The dance-music was faint and distant as he approached the door. He turned the crystal door-handle and went in. The aroma of cigar-smoke and perfume greeted him, and then he noticed a sharper odour that seemed to sting his nostrils. He stood on the threshold as if carved out of rock. There before him, in the softly-lit room with its air of luxury, sprawled beside the ornate gleaming desk on his back, lay the figure who he had last seen in the witness-box in the Coroner’s Court at Hatford. It was Ray Mercury.
Hesitantly he stepped forward and stood staring down at the inert figure. He saw the dark patch on the immaculate shirt-front and he bent and put his hand just above the dark patch, over the heart. Phil knew that the man was dead. He stood up, his mind a turmoil of conflicting emotions and questions. As he straightened himself he saw a note on the flat top of the desk. He was about to reach for it when there was a movement behind him and he heard a voice saying:
‘What is wrong —?’
Phil saw that it was a waiter who had come into the office. He spoke warily, with a strong Italian accent. He was a short, dark-haired, pudgy man. He was looking at the sprawling figure and broke into a stream of excited Italian. As he finished whatever it was he was saying he, too, knelt beside the body, and then looked up at Phil Stone.
‘Who did this?’
‘How the hell should I know,’ Phil said. ‘I came in here a moment ago and there he was.’
The waiter squinted at him, his dark eyes suspicious, then he straightened himself and leaning across the desk, grabbed a telephone.
‘What are you going to do?’ Phil asked.
‘Phone for a doctor.’
‘It’s not a doctor you want,’ Phil said with grim humour, ‘it’s more like an undertaker.’
The other flashed a long look at him. He hesitated and as if he had experienced a sudden brainwave, he put down the telephone.
‘I don’t have to phone,’ he said, ‘there’s a doctor here already.’
‘Oh?’ Phil said.
‘Yes,’ the other said, ‘Dr. Morelle. He’s having supper downstairs.’
Chapter Eleven
Dr. Morelle took a long drag at his inevitable Le Sphinx, and idly observed the man in the brilliant spotlight. The man was wearing sleek evening-tails, with a rather exaggerated white tie. He was pale-faced and his hair gleamed a grey, silvery colour, brushed back from a centre-parting.
He was approaching the climax of his act, which had been a fascinating display of conjuring dexterity with a pack of playing-cards. Now as his audience watched he was causing a card to rise from the bouquet of flowers he was holding in one hand into his other hand which he held two feet or more above. It was a card which he had previously asked a red-haired woman with a gay party sitting at a ringside table to select and without telling what the card was, return it to the pack he had held before her. Now, the card was held high in the conjurer’s fingers and a burst of applause greeted the red-head’s smiling acknowledgment that it was her own chosen card.
‘I know how he got her to choose that particular card,’ Inspector Hood said to Dr. Morelle from the corner of his mouth. ‘All he did was to cut the pack in two so that when he puts the pack together again he returned the top half underneath the original lower half. The card which she’d picked out and then returned on top of the lower half is now on top of the pack. That way he only has to remember where the card was returned to the pack, he doesn’t have to know what it was. Simple.’
Dr. Morelle nodded with a thin smile.
‘But what I don’t get,’ Inspector Hood said with a frown, ‘is how the devil he makes the card rise up in the air like that from that bunch of flowers?’
Dr. Morelle’s smile became a trifle condescending. ‘The devil has nothing to do with it,’ he said, through a cloud of cigarette-smoke. ‘The secret lies in a black thread, one end of which he attaches to the card, and which passes through a tiny eyelet on that ring he is wearing on his right finger to a tiny spring drum which is concealed up his coat-sleeve. To manipulate the card by this means is child’s play.’
Inspector Hood looked at Dr. Morelle admiringly. ‘Is there any mystery on this earth that your mind can’t unravel?’ he said.
Dr. Morelle contrived to smile deprecatingly. ‘You flatter me,’ he said. ‘My thought processes would be slow indeed if they remained baffled for long by anything our friend out there,’ he nodded in the direction of the bowing smiling conjurer, ‘could think up.’
Inspector Hood glanced at him quickly. ‘I didn’t know you too knew him,’ he said.
‘I did,’ Dr. Morelle said, ‘only not under the name he is performing under.’
‘Aces La Rue,’ the other said. ‘Trust him to think up one like that, it’s quite a handle.’
Detective-Inspector Hood of Scotland Yard was a square-faced, burly man, who looked a trifle out of place in the sophisticated surroundings of the Black Moth. He and Dr. Morelle occupied a table tucked away in a corner, but with a clear view of the dance floor. The orchestra had been playing softly during Aces La Rue’s act, now as the conjurer was making his final bow the music reached a crescendo. Inspector Hood glanced round at the faces of the women, their jewels glittering in the reflection of the spotlight’s glare and at the gleaming white of the men’s shirt-fronts. He turned his head as Dr. Morelle said:
‘I am very grateful to you for inviting me along, and it’s a pity that Miss Frayle could not accompany me. But there is a great deal of work to be done, so I left her busy at Harley Street. I’ve no doubt she fears,’ he went on, ‘that without her guidance I shall come to some wicked end, though since she knows that I am with you, perhaps she may feel less cause for concern.’
Inspector Hood chuckled. ‘I’m sorry she couldn’t have made it,’ he said. ‘I am sure Miss Frayle would have had a good time.’
Neither he, still less Dr. Morelle, had shown any interest in the first item of the evening’s entertainment, a line of scantily-dressed girls going through their dance routine, it was not until Aces La Rue’s appearance that Hood had sat up and taken some notice, and had watched his act attentively. Now the conjurer had made his exit and the line of girls were out again, wearing as little as before, though this time their heads were adorned with head-dresses of multi-coloured feathers, which bobbed up and down during the energetic dance that followed.
‘At any rate it was gratifying to learn,’ Dr. Morelle was saying, ‘that he is now treading a straighter and narrower path than he has in the past.’
The last time Dr. Morelle had met the individual who called himself Aces La Rue had been on a liner London-bound from New York. Then the conjurer had been working the Atlantic run as a professional card-sharper. One night two young men whom he had attempted to mulct, taking a poor view of his activities had inveigled him to a deserted part of the deck, and proceeded to beat him up. It chanced that Dr. Morelle had come along in time to scare the two men off, and to attend to the card-sharper, who was in a pretty sorry state as a result of the going-over he had suffered.
From that moment the latter had sworn his undying gratitude to Dr. Morelle, who had in turn suggested to him that he might turn his undoubted talents as a card-manipulator to a more honest purpose. Not that Dr. Morelle, whose knowledge of the criminal mind was deep and wide, had felt particularly confident that his advice would prove acceptable. But it would seem that his pessimism in this respect had proved unjustified. The card-sharper had turned over a new leaf and adopting a new name was apparently employing his skill legitimately.
Dr. Morelle was at the Black Moth that night on Inspector Hood’s invitation, the latter explaining to him that he himself was invited along by someone he’d known as a criminal and whom he’d had the job of arresting two or three times in the past, but who had abandoned a career of crime to become a performer on the music-halls and in cabaret.
When Hood mentioned the name of the man, Aces La Rue, who wanted to prove to the detective that he was no longer a crook, and to exhibit his prow
ess as a member of the entertainment profession, it had conveyed nothing to Dr. Morelle. Dr. Morelle had accepted his old friend’s invitation not with alacrity, or pleasurable anticipation. Night-clubs were not in Dr. Morelle’s line. But Hood had been so insistent and persuasive that in the end he had agreed to join him.
So it was with some amusement tinged with a sense of self-satisfaction that he had recognized the man who was the main reason for the detective-inspector’s presence as none other than the card-sharper who, by his intervention that night on board the Southampton-bound liner, he felt he had first set on the road away from crime.
He was wondering whether La Rue had observed him sitting with Inspector Hood, and if so what his reaction had been. And he was deciding that his presence might have passed unnoticed by the conjurer since Hood had chosen a table inconspicuously in the shadows of a corner, when a voice said deferentially in his ear:
‘Dr. Morelle.’
It was a waiter who was hovering behind him, his voice calm, but there was an agitated expression in his eyes. Dr. Morelle gave him a questioning glance and the other stepped closer.
‘Could you come, Dr. Morelle, please? There’s been a slight — er — accident.’
Dr. Morelle observed that the dark-haired man with his marked Italian accent was perspiring round his pudgy jowls, and he turned to Inspector Hood with a quizzical expression.
‘A doctor’s work is never done,’ Inspector Hood said, with a little chuckle as Dr. Morelle rose to his feet. The waiter hesitated and looked tentatively at the detective. Dr. Morelle caught his glance.
‘Would you like him to come too?’ he said. ‘This is Detective-Inspector Hood of Scotland Yard.’
The other gasped, then mopped his face with a handkerchief. ‘Perhaps you would, sir?’ he said to Hood. ‘I am afraid something — er — something unpleasant has happened.
Dr. Morelle and the Inspector exchanged glances and followed the waiter round the back of the tables at which the night-club patrons sat watching the line of girls, through the swing-doors, and up the thick-carpeted stairs to Ray Mercury’s office.
On the way the waiter told them in his voluble broken English what he had found when he entered the office, and how he earlier had recognized Dr. Morelle from a newspaper photograph he had seen several weeks before.
Inspector Hood made no comment as they hurried along the softly-lit passage at the head of the stairs, only a muttered grunt of surprise when he realized that it was the boss of the Black Moth Club who was lying dead in his office.
The office-door was open and Dr. Morelle led the way, followed by Hood, the waiter puffing behind, still chattering.
Phil Stone stood between the sprawled figure on the floor and the wide desk. He made no move, said nothing to Dr. Morelle as he knelt beside the body.
Dr. Morelle’s gaze flickered over him, and then it took in the note on the desk. Inspector Hood saw it at the same moment, and his large hand poised over it for a moment, then reached for the telephone instead. He was about to lift the receiver when he glanced at the waiter.
‘You said you picked it up before you remembered Dr. Morelle was here?’
The waiter nodded, the detective muttered something to himself, then picked up the phone. As he dialled and waited for a reply, he looked questioningly at Dr. Morelle who glanced up at him with one eyebrow raised significantly.
‘Dead?’
Dr. Morelle nodded. ‘Shot through the heart. No doubt the bullet’s from the pistol under the desk where it’s fallen.’
Dr. Morelle heard an exclamation from Phil Stone as the latter moved forward to see a small, gleaming black automatic which lay just out of sight under the desk about a foot from the dead man’s outstretched right hand.
Hood gave a quick nod, and then spoke briefly into the receiver, giving instructions. He hung up and then he picked up the note, and while he was squinting at it he muttered to Dr. Morelle. ‘Curious,’ he said, ‘they usually go in for blowing the brains out.’
Dr. Morelle glanced at the crimson patch on the dead man’s shirt front, then he looked round the luxuriously furnished office, his gaze lighting on the waiter, who stood anxiously in the background, before it rested once more on Phil Stone. His eyes held him for a moment, then they returned to Inspector Hood.
‘He appears to have had all the material necessities for a quiet, untroubled life,’ he said.
‘This note seems to give the idea,’ Inspector Hood said, and he read it aloud: ‘I can’t get poor Julie Grayson out of my mind. I know some people say I am responsible for her death. So I am taking this way out. All my love to you, darling Greta. Ray.’
Dr. Morelle raised an eyebrow. ‘Julie Grayson?’ he said musingly, and moved closer to Inspector Hood to read the note over the other’s thick, heavy shoulder.
‘An inquest a day or two ago, I seem to recall,’ Dr. Morelle said. ‘Verdict of suicide was returned against a girl who was employed here. And this man,’ he indicated the body of Ray Mercury, ‘gave evidence to the effect that she was infatuated with him, and committed suicide on account of it.’
‘That’s it. He drove her to her death.’
Dr. Morelle and the detective-inspector turned round to Phil Stone, his face was contorted as he was about to continue, but Inspector Hood interrupted him.
‘I was about to ask you one or two questions,’ he said to him drily.
‘You don’t need to ask me anything,’ Phil replied. ‘I can tell you everything that happened.’
‘Suppose you tell us who you are for a start?’
‘My name is Stone. I’m a ship’s officer, I arrived back in England only a few days ago.’
Dr. Morelle had already noticed the sunburn on the young man’s face which did not fit in with the tired shadows beneath his blue eyes.
‘I came up to his office,’ Phil Stone went on, ‘opened the door, and there he was.’
Inspector Hood turned to glance at the waiter. ‘That’s what you were telling us,’ he said ‘he told you, when he came up here.’
The waiter nodded, and mopped his glistening brow with his handkerchief again.
‘It’s true enough,’ Phil said. ‘I admit I came up here with the intention of causing trouble. I was prepared to give Ray Mercury a beating-up. But when I came in the room the job had been done for me.’
‘You would hardly describe yourself as being depressed by your discovery?’ Dr. Morelle said quietly.
‘Who are you anyway?’
‘I am afraid I forgot to make the introductions,’ Hood said. ‘This is Dr. Morelle, and I’m Detective-Inspector Hood of Scotland Yard. He and I happened to be around having a quiet little meal when the waiter brought us up here. Other police-officers are on their way.’
‘I can’t say I’m sorry,’ Phil Stone said to Dr. Morelle. ‘Though I must admit he didn’t strike me as the sort who’d take his own life.’
‘People do funny things for funny reasons,’ Inspector Hood said.
Dr. Morelle was wearing a thoughtful expression on his gaunt face. ‘I seem to recall that it was you who first found the girl referred to in the note,’ he said. ‘The girl whose death you say this man caused?’
‘Yes,’ Phil said, ‘I found her.’
Dr. Morelle noted the tension in his voice, the haunted look in his eyes, and he wondered what were the emotions and how deep ran the beat of human hearts that criss-crossed behind this strange story of two deaths so near to each other and concerning two people who were so well known to one another. The girl had been an unknown quantity, so far as the police were aware. A poor deluded creature who had apparently made a fool of herself over a man, and then had chosen a tragic way out. But from what Inspector Hood had mentioned to Dr. Morelle that evening concerning the owner of the Black Moth Club, the late Ray Mercury was not a particularly impressive specimen of humanity. His past was not the sort that would have stood a great deal of looking into, his photograph together with details of some of the more unsavour
y episodes which had engaged his attention, and which had brought him to the notice of the police were to be found in the Criminal Record Office at Scotland Yard.
Dr. Morelle’s cogitations were interrupted by Inspector Hood saying to the waiter: ‘You or anybody hear the sound of a shot?’
‘No, sir. I would not have known what happened if I had not come up here already because I wished to speak to Mr. Mercury about one or two business-matters. But it is not really surprising,’ the waiter went on, ‘that nothing was heard. The walls and door are sound-proofed. It is almost impossible, unless you are close outside the door, to hear anything in here.’
‘Mr. Mercury liked to be quiet when he was in his office?’ the Scotland Yard man said.
‘That is right, sir.’
The door opened wide, and Inspector Hood, without turning his head, was about to announce the police had arrived when a voice stopped him.
‘Dr. Morelle,’ the newcomer said, ‘at last I’ve found you.’
It was Miss Frayle who stood on the threshold.
Dr. Morelle spun round slowly to observe her with a frosty smile. Miss Frayle came forward tentatively, blinking a little behind her horn-rimmed glasses.
‘I’d finished my work,’ she said, ‘and you were still not back, so I thought I’d come along and find you, you know you have a long day to-morrow. They said downstairs that you were —’
Miss Frayle broke off with a horrified gasp as her eyes encountered the figure on the floor. Inspector Hood made a move towards her as if to mask the body, but he was too late to hide that inert shape.
‘Is — is he dead?’ Miss Frayle said.
‘If he isn’t,’ Dr. Morelle said, ‘he’s giving a remarkably good imitation.’
Chapter Twelve
Aces La Rue sprawled on his bed in his two-room flat overlooking a corner of Old Compton Street. Through the open window came the daytime noises of Soho’s busy streets below. Aces had just returned from buying the day’s groceries. From where he lay he could see through the open door his string shopping-bag bulging over on his sitting-room table. There was nothing else to the flat except a cubby-hole out on the landing, with a gas-stove and a sink and a few shelves, and a bathroom upstairs, which was shared by tenants of the flat above.
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