No one else who mattered came into the shop. The few customers were met at the doorway and all but hustled out by the junior assistant before he rushed back to rejoin the seance round the table under the bright lights, where the little glasses were busy and the talk was conducted in reverent murmurs.
Macfall himself was almost carried away by the sense of drama which is always present when great deals are in progress but when, on the stroke of twelve, a car pulled up on the kerb and a man sprang out and strode into the shop, he was prepared for him.
The newcomer was a large and powerful person with the sloping shoulders of a prize-fighter but there was nothing hostile in his manner when he walked up to Macfall and made his request. His name was Dr. Roup, he said, and was his salver waiting for him? The Detective-Constable produced it and his eyes were sharp and his muscles ready, but there was no sudden movement, no stealthy dive for a weapon. Dr. Roup took the silver dish in both hands, read the inscription with apparent satisfaction and inquired what he owed. While the police officer wrapped the parcel he stood with both fists on the counter fidgeting with his feet like any other man in a hurry. Macfall had parted with the parcel and given the man his change with a growing sense of anticlimax before a sudden horrified cry came from the inner room.
“A doctor! Get a doctor!”
As Mr. Mevagissy came scuttling out with what hair he possessed standing on end, the man with the salver under his arm turned in the doorway.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded without any great enthusiasm.
“I don’t know!” Mevagissy was ringing his hands. “He’s foaming. It’s horrible.” And then, as he recognized the customer, but forgot, in his anguish, all he knew about him, “Oh, Doctor, it’s you! Thank God for that. In here, sir. Quickly.”
Reluctantly it seemed, the customer came back into the shop, set down his parcel and went into the smaller room. Macfall followed promptly.
The distinguished visitor lay on the floor, his face congested and his eyes tightly closed.
One of Mevagissy’s assistants had undone his collar and the other, with commendable presence of mind, was shoveling the jewels back into the safe.
The doctor’s examination had a professional touch which shook Macfall’s confidence but only for an instant. When the pronouncement came he was ready for it.
“This man is seriously ill. There is one chance in a thousand of saving his life. Help me to get him into my car and ring up St Bede’s Hospital, Extension 3, and warn them we’ll be there in ten minutes.’
Poor Mevagissy was so appalled by the disaster which had overtaken not only his client but his deal, that he might have fallen for the trick completely but the second assistant, who was the one with the brains pointed out in a startled whisper that the Burma ruby, which was the star of the collection, was still clutched in the sick man’s hand. Nothing would open the clenched fingers and the doctor became angry.
“Good heavens, we can’t help that,” he said. “Don’t you understand the man is dying? Look at him. If he’s holding something valuable of yours, come with us. Hurry. That’s the vital thing now!”
Mr. Mevagissy, an old man with the physique of a weakly hen, looked about him wildly and Macfall stepped forward only just able to keep the grin off his face.
“Let me go, sir,” he murmured.
The powerful man who called himself Dr. Roup measured the young man with his eye and found the answer satisfactory. “Very well,” he said. “You’ll do. Now then, raise the patient very carefully by the shoulders, please. Oh, and somebody bring my salver.”
Macfall sighed with deep satisfaction. His moment had come. He picked up the parcel and followed the little procession out of the shop.
At first he had all the luck in the world. He put his remarkable gift to the test and it stood up to it well. He waited until it became clear that wherever the self-styled ‘doctor’ was driving it was not to the hospital, and then he went through the prescribed police drill for such an emergency with perfect confidence and, indeed, success.
He chose a moment when the road was clear, revealed himself as a police officer, challenged the driver to stop, and then, on receiving unsatisfactory if commendably terse replies, went smartly into action.
He overpowered the two men, relieved them of their guns and their loot, saved the car from destruction and drove his prisoners back to his own station in it with all the speed and efficiency of a good gun dog retrieving a couple of birds.
Only his ineffable smugness prevented several startled officers there from telling him that it was a very creditable performance.
The blow fell on the following morning when he was summoned to the Divisional Detective Chief Inspector’s private office. He could hardly walk there he was so pleased with himself and he went stumbling in, lowered his eyes modestly and waited for the bouquet.
A silence which had something of the chill of the grave about it went on so long that it became embarrassing. Macfall looked up and, for the first time, the wraith of a doubt crept unwillingly into his mind.
The D.D.C.I. possessed many of the attributes of an elderly schoolmaster; he never blustered but there was acid in the man. At the moment he was not looking at Macfall but was sitting with his head down, his lazy, heavy-lidded glance fixed on the blotter on which he was making idle drawings.
After a little he began to speak in the dry, precise voice his subordinates knew so well and imitated so accurately.
“Ah, Macfall,” said he with the hint of the Dublin accent which only appeared when he was deeply moved. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of a gentleman by the name of Elroy Muspratt? Don’t tell me. I can see by the expression on your face—which I’m not even looking at—that the name is Greek to you. Let me tell you about the man. In the first place, he’s most intelligent, the most impudent and the most dangerous jewel thief in the continent of Europe; and in the second, he’s the man for whom the whole of the Criminal Investigation Department has had its eyes skinned ever since they learned that there was a chance he was coming to this country.” Macfall stood looking at his chief blankly and the dry voice continued without pause.
“Unfortunately, the agents abroad lost sight of the fellow and, although all the usual precautions were taken, and the man was known to be audacious, somehow nobody guessed he’d have the calm effrontery to impersonate a famous Indian nobleman and come over with a retinue.”
For the first time he raised his eyes which were as bleak as wet paving stones to survey the Detective-Constable.
“The Superintendent in charge at the central office did all he could,” he went on. “He arranged that every suspicious item however trivial which was reported by a jeweler should be passed to his desk. He got a great many and his men got a lot of useless work but the one item which would have paid for his attention didn’t come in, and so—what do you think happened?”
He leaned forward and pulled a package of blue slips towards him. “Eighteen of them,” he continued calmly. “Eighteen jeweler’s shops in Greater London robbed of the finest stones in their safes. Each crime happened precisely at noon and each was worked in exactly the same way. Muspratt was still masquerading as the prince when he left the country by private plane at five minutes before one yesterday afternoon. Most of his ‘suite’ accompanied him. The flying Squad is looking for the rest now.”
He settled back in his chair and regarded the man in front of him steadily.“A week,” he said distinctly. “The police might have had a full week in which to circularize the jewellers—using the normal ‘missing articles list’, which is sent to them regularly—asking for details of any medical man who had left a piece of plate to be engraved or altered. It really would not have taken anybody long to notice that there was an unusual number of them who were going to collect the same day at the same hour.”
“But why?” The startled question escaped Macfall involuntarily. “Why all at the same time?”
The D.D.C.l.’s expression was pain
ed. “Because it was a good simple idea,” he said sadly, “and once it had been done in any place in the world which is served by a newspaper everybody who owned a jeweler’s shop would be on the lookout for it.”
There was a long pause and when the D.D.C.I. spoke again he sounded depressed.
“Macfall,” he said. “You’d go further in the uniformed branch, my lad. We don’t really need your gifts in this department. It’s that parlour trick of yours, you know—I should be very careful of it if I were you. It takes the blood from your head, I shouldn’t wonder.”
The Border-Line Case
It was so hot in London that night that we slept with the wide skylight in our city studio open and let the soot-blacks fall in on us willingly, so long as they brought with them a single stirring breath to move the stifling air. Heat hung on the dark horizons and beneath our particular bowl of sky the city fidgeted, breathless and uncomfortable.
The early editions of the evening papers carried the story of the murder. I read it when they came along about three o’clock on the following afternoon. My mind took in the details lazily, for my eyelids were sticky and the printed words seemed remote and unrelated to reality.
It was a straightforward little incident, or so I thought it, and when I had read the guarded half-column I threw the paper over to Albert Campion, who had drifted in to lunch and stayed to sit quietly in a corner, blinking behind his spectacles, existing merely, in the sweltering day.
The newspapers called the murder the ‘Coal Court Shooting Case’, and the facts were simple.
At one o’clock in the morning, when Vacation Street, N.E., had been a deserted lane of odoriferous heat, a policeman on the beat had seen a man stumble and fall to the pavement. The intense discomfort of the night being uppermost in his mind, he had not unnaturally diagnosed a case of ordinary collapse and, after loosening the stranger’s collar, had summoned the ambulance. When the authorities arrived, however, the man was pronounced to be dead and the body was taken to the mortuary, where it was discovered that death had been due to a bullet wound neatly placed between the shoulder-blades. The bullet had made a small blue hole and, after perforating the left lung, had furrowed the heart itself, finally coming to rest in the body structure of the chest.
Since this was so, and given the fact that the police constable had heard no untoward sound, it had been reasonable to believe that the shot had been fired at some little distance from a gun with a silencer.
Mr. Campion was only politely interested. The afternoon certainly was hot and the story, as it then appeared, was hardly original or exciting. He sat on the floor reading it patiently, his long thin legs stretched out in front of him.
“Someone died at any rate,” he remarked at last and added after a pause: “Poor chap! Out of the frying-pan… Dear me, I suppose it’s the locality which predisposes one to think of that. Ever seen Vacation Street, Margery?”
I did not answer him. I was thinking how odd it was that a general irritant like the heat should make the dozens of situations arising all round one in the great city seem suddenly almost personal. I found I was desperately sorry for the man who had been shot, whoever he was.
It was Stanislaus Oates who told us the real story behind the half-column in the evening paper. He came in just after four, looking for Campion. He was a Detective-Inspector in those days and had just begun to develop the habit of chatting over his problems with the pale young man in the horn-rimmed spectacles. Theirs was an odd relationship. It was certainly not a case of the clever amateur and the humble policeman: rather the irritable and pugnacious policeman taking it out on the inoffensive, friendly representative of the general public.
On this occasion Oates was rattled.
“It’s a case right down your street,” he said briefly to Campion as he sat down. “Seems to be impossible, for one thing.”
He explained after a while, having salved his conscience by pointing out that he had no business to discuss the case and excusing himself most illogically on grounds of the heat.
“It’s ‘low-class’ crime,” he went on briskly. “Practically gang-shooting. And probably quite uninteresting to all of you who like romance in your crimes. However, it’s got me right down on two counts: the first because the man who shot the fellow who died couldn’t possibly have done so, and second because I was wrong about the girl. They’re so true to type, these girls, that you can’t even rely on the proverbial exception.”
He sighed as if the discovery had really grieved him. We heard the story of Josephine as we sat round in the paralysingly hot studio and, although I never saw the girl then or afterwards, I shall not forget the scene; the three of us listening, breathing rather heavily, while the Inspector talked.
She had been Donovan’s girl, so Oates said, and he painted a picture of her for us: slender and flat-chested, with black hair and eyes like a Russian madonna’s in a transparent face. She wore blouses, he said, with lace on them and gold ornaments, little chains and crosses and frail brooches whose security was reinforced by gilt safety-pins. She was only twenty, Oates said, and added enigmatically that he would have betted on her, but that it served him right and showed him there was no fool like an old one.
He went on to talk about Donovan, who, it seemed, was thirty-five and had spent ten years of his life in gaol. The Inspector did not seem to think any the less of him for that. The fact seemed to put the man in a definite category in his mind and that was all.
“Robbery with violence and the R.O. boys,” he said with a wave of his hand and smiled contentedly as though he had made everything clear. “She was sixteen when he found her and he’s given her hell ever since.”
While he still held our interest he mentioned Johnny Gilchick. Johnny Gilchick was the man who was dead.
Oates, who was never more sentimental than was strictly reasonable in the circumstances, let himself go about Josephine and Johnny Gilchick. It was love, he said—love, sudden, painful and ludicrous; and he admitted that he liked to see it.
“I had an aunt once who used to talk about the Real Thing,” he explained, “and embarrassingly silly the old lady sounded, but after seeing those two youngsters meet and flame and go on until they were a single fiery entity—youngsters who were pretty ordinary tawdry material without it—I find myself sympathizing with her if not condoning the phrase.”
He hesitated and his smooth grey face cracked into a depreciating smile.
“Well, we were both wrong, anyway,” he murmured, “my aunt and I. Josephine let her Johnny down just as you’d expect her to and after he had got what was coming to him and was lying in the mortuary he was born to lie in she upped and perjured her immortal soul to swear his murderer an alibi. Not that her testimony is of much value as evidence. That’s beside the point. The fact remains that she’s certainly done her best. You may think me sentimental, but it depresses me. I thought that girl was genuine and my judgment was out.”
Mr. Campion stirred.
“Could we have the details?” he asked politely. “We’ve only seen the evening paper. It wasn’t very helpful.”
Oates glared at him balefully. “Frankly, the facts are exasperating,” he said. “There’s a little catch in them somewhere. It must be something so simple that I missed it altogether. That’s really why I’ve come to look for you. I thought you might care to come along and take a glance at the place. What about it?”
There was no general movement. It was too hot to stir. Finally the Inspector took up a piece of chalk and sketched a rough diagram on the bare boards of the model’s throne.
“This is Vacation Street,” he said, edging the chalk along a crack. “It’s the best part of a mile long. Up this end, here by the chair, it’s nearly all wholesale houses. This sandbin I’m sketching in now marks the boundary of two police divisions. Well, here, ten yards to the left, is the entrance to Coal Court, which is a cul-de-sac composed of two blank backs of warehouse buildings and a café at the far end. The café is open all nigh
t. It serves the printers from the two big presses farther down the road. That’s its legitimate trade. But it is also a sort of unofficial headquarters for Donovan’s mob. Josephine sits at the desk downstairs and keeps an eye on the door. God knows what hours she keeps. She always seems to be there.”
He paused and there came into my mind a recollection of the breathless night through which we had all passed, and I could imagine the girl sitting there in the stuffy shop with her thin chest and her great black eyes.
The Inspector was still speaking.
“Now,” he said, “there’s an upstairs room in the café. It’s on the second floor. That’s where our friend Donovan spent most of his evening. I expect he had a good few friends with him and we shall locate them all in time.”
He bent over the diagram.
“Johnny Gilchick died here,” he said, drawing a circle about a foot beyond the square which indicated the sandbin. “Although the bobby was right down the road, he saw him pause under the lamp post, stagger and fall. He called the Constable from the other division and they got the ambulance. All that is plain sailing. There’s just one difficulty. Where was Donovan when he fired the shot? There were two policemen in the street at the time, remember. At the moment of the actual shooting one of them, the Never Street man, was making a round of a warehouse yard, but the other, the Phyllis Court chap, was there on the spot, not forty yards away, and it was he who actually saw Johnny Gilchick fall, although he heard no shot. Now I tell you, Campion, there’s not an ounce of cover in the whole of that street. How did Donovan get out of the café, where did he stand to shoot Johnny neatly through the back, and how did he get back again without being seen? The side walls of the cul-de-sac are solid concrete backs of warehouses, there is no way round from the back of the cafe, nor could he possibly have gone over the roofs. The warehouses tower over the café like liners over a tug. Had he come out down the road one or other of the bobbies must have been certain to have seen him. How did he do it?”
The Allingham Case-Book Page 16