by Frank Froest
‘Are you going in there?’
‘Yes. Are you afraid?’ she taunted.
‘I am,’ he admitted. ‘I may tell you I am armed.’
Her lips curled. He got a vague glimpse of a slatternly old woman with curious eyes staring at them; and then the girl, without stopping to see whether he would follow, led the way within. He followed, mentally calling himself a fool. The old woman closed the door, and they were left in darkness.
‘Take my hand,’ she said. ‘I know the way. The fourth stair up is broken.’
The hand he groped for and found was ice-cold. He dragged his pistol out of his pocket, and held it ready for instant use. There was going to be no repetition of the Gwennie Lyne trick if he could help it. At the first sign of treachery he was determined to shoot. He heard the creak of a door on rusty hinges as she pushed it back, and released his hand from hers with a sudden jerk.
A thin light filtered out, and he beheld a wretchedly furnished room with something lying on a mattress in the farther corner. He advanced cautiously, weapon ready. She pushed the door to, and his pistol dropped as he saw the haggard, unshaven face of the sleeping man on the mattress—a man who turned restlessly at their entrance.
She pointed to the corner.
‘There you are, Mr Hallett. That’s my brother, James Errol. You have his life in your hands if you want to fetch the police.’
CHAPTER XVIII
SHE faced him by the thin light of the cheap oil lamp, her head defiantly tilted. He remained dumb, the pistol dangling by his side till he became conscious of the incongruity and replaced it in his pocket. The sudden spectacle of the sick man lying there in that miserable hovel had shorn him for the moment of the power of consecutive thought.
She lifted the lamp to examine the sleeping man, and, replacing it on the table, readjusted a pillow with tender fingers. Then she rose, and pushed forward a rickety chair. He complied with the unspoken invitation.
‘He is a fugitive from justice.’ She spoke softly lest the sleeper be disturbed. ‘Whatever he is, scoundrel though you think him, can I do less? But for me he would have been helpless. Would you have me desert him? Do you think’—she made a gesture of disgust—‘that I like living in this place, these two sordid rooms which are the only place in London I could hide him in? Why, I daren’t even have a doctor for fear of betrayal. And you thought that I was in league with the people who brought him to this. Well, I am in league. They know where he is, and a single word would bring the police down here.’
The fire in her low tone challenged him to still condemn her. Once before he had reasoned out a theory of her attitude—a theory that had partly been broken down by the open scepticism of Menzies until the culminating point had been reached when he found her dining with Ling. At first the apparent significance of that had been lost, but it had been borne upon him with ever-increasing force that it was evidence that the letter luring him to Gwennie Lyne’s house was no forgery, but deliberately written by her. Now, again, he had to go back to the old line of reasoning. He wondered that he had permitted anything to throw him off. Why, it was plain to the most dense intellect. Who so likely to pay off the old score of hatred of his father by a bullet than this mean, reckless waster, Errol?
‘It was he—who killed Mr Greye-Stratton?’ he whispered hoarsely.
Her reply was inaudible. But the drawn face, the twitching hands, left it in no doubt.
Without warning, the man on the pallet raised himself on one elbow, his features ghastly in the dim light.
‘Who says I killed him?’ he gasped in a cracked voice. ‘It’s a lie—a lie, I tell you. Who’s that you’ve got there, Peggy? Damn this light. I can’t see. Tell him it’s a lie—an infernal lie. I never laid a finger on the old man—old man—old man—old devil!’
He gasped out the last word with shrill vindictiveness and fell back breathless.
She hurriedly lifted a small bottle from the mantelpiece and poured a little of the contents into a glass and supported her brother’s head while he drank, talking soothingly to him all the while. In a little his regular breathing told that he was asleep. She made him comfortable and stood up.
‘I think you had better go now,’ she said brokenly. ‘I don’t know why I should have brought you here—why it should matter to me what you think. You have seen, and you are at liberty to believe what you like.’
‘Don’t let us talk nonsense,’ he said briskly. ‘I begin to see that I have acted like a blackguard, but I can’t leave you like this.’ He rose, crossed over to her, and laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘You have trusted me with the most important thing. Now you must trust me fully. You need a friend, and, whether you like it or not, I am going to see this through. Where’s the other room you spoke of? Let’s go in there and talk.’
With a glance at her brother, she lit a candle and led him to the adjoining room, as poorly furnished as the other.
‘I can’t offer you even a cup of tea, Mr Hallett,’ she said, with a feeble attempt at cheerfulness. There is no gas, and the fires are out.’
‘I don’t mind overlooking the defects in hospitality,’ he said. ‘They can be remedied some other time. Now, tell me how it all came about, and we’ll see what’s to be done.’
She paused, as though to put her thoughts into form.
‘You wondered why I never told you I was married,’ she said wearily. ‘It is true, all that you know. I am married to that man’—a shudder swept her slim frame—‘Ling. If there is any living thing that I detest, hate and despise, it is he. I want you to believe it, Mr Hallett, when I say that I am his wife only in name. Never, never’—he could see her face glow with her vehemence in the candlelight—‘shall I be anything more! He was a friend of my brother’s; he had a hold on him, and to save him I consented to a marriage. It was a marriage of form, and we separated at the registry-office. Not even for my brother could I do more.’
‘This was before the death of your father?’ he interpolated.
‘Yes.’
‘Then it was Ling who knew he had committed forgery. It was he who held the threat of exposure over your head. The price you paid was—marriage.’
‘That was part of the price. I thought it would silence him to have me bear the same name as himself. It was he who came to my flat the night of the murder with the forged cheques in his hand and demanded the full price as his silence—that I should take my place as his wife.’
Jimmie bit his lip. He promised himself there should be a reckoning if ever he ran across Ling again.
‘Then the murder took place. It was not difficult for me to guess what had happened when I read of it, and I spent a terrible hour. I knew that the detectives would soon learn enough to put them on the track, and that at any moment they might seek me out. So I went to them, partly because I was anxious to see what they knew, partly because I knew suspicion might be aroused if I seemed to avoid them. You know more or less what happened. Then I was brought up for you to identify, and I confess I had an anxious few minutes while you were walking up and down that line of women. I knew you had recognised me, and when you denied it to the officers I could—I could have done anything for you.
‘I hadn’t a single friend in whom I could confide, and then you appeared. I told you more, much more than I intended to, and when you urged me to give the police full details I was half tempted to comply. But it seemed too great a risk to take. If there was any doubt—if there seemed any doubt about my brother—How could I? To have told the police would have been to betray him.
‘I realised how desperate things were when I knew I was being shadowed and you stopped the detectives. I hurried back to my flat, and outside in the street I met Ling. I had neither the chance nor the desire to avoid him. “I have been running great risks to see you,” he said. “You must come with me at once. Your brother is hurt.”
‘I distrusted him, and my suspicion must have shown itself. He let me see plainly that he knew the truth, and he added that my broth
er was lying injured at a house in the East End. “He is nothing to me,” he added. “He can die there like a dog in a kennel, or the police can patch him up for another dog’s death. There is the address.” He pushed a scrap of paper in my hand and went away without another word.
‘If he had offered to accompany me, I fear I should not have come. He must have known that. He was astute enough to understand that once I came here, he could see me whenever he wanted. I found my brother as you have seen him. Only he had his senses more. He was suffering from a knife-thrust in the ribs, which he told me was due to an accident. He was in great pain, and I did not question him too much. Someone had bandaged it up, and the old woman below—the landlady of this house—was watching him. He had been brought here by two other men, she said. She did not know anything about him, how he had been injured, nor who the people were who brought him. They had taken the two rooms, and told her a lady would come to look after him. She wasn’t one to ask questions or to pry into other folks’ business as long as they paid their rent regularly. It was then I wrote that note to you, and gave it to her, with some money, to have sent to you.’
‘The old Jezebel!’ said Jimmie. ‘She must have made it over to Ling, or Gwennie Lyne, and they had the address altered.’
‘Well, you never came. I saw to my brother as well as I could, drawing on my memory of some Red Cross classes I once attended. I think I was near going mad at night with my impotence and the loneliness, and the thought of his peril. At about nine Ling came. He entered the room without knock or ceremony, and smoking a cigar. He laughed when he saw how terrified I was. “All right,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt a hair of your head. You ought to be grateful to me, young lady, for all the trouble I’ve been taking. Still, it’s a family affair, and I couldn’t do less, could I?” He grinned at me hatefully, and I don’t know what I answered. “You’re a little bit off colour tonight,” he went on. “I don’t wonder. You haven’t been used to this sort of thing. It would be wise to be civil, though.”
‘He left me in no doubt as to the meaning of his hint, and I constrained myself to a formal politeness. “I’ll not worry you any further tonight,” he said, “but we’ve got to look our positions in the face. Now, by tomorrow you’ll probably be glad of a change. I’ll come for you at seven o’clock, and we’ll go and have a dinner somewhere and talk things out sensibly. Mrs Battle here will look after your brother for an hour or two.”
‘I was in his power, and of course there was no question of refusing. I had to make every sacrifice but the last one. Tonight he called, and we went to the place where you met us. I don’t know how long we had been there, but we had practically finished dinner. He would talk of nothing but indifferent subjects, but there was something on his mind I feel sure. “Pleasure first,” he said, when I tried to pin him down. “We’ll leave business till we have eaten.”
‘Then when you came in, I was bewildered. You rushed me off my feet, and not till we were in a cab did I realise what the arrest of Ling would mean. He wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to betray my brother if he learned he is himself suspected. If Mr Menzies has arrested Ling, he will probably know all by this time.’ She glanced apprehensively towards the door, as though she feared the immediate entrance of the police. ‘Now I have told you everything, Mr Hallett. Can I ask you now what—what—?’
He understood her hesitation to frame the question as he understood now her eagerness to extract information from him in the train. But there was still something inexplicable on the face of the story. No reason, no motive other than that of a sort of blackmail had been given for Ling’s actions. The personality of Ling, as he understood it, was entirely alien to any unselfish action. So far as her story had gone, the man had committed no crime—no legal crime—that would bring him within the law. Why then the attempt on his life by William Smith? Why the attempt to make him a prisoner by Gwennie Lyne? Why the apparent importance which Menzies attached to the arrest of Ling?
He explained what had happened as far as he knew it, and little puzzled wrinkles appeared in her white forehead.
‘Now, Ling isn’t an altruist,’ he ended, ‘any more than Menzies is a fool. The gang has not been butting into this game merely to save your brother. And Menzies isn’t red-hot after them for no reason at all. If the case were as you think, it would be simple enough. The hue and cry would be all after him.’
He made a motion of his hand towards the other room.
‘Ah!’ She looked at him thoughtfully, and then walked slowly up and down the narrow confines of the apartment. ‘It’s no good!’ she exclaimed at last. ‘It may be as you say, but it’s all too complex for me. Even if something else is bound up with this crime, my brother’s danger remains the same. That is all that concerns me.’
Hallett found something to admire in the singleness of purpose that actuated the girl, even though it was to shield a man who was certainly a scoundrel, and, in all probability, a murderer.
‘There is yourself to be considered,’ he remonstrated. ‘You are in deep waters.’
‘I shall find a way out.’ But her tone belied the confidence of her words.
He scratched his chin.
‘The first thing to do is to get your brother away from here—to somewhere where these crooks cannot get at him.’
She shook her head.
‘That is out of the question. It might kill him to be moved. Besides, there is Mrs Battle. She would tell Ling, and he would find me somehow.’
‘Then there is only one other thing. This is no place for you. You had better get decent lodgings somewhere, and I will stay here. You can rely I should do everything possible for your brother.’
Again she shook her head.
‘That is out of the question, though I am grateful for the offer. The only chance of safety is for me to remain here.’
He lost patience.
‘Hang it all!’ he cried. ‘You can’t! This house—this neighbourhood—why, how can a child like you stay here alone? If you won’t allow me to take your place, I must get rooms in the neighbourhood.’
‘I thank you very much, Mr Hallett,’ she said, ‘but you will see it is impossible. Anything you did would only attract attention to the house. You can see that. I promise you if you like, that should ever I need you, I will send for you. It will be a comfort to know that I have at least one honest friend on whom I can rely.’
He was still uncertain.
‘I don’t like it,’ he grumbled. ‘Anything might happen suddenly. It would take an hour to fetch me, even if you had a reliable messenger.’ Then, as she showed no signs of relenting, ‘Very well, it shall be as you say. Here’—he took his automatic from his pocket and passed the butt to her—‘you might feel safer if you have this. Do you understand how it works?’
He explained the mechanism to her. She held the weapon rigidly at arm’s length. Like this?’ she asked.
‘Great Jehosophat, no! That is how they do it on the stage. Take your finger off the trigger. Never put it there till you mean it to go off. And use the second finger, not the first. Point your first finger along the barrel. If you haven’t time to take aim, all you have got to do is to point your finger, and you will hit whatever you are pointing at. Hold your arm more loosely. That’s the idea. Now put it away. I feel better to think you’ve got it.’
She held out her hand to him. ‘Thank you. And now good-night, Mr Hallett. I will write you—some time.’
He took her hand and held it.
‘Do you know that I was just going without asking you the name of this place? I might have something to tell you, you know.’
She released herself with some confusion.
‘I will write it down.’ She scribbled for a second, and then passed him the address.
‘A very interesting picture!’ sneered a voice. ‘Mr Hallett, I presume—or Mr Green from Mobile?’
The girl gasped. Red-eyed and flushed, with a rent in his jacket, Ling was regarding them from the doorway.
CHAPTER XIX
HALLETT’S fists had clenched, and he was poised for a rush, when restraining fingers on his sleeve reminded him that he had not only himself to consider. There might be a satisfaction in thrashing Ling, but it would be too dearly paid for. For all they knew, too, he might not be alone. He was leaning against the doorpost with one hand in his jacket pocket. There was a cigar between his teeth and his lower jaw jutted out. His green eyes, alert and menacing, took in the little by-play that restrained Jimmie. He had evidently expected, and been prepared for, violence.
‘My name’s Hallett,’ he said. ‘We have met before—Mr Ling, isn’t it? This is rather unexpected. I thought some friends of yours had arranged an invitation for you?’
Ling grinned.
‘They sure did, sonny boy. They held four aces, but I scooped the pot with a straight flush. I wondered what your little game was. Now I know.’ He continued to inflect a meaning into his words that made the blood surge in Jimmie’s veins. ‘I thought you’d be the kind of fool that’d come right on here. You see, Peggy was hardly to desert her darling brother, and you wouldn’t leave her, eh? How’s that for Sherlock Holmes? It won’t do, though, it won’t do. I’ll have to be seeing a lawyer about this. Lucky I’m an indulgent husband—eh, Peggy?’ His voice changed. ‘You stand right where you are, Hallett. It won’t be healthy for you if you take another step like that. I hate violence, especially before ladies.’
The other man remained stock still. He knew what the hand in Ling’s pocket was gripping. His mind was actively seeking for a solution of the immediate problem. Ling held the doorway, the only exit from the room, and he recognised perfectly well that this man, whose friends had twice before made attempts to secure his silence, was little likely to let him go again. If he had not made over the gun to Peggy, he could have felt on more level terms.
‘Sherlock Holmes would have carried it a bit further,’ he said. ‘Has it flashed across that limpid intellect of yours that I’d take care not to put my head into the lion’s jaws if I’d not taken precautions to keep them propped open? If this place isn’t surrounded now, it will be in five minutes. Those friends you missed won’t be put off a second time.’