Elk 04 White Face (15 page)

“There’s blood everywhere,” he said. “Look at that!” He pointed to an uneven smudge near the door. “They carried him out this way.”

“Is there any other way he could have been carried out?” snapped Mason.

In the courtyard the gates were wide open, and so were the doors of the empty garage. Gregory Wick’s taxicab had gone. When they came out to the street they had heard the faint, dying whine of it as it sped westwards.

“They’ve got him in the cab,” said Bray incoherently. “There must have been two or three of them.”

“Why not four or five?” snarled Mason, “Or six or seven?”

“I only want to say,” began the aggrieved inspector, “that one man couldn’t have outed him and lifted him. I’d better call up assistance.”

The police whistle was half-way to his mouth when Mason knocked it out of his hand.

“What’s the matter with the telephone?” he asked fiercely. “I want to know who’s awake in this neighbourhood, and I don’t want any excuse for their being awake, either! Call every man you can lay your hands on. The reserves will be in by now.”

When Bray had gone, the superintendent made a quick search of the yard. There was an open pit surrounded by a low fencing. He struck a match, drew his own lamp from his pocket and cast the rays down. A long way below the surface of the ground he saw the glint of water. A well. How deep was it? There was something there, too, something that looked like a sack. And then he heard a voice behind him. “Found the well?”

He looked round; it was Elk, a ghostly figure, with his white-bandaged head. “Did you know there was a well here?”

“Yes, the winch is above your head—handle on the wall.”

Looking up, Mason saw an iron bracket. “Something down there?” asked Elk, and peered curiously. “Gregory’s cab’s gone, of course. I guessed something was happening and came round.”

The two men went up to the empty garage and made a search. There was nothing there except a few tools, a spare tyre or two and a dozen tins of petrol. They picked up the blood trail in the garage. Mason looked at these ominous stains and shook his head.

“All my ideas have gone west,” he said in despair.

“Mine have stayed strictly put, working for the good of humanity,” said Elk. “White Face, wasn’t it? And he’s kidnapped the doctor—that fellow’s got a nerve!”

They heard Michael’s step and looked round. “Well, are you going to interview Gregory?” he asked. “Gregory—I presume he’s with his cab.”

“Let’s see,” said Michael.

They discovered that the door leading into Gallows Court was fastened with a spring lock and offered no difficulty. Elk examined this door carefully and grunted.

“As full of clues as a milkshop,” he said.

They walked quickly down the court and came to the doorway of No. 9. The sleeper still snored; the tin remained balanced on his knee.

“Whoever put that tin there were helping the police a lot,” said Mason. “It’d break their hearts to know it, but it’s a fact.”

He knocked heavily at the door, but there was no answer. After a little while he knocked again-still no reply.

“He must have gone out.”

Michael shook his head emphatically.

“How could he go in or out with that man sitting there? He must have moved him.”

The sleeper was now aroused; the tin fell noisily from his knee as he stood up, groaning, and Bray recognised him as a famous local tippler. He had been there, he said, since about—he didn’t know the time; he thought it was about half an hour after the public-houses had closed. He could not remember anybody passing, cither going in or out. Mason knocked again.

Gallows Court was alive now—alive with dark shapes that had melted out of the walls, silent things that just looked and gave no evidence of their humanness. Curious watchers, eager to see somebody, something happen. If they had chatted amongst themselves Michael could have borne their presence, but they were terribly silent, edging nearer and nearer.

Then suddenly the upper window of No. 9 was raised creakily.

“Who’s that?”

It was old Gregory Wicks’s strident voice, unmistakably so.

“I want to see you, Gregory.”

“Who is it?”

“Superintendent Mason. You remember me?”

The old man cogitated.

“I don’t know no Superintendent Mason. There used to be a young feller called Sergeant Mason a few years ago.”

“A good few, Gregory,” said Mason with a chuckle. “I’m Sergeant Mason. Come down and let us in.”

“What do you want?” asked the old man cautiously.

“I want to have a talk with you.”

The man above hesitated, but after a while he put down the window and Mason heard his feet descending the stairs. The door opened noisily.

“Come on up to my room,” he said.

There was no light in the house save the lamp which the police brought, nor in his little sitting-room.

“Come in and sit down. Here’s a chair, Sergeant—Superintendent, eh? Gosh! Time goes on!”

“Haven’t you got a lamp?”

The question seemed to embarrass the old man.

“Lamp? Well, yes, I’ve got a lamp somewhere. You’ll find it in the kitchen, mister. There are three of you, ain’t there? My eyes are not as good as they used to be, but I sort of heard three lots of feet on the stairs besides mine.”

It was Michael who went downstairs and found the lamp half filled with oil. He lit it, fixed the glass chimney and carried it carefully up the stairs into the room where the three men were. And then, to Mason’s surprise, he said:

“I couldn’t find your lamp anywhere, Mr. Wicks.”

This in face of the fairly bright light he carried in his hand. The old man smiled.

“What do you call that you’ve brought into the room?” he said. “Put it on the table, young man, and don’t try to take liberties with me.”

The look of chagrin in Michael’s face brought joy to Superintendent Mason’s heart.

“Now sit down, everybody. What do you want to know?”

“Have you been out to-night, Gregory?” Mason asked.

Gregory felt his scrubby chin.

“For a little while,” he said cautiously. “I always pop up to the West End. Why?”

“Does anybody else drive your cab?”

“I’ve let it out before now,” said Gregory. “I’m not so young as I was, and an owner-driver has got to live, and he can only live if he works his machine all the time.”

“Who takes your car out?”

The old man did not answer, and Mason repeated the question.

“Well…my lodger takes it out.”

“The man who lives downstairs?”

“That’s right, Sergeant—I mean, Superintendent! Bless me life, fancy you being a superintendent! I remember you getting your first stripe.”

Mason patted him gently on the knee.

“Of course you do. And I remember summonsing you for using abusive language and the magistrate dismissing the charge.”

Gregory gurgled with laughter at the recollection.

“I was always a hard one to get the better of,” he said smugly.

“Where is your lodger now?”

Again the hesitation.

“Out, I suppose. He usually goes out at night. Rather a nice young feller. Very quiet. He’s about thirty-five, and he’s had a lot of trouble: that’s all I know about him.” Then, in sudden alarm: “He’s not been in trouble again?”

“Oh, that’s the kind of trouble, is it?” said Mason. “Gregory, where is your badge?”

Now, a cabman’s badge is an almost sacred thing. It is to the driver what marriage lines are to a woman. The effect of the question on the old man was extraordinary. He fidgeted in his chair and rubbed his chin.

“I’ve put it away somewhere,” he said lamely.

“Gregory, where is your badge? If you’ve been out to-night, you must have been wearing it,” said Mason. “As a matter of fact, you haven’t been out to-night; you haven’t been out any night for months; you know that, old pal.”

Again he pressed the old man’s knee affectionately, and this time his sympathy was genuine.

“You know why you haven’t been out. The doctor knows.”

“He hasn’t told?” said Gregory quickly.

“No, I’ve told myself. You knew there was a lamp came in the room because you could smell it, but you couldn’t see it, Gregory—only dimly. Isn’t that true?”

The old man shrank back.

“I’ve been a licensed cabman for fifty-five years, Mr. Mason,” he pleaded.

“I know. I hope you’ll be a licensed cabman all the days of your life. Only you mustn’t drive cabs, Gregory—when you’re blind!”

He saw the old man wince, and cursed himself for his brutality.

“I’m not exactly blind, but I can’t see very well.”

The blustering Gregory Wicks had suddenly become an oddly pathetic figure.

“My eyes are not what they were, Mr. Mason, but I never like to admit it. I’ve had my licence and badge all these years, and naturally I didn’t want to part with it; so when this young lodger of mine, who’s been in trouble and couldn’t get a licence, said he’d like to take out the cab, I—well—I lent him my badge. That’s an offence, I know, but I’m willing to take my medicine.”

“Then you’ve never seen your lodger?”

“No, I haven’t seen him; I’ve heard him. He comes in sometimes; I hear him moving about; and he pays me regularly.”

“How do you know he’s thirty-five, and a nice young man who’s going to be married?”

“I heard he was—a friend of mine told me.”

They left him bemoaning the loss of the thing which was more precious to him than any other possession—the stamped licence that had been issued every one of the fifty-five years of his active life, and which might never be issued again. Mason went downstairs and tried the door of the lower room. The lock was not difficult to pick—did not, if they had known, require picking at all, for the key of the upstairs room fitted both doors. In five minutes it swung open and Mason went in, followed by Bray, who carried the oil lamp.

There was a bed in one corner, but evidently it had not been slept in for a long time: the blankets were folded, the pillow was without cover. The floor had a large square of carpet in the centre, and that, with a table, a chair, and a square mirror over the fireplace, seemed all that the room contained, until Elk began to test the mirror, and found that it hid a roughly hewn hole in the wall, large enough to take a heavy steel box.

“This will tell us something,” said Mason.

The lid opened squeakily, and he stared down into the interior at what it contained.

It was a short, stout knife, the blade stained and smeared red. Carefully he picked it out and as carefully laid it on the bare table.

“Here is the knife that killed Donald Bateman,” he said.

“Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I tell you?” he almost screamed when he caught sight of Mason. “You and the reporter fellow—what’s wrong with Gregory, eh? I knew!” He tapped his nose. “I’ll bet the doctor knew, but he wouldn’t squeak. Here!” He detained Mason. “Is it true that they got the doctor?…Somebody’ll be murdered if they touch him! Everybody in Gallows Court will go and find the man and bring him in here and put him down into a cellar, and put clay in his mouth and tear little bits off him till he dies!”

The awful face grinned up at the superintendent.

“In which case,” said Mason, “I shall come and do a bit of pinching myself, and somebody else will die. No, I don’t know who has taken the doctor.”

“I heard him—shouting, screaming something awful. And then the cab went out,” whispered the man. “If we’d known it was the doctor we’d have been after ‘em.”

“What is this lodger like?”

The man shook his head.

“A tall feller—that’s all I know. Seen him once or twice go in and out, generally at night; but I’ve never seen him any closer than that. He didn’t sleep there—old Gregory thought he did, but he didn’t.”

This was so near to the conclusion that Mason formed that he was inclined to listen to other opinions with respect, but Shoey—as they called him—said no more.

There was one good quality about Inspector Bray: he was an excellent telephonist. Before Mason left the surgery, Scotland Yard knew all about a taxicab No. 93458—its colour, its appearance generally and the direction it had taken. And Scotland Yard knew all about the missing Dr. Marford and the chauffeur who lived with old Gregory Wicks.

That busy printing press at the Yard worked furiously to carry the news to the outermost beat, and the early workers straggling into the City saw police cyclists disregarding all speed rules.

Lorna Weston sat in the infirmary hall waiting for the ambulance which was to take her to the police station. A pallid, shaken woman, her eyes weary and heavy, she barely noticed or heard the laborious platitudes of Police Constable Hartford, who sat by her side—all the more laborious because he had decided that her condition was due to excessive indulgence in alcohol, and had set himself the task of opening her eyes to the evil that men (and women) put in their mouths to steal away their brains.

One of the policemen who came with the ambulance gave a fragmentary and generally inaccurate resume of what had happened to Dr. Marford. P.C. Hartford clicked his lips unhappily.

“It only shows, Mrs. Weston, what drink will do to a man,” he said. “They were probably all drinking together up at the doctor’s surgery, and naturally something happened. It’s never too late to turn. Take me: five years ago there wasn’t a man who loved a glass of beer more than myself. I used to call myself a moderate drinker, but was I? No man who drinks can be a moderate drinker. Then one day I was induced to take the pledge, and look at me to-day!”

She did not look at him. She hardly heard him. If she had looked, she would have realised that if there had been any improvement in P.C. Hartford’s appearance, he must have looked very dreadful in his moderately drinking days. But she heard nothing except a buzz of voices that had been going on all night—whispering, buzzing voices that came from another planet; and there was a little pain in her left arm which irritated her; and through all her confusion of mind and dread, formless reality which could not be reduced to any dimensions or advanced into clear perspective.

When she spoke it was mechanically to repeat:

“I want to see the Chief of Police. I must see the Chief of Police.”

She repeated this monotonously. Part of the mechanism of her reason was working; some tremendous motive power impelled a demand of which she was not conscious. She had little flashes of complete understanding; knew she was sitting on a hard form in a long and dimly-lit corridor, with bare, discoloured walls. In the next second she was sitting in an arm-chair in a small room, which was so light that it hurt her eyes; and a different lot of people were around her.

“Why did the infirmary people let her go?” asked Mason, in despair.

“I want to see the Chief of Police,” she said. “I want to make a statement.”

“So you’ve told me a dozen times, my dear,” said Mason, patting her hand. “Now wake up. You know where you are—I’m Superintendent Mason.”

She looked at him searchingly and shook her head.

“Where’s the matron?” asked Mason. “Oh, here you are, Miss Leverett. Let her lie down; give her some coffee. Where’s that damned—oh, there you are, Bray! Is there any report?”

“None, sir,” said the inspector. And then, painfully: “I don’t think I can stand much more, sir. I shall have to go to sleep. After all, I’m only human.”

“You’re not human at all”—Mason was distinctly offensive—“you’re a policeman. You haven’t been awake twenty-four hours, and you’ll certainly be awake another twenty-four; the first forty-eight hours are the worst.”

“My own belief is,” said Bray, “that this fellow drove the cab straight into the Thames–-“

“Yes, yes, I’m sure he did,” said Mason soothingly, “or into the British Museum, possibly. You might put an inquiry through.”

Inspector Bray considered this.

“I shouldn’t think they’d go to the British Museum, sir–-” he began.

Mason pointed to the door. He felt that another ten minutes of Inspector Bray would reduce him to a state of imbecility.

He returned to the inspector’s room, now littered with a medley of articles which had been removed from the “lodger’s” home. There were one or two very important documents which he had found in a tin case, which had been half filled with platinum settings. Searching the box he found tweezers, awls and instruments of the jeweller’s art by the dozen. White Face had himself removed the stones from their settings—the wonder is that he had not disposed of the platinum. He must have felt himself perfectly safe under the aegis of old Gregory, whose very honesty was the lodger’s best credential.

A diligent search had been made for evidence of firearms, and as a matter of precaution, to the circulation of the description of the wanted man had been added the warning: “May carry a pistol.” But there was no proof that he carried anything of the sort. Neither cartridge nor cartridge box was found and, except for the knife, no arms whatsoever.

In the bottom of the cupboard they had unearthed a cardboard box bearing a Lyons label, which was filled with bundles of white cotton gloves, and in another part of the room half a dozen squares of twill into which eyeholes had been roughly cut. To the edge of each was fastened a strip of whalebone and a piece of elastic; the whalebone kept the mask rigid, and the elastic obviously fitted over the ears. Except for the eyeholes they might have been parts of the hangman’s ghastly equipment.

White Face was well found in all matters pertaining to dress. There were two new long black coats, obviously of foreign make, three pairs of rubber goloshes, only one pair of which had been used and, most curious of all, a dummy automatic pistol. It was the kind that is used in theatres, was made of wood, and was a lifelike representation of the real article. Until he had picked it up in his hand and had felt its lightness, Mason had been absolutely certain that it was the real thing.

In his own mind he was convinced that White Face had no other weapon and that this was the gun he carried on his unlawful occasions, the weapon which had cowed crowded restaurants and night clubs, and had reduced porters and waiters to trembling jelly.

Elk was half dozing in the room when Mason entered. “Do you know what I think, sir?”

“You thinking, too?” growled Mason. “All right, I’ll buy it.”

“There’s one man who is going to get White Face acquitted. You can look at it any way you like, but it comes back to the same thing. You couldn’t work a conviction against him—if Lamborn sticks to his story.”

“Oh!” Mason’s face fell. “Lamborn—that’s the pickpocket. H’m!”

He pondered on the matter for a long time.

“You’re quite right, Elk,” he said at last. “In the face of what that dirty little thief has said it would be very difficult to get a verdict. When I say ‘we couldn’t,’ we mightn’t. It’s a shade of odds how the jury would take it.”

“The jury,” said Mr. Elk oracularly, “is a body or institution which gives everybody the benefit of the doubt except the police. Juries don’t think; they deliberate; juries–-“

“Don’t let us get clever,” said Mason. He went out through the charge-room (where he borrowed a key), down a passage lined on one side with yellow cell doors, and stopped before No. 9, pulled back the grating and looked in. Mr. Lamborn was lying uneasily on a plank bed, two blankets drawn up over his shoulders. He was awake, and at the movement of the grating lifted his head.

“Hallo, Lamborn! Sleeping well?”

The thief blinked at him, swung his legs clear of the plank and sat up.

“If there’s a law in this country, Mason, you’re going to get fired out of the force for this what I might call outrage!”

“Invincible soul,” said Mason admiringly. He put the key in the lock and turned it. “Come out and have some coffee with me?”

“Poisoned?” asked Lamborn suspiciously. “A little strychnine—nothing serious,” said Mason. He conducted his prisoner along the corridor, handed over the key of the cell to an amused jailer and ushered Lamborn into the little room. At the sight of Elk’s bandaged head the prisoner brightened visibly.

“Hallo! Had a coshing?” he asked. “Prayers are answered sometimes! I hope you’re not seriously injured, Mr. Elk?”

“He means,” interpreted Elk, “that he hopes I’m fatally injured. Sit down, you poor, cheap, butter-fingered whizzer.”

“I shouldn’t like to see you killed—flowers ain’t cheap just now.”

Lamborn sat, still smirking, and when the inevitable coffee was brought, half filled a cup with sugar. “Got the murderer?” he asked pleasantly.

“We’ve got you, Harry,” said Mr. Mason in the same tone, and Lamborn snorted.

“You couldn’t prove anything against me, except by the well-known perjury methods of the London police. I dare say you’ll put half a dozen of your tame noses in the box and swear me life away, but Gawd’s in his heaven!”

“Where did you learn that bit?” asked Mason curiously.

Lamborn shrugged his shoulders theatrically.

“When I’m in stir I only read poetry,” he explained. “The book lasts longer because you can’t understand it.”

He sipped noisily at his coffee, put down the cup with a clatter and leaned towards Mason.

“You haven’t got a chance of convicting me. I’ve been thinking it out in the cell.”

Mason smiled pityingly.

“The moment you start thinking, Harry, you’re lost,” he said. “It’s like putting a cow on a tight-rope. You’re not built for it. I don’t want to convict you.”

His tone changed: he was so earnest that he carried conviction even to the sceptical hearer.

“All I wanted then, and all I want now, is that you should tell the truth. Have you ever known me to take all this trouble to get a little whizzer a couple of months’ hard labour? Use your sense, Lamborn! Does a Superintendent of Scotland Yard, one of the Big Five, come down here to Tidal Basin and waste his night trying to get a conviction against a poor little hook like you? It would be like calling on the Navy to kill an earwig!”

Mr. Lamborn was impressed. The logic was irresistible. He rubbed his chin uneasily.

“Well, it does seem funny,” he said.

“Funny? It’s ludicrous! There must have been some reason why I wanted you to tell me this, and some reason why I should promise to withdraw the charge against you. You’re wide, Lamborn—as wide as any lad in this district. Use your common sense and tell me why I should take all this trouble if I hadn’t something behind it.”

Lamborn avoided his eyes. “It does seem funny,” he said again.

“Then laugh!” growled Elk.

The man was not listening; he was frowning down at the table, obviously making up his mind. He made his decision at last.

“All right, guv’nor, it’s a bet!”

He put out his hand and Mason gripped it, and that grip was a pledge, an oath and a covenant.

“I dipped him—yes. I saw him drop and I thought he was soused. I went over and I was knocked out to find he was a swell.”

“He was lying on his side, his face away from the lamp, wasn’t he?” asked Mason.

The man nodded.

“Just tell me what you did—one moment.”

He raised his voice and called for Bray.

“Lie down there, Bray.” He pointed to the floor. “I want to reconstruct Lamborn’s petty larceny.”

Mr. Bray looked with some meaning at Elk.

“Elk can’t lie down because of his head,” said Mason irritably.

Bray went down on his knees and stretched himself, and Lamborn stood over him.

“I flicked open his coat—so. I put my hand in his inside pocket—”

“Left side or right side?” asked Mason.