The Joker ds(e-3 Read online

  For Jim the day’s interest had nothing whatever to do with stock exchanges or the fall of shares; nor yet the fortune which he knew was being gathered, with every minute that passed, by Harlow and his agents. His interest was solely devoted to the mystery of Sir Joseph Layton’s disappearance.

  There had been present at Harlow’s reception a very large number of notable people, many of whom were personal friends of the missing Minister. They were emphatic in declaring that he had not returned to Park Lane; and they were as certain that Harlow had not left the house after Sir Joseph’s departure. More than this, there were two policemen on duty at the door; and they were equally certain that Sir Joseph had not returned. The suggestion was made that the Minister had gone to his country house in Cheshire, but when inquiry was set on foot it was learned that the house and the shooting had been rented by a rich American.

  Immediately he had returned to London the Prime Minister flew to Paris. When he got back Jim saw him, and the chief officer of state was a greatly worried as well as a very tired man.

  ‘Sir Joseph Layton has to be found!’ he said, thumping his table. ‘I tell you this, Carlton, as I have told your superiors, that it was, impossible, unless Sir Joseph went mad, that he should have stood up in the House of Commons and said something which he knew to be absolutely untrue, and which he himself would repudiate! Have you seen this man Harlow?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Jim.

  ‘Did he tell you what was discussed by any chance? Was it the so-called Bonn incident?’

  ‘Harlow says that they just talked about the Middle East and nothing else during the few minutes the Foreign Minister vas in his house. And really, sir, I don’t see how they could have had any very lengthy discussion; they were not together more than a few minutes. Apparently Sir Joseph went into a little room which Harlow uses for his more confidential interviews and drank a glass of wine. They then talked about the reception and Sir Joseph congratulated him on bringing the warring elements together. It seems to have been, according to Harlow’s account, the most uninteresting talk.’

  The Prime Minister walked up and down the room with long strides, his chin on his chest.

  ‘I can’t understand it, I can’t understand it!’ he muttered. And then, abruptly: ‘Find Sir Joseph Layton.’ That terminated the interview for Jim.

  He was rattled, badly rattled, and in his distraction he could think of only one sedative. He rang up Aileen Rivers at her office and asked her to come to tea with him at the Automobile Club.

  Aileen realised from the first that Jim was directly occupied by a mystery that was puzzling not only the country but the whole of the civilised world. But she understood also the reason he had sent for her, and the thought that she as being of use to him was a very pleasant one.

  As soon as he met her he plunged straight into the story of his trouble.

  ‘He may have been kidnapped, of course, and I should say it was very likely, though the distance between Palace Yard and Whitehall Gardens is very short; and Whitehall so full of police that it hardly seems possible. We have advertised for the taximan who drove him away from the House, but so far have had no reply.’

  ‘Perhaps the taximan was also kidnapped?’ she suggested.

  ‘Perhaps so,’ he admitted. ‘I do wish Foreign Ministers weren’t so godlike that they have to travel alone! If he’d only waited a few minutes I would have joined him.’ And then, with a smile: ‘I’m laying my burdens upon you and you’re wilting visibly.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she affirmed.

  She considered a moment before she asked:

  ‘Could I not help you?’

  He stared at her in amused wonder.

  ‘How on earth could you help me? I’m being rude I know, but I can’t exactly see—’

  She was annoyed rather than hurt by his scepticism.

  ‘It may be a very presumptuous thing to offer assistance to the police,’ she said with a faint hint of sarcasm, ‘but I think what may be wrong with you now is that you want—what is the expression?—a new angle?’

  ‘I certainly want several new angles,’ he confessed ruefully.

  ‘Then I’ll start in to give you one. Have you seen my uncle?’

  His jaw dropped. He had forgotten all about Arthur Ingle; and never once had he associated him with the Minister’s disappearance.

  ‘What a fool I am!’ he gasped.

  She examined his face steadily, as though she were considering whether or not to agree. In reality her mind was very far away.

  ‘I only suggest my uncle because he called upon me this morning,’ she said. ‘At least, he was waiting for me when I came out to lunch. It is the first time I have seen him since the night he came back from Devonshire.’

  ‘What did he want to see you about?’

  She laughed softly.

  ‘He came with a most extraordinary offer, that I should keep house for him. And really, he offered me considerably more than the salary I am getting from Stebbings, and said he had no objection to my working in the daytime.’

  ‘You refused, of course?’

  ‘I refused, of course,’ she repeated, ‘but he wasn’t at all put out. I’ve never seen him in such an amiable frame of mind.’

  ‘How does he look?’ asked Jim, remembering the unshaven face he had seen through the window.

  ‘Very smart,’ was the surprising reply. ‘He told me he had been amusing himself with some of the big films that had appeared since he went to prison. He had hired them and bought a small projector. He really was fond of the pictures, as I know,’ the girl went on, ‘but it seems a queer thing to I have shut oneself up for days just to watch films! And he asked after you.’ She nodded. ‘Why should he ask after you, you are going to say, and that is the question that occurred to me. But he seems to have taken for granted that I am a very close friend of yours. He asked who had introduced me, and I told him your wretched little car on the Thames Embankment!’

  ‘Speak well of the dead,’ said Jim soberly. ‘Lizzie has cracked a cylinder.’

  ‘And now,’ she said, ‘prepare for a great shock.’

  ‘I brace myself,’ said Jim.

  ‘He asked,’ the girl went on, a twinkle in her eyes, ‘whether I thought you would object to seeing him. I think he must have taken a sudden liking to you.’

  ‘I’ve never met the gentleman,’ said Jim, ‘but that is an omission which shall be rectified without delay. We’ll go round together! He will naturally jump at the conclusion that we’re an engaged couple, but if you can stand that slur on your intelligence—’

  ‘I will be brave,’ said Aileen.

  Mr Arthur Ingle was only momentarily disconcerted by the appearance of his niece and the man who had filled his mind all that afternoon. Jim had met him once before, but only for a few seconds, when he had called to make an inquiry about Mrs Gibbins. Now he was almost jovial.

  ‘Where’s friend Elk?’ he asked, with a smile. ‘I understood you never moved without one another in these perilous times, when lunatic ministers are wandering about the country, and no man knows the hour or the day when he will be called up for active service! So you are Mr James Carlton!’

  He opened a silver cigar-box and pushed it across to Jim, who made a careful selection.

  ‘Aileen told you I wanted to see you, I suppose? Well, I do. I’m a bit of a theorist, Mr Carlton, and I have an idea that my theory is right. I wonder if you would be interested to know what it is?’

  He pointedly ignored the presence of the girl except to put a chair for her.

  ‘I’ve been making inquiries,’ said this surprising ex-convict, ‘and I’ve discovered that Sir Joseph is in all sorts of financial difficulties. This is unknown to the Prime Minister or even to his closest friend, but I have had a hint that he was very short of ready money and that his estates in Cheshire were heavily mortgaged. Now, Mr Carlton, do you conceive it as possible that the speech in the House was made with the deliberate intention of slumping the mar
ket and that Sir Joseph was paid handsomely for the part he played?’

  As he was speaking, he clasped his hands before him, his fingers intertwined; he emphasised every point with a little jerk of his clasped hands and, watching him, the mist rolled from Jim Carlton’s brain, and he instantly solved the mystery of those private film shows which had kept Mr Ingle locked up in his flat for a week. And to solve that was to solve every mystery save the present whereabouts of Sir Joseph Layton.

  He listened in silence whilst Ingle went on to expound and elaborate his theory and when the man had finished: ‘I will bring your suggestion to the notice of my superiors,’ he said conventionally.

  It was evidently not the speech that Mr Ingle expected. For a moment he looked uncomfortable, and then, with a laugh: ‘I suppose you think it strange that I should be on the side of law and order—and the governing classes! I felt a little sore when I came out of prison. Elk probably told you of the exhibition I made of myself in the train. But I’ve been thinking things over, Carlton, and it has occurred to me that my extremism is not profitable either to my pocket or my mind.’

  ‘In fact,’ smiled Jim, ‘you’re going to become a reformed character and a member of the good old Tory party?’

  ‘I don’t know that I shall go as far as that,’ demurred the other, amused, ‘but I have decided to settle down. I am not exactly a poor man, and all that I have got I have paid for—in Dartmoor.’

  Only for a second were the old harsh cadences audible in his voice. He nodded towards Aileen Rivers.

  ‘You’ll persuade this girl to give me a chance, Mr Carlton? I can well understand her hesitation to keep house for a man liable at any moment to be whisked off to durance, and I fear she does not quite believe in my reformation.’

  He smiled blandly at the girl, and then turned his eyes upon Jim.

  ‘Could you not persuade her?’

  ‘If I could persuade her to any course,’ said Jim deliberately, ‘it would not be the one you suggest.’

  ‘Why?’ challenged the other.

  ‘Because,’ said Jim, ‘you are altogether wrong when you say that there is no longer any danger of your being whisked off to durance. The danger was never more pressing.’

  Ingle did not reply to this. Once his lips trembled as though he were about to ask a question, and then with a laugh he walked to the table and took a cigar from the box.

  ‘I guess I won’t detain you,’ he said. ‘But you’re wrong, Carlton. The police have nothing on me! They may frame something to catch me, but you’ll have to be clever to do even that.’

  As they passed out of the building:

  ‘I seem to spend my days giving warnings to the last people in the world who ought to be warned,’ said Jim bitterly. ‘Aileen, maybe you’ll knit me a muzzle in your spare moments? That will help considerably!’

  The outstanding feature of this little speech from the girl’s point of view was that he had called her by her name for the first time. Later, when they were nearing her boarding house, she asked: ‘Do you think you will find Sir Joseph?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I doubt very much if he is alive,’ he said gravely.

  But his doubts were to be dispelled, and in the most surprising manner. That night a drunken black-faced comedian hit a policeman over the head with a banjo, and that vulgar incident had an amazing sequel.

  CHAPTER 16

  THERE is a class of entertainer which devotes its talents to amusing the queues that wait at the doors of the cheaper entrances of London’s theatres. Here is generally to be found a man who can tear paper into fantastic shapes, a ballad singer or two, a performer on the bones and the inevitable black-faced minstrel.

  It was eleven o’clock at night, and snow was lightly falling, when a policeman on point duty at the end of Evory Street saw a figure staggering along the middle of the road, in imminent danger from the returning theatre traffic. The man had obviously taken more drink than vas good for him, for he was howling at the top of his voice the song of the moment; and making a clumsy attempt to accompany himself on the banjo which was slung around his neck.

  The London police are patient and long-suffering people, and had the reeling figure been less vocal he might have passed on to his destination without interference. For drunkenness in itself is not a crime according to the law; a man must be incapable or create a disturbance, or obstruct the police in the execution of their duty, before he offends. The policeman had no intention of arresting the noisy wayfarer.

  He walked into the middle of the road to intercept and quieten him; and then discovered that the reveller was a black-faced comedian with extravagant white lips, a ridiculous Eton collar and a shell coat. On his head was a college cap, and this completed his outfit with the exception of the banjo, with which he was making horrid sounds.

  ‘Hi, hi!’ said the policeman gently. ‘A little less noise, young fellow!’

  Such an admonition would have been sufficient in most cases to have reduced a midnight song-bird to apology, but this street waif stood defiantly in the middle of the road, his legs apart, and invited the officer to go to a warmer climate, and, not satisfied with this, he swung his banjo, and brought it down with a crash on the policeman’s helmet.

  ‘You’ve asked for it!’ said the officer of the law and took his lawful prey in a grip of iron.

  By a coincidence, Jim Carlton was at Evory Street Station when the man was brought in, singing not unmusically, and so obviously drunk that Jim hardly turned his head or interrupted the conversation he was having with the inspector on duty, to look at the charge. They made a rapid search of the man, he resisting violently and at last, when they had extracted a name (he refused his address) he was hustled between a policeman and a jailer into the long corridor off which the cells are placed.

  The door of Cell No. 7 was opened and into this he was pushed, struggling to the last to maintain his banjo.

  ‘And,’ said the jailer when he came back to the charge-room, wiping his perspiring brow, ‘the language that bud is using would turn a soldier pale!’

  The reason for Jim’s presence was to arrange a local supervision of Greenhart House and to obtain certain assistance in the execution of a plan which was running through his mind; and that task would have been completed when the black-faced man was brought in, but that the officer he had called to see was away. Jim lingered a little while, talking police shop, before he paid his last visit to Sir Joseph’s house. He had the inevitable reply: No News had reached Whitehall Gardens of the Foreign Minister.

  The man he came to see at Evory Street was due to appear at the police court in the role of prosecutor and Jim strolled down to the court next morning, arriving soon after the magistrate had taken his seat. There he met the inspector from Evory Street. Before Jim could broach the subject which had brought him, the inspector asked:

  ‘Were you at the station when that black-faced fellow was pulled in last night?’

  ‘Yes, I remember the noisy gentleman,’ said Jim. ‘Why?’

  The inspector shook his head, puzzled. ‘I can’t understand where he got it from. The sergeant searched him carefully, but he must have had it concealed in some place.’

  ‘What is the matter with him?’ asked Jim, only half interested.

  ‘Dope,’ said the other. ‘When the jailer went and called him this morning it was as much as he could do to wake him up. In fact, he thought of sending for the divisional surgeon. You never saw a sicker-looking man in your life! Can’t get a word out of him. All he did was to sit on his bed with his head in his hands, moaning. We had to shake him to get him into the prison van.’

  The first two cases were disposed of rapidly, and then a policeman called: ‘John Smith,’ and there tottered into court the black-faced comedian, a miserable object, so weak of knee that he had to be guided up the steps into the steel-railed dock. Gone was the exhilaration of the night before, and Jim had an unusual feeling of pity for the poor wretch in his absurd cloth
es and black, shining face.

  The magistrate looked over his glasses.

  ‘Why wasn’t this man allowed to wash his face before he came before me?’ he asked.

  ‘Couldn’t get him to do anything, sir,’ said the jailer, ‘and we haven’t got the stuff to take off this make-up.’

  The magistrate grumbled something, and the assaulted policeman stepped into the box and took his oath to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. He gave his stereotyped evidence and again the magistrate looked at the drooping figure in the dock.

  ‘What have you to say, Smith?’ he asked.

  The man did not raise his head.

  ‘Is anything known about him? I notice that his address is not on the charge sheet.’

  ‘He refused his address, your Worship,’ said the inspector.

  ‘Remanded for inquiries!’

  The jailer touched the prisoner’s arm and he looked up at him suddenly; stared wildly round the court, and then:

  ‘May I ask what I am doing here?’ he asked in a husky voice, and Jim’s jaw dropped.

  For the black-faced man was Sir Joseph Layton!

  CHAPTER 17

  EVEN THE magistrate was startled, though he did not recognise the voice. He was about to give an order for the removal of the man when Jim pushed his way to his desk and whispered a few words.

  ‘Who?’ asked the magistrate. ‘Impossible!’

  ‘May I ask’—it was the prisoner speaking again—‘what is all this about—I really do not understand.’

  And then he swayed and would have fallen, but the jailer caught him in his arms.

  ‘Take him out into my room.’ The magistrate was on his feet. ‘The court stands adjourned for ten minutes,’ he said; and disappeared behind the curtains into his office.

  A few seconds later they brought in the limp figure of the prisoner and laid him on a sofa.

  ‘Are you sure? You must be mistaken, Mr Carlton!’

  ‘I am perfectly sure—even though his moustache has been shaved off,’ said Jim, looking into the face of the unconscious man. ‘This is Sir Joseph Layton, the Foreign Minister. I could not make a mistake. I know him so well.’