The Rogues' Syndicate

by Frank Froest

  ‘DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN? IF SO, TELL THE POLICE.

  ‘The above is a photograph of the mysterious prisoner now under arrest for a murderous attempt on the life of Mr James Hallett, who, it will be remembered, is one of the chief witnesses in the case of the murder of Mr Greye-Stratton. He refuses to give any account of himself, and the police are anxious to trace his antecedents, so that the full facts, whether for or against him, may be brought out when he is tried.’

  Menzies could be disingenuous when he liked. Though even the omniscient reporter did not know it, he had no longer much doubt on the subject of ‘William Smith’, or Dago Sam, as he preferred to think of him. The hint given by the ‘con’ man, even if latter questions failed to simplify it, would probably prove sufficient to dig out all the personal history that was wanted. Nevertheless, there was no reason for following either Gwennie Lyne or Ling to know how much he knew of their confederate. The apparently earnest search by newspaper might help to blind them as to how far the investigation had progressed.

  He threw the paper aside, and, accompanied by Bruin, walked reflectively round the garden with a sharp eye for caterpillars.

  Ten minutes before his usual time he put on his hat and coat, flicked away an imaginary spot of dust from his boots, kissed his wife, and caught the City-bound car.

  Jimmie Hallett was still in bed when the detective arrived at his hotel, and he sat up to receive him. His chin was jutted out doggedly, and there was a wary look in his eye. He reminded the chief-inspector of ominous evil-doing, but he was uncertain how much was known.

  ‘Come in, Menzies!’ he said heartily. ‘I couldn’t stop to see the fun out last night because I met a friend and wanted to get her out of the way of any trouble. How did it go?’

  Menzies dropped to rest at the foot of the bed.

  ‘I didn’t come up here last night,’ he said solemnly, ‘because I couldn’t trust myself not to break your jaw.’

  Jimmie’s eyebrows shot up in ingenuous astonishment.

  ‘So! I didn’t know you allowed personal feelings to interfere with your duty. You’re a pugnacious brute, Menzies. There’s some cigarettes on the table behind you. Help yourself, and pass me one. Now’—he sent out a blue ring of smoke—‘tell me why you want to smash me.’

  His attitude was different to that which Menzies had expected. There might have been defiance, a blank wall of obstinacy, but this touch of badinage, even though the defiance and obstinacy might still be behind it, was a little more difficult. Menzies’ opinion of Hallett went up. He exhibited his bandaged hand.

  ‘This is one reason. Cincinnati Red got another and worse one. I don’t know how he is this morning, but if he dies it’s you who’ll have to be thanked.’ He had no fear of the ‘con’ man’s wound proving fatal, but Jimmie’s chaff needed a little quenching.

  Hallett’s face grew more serious.

  ‘Gun play, eh? I’m right sorry to hear that. Still you bagged your man.’

  ‘Bagged hell!’ said Menzies. ‘I beg your pardon, but even my vicar could forgive me in the circumstances. Of course we didn’t. But I didn’t come here to satisfy your curiosity, but my own. Where did you leave that woman? Where is she now?’

  Hallett lay back in bed and laughed.

  ‘I see now,’ he gasped. ‘That’s quite a natural mistake. You’ve heard that I took a girl away, and you think it was Peggy—Miss Greye-Stratton.’

  ‘Mrs Ling,’ corrected the inspector. ‘I don’t think—I know.’ He menaced the other with his forefinger. ‘I’m not going to fence with you. Out with it.’

  Jimmie frowned.

  ‘Don’t take that tone with me,’ he warned. ‘I’m about sick of being bullied. I tell you, for your own satisfaction, that it was not that lady. It was someone quite different, a friend of mine who happened to be dining in the restaurant. I took her out because I didn’t want her to be there when the trouble arose. Now, take that or leave it. I don’t care a tinker’s curse whether you believe it or not.’

  His hand sought the bell over his head.

  ‘I should leave that bell alone,’ ordered Menzies curtly. ‘It won’t do to push me too far.’ Hallett dropped his hand. ‘You can tell me the lady’s name, of course, and bring her to prove it?’

  ‘I have said so,’ said Jimmie, coldly.

  Something flashed for an instant in Menzies’ hand.

  ‘Then you’re a liar!’ he cried, and his weight crushed the other back on the bed.

  The detective’s left hand was not so badly injured as to be totally useless, and Jimmie, taken by surprise, and at a disadvantage, was unable to put up any sort of a fight. In three minutes his arms were round a bed-post and a pair of patent, self-adjusting handcuffs encircled his wrists.

  It needed the physical tussle to make his equanimity give way. He was angry—very angry—and the crowning indignity of the handcuffs chafed his spirit even more than his wrists. The detective calmly extinguished a smouldering spark that threatened the bed-clothes and tossed Jimmie’s cigarette away. The other might have been a block of wood for all the notice he took of his passion and his protests. He resumed his seat and went on quietly smoking his cigarette with an air of placid satisfaction.

  Jimmie realised quickly that his most barbed epithets were passing over the detective’s head. The first spasm of wrath passed. He gulped something in his throat.

  ‘If you haven’t gone mad,’ he said, his voice vibrating with the effort he made to control himself, ‘perhaps you’ll be gracious enough to explain.’

  ‘That’s better—much better,’ said Menzies encouragingly. You’ll soon be polite if you persevere.’

  ‘Well!’ Hallett choked again. ‘Well me, what are you arresting me for?’

  ‘I’m not arresting you, sonnie. Oh, yes, I know. I’m going to act in an even more flagrantly illegal manner. I’ll take the risk of being broke. You can’t tell me anything about that. You’ll have plenty of chance to appeal to your ambassador. Or, if you like, you can bring me before a police-court for assault.’

  He spoke with a certain bitterness that was not lost upon his hearer. Weir Menzies had spent a lifetime in the service of Scotland Yard, and knew exactly what he was risking. He was behaving, as he had said, with flagrant illegality that could scarcely be justified even on the suspcions he harboured. He had faced Ling’s bullets more cheerfully than this, which, if anything went wrong, would lead to inevitable dismissal from the service.

  Jimmie wriggled himself out of bed to a sitting position.

  ‘This is a fool’s game to play,’ he protested more mildly. ‘What do you expect to gain by it, anyway?’

  ‘I don’t mind telling you now you’re more or less in your senses. By the way, I apologise for calling you a liar. It slipped out. But’—he brought his clenched fist heavily down on the bed-clothes—‘I warned you what would happen if you stood in my way. You spoilt things last night—I’ll do you the credit to suppose that it was without deliberation. Still, you were tacitly on your honour, and it was treachery to me when you did what you did.’

  Hallett flushed.

  ‘Easy, Mr Menzies. You’d have done the same in my place.’

  ‘I wouldn’t!’ denied the other. ‘I’ve been fair to you all through, and you’ve done your best to thwart every scheme of mine because—’ He checked himself suddenly as he saw the change on Jimmie’s face. ‘Then you insult my common sense now by telling me that this girl was not at La Petite Savoye—that it was someone else.’

  ‘You don’t know all the circumstances,’ said Hallett.

  ‘No, but I’m going to. I formally ask your permission now to search your clothes. I warn you I intend to do it whether you give me your permission or not.’

  Hallett hesitated for a moment.

  ‘Oh, very well then,’ he said at last. ‘Go on.’

  CHAPTER XXI

  IT is easy to see a mistake after it has been committed. Jimmie recognised this with the first chill touch of the handcuf
fs. He had merely dropped out of his clothes the night before, not troubling to remove or inspect anything. The least he should have done was to have placed the address Peggy had given him in safety.

  He raved helplessly. Weir Menzies sat on the end of the bed and waited imperturbably. Jimmie did not pick and choose his words.

  ‘Bad language won’t help,’ said Menzies, once again the stern moralist. ‘Make up your mind quick, I can’t wait here all day.’

  Hallett suppressed the vitrolic retort that rose to his lips. He was in no position to justify violent language.

  ‘Say, this is a joke, isn’t it?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t joke,’ retorted the inspector, grimly.

  ‘Look here,’ said Jimmie with inspiration, ‘you own that you’re doing an illegal thing. Now, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Unfasten these things and run away for five minutes, and when you come back you can search all you want to. There’ll be ten thousand dollars in it for you, too.’

  Ten thousand dollars, he reflected, was a small price to pay for the preservation of the secret he held.

  Menzies’ ruddy face had taken on a deeper tinge of crimson.

  ‘You’re wanting to bribe me,’ he said thickly.

  ‘That’s a nasty word,’ said Jimmie. ‘Illegal searchings are not your duty, and how can it be bribery if all I ask you to do is to keep within the limit of your rights? Come, I’m a fairly rich man, and I’ll make it fifteen thousand.’

  A brawny fist was shaken within an inch or two of his eyes. Menzies had for the moment let himself go, and was shaken with anger.

  ‘You dirty reptile!’ he blazed; and then suddenly checked himself. ‘The C.I.D. don’t stand that sort of thing,’ he went on more mildly. ‘If you’d been in London longer you’d have known that. It isn’t fair, Mr Hallett’—he shook his head reprovingly—‘it isn’t fair.’

  Jimmie observed him with some astonishment. He did not know the scale of pay of English detectives, but he imagined that fifteen thousand dollars—three thousand pounds in English money—would have removed most scruples.

  ‘Don’t get in a tear about it,’ he said. ‘For a man who plays the game like this’—he glanced at the handcuffs—‘I don’t see what you’ve got to complain of if you get insulted. You’re not a police-officer now, remember. You’re a common-or-garden burglar.’

  Menzies had resumed his placid equanimity. It was difficult to reconcile the placidity with which he was now enveloped to the resentment that had shaken him a moment before.

  ‘I suppose I am,’ he remarked. ‘That is, if you won’t give me the permission I asked for a while ago.’

  ‘I’ll see you burned first,’ retorted Jimmie.

  ‘Then I must go on with it,’ said Menzies; and quietly began to possess himself of the scattered articles of attire that littered the floor.

  He went through the pockets methodically, laying the articles in an orderly heap on a chair one by one as he examined them. Jimmie saw him pause over a scrap of paper on which Peggy had scribbled her address.

  ‘Does your friend—the lady who isn’t Mrs Ling—live at Shadwell?’ he asked. ‘That’s a bit of a change from Palace Avenue, isn’t it? I’ll use your telephone a second, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Make yourself at home,’ said Hallett. ‘Don’t mind me.’

  The detective lifted the receiver.

  ‘Give me a line. City 400. Is that the Yard? I want Royal or Congreve, if they’re there. Yes, Mr Menzies speaking. Hallo, is that you, Congreve? Oh, gone out is he? Anything fresh, Royal?

  The man at the other end of the wire seemed to Jimmie to be intolerably loquacious. A grin slowly stole over Menzies’ set features.

  ‘That’s darned funny,’ he commented at last. ‘So you’ve got it from two ends. Curiously enough, I’ve just run across the same address here—that’s what I rang up about. I’m in Mr Hallett’s rooms at the Palatial. He’s very annoyed with me, Royal. Eh? No, they’d better not do anything unless they spot Ling. Keep close observation on anyone in or out. You’d better come on here.’

  He turned to Hallett, and tapped the paper in his hand.

  ‘If this is all you’re upset about, Mr Hallet, you needn’t blame yourself or me. This address has cropped up at the Yard from two other sources. Some of our men are breathing the salubrious air of Shadwell at this minute. If I hadn’t been in a hurry to see you, I’d have known it half an hour or more ago. Promise me you’ll sit quiet, and wait without interence while I finish off, and I’ll unhook you’.’

  ‘I don’t take back anything that I’ve said,’ declared Jimmie; ‘but I must say I’d like to admire your methods in something more solid than pyjamas, and that’s a fact. Do you mind if I order breakfast?’

  Menzies smiled as he shook his head.

  ‘You’ll not starve if you wait ten minutes till Royal comes. I’m not going to take any chances of you sending a warning directly or indirectly. Not that it would do any good, if you managed to slip anything through. A mouse couldn’t get in or out of Levoine Street now.’

  It was a palpable hit. Hallett had hoped that the entrance of a servant might give him an opportunity to convey something to Peggy. His face fell as the other exploded the plan. He stretched himself as Menzies unlocked the handcuffs.

  ‘Yes, I guess I can hold out that long. I wish you’d forget your profession sometimes, Menzies. I’d hate to have to suspect a man of evil because he wants his breakfast. Say, if it’s not giving away secrets, how did Scotland Yard get on to the address?’

  Menzies postponed his rummaging for the moment.

  ‘There’s no secret about it,’ he said. ‘It was only a question of how long a well-dressed girl, obviously of the superior classes, could live in a slum without attracting notice, especially when she’s being looked for by the police. A report that she had been located by the Shadwell people was received this morning. Then again—you remember that note she sent calling you over to Brixton?’

  ‘Well?’ said Jimmie.

  ‘That was handed over to an expert for more detailed examination than we were able to give it ourselves. Royal hasn’t told me anything about the result, though I can guess how it was done. Very few inks are chemically alike. The expert must have applied tests which brought out the fact that certain words in that note had been written in a different ink. You follow me? The inference would be irresistible, and a properly skilled photographer would be able to bring out the underlying words. All automatic, Mr Hallett. We were just bound to find her.’

  ‘I suppose you were,’ said Hallett absently, enveloping himself in a big dressing-gown.

  The chief-inspector picked a revolver from a heap of belongings he had abstracted from the young man’s pockets, and weighed it carelessly in his hand while he scrutinised the young man from under his half-shut eyes.

  ‘I may have been doing you both an injustice,’ he confessed. ‘I’ll own I can’t make out why she wanted you at Shadwell, and how it came about that the note got altered by someone—apparently without her knowledge.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ said Jimmie indifferently. He began to appreciate the point which was being led up to.

  ‘Now,’ went on Menzies mildly, ‘I know you’ve your own notions as to which side of the fence you’d prefer to be, but it’s certain you’ve got some inside knowledge. You’re wise enough to know what will most likely be happening in a few hours. Why not give me the right end of the thing? No one need know it came from you, and I’ll do my best to keep things pleasant. I only want to get at the truth. Nothing can stop that. But you can make it come a bit quicker, if you like. Of course, I don’t believe she’s the sort of girl who’d be in it bad.’

  An involuntary laugh broke from Jimmie, though he was feeling very far from merriment.

  ‘Trying a new tack?’ he said. ‘Why, I thought you’d loaded the lady up with all the crimes in the calendar. Still, I’m glad to see some glimmerings of common sense, and I’ll reward you. She’s perfectly innoc
ent of anything—rather the other way about. Now, if you go running yourself into trouble, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Because if you do involve her, I’ll get the biggest lawyer that money can buy to raise particular Cain for your benefit.’

  ‘Ah!’ Menzies caught his breath. ‘So you fixed the thing last night? She’s told you the whole story, or you wouldn’t be so cocksure. Do you know what the penalty is for an accessory after the fact in a case of murder?’

  Watching acutely, he caught the slightest change of countenance in the young man. It was gone instantly.

  ‘I’ve half a mind to take you in on that charge, and let you try that lawyer for yourself,’ he pursued.

  ‘And make yourself the laughing-stock of the country,’ countered the other. ‘Why, you haven’t a shred of evidence that could justify it, and you forget I’m an American citizen. You wouldn’t hear the eagle scream—nunno!’

  ‘You’re quite sure about there being no evidence—quite sure?’ Jimmie felt an uneasy thrill run down his spine. ‘I could justify your arrest a whole lot if I wanted to. This, for example, would almost do by itself.’ He held up the revolver. ‘You were carrying an automatic yesterday. Now it is a revolver—and a revolver, moreover, with the initials J.E.G.-S. engraved on it—the revolver that used to belong to Mr Greye-Stratton.’

  He swung it carelessly to and fro by the muzzle.

  Jimmie started.

  ‘You don’t say!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, I got it—’

  He paused.

  ‘You got it from Ling,’ filled in the detective. ‘Quite so.’ He broke it apart and squinted through it. ‘There’s three chambers been recently fired.’ He looked up inquiringly. ‘Go on.’

  There was just the right touch of expectation in his voice and manner, as though he took it for granted that Hallett intended to continue his explanation. But Jimmie had no intention of doing so. He had been surprised into half an admission, but he was to be drawn no further. It might be that nothing he could reveal would affect the course of events, but having given his word to Peggy, he intended to remain silent. He was scarcely prepared to admit even what the lawyers call common ground.