by Frank Froest
‘You’re doing very well by yourself,’ he commented. ‘You don’t need my help.’
There had been little serious intention behind Weir Menzies’ threat of arrest. On the face of things, as he had explained, he could have justified the action. Nor would he have hesitated had he believed that any real good would come of it. He would have been as ruthless of Jimmie Hallett’s feelings as he was of his own energies, if thereby he could have gained a step. But events were developing too quickly to permit of too much finesse.
Of course, Hallett’s infatuation—that was Menzies’ private word for it—had been a stumbling block, and it would still be advisable to look after him. But to put him under lock and key would be to seal his lips utterly—Menzies had judged his character aright in that—and if treated in another fashion, he might yet be useful. Nevertheless, the threat was a bludgeon to be used if necessary.
He put the revolver aside and went on with his inspection. He hesitated over the letters, and then, with a muttered apology, opened one. There were four all told, and he steadily ploughed through them.
‘Ling must be very fond of you,’ he observed, with heavy irony. ‘Not only have you the pistol, but some of his personal letters. Gad,’ he burst out, ‘what game were you playing last night? I’d give a lot to know. You certainly have the knack of dropping into the thick of things.’
‘Yes, there were some letters,’ agreed Jimmie coolly. ‘I haven’t had time to read them. Anything of importance in them?’
‘There are no addresses,’ evaded Menzies, ‘and he doesn’t seem to have saved the envelopes, so we can’t tell where he received them.’
A knock at the door heralded the appearance of Royal, who nodded a genial good-morning to Hallett, and then glided unobtrusively to a seat. Menzies twisted the letters in his hand with an air of uncertainty.
‘I’ve got two courses open to me,’ he explained to Hallett. ‘One, as I said just now, to arrest you. The other is to take your word that you won’t attempt to leave your rooms here, nor to send any message to anyone until I see you again. In that case I should leave Royal here with you.’
‘You’ve got an everlastingly cool nerve,’ observed Jimmie.
‘Hang it, man! What do you expect?’ said the other impatiently. ‘The alternative is more than ninety-nine out of a hundred would offer you.’
Jimmie shrugged his shoulders resignedly. He saw Menzies’ difficulty, saw also that the chief-inspector was determined at any cost to keep him out of the game. Inwardly he writhed at his own impotence. If he could only have got one word to Peggy Greye-Stratton!
Outwardly he was philosophic.
‘No cell for mine,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You’ve got the drop on me, and I’ve got to do what you say. I will pass my word, though I’d take it kindly if you’d send on what news you can. Do you play piquet, Mr Royal?’
CHAPTER XXII
UNLESS circumstances dictated haste, Weir Menzies was never in a hurry. In essentials he was a business man. He was always ready to seize a fleeting opportunity, but for choice he preferred method and exactitude rather than gambling on luck. There was nothing he could do at Shadwell for the time being that could not be done equally well by the men already on duty there.
The tactics of the moment were quite clear in his mind. Peggy Greye-Stratton, by herself, was of minor importance compared with the possibility of laying Gwennie Lyne and Ling by the heels. The direct route to that objective seemed to lay through her. Moreover—though he would not admit it even to himself—he felt a certain personal animosity. Both Ling and the woman had contrived to humiliate him professionally. He wanted to locate them, and then—
He perched on a high stool before his tall desk in the chief- inspector’s room. The dossier of the case lay in front of him—reports, statements, photographs, everything that had been gathered together by the elaborate machinery of the C.I.D., neatly typed and carefully indexed. Also he had his own Greek notes and several facts not yet incorporated in the dossier.
He rubbed his hand through his scant hair and chewed at the end of a quill pen. For five minutes he allowed his thoughts uninterrupted flow, and then there came to him Superintendent Foyle, spruce and alert, with twinkling blue eyes.
‘Quite a dust-up last night, I hear,’ he observed.
‘Rather!’ agreed Menzies. He got down off his stool, reached for a tobacco-jar, and filled his pipe. ‘I was coming in to see you, sir. I’d like to arrange to have fifty men on hand. It’s likely I’ll want ’em tonight.’
Foyle polished his pince-nez.
‘As close up as that? I heard that you’d got an address. But fifty men! That means a raid. You’ll have the newspaper men there.’
The superintendent hated unnecessary limelight on the operation of the C.I.D., and he was not blind to the effects of human nature. Among fifty men, however carefully picked, there were sure to be some who had been carefully cultivated by journalists, and he knew that a friendly hint would be passed on to Fleet Street before many hours were over.
‘I only want them available,’ explained Menzies. ‘I don’t know that I’ll use them. We may be able to do things quietly, but if a house-to-house search is necessary, and there should be any more snap-shooting—’
‘Right you are. I’ll see they’re at hand for a call. Now, about things in general?’
‘I was just thinking it out,’ said Menzies. ‘I can’t just place things, though I’ve got more than enough to act on.’
The other removed his glasses.
‘What you mean,’ he smiled, ‘is that you don’t want to commit yourself to anything till you’re sure.’
‘That’s so,’ agreed Menzies. ‘You’ll remember when we went over Linstone Terrace Gardens we couldn’t find Greye-Stratton’s pistol? I came across it this morning. In fact, I have it here.’
‘Hallett?’ ejaculated Foyle, with a lift of his eyebrows.
‘Hallett it is. I’ve just left him. I did think he was safe last night. He was out of my sight for less than three minutes, and I’m blessed if he wasn’t on the warpath on his own again—or, rather, with the girl. She’s got that young man absolutely dazzled. It seems that they must have met Ling after he dodged me. Now, where she’s concerned you couldn’t make him talk, not if you used a—a—’—he wrestled for an illustration—‘a tin-opener. And he now knows a deuce of a lot, too. If I could draw it out of him I’d have the case pretty complete or I’m a fool. Look here.’ He ran through the papers on his desk, and picked out two. ‘I picked these papers off him just now.’ He read:
‘Dear Stewart,—I was right pleased to get your letter, and shall be glad when you come over again. Teddy is just fine, and says he would like to see his dad again. It would be fine if only we could settle down and you didn’t have to be sent on those long business journeys any more. As I wrote you last time, the show has gone bust, and I am resting. So if you can spare a little money I would be glad of a little cheque, though I hate worrying you, specially when you are so full up with business. I wish sometimes you had a regular berth here. Of course, the money would not be so big, but it would be certain, and we could all be together. But I won’t worry you, old boy. Much love from Teddy and from
‘CHRIS.’
‘A woman,’ commented Foyle. ‘You’d better look into that, Menzies.’
‘That’s seen to. This is the other letter: “The ’tecs have tumbled to me. Have just dropped one in the cellar along with J. H., and am clearing in case his pals turn up. Am coming straight you-know-where, and am sending this by messenger, in case you are out. Come along and see me.” There’s no signature to that. It doesn’t need one. I’m wondering how Hallett got these things and the pistol.’
‘And I’m wondering,’ said Foyle, ‘how you got them from Hallett. Have you arrested him?’
Menzies met his chief’s gaze steadily.
‘No, sir,’ he said.
A ready smile broke over Foyle’s face. It was not always advisable that
he, as head of the department, should know exactly the methods by which a result had been obtained. Men with the experience and sagacity of Weir Menzies could be trusted not to endanger the reputation of the C.I.D. He ignored the chief-inspector’s lack of candour.
‘Well, I suppose he’ll keep. If the evidence doesn’t crop up elsewhere, we’ll have to see what can be squeezed out of him in the witness-box. Don’t you wish this was America, Menzies?’
‘I never held with American methods, sir. I call a man down and take my chance sometimes, but the third degree isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. I believe in judicious firmness and mildness.’
‘I expect that’s how you treated Hallett. Never mind that, though. Ling wouldn’t have parted with those things willingly. Your young friend must have been fairly successful in handling him. How do you figure it all out generally?’
‘Well’—Menzies rubbed his chin meditatively—‘there’s money somewhere, though that’s to be expected. They’re not folk who’d set out for a coup without a stocking to draw on. They’ve been spending money pretty freely for hiding-places. There was Gwennie Lyne’s house at Brixton.
‘Then there’s this Bloomsbury place into which Ling carried us last night. I’ve just been reading the report of some inquiries Royal made. Ling took the whole place, furnished, a month ago under the name of Ryder. He’s never actually stayed there.’
He glanced under his heavy eyebrows at the superintendent, who jingled some keys in his pocket and returned a look of interrogation.
‘It’s solid, unpretentious, and central,’ prompted Menzies.
The superintendent gave his keys a final irritable shake.
‘What are you driving at?’ he murmured.
‘Just the place for a newly-married couple to settle down in till all the legal formalities in connection with Greye-Stratton’s property were settled,’ Menzies went on.
‘Oh I thought it was a riddle! That’s just like Ling; he’d have things cut and dried. Well, why didn’t he—or they?’
‘That’s what I want to ask the lady. Hallett’s got a glimmering of the reason, too. Personally, I can think of a hundred answers to the question; the only thing is to know which is right.’
‘Ling,’ observed the superintendent, with apparent irrelevance, ‘hasn’t the record of a man who’ll handle tar without gloves. He’s always up to now found his tools to do the actual work. Gwennie Lyne’s the same breed. That leaves two people to pick from—Errol and Dago Sam. If it came to the choice, I’d go nap on Errol.’
Menzies smiled sardonically. He had a great deal of admiration for, and loyalty to, his chief, but he was human enough to be pleased when he could register a score.
‘Then you’d be wrong, sir,’ he said.
‘You think that because Ling had Greye-Stratton’s pistol he—’
‘Not altogether. There’s another little point, though I only came across it yesterday. Did you notice the fireguard in Greye-Stratton’s place—I mean in the room where he was found dead?’
‘A heavy brass thing, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes. I was having another look over the place yesterday, when I found a thread had been caught in one of the sharp edges. I didn’t speak about it, because I wasn’t sure it had anything to do with the case. It so happened that, in his hurry to get away last night, Ling tore a bit of his coat. I took ’em both along to Fynne Racton to have a look at under the microscope. He now says definitely that they’re exactly similar.’
‘That’s useful, laddie,’ observed the superintendent. ‘A nice little bit of evidence to justify his arrest for murder, but you’ll have to go further than that for conviction. There’s going to be a big fight when this comes on for trial. The pistol doesn’t count. You haven’t even got Hallett’s word that it came from Ling, and, if you had, you can see the line of defence. It’s word against word, and you can see what counsel would do with Hallett.’ He made a gesture, as though addressing an imaginary jury. ‘And this man, gentlemen—this American Hallett; he has sworn that the pistol produced was taken from the prisoner Ling. Ling has denied on oath that he ever saw the weapon before. You will not need reminding, gentlemen, of the peculiar and extraordinary circumstances under which this man Hallett became associated with the case. He is found in a locked room with the murdered man, and he tells a confiding police-officer—mark you, I am not saying a word against the police—an honest enough detective, whose intelligence, perhaps, runs in narrow channels—’
Menzies eyed his chief ruefully.
‘Thank you, sir,’ he said drily …
Foyle’s eyes twinkled genially.
‘Well, you know that’s what they’ll say. It’s the obvious line of defence. As for the cloth’—he snapped his fingers—‘a common cloth, sworn to by a dozen experts as being worn by ninety-nine out of a hundred men. There’s heaps of evidence of motive, and no doubt you’ll be able to get it in; but there are gaps in your other evidence, Menzies, and don’t you go forgetting it.’
Menzies tapped his pipe on the heel of his boot and grinned. Foyle was indulging in no mere captious criticism. It was not unusual for the weak links in an important investigation to be thus examined when it was on the point of closing up, for the C.I.D. likes to be prepared. The work of the department does not finish with the catching of a criminal; every shred of relevant evidence has to be drawn up in lucid detail, from which the Treasury solicitors prepare a brief for counsel. It does not do to take anything for granted. Menzies could picture, too, the cross-examination of an unwilling Jimmie, and the conclusions that might be drawn from it.
‘There’s the girl, of course,’ he muttered thoughtfully. ‘She’d be even better than Hallet, in a way. If we didn’t have to put her in the dock, she might be persuaded to tell what she knows.’
‘Aren’t you forgetting she’s Mrs Ling?’ said Foyle. ‘You can’t compel a woman to give evidence against her husband.’
‘Against her husband, no,’ said Menzies.
CHAPTER XXIII
THERE was no outward evidence that Levoine Street was under any extraordinary police surveillance. Now and again a blue-coated constable picked his way at the regulation two and a half miles an hour down its sordid length. In the tap-room of a dingy public-house a couple of shabby loafers were playing dominoes, with a not infrequent casual glance through the open door into the rain-sodden road. There was no public-house at the further end of the street, but two waterside labourers had secured a ‘kip’ in one of the few lodging-houses in the street, and through the dirty windows their gaze also commanded the street.
These were, so to speak, Menzies’ advance posts. Not one of them had ever been stationed in that division of the East End. A divisional detective of necessity gets well-known to the criminal fraternity of his neighbourhood, and as facial disguise is more common in novels than in the ordinary routine of a detective’s work, it is easier and safer to employ strangers in a locality where the presence of a local police-officer might arouse undeniable speculation or comment.
Not that the divisional detectives were idle. Half a dozen or more were wandering with apparent aimlessness about the vicinity, though never by any chance showing in Levoine Street itself. Yet it was scarcely likely that anyone leaving that thoroughfare would escape the notice of this outer fringe of watchers. That was what they were there for.
Twice that day had Mrs Battle journeyed into the main street—once to the butcher’s, once to a post-office. And each time, curiously enough, one of the waterside labourers or one of the saloon loafers had lounged indifferently in the same direction, dropping back after three or four hundred yards, while the hard-bitten detectives of the H Division took up the unobtrusive escort. It was one of those periods of monotonous detective work which is of no public interest, and therefore rarely made known. For all those taking part in it knew, that depressing vigil might go on for weeks, perhaps for months, and then end without any obvious result having been achieved.
Meanwhile, Detect
ive-Sergeant Congreve had routed out a colleague in the division, and was more actively engaged. Together they walked along the Commercial Road until they reached a corner shop. The lower half of the big plate-glass windows had been blackened, and staring white letters announced:
DR KARL STEINGURT.
Dispensary.—Hours: 8 till 10 a.m.; 7 till 9 p.m.
The pair pushed their way into the room, bare save for a cupboard and table and a series of hard, wooden forms. Women crowded the latter, some with children, some without, and a shrill clatter of tongues died away for the instant as they took stock of the newcomer. An anaemic young man, busy juggling with bottles and pill-boxes, nodded abruptly to the vacant end of a bench.
‘Y’ want the doctor? Sit down there, and take your turn.’ He returned his attention feverishly to his dispensing. ‘That’s be thruppence, Mrs Isaacs—to be taken as before. Eh? No, you know very well what the rules are. If you ain’t got the money you shouldn’t have come. Now, who’s next? Don’t you hear the doctor calling?’
Indeed, a querulous, guttural voice from the top of the stairs which led out of the dispensary was shouting fiercely, and two or three women pushed forward. The anaemic dispenser shrilly demanded quiet—an order of which not the slightest notice was taken. The argument as to procedure threatened to develop to physical violence, and Congreve’s colleague stepped forward and took hold of the dispenser’s thin arm.
‘That Dr Steingurt upstairs?’ he demanded.
‘Why the blazes don’t you go and sit down?’ demanded the assistant, feebly wrathful. ‘He can’t see y’all at once, now can he? ’Ere, let go my arm!’
‘It’s Mr Hugh—a rozzer!’ said someone, and the tumult stilled.
The assistant lost his air of authority as a pricked toy balloon collapses.
‘Say, you can see the boss is busy! Won’t I do? What do you want?’