The Ringer, Book 1 Page 10

  PRISON RIOT CONVICT SAVES THE LIFE OF DEPUTY GOVERNOR

  He glanced through the description, expecting to find a name with which he was familiar, but, as is usual in these cases, a strict anonymity was preserved as to the identity of the prisoner concerned. There had been a riot in a county jail; the ringleaders had struck down a warder and taken possession of his keys, and would have killed the deputy governor, who happened to be in the prison hall at the time, but for the bravery of a convict who, with the aid of a broom handle, defended the official till armed warders came on the scene. Maurice pursed his lips and smiled. His regard for the criminal was a very low one. They were hardly human beings; he speculated idly on what reward the heroic convict would receive. Something more than he deserved.

  Opening the box of cigars that was on the table, he bit off the end and lit a long, black cheroot, and as he smoked his mind vacillated between Mary and her peculiar experience. What was Bliss doing in Deptford, he wondered; he tried to recall the man as he had known him years before, but he was unsuccessful.

  Hackitt came in to clear away the breakfast things, and, glancing familiarly over Meister’s shoulder, read the account.

  “That deputy’s a pretty nice fellow,” he volunteered. “I wonder what made the boys get up against him. But the screws are bad.”

  Meister raised his cold eyes.

  “If you want to keep this job, you’ll not speak unless you’re spoken to, Hackitt.”

  “No offence,” said Hackitt, quite unperturbed. “I’m naturally chatty.”

  “Then try your chattiness on somebody else!” snapped Maurice.

  The man went out of the room with the tray, and had gone a few minutes before he returned, bearing a long yellow envelope. Meister, snatching it from his hand, glanced at the superscription. It was marked “Very Urgent and Confidential” and bore the stamp of Scotland Yard.

  “Who brought this?” he asked.

  “A copper,” said Sam.

  Maurice pointed to the door.

  “You can go.”

  He waited till the door had closed upon his servant before he tore open the flap, and his hand shook as he drew out the folded typewritten paper.

  SIR, I have the honour to inform you that the Deputy Commissioner, Colonel Walford, C.B., wishes to see you at his office at Scotland Yard at 11.30 in the forenoon tomorrow. The matter is of the greatest importance, and the Deputy Commissioner wishes me to say that he trusts you will make every effort to keep this appointment, and notify him by telegram if you cannot be at Scotland Yard at the hour named.

  I have the honour to be, sir, etc.

  A summons to Scotland Yard! The first that Meister had ever received. What did it portend?

  He rose to his feet, opened a little cupboard and took out a long bottle of brandy, and splashed a generous portion into a glass, and he was furious with himself to find that his hand was shaking. What did Scotland Yard know? What did they wish to know? His future, his very liberty, depended on the answer to those questions. The morrow! The very day he had chosen to put into execution certain plans he had formulated. Unconsciously Scotland Yard had given Mary Lenley a day of respite!

  CHAPTER 21

  At the lawyer’s request, Mary came early to work the following morning, and she was surprised to find Maurice up and dressed. He was one of those men who usually was meticulously careful as to his dress, and indeed was almost a dandy in this respect. But he was usually a slow dresser and liked to lounge about the house in his pale green dressing-gown until the arrival of clients or the necessity for a consultation with counsel, made him shed that garment.

  When she came in, he was walking up and down the room with his hands clasped behind him. He looked as if he had not slept very well, and she remarked upon this.

  “Yes, I slept all right.” He spoke jerkily, nervously, and he was obviously labouring under some very strong emotion. It never occurred to Mary Lenley that that emotion might be fear. “I have to go to Scotland Yard, my dear,” said Meister, “and I was wondering”—he forced a smile—“whether you would like to come up with me—not into the Yard,” he added hastily, when he saw the look of repugnance on her face. “Perhaps you would like to stay at a—at a tearoom or somewhere until I came out?”

  “But why, Maurice?” The request was most unexpected.

  He was not patient to answer questions.

  “If you don’t wish to come, don’t, my dear—” he said sharply, but altered his tone. “There are one or two things I would like to talk to you about—business matters in which I may need a little—clerical assistance.”

  He walked to her desk and took up a paper.

  “Here are the names and addresses of a number of people: I wish you to keep this paper in your bag. The gentlemen named should be notified if anything—I mean, if it is necessary.”

  He could not tell her that he had passed that night in a cold sweat of fear, alternating snatches of bad dreams with an endless cogitation on the unpleasant possibilities which the morrow held. Nor could he explain that the names which he had written down and chosen with such care, were men of substance who might vouch for him in certain eventualities. He might have confessed with truth that he wanted her company that morning for the distraction he needed during the hours that preceded his interview with the Commissioner; and if the worst happened, for somebody to be at hand whom he could notify and trust to work in his interests.

  “I don’t know what they want me for at Scotland Yard,” he said, with an attempt at lightness. “Probably some little matter connected with one of my clients.”

  “Do they often send for you?” she asked innocently.

  He looked at her quickly. “No, I have never been before. In fact, it is a most unusual procedure. I have never heard of a solicitor being sent for.”

  She nodded at this. “I thought so,” she said. “Alan told me that they ask you to come to Scotland Yard either to ‘pump’ you or catch you!”

  He glowered at this. “I beg of you not to give me at second hand the vulgarities of your police officer friend. ‘To pump you’—what an expression! Obviously they have asked me to go because I’ve defended some rascal about whom they want information. Possibly the man is planning to rob me.”

  The point was such a sore one that Mary very wisely refrained from carrying it any further.

  Maurice possessed no car of his own, and it was characteristic of him that the local garage could supply no machine of sufficient magnificence to support his state. The Rolls which came to him from a West End hirer was the newest and shiniest that could be procured, and to the admiration and envy of the Flanders Laners, who stood in their doorways to watch the departure, Mary drove off with her employer. His nervousness seemed to increase rather than diminish as Deptford was left behind. He asked her half a dozen times if she had the paper with the names of his influential friends. Once, after an interregnum of gloomy silence on his part, she had tried to make conversation by asking him if he had seen an item in the newspaper.

  “Riot in a prison?” he answered abstractedly. “No—yes, I did. What about it?”

  “It is the prison Johnny is in,” she said, “and I was rather worried —he is such an impetuous boy, and probably he has done something foolish. Is there any way of finding out?”

  Meister was interested.

  “Was Johnny in that jail? I didn’t realise that. Yes, my dear, we’ll find out if you wish.”

  He evidently brooded upon this aspect of the prison riot, for as the car was crossing Westminster Bridge he said: “I hope Johnny is not involved: it would mean the loss of his marks.”

  She had hardly digested this ominous remark before the car turned on to the Thames Embankment and pulled up just short of the entrance to Scotland Yard.

  “Perhaps you would like to sit in the car and wait?”

  “How long will you be
gone?” she asked.

  Mr. Meister would have given a lot of money to have been able to answer that question with any accuracy.

  “I don’t know. These official people are very dilatory. Anyway, you can amuse yourself as you wish.”

  As he was talking he saw a man drop nimbly from a tram-car and slouch across the road towards the arched entrance of police headquarters.

  “Hackitt?” he said incredulously. “He didn’t tell me he was coming. He served me my breakfast half an hour before you arrived at the house.”

  His face was twitching. She was amazed that so small a thing could have so devastating an effect.

  “All right,” he nodded and scarcely looking at her, strode away.

  He stopped at the entrance to the Yard as some creature of the wild might halt at the entrance of a trap. What did Hackitt know about him? What could Hackitt say? When he had taken the man into his employ, he had not been actuated by any sense of charity—on the contrary, he felt he was securing a bargain. But was Hackitt in the pay of the police—a “nose,” sent into his house to pry amongst his papers, unearth his secrets, reveal the mysteries of locked cellars and boarded-up attics?

  Setting his teeth, he walked down the gentle slope and turned into Scotland Yard.

  CHAPTER 22

  Mary elected to spend the first part of her time of waiting in the car with a newspaper, but the printed page was a poor rival to the pageant of life that was moving past. The clanging trams crowded with passengers, the endless procession of vehicles crossing the beautiful bridge, the panorama of London which was visible through the front windows of the car. She wondered if business would call Alan Wembury to headquarters, and had dismissed this possibility when he made a very commonplace appearance. Somebody walked past the car with long strides: she only saw the back of him, but in an instant she was out on the sidewalk. He heard her voice and spun round.

  “Why, Mary!” he said, his face lighting up. “What on earth are you doing this side of the world? You haven’t come with Meister?”

  “Did you know they’ve sent for him?”

  Alan nodded.

  “Is it anything very important? He is a little worried, I think.”

  Wembury might have told her that Meister’s worry before he went to Scotland Yard was as nothing to what it would be after.

  “You didn’t bring Mr. Hackitt by any chance?” he smiled, and she shook her head.

  “No, Maurice didn’t know that Hackitt was coming—I think that rather distressed him. What is the mystery, Alan?”

  He laughed. “The mystery is the one you’re making, my dear.” And then, as he saw the colour come to her face, he went on penitently: “I’m awfully sorry. That’s terribly familiar.”

  “I don’t mind really,” she laughed. “I’m pretending that you’re a very old gentleman. Do you often have these important conferences? And who is that, Alan?”

  A beautiful little coupe had drawn noiselessly to the kerb just ahead of their own car. The chauffeur jumped down, opened the lacquered door, and a girl got out, looked up at the facade of Scotland Yard and passed leisurely under the arch. Though it was early in the morning, and the place was crowded, a cigarette burnt between her gloved fingers and she left behind her the elusive fragrance of some eastern perfume.

  “She’s a swell, isn’t she? And an old acquaintance of yours.”

  “Not Mrs. Milton!” said the girl in amazement.

  “Mrs. Milton it is. I must run after her and shepherd her into a nice airy room.”

  She dismissed him with a nod. He took her hand in his for a moment and looked down into her eyes.

  “You know where to find me, Mary?” he said in a low voice, and before she could answer this cryptic question, he was gone.

  At the request of a policeman, the driver of her car moved the car beyond the gateway and came to a halt at a place where she had a more comprehensive view of the building. It did not look like a police headquarters: it might have been the head office of some prosperous insurance company, or a Government building on which a usually staid architect had been allowed to give full play to his Gothic tendencies. What was happening behind those windows? What drama or tragedy was being played out in those rooms which look upon the Embankment? She thought of Johnny and shivered a little. His record was somewhere in that building, tabulated in long cabinets, his finger-prints, body-marks, colouring. It was dreadfully odd to think of Johnny as a number in a card index. Did they have numbers in jail also? She seemed to remember reading about such things.

  She was suddenly conscious that somebody was staring in at the car, and, turning her head, she met a pair of humorous blue eyes that twinkled under shaggy grey eyebrows. A tall, bent figure in a homespun suit, with an impossible brown felt hat on the back of his white head, and he was obviously wishing to speak to her. She opened the door of the car and came out.

  “Ye’ll be Miss Lenley, I think? My name’s Lomond.”

  “Oh, yes, you’re Dr. Lomond,” she smiled. “I thought I recognised you.”

  “But, my dear leddy, you’ve never seen me!”

  “Alan—Mr. Wembury says you look like every doctor he has ever known.”

  This seemed to please him, for his shoulders shook with silent laughter.

  “Ye’re no’ curious, or you’d ask me how I knew you,” he said. And then he looked up at Scotland Yard. “A sad and gloomy-faced place, young leddy.” He shook his head dolefully. “You’ve no’ been called here professionally?”

  As he spoke, he fumbled in his pockets, produced a silver tobacco-box and rolled a cigarette.

  “They’ve dragged me from my studies to examine a poor wee body,” he said, and at first she took him literally, and thought he had been brought to identify some drowned or murdered man, and the look of antipathy in her face was not lost on the doctor.

  “She’s alive,” he gurgled, “and no’ so unattractive!” He held out his long hand. “I’d like to be meeting you more often, Miss Lenley. Mebbe I’ll come along and see you one day, and we’ll have a bit chat.”

  “I should love it, doctor,” she said truthfully.

  She liked the old man: there was a geniality and a youthfulness in that smile of his that went straight to her heart. She watched him shuffling laboriously, the cigarette still twisting and rolling in his hand, until the grey pillars of the gateway hid him for view. Who was the poor wee body? She knew that he referred to a forthcoming cross-examination, for Alan had told her of his exploit with the poisoner Ann Prideaux. And then it flashed upon her—Cora Milton! She felt rather sorry for Dr. Lomond: he was such a nice, gentle soul; he would find Cora Ann Milton a particularly difficult lady.

  CHAPTER 23

  Mary did not see Central Detective Inspector Bliss walk quickly through the stone doorway of Scotland Yard. He scarcely acknowledged the salute of the constable on duty, and passed along the vaulted corridor to the Chief Constable’s room. A slight, bearded man, pale of face, brusque of manner, he might hold the respect of his subordinates, but he had no place in their affections.

  “That’s Mr. Bliss,” said the officer to a younger constable. “Keep out of his way. He was bad enough before he went to America—he’s a pig now!”

  Mr. Maurice Meister, sitting on a hard form in one waiting-room, saw him pass the open door and frowned. The walk of the man was oddly familiar.

  Sam Hackitt, ex-convict, lounging in the corridor in charge of a plain clothes police officer, scratched his nose thoughtfully and wondered where he had seen the face before. Mr. Bliss opened the door of the Chief Constable’s room, walked in and slammed the door. Wembury, gazing abstractedly through the double windows which gave a view of the Embankment, turned his head and nodded. Every time he had met Central Inspector Bliss he had liked him less.

  The bearded man made for the desk in the centre of the room, picked up a sheet of paper,
read it and grunted. A trim messenger came in and handed him a letter, he read the address and dropped the envelope on the table. Turning his head with an impatient growl, he asked: “Why is the Assistant Commissioner holding this inquiry, anyway? It’s not an administration job. Things have changed pretty considerably since I was here.”

  Alan withdrew his attention from the new County Council building. “The Chief Constable had the case in hand,” he said, “but he’s away ill, so Colonel Walford is taking it for him.”

  “But why Walford?” snarled Bliss. “He has about as much knowledge of the job as my foot!”

  Alan was very patient. He knew that he would be meeting Bliss that morning and had it in his mind to ask him about that mysterious visit he had paid to Malpas Mansions, but Bliss seemed hardly in a communicative mood.

  “This is a pretty big thing. If The Ringer is really back—and headquarters is pretty certain that he is—”

  Bliss smiled contemptuously. “The Ringer!” And then, remembering: “Who is this man who wrote from Maidstone Prison?”

  “Hackitt—a fellow who knew him.”

  Bliss laughed harshly. “Hackitt! Do you think that Hackitt knows anything about him? You’re getting pretty credulous at Scotland Yard in these days!”

  The whole attitude of the man was offensive. It was as though he wished deliberately to antagonise the other.

  “He says he’d recognise him.”

  “Bosh!” said Bliss scornfully. “It’s an old lag’s trick. He’d say anything to make a sensation.”

  “Dr. Lomond says—” began Alan, and was stopped by an explosive snort from the bearded detective.

  “I don’t want to know what any police surgeon says! That fellow’s got a hell of a nerve. He wanted to teach me my business.”

  It was news to Wembury that the pawky old police surgeon had ever crossed swords with this querulous man.