Murder in Wax

by Peter Baron

  Reaching into the farthermost corner, the manager took a white envelope and opened it. Drawing forth a slip of folded paper, he handed it to the Squid and leant against one wall of the safe, still panting. He had not yet recovered from the violent emotion he had undergone during the past half-hour.

  The Squid took the paper, still keeping one eye on Thyme, and scanned it briefly. That done, he held out his hand for the envelope and, placing the agreement inside, stowed the envelope carefully in an inner pocket.

  Thyme, watching him, made a move to step out into the room, and then realized his mistake.

  The Squid’s arm shot out and Thyme reeled back into the safe.

  “Words after all,” said the Squid calmly, “are often nothing but words,” and Thyme’s terror returned.

  He struggled to his feet and stared at the other wildly. Was it possible? Was this fiend even now contemplating evil? But the oath? He could not break that. And yet—the eyes that watched him were mocking.

  The Squid’s right hand reached out to the door and with a strangled gasp Mr. Thyme flung himself forward.

  The Squid laughed shortly, and a shrewd blow struck the manager in the face. He toppled backwards with a despairing cry, and the door slammed.

  The Squid stood there listening for a moment. From inside the safe came a sudden drumming of feet and hands.

  “Let me out—you devil—your oath—you’ve broken it—let me out—you treacherous hound—my God—Fm stifling—”

  Mr. Thyme’s voice came to the Squid without any volume, although he was shouting at the top of his voice. The safe was localizing the sound and very little passed out into the room. Certainly it was not loud enough to attract outside attention.

  “You’re not stifling yet, my dear Thyme,” said the Squid, raising his voice slightly and speaking close to the hinge of the safe, “but you soon will be. The safe is, I fancy, air-tight. Dead men tell no tales, Thyme, and they require no share of the profits! They will find you tomorrow asphyxiated. I have no idea how a man looks in that state. I should like to be here to see you. It would be most diverting, I imagine—distinctly humorous.”

  He stepped back, crossed the room and switched out the light. The door closed softly.

  In an agonized frenzy, Thyme hurled himself at the steel door and tore at it, shrieking, raving, tearing, clutching, until his nails were broken and bleeding; until his very voice gave out.

  Weak and exhausted, he sank back against the wall of the safe. The atmosphere was becoming hot, terribly hot. A strangling hand clutched at his wind-pipe, choking him slowly—slowly.

  “Let me out—oh, my God, let me out,” he croaked painfully. “Air—I want air—I must have air—”

  But no one heard.

  “Come back—you fiend—you’ve broken your oath—perjurer—may you burn in—eternal fire—help—help—God-I’m suffocating—you fiend——let me out...”

  • • •

  Sir Marcus and the Duke were already at the bank when Jimmy, in answer to a frantic telephone message from Bagshaw, put in an appearance. As one of the bank’s oldest and most valued clients, Sir Marcus had been granted the privilege of using the manager’s sanctum, and it was there that Jimmy found him, after fighting his way through the crowd outside in Fleet Street and winning past the two burly custodians of the law holding the crowd in check.

  Peach, the much-harassed right-hand man of the dead bank manager, was in conversation with the Duke and Sir Marcus at the moment, and in passing through the main office Jimmy saw a sergeant of police taking notes from the cashier, who with Peach had been the first to enter the strong room and discover the body of Mr. Thyme.

  “According to the doctor, sir,” Peach was saying in answer to a query from the Baronet, “he has been dead several hours. A terrible sight, sir. His face—absolutely purple—a terrible sight.”

  “Is the full damage known yet?” asked Sir Marcus.

  “It is impossible to estimate it yet,” answered Peach, “but it must be enormous. Your tiara was taken, sir.”

  He contrived a weak, sympathetic smile. Sir Marcus was one of the bank’s biggest clients and consequently almost ruined.

  The Baronet, however, was facing the catastrophe with his customary equanimity.

  “You should have withdrawn your account months ago,” grumbled Framlingham. “I warned you. I always thought there was something fishy about this concern.”

  Peach looked pained: “Really, your Grace,” he protested warmly.

  “Don’t ‘really’ me,” scowled the Duke. “Thank God, I had the sense to get .out years ago before the roof fell in. I never did trust Tubby Thyme. I knew him at Charterhouse. He always had cod’s eyes,” he added reflectively.

  “My late principal died defending the interests of his clients,” Peach reminded him reprovingly, and elicited a disparaging grunt from the skeptical Duke.

  “At what time was he found?” asked Jimmy, insinuating himself into the conversation.

  Peach eyed the reporter sourly, but gave the required information.

  “How did the thieves gain entrance?” pursued Jimmy.

  “Look here, young man,” said Peach, “are you a reporter?”

  “Unfortunately,” Jimmy admitted.

  “I dislike reporters,” said Peach coldly.

  “And rightly,” agreed Jimmy. “I also dislike reporters. It is my chief recreation. But reporters do not reciprocate that feeling.” Peach remained unimpressed.

  “I might add,” continued Jimmy modestly, “that I am considered rather a charming specimen of my kind.”

  “The door,” interrupted Peach, “is behind you.”

  “My persuasive powers are unlimited,” said Jimmy, “and I have waited——”

  “The door,” said Peach, “has not changed its position.”

  “——at great inconvenience——”

  “It is opened—and closed—by turning the handle,” Peach said firmly.

  “I have waited,” persisted Jimmy unperturbed, “to obtain a story from the fountain head which I might have obtained from an underling.”

  Peach gulped dubiously.

  “From the fountain head,” purred Jimmy.

  The other began to appreciate a certain charm, hitherto unnoticed, in the reporter’s manner.

  “There is so little known,” said Peach lamely.

  “But you will give me the most authentic report,” Jimmy suggested deferentially.

  The flattery did its work. Peach succumbed. Jimmy asked the now almost sycophantic man a few more questions and the latter answered them readily and in detail.

  As the reporter concluded, the door opened to admit Inspector Elveden. He smiled faintly as he observed Sir Marcus.

  Jimmy drew him on one side at once.

  “This boxes up the case for abduction against Thyme,” he said regretfully.

  “It boxes up nothing,” retorted the Inspector grimly. “The popular theory is that he died defending his clients’ interests. Bah! You and I know perfectly dam’ well that he was warned somehow or other by the Squid and tried to make his get-away. What happened after that we can only guess at, but I’ll stake my reputation that the Squid tricked him and left him when he was no longer of any use. It’s just another example of that fiend’s beastliness.”

  “Any theory, legal limb?” the Duke interrupted suddenly.

  “Theory? Yes, your Grace,” said Elveden, crossing to the others. “Actual fact, no; but,” and he looked straight at Sir Marcus, “I think we shall land the Squid sooner or later. He’s practically run his course.”

  “You’ll land something else, too, Elveden,” said the Duke, laying a restraining hand on his friend’s arm. “There’s a limit to what any man can stand. And Squids, in common with other marine monsters, do not run, they swim!”

  Elveden smiled coldly and turned to take the sergeant’s report.

  “That Loseley fellow has had a bad blow this morning, sir,” whispered the sergeant. “He’
s practically ruined.”

  “Huh!” grunted Elveden. “I never met the crook yet who fouled his own nest!”

  XXXII. THE UBIQUITOUS JERRY

  A solitary passenger on Platform Nine stood pulling at his sandy-colored, straggling mustache long after the train had vanished round the bend, and then suddenly picking up his suit-case, he shambled towards the exit.

  Giving up his ticket, he stood outside the platform for some moments, staring in a slightly puzzled way around the station. It was nearly four years since he had last set foot in Victoria Station, and the hurrying crowds, the roar of trains, the clamor and rush were a little strange to him. Standing there in a rather obviously new “Sunday best” of dark brown, he made rather a lonely figure. Which led an over-anxious porter into the error of thinking him “a proper country cousin.” And that was fatal.

  The porter sidled up and picked up the suit-case.

  “Taxi, sir?” he said ingratiatingly.

  The owner of the suit-case stopped pulling at his mustache and wheeled round suddenly.

  “‘Ere, lay off that,” he growled, “I can carry the doin’s mesself wivout payin’ the likes o’ you a bob ter go an’ lose it.”

  He retrieved his property and, bestowing a cold glare on the startled porter, shuffled off to the exit in Buckingham Palace Road. The porter scratched his head and stared after him blankly.

  Out on the pavement, the man with the suit-case looked round the familiar animated scene and his expression became a little more wistful. This was his home. He knew every inch of the ground. He had played there as a child, been impudent to the law as a boy in the back streets, thieved here as a young man and been arrested outside this very exit as a housebreaker later on.

  He sighed. The place evoked pleasant memories. It was here that he had once taken an unsuspecting policeman——

  “Taxi, sir?”

  The interruption, coming from the curb, made him look in that direction. A taxi driver was leaning over his seat with an inquiring smile. The man on the pavement looked at the driver and then at his own suit-case. Eaton Place was certainly not far, but then the case was heavy, very heavy.

  He walked to the taxi.

  “Eaton Place,” he directed, pushing his case on to the seat, “an’ don’t you try an’ swing it on me fer the fare. I knows how they works them«gas meter gadgets, matey. I seen ‘em afore.”

  “Keep yer ‘air on, Lord ‘elpus,” grinned the chauffeur, shutting the door behind the other.

  “Less lip and more speed,” his fare instructed coldly, sitting back stiffly on the seat.

  He remained in the same rigid position until the taxi came to a standstill, in response to his signal, in Eaton Place, and seemed not a little relieved to descend from it.

  Rummaging in his pocket, he produced a shilling and tendered it to the chauffeur.

  That gentleman spat with great accuracy and emphasis. “One-an’-a-kick,” he corrected significantly.

  “Yus,” jeered his fare, “to them as ‘as got more oof than sense, but not to one of the helite, me lad. This ain’t the Daimler ‘Ire Comp’ny.”

  The driver descended from his seat to discuss the matter more fully.

  “Nor it ain’t no council tramcar,” he snarled.

  “It ain’t,” was the emphatic agreement. “Tramcars is some use. A bob, Isaacstein.”

  “One-an’-a-kick is what I wants orf you,” growled the chauffeur, and rolled back his sleeves in a business-like manner.

  “An’ a couple o’ months in the Middlesex ‘orspital is what you’ll get,” added his fare with purposefully gleaming eyes.

  The chauffeur spat again, with disdainful emphasis.

  “Where’s yer six ‘elpers?” he jeered, and advanced to the attack as the other fell into a defensive position.

  “‘Ere!”

  A third voice leant its weight to the argument, a voice with which every Londoner is familiar and one which gives the boldest pause.

  Turning, the disputants gazed into the coldly accusing eyes of the law, and their hands dropped automatically to their sides.

  “Fightin’?” enquired Robert gently.

  “No,” grunted the taximan, “playin’ ‘op-scotch. ‘Ere, ‘ow much from Victoria to ‘ere?”

  The law had settled many such disputes. “A bob,” was its inexorable verdict.

  “Blimey, ain’t you generous!” gasped the chauffeur. “ ‘Ere, I don’t want to rob ‘im. Make it ninepence, an’ if ‘e wants ter go to Scotland it’ll be fourpence, with a free life policy thrown in!”

  His heavy sarcasm was his undoing.

  “He’d need it,” said the law, eyeing the taxi disparagingly. “Go on, mate, pay him ninepence. He said it.”

  The fare obligingly substituted a threepenny-piece and six pennyworth of coppers for the shilling, and thrust it into the hand of the astonished chauffeur.

  “An’ now ‘op orf, Ikey,” he advised, “afore I deducks discount for cash.”

  “Gor,” groaned the driver. “Want any chinge?”

  Catching the law’s eye and reading therein a possible demand for “chinge,” the chauffeur retreated hastily, breathing beer and threats.

  The law bent its legs majestically and hooked its thumbs into his belt.

  “Rooks, them blokes is,” he said disparagingly. “Never knowed one yet but what wouldn’t try to twist his mother outer her widow’s pension and as for——”

  He broke off suddenly and peered at his companion searchingly, his scrutiny taking in his clothes and returning to his face again.

  “Gosh,” he observed delightedly. “If it isn’t Jerry. In them posh duds, too, and lashing out on taxis and all. Getting lively on the proceeds, ain’t you, Jerry?”

  The other took up his suit-case and bestowed a cold glare on Robert.

  “Keep yer place, orficer,” he admonished severely, “an’ remember I gotter ‘andle to me name.”

  “Beg pardon, I’m sure,” the law grinned ironically. “Well, Mister Jerry the Lag, there’s a certain friend of yours who’s dying to meet you.”

  “Not so much o’ the Jerry the Lag, mate,” grunted the other. “An’ who’s waitin’ ter see me? Not Elv’den? I don’t want ter see ‘im. I’m respekterble now, an’ don’t ‘ave no truck wiv low inspectors.”

  “Elveden it is,” said the law. “Remember him?”

  “Remember ‘im?” echoed the other. “Wish I could fergit ‘im!”

  “Well, come along,” advised the constable. “I’ve got special instructions to bring you in at once. It don’t do to keep the Inspector waiting.”

  “Lumme, I fort I was rid o’ that gang. Seems they can’t let a man rest, nohow.”

  He took up his bag with a disgruntled expression, and motioned to Robert to lead the way.

  Twenty minutes later he was ushered into the Assistant Commissioner’s room at Scotland Yard.

  Inspector Elveden, the only occupant, gazed at him curiously.

  The ready-made brown suit was something in the nature of a shock. The well-polished boots, too, and the collar and tie occasioned him no little surprise.

  “Sit down, Jerry,” he said slowly. “I want to talk to you about things in general.”

  “An’ about the ‘Scrubs in pertickler,” grunted Jerry. “Quite like old times, ain’t it, Mister Elv’den? The last time I ‘eard you say them words you give me two years in stir.”

  Elveden frowned. There was something puzzling about the Lag, something unfamiliar, but he could not place it.

  He was still debating, when the door opened to admit the Commissioner, and he rose to his feet respectfully.

  “Jerry the Lag,” he said formally.

  The Commissioner stood still for a moment, his keen eyes resting on the Lag and then, crossing to his desk, sat down.

  “I want to have a little heart-to-heart talk with you, Jerry, about various little matters of mutual interest.”

  “Wiv a stretch at the uwer end?” suggested Jer
ry humorously.

  “Not necessarily,” corrected the Commissioner. “It depends on you entirely. If you like to help us, you will be quite safe. On the other hand——”

  He broke off and shrugged expressively.

  “Tell me all you know about the Squid,” he said suddenly.

  “Easy,” grinned the Lag. “Nuthin’.”

  “Cut that out, Jerry,” snapped Elveden. “Tell the Commissioner what you know.”

  He stared curiously at the Lag. There was something different about the man, but what on earth was it? The Inspector knitted his brows in a puzzled frown.

  “I don’t know nuthin’ about ‘im,” reiterated the Lag, with a curious expression. “ ‘Oo is ‘e, anyway?”

  “Excuse me, sir,” said Elveden, forestalling the Commissioner’s next question. “Where did you get that rig-out, Jerry?”

  “Day and Martin’s,” the Lag responded facetiously, eyeing his trousers affectionately. “What’s the matter wiv ‘em? Pretty toney, I calls ‘em. Good bit o’ stuff this ‘ere suit. Gent’s whipcord lounge, they calls it.”

  “That’s not your usual garb,” Elveden accused sharply.

  “No, in course it ain’t,” said Jerry, striking a dignified pose. “I allus wears a topper an’ a silk ‘at an’ kid gloves an’ spats, I does. Pertickerly when I goes round the hestate. Correct duds them is fer plowed fields.”

  “Estate? What estate?” Elveden asked blankly, exchanging a glance with the Commissioner.

  “Struth, this is worse’n a cat-kisem,” groaned the Lag. “Sir Markis’s o’ course.”

  “Sir Marcus? Loseley you mean?” said Elveden, shooting a bow at a venture.

  “Ain’t he coot?” jeered Jerry. “O’ course it’s Loseley. ‘Ow many perishin’ barynets d’ye think I got on me visitin’ list?”

  Elveden sat back helplessly. He was worried. It was becoming increasingly obvious that Jerry had undergone a drastic change or else——The Inspector leant forward.

  “Where is Sir Marcus’s estate?”

  “Faversham,” answered the Lag promptly. “Go on, ast me where that is!”

  “How long have you been in his employ?”

  “Ever since I finished me vacation at Wormwood,” said Jerry equably, pulling at his mustache as though to stimulate thought. “Sir Markis is one o’ these ‘ere phil—antropics, an’ I’m one o’ ‘is converts as ‘e calls ‘em.”