by Molly Thynne
“If I could explain to her, I know she’d understand,” he whined. “She isn’t one to be hard about a thing like that.”
“Meaning because she let you down lightly over the ring,” was Fenn’s grim answer. “You won’t get round her a second time, Johnson. I don’t suppose this was all you helped yourself to.”
Johnson wrung his hands together.
“I give you my word, that was all!” he protested frenziedly. “I never touched another thing. You can search the place. It was when I was alone there, after me and Mr. Webb found the old gentleman. It was being upset and all made me do it. I’m not a thief!”
“It doesn’t make much difference what you call yourself,” said Fenn unkindly. “There was no loud speaker in the study when we got there. Where was it?”
“In the wardrobe in my bedroom. I knew no one was likely to miss it. I didn’t mean to take it, really, even then.”
Fenn gave him a keen glance.
“Oddly enough, I’m disposed to believe you. You were pretty well knocked out when you discovered the murder, weren’t you, Johnson?”
The man gulped, and his face whitened at the mere recollection of that night.
“I wasn’t myself, sir,” he pleaded.
“Seeing that you were so upset, it seems funny that, at such a moment, you should have thought at all about the loud speaker. What put it into your head?”
“It was hearing it. I’d forgotten all about the wireless set, and when I heard a man speaking in the study, I got the fright of my life. Then I thought it was some one—”
He pulled himself up just in time.
“You thought it was some one you had reason to suspect might be in the flat,” finished Fenn gently. “Some one you had left the door on the latch for when you went out!”
“I didn’t!” protested Johnson violently. “And there wasn’t no one in the flat. Miss Braid’ll tell you I went all over it while she was there.”
His face was ghastly now.
“Seeing the state you were in, I’ll wager it was a pretty cursory inspection. Did you look behind the curtains in the study, for instance?”
Johnson’s voice was almost inaudible as he answered.
“No. But there wasn’t no one there. The flat was empty.”
“But you didn’t think so when you heard a man’s voice in the study. You expected to find somebody there. Who was it?”
“I knew before I went in that it was the wireless,” asserted Johnson sullenly. “Seeing the state I was in, I was ready to believe anything.”
“What did you do when you went into the study?”
“I turned the wireless off. It didn’t seem right for music and things to be going on just then.”
Fenn took a step closer to the man, who recoiled instinctively.
“What made you hide the loud speaker?” he asked sternly.
Johnson’s eyes flickered. He tried to answer, failed, moistened his dry lips, and at last found his tongue.
“What I said. It was a sudden temptation,” he muttered.
“Had Mr. Webb spoken to you about the woman’s voice he had heard when he was waiting outside the door?”
“He may have mentioned it when we were going up the stairs.”
“In fact, he did tell you. Did you realize that it was probably the wireless that he heard?”
“Not at first, I didn’t. After I’d turned it off, I thought it might be.”
“You were puzzled when he told you he’d heard a woman in the flat, weren’t you?”
“I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know of any woman that was likely to be there.”
“I put it to you that you did know of a man? If it had been a man’s voice, you wouldn’t have been surprised?”
“Sir Adam did have gentlemen in to see him sometimes.”
“There was no one you expected to find in the flat just then? No one you would be prepared to shield, if you had found him there?”
Johnson shook his head. He seemed beyond speech.
“Then what was your object in hiding the loud speaker, if not to lead people into thinking there was a woman in the flat?”
“It didn’t make any difference to me what they thought,” muttered Johnson.
“Then why didn’t you tell the police that it was the wireless Mr. Webb had heard?”
“It wasn’t any affair of mine. I hadn’t anything to do with the murder.”
“But you admit that you turned off the loud speaker and concealed it, and at the first opportunity got it out of the flat?”
“I’ve told you I took it. I’m sorry now.”
“I fancy you’ll have reason to be even more sorry later. You can take him, Parker,” said Fenn grimly.
He was feeling anything but grim, however. He had got all he wanted out of Johnson for the present, and as soon as the man heard of Ling’s arrest, there would be little difficulty in getting more. He was not of the type to prove a satisfactory accomplice.
Fenn realized that the arrest of Ling might be a very different proposition, and he set about his task warily. He found the man he had set to shadow the newsagent waiting for him in Shorncliffe Street.
“He’s in the shop now, sir,” he informed him. “He was telephoning when I passed just now.”
Fenn quickened his steps. Mrs. Johnson had been nowhere to be seen when he took her husband, but it did not follow that the news of his arrest had not reached her. There was a possibility that she might have telephoned to her father.
He could see the door of the shop, and, as he watched it, a woman crossed the road and turned in.
“That’s not the daughter,” he said quickly. “She’s not tall enough.”
“More likely to be a customer,” answered the detective. “Archer is at the corner. He’ll have sized her up.”
“You’re sure there’s only the one exit?”
“Certain. It’s just a lock-up shop, with no window at the back and no basement.”
“I’ll go in alone, then. You stay with the others and see that no one leaves. If there’s trouble you can take a hand.”
But when he entered the little shop, Ling was nowhere to be seen. A woman was standing at the counter, with her back to him. As he passed through the shop he saw her half turn in his direction, but he wasted no time on her. A glance at her back had told him that she was not Mrs. Johnson.
The tiny room at the back of the shop was empty. As the detective had said, it contained no window or door. The floor was littered with packing-paper and cartons of cigarettes and stationery. Almost blocking the doorway stood a couple of tall packing-cases, one on the top of the other, the only object in the room large enough for a man to hide behind.
“You there, Ling?” asked Fenn quietly.
There was not a sound from behind the obstruction, nor could he detect any movement. As he had foreseen, Ling was not going to surrender easily.
He called again, but once more there was no response.
With a rapidity and lightness that would have done credit to a boxer, he skirted the packing-cases—and only just saved himself in time!
He had almost tripped over the head of a ladder, protruding from the mouth of an open trap-door.
He hesitated for a moment, then, returning to the door leading into the shop, gave a low whistle.
He was joined immediately by Parker, the man who had been shadowing Ling. He gave a gasp of surprise at the sight of the trap.
“You were wrong about there being no cellar,” said Fenn. “I’m going down. Give me time to get to the bottom of the ladder, then follow.”
He bent over the trap.
“Ling,” he called. “You’re wanted.”
There was no answer, but this time his quick ears detected a movement below. His man was there, sure enough. He peered down, but the cellar was in darkness, save for a patch of grey light, at the foot of the ladder, that filtered through from the trap above.
“Got a torch?” he whispered.
Parker took one from his pocket and handed it to him.
Fenn did not light it. He knew better than to expose himself as a target to the man below. Holding it ready in his hand, he began to descend the ladder.
He had not gone down four steps when it was jerked suddenly from under him and he found himself on his back, sprawling, half on the ladder and half on the floor of the cellar. He recovered himself in a second, but a boot caught him full in the stomach, winding him, and as he lay gasping he could see the trap above him blocked by a struggling black bulk, heaving its way through the narrow opening. Ling had made the leap for the trap, caught the edge, and managed to get his elbows on to the floor above.
Fenn scrambled painfully to his feet. For the moment he was incapable of any effort, but he knew, from the sounds overhead, that Parker had got his man and was being hard put to it to hold him. Then the sound of running footsteps told him that the men outside the shop were hurrying to the rescue.
He got the ladder back into position and then mounted it.
As he emerged through the trap, the little group of struggling men sorted itself, and Ling was revealed, a savage and unkempt figure, singularly unlike the respectable and competent tradesman who had been so ready to collect witnesses against Stephens after the murder of Sir Adam Braid.
He stood gasping in the grip of two of the detectives, and Fenn, watching the rise and fall of the man’s great chest, realized, for the first time, the gorilla-like strength that lay concealed in the stocky, thickset figure. There was something ape-like, too, in the naked ferocity of the small, deep-set eyes that gleamed from under the heavy brows.
Fenn surveyed him quietly.
“You’re doing yourself no good, you know, by resisting the police,” he said, in his even voice. “Will you come quietly, or must we take you?”
Ling neither moved nor spoke.
“Very well, then,” went on Fenn, taking a pair of handcuffs from his pocket, “we’ll have to put the darbies on you. You’ve only yourself to blame.”
For a second Ling’s features were convulsed with fury, then he mastered himself. When he spoke, it was in his usual measured tones, and Fenn found himself marvelling at the man’s powers of self-control.
“What’s the charge?” he asked.
“You are charged with the murder of Sir Adam Braid on the evening of November the sixth,” answered Fenn. “Now, what about it? Are you coming quietly or not?”
He was watching his man closely, but Ling had not flinched at the ominous words.
“I’ll come quietly,” he said. His voice was expressionless, and his eyes never wavered from Fenn’s face. “But I’ve something to tell you that may make you change your mind.”
“If you’ve got anything to tell me, I’m ready to listen,” replied Fenn. “But I warn you that anything you may say may be used against you.”
“I never set foot in Sir Adam Braid’s flat that night,” said Ling earnestly. “I delivered Mr. Adams’s paper to him as usual, and then, when I was goin’ out, I heard a noise upstairs. There was somethin’ had made me suspicious.”
He paused.
“Well?” snapped Fenn impatiently.
In spite of himself, he was impressed by the man’s manner.
Ling took a step forward, and the two men on either side of him relaxed their grip instinctively.
“I went up that first flight of stairs,” Ling went on impressively.
The thing happened in a second. Fenn, who was watching the man’s eyes, saw them shift and got his warning. But it was too late to act.
Ling’s foot lashed out sideways and caught the shin of one of the men who was holding him. In his agony the detective released his grip of his captive’s arm, and before Fenn or the man on Ling’s right realized what was happening, Ling’s left fist had landed on the point of the remaining detective’s jaw.
That respite was all he needed. In a flash he had wrenched himself free and hurled himself through the doorway into the shop. In another second he would have been in the street, had not a totally unexpected obstacle blocked his way.
The woman Fenn had noticed when he entered the shop had remained, forgotten and unheeded, in the background.
Unnoticed by any one, she had approached the back room, and, when Ling made his last wild bid for freedom, was standing blocking the narrow doorway. Ling, unable to stop himself, cannoned full into her in his flight, knocking her backwards and hurtling over her prostrate body. Unable to save himself, he crashed to the ground, catching his head on the edge of the counter as he fell.
Fenn was the first through the doorway. He found Ling, insensible and bleeding from a wound on his forehead, on the ground.
Painfully raising herself to a sitting position in the centre of the shop, was a plump, dishevelled, middle-aged lady.
Fenn bent and snapped the handcuffs on to the wrists of the unconscious man. He was taking no further risks with Ling. Then he went to the assistance of the lady.
The breath had almost been knocked out of her body, but she could still speak, and she gazed up at him with eyes that even pain could not rob of their eager brightness.
“Do you know, I always did feel that there was something not quite nice about that man Ling!” announced Miss Webb, as, helped by the speechless Fenn, she rose with considerable difficulty to her feet.
CHAPTER XXI
Gilroy and Jill Braid lingered so long over their tea that all the tables in their vicinity were not only deserted, but had been ostentatiously cleared even of their tablecloths, before they realized that they had long ago become the objects of detestation in the eyes of every waiter in the room.
Their departure, in consequence, was both hurried and undignified, and they arrived in the street slightly flustered, but still wrapped in that roseate and protective haze that envelops all men at least once in a lifetime.
Not many days before, Gilroy had asked Jill a question which she had declined to answer until she was definitely cleared of all suspicion, but Gilroy, though the least vain of mortals, had little doubt as to what her verdict would be. Therefore he walked on air. But he would have been an even happier man if he could have been sure that Fenn was carrying out his plans for the arrest of Ling satisfactorily.
It was significant that Gilroy had said nothing to Jill Braid about these recent developments, the truth being that he was uncomfortably aware of the fact that the evidence against the man was of the slightest, and that, in spite of Macnab’s evidence, they would have considerable difficulty in bringing the murder home to him. Fenn, he knew, was counting on Johnson’s chicken-heartedness. With his father-in-law under arrest, there was every reason to hope that, in the endeavour to save his own skin, Johnson would confess to his own part in the affair; but, unless his evidence was very damning, Fenn might find himself hard put to it to justify his arrest of Ling. And, most disconcerting of all, there remained the fact that, if Ling was in the flats when Sir Adam was killed, Jill Braid was there also, unless they could prove Smith’s theory of the actual time of the murder to be correct. In the face of this, Gilroy had judged it better not to raise a hope that might, in the end, prove to be false.
He saw Jill home, and went on to his own flat in a queer mood that hovered between exaltation and depression. In his letter-box he found a note from Fenn that sent his spirits once more soaring.
“We’ve done the trick,” it ran. “Pulled in Ling this evening, and got enough evidence to convince the most hard-boiled jury. Let Jill Braid know, and bring her to ‘The Goose’ at one o’clock tomorrow.”
Ten minutes later Gilroy was hammering at the door of Jill Braid’s flat.
“The Goose” is one of the few chop-houses left in London where each table is divided from its neighbour by a wooden partition, and where it is still possible to eat in comparative privacy. Gilroy and Jill Braid found Fenn waiting for them, and one glance at his face was sufficient to convince them that his letter had not erred on the side of optimism. He was literally beaming,
and when the colossal lunch he had ordered arrived, he attacked it with the gusto of a man who has done his job and is well satisfied with it.
“I took a chance when I took Ling,” he admitted, in answer to Jill’s first eager question. “But, by Jove, I was justified. He’d got that cellar of his so well hidden that he’d hardly taken the trouble to conceal the things. There was neither window nor door to the place, and no indication, except the trap-door into the shop, that the place had any basement. He seems to have kept a couple of packing-cases over the trap, and, unless a regular search had been made of the shop, no one would have stumbled on it. It was his certainty that no one would come on it that proved his undoing, for he’d had time and to spare in which to destroy the stuff. There was the old hat-box that you were so interested in, Robert, among other things, with the lining cut to bits. He must have had some idea that Sir Adam had hidden his money there, as, according to Johnson, he was bitterly disappointed in the amount the hat-box contained. Johnson went to pieces altogether when he heard of Ling’s arrest and spilled everything, but we haven’t got a word out of Ling and I don’t suppose we ever shall. He’s no fool, and as hard as nails into the bargain, but he doesn’t stand a chance. Apart from Johnson’s confession, which is enough to hang him, we found a raincoat with the sleeves cut away below the elbow and part of the front missing. He didn’t do his work thoroughly enough, though, and there’s a bloodstain on the lining that he overlooked. It’s typical of the man’s coolness that he did actually deliver the rest of his papers that night, probably with the coat carried over his arm. We found the bulk of the notes rolled up in a bit of sacking and stuffed into the straw in an old packing-case. The jewellery was there too. It’s a clear case. You can go to sleep with a quiet mind to-night, my dear,” he finished, turning to Jill, his eyes alight with affection and sympathy.
She had ceased to eat, and was leaning back against the partition, her face white and tired now that the strain was over, but her only sensation was one of sheer happiness and unutterable relief.