Elk 04 White Face Page 17

  He did not despise them nor did he fear them. The odds against his escaping were twenty to one—there was enough of the gambler in him to fancy his chance.

  No man who was wanted, and whose photograph was procurable, had ever escaped from England. Perhaps some did, but the police never admitted the exceptions.

  As he came back along the passage he heard a faint voice call from the open door of the darkened room.

  “Can I have some water, please?”

  He carried a glass in to the doctor, who drank it and thanked him.

  “You’re in considerable danger, my friend. I hope you realise that?” said the voice from the sofa weakly.

  “My dear Doctor, I have been in danger for quite a long time—go to sleep, and don’t worry about me.”

  He waited till he heard the doctor’s regular breathing, and then came out, closing the door softly behind him.

  Danger! It had no significance for White Face. He feared nothing, literally and figuratively feared nothing. He did not regret one act of his life; regretted least of all that which had sent Donald Bateman into nothingness. Perhaps Walter would not have approved, but then Walter was weak—a daring man, but weak. White Face approved his own deed, which approval was more important than self-glorification.

  Poor old Gregory! As for the doctor, he would put water and some kind of refreshment ready to his hand. In the morning he would be well enough to drive the taxi to the nearest police station.

  Only one regret he had, and that he did not allow his mind to rest upon. But to give up life was an easy matter if necessity arose; with life one surrendered all aspirations.

  He had finished his shaving, using cream instead of soap and water, when he heard a footstep in the passage. The doctor, then, was awake; that was unfortunate. He took one step towards the door when it opened. Mason stood there; an untidy Mason with his hat on the back of his head and his overcoat unfastened.

  “I took the liberty of coming through a back window; most of them are open,” he said. “I want you, of course.”

  “Naturally,” said White Face. There was no tremor in his voice. “You’ll find the doctor in the next room. I don’t think there’s very much the matter with him.”

  He held out his hands, but Mason shook his head.

  “Handcuffs are old-fashioned. Have you got a gun?”

  White Face shook his head.

  “Then we’ll step along,” said Mason politely, and guided him by the arm into the darkness outside.

  Stopping to despatch his men to look after the doctor, he led his prisoner to where the police car was waiting.

  “You weren’t seen, but you were heard,” he explained.

  White Face laughed.

  “A taxicab in low gear is a menace to the security of the criminal classes,” he said lightly.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  There was a complete dearth of news when Michael Quigley reached the station. Negative reports are never sent to minor stations, and the absence of anything positive was sufficient to indicate that the search for the missing taxicab had so far been fruitless. To kill time he wandered up and down the streets, revisited the scene of the murder, would have gone again to Gallows Court for news, if Gallows Court had not come out to meet him.

  Michael was turning over the mud in the gutter with the toe of his boot when he saw the odd figure of the crazy man crossing the road. This strange apparition had one curious (and welcome) characteristic. He avoided the light, and no sooner had he come within the range of the arc lamp, than he halted and half turned away from its searching beams.

  “Come over here, reporter! I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “You can tell me your name to start with.”

  The oddity chuckled. “I ain’t got a name. My parents forgot to give me one.” (This astounding statement, Michael discovered was true.) “People call me anything they like—Shoey, some of ‘em, because I used to black shoes.”

  “What have you got to tell me?” asked Michael.

  “He took the doctor away.”

  He said this in a hoarse whisper.

  “Who—White Face?”

  Shoey nodded violently.

  “I’ve got all the rights of it now. He took him in his cab—he was layin’ there on the floor and nobody knew.”

  He doubled up with silent laughter and slapped his knees in an agony of enjoyment.

  “That makes me laugh! Mason don’t know! All these clever busies from Scotland Yard, and they don’t know that!”

  “What are the ‘rights of it’?” asked Michael.

  Sometimes, Mason had said, this strange creature was nearer to the truth than a saner man.

  “Elk knows.”

  The man without a name stuck a grimy forefinger into Michael’s ribs to point his remark.

  “That fellow’s wider than Broad Street. Elk! I’ll bet you he knowed all the time! But he likes to keep things to hisself until he’s got ‘em all cleared up. I’ve heard Bray say that—Bray’s got no more brains than a rabbit,” he added.

  Somebody was walking along the sidewalk towards them.

  “That’s him!” whispered the ragged object and melted across the street.

  Bray was at such a distance that it seemed impossible for anybody to recognise that it was he. It appeared that he was walking off a grievance.

  “As soon as this affair is over I’m going to put things straight,” he said aggressively. “Mason really shouldn’t do it! You understand, Quigley, that an officer of my rank has his position to uphold; and how can I uphold it if important inquiries are placed in the hands of subordinates? Insubordinates, I call ‘em!”

  “What’s Elk been doing now?”

  There was no need to ask who was the offender.

  “Mason is a good fellow,” Bray went on, “one of the best men in the force and one of the cutest. It you ever get a chance of dropping a hint that I said that, I’d be obliged, Quigley. You needn’t make a point of repeating the conversation, but just mention it accidentally—he takes a lot of notice of what you say. But he’s altogether wrong about Elk. Evil,” he went on poetically, “is wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart—”

  “Shakespeare?” murmured Michael.

  “I dare say,” said Bray, who had no idea that American citizens wrote poetry. “Mason does these things thoughtlessly. I told him I was willing to cross-examine this woman as soon as she came round and was in a fit state to talk. But no, Elk must do it! Elk knows her, apparently. But I ask you, Quigley, is it necessary to know a person before you question ‘em? Was I properly introduced to Lamborn—there’s another scandal; he’s out on bail!”

  To shorten the length of the grievance, Michael suggested that they should walk back together to the station. They arrived at an interesting time for Inspector Bray, because Lorna Weston had decided to talk.

  She had refused to go into the inspector’s office, and was seated in the charge-room, the bandaged Elk towering over her. Michael could see that it was not his but Bray’s presence which brought that demoniacal frown to the sergeant’s face when they appeared.

  “All right, let’s have all the press in, Bray,” he said savagely. “Won’t you come into the private office, Mrs. Weston?”

  “No, I won’t.” The pale-faced woman was determined on the point. “I’ll say what I want to say here.”

  “All right,” said Elk grimly. And to Shale, who was the stenographer of the party: “Get your book. You’re known as Lorna Weston,” he began, “and you’re the wife of—?”

  She had parted her lips to speak when Mason came in briskly; behind him came two detectives and between them walked their prisoner.

  Lorna Weston came up to her feet, her eyes fixed upon the smiling man who stood between the two guards—unconcerned, perfectly at his ease, not by so much as the droop of an eye betraying consciousness of his deadly peril.

  “There he is! There he is!” she shrieked, pointing at him. “The murderer! You kille
d him! You said you would if you ever met him, and you did it!”

  Mason watched the prisoner curiously, but he made no response.

  “It wasn’t for me you hated him. It wasn’t because he took me away from you—it was because of your brother who died in prison.”

  The man nodded.

  “It was because of that,” he said simply. “If he could be brought to life and I were free, I’d kill him again.”

  “Do you hear him?” she shrieked. “My husband—Tommy Furse!”

  “Call me by my real name,” said the other. “Thomas Marford! It is a pretty good name, though it has been borne by some pretty bad people.”

  He turned smilingly to Mason.

  “You won’t want this lady, I think? I can tell you all you wish to know, and I will clear up any point which may seem to you to be obscure.”

  Michael Quigley stood petrified, unable to speak or move. Marford! This self-possessed man…White Face…hold-up man, murderer…He must be dreaming. But no, here was the reality.

  Marford, as unemotional as the crowd of detectives who stood around him, was twiddling his watch-chain, looking half amused, half pityingly at the shivering woman who called herself his wife.

  He was evidently considering something else than his own position.

  “I hope Dr. Rudd will feel no ill-effects from his unhappy experience,” he said. “As I told you earlier in the morning, I don’t think he will suffer anything worse than a headache, which he can easily remedy. He has been in my garage all the night. You see,” he was almost apologetic, “Rudd had a theory, which was to me a very dangerous theory on the lips of a rather loquacious and not terribly clever man. His view, which he was developing most uncomfortably, was that there was only one person who could possibly have killed Bateman—and that was myself! He thought it was a huge joke, but it wasn’t a joke to me; and when he called in at my surgery on the way to the station to put his ideas before you, I realised at once that I was in considerable danger. I realised more than this,” he added calmly, “that my life’s work was done, that my clinic and my convalescent home and my new rest-house at Annerford—how did you find your way to Annerford Farm, by the way? But perhaps you wouldn’t like to tell me—were things of the past, and that I must save myself at all costs.”

  He looked round and caught Elk’s eye and shook his head sadly.

  “I had to do it, Elk. I’m terribly sorry. You’re the last man in the world I would have hurt.”

  To Mason’s surprise, Elk grinned amiably.

  “I don’t know anyone I’d rather take a coshing from,” he said handsomely.

  “You were a dangerous man, too,” smiled Marford, “but I couldn’t give you a whisky and soda with a little shot of drug in it, as I gave to Dr. Rudd. Just enough to put him under for a few minutes. What I did then was to dope him and put him in the garage. I was afraid he had betrayed me later, when I heard him groaning. You probably heard him groaning, too; I think you mentioned the fact to me?”

  He addressed the reporter, and Michael remembered the noise he had heard as he had moved through Gallows Court in the dead of the night.

  “There is one other matter I’m concerned about—how is old Gregory? I’m afraid he’s taken it rather badly.”

  He talked fluently enough, but with a little slur in his voice. It was the first time Mason had noticed that he had an impediment of speech which caused him to lisp a little. “I’m rather anxious you should take my statement now.”

  Mason nodded.

  “I must caution you, Dr. Marford—I suppose you are a doctor, Marford?”

  Marford inclined his head.

  “Yes, I am qualified: lay anything to my door but the charge of being a quack! You can confirm this by a visit to my surgery, where you will find the certificates.”

  “I have to warn you,” Mason went on conventionally, “that what you now say may be taken down and used at your trial.”

  “That I understand,” said Marford.

  He looked at his wife; she had approached more closely to him; her dark eyes were blazing with hate; the straight, white mouth was bloodless.

  “You’ll hang for this, Tommy!” she breathed. “Oh, God, I’m glad—you’ll hang for it!”

  “Why not?” he asked coolly, and, turning on his heels, followed Mason into the inspector’s office.

  “A nice woman,” was his only comment on his wife’s outburst. “Her loyalty to her unfortunate friend is almost touching—but then, loyalty invariably is. I cannot let myself think about poor Gregory Wicks.”

  He was sincere: Mason had no doubt of it. There was no cynicism in his tone. Whatever else he might be, Thomas Marford was not a hypocrite.

  Mason offered him a glass of water, which he refused.

  He sat down by the side of the writing-table; his only request was that somebody should open a window, for the room was unpleasantly crowded. And then he told his story. He did not refuse a cigarette, but through most of the narrative he held it and its many successors between his fingers and only occasionally raised it to his lips.

  “Are you ready?” he asked, and Sergeant Shale, who had opened a new notebook, tested his fountain pen and nodded.

  CHAPTER XIX

  “One always tries to find a beginning to these stories” (said Dr. Marford), “and usually one chooses to enumerate the virtues and describe the splendid domestic qualities of one’s father and mother. That I do not purpose doing, for many reasons. “My brother and I were left orphans at an early age. I was at a preparatory school when Walter went out to Australia to try his luck. He was a decent fellow, the best brother any man could wish to have. The little money that came to us from the sale of my father’s practice—oh, yes, he was a doctor—he put in the hands of a lawyer for my education. He hadn’t been in Australia long before he found work, and half his salary used to come to the lawyer every month.

  “I don’t know what date his criminal career began, but when I was about fifteen I had a letter from him, asking me to address all future letters to ‘Walter Furse.’ He was then in Perth, Western Australia. His full name was Walter Furse Marford. Naturally, I did as I was asked, and soon after larger monthly sums came to the lawyer and were very welcome, for I had been living practically without pocket money, and my clothes were the scorn of the school.

  “By this time I was at a high school, or, as they call it in England, a public school, which I shall also refrain from mentioning, because every public school boy has a sneaking pride in his school. One day the lawyer came to see me. He asked me whether I had heard from my brother, and I told him I had not had a letter from him for four months. He told me that he was in a similar case, but that, previous to my brother’s ceasing to correspond, he had sent a thousand pounds. But all the lawyer’s letters asking how he would like this money invested had been unanswered. I was a little alarmed, naturally, because I had a very deep affection for Walter, and realised, as I had grown older, just what I owed to him. I was to go to a hospital and take up the profession of my father—it was my brother’s money which made this possible.

  “The mystery of Walter’s silence was explained when I received, in a roundabout way, a letter which had been sent to a friend of his, and which was by him transmitted to me. It was written on blue paper, and when I saw on the heading the name of an Australian convict prison I nearly fainted. But it was the truth: Walter hid nothing in the letter, though in justice to him it contained no cant of repentance. He had been arrested after holding up a bank, where he and his gang had got away with nearly twenty thousand pounds. He asked me to think as well of him as I could, and said that he was telling me because he was afraid the authorities might trace me, and I should hear from some unsympathetic person the story of his fall.

  “I will tell the truth. After the first shock I was not horrified at the revelation. Walter had always been an adventurous sort, and at my age I had that touch of romanticism which exaggerates certain picturesque types of crime into deeds almost
worthy of a Paladin. My reaction to the blow was that I felt an increasing love for the man who had made such sacrifices and had taken such risks in order to fit his brother for membership of a noble profession.

  “I exalted him above all men, and I yet do. But for the burden which my education and living imposed upon him, he could have afforded to live honestly, and I know, though he never told me, that I and I alone was responsible for his entering into the crooked path.

  “The letter which I sent to him was, I am afraid, rather disjointed, and had in it a suggestion of hero-worship, for when he was released from prison he answered me very straightly; pointed out that there was nothing admirable in what he was doing, and that he would sooner see me dead than go the way he had gone.

  “I worked like the devil at the hospital, determined to justify his sacrifice, if it could be justified. From time to time he wrote me, now from Melbourne, once from Brisbane, several times from a town in New South Wales, the name of which I cannot at the moment recall. Apparently he was going straight, for there were no delays in his letters; he told me that he was thinking of buying a ‘station,’ that he had already acquired a house and a few hundred acres in the hope to extend these by the purchase of other land.

  “It was in this letter that I first heard of Donald Bateman. He said that he had met a very clever crook and had nearly been caught by him in connection with a land deal, but that a mutual friend, who had been in prison with Walter, had made them known to one another, Bateman had apologised, and they were now chums.

  “Bateman apparently made his money out of persuading innocent purchasers to put up a deposit on imaginary properties, but he did a little other crook work on the side, and was one of the best-informed men in Australia on one topic—the security and deposit of banks. He himself was not a bank robber, but he supplied the various gangs with exact information which enabled them to operate at a minimum risk. Usually he stood in for his corner—by which I mean—”

  “I know what you mean,” said Mason.

  “As soon as my final examinations were over Walter wanted me to come out to Australia and stay with him for six months, to discuss future plans. He asked me if I would mind adopting the name of Furse. He said he could arrange to get me my passport and ticket in that name. The only awkward point about this arrangement was that my examinations finished on the Friday, I was to leave for Australia on the Saturday, and I could not know the result of the exams, except by letter. I arranged, however, with the manager of the bank which carried my account to have the certificates addressed care of the bank and for him to send them on to an address which my brother had given me. I had to invent a family reason why I was calling myself Furse in Australia, and he seemed satisfied.