The Grell Mystery

by Frank Froest

  A discreet knock at the door heralded the entrance of a messenger, who laid an envelope on the table and silently disappeared.

  ‘Western Union,’ muttered the superintendent. ‘This may be something else from Pinkerton’s, Sir Hilary. Don’t go yet.’ And, tearing open the envelope, he crossed the room and pulled down a code-book. In a little he had deciphered the cable. ‘We’re getting closer,’ he said. ‘Pinkerton’s have got hold of “Billy the Scribe”, who identified the photograph of the dagger with which the murder was committed as one that he believes was in the possession of Henry Goldenburg when he last saw him. That may be fancy or invention, or it may be important. Hello! what is it?’

  It was Green who had interrupted the conference. ‘Lady Eileen Meredith, sir—Machin reports that she left her home at five this morning, walked to Charing Cross Station, bought a copy of the Daily Wire, looked hurriedly through it, and then worked out something on a small notebook. Then she returned home, and came out again in half an hour’s time and went to Waterloo Bridge floating station. There she asked to see one of the detective branch, and they referred her to headquarters at Wapping after nine this morning. Machin says he had no chance to telephone through before. She has not gone to Wapping,’ he added, as he saw the eyes of his chief seek the clock. ‘She went straight back home and has not come out since.’

  A low whistle came from between Foyle’s teeth and his eyes met Thornton’s. ‘She knew the advertisement was to appear in the Daily Wire, and she got up early to warn Grell that we know, in case he should give an address. She did not discover a little paragraph of Mr Green’s invention till after she returned home, and then her curiosity was stirred, and she hoped, by going to Waterloo, to find a subordinate detective whom she might pump. What do you think, Green?’

  ‘I agree with you, sir. She’ll turn up here later, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Sir Hilary Thornton strode to the door, returning the greeting of Wrington, whom he passed as he retired. The river man was evidently pleased with himself. Foyle took a place in front of the fire and waited.

  ‘Had a cold night?’ he queried.

  ‘Been too busy to think about it, sir,’ he chuckled. ‘We discovered that the owners of the barge engaged the man who gave the name of Floyd on the written recommendation of a firm of steamship agents—that, by the way, was forged, for the agents deny all knowledge of the man. He was supposed to have been an American sailor. Once or twice he has been visited on the boat by a couple of men who pulled up in a dinghy hired from Blackfriars. The regular waterman hardly ever caught a glimpse of him—he never showed himself by day. This morning a letter was sent aboard addressed to James Floyd, Esq. I never opened it, thinking perhaps you might prefer to do so. We searched the barge from end to end, and Jones is outside with a bag of different things you might like to see. What I thought most important, however, was this.’

  He dipped his hand in his jacket pocket and, withdrawing a small package wrapped in newspaper, carefully unfolded it. Something fell with a tinkle on Foyle’s desk.

  ‘By the living jingo!’ ejaculated Green. ‘It’s the sheath of the dagger!’

  The superintendent picked up the thing—a small sheath of bright steel with, on the outside, a screw manipulating a catch by which it might be fastened to a belt. He handled it delicately from the ends.

  ‘I believe you’re right,’ he said. ‘Now, what about the letter?’

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  THE motive of the actions taken that day by Eileen Meredith had been accurately diagnosed by Heldon Foyle. She had returned to her home after her visit to the police at Waterloo Bridge in a state of the keenest uncertainty. Not for an instant did she credit the paragraph referring to the dead body. The police had been able to read the cipher message from Grell, and she assumed correctly enough that they had been more successful than herself in obtaining an early glimpse of the advertisement. What, then, had become of her note of warning?

  She was half reclining in a big easy-chair, her arms resting on the broad ledges, her fists tightly clenched. Her train of thought led her to alarming conclusions. If the police had been watching—and that now occurred to her as having been an obvious step—they must not only have seen her note, but they might have secured and questioned the person who brought the advertisement. And if so, might not Robert Grell’s hiding-place have been betrayed? Her heartbeats became unsteady. What if the visit of the detectives down the river had been not to identify a drowned corpse, but a living prisoner? Suppose Grell were already in their hands?

  She jumped to her feet. The watch on her wrist spoke to quarter to eleven. Her reflections had occupied many hours. She was already dressed in a brown walking costume, and she had not even removed her hat since she returned. In answer to her summons a maid appeared with a cup of coffee and a couple of biscuits on a tray. That reminded her that she had not eaten since she had risen. She drank the coffee and ate the biscuits, while waiting for the brougham she had ordered. Within a quarter of an hour she was on her way to Scotland Yard.

  In the circular hall, entered through swing-doors from the wide steps of the main entrance, a uniformed policeman hurried forward to take her card. Through the big windows she could see beneath her the surging life of the Embankment and the smooth traffic of the river. Had the river given up its secret? The constable returned, and she was ushered along a grey and green corridor to Foyle’s room. He had his overcoat on, and his hat and stick lay on the table. He smiled a polite welcome at her, and she strove to read his genial face without success. For her there was something of humiliation in the situation. She, who had taken pains to be offensive on the last occasion that they had met, was now dependent upon his good-nature for the information she wanted.

  ‘What can I do for you, Lady Eileen?’ he asked with grave courtesy.

  She had dropped into a chair and her grey eyes met his, half defiant, half entreating. She answered with quick directness, ‘You can tell me what has happened to Mr Grell.’

  He opened his hands in a gesture of surprised expostulation. ‘My dear young lady! I only wish we knew.’

  Her foot tattooed impatiently on the floor. ‘Please don’t treat me as if I were a child, Mr Foyle. Something has happened since yesterday morning. I demand to know what it is.’

  Foyle was invariably gentle with women, and her insistent dignity rather amused than angered him. ‘Since you demand it,’ he said suavely, laying a scarcely perceptible stress on the word demand, ‘I will tell you. As the result of certain information, observation has been kept on Lady Eileen Meredith. She was followed yesterday to the advertisement offices of the Daily Wire, where she made inquiries respecting a certain cipher advertisement which was to appear in that paper. Failing to obtain what she wanted, she left a note warning someone in the following terms: “The police know the cipher. Be very cautious. R. F. is acting with them.”’

  An angry flush swept across the girl’s pale cheeks. ‘I know you have set your spies about me,’ she said scornfully. ‘I did not come here to ask you that. What—’

  ‘One moment. Let me finish. This morning Lady Eileen rose at an unfashionable hour—about four, to be exact—and went out to obtain a copy of the Daily Wire. Having deciphered the advertisement, and finding that it afforded no direct clue to Grell’s whereabouts, she returned home and there came across a paragraph—which I will confess was inspired in this office—that set her wondering whether, after all, her lover was safe. She went out again—this time to Waterloo Bridge police station—and there made some inquiries—’

  Eileen had got to her feet. She was plainly angry. ‘I don’t want to know how effective your spying on a harmless woman can be.’

  ‘I am glad you admit it is effective,’ he answered quickly. ‘I wanted to bring that home to you. You cannot or will not understand in how perilous a situation you may find yourself if you go on playing with fire. There is no one else who has fuller sympathy with you or greater understanding of your feelings than
I. Therefore I warn you. Do you know that merely on what you have done and are doing I should, were I certain that Grell was guilty, be justified in having you arrested as an accessory after the fact?’ His voice became very grave. ‘If your conduct has not hampered this investigation, Lady Eileen, it has not been for want of effort. Take the warning of a man who wishes you well. For neither your position nor your friends will save you if ever you stand in my way. I shall do my duty, whatever the consequences.’

  She was more impressed by his words and his tone than she would have cared to admit. But except that her face became a shade paler, she gave no indication that the warning touched her. Foyle had picked up his hat and stick.

  ‘You have not found him, then?’ she cried. ‘Can it be doing you any harm to say what has happened?’

  ‘We have not found Grell—yet,’ he answered. ‘We found where he had been hiding, but he got away.’

  A sigh of relief came from between her lips. She scarcely noticed the abruptness with which he ended the interview, and returned his bow almost with cordiality. Foyle only stayed long enough to thrust a few papers into the safe, and then followed her out. Two resounding smacks called his attention to the landing of the private stairs, where Chief Detective-Inspector Green was struggling in the embrace of a stout, matronly woman, while a half-suppressed snigger came from a passing clerk.

  Green, his solemn face crimson, pushed the woman gently away from him towards a girl and a young man who were apparently waiting for her. ‘There, there; that will do. Let us know if everything does all right. Won’t keep you a moment, sir,’ and he disappeared along the corridor.

  When he returned he had recovered something of his usual impassivity. But he could not be oblivious to the twinkle in Foyle’s eyes. ‘Women are the very devil,’ he said as if in answer. ‘There’s no knowing what they’ll do. Now, the young girl there wanted to run away with a man of fifty, who is already a married man. So her mother—the old lady you saw kissing me—brought her up here, evidently under the impression that we can do anything. I took the girl into my room and gave her some good advice, telling her she had much better marry the young man you saw—they had been engaged, and quarrelled—and I told of some cases like her own that had come under my own knowledge. She wept a bit, admitted I was right, and then suddenly flung herself on top of me and started hugging and kissing me. I got her outside, told her mother that the matter was all right, when I’m blessed if she didn’t try it on too. That was just as you came out. You may have noticed that I side-stepped warily round the young man.’

  ‘Be careful, Green. Is she a widow?’ laughed Foyle. And then, more seriously: ‘How far is it to this place? Our man may be out when we get there.’

  ‘Shall we leave it till tonight, sir? It will be more certain then.’

  ‘No, we’ll chance it. Let’s have a look at the letter.’ He fished a note out of his pocket and paused to read it through, carefully replacing it in its envelope as he finished.

  It was the letter that had been addressed to Floyd on the barge Flowery Land. It read:

  ‘DEAR MR. FLOYD,—I have tried to carry out your instructions, but luck has been against me, as I have to be very careful. It has been easy enough to buy the seamen’s discharges that you require, but I have been unable to see Lola since she took the advertisement today, so do not know if she has managed to raise money. I believe I am fairly safe here, and my friends are to be relied upon, though they are much occupied with the gambling and the smoke, so there is not much quietness. If you write, address me as Mackirty, 146 Smike Street, Shadwell.’

  It had needed little penetration to identify the writer of the note as Ivan, and to guess that he had taken refuge in a gambling and opium den. Indeed, this latter fact was soon verified by a telephone appeal to the detective-inspector in charge of the district, who declared that he was only waiting for sufficient proof of the character of the house before making a raid. Foyle had promptly ordered the place to be discreetly surrounded, but that no steps were to be taken until his arrival. He had conceived an admiration for Ivan’s cunning in the matter, for there was no place where a fugitive could be more certain of having the intrusion of strangers more carefully guarded against than a gambling-house.

  He was willing to forego a conviction against the keepers of the place rather than miss an opportunity of securing Ivan. For cautious steps are always necessary in proceeding against such places. It is so easy to transform a game of baccarat, faro, or fantan into an innocent game of bridge or whist with a few innocent spectators, and to hide all gambling instruments between the time the police knock and the time they effect an entry. Then, however positive the officers may be, they have no legal proof, unless one of their number has been previously introduced as a ‘punter,’ and to do that would require time.

  Smike Street at one time had been a street of some pretensions. Even now, in comparison with the neighbourhood in which it was set, it maintained an air of genteel respectability, and its gloomy three-storeyed houses had in many cases no more than one family to a floor. It was, however, one of those back streets of the East End which are never deserted, for its adult inhabitants plied trades which took them abroad at all hours—market porters, street hawkers, factory workers, dock labourers, seamen, all trades jostled here. One or two of the houses bore a sign, ‘Hotel for Men Only.’

  It was at the corner that Foyle and Green were joined by the divisional detective-inspector, and the three swung into the deserted saloon bar of a shabby public-house which afforded a better opportunity for unobtrusive conversation than the street. Leaving the glass of ale he ordered untouched upon the counter, the superintendent rapidly learned all steps that had been taken.

  ‘It’s a corner house on this side,’ said the local man, ‘kept by an old scoundrel of a Chinaman calling himself Li Foo, and a man who was a bit of a bruiser in San Francisco at one time—a chap called Keller. He looks after the faro game in a back room on the first floor, while the chink runs the black smoke upstairs on the stop storey. They’re the bosses, but there’s three under-dogs, and the place is kept going night and day.’

  Foyle grunted. ‘How long have you known this? Couldn’t you have dropped on ’em before?’

  The other made a deprecatory gesture with his hands. ‘They’re cunning. The show had been running three months before we got wind of it. That was about a month ago, and we’ve tried every trick in the bag to get one of our men inside. There’s no chance of rushing the place on a warrant either, because both front and back doors are double, and only one man is allowed to go in at a time. They won’t open to two or more. Before we could get the doors down there’d not be a thing left in the place as evidence.’

  A gleam of temper showed in Foyle’s blue eyes. ‘That’s all very well, Mr Penny. It won’t do to tell me that you’ve known of this place for a month and that it is still carried on. Why didn’t you let a man try single-handed? With the door once open he could force his way in.’

  ‘I couldn’t send a man on a job like that,’ protested the other. ‘Why, you don’t know the place. They’d murder him before we could get at him.’

  He flinched away from Foyle as though afraid his superior would strike him. For the superintendent’s hands were clenched and his eyes were blazing. Yet when he spoke it was with dangerous quietness.

  ‘A man of your experience ought to know by now that it’s his business to take risks. If you’d made up your mind there was no other way of obtaining evidence you should have sent a man in. Never mind that now. Take your orders from Mr Green for the day. Green, I’ll be back in an hour. I’m going into that place. Act according to your own discretion if you think I’m in difficulties.’

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  THE game of faro is one that makes no strenuous demands on the skill of the players. It is chance pure and simple, and therein lies its fascination. While baccarat or chemin-de-fer are almost invariably games to be most in favour when the police raid a gambling-house in the
West End, at the other side of the town it is invariably discovered that faro holds first place in the affections of gamblers. In its simplest form it is merely betting on the turn of each card throughout a pack.

  Although it was broad daylight, the room in which the operations took place was shuttered and had the blinds drawn. A three-light gaselier beat down on a big table in the centre of the room, round three sides of which were ranged a dozen or fifteen men eagerly intent on the operations of the banker. A heavy-jowled man with overhanging black eyebrows, he was seated in a half-circle cut into the centre of one side of the table. In front of him was a bright steel box sufficiently large to contain a pack of cards with the face of the top card discernible at an opening at the top. The cards were pressed upwards in the box by springs, and at the side a narrow opening allowed the operator to push the cards out one at a time, thus disclosing the faces of those underneath and deciding the bets. On each side of the box were the discarded winning and losing cards, and on the dealer’s left a tray which served the purpose of a till in receiving or paying out money. A cloth with painted representations of the thirteen cards of a suit was pinned to the table nearest to the players, and they placed stakes on the cards they fancied would next be disclosed. Twice the box would click out cards amid a dead silence. Those who had staked out money on the first card disclosed won, those who had staked on the second lost.

  There was often dead silence while the turn was being made, save for the click of a marker shown on the wall and guarded by a thick-set little man with red hair, fierce eyes, and an enormous chest. But directly afterwards babel would break out, to be sternly quelled by the heavy-jowled man.

  ‘I ’ad set on sa nine,’…‘Say, that king was coppered,’…‘I ought ter have split it.’