by Peter Baron
Mr. Hesse showed signs of apoplexy.
“That snake went to the bank, eh?” he ground out.
“He did, and you can thank your stars he’s no forger, or he’d have drawn a check on self that would have put you beyond the reach of income tax inspectors!”
“Very funny,” said Mr. Hesse, and sat up like a jack-in-the-box. “Well, get this, you. If anyone thinks this gorilla can prize forty thousand bucks outer J. B. H. and get away with it they’ve got another think coming. The first hand’s his, but if that feller don’t hit the mat hard before I’m through—well, pardon me while I choke with mirth.”
For the first time in her life Mrs. Hesse began to cry. It was a revolting sight. Inspector Keating, endeavoring to make out his report, eyed the lady with disfavor and motioned Mr. Hesse to try and soothe her.
The millionaire declined. The only solace he had received until then was his wife’s fall from power. He liked it and proposed to enjoy it to the full. He was still watching her with grim pleasure when the telephone rang again. Keating picked it up wearily.
“Hello. Yes, speaking. Who’s that?”
A musical laugh answered him, and the Inspector set his teeth. Unless he was mistaken he knew the owner of that laugh. He was not mistaken.
“I thought you’d be there as soon as Arthur Somerville told his story,” said the Colonel’s voice. “You can tell him that his pants and shoes are in a cupboard on the landing of the house in which Inspector Storm found him.”
“You’ve slipped, George,” said Keating evenly. “This is the first time you’ve come out into the open, and we’ve got you.”
“Think so? Well, go on if it eases the pain. I’ve made my pile and I’m through. This is where I retire and settle down to breed pigs, probably in your home county, Surrey.”
“I give you a week, George, and then someone else will give you twenty years,” Keating retorted.
“Not on your sweet life. By the way, your excitable little friend, the Baron, is confined to his car in Freyer’s dockyard, off the East India Dock Road. Know it? Good. When I say confined...well, he’s in the dickey. It holds him nicely but is probably not too comfortable. You might look in and see how he’s getting on. For the present, goodbye. My regards to Mr. Hesse, whom I expect you have found by now. In case you haven’t, he was languishing in an ottoman the last time I saw him.”
The line went dead and Inspector Keating hung up the receiver.
“That was the Colonel,” he said briefly. “He sends you his regards, Mr. Hesse.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Until the People Who Matter took an adverse view of it, Inspector Keating received a reasonable amount of sympathy from his immediate superiors, the council known to its subordinates as the “Round Table,” and labeled by the Press the Big Four. In their opinion it was not Keating’s fault that the Colonel had got away with his raid. These things happen, and, as Inspector Storm pointed out, “every Napoleon has his Wellington.”
Then the most aged member of the cabinet pointed out that although the existing Government could not recognize a project that had as its object the raising of money for arms by the Prince of Morcovia with a view to declaring war on the Archduke Boris of Saxe-Munen—“ a state to which we are bound by treaty, gentlemen”—it was nevertheless a fact that a foreign emissary had been insulted and treated with contumely and England owed it to her reputation for impartial justice to seek out the wrongdoer and visit his sins on his head. Further, the Baron d’Essinger was entitled to an official apology. The aged member recommended that the Home Secretary give the matter his attention and also inquired closely into the advisability of placing the mantle of command on more worthy shoulders than those invested with it at the time of the outrage.
To which suggestion the Home Secretary listened in respectful silence although he was guilty in his thoughts of grave disrespect to the aged speaker. He would adopt the gentleman’s advice. He did, and the suddenly summoned Round Table listened to a tirade that was as unwelcome as it was unexpected. It was practically a verbatim facsimile of the aged member’s words, with a few more stringent remarks of the Home Secretary’s thrown in and it removed all shadow of blame from himself to their worthy selves.
At that point three of the Knights ceased to sympathize with Inspector Keating, and not even the able defence of the fourth, Superintendent Kaye, prevented them from passing a vote of censure on the entire lack of foresight shown by Inspector Keating. Neither did Kaye’s staunch fight for his friend deter them from summoning that gentleman and passing on the rebuke in more scalding language.
The immediate consequences might have been less unpleasing if the Inspector had kept his head. Unfortunately he had never quite succeeded in controlling his passion for saying what he thought. He dwelt at some length on “armchair critics” and practically hooted a challenge to the Round Table to “do better” itself. It left an unfortunate impression. And Superintendent Kaye’s remark that there was an element of truth in Keating’s statements profoundly shocked Mr. Commissioner Carr and all but threw Chief Constable Send into a fit of apoplexy.
So much for that. The bitterest blow of all was the punctilious obedience with which Inspector Keating’s orders were carried out by his subordinates. No one took the risk of inviting the next stage of the descending rebuke and Keating nursed a grievance to which he could not give adequate vent.
And so it was that at six o’clock in the evening of the day following the Colonel’s last coup, he sat in his office glaring out across the river and wondering if a broken lock on the door of the adjacent washing lavatory was sufficient excuse for a vitriolic attack on the janitor.
He abandoned the project reluctantly with the arrival of Kaye and filling his pipe, eyed his friend morosely.
Kaye, shaking the rain from an old umbrella looked out of the window and murmured something about “the gentle rain from heaven” dropping “upon the place beneath.”
“Rain,” said Inspector Keating, “is the only thing in England that hasn’t gone up since the war. I suppose someone enjoys it.”
“The only ‘Rain’ I ever enjoyed was Somerset Maugham’s,” said Kaye and laughed immoderately at his joke. Keating who saw no joke eyed his companion suspiciously and wondered what kind of rain “Somerset Maugham’s” was.
“That fat slug d’Essinger has been in here this morning raising Cain about his perishing emeralds,” he continued, “and one of the dailies has come out with the bright headline ‘Keating’s routs bugs, fleas and other pests, excluding crooks.’ Another paper has published an article on ‘Police Inefficiency’ by ‘A Member of the Public.’ I tell you, this is getting me down.”
“‘The public has more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it,’” quoted Kaye. “You’ll get more solace from Cato than you will from encouraging an inferiority complex, Sam. Personally I’m inclined to think that we’ve met our match in the wily George. The Squad are wasting their time combing the East End and watching the known fences. George will pass the emeralds on to a receiver who has never been through our hands. Some day I’ll go down the Goswell Road. I’ve an idea that someone is receiving there. We traced some stuff as far as the Barbican some weeks ago.”
“All of which,” observed Keating, “is very interesting, but means dam-all. The only person I’m interested in at the moment is George and he’s lying low.”
“Lying is always low,” Kaye rejoined. “Even truth lies at the bottom of a well.”
He turned in his seat as someone rapped on the door and called a curt “Come in.”
A plain clothes man appeared.
“There’s a man here who wants to speak to you, sir,” he informed Keating.
“Me? Who is it? Not that blighter with the civilian auxiliary police scheme?”
“No sir,” the man smiled. It was well known that the civilian police force was a sore point with Keating. “Chorley, ‘the Nose’, sir.”
“Oh, send him in.”
When Chorley arrived he conveyed less the impression of having been sent in than having had Keating brought to him. His careless distribution of cigarette ash on the floor was a masterpiece of cool detachment.
He tipped his hat over one eye by way of acknowledging Kaye’s presence, although he was unaware of the Superintendent’s identity, and vouchsafed Keating a casual “ullo, Flea-powder.”
That was a tactical error. Keating was in no mood to appreciate the use of the flippant nickname by which he was known in “wanted” circles.
“There’s only one thing that stops you joining the angels at the moment,” he snarled, “and that’s your past. Spit your trouble out and follow it.”
Chorley inhaled indifferently.
“What’s a picture of the Colonel worth, Keating?” he asked.
“As much as your chance of avoiding my boot if you don’t come to the point.”
“That is the point. The Yard ain’t got no photo of the Colonel——”
“How do you know?”
“By reading someone else’s paper,” said Chorley blandly. “If you’d got his dial on paper it’d be in all the dailies. He’s one of the few who ain’t in the Rogues’ Gallery. All the rest are there—you and—orl right, keep yer hair on, what there is of it. Can’t a bloke have a joke? I got a photo of the Colonel with the face Nature gave him, because it was no good to her. He can’t change the shape of his ears or his head, so your clever-clever blokes say. Here’s something for ‘em to work on.”
He took a large square photograph from a side pocket and proffered it to Keating, and the Inspector studied it with mixed feelings.
It was a portrait of George Teyst as Keating had seen him a few days previously, and it seemed to smile up at the Inspector triumphantly. It was mounted on an expensive art board and there was no photographer’s name on the back, but Keating forbore to ask how it came into Chorley’s possession. Instead he pulled out a wallet and extracting a pound note tossed it to the “nark.”
“Take that and get out, before you get something else and have to be taken out,” he said, and Chorley pocketed the note.
“A quid,” he said faintly. “A whole quid. And they say a flattie ain’t generous. And they ain’t far out. That picture’s worth five bars to you and that’s what it’ll go down as in the office expenses, you measly—orl right, orl right, I’ll think it.”
He withdrew muttering profanely, and Keating turned to the telephone at his elbow.
Five minutes later the Photographic Department on the floor above them was working deftly and swiftly to turn out copies for the five leading evening papers before the next edition “went to bed.”
And to their tireless efforts the Colonel owed it that he encountered his likeness on every street corner the following morning. Not that it was a likeness of himself at that moment. The thin, rather tired looking man who was so amused by the poster might have been a city clerk, but whatever he was he bore not the faintest resemblance to Colonel George Teyst.
The man studied the “Mail’s” picture for some moments and then walking to the nearest telephone booth gave a number and was subsequently connected with Inspector Keating.
“Hello, is that? Keating?”
A disgruntled voice assured him that it was.
“Well, look here. About this photo the “Mail’s” got. Lord only knows where you dug it up. It’s an old one and was retouched to death. It’s not a good likeness by any means. Can’t I send you a better one? What’s that? Yes, of course it’s me. Shush. Remember the little girlie who gives you the wrong numbers. But to get back to this ghastly photo. The “Mail’s’ is better than the “Express’ but my dear man, the “Mail’ hasn’t got anything to write home about.”
Inspector Keating again imperiled the maidenly innocence of the lady operator, and commenced to write swiftly on a pad before him.
““One other thing,” the Colonel continued. ““You’ve got too many men looking for your humble subscriber. The traffic’s getting gummed up in Trafalgar Square. You’ll have the ratepayers complaining. I’ve just been talking to one of your men—where? Charing Cross. That’ll save you the trouble of asking someone else to get the exchange on another line to trace the call office.”
Inspector Keating grunted.
“Anyway see that the “Mail’ scrap the block they’re using. My relations will be horrified.” The Colonel grinned at Keating’s sarcastic reply. “
“Not at all. Anything I can do—let me know.”
At the other end of the line Inspector Keating hung up the receiver wearily and reflected that within a week he would be using hair dye. He was faced with an ingenuity which, as he knew from experience, increased with the need for it. And yet with the Colonel still in England the case could not be so hopeless—and that the Colonel would remain in England, if only to make good his boast of breeding pigs in Keating’s home county—the Inspector had no doubt.
The principal reasons, Keating surmised, were that the Colonel still retained some affection for his brothers and was bent on their reunion. It was through that union that Keating hoped to take the Colonel so his objections to it were not great.
But the Colonel had no intention of betraying his whereabouts by visiting any of his brothers, all of whom were under police observation. Neither had he any intention of meeting Keating. The fact that he did so was not due to his own carelessness or Keating’s brilliance. It was a matter of pure luck, or rather, ill-luck.
It took place at the Bank, and a second more would have altered the course of both their lives considerably. As it was, over the heads of a stream of people, their eyes met. Had they met face to face Keating would not have recognized his man, but a bowler hatted head partially obscured Keating’s view and he saw only the Colonel’s eyes. Eyes that he had good cause to remember.
He took a flying leap at the Colonel and collided with a messenger boy. In that second the Colonel stepped back and turned swiftly to the one place where a running man occasioned no comment, the subway leading to the Underground. And those people who heard the siren of Keating’s whistle paid scant attention to a hurrying man, but pressed eagerly forward to ascertain the cause of the disturbance and, incidentally to block Keating’s descent.
After that the pursuit was hopeless. Where the Colonel went to Keating did not even try to guess. One thing was certain, in a very short time George Teyst would be again trying his hand at the art of altering his appearance.
And Keating’s guess was correct. At an obscure hotel off Cannon Street the Colonel’s appearance was undergoing changes, and even though the man who left room number twenty-three did not resemble the man who entered it, the proprietor of the hotel was in no way distressed or curious. He had encountered that kind of mystery before. Men who changed their appearance in that manner seldom returned to the hotel. Sometimes their discarded suits were described in rewards and sometimes they were not. In the latter case the proprietor wore them himself. He was not aware that the rather well worn gray suit had recently clothed the notorious Colonel. He simply had it dyed and kept it for every day wear. He had not bought a new suit of morning clothes for years.
CHAPTER FIVE
There is a narrow alley, joining Goswell Road to the Barbican, called Angels Crescent, and the subtle jester who was responsible for the name probably knew quite well that no Angel had ever visited the precincts of the Crescent, or ever would unless he was prepared to be “held up” for his halo.
For three parts of its unlighted way, the Crescent is bounded on either side by towering warehouses and at its widest part, the halfway bend, not more than four yards separates the front window of Lou Staam’s “junk” shop from the opposite wall.
Curiously enough Lou found it a peculiarly profitable site for his shop—more profitable than the police or other unduly curious people suspected. Lou sold most things, including his friends, if it was safe to do so, and the small airless room, slightly below the street level, was packed with a
curious mixture of ill-assorted commodities that would probably not be found in proximity to each other in any other shop in London. Or elsewhere, for that matter.
Yet it was in a still smaller room, beyond the shop, that Lou’s most profitable transactions took place. A dingy place, that room, warmed by a small oil stove and harboring all the smells of the Barbican and Aldersgate. The one window had never been opened in the memory of those who frequented the shop, and the same tom rug had adorned the floor since its present owner had accepted it as a pledge thirty years previously. Its furniture, a desk that was clamped to the floor, a swivel chair for Lou and a cane death trap for customers, had come into their owner’s possession as a result of a business arrangement between Lou and an auctioneer’s carman. The arrangement was directly responsible for a mystery that still clouds the mind of a certain furniture dealer concerning the ultimate fate of part of “Lot 33.”
There were two doors to the room, one leading to the shop and a few feet from it another, leading to Lou’s bedroom.
There was another exit, but only a few people knew of the existence of the lift within the huge oak wardrobe that stood in the far corner of the room. Lou said the wardrobe was a legacy. So it was, only it had been bequeathed to someone else, but the lift it masked was undoubtedly Lou’s property. He had constructed it himself and although it was only a crude platform operated by the pulling of a rope and lacking some of the comforts of those palatial cages that adorn Claridges, it was useful and Lou was proud of it.
It led to a cellar which was noted in the plans retained by a certain architect, and that cellar in turn led to one below, which, according to the same plans, had had its exits and entrances blocked up and, technically, did not exist. But architects are not always well informed, and anyway it suited Lou’s convenience to keep the secret of the lowest cellar.
Chorley “the Nose” knew of the existence of both cellars, as he knew of most things, and it was to the upper one that he turned his steps immediately after he had seen the leader article of the mid-day “Standard.”