(1929) The Three Just Men Read online

  Here was a note to which the heart of the girl responded. Even Monty found himself leaning forward, as the old familiar cant terms of his trade came across the footlights.

  “It is quite all right,” he said, at the second interval, “only”—he hesitated—“isn’t it a bit too near the real thing? After all, one doesn’t come to the theatre to see…”

  He stopped, realizing that conditions and situations familiar to him were novel enough to a fashionable audience which was learning for the first time that a “busy” was a detective, and that a police informer went by the title of “nose.”

  The lights up, he glanced round the house, and suddenly he started and caught her arm.

  “Don’t look for a moment,” he said, averting his eyes, “then take a glance at the front row. Do you see anybody you know?”

  Presently she looked.

  “Yes, that is the fellow you hate so much, isn’t it—Gonsalez?”

  “They’re all there—the three of them,” said Monty. “I wonder”—he was troubled at the thought—“I wonder if they’re looking for you?”

  “For me? They’ve nothing on me, Monty.”

  He was silent.

  “I’m glad you’re not going back to that place tonight. They’ll trail you sure—sure!”

  He thought later that it was probably a coincidence that they were there at all. They seemed to show no interest in the box, but were chattering and talking and laughing to one another. Not once did their eyes come up to his level, and after a while he gained in confidence, though he was glad enough when the play was resumed.

  There were two scenes in the act: the first was a police station, the second the lawyer’s room. The man was drunk, and the detective had come to warn him that The Ringer was after him. And then suddenly the lights on the stage were extinguished and the whole house was in the dark. It was part of the plot. In this darkness, and in the very presence of the police, the threatened man was to be murdered. They listened in tense silence, the girl craning her head forward, trying to pierce the dark, listening to the lines of intense dialogue that were coming from the blackness of the stage. Somebody was in the room—a woman, and they had found her. She slipped from the stage detective’s grasp and vanished, and when the lights went up she was gone.

  “What has happened, Monty?” she whispered.

  He did not answer.

  “Do you think- ?”

  She looked round at him. His head was resting on the plush-covered ledge of the box. His face, turned towards her, was grey; the eyes were closed, and his teeth showed in a hideous grin.

  She screamed.

  “Monty! Monty!”

  She shook him. Again her scream rang through the house. At first the audience thought that it was a woman driven hysterical by the tenseness of the stage situation, and then one or two people rose from their stalls and looked up.

  “Monty! Speak to me! He’s dead, he’s dead!”

  Three seats in the front row had emptied. The screams of the hysterical girl made it impossible for the scene to proceed, and the curtain came down quickly.

  The house was seething with excitement. Every face was turned towards the box where she knelt by the side of the dead man, clasping him in her arms, and the shrill agony in her voice was unnerving.

  The door of the box swung open, and Manfred dashed in. One glance he gave at Monty Newton, and he needed no other.

  “Get the girl out,” he said curtly.

  Leon tried to draw her from the box, but she was a shrieking fury.

  “You did it, you did it!…Let me go to him!”

  Leon lifted her from her feet, and, clawing wildly at his face, she was carried from the box.

  The manager was running along the passage, and Leon sent him on with a jerk of his head. And then a woman in evening dress came from somewhere.

  “May I take her?” she said, and the exhausted girl collapsed into her arms.

  Gonsalez flew back to the box. The man was lying on the floor, and the manager, standing at the edge of the box, was addressing the audience.

  “The gentleman has fainted, and I’m afraid his friend has become a little hysterical. I must apologize to you, ladies and gentlemen, for this interruption. If you will allow us a minute to clear the box, the play will be resumed. If there is a doctor in the house, I should be glad if he would come.”

  There were two doctors within reach, and in the passage, which was now guarded by a commissionaire, a hasty examination was made. They examined the punctured wound at the back of the neck and then looked at one another.

  “This is The Snake,” said one.

  “The house musn’t know,” said Manfred. “He’s dead, of course?”

  The doctor nodded.

  Out in the passage was a big emergency exit door, and this the manager pushed open, and, running out into the street, found a cab, into which all that was mortal of Monty Newton was lifted.

  Whilst this was being done, Poiccart returned.

  “His car has just driven off,” he said. “I saw the number-plate as it turned into Lisle Street.”

  “How long ago?” asked Gonsalez quickly.

  “At this very moment.”

  Leon pinched his lip thoughtfully.

  “Why didn’t he wait, I wonder?”

  He went back through the emergency door, which was being closed, and passed up the passage towards the entrance. The box was on the dress-circle level, and the end of a short passage brought him into the circle itself.

  And then the thought of the lame man occurred to him, and his eyes sought the first seat in the front row, which was also the seat nearest to the boxes. The man had gone.

  As he made this discovery, George emerged from the passage.

  “Gurther!” said Leon. “What a fool I am! But how clever!”

  “Gurther?” said Manfred in amazement. “Do you mean the man with the club foot?”

  Leon nodded.

  “He was not alone, of course,” said Gonsalez. “There must have been two or three of the gang here, men and women—Oberzohn works these schemes out with the care and thoroughness of a general. I wonder where the management have taken the girl?”

  He found the manager discussing the tragedy with two other men, one of whom was obviously associated with the production, and he signalled him aside.

  “The lady? I suppose she’s gone home. She’s left the theatre.”

  “Which way did she go?” asked Gonsalez, in a sudden panic.

  The manager called a linkman, who had seen a middle-aged woman come out of the theatre with a weeping girl, and they had gone down the side-street towards the little square at the back of the playhouse.

  “She may have taken her home to Chester Square,” said Manfred. His voice belied the assumption of confidence.

  Leon had not brought his own machine, and they drove to Chester Square in a taxi. Fred, the footman, had neither heard nor seen the girl, and nearly fainted when he learned of the tragic ending to his master’s career.

  “Oh, my God!” he groaned. “And he only left here this afternoon…dead, you say?”

  Gonsalez nodded.

  “Not—not The Snake?” faltered the man.

  “What do you know about the snake?” demanded Manfred sternly.

  “Nothing, except—well, the snake made him nervous, I know. He told me to-day that he hoped he’d get through the week without a snake-bite.”

  He was questioned closely, but although it was clear that he knew something of his master’s illicit transactions, and that he was connected in business with Oberzohn, the footman had no connection with the doctor’s gang. He drew a large wage and a percentage of profits from the gaming side of the business, and confessed that it was part of his duties to prepare stacks of cards and pass them to his master under cover of bringing in the drinks. But of anything more sinister he knew nothing.

  “The woman, of course, was a confederate, who had been planted to take charge of the girl the moment the
snake struck. I was in such a state of mind,” confessed Leon, “that I do not even remember what she looked like. I am a fool—a double-distilled idiot! I think I must be getting old. There’s only one thing for us to do, and that is to get back to Curzon Street—something may have turned up.”

  “Did you leave anybody in the house?”

  Leon nodded. “Yes, I left one of our men, to take any ‘phone messages that came through.”

  They paid off the taxi before the house, and Leon sprinted to the garage to get the car. The man who opened the door to them was he who had been tied up by the pedlar at Heavytree Farm, and his first words came as a shock to Manfred: “Digby’s here, sir.”

  “Digby?” said the other in surprise. “I thought he was on duty?”

  “He’s been here since just after you left, sir. If I’d known where you had gone, I’d have sent him to you.”

  Digby came out of the waiting-room at that moment, ready to apologize.

  “I had to see you, sir, and I’m sorry I’m away from my post.”

  “You may not be missing much,” said Manfred unsmilingly. “Come upstairs and tell me all about it.”

  Digby’s story was a strange one. He had gone down that afternoon to the canal bank to make a reconnaissance of ground which was new to him.

  “I’m glad I did too, because the walls have got broken glass on top. I went up into the Old Kent Road and bought a garden hoe, and prised the mortar loose, so that if I wanted, I could get over. And then I climbed round the water-gate and had a look at that barge of his. There was nobody about, though I think they spotted me afterwards. It is a fairly big barge, and, of course, in a terrible state, but the hold is full of cargo—you know that, sir?”

  “You mean there is something in the barge?”

  Digby nodded.

  “Yes, it has a load of some kind. The after part, where the bargee’s sleeping quarters are, is full of rats and water, but the fore part of the vessel is water-tight, and it holds something heavy too. That is why the barge is down by its head in the mud. I was in the Thames police and I know a lot about river craft.”

  “Is that what you came to tell me?”

  “No, sir, it was something queerer than that. After I’d given the barge a look over and tried to pull up some of the boards—which I didn’t manage to do—I went along and had a look at the factory. It’s not so easy to get in, because the entrance faces the house, but to get to it you have to go half round the building, and that gives you a certain amount of cover. There was nothing I could see in the factory itself. It was in a terrible mess, full of old iron and burnt-out boxes. I was coming round the back of the building,” he went on impressively, “when I smelt a peculiar scent.”

  “A perfume?”

  “Yes, sir, it was perfume, but stronger—more like incense. I thought at first it might be an old bale of stuff that had been thrown out, or else I was deceiving myself. I began poking about in the rubbish heaps—but they didn’t smell of scent! Then I went back into the building again, but there was no smell at all. It was very strong when I returned to the back of the factory, and then I saw a little waft of smoke come out of a ventilator close to the ground. My first idea was that the place was on fire, but when I knelt down, it was this scent.”

  “Joss-sticks?” said Poiccart quickly.

  “That’s what it was!” said the detective. “Like incense, yet not like it. I knelt down and listened at the grating, and I’ll swear that I heard voices. They were very faint.”

  “Men’s?”

  “No, women’s.”

  “Could you see anything?”

  “No, sir, it was a blind ventilator there was probably a shaft there—in fact, I’m sure there was, because I pushed a stone through one of the holes and heard it drop some distance down.”

  “There may be an underground room there,” said Poiccart, “and somebody’s burnt joss-sticks to sweeten the atmosphere.”

  “Under the factory? It’s not in the plans of the building. I’ve had them from the surveyor’s office and examined them,” said George, “although surveyors’ plans aren’t infallible. A man like Oberzohn would not hesitate to break so unimportant a thing as a building law!”

  Leon came in at that moment, heard the story and was in complete agreement with Poiccart’s theory.

  “I wondered at the time we saw the plans whether we ought to accept that as conclusive,” he said. “The store was built at the end of 1914, when architects and builders took great liberties and pleaded the exigencies of the war.”

  Digby went on with his story.

  “I was going back to the barge to get past the water-gate, but I saw the old man coming down the steps of the house, so I climbed the wall, and very glad I was that I’d shifted that broken glass, or I should never have got over.”

  Manfred pulled his watch from his pocket with a frown. They had lost nearly an hour of precious time with their inquiries in Chester Square.

  “I hope we’re not too late,” he said ominously. “Now Leon…”

  But Leon had gone down the stairs in three strides.

  CHAPTER THIRTY - JOAN A PRISONER

  DAZED with grief, not knowing, not seeing, not caring, not daring to think, Joan suffered herself to be led quickly into the obscurity of the side-street, and did not even realize that Oberzohn’s big limousine had drawn up by the sidewalk.

  “Get in,” said the woman harshly.

  Joan was pushed through the door and guided to a seat by somebody who was already in the machine.

  She collapsed in a corner moaning as the door slammed and the car began to move.

  “Where are we going? Let me get back to him!”

  “The gracious lady will please restrain her grief,” said a hateful voice, and she swung round and stared unseeingly to the place whence the voice had come.

  The curtains of the car had been drawn; the interior was as black as pitch.

  “You—you beast!” she gasped. “It’s you, is it?…Gurther! You murdering beast!”

  She struck at him feebly, but he caught her wrist.

  “The gracious lady will most kindly restrain her grief,” he said suavely. “The Herr Newton is not dead. It was a little trick in order to baffle certain interferers.”

  “You’re lying, you’re lying!” she screamed, struggling to escape from those hands of steel. “He’s dead! You know he’s dead, and you killed him! You snake-man!”

  “The gracious lady must believe me,” said Gurther earnestly. They were passing through a public part of the town and at any moment a policeman might hear her shrieks. “If Herr Newton had not pretended to be hurt, he would have been arrested…he follows in the next car.”

  “You’re trying to quieten me,” she said, “but I won’t be quiet.”

  And then a hand came over her mouth and pressed her head back against the cushions. She struggled desperately, but two fingers slid up her face and compressed her nostrils. She was being suffocated. She struggled to free herself from the tentacle hold of him, and then slipped into unconsciousness.

  Gurther felt the straining figure go limp and removed his hands. She did not feel the prick of the needle on her wrist, though the drugging was clumsily performed in the darkness and in a car that was swaying from side to side. He felt her pulse, his long fingers pressed her throat and felt the throb of the carotid artery; propping her so that she could not fall, Herr Gurther sank back luxuriously into a corner of the limousine and lit a cigar.

  The journey was soon over. In a very short time they were bumping down Hangman’s Lane and turned so abruptly into the factory grounds that one of the mudguards buckled to the impact of the gate-post.

  It must have been two hours after the departure of her companion, when Mirabelle, lying on her bed, half dozing, was wakened by her book slipping to the floor, and sat up quickly to meet the apprising stare of the man whom, of all men in the world, she disliked most cordially. Dr. Oberzohn had come noiselessly into the room and under his
arm was a pile of books.

  “I have brought these for you,” he said, in his booming voice, and stacked them neatly on the table.

  She did not answer.

  “Novels of a frivolous kind, such as you will enjoy,” he said, unconscious of offence. “I desired the seller of the books to pick them for me. Fiction stories of adventure and of amorous exchanges. These will occupy your mind, though to me they would be the merest rubbish and nonsense.”

  She stood silently, her hands clasped behind her, watching him. He was neater than usual, had resumed the frock-coat he wore the day she had first met him—how long ago that seemed!—his collar was stiffly white, and if his cravat was more gorgeous than is usually seen in a man correctly arrayed, it had the complementary value of being new.

  He held in his hands a small bouquet of flowers tightly packed, their stems enclosed in silver foil, a white paper frill supplying an additional expression of gentility.

  “These are for you.” He jerked out his hand towards her.

  Mirabelle looked at the flowers, but did not take them. He seemed in no way disconcerted, either by her silence, or by the antagonism which her attitude implied, but, laying the flowers on top of the books, he clasped his hands before him and addressed her. He was nervous, for some reason; the skin of his forehead was furrowing and smoothing with grotesque rapidity. She watched the contortions, fascinated.

  “To every man,” he began, “there comes a moment of domestic allurement. Even to the scientific mind, absorbed in its colossal problems, there is this desire for family life and for the haven of rest which is called marriage.”

  He paused, as though he expected her to offer some comment upon his platitude.

  “Man alone,” he went on, when she did not speak, “has established an artificial and unnatural convention that, at a certain age, a man should marry a woman of that same age. Yet it has been proved by history that happy marriages are often between a man who is in the eyes of the world old, and a lady who is youthful.”