by Molly Thynne
“He’s a poor creature,” agreed Fenn. “For which we’re going to be properly grateful if our luck holds.”
He glanced at the time-table he was carrying, and found that he could just make the London train, in spite of which he risked missing it by entering the nearest call office and ringing up the Yard. The instructions he gave were brief and to the point, and he caught his train by the skin of his teeth.
A constable met him as he entered the portals of New Scotland Yard. Fenn listened to his report.
“Bring him along,” he said briskly, when the man had finished.
It was a distinctly nervous individual who was escorted, a few minutes later, up the stairs and along the forbidding corridors to Fenn’s office. Though there was nothing very heinous on his conscience at the moment, he was afflicted with a constitutional dislike to anything connected with the police.
Fenn, who had not come in contact with him before, thought he had never seen a more unlovely object. Ike Sanders, the name on whose passport was, curiously enough, Jacob Finkelstein, had already been quite adequately described by the police officer who gathered him in.
“Sit down,” said Fenn, pointing to a chair.
Sanders perched himself on the extreme edge, clutching the brim of his hat with both hands as though he expected it to be snatched from him.
“When did you get back from Brighton?” asked Fenn abruptly.
Sanders’s black eyebrows shot up to meet his hair.
“Brighton, thir?” he queried, in blank surprise.
Fenn nodded.
“A favourite health resort on the East Coast. I fancy you must have heard of it, or you wouldn’t have taken the trouble to go down there on Monday night.”
Sanders looked pained.
“And if I did go to Brighton for a bit of a blow, what about it?” he asked.
“Only that I hope you got it,” answered Fenn unsympathetically. “Those little streets near the station are apt to be a bit stuffy compared to the sea front.”
The man shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“There’th nothing againtht a feller combining buthineth with pleathure, I thuppothe?” he queried uneasily.
“The trouble with your kind of business is that it so rarely coincides with other people’s pleasure. Not that I’m under the delusion that you went to Brighton on any job of your own. See here, Sanders, I’m not asking you who you went to see that night, because I know, and if I don’t know what your business with him was, I can make a shrewd guess. What I’m asking you is, who sent you?”
“Nobody thent me. You’ve got it wrong, I athure you,” Sanders assured him earnestly. “I had my own reathonth for wanting to thee thith feller. I’m being perfectly honetht and above-board with you.”
Fenn stretched out his hand and placed his finger on the button of the electric bell attached to his table.
“Have it your own way,” he said resignedly. “But you’ve been sent up once for doing other people’s dirty work, and if you’re mug enough to fall for it again, I can’t help you. If you’ve nothing to say, you can go. But I’d have you remember that your friend Johnson was in Sir Adam Braid’s service at the time of his death, and that my job is to lay my hands on the man that killed him.”
The man’s face had changed colour.
“Here, don’t ring that bell, mithter,” he gasped. “What’th thith about murder?”
“You heard me,” answered Fenn. “You’ve run your head into a very nasty business, Sanders. I’m giving you a chance, and I advise you to take it. Who paid your fare to Brighton on Monday night, and what was the message he gave you?”
“I didn’t have no methage, honour bright, I didn’t! I don’t know any more about thith buthineth than a babe unborn! I jutht handed in the letter like I wath told to. I don’t know what wath in it.”
“You’re not going to tell me that you carried a letter all the way from London to Brighton without having a look inside?” said Fenn incredulously.
But Sanders was impervious to insult.
“How could I look inthide when the envelope wath thealed?” he demanded aggrievedly.
“Well, you know where the letter came from. You’re wasting my time, Sanders.”
“I’m telling you all I know. You wouldn’t have me invent thingth, would you?” urged Sanders. “On Monday a feller I know came round to my plathe and athked me if I’d do him a favour and take a letter down to a pal of hith in Brighton. Well, there didn’t theem no harm in that, and I’m one that’th alwayth ready to do a friend a good turn. That’th me!”
He paused as though to give proper weight to this virtuous sentiment, but Fenn knew that his wits were working double time on the question of how much of his information it would be safe to suppress.
“And then?” he demanded. “Get on with it.”
“Then I naturally athked him, what about my fare? And he paid it, and I went,” concluded Sanders.
“And now perhaps you’ll tell me the name of this philanthropist,” said Fenn blandly. “You’d have saved yourself time if you’d mentioned it in the first instance.”
Sanders’s face was the picture of innocence.
“That’th just what I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve known him, mind you, on and off, for a long time, but I’ve never heard hith name mentioned.”
“You knew where to take the answer to the letter, I suppose?”
“There wathn’t goin’ to be no anthwer.”
Fenn stretched out his hand once more towards the bell. As he did so, he leaned forward, his eyes on the man’s face.
“It’s a murder case, Sanders,” he said softly.
Sanders’s forehead grew damp. He gulped and cleared his throat. Then he spoke, huskily.
“I’ve remembered now; they call him Eddie Goldstein. That’th between ourthelveth, though. I wouldn’t thqueak on a man,” he finished virtuously.
“Eddie Goldstein? Are you sure that’s all you know?”
Fenn’s voice was gentle, but the little man shivered, and he was undoubtedly sincere as he answered.
“Honeth, that’th all I can tell you, thir. There’th one thing Eddie did thay, though, that I remember. He told me the letter wathn’t hith, but had been given him to take, and that, properly, he ought to have gone down with it himthelf. But it wathn’t convenient for him to be away that night, hith old father being ill, I think he thaid.”
“I’ve no doubt he did,” said Fenn dryly, making a mental note to have an inquiry made into the Monday night activities of Goldstein and his friends.
Sanders was hardly out of the building before the order had been passed to all stations to bring in Eddie Goldstein. But as the night wore on and the reports began to come in, it became evident that that gentleman had temporarily forsaken his usual haunts.
Fenn, running through them on his arrival at his office next morning, began to wonder whether, at last, he had not sighted his quarry. Johnson’s depredations were undoubtedly taking on a deeper and more sinister significance than he had at first imagined; and whereas before they had seemed merely to confuse the trail, they now appeared to be leading to a very definite objective. He had already applied for a search warrant for Johnson’s rooms, and had every intention now of putting it into execution at the first opportunity.
As it happened, both Gilroy and Jill Braid were in his office when, at six o’clock that evening, Garrison telephoned to say that the Johnsons had returned to London, but had gone to the cinema and that the coast was clear. His report was satisfactory, inasmuch as it confirmed Fenn’s prediction that, on learning that Sanders had been summoned to the Yard, Johnson would try to get in touch with him. As it turned out, he had returned to his lodgings in Brighton the night before too helplessly drunk to travel and had gone straight to bed; in spite of which he and his wife had left Brighton by an early morning tram and been in London by lunch-time. Leaving Mrs. Johnson to make her way back to Chelsea with their bags, Johnson had gone straight to Sanders�
�s lodgings in Camden Town. There, as Fenn had foreseen, he drew a blank. Sanders, after his experience at the Yard, knew better than to put his neck further into the noose, and it was doubtful whether Johnson would succeed in laying eyes upon him for some time to come.
Blissfully unaware of these recent developments, Johnson had spent the afternoon hurrying from one to another of Sanders’s associates, none of whom was able to give him any information as to Sanders’s whereabouts. According to Garrison, he was a badly worried man by the time he got back to his rooms in Chelsea. Also, he was anything but sober, and it looked as if his wife had dragged him to the cinema in an attempt to keep him out of the public-house.
“I suppose you can’t let an outsider in on this?” suggested Gilroy tentatively, when he heard of Fenn’s intention to search the man’s rooms. He had not forgotten their brush over the telephone, and though neither of them had alluded to the incident since, he was painfully conscious of having made rather an offensive fool of himself.
Fenn was aware of his diffidence, and liked him all the better for it. After all, he had been in a devil of a temper himself that night.
“Of course,” he answered heartily. “I shall be glad to have you. And if there are any filthily dirty carpets to be dragged up, I’ll see that you do it.”
Gilroy grinned over his shoulder at Jill as they followed Fenn down the side staircase.
“You haven’t seen the sleuths at work,” he said. “It’s quite according to tradition. The tall, good-looking young doctor, with his head under the bed in a cloud of dust, and the little insignificant fellow, with the big head, tucked away in the only comfortable armchair, writing down the clues in his little book as the doctor—that is to say, I, produce them. Every now and then I say, ‘My God, Fenn, how do you do it?’ and he answers, ‘Brains, my dear Gilroy, just brains!’”
Fenn stopped suddenly in his descent.
“Brain, my dear Gilroy, not brains,” he corrected gently. “I never, in my wildest moments, accused you of that!”
They dropped Jill at her rooms, and dismissing the taxi, walked from there to Johnson’s lodgings.
The man who had relieved Garrison was waiting for them.
“There’s nobody in the house, sir, but the landlady’s old mother,” he reported. “The daughter’s gone to the pictures with the Johnsons. I’ve had a word with the old lady. She won’t make any trouble. She’s none too fond of Johnson as it is, owing to his drinking habits.”
He led the way up the steps and pushed open the front door. If the old woman in the basement was aware of their entrance, she made no sign.
“The key’s under the mat, so she tells me,” said the detective. He bent down, then straightened himself with it in his hand. Unlocking the door he stood aside while they entered the room.
Gilroy made a swift inspection. It was much as it had been when he and Jill had paid their visit, though now it showed more positive signs of occupation. A coat of Mrs. Johnson’s trailed over the back of a chair and a paper-backed novel lay face downwards on the table, but little had been done to alter the cheerless aspect of the room.
Fenn made straight for the door leading into the bedroom, and Gilroy followed him.
Here there was more confusion, owing, no doubt, to the fact that Johnson had not had time to unpack his things since his return. The suitcase that stood open on the bed was still full of clothes, and Fenn ran through the contents swiftly before turning his attention to the cupboard.
“You won’t find the hat-box there,” volunteered Gilroy—“that is, unless he had it in Brighton with him. I went through that cupboard the other day.”
Then seeing that Fenn, disregarding his remark, had started systematically on the contents of the cupboard, he strolled into the sitting-room and embarked on a more thorough search than he had been able to make on the occasion of his former visit. But he had no better luck than before, and when Fenn joined him he had given it up and was absent-mindedly fingering the small wireless set which stood on a little table near the window.
“Any luck?” he asked. “There’s no sign of it here.”
Fenn, who had opened the table drawer and was going through its contents, looked up vaguely.
“What? Oh, the hat-box!” he answered. “He’s not likely to have hung on to that as long as this. I was hoping I might pitch on something else, but it was a very forlorn hope and I’m afraid we’re beaten.”
As he spoke, his eyes fell on the grate. Earlier in the day a fire had been burning there and a little pile of dead coals still remained. He crossed the room and bent over it.
From the grey, feathery deposit on the top of the still warm ash it was evident that papers had been burnt there, but the job had been done so effectually that no portion of them was left. Fenn knelt down, put his head into the grate, and peered up the chimney.
Suddenly his hand shot out, and with infinite care he detached the charred fragment of a piece of paper that had evidently blown up the chimney and lodged behind the edge of the ventilator. One glance at it was enough.
“Done it!” he exclaimed, as he scrambled to his feet.
Gilroy peered over his shoulder, and read what was evidently a fragment of a letter. The unburnt portion was easily decipherable.
out. The splits
traced two of the
they come to you stick
we arranged. Keep
I gave you next
till you can send
She has enough
Unfortunately the signature was missing. The writing was firm and clear, but evidently that of an uneducated person, and the paper was of the ruled kind that is sold in cheap blocks.
“Now at least we know what took Sanders down to Brighton,” said Fenn, with satisfaction. “If this is Goldstein’s writing we’ve got him. You were just two days too late when you collected that note of Johnson’s, Robert. He’d been warned.”
Gilroy gave a low whistle.
“So that’s what you were after!” he exclaimed. “I must say you’re in luck’s way! If a little more of this enlightening communication had been burned we should have been none the wiser. As it is, it speaks for itself.”
“Yes, and the third line is significant. If ‘they come to you, stick (to the plan or explanation) we arranged.’ I thought Johnson was a bit too glib with his confession, when it came to the point. ‘She,’ in the last line, presumably refers to Johnson’s wife. The note you intercepted probably was supplied by her.”
Gilroy stared at him.
“This narrows things down a bit, doesn’t it?” he said. “How many people knew you were on the track of those notes?”
Fenn smiled.
“All the police stations within the Metropolitan area, the banks, post offices, and any small tradesmen the police saw fit to warn. No, that’s not going to lead us anywhere. Webb’s two notes are more significant. Sanders took this letter down to Brighton on the Monday night. By lunch-time on Monday the fact that those notes were in my possession was known only to the Webbs, Ling, and myself. By Monday evening, no doubt, the knowledge had been pretty widely circulated. Unfortunately, we can take it for granted that the Webbs probably spread it wholesale.”
“All the same, I find it difficult to believe that little Webb has criminal associations! His gossip would be pretty harmless.”
“Would it?” was Fenn’s dry comment. “Take it that Miss Webb prattles to the porter’s wife while she is working at their flat. She tells her husband, and he spreads the glad news in the bar of the nearest pub. It’s in the bars that the crook gathers his most valuable information. It’s there that the servants and the charwomen gossip, and he’s only got to listen to find out where the Smiths keep their silver, when a flat is most likely to be left empty for an hour or so, or what beautiful jewellery Mrs. Brown’s got. I’ve heard them at it myself, and it’s a wonder any of these small flats escape. I could have warned the Webbs, but I knew it would be worse than useless. They’re constitutionally incapa
ble of keeping a tit-bit like that to themselves.”
“What about Ling, the newsagent?”
“Ling’s a different proposition. I did warn him, and if he spread the news, he did it deliberately. From the look of him, I shouldn’t say he was a talker. Apart from his betting proclivities, which are not in any way unusual, he’s a respectable tradesman, and, so far, he’s done all in his power to help the police.”
A sudden thought struck Gilroy.
“This chap Goldstein is a member of a race gang, isn’t he?”
“I doubt if he’s a member of any actual organization,” answered Fenn. “These little tipsters join forces with each other when the occasion arises, but they’re always changing their associates. Both Sanders and Goldstein have been ‘inside,’ and on more or less the same count. On each occasion a bookie got badly beaten up one dark night, but whereas Sanders worked with two other men, Goldstein did the job single-handed. I see what you’re driving at: Ling’s racing connections. But you must remember that men of the Goldstein kidney are the sworn foes of the small bookmaker. It’s unlikely that there would be any connection between Goldstein and Ling. However, it’s worth looking into.”
He put the bit of paper carefully away in his pocket-book. As he did so, his eye fell on the crystal set in the window.
“Hallo, that’s Webb’s little tribute, I suppose,” he said. “Know anything about wireless?”
Gilroy laughed.
“I used to be rather keen on it. As a matter of fact, I’ve been chuckling over that set. If he gave more than ten shillings for that contraption he was cheated. And the pathetic thing is that Johnson’s evidently spent the morning coupling a loud speaker on to it! If he expects any results, I’m afraid he’ll be disappointed.”
“He must have been in a hurry to lay out Webb’s two pounds,” remarked Fenn, as he picked up his hat, “considering he only came home from Brighton this morning and has spent a pretty busy day since!” Gilroy shook his head.