Elk 02 The Joker (21 page)

He tried the door handle again, touching it gingerly with his finger-tip. The current was off. In the briefest time he was in the street; and he advertised his escape by closing the door with a crash that shook the house.

Hurrying back to his car, he found Elk astride of the wall, in earnest parley with the police sergeant.

‘I was just going round to the back to see what had happened to you,’ said Elk, vaulting on to the sidewalk.

‘Did you get my message?’

‘What was it? I heard something fall, and thought you must have dropped the ladder. I couldn’t locate it anyway.’

It was long past midnight when the driver stepped on his brake before the entrance to Scotland Yard. And the first man Jim saw as he walked into the hall was Brown and his heart sank.

‘Anything wrong?’ he asked.

‘Miss Rivers has not returned to the house,’ said the detective. ‘I’ve been on the phone to Stebbings. He tells me that she left at six o’clock to deliver two letters, one to Ellenbury and the other to Harlow. I got through to Ellenbury; he said his letter was handed to him by Miss Rivers soon after six and that he hadn’t seen her since.’

Jim Carlton thought quickly.

‘Just before eleven!’ exclaimed Elk. ‘Gosh! I’d forgotten that!’

‘What?’

‘That’s the time he passed us and went into his garage - I could see the car from the top of the library - it wasn’t his own and I didn’t know it was Harlow until he turned into the gate at the end of the courtyard. And he was a long time in the garage too! I’ll bet - ’

It needed this clue, slight as it was, to spur Jim Carlton into instant action. At two o’clock in the morning, when Mr Harlow was finishing his last cigar, Jim Carlton and Elk arrived with the backing of a search warrant…

‘How amusing!’ said Mr Harlow sombrely, as he rose from the table and handed back the warrant to Jim. ‘Do you mind letting me have a copy of that interesting document one of these days. I should like it for my autobiography!’

‘You can save your breath, Harlow,’ said Jim roughly. ‘The present visit is nothing more than a little inconvenience for you. I’m not arresting you for the outrage on Sir Joseph Layton; I am not taking you for the murder of Mrs Gibbins!’

‘Merciful as you are strong!’ murmured Harlow. ‘Murder is an unpleasant word.’

His face was rather pale and seemed to have developed new lines and furrows since Jim saw him last.

‘What’s this talk of murder?’

At the sound of the harsh voice the inspector spun round. Standing in the doorway was the hard-faced Mrs Edwins. It was the first time he had seen her, but he could recognise instantly from Aileen’s description. Stiffly erect, her arms folded before her, she stood waiting, her hard black eyes blazing with malignity. She was a more menacing figure then Harlow himself.

‘What is this talk of murder? Who has been murdered, I should like to know?’ she demanded.

But Harlow pointed past her.

‘“Murder” was not your cue, Lucy Edwins,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Your sense of the dramatic will be your ruin!’

For a moment it seemed that the woman would disobey that imperious gesture. She blinked at him resentfully, almost with hate, and then turned, stiff as a ramrod, and disappeared.

‘Now, Mr Carlton, let us be our calm selves. What do you expect to find in this house? I imagine it is something very important.’

‘Imagine!’ said Jim sternly. ‘Harlow, I’m going to put my cards on the table and tell you just what I want to find. First and foremost, I want Aileen Rivers, who came here earlier in the evening with a letter from her employer. She has not been seen since.’

Mr Harlow did not smile.

‘Really? Not been seen by you, I suppose you mean - ’

‘Wait, I haven’t finished. A car was seen to drive away from Ellenbury’s office in Theobald’s Road at half-past five. Miss Rivers was in that car - where is she now?’

Harlow looked at him steadily. ‘I will not say that I don’t know - unnecessary lies are stupid.’

He opened a drawer of his desk with great deliberation, and, taking out a bunch of keys, dropped them on his blotting-pad.

‘You may search every room in the house,’ he said. ‘And then tell me if you are as wise as I!’

The library itself needed no prolonged inspection. Jim went up the stairs, followed by Elk, and came at last to the top floor, to find Harlow waiting for him at the door of the little elevator.

‘That is my housekeeper’s room’ - he pointed. ‘You will recognise the door as the one which you locked a few hours ago.’

‘And this?’ asked Jim.

Harlow turned the handle and threw the other door wide open. The room was as Jim had seen it on the previous night, and was untenanted.

‘We will start with the roof,’ said Carlton, and went up the narrow flight of stairs, opened the door and stepped out onto the flat roof. This time he carried a powerful torch, but here also he drew blank. He made a circuit of the parapet and came back to where Harlow was waiting at the open door.

‘Have you found a secret stairway?’ Harlow was innocence itself. ‘They are quite common in Park Lane, but still a novelty in Pimlico. You can touch a spring, something goes click, and there is a narrow winding stair leading to a still more secret room!’

Jim made no answer to this sarcasm, but went downstairs.

From room to room he passed, but there was no sign of the girl or of the bearded man and at last he reached the ground floor.

‘You have cellars? I should like to see them.’

Harlow opened a small door in the panelling of the vestibule. They were in a rather high, flagged passage, at the end of which was the kitchen and servants’ hall. From an open archway in one of the walls a flight of stone stairs descended to the basement. This was made up of three cellars, two of which were used for the storage of wine.

‘This is not the whole extent of the cellar space,’ said Jim suspiciously, when he had finished his inspection.

‘There are no other cellars,’ replied Harlow, with a weary sigh. ‘My good man, how very suspicious you are! Would you like to see the garage?’

Jim followed him up the steps, through the hall. He was being played with - Jim Carlton knew that, and yet for some reason was not rattled.

‘Harlow, where is Miss Rivers? You suggested you knew.’

Harlow inclined his head graciously. ‘If you will allow me to drive you a very little journey, I can promise that I will put an end to all your present doubts.’

They faced one another - Harlow towards the bright light that streamed from the garage.

‘I’ll call your bluff,’ said Jim at last.

A slow smile dawned on Harlow’s face. ‘So many people have done that,’ he said, ‘and yet here I am, with a royal flush permanently in hand! And all who have called - where are their chips?’

He opened the car door and after a second’s hesitation Jim entered, Mr Elk following. The big man shut the door.

‘I have a high opinion of the police,’ he said, ‘and I realise that I am making you look rather foolish: I am sorry! This story of Harlow’s penultimate joke shall go no farther than me.’

He moved away from the car and then very leisurely he walked to the wall, put up his hand, and the garage was in darkness.

Jim saw the manoeuvre and leapt to the door, but it was locked; and even as he struggled to lower the window, there was a whine of machinery and the car began to sink slowly through the floor. Down, down it went upon its platform and then, when the roof was a little below the level of the floor, the platform tilted forward, and the car slid gently onto an unseen track and thudded against rubber buffers and stopped.

Jim had got the window down and was half through when the hydraulic pillars beneath the platform shot up and closed the aperture with a gentle thud. In another second Elk was free. Wrenching open the driver’s door, Jim switched on the powerful head lamps and illuminated the chamber to which the car had sunk.

There were two more machines there; one in particular attracted his attention - an old hire car grey with mud which was still wet. Evidently the place was a very ordinary type of underground garage, though he had never seen such expensive equipment as a hydraulic lift in a private establishment. The walls were of dressed stone; at one end was a low iron door, not locked, so far as he could see, but fastened with two steel bolts. It was probably a petrol store, he thought, and the position under the courtyard before the garage confirmed this guess.

He looked at Elk.

‘How foolish do you feel?’ he asked bitterly.

Elk shook his head.

‘Nothin’ makes me feel foolish,’ he said cheerfully, ‘but I certainly didn’t expect to see the end so soon.’

‘End?’

Elk nodded.

‘Not mine - not yours: Harlow’s. He’s through - what’s penultimate mean, anyway?’

And when it was explained, Elk’s face brightened.

‘He’s got one big line to finish on? I’ll bet it is the biggest joke that’s ever made the police stop laffin. And I’ll tell you - ’

He stopped; both heads went round towards the little iron door. Somebody was knocking feebly and Jim’s heart almost stopped beating.

‘Somebody behind that door,’ said Elk. ‘I never thought old man Harlow ran a dungeon.’

Jim ran to the place, slipped back the bolts and flung the iron door open - there staggered into the light the wild and dishevelled figure of an elderly man. For a moment Jim did not recognise him. He was coatless, his crumpled collar was unfastened, but it was the look in his face that transfixed the astonished men.

‘Ellenbury!’ breathed Jim.

The lawyer it was, but the change in him since Jim had seen him last was startling. The wide opened eyes glared from one to the other and then he raised his trembling hand to his mouth.

‘Where is she?’ he whispered fiercely. ‘What did he do with her?’

Jim’s heart turned to lead.

‘Who - Miss Rivers?’

Ellenbury peered at him as though he remembered his voice but could not identify him.

‘Stebbings’s girl!’ he croaked. ‘He took this axe - Harlow!’ The old man swung an imaginary axe. ‘Ugh!…killed her!’

Jim Carlton’s hand was thrust to the wall for support.

His face was colourless - he could not speak and it was Elk who took up the questioning of this apparition.

‘Killed her?’

Ellenbury nodded.

‘Where - ?’

‘On the edge of the kitchen garden…there’s a pit. You could put somebody there and nobody would guess. He knew all about the pit. I didn’t know he was the chauffeur - he had a little black moustache and he’d been driving me all day.’

Elk laid his hand gently on the little man’s shoulder and he shrank back with a sound of weeping.

‘Listen, Mr Ellenbury, you must tell us all you know and try to be calm. Nobody will hurt you. Did he kill Miss Rivers?’

The man nodded violently.

‘With an axe - my axe…I saw her lying there on the furnace-room floor. She was very beautiful and white and I saw that he had killed her and went back to the house for I did not wish - I did not wish…’ he shuddered, his face in his hands, ‘to see her in that pit, with the water…green water…ugh…ugh!’

He was fighting back the vision, his long fingers working like a piano player’s.

‘Yes…you saw her again?’ asked Jim huskily. He had. ‘Where?’

‘In the back of the car - where the suitcases were - all huddled up on the floor with a blanket thrown over her. I sat beside the devil and he talked! So softly! God! You’d have thought he had never murdered anybody! He said he was going to take me for a holiday - where I’d get well. But I knew he was lying - I knew the devil was lying and that he was forging new links in my chain. He put me in there!’

He almost screamed the words as his wavering finger pointed to the open door of his prison.

‘Ellenbury, for God’s sake try to think - is Aileen Rivers alive?’

The old man shook his head.

‘Dead!’ he nodded with every repetition of the word, ‘dead, dead, dead! My axe…it was outside the kitchen door…I saw her lying there and there was blood…’

‘Listen, Carlton,’ it was Elk’s harsh voice. ‘I’m not believing this! This bird’s mad - ’

‘Mad! Am I mad!’ Ellenbury struck his thin chest. ‘She’s upstairs - I saw him carry her up - and the woman with the yellow face, and the man with a beard…they made me come with them…left me here in the dark for a long time and then made me come with them - look!’

He dragged Elk into the little prison house. There was a bed and a wardrobe; carpet covered the floor. It was a self-contained little suite, in the depth of the cellar.

Fumbling on the wall he found a light switch and the room was flooded with a rose-coloured glow that came from concealed lights in the angle of a stone cornice.

‘Look - look!’

The lawyer dragged open the door of the wardrobe. At the bottom was a heap of clothes - men’s clothes. A crumpled dress shirt, a velvet dress-jacket -

‘Sir Joseph’s clothes!’ gasped Elk.

‘THEY KEPT him here,’ whispered Ellenbury. He seemed afraid of the sound of his own voice.

Jim saw another steel door at the farther end of the room; it had no bolt - only a tiny keyhole. And then his attention was diverted.

‘Look!’ called Ellenbury.

Exercising all his strength, the little man pulled at the wardrobe and it swung out like a gate on a hinge. Behind was an oblong door. ‘There…I came that way. The elevator…’

As Elk listened, he heard the distant whine of the elevator in motion.

‘To what room did he take her?’ asked Jim huskily. ‘We searched everywhere.’

‘Mrs Edwins’. There is a cupboard, but the back is a false one. There is a small room behind…why didn’t they put her in the pit and hide her? It would have been better…’