Elk 04 White Face

by Edgar Wallace

  “Rum lot of devils,” he said, and shrugged off his uneasiness.

  CHAPTER XI

  The telephone bell had been ringing at frequent intervals in the Landors’ flat; the waiting detectives could hear it in the street: there must have been a half-open window somewhere through which the sound could come. “It’s Mason getting rattled, I should think,” said Elk fretfully. “Why I came here I don’t know. Madness! I get like that sometimes—just go dippy and do silly things.”

  “You came here,” said Inspector Bray heavily, “because you were told to come by your superior officer.”

  Elk groaned.

  “The trouble with you, Billy, is that you’ve no sense of unimportance,” he said helplessly.

  “That doesn’t sound very respectful,” said Mr. Bray severely.

  He wanted to be very severe indeed, but you never knew with Elk. At any moment he might force you into bringing him before the Chief Constable, and invariably when he was brought before the Chief Constable he demonstrated that he and the Chief Constable were the only people in the world who took a sensible view of the circumstances. “How many men have you posted?” he asked. “I don’t want to give either of these two people a chance of slipping us.”

  “I’ve posted none,” said Sergeant Elk, almost brightly. “My superior officer has posted three, and takes all the responsibility. I ventured to suggest a different posting, but I was told to mind my own so-and-so business.”

  “I said nothing of the sort,” said Bray hotly.

  “You meant it,” was Elk’s retort.

  Bray looked anxiously up and down. He was not terribly happy, working under Mason. Very few detective officers were. And he was out of his own division, which was all wrong. Moreover, Mason was very unforgiving when his subordinates fell into error, and this was a murder case, where no excuses would be accepted. On the whole, it was better to conciliate his sergeant, who was notoriously a favourite of the superintendent.

  He stared up and down the road uncomfortably.

  “If I’ve been a little short-tempered with you, Elk, I’m sorry,” he said almost affectionately. “I’m so distracted with this business. Where did you say I ought to post a man?”

  “In the back courtyard,” said Elk promptly. “There’s a reachable fire escape up which any healthy man or woman could climb, or vice versa.”

  Elk was on the point of withdrawing a perfectly useless patrol at the far end of the street, when a taxicab turned the corner, stopped before the main door of the apartment and a woman got out. They were watching from the corner of a front garden on the opposite side of the road.

  “That looks like the lady, eh? What do you think, Elk?”

  “That’s madam,” said Elk. “And I’ve seen her before somewhere.”

  She had paid the taxi and it drove slowly away. The watchers still waited.

  As Inez Landor put the key in the front door they saw her turn her head and look anxiously round. She could see nobody. Her imagination had pictured the road packed with police officers. She hurried up to the first floor, unlocked her own door and went into the flat.

  There was a small hand-lamp on the table, working from a dry battery, and it was this she switched on. There were four letters in the letter-box. She did not even trouble to take them out, but, taking the lamp in her hand, she went softly to the bedroom door, which opened from the hall, and looked in. Her heart sank when she saw that her husband had not returned. What should she do? What could she do? With a deep sigh, she took off her leather coat and hat and went into the bedroom, leaving the door open.

  There had been a murder in the East End; she had seen the late edition bills and heard somebody speaking about it at supper—not that she ate supper, but usually, when she and her husband were both out, she arranged to meet Louis at Elford’s. He had not appeared. She had waited till the restaurant closed, and had then gone on to a fashionable all-night coffee-house, where they went when he was very late. He was not there either. The time of waiting seemed an eternity. In despair she had gone home, not daring to buy the midnight sheets which were being sold on the street for fear…

  She shivered. She wondered whether that nice doctor would say anything; the man with the gentle voice, who had been so sympathetic and who had given her sal volatile. How stupid she had been to mistake a fight between two labourers! Perhaps that was what the newspapers called murder.

  She had told him so much—things she would not have told to her mother if she were living. There was hardly a step she had taken that day which she did not now bitterly regret. It was worse than folly—sheer madness, to go in search of Louis. Suppose something had happened—a fight; she dared not imagine worse. She had broadcast his motives through London.

  Inez Landor drew on her dressing-gown and walked up and down the dark room, striving to settle her mind to calmness. She had had four deliriously happy years, years of dream-building. That flimsy fabric had been shivered to nothingness.

  She thought she heard a sound, a step in the hall, and, opening the door, she listened. There it was again, a faint creak. There was a loose board near the hall door. She had always intended having that board replaced.

  “Is that you, Louis?” she whispered.

  There was no answer. She could hear the solemn ticking of the hall clock, and the far-away whirr of a motorcar passing the end of the road.

  “Louis—is that you?” she raised her voice.

  She must have been mistaken, then, for no answer came. She left the door ajar, and, going to the window, pulled aside the curtains carefully and looked out. A futile act, for this window looked upon the well at the back of the building.

  And then she heard a faint knock. The silence in the flat was so deep that it re-echoed through the hall. She tiptoed into the hall and listened. The knock was repeated, and she crept to the door.

  “Who is there?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Louis.”

  Her heart was beating furiously. She turned the handle and admitted him, closing the door behind him.

  “Put on the light, darling.”

  His voice was strained and old-sounding. It was the voice of a man who had been running and had not recovered his breath.

  “Sitting in the dark? Turn on the lights.”

  “Wait!”

  There was a window in the tiny lobby which could be seen from the street. She pulled down the blind and drew the thick curtains across and closed her own door before she switched the light in the hall. Save for the blue bruise under one eye, his face was colourless. Inez Landor stared at her husband with growing terror.

  “What has happened?”

  He shook his head. It was at once a gesture of impatience and weariness.

  “Nothing very much. I have had a ghastly time. Inez, will you get me a glass of water?”

  “Shall I get you some wine?”

  He shook his head.

  “No, darling, water.”

  She was gone for a few minutes; when she returned he was looking at the knife and belt that hung on the wall. It was one of many souvenirs he had collected in his travels—a broad leather belt with big brass bosses, from which hung a knife in a gaily ornamented sheath. Before this day it had meant no more than the saddle, the lasso, the spears and the strange Aztec relics that covered the wall.

  “We’ve got to get rid of that somehow,” he said.

  “The knife?”

  “Yes, this.”

  He tapped the empty frog where a second knife had been.

  She did not ask him why; but what hope there was left in her heart, flickered and died. For a little while neither spoke. There were questions she wanted to ask him which her tongue refused to frame. She could only make the most trite and commonplace remarks.

  “I thought I heard you in the flat a few minutes ago,” she said. “You haven’t been in before?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you knock?” she asked, suddenly remembering.

  He licked his
lips.

  “I lost my key. I don’t know where—somewhere.”

  He drank the remainder of the water and put the glass on the top of a little desk which stood against the wall.

  “I could have sworn I heard the door close a few minutes ago,” she said. “I came out and called you. I heard somebody walking in the hall.”

  He smiled and his arm went round her shoulders. “Your nerve is going. Have you been waiting here in the dark?”

  She shook her head. Should she tell him? It was not the moment for half-confidences.

  “No, I have been out looking for you.”

  She caught his arm.

  “Louis, you didn’t fight? You didn’t—do anything?”

  Louis Landor did not answer immediately.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Let us go into the sitting-room.”

  But she pushed him back into the chair where he was sitting.

  “No, no, stay here. None of these lights shows from the street.”

  He looked at her sharply.

  “What do you mean—none of these lights shows from the street? Is anybody outside watching?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “I think so. Before I left the restaurant I telephoned here in the hope that you had returned. I thought the maid was here, and didn’t realise that she couldn’t get in. I knew she’d gone to her sister’s and I called her up. Louis”—her lips quivered—“the police have been here.”

  And when he did not speak she knew—

  “Has anything happened?”

  Louis Landor ran his fingers through his long black hair.

  “I don’t know—yes—I do know, but I’m not sure how far I was involved. When I went out after him I lost sight of him, but I had an idea I should find him somewhere in the West End, and I was right.”

  “You spoke to him?”

  He shook his head.

  “No, he was in a car with a girl—a pretty girl; some poor little fool who has fallen for him. She’s a nurse who works for Marford.”

  He saw her mouth open wide in amazement.

  “For Marford—not Dr. Marford?”

  “How the devil did you know that?” he asked, astonished. “Yes, he’s got a clinic in the East End, I’m going to see her to-morrow and tell her the truth about Mr. Donald Bateman. I followed them in a cab to Bury Street and then back to his hotel. I wanted the chance of seeing him alone without making any kind of scandal, but he never gave me the chance. Naturally I did not want to send my name up to his room, so I waited till he came out. There wasn’t the ghost of a chance of seeing him: he went to a little restaurant which was crowded with people, but I knew that if I was patient I should pick him up and settle our little matter definitely. He lingered over his dinner and I have an idea that he was waiting for somebody. She came eventually—rather a pretty woman. She wasn’t in evening dress and her voice was rather common. When he went out of the restaurant I followed, keeping at a distance. I think he’d recognised me this afternoon. Naturally, she complicated matters: I had to wait till he dropped her. After dinner they drove away from the restaurant. I was in the gallery upstairs and could see everything that was happening. I took a taxi and followed them—they drove to a very poor neighbourhood—Tidal Basin, they call it, I think. There she went into a flat with him—it was over a shop. It was then that I telephoned to you. Darling, you didn’t follow me?”

  She nodded dejectedly.

  “I had an uncomfortable feeling you might. You were mad!”

  “I know. Go on,” she said. “What happened then?”

  He asked for another glass of water and she brought it for him.

  “He came out alone, and I followed him to a street which has a long wall on one side. I was just going up to him when I saw the woman run across the road. She spoke to him for a little time and then they parted. It was my opportunity. There was nobody in sight and I came up to him—”

  “He had the knife?” she interrupted, and he smiled wryly.

  “I gave him no chance to use it.” She had seen the bruise on his face but had not the courage to ask him how he came by it. It seemed so unimportant in view of the other terrific possibility.

  “—Yes, I hit him. He went down like a log. I got scared. I saw somebody standing in the doorway—a doctor’s place—it must have been Marford. I ran. And then I saw a policeman walking towards me. At the place where I stopped there was a big gate which had a wicket door. By some miracle it was unlocked. I got through and bolted the door. I was in a narrow yard which surrounded the warehouse. The police came and searched it but I hid behind some packing cases.”

  “The police?” she gasped. “Searched it. Is Donald—?”

  He nodded.

  “Not dead?” she wailed.

  He nodded again.

  “The police have been here?”

  “Yes. They’ve been questioning the maid. I don’t know what she has told them.”

  He got up and walked to the little desk and felt in his pocket.

  “I’ve lost my keys.”

  She took a little leather case from her bag and handed it to him. He opened one of the drawers and took out a thick packet of papers.

  “I suppose very few people keep three thousand pounds in the entrance hall of their flat!” His voice was now almost normal. “Whatever happens, we’ll get out of the country to-morrow. If anything goes wrong with me, you take the money and get away.”

  She clutched at his sleeve frantically.

  “What can happen to you, Louis? You didn’t kill him—the knife!”

  He disengaged her hand almost roughly.

  “I don’t know whether I killed him. Now listen,” he said. “You’ve got to be terribly sensible about this. Even if this blackguard told everything, they can’t hurt you. But I don’t want you to suffer the ignominy of an inquiry—the police court and that filth.”

  Her senses were unnaturally keen. She heard a sound.

  “There’s somebody coming up the stairs,” she whispered. “Go into the bedroom—go quickly!”

  He hesitated, but she pushed him towards the room and ran rather than walked to the door and listened. She could hear soft, whispering voices. Switching on the table lamp, she found a book and opened it with trembling hands. There was a little sewing table in the spare room and she brought this out and had placed it near when the first thunderous knock sounded. She took one glimpse at herself in the hall mirror, used her pocket puff swiftly and opened the door.

  Two men were standing there: two tall, grim-looking figures of fate.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  It was an agonised effort to control her voice, but she succeeded.

  “My name is Bray—Detective-Inspector Bray, Criminal Investigation Department,” he said formally. “This is Detective-Sergeant Elk.”

  “Good evening, Mrs. Landor.”

  It was characteristic of Elk that he took complete charge of the proceedings from that moment. He had the affability of a man supremely confident of himself. “Come in,” she said.

  “All right, Mrs. Landor, I’ll shut the door,” said Elk. They walked into the hall. She noticed that neither of the men removed his hat.

  She made one effort to appear unconcerned, tried to infuse a little gaiety into her voice.

  “I should have known you were detectives. I’ve seen so many in cinemas and I know detectives never take their hats off,” she smiled.

  Mr. Bray would have taken this as a reproach. Elk was apparently amused, but supplied an explanation.

  “A detective who takes his hat off, Mrs. Landor,” he said, “is a detective with one hand! In other words, the other hand is occupied when he may want to use two.”

  “I hope you won’t even want to use one,” she said. “Will you sit down? Is it about Joan?”

  It was cruelly unfair to make this implied libel on an honest and decent servant, but she could not afford to be nice.

  “Don’t make a noise, will you?” she added. “My h
usband is asleep.”

  “He got asleep very quickly, Mrs. Landor,” said Bray. “He only came in a few minutes ago.”

  She forced a smile.

  “A few minutes ago! How absurd! He’s been in bed since ten.”

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Landor, did another man come into this flat?”

  She shook her head.

  “Do you ever have burglars coming up the fire escape?” he asked, eyeing her quickly. She laughed at this.

  “I don’t even know which way burglars come, but I never use the fire escape myself! I hope I never shall!”

  Elk paid tribute to the sally with a smile.

  “We’d like to see your husband,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “Which is his room? Is that it?” He pointed to a door near the hall.

  She had seated herself at the table where the open book was lying, her hands folded on her lap that they might not testify to her agitation. She rose now.

  “No—that is the maid’s room. My room is here, but I can’t have him disturbed. He’s not very well,” she said. “He’s had a fall.”

  “Too bad,” said Elk. “Which is his room?”

  She did not answer but walked across to the bedroom door and knocked.

  “Louis, there are some people who want to see you.”

  He came in immediately. He was without coat and collar, but it needed no experienced observer to realise that he had been interrupted rather in the process of taking off his clothes than of dressing.

  “Were you getting up, darling?” she asked quickly.

  Elk shook his head reprovingly.

  “I’d rather you didn’t suggest anything to him, Mrs. Landor. You may suggest the wrong things. That is a friendly tip.”

  Louis looked from one to the other. He had heard Inez say “detectives” under her breath, but he did not need that explanation. Inspector Bray made one effort to control the inquiry.

  “I’ve reason to believe that you know a man who was staying at the Little Norfolk Hotel in Norfolk Street, Strand, and calling himself Donald Bateman.”

  “No,” said Inez quickly.