair. The dark man did not sleep but sat alert, glancing at Palmer occasionally with a mixture of curiosity and contempt.
21. The Place Where Things Happen
At the time that Palmer was arrested the police went through his private house with a thoroughness which left nothing to be desired but failed completely to find there any such traces of wealth as a bank passbook, bearer bonds or other securities, or even notes to any substantial amount. There were the accounts of his pork business, all open and aboveboard, and that was all.
“He’s got some stowed away somewhere,” said Chief Inspector Bagshott. “There are some more of the Park Lane rubies somewhere too. Go down to his pork shop and don’t come back till you’ve found something.”
The police sighed patiently and went along to the pork shop, which they dissected into its component parts. The manager hovered round and wrung his hands while they took adrift the sausage machine and looked inside each separate part of it. He became so distressed when they uprooted the bacon slicer from its bed that they told him to go away and have a nice cup of Ovaltine somewhere. Consequently he was not there when they gathered round the open refrigerator and stared helplessly at it.
“Nothing in here but pork of sorts,” said the detective-inspector in charge. “Better have those cupboards right off the wall, George; there may be a space behind them.”
“Come to that,” said a young constable diffidently, “there’s a lot of space to spare at the bottom of that ’frige.”
The detective-inspector looked at the refrigerator again and pulled the bottom shelf right out once more. Underneath was a nice sheet of white enamelled iron fastened down by chromium-plated screws.
“I expect it’s only the works under here,” he said; “however, we’ll see. George, the screw driver.”
The white enamelled sheet came up and disclosed a space the whole size of the refrigerator and about four inches deep. There were several large and fat envelopes in it containing, as Palmer had said, bearer bonds to a considerable amount and bundles of notes, mostly fivers. There was a small notebook or two, and that was all.
“Very nice,” said the detective-inspector, “as far as it goes. One up to you, my lad,” addressing the constable, who blushed hotly. “We still haven’t found the rubies; he may have passed them on. Now then, look sharp and tidy the place up again. I’ll take this stuff along to the chief.”
When Palmer had escaped from custody and two policemen vanished with him, Chief Inspector Bagshott said, “He’ll be wanting his dough soon. Put a man onto the pork shop, and if anybody comes for the money don’t stop him. Follow him. Where Palmer is our men are. Put a good man on.”
Accordingly, when Palmer’s messenger made his quiet entry into the shop between three-thirty and four that morning he was unobtrusively observed. A telephone call went through to Scotland Yard, and the Flying Squad turned out. The messenger on his homeward way on the elderly motorcycle did not drive the machine so hard as he had done on the way up, so he was not surprised to be overtaken several times by things like a fruiterer’s van with a rattling body and wobbling rear doors and an ancient taxi. He was having a little trouble with the ignition and was too busy to notice that it was the same van and the same taxi which kept on overtaking him and then waiting, down side turnings until he had gone by. It did not even dawn on him that, considering their appearance, they had a remarkably good turn of speed. Nor did he know that behind these two, but in wireless communication with them, were several other police cars loaded with muscular and athletic Special Branch Constabulary. “Take plenty of men,” said Bagshott. “There must have been quite a gang on that job, and you don’t know how many of ’em you’ll meet. All of them, possibly, if, as I suspect, they are waiting to be paid. Else why the hurry for the cash?”
Palmer, dozing in a wooden armchair, awoke with a start at the sound of a stuttering motorcycle coming up the lane. “Here’s our man,” he said. “Good. What’s the time?”
Before the dark man could answer the door burst open and the motorcyclist came violently in. Other members of the party, who had been resting, also heard the arrival and came yawning and stretching to meet him; the small room filled with men staring at Palmer and the motorcyclist, who stared back and did not speak.
“Well,” said Palmer, “have you brought it?”
“There wasn’t anything there.”
“Don’t be a fool,” said Palmer irritably. “You can’t get away with that. Out with it.”
“I tell you,” said the motorcyclist truculently, “there wasn’t anything there. The place was as empty as a poor box in a work-’ouse.”
The men who had been staring at the motorcyclist looked at Palmer instead, and those who had been staring at him before went on doing so. He found it most distasteful.
“Then why were you so long getting back?” he asked defiantly. “Where’
ve you been on the way ’ere?”
“Nowhere. ’Ad ignition trouble.”
“Ignition trouble my foot. You’ve been and——”
A large unpleasant-looking man in the group lifted up a loud unpleasant voice and said, “Freddy’s all right. If Freddy says the stuff wasn’t there, it wasn’t.”
Palmer found himself involuntarily backing towards the inner door of the room. “Listen,” he said. “I put that stuff there myself, and nobody else knowed anything about its being there. I was arrested most unexpected one night as I got ’ome from business—I didn’t ’ave no chance to move it if I wanted to,” he added pathetically.
“You double-crossing old twister,” said the motorcyclist.
Palmer found the door open behind him and backed into the doorway.
“ ’Ere,” said the large unpleasant man, “you ain’t gettin’ away with this. You gotta——”
Palmer felt someone behind him draw him back and press something hard and cold into his right hand. “You may need that,” said the dark man who had talked to him about Morley Park, and immediately melted into the shadows. Palmer, with some idea of getting reinforcements, darted back along the passage, unlocked the door of the room where the two policemen were, sprang inside, taking the key with him, and locked it again from the inside. He switched on the electric light and looked round.
The two policemen were sitting up on the floor, still attached to each other and to the wall. Palmer rushed at them with some idea of breaking open the handcuffs; these men looked like old friends to him compared with the toughs outside the door.
Without Lawful Authority Page 25