The Grell Mystery

by Frank Froest

  The jargons of all the world met and crossed at such time. It was rarely that there arose a serious quarrel, for Keller and his myrmidons had a swift way of dealing with malcontents. When a man became troublesome, the fierce-eyed little marker with the big chest would tap him on the shoulder.

  ‘That’s enough, you,’ he would say menacingly.

  If the warning were not sufficient the left hand of the little man would drop to his jacket pocket, and when it emerged it would be decorated with a heavy brass knuckle-duster. It took but one blow to make a man lose all interest in the game, and thereafter he would be handed over to the tender mercies of ‘Jim,’ a giant of a door-keeper, who after dark would drop him into the street at some convenient moment, with a savage warning to keep his mouth shut lest a worse thing befall him.

  This was the place Heldon Foyle had made up his mind to enter single-handed—a place in which the precautions against surprise were so complete that every article which could be identified as a gambling implement was made of material which could be readily burnt, or soluble at a temperature lower than that of boiling water. A big saucepan was continually simmering on the fire, so that the implements could be dropped in it at a second’s notice.

  But Heldon Foyle had hopes. At the worst he could only fail. He returned to Scotland Yard and shut himself up for twenty minutes in the make-up room. When he reached Smike Street again he was no longer the spruce, upright, well-dressed official. A grimy cap covered tousled hair. His face was strained, his eyes bloodshot and his moustache combed out raggedly. A set of greasy mechanic’s overalls had been drawn over his own clothes. He walked uncertainly.

  Green and the local inspector saw him reel past the public-house in which they still remained, as affording an excuse to be near the spot, and reel up Smike Street. Towards the end he appeared confused and gravely inspected several houses before approaching the gambling-joint. He rapped on the door with his knuckles, ignoring both the knocker and the bell. It opened a few inches wide, enough for the scowling face of Jim the door-keeper to appear in the aperture.

  Supporting himself with one hand on the door-post, Foyle leered amiably at the Cerberus. ‘Hello, old sport, I want t’come in. Open the door, can’t you?’

  ‘Git out of it, you drunken swab. You don’t live here,’ said Jim, taking stock of the drunken intruder and coming to a quick decision.

  The door slammed. Foyle beat a tattoo on the panels with his hands, swaying perilously to and fro the while. Again the door opened the cautious six inches, and Jim’s face was not pleasant to look on as he swore at the disturber.

  ‘Tha’ss allri’, ol’ sport,’ hiccoughed Foyle. ‘I want to come in. A Bill Reid tol’ me if I wanted—hic—game I was to come here. You know ol’ Bill Reid’—this almost pleadingly—‘he’ll tell you I’m allri’, eh?’

  The door-keeper of the gaming-house holds an onerous responsibility. On him depends the safety of the gamblers from interference by the representatives of law and order. Jim’s suspicions were lulled by Foyle’s quite obvious drunkenness. Nevertheless, a drunken man who had apparently been told of the place was a danger so long as he remained clamouring for admittance on the step. Jim tried tact.

  ‘There’s nothing doing now,’ he explained. ‘You go away and come back tonight. It’ll be a good game then.’

  ‘Tha’ss a lie,’ said Foyle, with an assumption of drunken gravity. ‘Old Bill Reid he says to me, he says—’

  But Jim had lost the remainder of his small stock of patience. He jerked the door again in Foyle’s face, pulled off the chain and leapt out, his intention of throwing the other into the street and so ending the argument once for all written on every line of his stalwart figure.

  That was his programme. But Foyle had also his programme. He had got the door open. All that remained between him and the entrance was the muscular figure of Jim. He suddenly became sober. The door-keeper’s hand grasping at his collar clutched empty air. The detective’s head dropped. Jim was met half-way by a short charge and Foyle’s shoulder caught him in the chest. Both men were forced by the momentum of the charge back through the open door and fell in a heap just within.

  At ordinary times the two would have been fairly evenly matched. Both were big men, though the door-keeper had slightly the advantage in size. He had, however, been taken by surprise and received no opportunity to utter more than a stifled oath before his breath was taken away. Inside the house Foyle stood on no ceremony in order to silence his opponent before those within could be alarmed. He had fallen on top of Jim. Pressing down on him with head and knee, he swung his right fist twice. Jim gave a grunt and his head rocked loosely on his neck. He had, in the vernacular of the ring, been put to sleep.

  The effects of a knockout blow, however deftly administered, do not last long. The detective’s first move was to close the street door, leaving the bolts and chains undone, so that it was fastened merely by the catches of the Yale locks. Then he whipped a handkerchief about the unconscious man’s mouth, and silently dragging him to a sitting posture, handcuffed his wrists beneath his knees, so that he was trussed in the position schoolboys adopt for cock-fighting. He surveyed his handiwork critically, and, a new idea occurring to him, unlaced the man’s boots, and, taking them off, tied the laces round the ankles. That would prevent the man rattling his boots on the floor when he came to, and so have given the alarm.

  The inner door had been left open by Jim, a lucky circumstance for Foyle, as otherwise he would have been at a loss, for it was of stout oak and he must have made considerable noise in forcing it. Yet he did not make any attempt to soften his footsteps as he climbed the stairs. He hoped to be taken as an ordinary client long enough, at any rate, to discover the whereabouts of Ivan. Once that was achieved he was reckless as to his identity becoming known.

  He needed no guide to the right door, for the clink of money and the exclamations of many voices guided him. He threw it open and entered the faro room with quiet assurance. Beyond a quick glance from Keller no one took any notice of him. They took it for granted that Jim had gone into his bona-fides and that he was ‘square’.

  He took up a position at the end of the table nearest the door, and apparently watched the game before staking. In reality he was studying the faces of the players. He was uncertain whether he would find Ivan there, but he had calculated that the Russian would at least be watching, if not taking a hand, if only as a means of passing the time during his voluntary imprisonment. And he was right. Seated at the table two or three paces away was the Russian, lost to all save the turn of the card.

  Foyle bent over and staked a coin. At the same moment Ivan’s eyes met his in puzzled recognition. There was a crash and the gambler sprang up, overturning the chair. His hand was outstretched, the finger pointing at the detective.

  ‘That man—how did he get in here?’ he cried, with something like alarm.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  FOR a second or a trifle more a dead silence followed Ivan’s denunciation. Heldon Foyle backed towards the door, dragging with him a chair which he had clutched with some idea of using it as a shield should there be a rush. There arose an angry snarl among the gamblers, for with them suspicion was quick. A rush of crimson had swept across Ivan’s face at the first alarm. He ejaculated something excitedly in Russian, and then went on in English:

  ‘He is a police officer. I know him. It is the man Foyle of Scotland Yard.’

  At the mention of the word police the hubble died down a little. Heldon Foyle, leaning quietly on the back of the chair, took advantage of the lull.

  ‘Yes, I am a police officer,’ he admitted confidently. ‘The place is surrounded. It will pay you to behave yourselves—you over there, put that knife away, do you hear?’

  The order was sharp and authoritative, and the Greek in whose hand the detective had caught the gleam of steel thrust it back hastily into the sheath at his belt. There were men there who would have thought little of murder, and Foyle knew that once
they were roused to fighting-pitch he stood little chance. At the first sign of flinching on his part they would be on him like a pack of wolves. He held them for the moment only, as a lion-tamer holds his beasts under control—by fearless domineering assumption of authority. They were like a flock of sheep. Only two men he feared—Ivan and Keller. Both were men above the average intelligence, and both had more reason to fear the law than the others. If either of them took the initiative he might be placed in an ugly position. He felt for his whistle while they remained inactive, uncertain.

  ‘Let’s teach the dog a lesson,’ hissed a venomous voice—that of Keller. ‘He’s trying to bluff us.’

  ‘Boot him, boys,’ incited Ivan, edging forward and so creating a movement towards the detective.

  Heldon Foyle put his whistle between his teeth and gripped the heavy chair with both hands. As the rush came he blew the whistle three times in the peculiar arrangement of long and short blasts that is the special police call, and swung the chair down with all his force on the leading man. It was Keller. The gaming-house keeper dropped, stunned, and the detective swept the chair sideways and so forced a clear space about himself. Again the whistle thrilled out, and Ivan dodging sideways seized one of the legs of Foyle’s unwieldy weapon. Menacing faces besieged the detective on all sides. Other hands assisted the Russian to hold the chair. And still no help came. Once the door opened and the wrinkled leathern face of a Chinaman protruded through the slit, took in the scene with quick understanding and disappeared. That was all the notice taken of the row by the habitués of the opium den on the high floor. The two or three clients who were stretched on the low couches were either entirely under the influence of the drug or too listless to worry about anything short of an earthquake—if even that would have aroused them.

  It was with small hope that the superintendent sounded his whistle again. A heavy blow on the face laid open his cheek, and he saw the little red-headed man who had slipped on his heavy brass knuckle-duster dodge back into the crowd. He relinquished his hold of the chair and defended himself with his hands. He carried a pistol in his pocket, but, imbued with the traditions of the London police, he would not use a lethal weapon save in the last extremity. Inch by inch he sidled along the wall, fighting all the while until he reached the corner. Here the crowd could only come at him from the front.

  A knife was thrown and a bottle crashed against his shoulder. The crisis had come. He dropped his guard and his hand closed over his pistol. Those nearest to him recoiled as the muzzle was thrust into their faces.

  ‘He daren’t shoot,’ insisted a voice which Foyle recognised as that of Ivan.

  In fact, the gibe was partly true. The detective had himself well in hand, and he knew that even though he were justified, a wounded man would lead to an inquiry which at the very least would prevent his going on with the Grell investigation for some time. But to let the taunt pass would invite disaster. He dropped the weapon to his thigh, forefinger extended along the barrel to help his aim, and pressed the trigger with his second finger twice. The reports were deafening in the confined space of the room, and one man put his hand to his head with a sharp cry. He need not have disturbed himself, for the bullets had passed over him and were buried in the opposite wall.

  ‘We’ll see whether I daren’t fire,’ said Foyle grimly. ‘Come on. Who’d like to be the first?’

  There was no answer to his challenge, for from below came the sound of a crash and the quick tread of many men racing up the stairs. One or two of the gamblers turned white, and Foyle felt the tension of his nerves relax. Half-a-dozen men, headed by Green and Penny, were rushing into the room.

  A little gurgling laugh burst from the superintendent, and he waved his hand about the room. ‘You see, Penny, it could be done, single-handed. That is Ivan over there. Take good care of him, Green. Keller is that man knocked out down there.’ And, swaying, he crashed forward to the floor in a dead faint.

  When he came round he was lying on a couch with his injured face and shoulder neatly bandaged. There were only two other persons in the room, Green and one of the local detectives, who were systematically making an inventory of everything in the room. The superintendent struggled to a sitting position and the movement brought Green to his side.

  ‘Hello, Green,’ said the superintendent cheerfully. ‘You’ve got ’em all away, I see. How long have I been lying here?’

  ‘Matter of half an hour. It’s only a case of loss of blood, I think. You must have been bleeding for some time before we broke in on the tea-party. We put some first-aid bandages on.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ said Foyle, rising stiffly. ‘What happened? You were a deuce of a time answering my whistle.’

  ‘We tried the wrong door first, and it’s my belief that nothing short of dynamite would move it. It’s steel-lined, and with all the bolts pushed home we stood no chance. We gave it up after a while and tried the other. Luckily that was not bolted.’

  ‘I know. I left it like that purposely.’

  ‘Well, we didn’t know. By that time we got thirty uniform men down here, and they followed us up. Once we got the door down and found the chap you’d trussed behind it, we had no trouble worth mentioning except with Master Ivan, who fought like a wild cat. We got the cuffs on him at last, but even then it took four men to get him away. Penny is down at the station waiting till you come before charging ’em. What is it to be? Attempt to murder?’

  ‘No, I don’t think we can get a conviction on that,’ answered Foyle. ‘There’s plenty up against them—unlawful wounding, assaulting a police officer in the execution of his duty, frequenting a gaming-house, and, of course, Ivan could be charged with the Waverley affair if we find it necessary now. I see you’ve started running over the house.’

  ‘Only just started. We are waiting for the divisional surgeon to see to you and three men who are sleeping like logs in the opium-joint upstairs. The Chinaman seems to have vanished—at any rate, he can’t be found. It’s just about time this place was broken up. Keller took no chances with the bank.’ He picked up the faro-box. ‘Now, in the States this kind of thing would not go. It’s a two-card needle-tell swindle.’

  ‘That’s done with fifty-four cards to the pack, isn’t it?’ asked Foyle indifferently, handling the box. ‘I’ve seen something like it before. The dealer is warned of the approach of duplicate cards by a tiny needle-point jumping out of one side of the box.’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Well, all that will have to be explained when the case comes on for trial. I’m more interested in Ivan just now. It’s something to have him under lock and key. I’ll leave you here to handle the remainder of the business and get down to the station. No—I’ll not wait for the doctor. I feel perfectly fit now.’

  In spite of his assertion the superintendent felt a little dizzy when he reached the open air. A big crowd filled the street, and a dozen reporters who had been held sternly at bay by the constables on duty at the gambling-house pounced on him determinedly. He laughingly waved them aside, but they would not be denied, and while they walked at his side gave a succinct account of what had happened, omitting all reference to Ivan Abramovitch.

  ‘New thing for you to come all the way to the East End to take charge of a gambling raid, isn’t it?’ asked Jerrold, the Wire man, in a tone that told of a shrewd suspicion of something underlying.

  ‘Oh, it’s been an experience,’ said Foyle lightly, indicating his bandaged head. ‘I’ve told you everything I know now, boys. If there’s anything else you can use, I’ll have it at the Yard presently. So long.’

  The journalists melted away, and Foyle presently found himself in a dingy back street where the local police station was situated. Here also a crowd of men and women had gathered, and the reserve men at the door were repelling eager women who, not knowing who had been taken in the raid, feared that their husbands might be included and were anxious to know the worst; for news of that kind spreads rapidly.

  A motor
-car standing without told the superintendent of Sir Hilary Thornton’s presence. And the Assistant Commissioner was the first person he saw as he entered the place. Thornton came forward with hand outstretched.

  ‘Thank God, Foyle! We had a rumour at the Yard that you had been badly hurt. I see you’ve been knocked about a bit. What made you take a hand yourself down here? Couldn’t you leave a raid to be carried out by the local folk?’

  ‘I didn’t come down here specially for that reason,’ smiled the superintendent. ‘I wanted to get hold of Ivan Abramovitch, and everything else was purely incidental.’

  ‘They’re waiting for you to settle who shall be charged with what,’ said Thornton. ‘Be as quick as you can, and I’ll wait and give you a lift back in the car. I’ll not be happy till I’ve heard all about this.’

  The two passed into the charge-room, where Penny was in conversation with the superintendent of the division. In reply to a question, he thought for a little.

  ‘We’ve got eighteen men in all, sir,’ he answered. ‘It would have been fifty if we’d been able to bring our coup off at night.’

  ‘Very well. Have ’em all in except Abramovitch and Keller. I will pick out those I want charged with assault, or who I think were mixed up with Keller. The remainder might be let out on bail after you have verified their addresses.’

  The prisoners were ushered into the room, a shame-faced, sullen, dispirited gang now. Penny and a clerk passed along the line, taking their names, while Foyle scrutinised their faces. Finally, the superintendent touched four men on the shoulder one after the other. One was Jim, the door-keeper; another the red-haired man with the big chest; the third and fourth two men who had been prominent in the attack. Penny put a tick against their names, and the whole of the prisoners, many of whom had broken into voluble protest and appeal, were taken back to the cells. Foyle had determined to leave the business of charging them to Green and Penny.