by Brian Ball
“I can’t go back there!” cried the rough voice. “—It’s full of bobbies!”
“It will be locked by now, and the theatre’s deserted—do as I say!” the second speaker snarled, and there was the sound of a heavy blow. “Marvin had it with him! Find it!”
“All right! All right—I’m going! But what about the girl in there?” cried the thuggish voice.
Queenie had been following the conversation in an almost trance-like state. She knew she was being held captive by desperate men; but why and where was beyond her—except that it must be to do with Marvin, for both speakers knew him. It was also clear to her that the man with the rough voice was the thug who had knocked her down, and that the second speaker was his employer.
But what did they want from Marvin’s dressing-room? In the midst of her fears, Queenie had one consolation: Wiggins was right again. What better way of discovering Marvin’s secret could there be than to become his assistant?
Queenie froze again though when the next words came to her: “How about her?” grunted the thug before he left.
There was a pause, and Queenie heard a strange metallic sound. She couldn’t identify it, but she had heard it before. It went on for several seconds, terrified, she held her breath; for she knew her fate was about to be decided. “How about her?” the thug had said. He meant, “Do we let her live?”—Queenie was sure of it.
“Let her sleep,” said the second man eventually. “We can see to her later.”
Queenie’s breath came out in a long, deep sigh behind the gag. She heard the slam of a door and two sets of heavy footsteps.
“See to me?” she whispered to herself. “I can see to myself!” And she started to test the knots.
* * * *
Wiggins had just finished telling the other Baker Street Boys about the blood-spot, when the door burst open, and a tall, thin man stood framed in the doorway. He was poorly-dressed, and yet for all his sudden and frightening entry, he didn’t seem particularly threatening.
Wiggins grabbed a poker. Mary let out a scream; Rosie grabbed her. Beaver put his big fists up. And Sparrow stood behind Wiggins with a chunk of wood in his hands—whilst Shiner stood behind him.
“What’d you want!” yelled Wiggins.
“It’s OK, folks!” the stranger called, a smile on his face. “No cause for alarm!”
“He’s an American!” said Sparrow. “Like Mary!”
“And I’ve seen him before!” said Wiggins. “Who are you? You was near Trump’s Music-hall earlier—have you done anything to Queenie? ‘Cos if you have—”
”Here, hold it!” the stranger cried. “I’m on your side, kids, especially now I’ve found Miss Mary Ashley here! Cards on the table, OK—I’m O’Neill, Special Investigator for Pinkerton’s Detective Agency. See, here’s my card!”
“You look, Wiggins,” said Sparrow, so Wiggins cautiously approached O’Neill.
“It looks genuine,” he said.
“It sure is—and I happen to know about you kids working for Mr. Sherlock Holmes, so maybe you can trust me to come in and talk?” Wiggins still hesitated. He turned to Mary.
“Mary,” he said. “What do you think? Do we listen to him?”
O’Neill shrugged.
“It’s listen to me, or listen to Inspector Lestrade. It won’t be long before he works out where Mary’s got to! I asked around earlier tonight, and I learned how close she’d got to Sparrow here—yes, I recognised you, Sparrow!” he said as Sparrow looked at him in amazement. “I’ve been in the game a long time and I know how to find out what I want to know! And however dumb Lestrade is, that young Sergeant Hopkins will soon put two and two together and come looking around here! Now, what’s it to be, kids?”
“We’ll listen to you, Mr. O’Neill,” said Mary. “I don’t think you mean us any harm.”
So the Pinkerton investigator began to tell them an amazing story. “First of all, kids,” he said, “I’ve been on the lookout for Mary Ashley’s stepfather for over a year—long before he met her mother and turned himself into Marvin the Mentalist.”
“Why, what’s he done?” said Sparrow. O’Neill smiled.
“More than you’d believe. Marvin was a member of the worst gang of desperadoes that New York ever saw—and Marvin was one of the worst before he left the Iron Fist gang!”
“He left the gang?” said Wiggins.
“Yeah!” said the American. “With the loot—and nobody robs the Iron Fist gang and gets away with it! They’ve been on the lookout for him ever since!”’
“He knew they were coming!” said Mary. “He was scared—I’m sure he was!”
“He had every reason to be terrified,” said O’Neill. “He made off with the loot—over a couple of million dollars worth of jewels. He knew that when they caught up with him, his life wouldn’t be worth a bent nickel.”
“Yet you found him, Mr. O’Neill,” said Mary. “Wasn’t it your duty to arrest him right away?”
“No,” said O’Neill. “I’ve been hired to get the jewels back. We want to see the rest of the gang behind bars, but most of all the Pinkerton Agency wants the loot—and I’m not quitting yet!”
The Baker Street Boys listened in utter fascination as O’Neill told of his investigations. He had found Marvin’s trail in New York only a few weeks before his appearance at the music-hall. And when finally O’Neill crossed the Atlantic to check up on one slender lead, he realised that he had found the treacherous member of the Iron Fist gang.
It had been an almost unbelievable discovery, for who would have thought that the most wanted criminal in the United States would have the nerve to appear in public on the stage? But, so O’Neill explained, when Marvin had met and married Mary’s mother, he had looked quite different from The Amazing Marvin the Mentalist.
He had been heavier then, and he wore a beard and a heavy moustache. Now, much lighter and clean-shaven, he had shown the bravado that had made him such a desperate and successful criminal.
“He sure had gall,” said O’Neill. “But he fooled the gang—none of them picked up his trail.”
“But surely they did!” put in Mary.
“Yeah!” said Wiggins. “And they killed him!”
O’Neill shook his head.
“I’ve been on the lookout for the past week,” he said. “If any of the gang had been around, I’d have spotted them. That’s what I’ve been waiting for—some of them to show up and get Marvin scared so he would panic. But someone else got to him first.”
Wiggins breathed out slowly.
“’S’trewth!” he said. “If the gang didn’t get him—then who did? And where’s the loot?”
“I’ve got a clue,” said O’Neill. “I have proof that Mary’s stepfather placed his stolen loot in a safety-deposit box in a New York bank. We don’t know which bank, but we know that somewhere amongst Marvin’s possessions there must be a ticket of some kind that gives him access to his loot. If we can find the secret of the ticket, I can recover the jewels!”
“Marvin’s secret,” whispered Sparrow. “That’s what it was.”
Wiggins and the others looked at Sparrow in amazement, for he was staring at Mary as though she was a ghost.
“What’s the trouble, kid?” asked O’Neill.
“Sparrow, tell me!” gasped Mary.
“Come on!” growled Wiggins.
“All right—I will!”’ cried Sparrow. “Mary’s got the secret of the loot—that’s why he was hypnotising her! I saw him do it with her locket—he put her in a trance and said she was never to tell his secret!”
And then Sparrow reached out to touch the silver locket at Mary’s neck.
“What is it, Sparrow?” whispered Mary.
“The locket?” said O’Neill.
Wiggins nodded slowly.
“It has to be, doesn’t it—let’s have a look in that locket of yours, Mary.”
And it was there.
Mary wept when she saw the picture of her dead mother; but wh
en she saw that Marvin had hidden the safety-deposit box ticket behind the picture, she became furious.
“He used me just as he used my poor mother!” she cried. “He could have had me killed too!”
“Marvin sure was smart,” agreed O’Neill. “When he figured the gang was after him, he made sure they couldn’t get to the loot.”
“He knew I’d take care of the locket!” Mary sobbed. “It’s the only one of my mother’s possessions he let me keep!”
Wiggins looked at the ticket for which Marvin had been killed. For a few moments he stood deep in thought, and then suddenly he looked up at the picture on the wall, at the stern features of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
The Baker Street Boys noticed his abstraction; and so did O’Neill. “Something bothering you, kid?” he said.
“Oh yes,” said Wiggins. “Quite a few things, as a matter of fact. Things like who gave the blood-spot to Marvin, for a start, and where Queenie is for another. Then again, we’ve got to think about this here ticket and how to catch a murderer, ain’t we?”
“Yeh!” said Sparrow. “What you thinking, Wiggins?” Wiggins pointed to the picture of Mr. Holmes.
“I was thinking of what Mr. Holmes would do.”
“And what’s that?” said Rosie.
“Yeah, kid,” said O’Neill. “This case isn’t finished yet—we want Queenie back, and the way to do that is to find the murderer. You got a plan, kid?”
“Sort of,” said Wiggins. “I’m going to see Dr. Watson to ask him to send a telegram to Mr. Holmes, but meanwhile we’ll need Inspector Lestrade’s help.”
“Lestrade!” said Sparrow. “But he won’t have us near him!”
“He will when we take Mary to him,” said Wiggins.
“You’re not taking Mary!” cried Rose. “He thinks she helped the murderer!”
“True,” said Wiggins. “But Mr. O’Neill and me might persuade him different.”
“How?” said O’Neill. Wiggins looked smug.
“I don’t know much about America,” he told O’Neill, “but I did hear how they catch wolves out there.”
“Wolves, kid?”
“Yeh,” said Wiggins. “They put out wolf-bait.”
He showed O’Neill and the fascinated Baker Street Boys the ticket. Then he slipped it back into the locket and fastened the locket around Mary’s neck.
“What are you doing that for?” whispered Mary.
O’Neill understood:
“Wolf-bait!”
* * * *
Queenie struggled for hours in the dingy box-room; at one time, she thought the cords at her wrists had given a little, but before she could be sure, exhaustion overtook her.
As the cold grey light of another dawn filtered into the box-room, Queenie slept.
Her dreams were full of terror.
CHAPTER SIX
“What!” cried Inspector Lestrade to me when he first heard early the next morning that the Baker Street Boys were again involved.
“Amateurs again? I won’t have it, Hopkins! No ragamuffin amateurs are going to impede this investigation! It’s bad enough having a wretched American investigator up to his neck in gangsters and stolen jewels poking about here, but I will not have those would-be sleuths near me! Get a statement from each of them, Hopkins, and see if you can find something to charge them with.”
I told my superior that it wasn’t likely that I could.
“Charge them with abducting the girl—what’s her name?”
“Mary Ashley, sir. But they didn’t abduct her, from what I understand of the situation. Wiggins—”
”Don’t speak to me, about Wiggins! Mr. Holmes might hold him in high regard, but so far as I’m concerned he’s just another meddling urchin!”
It had seemed an easy business at first. There was the dead gangster (as we found him to be once O’Neill reported to us) stretched out on his dressing-room floor with a knife through his heart; but Maccarelli the knife-thrower could prove that he had been drinking in company at the time of the murder.
One by one, everyone who had access to the backstage area produced an alibi of sorts. Not every alibi was perfect—a dozen different people could have slipped into the star’s dressing-room and knifed him in a moment. But who had actually done it?
“One of these desperadoes,” said Inspector Lestrade. “O’Neill told us they’re a murderous bunch wanting their revenge on Marvin.”
But O’Neill had also told us that he didn’t believe the Iron Fist gang had located Marvin. So we were thrown back again into looking for the murderer amongst the music-hall people, and worse still, from Lestrade’s point of view, we were forced to listen to a gang of amateurs who claimed to be able to solve the case!
“Oh, send them in!” declared my boss. “I’ve listened to O’Neill, so I might as well hear what Wiggins has got to say.”
I did point out that, but for Sparrow’s resourcefulness, Mary Ashley might also be dead, with a knife-thrust through her heart; but Inspector Lestrade snorted angrily:
“This isn’t an investigation, it’s chaos!”
And when he heard the American and the Baker Street Boys outlining their plan he gasped:
“It isn’t chaos—it’s lunacy! What, wolf-bait? Wolf-bait! And you, Miss Ashley, have agreed to be the bait?—Why, it’s plain lunacy!”
It was not as lunatic a proposal as it seemed, and eventually Inspector Lestrade agreed to it.
Wolf-bait was as good a way of describing Wiggins’ scheme as any—but Mary Ashley was the bait, and the unknown knife-wielder was our quarry.
It was an audacious scheme. Quite simply, we were going to put Mary back on the stage on the music-hall. She would take part in the act she knew so well, and we hoped that the murderer would make an attempt to find the secret he had already killed once for.
“It sure is a crafty kind of plan,” said O’Neill in the stunned silence that followed Wiggins’ and Sparrow’s explanations.
“Crafty isn’t what I’d call it,” said Inspector Lestrade sourly. “And who’s to be the new Marvin, always supposing I agree to this imbecile scheme?”
Wiggins grinned.
“In a posh suit—me!”
“Wiggins knows the act, Inspector,” said Sparrow. “And there’d be crowds wanting to see Mary now her old man’s been knifed—it’ll be sensational!”
“And it will bring the murderer out of hiding, Inspector,” said O’Neill. “We’ll let it be known that Marv has inherited something of great value. It’s bound to attract the murderer.”
“’Course!” declared Sparrow. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face!” which was an unfortunate thing to say, for Inspector Lestrade’s nose was large and red.
Inspector Lestrade glared back at Sparrow; but the more he heard, the more he was convinced, and so it was that the following day’s newspapers were full of the revival of Marvin’s popular act—minus the murdered Marvin, but with a mysterious hypnotist called Arnold Wiggins.
And, of course, Mary Ashley!
* * * *
People flocked to the opening night.
What made it more attractive for them was the promise that all the acts which had performed on the night of the murder of Marvin would again be assembled. Crowds clamoured to get into Trump’s Music-hall, for what greater thrill could there be than to see the orphaned Mary in the music-hall where there had been such a gruesome murder?
“Full house!” said Mr. Trump to Bert. “Excellent!”
“Sparrow!” called Bert. “Placards for Signor Macaroni!”
“Maccarelli!” yelled the knife-thrower. “Don’t make bad jokes about me, or maybe I stick a knife in you, Bert!”
“Did you hear that, Hopkins?” demanded Lestrade, who was with me backstage. “A threat!”
“Macaroni wouldn’t harm a fly!” said Sparrow.
“Hush!” said Rosie. “Keep a good look out!”
“Quite,” said Lestrade, so we settled back in our dusty hiding-place amongst ro
lls of painted canvas and miscellaneous stage-furniture whilst knives were thrown, the songs were sung, and the rest of the show was performed until, at last, with a roll of drums and a crash of cymbals, Arnold Wiggins, The Boy Hypnotist in a borrowed suit, and Mary Ashley appeared.
How the audience loved it!
They gasped and cheered, they clapped and stamped their feet, they shouted and struggled to become one of those chosen to take the stage and have a ring, or a watch, or a wallet identified. Wiggins turned out to be a most competent stand-in, too.
He hadn’t had the training or the stage presence of Marvin, of course; but his confident bearing dominated the audience, and his loud voice made him a passable stage hypnotist.
I was quite enjoying the show, but Lestrade had become very impatient.
“Wolf-bait!” he growled. “Hypnotism! Amateur sleuths!” But the amateur was doing very well on stage.
“Now Mary!” he called. “You can’t see a blooming thing can you?”
“No, Master!” said Mary.
“And you don’t know what’s in my hand, do you? She don’t,” he told the audience. “Not yet, ’cos she can’t read my mind yet!”
The audience yelled for him to read Mary’s mind, so Wiggins grinned and went on:
“Concentrate, Mary, my dear! Wipe your mind clear and concentrate! Are you ready?”
“Yes, Master…I see…I believe it is a handkerchief!”
Howls of approval greeted Mary’s words. The audience cheered on and demanded more, and it was an exhausted—but exhilarated—Wiggins and Mary that finally left the stage.
“And still no sign of the murderer!” growled Lestrade.
“He’s not shown his hand yet, sir,” I answered. “But he couldn’t tackle Mary on stage, could he? Oh, by the way, sir, I’ve just heard that we have two distinguished visitors in the audience!”
“Not the Prince of Wales!” gasped Lestrade. “Trump told me that he’s been expecting royalty to see the act!”
“No, sir. It’s Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson—they’re in a box at the back of the hall.”
“As if I didn’t have enough amateurs backstage!” Lestrade muttered. “We’ve got to do something to make that murderer reveal himself! But how!”
* * * *