The Round Table Murders

by Peter Baron

  Apparently the article was of absorbing interest. At all events Chorley failed to return Lou’s salutation as he passed the old Jew on his way to the wardrobe.

  Opening one of the doors he stepped on the platform and closing the door behind him, jerked at a rope running up from a hole in the flooring beneath him and terminating somewhere above his head. The platform began to descend and Chorley allowed the rope to slide through his fingers until a pair of doors came into view, then he tightened his grip and the lift came to a standstill. He pushed open the right hand door and slouched into the room beneath Lou’s shop.

  It was a wide room dotted about with marble topped tables and gave the impression of a cheap eating house, an impression heightened by the presence of a bar at the farther end. But this was one of the occasions—there had been two others—when Chorley was interested neither in the bar nor what it represented. His interest centered on the two men seated at a table by the wall matching their respective skill at card sharping.

  The smaller of the two, a little man with the face of a ferret and a suit that had been assembled from the wardrobe of men of more imposing stature, cocked his hat over his eye by way of greeting.

  “Hello, Chorley,” he observed and receiving no answer added his opinion “as ‘ow it was ‘ard if a bloke couldn’t get a single ace in a stack.”

  He extended the habit of dropping his aitches even to his surname and, although this varied during periods of exceptional police activity, it was as Walter Tompson that he was cited in the folios at the Criminal Records Office.

  Chorley ignored Mr. Wal Tompson. Crossing the room he spread the paper he held beneath the nose of the good-looking youngster who sat opposite Wal, and incidentally interrupted that gentleman’s pastime of trying to deal himself a flush from the pack with sufficient delicacy to lull suspicion in any observers.

  “See that?” demanded Chorley dropping into a chair.

  Larry Wade pushed back his own chair and took the paper. He was a slim young man, with dark wavy hair, and clad in a brown suit that would not have attracted attention elsewhere, but stood out in rather painful contrast to the clothes affected by his friends. For whereas Larry’s tie matched his handkerchief, Chorley was not so fastidious. He possessed neither.

  There was a silence while Larry read, and Chorley amused himself by trying to blow smoke rings. Eventually Larry tossed the paper aside and his brown eyes took on an unfriendly light.

  “So the Colonel’s brought it off?” he asked, and helped himself to a cigarette from the case on the table. Mr. Tompson regarded the proceedings in a carefully detached manner. It was his case.

  “Nice haul,” observed Chorley. “Where do we come in on the deal?”

  Larry shrugged and Mr. Tompson took the opportunity of intruding his opinion.

  “The bloke we want to get ‘old of is Dennis Teyst. I reck’n ‘e knows more’n anyone abaht where the Colonel parks ‘is carcass and anyway them two’s come unstuck lately and Dennis ‘d jump at the chanct o’ queering ‘is brother’s pitch.”

  “This is brilliance, Wal,” smiled Larry, “but I doubt if Dennis knows his brother’s whereabouts.”

  “He don’t have to,” said Chorley. “The Colonel’s been away three years and he don’t know your connection with Lou.”

  Larry ran a slim hand through his hair.

  “You think he’ll try and pass the bracelet through Lou?”

  “Why not? Lou’s the only safe fence in London,” said the other. “He’s fooled the nabs for twenty years with that junk shop and he’s never been lagged. What’s more the Colonel passed all his other stuff through Lou.”

  Larry thought it over. “Something in that, but my experience of the Colonel is that horning in on one of his stunts is a certain passport to hell.”

  Chorley’s heavy lidded eyes flickered suddenly.

  “I’d do a lot to shop that smooth swine,” he said viciously. “I reckon he knew something about the squeal that landed me in stir. If I could prove it—”

  He left the sentence unfinished and proceeded to extract aces with uncanny accuracy from the pack before him.

  Mr. Tompson again intruded.

  “The Colonel’s a guy wot takes a ‘elluver lot o’ rekernising. Wot ‘e don’t know abaht rearrangin’ ‘is dial aint’ been found out yet.”

  The others nodded agreement. Chorley knew it to his cost. Few people could teach the Colonel anything about the possibilities of make-up. He was a past master.

  And few people would have recognized Colonel George Teyst in the shabby loafer who at that moment slouched into the room above the one in which they sat.

  Even old Lou, when he ambled out from his back room had no idea of his visitor’s identity, and Lou’s eyes were pre-ternaturally keen. Besides which he had had previous dealings with the Colonel.

  Standing in the semi-darkness of the shop he blinked uncertainly at the newcomer and the Colonel returned his stare interestedly.

  For as long as he could remember the little German Jew had worn that faded green suit with its double breasted waistcoat and shining metal buttons, and it seemed probable that the rusty black cravat encircling Lou’s neck had not been removed since the Colonel last saw it. Or the black tasseled smoking cap. Nobody had seen Lou without that cap. He slept in it.

  “You vant sometings, hein?”

  “Yes, I want something, Lou,” returned the Colonel. “Come into the back room.”

  Lou nodded wisely. “Like dot is eet? Vat you got?”

  The Colonel walked past him into the next room and sat down on the cane chair opposite Lou’s desk. Lou after a puzzled glance ambled slowly after him and sat down behind the desk.

  “You got sometings for me, hein? Dat is good. An’ you know about de back room? Dat is nod so good. I don’ know you.”

  The Colonel took an old tobacco pouch and a packet of cigarette papers from his pocket. Rolling himself a cigarette he lighted it before he spoke.

  “Been a big stick-up at the Plaza, I hear.”

  Lou’s eyes narrowed. “You know something about heem, hein?”

  “Possibly.” The Colonel laid his pouch on the desk.

  “Take a look at that.”

  Lou picked it up curiously and turned it over. Less sensitive fingers than his would have detected the fact that there was something more than tobacco in the pouch, but no fingers could have extracted that something quicker.

  “So?” he muttered. “It vos you, mein freund?”

  He turned the pendant, slowly allowing the light from the window behind him to play on the gleaming stones. After a few moments he took a small magnifying glass from his pocket and peered closely at the emeralds.

  “Wonnershon!” he breathed at last. “Dese stones ees der goods, hein? Flawless. You know vat dat mean? Dey fetch der beeg price.”

  The Colonel nodded and lounging back in his chair stared at the ceiling.

  “Sachs gave his verdict as forty thousand pounds,” he said. “How much, Lou?”

  The Jew dropped his hands on his knees and stared down at the four emeralds.

  “Fordy tousand? Dot ees a mint of money. Eet ees too mooch. Mebbe I raise fifteen tousand, mebbe twenty, but fordy, nein. I haf to find der buyer—I don’ know eef I can—bot I haf to make der profit myself.”

  The Colonel was familiar with Lou’s methods of doing business. He contented himself with staring round the room and the old Jew fell to scribbling aimlessly on a sheet of paper before him. The Colonel repressed a smile. It had occurred to him that Lou was trying to estimate just how much it was safe to pay.

  Which was a mistake. The room in which they now sat had not altered much in the past thirty years, but it had been subjected to at least one alteration of which the Colonel was ignorant.

  Beside Lou’s knee stood an old wooden waste paper box, a funnel shaped affair that the Colonel knew had not changed its position for many years. But what he did not know was that it no longer possessed a bottom, or that a
piece of lead piping led from its base to the room below, its unsealed end protruding over the table at which Larry and Chorley were still sitting.

  The idea had been Larry’s and it had more than justified its adoption in the past two years.

  At that moment Lou’s thoughts were concentrated on the waste paper box and also on the need of caution in writing on the sheet before him.

  “Dey ees peautiful stones,” he said at length and slowly screwed up the paper on which he had been writing. “For how mooch you sell?”

  “Twenty-five thousand,” said the Colonel coolly, and a look of horror spread over the old man’s face.

  “Twenty fife tousand? Vere you tink I get dat mooch moneys? You tink I break a bank perhaps, hein? Be der reasonable man. Novere can I find der buyer at dat price. Dese stones ees marked—every vere der polis vatch for dem. Dere is nod der market at dat price, no-one take der risk and eef dey did vere do I make der profit?”

  The Colonel shrugged. “I came to you because you’re safe, Lou. There are others.”

  Lou forced a smile and spoke placatingly.

  “You vos hard to a poor old man dat has to make der living,” he whined. “Me, I try to find der buyer. I cannot pud up der money myself. Mebbe I raise eet, bot twendy fife tousand, dat ees profideering, mein freund, profideering.”

  He subjected the stones to another scrutiny.

  “You come back vid dem tomorrer, hein?” he asked, pushing the emeralds across to the other. “I don’ promise dat I do business, mebbe, I see. Dese stones ven dey are recut lose der value—perhaps no one take der risk of dem, den mebbe I buy myselfs. Eet ees mooch money. Vere I find heem, I do nod know.”

  He tossed the screwed up paper into the waste paper box and peered at his companion as the other rose to leave.

  “Many times haf I seen you, George, mit der different face, dis time you excel yourselfs, hein? I remember vonce——”

  He trailed off into a reminiscence and the Colonel listened good-naturedly, unaware of the other’s object. Which was to gain time for certain gentlemen in the room below.

  It was Chorley who picked up the ball of paper as it fell from the lead piping above his head, but before he could unroll the paper Larry’s hand fell on his arm.

  “Thanks, I’ll have that, Chorley.”

  Larry took the paper, smoothed it out and read. Then he tossed it to Chorley.

  “Turning prophet, Chorley, in your old age?” he asked.

  Chorley read the message, scribbled amongst a maze of lines and squares, slowly.

  “I got the Colonel here with the emeralds. One of you better trail him, but no fighting in the shop.”

  Chorley grinned back at Larry and passed the message on to Mr. Tompson.

  “No. There won’t be no fighting—in the shop,” he said significantly. “Wal, he don’t know your ugly mug—which is an advantage for him and us. Jump to it.”

  Mr. Tompson overlooking the libel rose to his feet.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Exactly a quarter of an hour after he left Lou Staam’s shop, the Colonel had a severe shock. It would have been even more severe if he had not been on the point of descending the stairs.

  From the head of the tenement stairs it was possible to look down over the banisters to the ground floor, and the Colonel did so more from force of habit than a desire to see if any undesirable visitors were ascending. It made just that much difference in the ultimate result, for there was no doubt that visitors were ascending or that they were undesirable.

  Both Chorley and Larry were moving with peculiar silence, and keeping close to the wall in a manner that gave the Colonel food for thought. Not that he wasted much time in thinking. He was not concerned with the means by which either had traced him, but with their reason for so doing.

  The Colonel had made quick-thinking a habit. It took him two seconds to realize their object. Knowing it, his impulse was to stay there and await them, but he overruled it. Chorley or Larry separately was one thing, Chorley and Larry was another.

  And so the Colonel retired slowly from the landing to his dingy little room, closing and locking the door behind him, and left by the fire escape. Privately he resolved, that in the near future he might have much for the ears of both Chorley and Larry, but nothing that would please them.

  It was not until he was a foot from the ground that he became aware of Mr. Tompson lounging in the shadow of a doorway opposite. Then several things happened suddenly.

  The Colonel flung himself against the wall and they fired together. The double crash shook the echoes of the cul-de-sac, and two wisps of smoke drifted up into the air of that sunless place.

  An expression of reproachful surprise crossed Mr. Tompson’s features as he slowly toppled against the doorway and sagged to the ground. As Wal’s gun slipped from his hand, the Colonel, clutching at his side, stumbled down the last two steps of the fire escape and lurched towards the end of the alley.

  Two minutes later a dumbfounded greengrocer left a shop to find a curious crowd gaping after his swiftly departing lorry.

  He made one or two trenchant remarks about motor bandits, and then hurried to meet the approaching constable who had appeared suddenly, in that mysterious manner peculiar to his kind when something happens to disturb the peace of the community.

  The grocer had commenced his statement and given the number of his lorry when he noticed that the constable was staring intently at a boot protruding from a doorway halfway down the alley behind them. In two strides the constable reached Mr. Tompson, and simultaneously Chorley “the Nose,” and Larry, retired from an altogether too conspicuous position at the head of the fire escape.

  The constable was an earnest young man who was not given to asking needless questions. He dropped on one knee beside Wal and bent his head in order to try and catch what he was saying.

  “Did they get him?” whispered Mr. Tompson.

  The constable shook his head.

  “No, but he seems to have got you. Where did it hit you, Wal?”

  Mr. Tompson looked up and recognized an old friend.

  “Lung,” he said faintly. “I guess this ‘ere’s my finish—get ‘im, flattie.”

  The “flattie” nodded. “Who was he?”

  Mr. Tompson’s eyes closed and his breathing became difficult. He had spoken no more than the truth in saying that it was his finish. The Colonel’s bullet had destroyed both Wal’s lung and its owner. It was that recollection that spurred Wal to a reprisal.

  “I got mine, flattie,” he said slowly. “See ‘e gets ‘is—you allus was a pal—did yer rounds regular so’s we noo when yer was due—the bloke who gimme this packet, blarst ‘im—was the bloke who pulled the d’Essinger raid—the Colonel.”

  The constable made a rapid note and then turned to the crowd that had gradually filtered into the alley.

  “Doctor here?” he asked. “No? Well you—yes, you with the choker, make a pillow for this man’s head and don’t move him till I get back. Easy does it—one lung’s out of action, and he’s got hemorrhage. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He forced his way through them, and within a few seconds was in a call box arranging matters connected with an ambulance, the divisional surgeon, and a report. The last item contained the number of the lorry in which the Colonel had made his escape, and it would have been a valuable piece of information, but for the fact that at the moment it reached headquarters the Colonel was engaged in defacing the number plate of the lorry with mud in a secluded street.

  Satisfied that he need not fear betrayal from that source the Colonel clambered back into the driving seat and slipped in the dutch.

  The effort had called forth more energy than he expected, and he realized suddenly that the wound in his side was bleeding profusely. With one hand on the wheel he pulled out a handkerchief, and, folding it into a pad, stuffed it between his shirt and his skin. Then with his right arm pressed close to his side he devoted his attention to the driving of the lorry.
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br />   He had a journey before him that proved a tax on his waning strength, and he arrived in Reigate with the knowledge that if he reached his own home before he collapsed it would be a miracle.

  Yet even miracles happen. He abandoned the lorry just at the beginning of the tunneled entrance to the town, and then, walking a little unsteadily, made his way in the direction of the Post Office. Fortunately at that early hour of the afternoon the tunnel was deserted and there were no witnesses to the abandoning of the lorry. But in the town itself he had to observe greater care.

  Probably none of the people in the square, busied with their own immediate affairs, suspected what it cost one of their number to walk firmly and normally. Even the girl who supplied the Colonel with the stamps he asked for failed to notice anything about him except his pallor, and that she forgot almost at once.

  For all that, it was sheer will that kept the Colonel on his feet and forced him to stand in one of the little cubicles and write three letters. They were only short letters, and he finished them without allowing any weakness to creep into his writing. Nevertheless, he had to pause before he completed what he had come to do.

  After a few minutes’ rest he took a sheet of blue paper from his pocket, and taking up the pen again thought for a few moments before he began to write again.

  The letters showed signs of the shaking hand that had written them, but they were readable, and for some moments the Colonel stood there looking at them. They represented his last attempt to bridge a wide gulf. And it was the finest attempt since it was to be made possible only by his own death.

  Slowly he folded the paper twice and then tore it along the folded edges, making three slips, which he placed in separate envelopes, and then, sealing them, dropped them into the letter-box.

  Standing close to the counter he suddenly felt that he was swaying a trifle, and the realization did something to clear his clouded brain. With an effort he stood upright and walked firmly to a telephone box. None the less, when he pulled the door to behind him, he found the lifting of the telephone receiver almost beyond him.