Warrant for X

by Philip MacDonald

  “Here is a thing,” said Anthony. “And a very pretty thing!” He turned his head to look at Pike. “What the hell is it? I should know. It tells me that I know. But I’m damned if I do.”

  Pike took the scrap between finger and thumb and looked at it this way and that and finally held it up to the light. He said at last:

  “In such a hurry that he tore it.” He looked at Anthony. “That’s about the first bad slip he’s made, sir.”

  “It’s only a slip if we find out, quickly, what this is.” Anthony’s finger pointed to the morsel of paper.

  Pike said: “Some sort of cheap notice. In the morning, sir, we’ll get Summers onto it. He’ll find out.”

  Anthony groaned. “That’s too late.” He looked at Pike and a sudden gleam came into the green eyes. He said softly:

  “You know, we’re not thinking. Because we’re hurrying Evans, we mustn’t let him hurry us. Think, bobbie, think!”

  Pike said, smiling a little:

  “Thinking won’t do much good, sir; not at this juncture, as you might say. What I mean, sir: after Summers has found out what this is”—he waved the scrap of paper—“then’s the time to start thinking. Until then—well, we might hear something from Scotland about the Bellows woman.”

  Anthony did not seem to be listening. A frown was drawing his eyes together. He said in the voice of a man talking to himself:

  “Vile paper which could only take pencil or print . . . A form of some kind . . .”

  Pike looked at him intently: he knew this voice; he said nothing. Anthony said:

  “Intrinsically of no possible value. But he did one murder and half another to get it . . . it’s extremely important to him but it can’t be in itself. Ergo, it stands for something important.”

  Pike’s small brown eyes were bright now, like a bird’s. He said:

  “By gosh! A safety-deposit ticket, by jing!” The schoolboy oaths—a trick of his when excited—rang with all the brazen fervour of profanities. Again he held the slip to the light.

  Anthony took it from his fingers. “Possibly, yes. But the vile quality of the paper is much more——”

  “By cripesl” said Pike. “Cloakroom ticket! ’Scuse me, sir!” He brushed past Anthony and reached the door in two strides and was gone.

  Anthony followed leisurely. By the time he crossed the threshold of the drawing room Pike was already talking on the telephone, to the Yard. On the sofa lay Garrett, his head propped by cushions; on one of the arms to face him sat Avis Bellingham. There was more colour now in Garrett’s face and he wore the sheepish look of a man who has been so supposedly feminine as to faint.

  Pike was saying to the telephone: “. . . yes. Now: get men on this right away! Understand? At oncel Inside an hour I want a specimen cloakroom ticket from every railway company with stations in London.”

  Garrett looked at Anthony. “Cloakroom ticket?”

  “Baggage check,” said Anthony. “That’s what Evans took from Brent’s trunk . . . I think.”

  Pike said to the telephone: “I know they’re shut. But I want a specimen from every line inside an hour. I’ll be in my office by then.” The tone, most definitely, was a superintendent’s.

  Anthony grinned. “They’d better get ’em!” he said to no one in particular.

  5

  It was some minutes after three when Anthony, once more in his own house, answered a telephone whose ringing was insistent.

  Pike’s voice came to him. “We’ve done it, sir!” The tone was one of sternly suppressed elation.

  “Congratulations!” said Anthony. “What is it?”

  “A corner off a London and Great Eastern cloakroom ticket,” said the telephone.

  Anthony said: “And so . . . ?”

  The telephone spoke at length.

  “Yes,” said Anthony. “Yes. Neat arrangement. Very good indeed, Pike. . . . There’s one thing, though. Make absolutely sure that each man understands that he’s not to arrest the person presenting the ticket. Just follow them, and then——”

  The telephone interrupted. “I made sure of that already, sir. One man inside; one out. They follow the person presenting the ticket; they don’t take any further steps without calling here.”

  “Good!” said Anthony and meant it.

  CHAPTER XX

  DESPITE the needlecraft of his mother his father’s trousers were still too large for James Widgery, which explains why, at a quarter of nine on the morning of Thursday, the thirteenth of October, James fell heavily to the pavement at the corner of a street in Lambeth.

  The morning was cold, with a grey sky and an east wind which hurt. And the pavement was hard. James Widgery, for all his thirteen years, began to weep.

  A hand came from nowhere in particular and helped James to his feet. He continued to blubber and looked up at the owner of the hand and saw a man and heard a voice which said:

  “Hurt yourself, sonny?”

  James, who had stopped blubbering, began to blubber afresh. He scented consolatory copper.

  “Not ’arf!” said James through tears.

  The gloved hand of James’s rescuer went into the pocket of his overcoat. It came out again holding a silver coin which glittered.

  James, having caught his breath, produced heart-rending sobs.

  “You could earn this,” the man said. “And another. They might make you feel better.”

  “Gotter go t’ school,” said James Widgery but without conviction.

  2

  James Widgery did not go to school. Instead he appeared—at nine thirty-five upon this cold, grey morning—outside the entrance to the East Dulwich station of the London and Great Eastern Railway. One hand was busy in holding up the trousers of Albert Widgery; the other was firmly clutched about a small slip of paper in the right-hand pocket of these trousers.

  He looked up at the sooty facade of the station; then made his way through the central archway into the dingy, acrid-smelling booking hall. To his right was a line of ticket windows. To his left, upon the far side of a heterogeneous row of telephone booths and slot machines, there showed a lighted recess over which appeared the word, in great yellow letters, CLOAKROOM.

  Towards this James strode as manfully as he could in his hampering garments. He halted with his chin only a few inches above the outer edge of the counter and whistled between his teeth to attract the attention of the sallow-faced man behind it. He produced from the right-hand pocket of the trousers a hot and grimy paw and threw down its content upon the dirty, polished wood.

  The luggage clerk surveyed James without approval. His nose wrinkling, he picked up the crumpled paper slip and unfolded it. He looked at it for a long moment with a lack of facial expression wholly admirable in the circumstances. He said sourly to James:

  “Jest a minute,” and was gone, disappearing behind baggage-filled racks.

  3

  At exactly twenty minutes to ten James Widgery, still holding up his trousers with his left hand, but now carrying in his right a flat leather portfolio of a certain quiet elegance, made his way across the station courtyard towards the bus stop outside the railings. He whistled as he walked. There was in him—despite the certainty of a thrashing for having played truant from school—a great glow of satisfaction, for did there not repose in his pocket a whole half crown? And would there not, when he had delivered the little bag to the gentleman, be another added to it!

  Five whole shillings! James caught his breath and ceased to whistle and passed out of the courtyard and took his stand on the curb to await a westbound bus.

  As he did so a young and burly man came out of the station and strolled, with every appearance of leisure, over the way taken by James. As he walked he read, absorbedly, a Racing Special.

  A bus came. James climbed inside it and, finding it practically empty, ensconced himself luxuriously in a front seat. He congratulated himself that, having still twopence of his mother’s shopping money in his pocket, he need not, as yet, break the ha
lf crown. He sat forward, the bag balanced on his bony knees, and looked out of the window with the alert curiosity of the gamin. He did not know—nor would he have cared if he had—that the man who had just entered the bus and was now seated by the door reading a racing paper was what his father would have termed a “busy.”

  The bus began to move—and just as it did so another passenger swung himself aboard; a large, thick-looking man in blue serge. James Widgery did not know—nor would he have cared if he had—that here was yet another “busy.”

  4

  Strictly speaking, the fare from the East Dulwich station of the L. & G.E.R. to Piccadilly Circus is fivepence. Wise, however, to the ways of conductors, James made the journey for less than half of this sum. At Swan and Edgar’s he alighted and, after dealing with the refractory trousers, dived like a rabbit down the more southerly of the stairways to the tube station. Close on his heels, but exhibiting no interest in him, came the two men of the bus trip.

  Although the time was not yet ten-thirty in the morning there were, as always in this great underground clearing-house of humanity, many people hurrying this way and that, upward and downward, round and about—with all the fussy speed and apparent aimlessness of ants. James Widgery, at the foot of the stairway, turned to his right and, swinging the incongruous portfolio, began to walk briskly round the circle. Behind him Detective Officers Frawley and King quickened their steps. Though not now attempting to conceal their companionship, they did not speak, each occupied in keeping in view the small, red, capless head of their quarry.

  James moved through the thin crowd with the speed and precision of an eel—and, slipping behind a newspaper kiosk to avoid the oncoming surge of a crowd of uniformed schoolgirls, was momentarily lost to the eyes of King and Frawley.

  “Where the hell . . . ?” said King, blowing out his cheeks.

  Frawley said: “Right there! Behind that newspaper stall!” He saw the boy again as he spoke.

  King stopped dead in his tracks. A puzzled frown, showing the beginnings of alarm, creased his bucolic face. He said urgently: “Come on!”

  James Widgery was standing still, looking about him with quick dartings—strangely reptilian—of his red head. His face was agonized, the mouth half open, the eyes glaring as they shot their glances in every direction.

  And James Widgery was empty handed.

  CHAPTER XXI

  JAMES WIDGERY stood upon the soft grey carpet in the room of Sir Egbert Lucas in Scotland House. He felt afraid and important and dirty. He had, it seemed to him, been answering questions for countless hours but the clock upon the mantel showed only eleven-thirty.

  There were several men in the room and they all, at one time or another, spoke to James Widgery. At intervals they tried to persuade him to sit down but this he would not do—so they went on questioning him as he stood. Though asked in many ways, and with plethora of subsidiaries, the questions came down, really, to two: What was the man like who had given James the job and the half crown? And what was the appearance of the person who had snatched the leather portfolio from him in Piccadilly Circus station?

  James said, many times, with as much variation as was allowed by his vocabulary, that the man who gave him the job and the half crown wasn’t tall and wasn’t short; wasn’t smart and wasn’t shabby; wasn’t dark and wasn’t fair; wasn’t thin and wasn’t fat—was, in short, medium.

  He was obviously attempting, with effort which brought sweat to his young brow, to tell the truth—both when he said what had gone before and when, in reply to the second question, he averred that he’d no more idea than the man in the moon who it was—or what—that had grabbed the bag away from him at his appointed meeting place with the first man. One minute the bag was in his hand; the next it was gone, pulled away from behind like. When he’d whipped round there had been so many people he couldn’t tell and none of them seemed to have the bag. . . .

  At ten to twelve they let him go, the tall man who had questioned him most following him to the door and giving him a florin.

  James Widgery clattered down a stone staircase and out of this history, while Anthony Gethryn went back into Lucas’ room.

  2

  In an office three floors below two large and sheepish men bore, with assumed stolidity, the imprecations of Chief Detective Inspector Horler.

  “In Frawley’s case,” said Horler, wiping his forehead, “there might be some excuse! He’s only been on this job for six months. . . . But as for you, King”—he jerked his head round to glare at his objective—“all I can say is—the only thing I can say—well, if this sort o’ thing’s going to go on, you won’t!”

  Detective Officer King played with his hat.

  Detective Officer Frawley said in a very small voice:

  “Excuse me, sir . . .”

  “And what’s more,” said Horler, “if anything of the same sort happens again I’ll have to send you up direct to the super.”

  King said, clearing his throat:

  “Very sorry, sir!”

  Frawley said in a still smaller voice:

  “Excuse me, sir, but I’ve——”

  “It’s not as if it was a difficult job!” Horler was plaintive now. “Just tabbing a little kid!”

  King said: “With all joo respect, sir, it might of ’appened to anyone. This boy, ‘e just ducks be’ind a newspaper stall and ain’t out of sight more than twenty seconds at the very most but juring them seconds someone comes up and snatches this bag right out of ’is ‘and. Not seein’ the boy, it’s on’y natural that Frawley and meself didn’t see ‘oo snatched the bag from ’im——”

  Horler interrupted: “That’s enough! There’s no excuse!” Frawley coughed. He said in an ingratiating whisper: “Excuse me, sir, but——”

  Horler said: “That’ll do! Excuses only make the thing worse! Now get out, both of you! And for the love of all that’s holy, don’t fluff like that again!”

  “Yes sir!” said King smartly and turned towards the door. But Frawley stood his ground. Frawley said:

  “Excuse me, sir, but——”

  Horler, who was now opening a blue-covered file upon his desk, looked up with a savage jerk of his head. He said: “Get out!”

  The young and cherubic face of Detective Officer James Davenport Frawley lost much of its ruddy glow. He said with a sort of hurried meekness:

  “Yes sir. Thank you, sir.” And obeyed.

  3

  In Lucas’ room was a haze of tobacco smoke through which were visible Lucas himself, Anthony, Pike and a palefaced Garrett. Lucas’ voice, giving to Pike in more polished periods what Horler had just finished giving to King and Frawley, was the only sound.

  Lucas came to an end, drew a deep breath and sat back in his chair.

  Pike said: “Yes sir. I know, sir. If I’m not mistaken Horler will be dealing with the men right now, sir.”

  “Which,” said Garrett bitterly, “is a hell of a lot of satisfaction !”

  Anthony uncurled himself from the depths of Lucas’ biggest chair and stretched. He said:

  “Children! Children!”

  Garrett said: “Shut up! I’m sick of all this suavity! All I can think of is that an hour ago we were on the point of getting our man and that now we’re further away from him than we ever were! And just because somebody puts a couple of utterly incompetent flat feet on a job which should have been done by your best men! That’s rude and I know it but I’m not going to apologize!” He was sitting very straight in his chair. His eyes blazed angrily, shooting challenging glances from one to another of the Englishmen.

  Lucas looked at him, not too pleasantly; but was silent. Pike looked at the floor or, perhaps, at the tips of his brightly polished shoes.

  “ ’Tis true, ’tis pity,” Anthony murmured. “And all we can do is to hope for Bellows.”

  The bell of a telephone on the desk blared imperiously. Lucas lifted the receiver and spoke. He said:

  “Lucas speaking. . . . Yes. . . . What? .
. . Yes, read it out.” He took a pad of paper and a pencil and began to scribble as the telephone stuttered into his ear He said quietly as he finished writing:

  “Thanks. . . . Yes, I’ll tell him.” With exaggerated care he put the receiver back upon its hook. He pulled the pad upon which he had been writing towards him and looked at his companions. A smile in which there was little mirth crossed his face. He said slowly:

  “Pike, that was from your office. A wire has just come in from MacFarland, of Midlothian. I’ll read it to you. It says: ‘Reference your AC-42 and my reply stop Body answering description Mrs Bellows found on moor near Kinmarnock stop Death due strangulation medical opinion three days ago post-mortem today stop Further information follows MacFarland.’ ”

  There was a long silence.

  “And that,” said Anthony, “is that! You’ve got to admit they’re thorough.”

  Sheldon Garrett stood up. He was very white and looked like a man tired out. He walked across to a small table by the door and took his hat from it. He said with his fingers on the door handle:

  “That finishes us, doesn’t it? If they’d trailed the boy properly they’d’ve caught the man or someone who could have led us to him. But they didn’t. And now this poor old woman’s been killed too. . . . And so we’ve just got to say that he’s won.” He paused for a moment and looked at Lucas. He said rather hesitantly:

  “If I’ve been overofficious and uncivil I can only apologize.”

  He opened the door and went out, closing it quietly behind him.

  After a moment’s stillness Pike sighed and got to his feet and wandered over to a window. He said without turning:

  “I can’t help sympathizing with Mr Garrett, if you know what I mean.”