Elk 04 White Face (6 page)

“Yes, yes; but that is hardly the way, is it? I mean, there are certain professional—um—courtesies to be observed. The resident surgeon is a friend of mine, as it happens—Grennett; he was with me at Guy’s.”

He dropped Marford as being unworthy of his confidence, and addressed the superintendent.

“I’m getting the ambulance down right away.”

“Have you seen the man again?” asked Mason.

“The man?” Dr. Rudd frowned. “Oh, you mean the dead man? Yes. Your Mr. Elk was there, searching him. I made one or two observations which I think may be useful to you, Superintendent. For instance, there’s a bruise on the left cheek.”

Mason nodded.

“Yes, he was fighting. Dr. Marford saw that.”

Rudd was called away at that moment, and bustled out with an apology. The very apology was offensive to Mr. Mason, for it inferred that investigations were momentarily suspended until the police surgeon returned.

The woman on the bed showed no sign of life. The doctor, at Mason’s request, exhibited two tiny punctures on the left arm.

“Recently made,” he explained, “but there’s no evidence that she’s an addict. I can find no other punctures, for example, and the mere fact that the shot has had such an extraordinarily deadening effect upon her rather suggests that she’s a novice.”

He lifted the arm and dropped it; it fell lifelessly.

“When will she recover consciousness?”

Marford shook his head.

“I don’t know. At present she’s not in a state where I could recommend giving restoratives, but I’ll leave that to the infirmary people. The resident surgeon is a personal friend of Dr. Rudd’s and is therefore in all probability a man of genius.”

The eyes of the two men met. Mr. Mason did not attempt to disguise his own amusement.

“Fine,” he said. And then: “Have you ever been in a murder case before?”

The doctor’s lips twitched with the hint of a smile.

“Manslaughter—this evening,” he said. “No, I have not been called in professionally. Not one doctor in eight thousand ever attends a murder case in the whole course of his practice—not if he’s wise,” he added.

Mason became suddenly interested in this shabby figure with the pained eyes and the thin, starved face.

“You find living not particularly pleasant in this neighbourhood, Doctor? Couldn’t you work your clinic somewhere more salubrious?”

Marford shrugged.

“It’s all one to me,” he said. “My own wants are very few and they are satisfied. The clinic must be where it is wanted. For myself, I do not crave for the society of intellectual men, because intellectual men bore me.”

“And you’ve no theory about this murder?”

Mason’s good-humoured eyes were smiling again.

The doctor did not answer immediately; he bit his lip and looked thoughtfully past the superintendent.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “To my mind, this case is obviously a case of revenge. He was not murdered for profit, he was deliberately assassinated to right some wrong probably committed years before. And it was not in the larger sense premeditated: the murder was committed on the spur of the moment as opportunity offered.”

Mason stared at him.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I think it.” Marford was smiling. “Unless you believe that this man was definitely lured to this spot with the object of killing him, and that a most elaborate scheme was formed for enticing him into this neighbourhood, you must believe that it was unpremeditated.”

Superintendent Mason, fists on hips, legs wide apart, peered at Marford.

“You’re not one of these amateur detectives I’ve been reading about, Doctor?” he challenged. “The sort of man who’s going to make the police look foolish in chapter thirty-nine and take all the credit for the discovery?” Then unexpectedly he clapped his hand on Marford’s bony shoulder. “You talk sense, anyway, and every doctor doesn’t talk that. I could name you one, but you’d probably report me to the British Medical Association. You’re quite right—your theory is my theory.”

And then, suddenly: “Do you exclude the possibility that Lamborn may have knifed him?”

“Entirely,” said the other emphatically, and Mason nodded.

“I might tell you”—he dropped his voice confidentially—“that that is the ground plan of Dr. Rudd’s theory.”

“He has another,” said Marford. “I wonder he hasn’t told you.”

“She’s got it locked up there.” He touched the white forehead lightly. “No, it’s an ordinary police case, Doctor. Everything looks mysterious until somebody squeals, and then the case is so easy that even a poor old gentleman from Scotland Yard could work it out.”

He frowned at the woman.

“All right, shoot her into hospital,” he said brusquely, and returned to his room.

It was Inspector Bray’s room really; a cupboard of a place, with a table and chair, a last year’s almanac on the wall, two volumes of the Police Code, a telephone list a foot long—and three reprints of popular fiction. They were decently hidden from view by the Police Code, and Mr. Mason took one down to the table and opened it.

A taste for thrilling fiction is not phenomenal in a detective officer. With this particular story Mr. Mason was well acquainted, and he turned the leaves casually and disparagingly. Here was a murder the like of which never came the way of the average police officer. There were beautiful ladies involved, ladies who had their own Rolls-Royces and lived in exotic apartments; gentlemen who dressed for dinner every night—even the detectives did that. Here murder had a colour and a fragrance; it was set in scenes of beauty, in half-timbered country houses, with lawns that sloped down to a quiet river; in Park Lane mansions, where nothing less than a footman in resplendent uniform could find the dead body of his master lying by the side of a broken Sevres vase. High politics came into the story; ministers of state were suspected; powerful cars sped seaward to where the steam cutter was waiting to carry its murderous owner to his floating den of vice.

Mr. Mason shook his head, scratched his cheek and closed the book, and returned to his own murder, to the drabness of Tidal Basin, with its innumerable side streets and greasy pavements, jerry-built houses all of a plan, where three families lived in a space inadequate for a Park Lane bath-room. Silent Tidal Basin, with its swing bridges over the narrow entrance to docks, and its cold electric standards revealing ugliness even on the darkest night. People were living and dying here; one death more or less surely made no difference. But because a man who was a card-sharp, probably a blackguard, had met his just end, there were lights burning in all sorts of odd rooms at Scotland Yard, men searching records, a printing press working at feverish speed, police cyclists flying to the ends of the area carrying the wet sheets which described the dead man, and in ten thousand streets and squares policemen were reading, by the light of their electric lamps, the description of a man unknown, killed by one known even less.

The machinery was working; the wheels and pistons whirled and thundered—purposeless, it would seem, save to entertain the tall men on their lonely beats with first-hand news of tragedy.

Mason got up and walked out to the entrance of the station. A dim blue light painted his bronzed cheek a sickly hue. The street was deserted. Rain was falling steadily; every window of every house that faced the station was black and menacing.

Why he shivered he did not know. He was too serious a police officer to be influenced by atmosphere. And yet the unfriendliness of this area, all its possibilities of evil, penetrated his armour of indifference.

A queer, boozy lot of people…A thought struck him, and he slapped the palm of his hand. There were three C.I.D. men in the charge-room; he called them and gave them instructions.

“Take a couple of guns,” he said. “You may need them.”

After he had seen them depart, he sent an urgent phone message to Scotland Yard. Then he went across to where Dr. Marford was standing, talking to the station clerk.

“What about this man with the white mask? You know everything that happens in this pitch. Is it a yarn, or is there any foundation for it? There used to be a man up west—had some sort of accident that upset his features—he used to wear that kind of thing.”

The doctor nodded slowly.

“I think that is the man I have met,” he said.

“You’ve met him?” asked Mason in surprise.

“Yes. Why he wore the mask I have never been able to understand, because there was really very little wrong with his face, except a large red scar. He wasn’t exactly good to look at—but you can say that of a lot of people who don’t wear masks. I’ve seen thousands looking worse.”

Mason scowled and pursed his lips.

“I remember the West End man. I see that some of the newspapers are recalling the fact that he was seen years ago. If I remember rightly, he lived in a top flat in Jermyn Street. He had permission from the Commissioner to go out with this thing on his face. I haven’t seen him for years, but I remember him well. What was his name—West something—not Weston?”

The doctor shrugged.

“I never knew his name. He came to me about three years ago and asked for ray treatment. He was stupidly sensitive and only came after he had fixed the interview up by telephone. He’s been several times since, round about midnight, and he invariably pays me a pound.”

Mason thought for a while, then went to the telephone and called a central police station off Regent Street. The sergeant in charge remembered the man at once, but was not sure of his name.

“He hasn’t been seen round the West End for years,” he said. “The Yard has been arguing about him—wondering if he was White Face.”

“Was his name Weston?” suggested Mason, but the sergeant was without information.

Mason came back to the doctor.

“Does this man live in the neighbourhood?”

But here Dr. Marford could tell him nothing. The first time he had met his queer patient he had undoubtedly lived in the region of Piccadilly; thereafter he had only appeared at irregular intervals.

“Do you think he’s our devil?” asked Mason bluntly, and the lean man chuckled.

“Devil! It’s queer how normal people attribute devilry to any man or woman who is afflicted—the hunchback and the misshapen, the cross-eyed and the lame. You’re almost medieval, Mr. Mason.”

He could say very little that might assist the police, except that he no longer received warning when the man with the mask made his appearance. Invariably he came through the little yard that ran by the side of the surgery into the passage which Dr. Marford’s patients used when they queued up for their medicine.

“I never have the side door locked—I mean the door that goes into the yard.” Marford explained that he was a very heavy sleeper, and it was not unusual for his clients to come right into the house to wake him, and the first intimation of their needs was a knock on his bedroom door.

“I’ve nothing to lose except a few instruments and a few bottles of poison; and to do these fellows justice, I’ve never had a thing stolen from me since I’ve been in the neighbourhood. I treat these people like friends, and so long as they’re reasonably wholesome I don’t mind their wandering about the house.”

Mr. Mason made a little grimace.

“How can you live here? You’re a gentleman, you have education. How can you meet them every day, listen to their miseries, see their dirt—ugh!”

Dr. Marford sighed and looked at his watch.

“If that child’s normal he’s born,” he said, and at that moment the sergeant called him across to the telephone at the desk.

The child had been normal and had made his appearance into the world without the doctor’s assistance. The male parent, a careful man, was already disputing the right of the doctor to any fee. Dr. Marford had had previous experience of a similar character, and knew that for the fact that the baby arrived before the doctor came the mother would claim and receive the fullest credit.

“Half fee, as usual,” he told the district nurse and hung up the receiver.

“I used to charge half fees, but double visiting fees if I was called in afterwards. That didn’t work, because the mother was usually dead before they risked the expense of calling me in. The economy of these people is excessive.”

The ambulance was ready. He and Rudd saw the woman placed in charge of a uniformed nurse, and Sergeant Elk appointed a detective officer to accompany the patient to the infirmary.

Elk was silent, and his eyes were preternaturally bright when he lounged into the inspector’s room.

“This is a case which ought to get me promotion,” he said, a shameless thing to say in the presence of a man who expected most of the kudos. “Here I’ve been working for years, and this is the first real mystery I’ve struck. More like a book than a police case. Quigley’s nosing round the neighbourhood—I shouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t turn in a new devil. It’s a good story for him.”

Mr. Mason indicated a chair.

“Sit down, my poor fellow,” he said with spurious sympathy. “What are the features of this murder which have separated it from an ordinary case of knifing?”

Elk’s long arm went out, and he pointed in a direction which Mr. Mason, not wholly acquainted with the geography of the station, decided was the matron’s room.

“She’s it!” said Elk. His voice shook. “What happened to-night, Mr. Mason? An unknown man has a fight with another unknown man, who bolts. The first fellow walks along and meets a police officer and tells him all about it. He’s alive and well; obviously he’s not stabbed; yet within a few seconds after the officer moves on, this fellow drops in his track like a man shot. A cheap crook comes over and dips him, and is seen by Hartford, who tackles the man. They then discover that the fellow on the ground is stabbed. Nobody saw the blow struck. Yet there he is dead—knifed, and the knife’s well away and can’t be found.”

Mason leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

“End of the first reel; the second reel will follow immediately,” he murmured, but Elk was undisturbed. That bright light in his eye was now a steely glitter. He was agitated as he had never been seen before in all the years of his service.

“Out of nowhere comes Mrs. Weston. She’d warned this man he was going to be killed. She wants to be sure that it is him.”

“He,” murmured Mason gently.

“Never mind about grammar.” Elk was frankly insubordinate in his vehemence. “She takes a look at the man on the ground and drops.”

He laid his hand almost violently upon the superintendent’s arm and shook it.

“I was watching her. I knew the woman, though I didn’t recognise her at first. She drops—and what do we find? She’s a needler—a dope. Does that mean anything to you, sir?”

“I’m glad you said ‘sir,’” said Mason. “I was wondering how I’d bring you back to a sense of discipline. Yes, it means a lot to me. Now I’m going to ask you a question: does the can of beer which Mrs. Albert was carrying mean anything to you, and does that can of beer associate itself in your active and intelligent mind with the disappearance of Mr. Louis Landor—if that’s the name of the man who fought with the dead one?”

Elk was frankly bewildered.

“You’re trying to pull my leg.”

“Heaven forbid!” said the patient Mason. “Bring in Mrs. Albert. She’s waited long enough to get three kinds of panic—I want her to have the kind where she’ll tell the truth.”

Mrs. Albert came, a rather pale woman, sensible of her disgraceful surroundings, conscious, too, of her responsibility for four children, only three of which, Mason learned, were yet born. She still clutched in her hand the tell-tale can of beer. The liquid was now flat and uninviting and some of it had spilt in her agitation, so that she brought with her to the inspector’s room a faint aroma of synthetic hops. She was quivering, more or less speechless. Mason gave her no opportunity for recovering her self-possession or her volubility.

“Sorry I’ve had to keep you so long, Mrs. Albert,” he said. “Your husband’s the night watchman at the Eastern Trading Company, isn’t he?”

She nodded mutely.

“The Eastern Trading Company do not allow their night watchman to have beer?”

Mrs. Albert found her voice.

“No, sir,” she piped. “The last night watchman got the sack for drinking when he was on duty.”

“Exactly,” said Mason, at his most brusque. “But your husband likes a drop of beer, and it’s fairly easy to pass the beer through the wicket gate, isn’t it?”

She could only blink at him pathetically.

“And he’s in the habit of leaving the wicket gate undone every night about eleven o’clock, and you’re in the habit of putting that can inside the gate?”

Her pathos grew. She could only suspect a base informer, and was undecided as to which of her five neighbours had filled that despicable role.

She was not unpretty, Mason noticed in his critical way, despite the three children—or four, if her worst fears were realised.

The superintendent turned to his subordinate.

“There’s the connection,” he said, “and that is where Mr. Louis Landor went—through the wicket gate. Oh, you needn’t bother: I’ve sent some men to search the yard. But if I am any judge, Mr. Landor has gone. I’ve already circulated his description.”

Mrs. Albert, the wife of the night watchman, drooped guiltily in her chair, her agonised dark eyes fixed on Mr. Mason. Here was tragedy for her, more poignant than the death of unknown men struck down by unseen forces; the tragedy of a husband dismissed from the only job he had held in five years, of the resumption of that daily struggle for life, of aimless wanderings for employment on his part—she could always go out as a hired help for a few shillings a day.