“Rubbering round,” said his companion. “Giving us the woiks,” he added sorrowfully.
“And now I carry on,” said Pirberry. “Who are you working with, Beetler?”
“Going straight, straight I am,” said Ear-rings. “Merchant navy. Prove it to you if I had my papers here.”
“No doubt. And what’s all this about muddy beer? And who carried a bloke out of a house on the river near Chiswick? Carried him out, what’s more, in an empty cistern? Who croaked him? Come on; talk.”
“He wasn’t croaked, governor, was he? We never intended that! I never touched him. That was the skipper, I reckon. Must have been. Said he was canned, and had got to be tooken home. That’s all I know. Straight it is, Mr. Pirberry!”
“What about you, Kidnapper?” asked Pirberry pleasantly. The smaller man jerked his head, a gesture implying, it seemed, resignation combined with a kind of sad self-justification.
“What he says goes,” he replied. “We fetch up at the joint and get our orders. Well, we carry ’em out. Ain’t that what orders is for? Then we beat it, like we been told. Anything wrong about that?”
“You’ll see,” replied Pirberry. “Well, come on. I can’t wait here all day. Where do I find this skipper?”
“Search me,” said Ear-rings, curtly. “All we knows is he gets our name and address from Plug Williams—you know Plug—keeps a little sports shop in Mild Close, on the corner—”
“I know Plug. All right, buddies. Off you go, and the less said the better. Understand?”
“Sure,” they said; and slouched out. Pirberry scratched his head.
“Don’t know whether I’m doing the best thing in letting them go like that, but there’s nothing on which we can hold them. You can’t jug a man for leaving a public house before he’s finished his drink. Of course, their finger-prints are on that cistern, as I daresay you gathered, ma’am. But I rushed ’em as far as I think I’d better, about that, at any rate for a bit. Now there’s Plug Williams to see. I wonder how far these boys will tip him off before I get there?”
“Is the name Plug derived from tobacco habits or from his boxing?” Mrs. Bradley enquired.
“A bit of both, I believe, ma’am. But somehow I don’t believe we’ve got hold of the right stick—let alone the right end of it. I don’t see those boys as murderers. There’s something behind their statement.”
“It isn’t like you to be pessimistic, Mr. Pirberry,” said Mrs. Bradley, studying him thoughtfully. “Never mind! Let’s go and see Plug.”
Mrs. Bradley grinned reminiscently.
“You will remember our abortive visit?” she observed.
“Very well, ma’am. But I never knew what you were up to. I never knew you had a thought beyond Mr. Harben’s disappearance. You shouldn’t have kept me in the dark, ma’am, about the old man’s death.”
“And yet, Inspector, what could I do? Mr. Harben had confided in me—and there was, after all, no body.”
Pirberry looked at her, and shook his head.
“Sophistry?” said Mrs. Bradley, grinning. “Well, perhaps it is. But I got what I wanted out of Plug.”
“You did, ma’am. More than I managed to do!”
“You were working in the dark, in a sense. It was hardly fair. But now we have found the corpse …”
“Not the corpse. A corpse, ma’am, until we get it identified for certain.”
“Thank you. Now that we have found an unaccountable, interesting, significant, magnificently dressing-gowned corpse in a box which would fit the marks left on the lawn of the house by the river …”
Pirberry grinned, and gave in.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Welshman
Plug Williams retained the Glamorgan cadence of his youth. He was a short, broad, round-headed, fiery little man with the manners of a local preacher and the morals (according to Pirberry) of a pimp. For a short time he had been a merchant seaman, and bore proudly upon his chest the badge called the Prince of Wales’ feathers. In place of the usual motto, the tattooist had added “Me too,” with all the appropriate emphasis of a heavy Gothic script.
Pirberry and Mrs. Bradley found Plug at home in the room behind his shop. He was playing draughts with a friend. The shop, which was rather optimistically labelled The Sports Store, offered a couple of greenheart fishing rods, some haversacks of an inexpensive kind, one pair of football boots, sets of darts, cheap but innocuous literature, various embrocations and liniments in bottles, a fly-whisk, studs for football boots, a chest-developer, two sets of boxing gloves, a bottle of cough sweets, boot laces, jock straps, a cricket belt with a snake buckle, several technical works all priced at one and sixpence and dealing with the various forms of sport, a landing net, a table-tennis set in a box, dominoes, dice, half a dozen electric torches, two lanyards, some boxes of corn-cure and a tin of air-gun pellets.
Finding no one in the shop, Pirberry banged on the counter, and the proprietor came out of the back room like a crab turned dancing master.
“No neet to make a noise,” he observed austerely.
Pirberry disclosed his identity. Mrs. Bradley, who had remained in the background, found herself subjected to the scrutiny, swift, but, she felt, complete, of a pair of small, suspicious, but not unfriendly eyes.
“Plug Williams?” asked Pirberry.
“Indeed yes.”
“Well, Mr. Williams, we’ve been sent to you by a couple of chaps named Beetler Hankin and Kidnapper Brent, sailors. Know them?”
“Indeed, yes. Why not, then?”
“No ‘why not’ about it. What about muddy beer?”
The Welshman stared at him in perplexity.
“You are choking, isn’t it?” he said.
“I don’t think so,” said Pirberry, putting a finger to his collar.
“Joking,” murmured Mrs. Bradley’s voice behind him.
“Oh, ah, yes. No,” he added, addressing Williams again. “No, I’m not joking. Let’s try again, Mr. Williams. You were good enough, some time ago, to put a ship’s captain on to Hankin and Brent. When would that have been?”
Plug appeared to search his memory. Apparently it failed him. He shook his round head, pursed up his little fat lips, and then shook his head once more.
“Come on!” said Pirberry impatiently. “You know me, for all you pretended you didn’t. I haven’t got all day to muck about. What’s St. Giles’-in-the-Fields got to do with it?”
“Sir,” said Mr. Williams, with great dignity “to assist the police I am willing always, isn’t it? Indeed to God yes,” he added, reassuring himself on this point. “But innocent I am of all complicity in crime.”
“Who’s talking about crime?” demanded Pirberry. Plug picked up an open box of darts from the counter, looked inside it, clicked his tongue, turned to the shelf behind him, took up a small tin of metal polish and a blackened cloth, and set to work to clean off a speck of rust on one of the darts.
“Me, that is. Thorough, so I am,” he observed. These irritating tactics had their effect on Pirberry. He turned and marched out of the shop, saying over his shoulder:
“You’re playing a mug’s game, Plug. There’s more behind this than you might think.”
“And what more?” Williams enquired.
“Murder,” said Pirberry briefly; and walked out.
“Now, wouldn’t you call that an impatient, unreasonable man?” said Williams, subjecting the dart to one last scrutiny before he replaced it in the box. He screwed the top on the tin of metal polish, put it back in its place, gave the cloth a slight flick, laid it down, and then looked at Mrs. Bradley as though surprised to see her standing there.
“Wass you not with the policeman bach?” he enquired.
“Does it look like it?” Mrs. Bradley asked. “I want to see your gymnasium,” she added, smiling. The smile appeared to fascinate Mr. Williams.
“What is that you are saying?” he enquired.
“Your gymnasium,” repeated Mrs. Bradley. “You have
a gymnasium, haven’t you? They told me at the Baths they thought you had.”
She had heard a disciplined scuffling overhead when first she had entered the shop.
“Come up you,” said Mr. Williams, much more cordially. “Tuition in boxing, was it, for a nephew or son, perhaps?”
“Grandson,” said Mrs. Bradley. “His grandfather is nervous, but I think a boy needs a manly sport.”
She followed the proprietor through a door at the back, and found in the room a sallow-faced man in a suit of overalls seated patiently in front of a draught-board.
“Sorry I am, Sunny Boy,” said Mr. Williams. “But business I have, as you see.”
The sallow man waved aside the apology, and, picking up one of the pieces which he had captured during the game, attempted to balance it on the end of one finger. Mr. Williams led the way upstairs.
“In the game I was, yes, indeed, until too old I am,” he explained, as he opened a baize-covered door at the top. “Go in first, I will, if you please, to see that the boys are dressed for a woman to see. Not often ladies we have.”
He closed the door behind himself, but appeared in less than five seconds.
“All right they are. Just resting. In their gowns.”
The resting youths were obviously of Jewish extraction. Clad in faded dressing-gowns, presumably the property of Williams, since each was embroidered on the back with his name in full, they were leaning on the parallel bars at the side of the room, chewing gum and exchanging information about greyhounds.
The room was a very large one. A twenty-foot space marked off with thick white lines was the boxing ring, and, besides this and the parallel bars, the room contained a punching ball on a stand clamped down to the floor, a table for massage and another for billiards.
“All over my two rooms below it goes, and over my place at the back,” explained Williams, going to one of the windows and looking out. “Your grandson would be how old? Sixteen, then?”
“Seventeen, and weighs just over ten stone.”
“Ah, ten stone is it? Nice that is. Come here, Bennie bach, and show me that left hook. Slow you are with it, slow; and that is the death of the game, and a dirty death, wasn’t it, at that?”
One of the youths came forward, dropping his dressing-gown on the floor. He sparred with Williams for a minute or two, then Williams thrust him away and told him to dress.
“You would like to pay twelve and six a lesson?” he enquired of Mrs. Bradley. She shook her head.
“How much do these boys pay?” she pertinently enquired.
“Well, now, indeed, they’ll be professionals, look you,” said Williams earnestly. “I shall get a nice picking off them when I get them into the game. I’ll manage for them, see? And get a percentage, see? My living they are, these boys. Chews they are, you see. They’ll get on to the money, Chews will.”
“I can’t pay more than seven and sixpence a lesson,” said Mrs. Bradley firmly. The Welshman shook his head.
“I don’t want private pupils, look you,” he pointed out. “A great waste of my time it is. Go, you, and see what your old man have to say.”
Scarcely had they got back into the shop when Pirberry reentered it from the street.
“What was the name of the skipper?” he demanded.
“Toms, Inspector bach,” replied the Welshman, without a second’s thought. “And the boys are taking the rap for him, so they are. Good boys, well-paid, they are.”
“Where does he live?”
“I wouldn’t know, would I? Be a reasonable man, now.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“On a ship, the Countersign, of London. He was the captain, and saved my life when I was poisoned with some bad shell-fish in Naples one time. All had given me up, but not the skipper. A fine fellow he was, and when he comes here looking for two good fellows for a bit of work he has for them to do, why, look you, I recommended to him those boys. Good boys they are, and strong boys. Yes, indeed. And not afraid to take the rap for anyone, because they know they can clear themselves. See? They are very well satisfied, too, with what he gives them. Very well satisfied they are.”
“They’ll be a lot less satisfied by the time I’ve done with them,” said Pirberry. “And you can tell them so when you see them. They’ll be lucky if they don’t get fourteen years for being accessories, you know.”
“Dear, dear!” said Williams, nodding his head. “Yes, indeed! Misguided they are, but good-hearted. They are like the police, isn’t it? They would help anyone in trouble.”
He picked up a second dart from the open box upon the counter, scrutinized its metal shaft, and reached for his blackened cloth and his little tin of polish, avoiding Pirberry’s eye, but conveying to an unprejudiced observer the impression of an industrious, virtuous man.
Pirberry snorted.
“Please yourself, Plug,” he observed. “I wonder whether you’ve met a Mr. Harben, lives round these parts every winter?”
“David Harben?” said Williams, interested. “And what nicer boy could you wish to meet than David?”
“The trouble is, it’s no use wishing to meet him,” said Pirberry sourly. “Somebody’s done for Harben, and somebody’s going to swing.”
“Well, well,” said Williams, philosophically.
“And there’s a very great rascal,” said Pirberry, when Mrs. Bradley rejoined him in Cambridge Circus just outside the Palace Theatre. “What did you stay for, ma’am?”
“Nothing very much,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I didn’t particularly want him to connect us, so I remained to discuss with him his terms for teaching my grandson to box. I suppose you can find me a young policeman or someone?”
“Yes, there’s a Flying Squad fellow you can have—somebody Plug won’t know. No use sending him one of the fellows from the Charing Cross Road or Gray’s Inn Road stations. He’s certain to know all of those. Why, what’s the idea?”
“Just to leave with Mr. Williams a picker-up of unconsidered trifles.”
“And not a bad idea, either. I could do with a line on Plug myself, and that’s much the best way to set about it. A brainy notion, ma’am, if I may say so.”
“I’ve beaten Plug down to nine and sixpence,” said Mrs. Bradley complacently. “He doesn’t want pupils, he tells me. I don’t know whether the boy we send will learn much, except how to box.”
“He’ll learn that all right,” said Pirberry. “Another thing about Plug; he’s a judo expert. Lots of people don’t know that, but a fellow I had a tussle with once, who threw me over a backyard fence in Pimlico, told me afterwards, when we’d pinched him—it took four of us, I might tell you—that he learned his stuff from Plug Williams.”
“That’s interesting,” said Mrs. Bradley slowly. “I saw the gymnasium, of course.” She described it.
Pirberry nodded.
“Sounds above-board, all right, but we happen to know he isn’t. What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to find Captain Toms.”
“Don’t bother, ma’am. That’s our job. We’ve got the machinery for it. Now we’ve learnt the name of that ship we shall be all right.”
“I doubt it,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Do you know the kind of ship she is?”
“No, but she’ll be registered at Lloyds. It only means looking up her record.”
“Well, good luck,” said Mrs. Bradley, “but I think I’d like to dabble, just the same.”
“Suit yourself, ma’am,” said Pirberry, knowing that she would do this in any case.
She did not, however, attempt to emulate the tactics of the police, but sat down and collected in a methodical, logical manner such evidence as she had garnered.
Broadly observed, it smelt of the sea. There was the parrot, often a link with sailors. There was the disappearance of a man known to be an amateur yachtsman. There were the seafaring men Hankin and Brent who had been employed by the (so far) mysterious and unreal Captain Toms. There was the ex-pugilist, ex-sailor Williams, w
ho seemed to be the connecting link between the captain and the merchant seamen. Lastly, there was the ship which had been mentioned—the Countersign. Was it her imagination, or was there something unusual about this name? Ships’ names seemed inevitable, somehow. The ships of literature and history—the Golden Hind, Saucy Hispaniola, Mayflower, Speedwell, Harry Grace à Dieu, Moonraker, Bounty, Santa Maria, Argo, Victory—these all had right-sounding names. Countersign should be in the same tradition, but it was not. It did not sound like a ship. But at that she had to leave it.
A point of real interest soon emerged, however. The Countersign was not in Lloyds’ lists. Pirberry telephoned her a week later, and reported the total failure of the police, or of Lloyds’ agents in London to account for any ship called Countersign.
“Dear, dear!” said Mrs. Bradley, over the wire. “And what are you going to do now?”
“Going to try and bounce something more out of Williams. We shan’t do it, ma’am,” was his weak and dispirited reply. “Not until Mr. Harben’s body turns up.”
“Come, come!” said Mrs. Bradley. “Don’t despair!”
“So you never believed for a minute that Mr. Harben was dead, ma’am?” Pirberry observed.
“Well, I liked him, you know,” said Mrs. Bradley, “and one hates to think that one’s friends have been murdered, don’t you think?”
Pirberry eyed her warily, but she remained perfectly grave.
“It was about then that I had another interview with Sir Beresford at the Yard,” he said, changing the subject. “His view was that Mr. Harben had disappeared for reasons known only to himself, and had taken the lady with him.”
“It was a reasonable surmise,” Mrs. Bradley admitted. “In fact, if we do not accept Mr. Harben’s own story of his disappearance, we ourselves might agree with Sir Beresford. One more thing I did at about that time. I looked up the local directory. The name of the owner of the house was Emmanuel Sandys, so that did not help the enquiry. I checked it with local tradespeople to make quite sure that that was the name on their books.”
“And, of course, it was,” said Pirberry. “And that makes another dead end, ma’am.”
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