Lucia jumped as though she had been stung. Butler too felt a twinge. Standing by their table, looking down with an expressionless face, was Superintendent Hadley of the C.I.D.
Hadley, even in his ancient raincoat, did not look at all out of place here. He was tall and square-shouldered; his hair and cropped moustache, the colour of dull steel, gave him the air of a retired military man. Patrick Butler hesitated between arrogance and friendliness.
"I didn't know a man of your position," he said, "would condescend to follow people." His hand closed over that of Lucia, who was trembling. "Mrs. Renshaw, may I present Superintendent Hadley of the Criminal Investigation Department?"
"Oh, I didn't follow you," said Hadley. He did not add that Lucia had been under what the C.I.D. call "observation" for two days. "Mind if I sit down for a moment?"
Butler beckoned a waiter, who fetched a chair. Hadley sat down opposite them, and put his bowler hat on the table.
"I don't in the least mind telling you where I stand," Butler went on, "because I believe what Dr. Fell believes. Have you seen him, by the way?"
"Saw him this morning," grunted Hadley, with a shade of wrath in his face. "He was about as comprehensible as usual."
"He believes," Butler stated, "that there's a murder organization which can operate with poison and never leave a clue."
"Lower your voice," said Hadley, without taking his eyes from the others'.
"This lunatic group," Butler insisted, "operates under some kind of 'cloak.' I don't know what. I can't for the life of me," he clenched his fists, "see how it can be deeply concerned with an ordinary candelabrum and a squiggly mark in dust and a woman with red garters. But I'll bet I can tell you who was the head of the whole group."
"All right. Who's the head of it?"
"I said, 'was' the head of it," Butler conected, conscious of the bombshell he was about to explode. "The head of it, who was poisoned so that someone else could take his place, was Mr. Richard Renshaw."
Lucia upset her coffee-cup.
It was a small cup, having little coffee in it, but it clattered harshly against the hum of talk in the restaurant. Lucia's cigarette, on the edge of the saucer, sizzled and died.
"A—a criminal?" she cried incredulously. "That's impossible!" Then, with a curious but startling inelevance: "Dick always chose my clothes, you know."
"You observe," Butler smiled at Hadley with his easy manner, "that Mrs. Renshaw knows nothing about it. That's why Dr. Fell asked all the queer questions last night: to prove she knew nothing about it." Then Butler's voice changed. 'Tind the person who took Renshaw's place as head of the murder-group, and you'll find the poisoner. What do you say, Mr. Hadley?"
The muscles tightened down Hadley's lean jaws.
"We get information, Mr. Butler. We don't give it. At the same time. . . ."
Hadley's fingers drummed on the table-cloth.
"At the same time," he went on, "I'll admit this much. Renshaw kept three separate banking-accounts under three different names." His
glance at Lucia was opaque. "If you do happen to be innocent, Mrs. Renshaw, you'll be a rich woman."
{Good God, I was light!)
Butler's fist crashed on the table. "Why don't you follow that lead, Superintendent?"
"H'm. How would you follow it?"
"A man from a firm called Smith-Smith, Discretion Guaranteed was bashed about by two wide-boys in Renshaw's pay. Smith-Smith, or whoever he is, must know the boys concerned. Trace it back from there to the middle of the Murder Club!"
There was the flicker of a smile on Hadley's hard face.
"It's an odd thing, Mr. Butler. But we've already thought of that. Smith-Smith, whose real name is Luke Parsons—well, he's discretion guaranteed, all right. We couldn't get a word out of him."
"Do you want to bet I can't?"
"I see," remarked Hadley, eyeing him up and down. "Are you thinking of jumping into this thing yourself?"
"With both feet. Yes."
"Bit risky, isn't it?"
Butler was really surprised. "Do you honestly think," he inquired, "I'm afraid of these scum? As a matter of fact, I've been threatened already."
"What's that?"
"Oh, yes. With a note straight out of Sexton Blake. 'Stay out of the Renshaw case. This will be your only warning.' " Butler spoke dryly. "I've had a good deal of professional experience with crooks. Superintendent."
"You've got a lot of them turned loose, if that's what you mean."
"That's exactly what I mean," Butler agreed amiably. "And there isn't a thimbleful of intelligence in the whole lot of them."
Hadley's jaw tightened still more.
"Will you tell me the good of intelligence," he said, "against a straight-bladed razor across your face? Or a potato full of safety-razor blades?"
"I'll worry about that when I meet it."
"Were you ever in a real roughhouse? Do you know how to use your fists?"
"No," Butler answered contemptuously. "I never bothered to learn."
"You never bothered—" Hadley stopped.
Then he leaned forward across the table, leaning his elbows on it. Hadley's hair and moustache had a steel-grey edge against the gaudy restaurant with its chattering crowd.
"Listen, Mr. Butler. These are post-war days. The whole East End has moved slap round Piccadilly Circus. Leave this kind of work to us. I'm warning you, now! Because. . . ."
"Because?"
"Because I can't spare the men to protect you!"
For a moment Butler looked at him, past the smoke of a cigarette which had burned nearly to Butler's mouth.
"And who the devil," he inquired quietly, "ever asked for your protection? Or would take it if you offered it on a plate? —More coffee, Lucia dear?"
Half an hour afterwards Patrick Butler, in all his pride, was sauntering up the stairs towards the agency listed as Smith-Smith, Discietion Guaranteed.
10
YES?" said the girl with the horn-rimmed spectacles, her bun of hair outlined against a dingy window with fading gilt letters.
It was a dreary, grimy building in Shaftesbury Avenue, up one flight of stairs. Patrick Butler observed that the office could contain only two very small rooms of which this was the outer.
Butler had already prepared his plan of attack. But, seeing that the door on his left was very slightly open, he somewhat altered the plan. Assuming his most winning smile, he sauntered across broken linoleum to the bun-haired girl by the window. That door on his left could only lead to the office of Mr. Luke Parsons, alias Smith-Smith.
"Good afternoon," said Butler. "I wonder if I could have a word with Mr. Parsons?"
The girl's attempt at the proper reply was almost pathetic.
"Have you an appointment?"
"No, I'm afraid not." Butler raised his voice. "But I think he'll see me. My name is Renshaw."
From the adjoining office Butler could have sworn he heard the sharp metallic squeak of a swivel-chair. Red buses were grinding and bumbling into each other beneath the windows; he could not be sure. Yet there was no mistaking the quiver of the girl's arm, the quick upturn of her eyes behind the spectacles, as she reached out for the 'phone.
"Don't bother to do that," Butler said quickly, and patted her hand. "I'll just go in and see him."
And he sauntered across and opened the door.
He had hoped, perhaps, for some faintly startling effect. But he got more than he could possibly have anticipated.
In an even dingier room, behind a flat-topped desk facing the door, sat a lean middle-sized man whose old-time police-moustache was too black for his age and too big for his face. His jaw had dropped. His face
was the colour of a tallow candle. He sat there petrified, with one leg twisted round the leg of the swivel chair.
Tlie room was a grey blur, shaken by traffic vibrations against the two windows on the right. Butler allowed a slight pause before he pretended astonishment.
"Great Scott, what's the m
atter?" Then he simulated realization. "Stop a bit! You didn't mistake me for my brother, did you?"
From somewhere in the direction of Mr. Luke Parsons, whose eyes bulged among their wrinkles, issued a sound like, "Brother?"
"Yes. My brother Dick. He died two days ago, poor fellow."
"O-er!" breathed Mr. Parsons, untwisting his leg from the swivel chair.
"I've been living in the States for the past six or seven years." Butler closed the door. "I thought perhaps. . . ."
"You don't look like him; that's fact," said the man with the bald head, still fascinated. "But that voice! And the way you—" He stopped. "Oh, ah; you're his brother. The States, you say?"
"Yes. I took the first plane when I heard of Dick's death."
"Now there's a place," said Mr. Parsons bitterly, "where firms like mine have got rights. How does the Yard look on a private firm here? Like dirt. I've got no more rights than"—his finger stabbed in the general direction of the people in Shaftesbury Avenue—"than any of them."
"That doesn't matter." Butler lowered his voice. "I have a little business, of a strictly private nature. ..."
Even the police-moustache was galvanized to a quiver.
"My dear sir!" murmured Mr. Parsons, with a bad imitation of a bank-manager soothing a rich client. "Sit down! Sit down!" He hastily bustled out with a wooden chair, and sat back again. "If you'd give me the facts, now?"
"It's a little difficult to begin."
"Of course, of course! It often is. There's a lady in it, perhaps?"
"In a way, yes."
"Painful but natural," the lean old bald-head assured him, with a commiserating shake of the head. "And you know our motto, sir: Discretion Guaranteed. Now if you'd look on me as a sympathetic friend, eh?"
"The fact is, I've been in business in the States."
"Ah. May I make so bold as to ask the nature of it?"
Butler played a leading card.
"The same business Dick organized here," he replied, fixing his eyes on his companion's. "But I think our 'cloak' is better established."
For a moment he thought he had gone too far.
Mr. Parsons's face was again the colour of a tallow candle, while the swivel-chair squeaked and cracked. In this greyish room (electricity and heat again off) it was so cold that each could see the steam of his own breath.
And Patrick Butler, for the first time, began to feel he had stepped across into an eerie borderland from which he would not soon emerge. What was terrifying old walrus-moustache? A suggestion of wholesale poisoning—that might well do it, yes. But Mr. Parsons had blenched only when he heard mention of the organization's 'cloak.' What cloak, in sanity's name?
"If you'll excuse me," said Mr. Parsons in the genteelest of voices, "I don't want nothing to do with it."
"Look here," Butler said sharply, "I don't think you understand me."
"No?"
"No. I don't want to involve you in my affairs." Then he laughed. "You may remember, some time ago, that my brother had a little trouble with his wife?"
The bulbous eyes were wary. "Did he?"
"Naturally, Dick got a couple of brisk lads to—excuse me!—operate on one of your men. I want to know where I can find those two, and take them back to the States with me. That's all I want."
"Sorry. Dunno anything about it."
"If," Butler said suddenly, and made a feint of reaching for identification papers in his inside pocket, "if you doubt I'm Bob Renshaw. . .."
"No, no, no! If you were dark instead of fair, I'd think I was seeing his ghost."
"We make pretty fair profits in my business." Taking out his notecase, Butler laid a hundred-pound note on the desk.
"I dunno what you're talking about, so help me!"
Butler laid another hundred-pound note on the desk. Despite the cold room his companion was sweating.
"I might," a low hoarse voice admitted, "give you an address where you might find a certain two people. No names in this office. Not ever! And I don't even say you would find 'em. Only you might."
"If you're playing a trick, of course. . . ."
"My God, Mr. Renshaw, would I dare to play a trick?"
Butler pushed the notes across the desk. Tearing half a sheet off a memorandum pad, Mr. Parsons printed an address in block capitals, folded the sheet, and shoved it into his companion's hand. Butler put the slip of paper in his pocket, and stood up.
"Tell me, Mr. Parsons," he said, "why do you dislike our business so much?"
And suddenly Butler had a vision of Luke Parsons, the shabby suburbanite, with his squeezed semi-detached house and his bit of garden.
"If my wife ever saw...." he blurted out.
"Saw what?"
"Ah, I was wool-gathering!" murmured Mr. Parsons, with a ghastly heartiness. "Wool-gathering, that's what I was!"
"You understand, I think, that our little transaction remains confidential?"
"Oh, naturally, sir! You may trust me to the hilt!" breathed Discretion Guaranteed; and reached for the telephone as soon as the door had closed behind his client.
Patrick Butler noticed nothing of this. Hurrying downstairs, he did not open the slip of paper until he had partly emerged from the doorway into crowded Shaftesbury Avenue. Then he stared at the address for so long that grim-faced pedestrians jostled him back into the doorway.
The mist and soot-smell of London was in his lungs, but a colder chill lay at his heart. From his inside pocket he took out the envelope on which Lucia Renshaw had written the address at which he must meet her at eight o'clock tonight. Both addresses were the same: 136 Dean Street, Soho.
"Taxi!" he bellowed, without much hope of getting one. "Taxi!"
To describe his state of mind, during the next few hours, would be merely to sum up with his repeated word, "Nonsense!" Lucia Renshaw could not be mixed up in this business, whatever it was. He had made his decision; he simply knew. And so Butler went home, fighting shadows.
In his little library, at tea-time, Mrs. Pastemack had kindled a great coal fire under the Adam mantelpiece. Facing the fire stood two easy chairs; and beside one of them was his old dictaphone.
It was coincidence, pure coincidence, that Lucia had given him that same address!
Patrick Butler sat down, and fitted a new wax cyhnder to the revolving mechanism. Lounging back in the chair after he had turned on the starting-switch, he watched the cylinder revolve noiselessly before— with a sharp plop—he pressed the button under the speaking-tube.
Then he spoke to it in a fierce and challenging voice.
"Notes," he said, "for the defence of Lucia Renshaw."
The cylinder continued to spin, while he scowled.
"What in hell—no; strike out the 'in hell'—is the 'cloak' for this Murder Club? Aside from murder, what's their racket? It is, obviously, a new one. It cannot be drugs, or white slavery, or anything so dull and stale. Because: not only did it upset the experienced Luke Parsons, but he knew it would shock his wife beyond words. Why?"
Butler released the speaking-button, but plopped it down again savagely:
"Why, at lunch-time, did Lucia Renshaw say: 'Dick chose all my clothes'?"
Again a silence. Then, with more fury:
"Lucia Renshaw, from the first, showed a fondness amounting to passion for—for P.B." (This would have to be taken down by a secretary; he couldn't say 'for myself; he squirmed even as it was.)
"Was this," he went on, "because P.B. bears a strong resemblance, in voice and general appearance, to L.R.'s late husband, Dick Renshaw? Has she unconsciously transferred her affections to another man who looks like him?"
This, Butler remained clear-headed enough to see, was the crux of it all as far as he was concerned. This was why he raged.
He had fallen for Lucia Renshaw, he told himself, past all doubt or hope. He could see her image from last night: in the negligee, stretching out her hands to him. And the image was so vivid that it hurt him. But he was not going to be anybody's substitute
or anybody's rival, even a dead man's! He was going to be. . . .
"Tea, sir?" interrupted the voice of Mrs. Pastemack, accompanied by a rattle as she wheeled in the tea-wagon.
"Oh, to blazes with the tea!"
"Very good, sir."
"Mrs. Pasternack, she is not guilty."
"No, sir."
"Thank you, Mrs. Pastemack. And I am never wrong."
He was in this same mood when he set out on foot, at a quarter past seven, to keep his rendezvous with Lucia.
The mist had thinned a httle, though it was still bitter cold, as Butler circled Piccadilly Circus and again went towards Shaftesbury Avenue. At the London Pavilion he saw a depressing sight.
At each side of the theatre doors, and then bent back along the side of the building, stretched an endless three-abreast queue of those waiting to get into the cinema. They did not speak. They did not move. They waited patiently, dull-eyed in the aching cold, for the hour or hours before they could scramble inside for some escape—any kind of escape 1—from grey life.
Butler, who would not have joined any kind of queue if his hfe depended on it, eyed them as he passed. But why shouldn't they wait there? What else had they to do? They couldn't entertain at home, because they had no food or drink to offer guests; they couldn't be entertained for the same reason. Besides, the question of transportation....
"Transportation!" he exclaimed aloud.
Into his mind had come an idea which might (just possibly might) smash the whole case against Lucia Renshaw.
Striding blindly along the street, he examined this idea until, in the upper and darker region, he turned left into Dean Street.
Dean Street, narrow and slatternly, was partly lighted behind shutters and a few half-drawn blinds. Though a part of the so-called 'Wicked Square Mile,' there was little noise except murmurings from a pub and the sound of a consumptive hand-organ. The wheezy music rose with a rattle like strings.
"She was a poor little dicky-bird. Tweet, tweet, tweet,' said she. . . ."
A number of pavement-nymphs, uglier than Butler had ever seen them, were ranged at one crossing like fielders in a cricket-match. Beyond them, two tall Negroes talked quietly together. He saw nobody else. The grinding of the hand-organ dwindled to a faint tinkle as he strode on.
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