Elk 04 White Face (9 page)

Half an hour passed, and at a quarter to two Mason gathered all his reserves and sent them on a search. A telephone call brought swift police launches to the water front, to the distress of the local gang that was illicitly breaking cargo when the boats arrived. But there was no sign of Rudd or message from him. Momentarily he had vanished from the face of the earth.

This was the situation as Michael Quigley found it when he arrived on the scene. He sought an interview with the superintendent and told him frankly, as Janice had directed him to tell, the story of the ring. Mr. Mason listened wearily.

“Hiding up!” he wailed. “What good did it do? Why couldn’t you tell me right away—not that it would have made any difference, except that I should have known the name earlier. Yes, that’s his name, Donald Bateman. We’re getting warmer—hallo, Doctor!”

It was Marford, who had come for news of his colleague.

“None. He’s probably discovered that the murderer was an Irishman and he’s gone off by the night boat to Ireland to get local colour. Sit down, Doctor, and have some coffee.”

He pushed a steaming cup towards Marford, who took it and sipped painfully.

“Where he’s gone I don’t know, and don’t care.” Mason yawned. “I’m a weary man, and I did hope this murder was coming out nicely. If Mr. Louis Landor would only come home like a good lad, we ought to have all the threads in our hands by the morning. But if Mr. Louis Landor has taken his passport and his three thousand pounds in a private aeroplane to the Continent, then this is going to be one of those well-known unravelled mysteries of London that reporters write about when they’re too old for ordinary work.”

The doctor finished his coffee and went soon after. His second case was due.

Mason walked with him to the door.

“Any more theories?”

“Yes, I’ve got, not a theory, but an absolute conviction now.” said Marford quietly. “But for the trifling detail that I’m not in a position to supply the evidence, I think I could tell you the murderer.”

Mason nodded.

“I wonder if you are thinking of the same person, Doctor?”

Marford smiled.

“For his sake, I hope not.”

“Which means that you’re not going to give us the benefit of your logic and deductions?”

“I’m a doctor, not a detective,” said the other.

Mason came back to the charge-room fire and warmed his hands.

“No message from Bray or Elk?”

He glanced at the clock; it was a quarter-past two. He began to have his doubts whether Mr. Louis Landor would ever return to his flat.

Accompanied by the reporter, he strolled out in the direction of Gallows Alley. The rain had ceased, but the wind still blew fitfully.

“And if you’re writing about this place,” he said, “don’t fall into an error common to all cub reporters that Gallows Alley stands on the site of Execution Dock. It doesn’t. It was named after a man called Gallers, who owns a lot of property about here, and if, instead of putting up his silly clinics, the doctor would get his rich pals to buy this area and clear away the slums, he’d be doing the world a service—and the police.”

The entry of Gallows Alley looked dark and formidable. Within a few yards were the gates of the doctor’s yard. It was a small courtyard, at one end of which was a shed, which he hired out to the famous Gregory Wicks, a veteran owner of a taxicab. It was in another way a most useful assembling place for the doctor, who dispensed his own medicines. Almost any evening could be seen a queue of poorly-dressed men and women lined up, waiting their turn to enter the narrow passage that flanked the surgery and receive through a small hatch from the doctor’s hands the medicine he had ordered and dispensed.

It’s more like the waiting-room of a hospital than a private surgery,” explained Michael. Mason grunted.

“Why keep ‘em alive?” he asked in despair. A wall divided Gallows Alley from the doctor’s yard, the houses in that by-pass being built on one side of the court only.

Mason looked up and down, and again felt that unaccountable sensation of menace.

The road was a black canyon, and the starry arc lamps emphasised the desolation. A street of tombs; black, ugly, shoddy tombs, nailed and glued and cheaply cemented together. The dingy window-glass hardly returned the reflection of the lights; no chimney smoked, no window glowed humanly. Up Gallows Alley, where the door panels had been used for firewood, men and women slept in the open, huddled up in the deep recesses of doorways, slept through the rain and the soughing wind, old sacks drawn over their knees and shoulders.

As Mason and his companion picked a way over the slippery cobbles, a voice in the darkness chanted—the voice of a woman husky with sleep:

“I spy a copper with a shinin’ collar. If he touches me I’ll holler—P’lice!”

He never ceased to wonder how they could see in the dark.

“They’re rats,” said Mike, answering his unspoken thought.

A chuckle of sly laughter came to them.

“They never sleep,” said Mason in despair. “It was the same in my time. Day and night you could go through Gallows Alley and there would be somebody watching you.”

He wheeled suddenly and called a name. From a entry slunk a figure, which might have been man or woman.

“Thought it was you,” said Mason.

(Who it was, or who he thought it was, Michael never learnt.)

“How are things?”

“Bad, Mr. Mason, very bad.” It was the whining voice of an old man.

“Have you seen Dr. Rudd to-night?”

Again came that eerie peal of laughter from invisible depths.

“He’s the coppers’ man, ain’t he—Rudd? No, Mr. Mason, ‘we ain’t seen him. Nobody comes down ‘ere. Afraid of wakin’ people up, they are!”

The chuckles came now like the rustle of a wind.

Mason stopped before No. 9. A man was sitting on the step, his back to the door, a bibulous man who slept noisily. An old hearth-rug was drawn over his knees and on top some belated wag of Gallows Alley had balanced an empty tomato can.

“If it doesn’t fall and wake him, old man Wicks will give him a shock if he finds him there!” said Mason.

“Uncanny, isn’t it?” he said when they had emerged from the court. “They talk about Chinamen in the East End of London. Lord! they’re the only decent people they’ve got in Gallows Alley, and old Gregory.”

“I wonder what they do for a living?”

“I should hate to know,” said Mason.

They came back by the way they had entered.

“I’m giving Bray another hour, and then I’m going up to the Yard.”

“I’ll drive you, if you like. There’s nothing more to be got here.”

The shadowy figure they had seen emerged from the opening, holding an old overcoat about his throat.

“White Face has been around to-night, they say, Mr. Mason.”

“Do they, indeed?” said Mason politely.

“You don’t treat us right, Mr. Mason. You come down ‘ere an’ expect us to ‘nose’ for you, and everybody in the court knows we’re ‘nosing.’ If you treated us right and did the proper thing, you’d hear something. What’s the matter with old Gregory, hey? That’s something you don’t know—and nobody else knows. What’s the matter with Gregory?”

And with this cryptic remark he vanished.

“He’s mad—genuinely mad. No, I don’t know his name, but he’s mad in a sane way. What in hell does he mean about Gregory?”

Mike could not answer. He knew old Gregory—everybody in London knew the man who housed his cab in Dr. Marford’s yard and lived alone in the one decent house in Gallows Court.

“I’d give a lot to know what that crazy man knew about him—what he was driving at.”

Mason was disturbed, irritable. A detective officer has an instinct for sincerity—it is two-thirds of his mental equipment, and the demented denizen of the court was not rambling. To speak ill, or hint suspicion, against Gregory Wicks was a kind of treason.

“Rum lot of devils,” he said, and shrugged off his uneasiness.

“It’s Mason getting rattled, I should think,” said Elk fretfully. “Why I came here I don’t know. Madness! I get like that sometimes—just go dippy and do silly things.”

“You came here,” said Inspector Bray heavily, “because you were told to come by your superior officer.”

Elk groaned.

“The trouble with you, Billy, is that you’ve no sense of unimportance,” he said helplessly.

“That doesn’t sound very respectful,” said Mr. Bray severely.

He wanted to be very severe indeed, but you never knew with Elk. At any moment he might force you into bringing him before the Chief Constable, and invariably when he was brought before the Chief Constable he demonstrated that he and the Chief Constable were the only people in the world who took a sensible view of the circumstances. “How many men have you posted?” he asked. “I don’t want to give either of these two people a chance of slipping us.”

“I’ve posted none,” said Sergeant Elk, almost brightly. “My superior officer has posted three, and takes all the responsibility. I ventured to suggest a different posting, but I was told to mind my own so-and-so business.”

“I said nothing of the sort,” said Bray hotly.

“You meant it,” was Elk’s retort.

Bray looked anxiously up and down. He was not terribly happy, working under Mason. Very few detective officers were. And he was out of his own division, which was all wrong. Moreover, Mason was very unforgiving when his subordinates fell into error, and this was a murder case, where no excuses would be accepted. On the whole, it was better to conciliate his sergeant, who was notoriously a favourite of the superintendent.

He stared up and down the road uncomfortably.

“If I’ve been a little short-tempered with you, Elk, I’m sorry,” he said almost affectionately. “I’m so distracted with this business. Where did you say I ought to post a man?”

“In the back courtyard,” said Elk promptly. “There’s a reachable fire escape up which any healthy man or woman could climb, or vice versa.”

Elk was on the point of withdrawing a perfectly useless patrol at the far end of the street, when a taxicab turned the corner, stopped before the main door of the apartment and a woman got out. They were watching from the corner of a front garden on the opposite side of the road.

“That looks like the lady, eh? What do you think, Elk?”

“That’s madam,” said Elk. “And I’ve seen her before somewhere.”

She had paid the taxi and it drove slowly away. The watchers still waited.

As Inez Landor put the key in the front door they saw her turn her head and look anxiously round. She could see nobody. Her imagination had pictured the road packed with police officers. She hurried up to the first floor, unlocked her own door and went into the flat.

There was a small hand-lamp on the table, working from a dry battery, and it was this she switched on. There were four letters in the letter-box. She did not even trouble to take them out, but, taking the lamp in her hand, she went softly to the bedroom door, which opened from the hall, and looked in. Her heart sank when she saw that her husband had not returned. What should she do? What could she do? With a deep sigh, she took off her leather coat and hat and went into the bedroom, leaving the door open.

There had been a murder in the East End; she had seen the late edition bills and heard somebody speaking about it at supper—not that she ate supper, but usually, when she and her husband were both out, she arranged to meet Louis at Elford’s. He had not appeared. She had waited till the restaurant closed, and had then gone on to a fashionable all-night coffee-house, where they went when he was very late. He was not there either. The time of waiting seemed an eternity. In despair she had gone home, not daring to buy the midnight sheets which were being sold on the street for fear…

She shivered. She wondered whether that nice doctor would say anything; the man with the gentle voice, who had been so sympathetic and who had given her sal volatile. How stupid she had been to mistake a fight between two labourers! Perhaps that was what the newspapers called murder.

She had told him so much—things she would not have told to her mother if she were living. There was hardly a step she had taken that day which she did not now bitterly regret. It was worse than folly—sheer madness, to go in search of Louis. Suppose something had happened—a fight; she dared not imagine worse. She had broadcast his motives through London.

Inez Landor drew on her dressing-gown and walked up and down the dark room, striving to settle her mind to calmness. She had had four deliriously happy years, years of dream-building. That flimsy fabric had been shivered to nothingness.

She thought she heard a sound, a step in the hall, and, opening the door, she listened. There it was again, a faint creak. There was a loose board near the hall door. She had always intended having that board replaced.

“Is that you, Louis?” she whispered.

There was no answer. She could hear the solemn ticking of the hall clock, and the far-away whirr of a motorcar passing the end of the road.

“Louis—is that you?” she raised her voice.

She must have been mistaken, then, for no answer came. She left the door ajar, and, going to the window, pulled aside the curtains carefully and looked out. A futile act, for this window looked upon the well at the back of the building.

And then she heard a faint knock. The silence in the flat was so deep that it re-echoed through the hall. She tiptoed into the hall and listened. The knock was repeated, and she crept to the door.

“Who is there?” she asked in a low voice.

“Louis.”

Her heart was beating furiously. She turned the handle and admitted him, closing the door behind him.

“Put on the light, darling.”

His voice was strained and old-sounding. It was the voice of a man who had been running and had not recovered his breath.

“Sitting in the dark? Turn on the lights.”

“Wait!”

There was a window in the tiny lobby which could be seen from the street. She pulled down the blind and drew the thick curtains across and closed her own door before she switched the light in the hall. Save for the blue bruise under one eye, his face was colourless. Inez Landor stared at her husband with growing terror.

“What has happened?”

He shook his head. It was at once a gesture of impatience and weariness.

“Nothing very much. I have had a ghastly time. Inez, will you get me a glass of water?”

“Shall I get you some wine?”

He shook his head.

“No, darling, water.”

She was gone for a few minutes; when she returned he was looking at the knife and belt that hung on the wall. It was one of many souvenirs he had collected in his travels—a broad leather belt with big brass bosses, from which hung a knife in a gaily ornamented sheath. Before this day it had meant no more than the saddle, the lasso, the spears and the strange Aztec relics that covered the wall.

“We’ve got to get rid of that somehow,” he said.

“The knife?”

“Yes, this.”

He tapped the empty frog where a second knife had been.

She did not ask him why; but what hope there was left in her heart, flickered and died. For a little while neither spoke. There were questions she wanted to ask him which her tongue refused to frame. She could only make the most trite and commonplace remarks.

“I thought I heard you in the flat a few minutes ago,” she said. “You haven’t been in before?”

“No.”

“Why did you knock?” she asked, suddenly remembering.

He licked his lips.

“I lost my key. I don’t know where—somewhere.”

He drank the remainder of the water and put the glass on the top of a little desk which stood against the wall.

“I could have sworn I heard the door close a few minutes ago,” she said. “I came out and called you. I heard somebody walking in the hall.”

He smiled and his arm went round her shoulders. “Your nerve is going. Have you been waiting here in the dark?”

She shook her head. Should she tell him? It was not the moment for half-confidences.

“No, I have been out looking for you.”

She caught his arm.

“Louis, you didn’t fight? You didn’t—do anything?”

Louis Landor did not answer immediately.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Let us go into the sitting-room.”

But she pushed him back into the chair where he was sitting.

“No, no, stay here. None of these lights shows from the street.”

He looked at her sharply.

“What do you mean—none of these lights shows from the street? Is anybody outside watching?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I think so. Before I left the restaurant I telephoned here in the hope that you had returned. I thought the maid was here, and didn’t realise that she couldn’t get in. I knew she’d gone to her sister’s and I called her up. Louis”—her lips quivered—“the police have been here.”

And when he did not speak she knew—

“Has anything happened?”

Louis Landor ran his fingers through his long black hair.

“I don’t know—yes—I do know, but I’m not sure how far I was involved. When I went out after him I lost sight of him, but I had an idea I should find him somewhere in the West End, and I was right.”

“You spoke to him?”

He shook his head.

“No, he was in a car with a girl—a pretty girl; some poor little fool who has fallen for him. She’s a nurse who works for Marford.”

He saw her mouth open wide in amazement.

“For Marford—not Dr. Marford?”

“How the devil did you know that?” he asked, astonished. “Yes, he’s got a clinic in the East End, I’m going to see her to-morrow and tell her the truth about Mr. Donald Bateman. I followed them in a cab to Bury Street and then back to his hotel. I wanted the chance of seeing him alone without making any kind of scandal, but he never gave me the chance. Naturally I did not want to send my name up to his room, so I waited till he came out. There wasn’t the ghost of a chance of seeing him: he went to a little restaurant which was crowded with people, but I knew that if I was patient I should pick him up and settle our little matter definitely. He lingered over his dinner and I have an idea that he was waiting for somebody. She came eventually—rather a pretty woman. She wasn’t in evening dress and her voice was rather common. When he went out of the restaurant I followed, keeping at a distance. I think he’d recognised me this afternoon. Naturally, she complicated matters: I had to wait till he dropped her. After dinner they drove away from the restaurant. I was in the gallery upstairs and could see everything that was happening. I took a taxi and followed them—they drove to a very poor neighbourhood—Tidal Basin, they call it, I think. There she went into a flat with him—it was over a shop. It was then that I telephoned to you. Darling, you didn’t follow me?”

She nodded dejectedly.

“I had an uncomfortable feeling you might. You were mad!”

“I know. Go on,” she said. “What happened then?”

He asked for another glass of water and she brought it for him.

“He came out alone, and I followed him to a street which has a long wall on one side. I was just going up to him when I saw the woman run across the road. She spoke to him for a little time and then they parted. It was my opportunity. There was nobody in sight and I came up to him—”

“He had the knife?” she interrupted, and he smiled wryly.

“I gave him no chance to use it.” She had seen the bruise on his face but had not the courage to ask him how he came by it. It seemed so unimportant in view of the other terrific possibility.

“—Yes, I hit him. He went down like a log. I got scared. I saw somebody standing in the doorway—a doctor’s place—it must have been Marford. I ran. And then I saw a policeman walking towards me. At the place where I stopped there was a big gate which had a wicket door. By some miracle it was unlocked. I got through and bolted the door. I was in a narrow yard which surrounded the warehouse. The police came and searched it but I hid behind some packing cases.”

“The police?” she gasped. “Searched it. Is Donald–-?”

He nodded.

“Not dead?” she wailed.

He nodded again.

“The police have been here?”

“Yes. They’ve been questioning the maid. I don’t know what she has told them.”

He got up and walked to the little desk and felt in his pocket.

“I’ve lost my keys.”

She took a little leather case from her bag and handed it to him. He opened one of the drawers and took out a thick packet of papers.

“I suppose very few people keep three thousand pounds in the entrance hall of their flat!” His voice was now almost normal. “Whatever happens, we’ll get out of the country to-morrow. If anything goes wrong with me, you take the money and get away.”