The Ringer, Book 1 Read online

  “Why, you’re quite glum, Alan. Doesn’t the prospect of my earning a living appeal to you?” she asked, her lips twitching.

  “No,” he said slowly, and it was like Alan that he could not disguise his repugnance to the scheme. “Surely there is something saved from the wreck?”

  She shook her head.

  “Nothing—absolutely nothing! I have a very tiny income from my mother’s estate, and that will keep me from starvation. And Johnny’s really clever, Alan. He has made quite a lot of money lately—that’s queer, isn’t it? One never suspected Johnny of being a good business man, and yet he is. In a few years we shall be buying back Lenley Court.”

  Brave words, but they did not deceive Alan!

  CHAPTER 3

  He saw her look over his shoulder, and turned. Two men were walking towards them, Though it was a warm day in early summer, and the Royal Courts of Justice forty miles away, Mr. Meister wore the conventional garb of a successful lawyer. The long-tailed morning coat fitted his slim figure faultlessly, his black cravat with its opal pin was perfectly arranged. On his head was the glossiest of silk hats, and the yellow gloves which covered his hands were spotless. A sallow, thin-faced man with dark, fathomless eyes, there was something of the aristocrat in his manner and speech. “He looks like a duke, talks like a don and thinks like a devil,” was not the most unflattering thing that had been said about Maurice Meister.

  His companion was a tall youth, hardly out of his teens, whose black brows met at the sight of the visitor. He came slowly across the lawn, his hands thrust into his trousers pockets, his dark eyes regarding Alan with an unfriendly scowl.

  “Hallo!” he said grudgingly, and then, to his companion: “You know Wembury, don’t you, Maurice—he’s a sergeant or something in the police.”

  Maurice Meister smiled slowly.

  “Divisional Detective Inspector, I think,” and offered his long, thin hand. “I understand you are coming into my neighbourhood to add a new terror to the lives of my unfortunate clients!”

  “I hope we shall be able to reform them,” said Alan good-humouredly. “That is really what we are for!”

  Johnny Lenley was glowering at him. He had never liked Alan, even as a boy and now for some reason, his resentment at the presence of the detective was suddenly inflamed.

  “What brings you to Lenley?” he asked gruffly. “I didn’t know you had any relations here?”

  “I have a few friends,” said Alan steadily.

  “Of course he has!” It was Mary who spoke. “He came to see me, for one, didn’t you, Alan? I’m sorry we can’t ask you to stay with us, but there’s practically no furniture left in the house.”

  John Lenley’s eyes snapped at this.

  “It isn’t necessary to advertise our poverty all over the kingdom, my dear,” he said sharply. “I don’t suppose Wembury is particularly interested in our misfortunes, and he’d be damned impertinent if he was!”

  He saw the hurt look on his sister’s face, and his unreasonable annoyance with the visitor was increased. It was Maurice Meister who poured oil upon the troubled water.

  “The misfortunes of Lenley Court are public property, my dear Johnny,” he said blandly. “Don’t be so stupidly touchy! I, for one, am very glad to have the opportunity of meeting a police officer of such fame as Inspector Alan Wembury. You will find your division rather a dull spot just now, Mr. Wembury. We have none of the excitement which prevailed when I first moved to Deptford from Lincoln’s Inn Fields.”

  Alan nodded.

  “You mean, you’re not bothered with The Ringer?” he said.

  It was a perfectly innocent remark, and he was quite unprepared for the change which came to Meister’s face. He blinked quickly as though he had been confronted with a brilliant light. The loose mouth became in an instant a straight, hard line. If there was not fear in those inscrutable eyes of his, Alan Wembury was very wide of the mark.

  “The Ringer!” His voice was husky. “Ancient history, eh? Poor beggar, he’s dead!”

  He said this with almost startling emphasis. It seemed to Alan that the man was trying to persuade himself that this notorious criminal had passed beyond the sphere of human activity.

  “Dead … drowned in Australia.”

  The girl was looking at him wonderingly.

  “Who is The Ringer?” she asked.

  “Nobody you would know anything about, or ought to know,” he said, almost brusquely. And then, with a little laugh: “We’re all talking ‘shop,’ and criminal justice is the worst kind of ‘shop’ for a young lady’s ears.”

  “I wish to heaven you’d find something else to talk about,” growled John Lenley fretfully, and was turning away when Maurice Meister asked: “You are at present in a West End division, aren’t you, Wembury? What was your last case? I don’t seem to remember seeing your name in the newspapers.”

  Alan made a little grimace.

  “We never advertise our failures,” he said. “My last job was to inquire into some pearls that were stolen from Lady Darnleigh’s house in Park Lane on the night of her big Ambassadors’ party.”

  He was looking at Mary as he spoke. Her face was a magnet which lured and held his gaze. He did not see John Lenley’s hand go to his mouth to check the involuntary exclamation, or the quick warning glance which Meister shot at the young man. There was a little pause.

  “Lady Darnleigh?” drawled Maurice. “Oh, yes, I seem to remember … as a matter of fact, weren’t you at her dance that night, Johnny?”

  He looked at the other and Johnny shook his shoulder impatiently.

  “Of course I was … I didn’t know anything about the robbery till afterwards. Haven’t you anything else to discuss, you people, than crimes and robberies and murders?”

  And, turning on his heel, he slouched across the lawn.

  Mary looked after him with trouble in her face.

  “I wonder what makes Johnny so cross in these days—do you know, Maurice?”

  Maurice Meister examined the cigarette that burnt in the amber tube between his fingers. “Johnny is young; and, my dear, you mustn’t forget that he has had a very trying time.”

  “So have I,” she said quietly. “You don’t imagine that it is nothing to me that I am leaving Lenley Court?” Her voice quivered for a moment, but with a resolution that Alan could both understand and appreciate, she was instantly smiling. “I’m being very pathetic; I shall be weeping on Alan’s shoulder if I am not careful. Come along, Alan, and see what is left of the rosery—perhaps when you have seen its present condition, we will weep together!”

  CHAPTER 4

  Johnny Lenley looked after them until they had disappeared from view. His face was pale with anger, his lips trembled.

  “What brings that swine here?” he demanded.

  Maurice Meister, who had followed across the lawn, looked at him oddly.

  “My dear Johnny, you’re very young and very crude. You have the education of a gentleman and yet you behave like a boor!”

  Johnny turned on him in a fury.

  “What do you expect me to do—shake him cordially by the hand and bid him welcome to Lenley Court? The fellow’s risen from the gutter. His father was our gardener—”

  Maurice Meister interrupted him with a chuckle of malicious enjoyment.

  “What a snob you are, Johnny! The snobbery wouldn’t matter,” he went on in a more serious tone, “if you would learn to conceal your feelings.”

  “I say what I think,” said Johnny shortly.

  “So does a dog when you tread on his tail,” replied Maurice. “You fool!” he snarled with unexpected malignity. “You half-wit! At the mention of the Darnleigh pearls you almost betrayed yourself. Did you realise to whom you were talking, who was probably watching you? The shrewdest detective in the C.I.D.! The man who caught Hersey, who hanged Gostein
, who broke up the Flack Gang.”

  “He didn’t notice anything,” said the other sulkily, and then, to turn the conversation to his advantage: “You had a letter this morning, was there anything about the pearls in it—are they sold?”

  The anger faded from the lawyer’s face; again he was his suave self.

  “Do you imagine, my dear lad, that one can sell fifteen thousand pounds’ worth of pearls in a week? What do you suppose is the procedure—that one puts them up at Christie’s?”

  Johnny Lenley’s lips tightened. For a while he was silent. When he spoke his voice had lost some of its querulous quality.

  “It was queer that Wembury was on the case—apparently they’ve given up hope. Of course, old Lady Darnleigh has no suspicion—”

  “Don’t be too sure of that,” warned Meister. “Every guest at No. 304, Park Lane, on that night is suspect. You, more than any, because everybody knows you’re broke. Moreover, one of the footmen saw you going up the main stairs just before you left.”

  “I told him I was going to get my coat,” said Johnny Lenley quickly, and a troubled look came to his face. “Why did you mention that I was there to Wembury?”

  Maurice laughed.

  “Because he knew; I was watching him as I spoke. There was the faintest glint in his eyes that told me. I’ll set your mind at ease; the person at present under suspicion is her unfortunate butler. Don’t imagine that the case has blown over—it hasn’t. Anyway, the police are too active for the moment for us to dream of disposing of the pearls, and we shall have to wait a favourable opportunity when they can be placed in Antwerp.”

  He threw away the end of the thin cigarette, took a gold cigarette-case from his waistcoat pocket, selected another with infinite care and lit it, Johnny watching him enviously.

  “You’re a cool devil. Do you realise that if the truth came out about those pearls it would mean penal servitude for you, Maurice?”

  Maurice sent a ring of smoke into the air.

  “I certainly realise it would mean penal servitude for you, my young friend. I fancy that it would be rather difficult to implicate me. If you choose for your amusement to be a robber baron, or was it a Duke of Padua? —I forget the historical precedent—and engage yourself in these Rafflesish adventures, that is your funeral entirely. Because I knew your father and I’ve known you since you were a child, I take a little risk. Perhaps the adventure of it appeals to me—”

  “Rot!” said Johnny Lenley brutally. “You’ve been a crook ever since you were able to walk. You know every thief in London and you’ve ‘fenced’—”

  “Don’t use that word!” Maurice Meister’s deep voice grew suddenly sharp. “As I told you just now, you are crude. Did I instigate this robbery of Lady Darnleigh’s pearls? Did I put it into your head that thieving was more profitable than working, and that with your education and entry to the best houses you had opportunities which were denied to a meaner—thief?”

  This word was as irritating to Johnny Lenley as “fence” had been to the lawyer.

  “Anyway, we are in, the same boat,” he said. “You couldn’t give me away without ruining yourself. I don’t say you instigated anything, but you’ve been jolly helpful, Maurice. Some day I’ll make you a rich man.”

  The dark, sloe-like eyes turned slowly in his direction. At any other time this patronage of the younger man would have infuriated Meister; now he was only piqued.

  “My young friend,” he said precisely, “you are a little over-confident. Robbery with or without violence is not so simple a matter as you imagine. You think you’re clever—”

  “I’m a little bit smarter than Wembury,” said Johnny complacently.

  Maurice Meister concealed a smile.

  It was not to the rosery that Mary led her visitor but to the sunken garden, with its crazy paving and battered statuary. There was a cracked marble bench overlooking a still pool where water-lilies grew, and she allowed him to dust a place for her before she sat down.

  “Alan, I’m going to tell you something. I’m talking to Alan Wembury, not to Inspector Wembury,” she warned him, and he showed his astonishment.

  “Why, of course …” He stopped; he had been on the point of calling her by name. “I’ve never had the courage to call you Mary, but I feel—old enough!”

  This claim of age was a cowardly expedient, he told himself, but at least it was successful. There was real pleasure in her voice when she replied: “I’m glad you do. ‘Miss Mary’ would sound horribly unreal. In you it would sound almost unfriendly.”

  “What is the trouble?” he asked, as he sat down by her side.

  She hesitated only a second.

  “Johnny,” she said. “He talks so oddly about things. It’s a terrible thing to say, Alan, but it almost seems as though he’s forgotten the distinction between right and wrong. Sometimes I think he only says these things in a spirit of perversity. At other times I feel that he means them. He talks harshly about poor, dear father, too. I find that difficult to forgive. Poor daddy was very careless and extravagant, but he was a good father to Johnny—and to me,” she said, her voice breaking.

  “What do you mean when you say Johnny talks oddly?”

  She shook her head.

  “It isn’t only that: he has such strange friends. We had a man here last week—I only saw him, I did not speak to him—named Hackitt. Do you know him?”

  “Hackitt? Sam Hackitt?” said Wembury in surprise. “Good Lord, yes! Sam and I are old acquaintances!”

  “What is he?” she asked.

  “He’s a burglar,” was the calm reply. “Probably Johnny was interested in the man and had him down—”

  She shook her head.

  “No, it wasn’t for that.” She bit her lip. “Johnny told me a lie; he said that this man was an artisan who was going to Australia. You’re sure this is your Sam Hackitt?”

  Alan gave a very vivid, if brief, description of the little thief.

  “That is he,” she nodded. “And, of course, I know he was an unpleasant sort of man. Alan, you don’t think that Johnny is bad, do you?”

  He had never thought of Johnny as a possible subject for police observation. “Of course not!”

  “But these peculiar friends of his—?”

  It was an opportunity not to be passed.

  “I’m afraid, Mary, you’re going to meet a lot of people like Hackitt, and worse than Hackitt, who isn’t a bad soul if he could keep his fingers to himself.”

  “Why?” she asked in amazement.

  “You think of becoming Meister’s secretary—Mary, I wish you wouldn’t.”

  She drew away a little, the better to observe him.

  “Why on earth, Alan … ? Of course, I understand what you mean. Maurice has a large number of clients, and I’m pretty sure to see them, but they won’t corrupt my young mind!”

  “I’m not afraid of his clients,” said Alan quietly. “I’m afraid of Maurice Meister.”

  She stared at him as though he were suddenly bereft of his senses.

  “Afraid of Maurice?” She could hardly believe her ears. “Why, Maurice is the dearest thing! He has been kindness itself to Johnny and me, and we’ve known him all our lives.”

  “I’ve known you all your life, too, Mary,” said Alan gently, but she interrupted him.

  “But, tell me why?” she persisted. “What do you know against Maurice?”

  Here, confronted with the concrete question, he lost ground.

  “I know nothing about turn,” he admitted frankly. “I only know that Scotland Yard doesn’t like him.”

  She laughed a low, amused laugh.

  “Because he manages to keep these poor, wretched criminals out of prison! It’s professional jealousy! Oh, Alan,” she bantered him, “I didn’t believe it of you!”

  No good purpose could be
served by repeating his warning. There was one gleam of comfort in the situation; if she was to work for Meister she would be living in his division. He told her this.

  “It will be rather dreadful, won’t it, after Lenley Court?” She made a little face at the thought. “It will mean that for a year or two I shall have no parties, no dances—Alan, I shall die an old maid!”

  “I doubt that,” he smiled, “but the chances of meeting eligible young men in Deptford are slightly remote,” and they laughed together.

  CHAPTER 5

  Maurice Meister stood at the ragged end of a yew hedge and watched them. Strange, he mused, that never before had he realised the beauty of Mary Lenley. It needed, he told himself, the visible worship of this policeman to stimulate his interest in the girl, whom in a moment of impulse, which later he regretted, he had promised to employ. A bud, opening into glorious flower. Unobserved, he watched her; the contour of her cheek, the poise of her dark head, the supple line of her figure as she turned to rally Alan Wembury. Mr. Meister licked his dry lips. Queer that he had never thought that way about Mary Lenley. And yet …

  He liked fair women. Gwenda Milton was fair, with a shingled, golden head. A stupid girl, who had become rather a bore. And from a bore she had developed into a sordid tragedy. Maurice shuddered as he remembered that grey day in the coroner’s court when he had stood on the witness stand and had lied and lied and lied.

  Turning her head, Mary saw him and beckoned him, and he went slowly towards them.

  “Where is Johnny?” she asked.

  “Johnny at this moment is sulking. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know.”

  What a wonderful skin she had—flawless, unblemished! And the dark grey eyes, with their long lashes, how adorable! And he had known her all her life and been living under the same roof for a week, and had not observed her values before!

  “Am I interrupting a confidential talk?” he asked.

  She shook her head, but she did not wholly convince him. He wondered what these two had been speaking about, head to head. Had she told Alan Wembury that she was coming to Deptford? She would sooner or later, and it might be profitable to get in first with the information.