Elk 02 The Joker (7 page)

It was the first time he had met her in a period of freedom. She had had her instructions to look after the flat, smuggled out of prison by a discharged convict; and their talks during the brief visiting hours had been mainly on business.

‘What does one usually do when a burglary is discovered?’ she asked. ‘I sent for the police - of course I sent!’

He stared at her fiercely, but she did not flinch. It was his eyes which dropped first.

‘I suppose it’s all right,’ he said, and then: ‘You know Harlow, don’t you?’

‘I met him at Dartmoor, yes.’

‘A friend of yours?’

‘No more than you are,’ she said; and he had his second shock. ‘I’m not going to quarrel with you, and I don’t see why you should want to be rude to me,’ he snapped. ‘You’ve been useful, but I’ve not been ungenerous. Harlow is a friend of yours - ’

‘He called here on the night of the burglary to offer me a job,’ she replied, without any visible evidence other rising anger. ‘I met him at Princetown and he seemed to think that because of my relationship with you, I should find it rather difficult to get employment.’

He muttered something under his breath which she did not catch and it occurred to her that she had cowed this bullying little man, though she had had no such intention.

‘I shall not want you any more.’ He took out his pocket-book, opened it and extracted a banknote. ‘This is in the nature of a bonus,’ he said. ‘I do not intend continuing your allowance.’

He expected her to refuse the money and he was not wrong.

‘Is that all?’ she asked. She did not attempt to take the note.

‘That is all.’

With a nod she turned and walked to the door. ‘The charwoman is coming tonight to clean up,’ she said. ‘You had better make arrangements for her to stay on - but I suppose you’ve already made your plans.’

Before he could reply, she was gone. He heard the street door slam after her, took up the money and put it back in his case; and he was without regret for, if the truth be told, Mr Arthur Ingle, despite the largeness of his political views, was exceedingly mean.

There was a great deal for him to do: old boxes to open and sort, papers and memoranda to retrieve from strange hiding-places. The seat of the big settee on which Aileen had sat so often waiting for the cleaner to finish her work, opened like a lid and here he had documents and, in a steel box, books that might not have come to light even if the police had been aware of the flat at the time of his arrest, an had made their usual search.

Ingle was a man of wide political activities. No party man in the sense that he found a party to match his own views; rather, he was one of those violent and compelling thinkers who are unconsciously the nucleus of a movement. His grudge against the world was a sincere one. He saw injustice in the simplest consequences of cause and effect. His opinions had not made him a thief; they had merely justified him in his disregard for the law and his obligation to society.

Imprisonment had made him neither better nor worse, had merely confirmed him in certain theories. Inconsistently, he loathed his prison associates, men who had been unsupported by his high motives in their felonies. The company of them was contamination. He hated the chaplain; and only one inmate of that terrible place touched what in him still remained tender. That was the old, blind horse who had his stable in the prison, and whose sight seemed to have been destroyed by Providence that he might not witness the degradation of the superior mammals that tramped the exercise ring, or went trudging and shuffling up the hill and through the gates.

He was the one man in the prison who was thankful when the cell door closed on him and the key turned in the lock.

The foulness of these old lags, their talk, their boasts, the horrible things that may not be written about…he could not think back without feeling physically sick. In truth he would not have stretched out his hand if, by so doing, he could have opened those cell doors and released to the world the social sweepings whom it was his professed mission to salve.

His work finished, he lit a cigarette, fitted it carefully into an amber holder and, adjusting the cushions, lay down on the settee and smoked and thought till the telephone bell roused him and he got up.

The voice that spoke to him was quite unfamiliar. ‘Is that Mr Ingle?’

‘Yes,’ he said shortly.

‘Will you make a sacrifice of your principles?’ was the astonishing request, and the man smiled sourly.

‘What I have left, yes. What do you wish?’

It might be an old friend in need of money, in which case the conversation would be short. For Arthur Ingle had no foolish ideas about charity.

‘Could you meet me tonight on the sidewalk immediately opposite Horse Guards Parade?’

‘In the park, you mean?’ asked Ingle, astonished. ‘Who are you? I’ll tell you before you go any further that I’m not inclined to go out of my way to meet strangers. I’m a pretty tired man tonight.’

‘My name is - ’ a pause - ‘Harlow.’

Involuntarily, Ingle uttered an exclamation.

‘Stratford Harlow?’ he asked incredulously.

‘Yes, Stratford Harlow.’

There was a long pause before Arthur Ingle spoke. ‘It’s rather an extraordinary request, but I realise that it isn’t an idle one. How do I know you’re Harlow?’

‘Call me up in ten minutes at my house and ask for me,’ said the voice. ‘Will you come?’

Again Mr Ingle hesitated. ‘Yes, I’ll come,’ he said. ‘At what time?’

‘At ten o’clock exactly. I won’t keep you hanging about this cold night. You can get into my car and we’ll drive somewhere.’

Ingle hung up the telephone a little bewildered. He was a cautious man and after ten minutes had expired he put through the number he discovered in the phone directory, and the same voice answered him. ‘Are you satisfied?’

‘Yes, I’ll be there - ten o’clock,’ he said.

He had two hours to wait. The charwoman did not arrive till nine. He gave her instructions, made arrangements for the following day; and went back to the dining-room to think out the extraordinary request which Stratford Harlow had made of him. And the more he thought, the less inclined he as to keep the appointment. At last he turned to his writing table, took out a sheet of paper and scrawled a note.

“DEAR MR HARLOW,

“I am afraid I must disappoint you. I am in such a position, being an ex-convict, that I cannot afford to take the slightest risk. I will tell you I frankly that what I have in my mind is that this may be a frame-up organised by my friends the police, and I think that it would be, to say the least, foolish on my part to go any farther until I know your requirements, or at least have written proof that you have approached me.

“Yours sincerely,

“ARTHUR INGLE.”

He put the letter in an envelope, addressed it, and marked in the corner in bold letters ‘By hand. Urgent.’ Even now he was not satisfied. He went to the telephone to call a district messenger, but he did not lift the receiver. His curiosity was piqued. He felt he must know, with the least possible delay, just why Stratford Harlow had summoned Arthur Ingle, late of Dartmoor convict establishment. And why should the meeting be secret? A man of Harlow’s standing would not lose caste, even if he sent for him to go to his house. He came to a sudden resolve, pitched the letter on to the table, went into his bedroom and changed into a dark suit.

By the time he had climbed into his overcoat he was satisfied that he was taking the wisest course. The charwoman was in the kitchen and he opened the door to pass his last admonition. She was on her knees, scrubbing-brush in hand, and he looked down into a long, weak face over which strayed lank wisps of grey-black hair.

‘I’m going out. You needn’t wait. Finish your work and be here in the morning before eight,’ he barked and slammed the door on this inconsiderable member of the proletariat and went down the stairs in a spirit of adventure that made him feel almost young.

As the Horse Guards clock was chiming the three-quarters he came into Birdcage Walk and turned along the lonely footpath that runs parallel with the House Guards and flanks the broad parade ground. There was no hurry; he fell into a gentle stroll, fast enough to keep him warm and to avoid any suspicion of loitering within the meaning of the act.

It could not be a frame-up, he had decided. A man of Harlow’s character would hardly lend himself to such a plot; and in his heart of hearts, for all his bitter gibes at the police, he did not believe seriously in the prison legend of innocent men being trapped by cunning police plots.

He looked at his watch under a street standard; it was five minutes to ten, and he strolled back the way he had come, and stopped immediately in a line with the gates that closed the arch of the Horse Guards. As he did so a car came noiselessly along the sidewalk from the direction of Westminster.

It stopped in front of him and the door opened.

‘Will you come in, Mr Ingle?’ said a low voice; and without a word he stepped inside, pulling the door close after him and sank down on a soft seat by the side of a man who, he at once recognised, was that Splendid Harlow, whose name, even in Dartmoor, symbolised wealth beyond dreams.

The car, gathering speed, turned into the Mall, swung round towards Buckingham Palace and across the Corner into Hyde Park. It slackened speed now, and Stratford Harlow began to talk…

For an hour the car moved at a leisurely pace round the Circle. Sleet was falling. Ingle listened like a man in a dream to the amazing proposition which his companion advanced.

He, at any rate, sat in comfort. Inspector Jim Carlton, following in an aged convertible was chilled and wet, and the highly sensitive microphone which he had placed in Harlow’s car failed to transmit the talk it was so vital he should hear.

Arthur Ingle arrived home at his flat soon after eleven. The cleaner had gone and he was glad; dull clod and unimaginative as she was she yet might have read and interpreted the light that shone in his eyes or have sensed the exultation of his heart.

Brewing himself some coffee, he sat down at his desk and in to make notes. Once he rose and, entering his bedroom, turned on the light above his dressing-table and stared at himself for five minutes in the glass. The scrutiny seemed to afford him a certain amount of satisfaction, for he; smiled and returned to his notemaking.

That smile did not leave his lips; and once he laughed out loud. Evidently something had happened that afforded him the most exquisite happiness.

‘Could you please come and see me in the lunch hour? - A.R.’

JIM CARLTON looked at the ‘A.R.’ blankly before he placed ‘A’ as indicating Aileen - he was under the impression that she spelt her name with an ‘E’. It had been delivered at Scotland Yard by a messenger half an hour before he arrived. Literally he was waiting on the mat when she came out; and she seemed very glad to see him.

‘You will probably be very angry that I’ve sent for you about such a little thing,’ she said, ‘and you’re so busy - ’

‘I won’t tell you how I feel about it,’ he interrupted, ‘or you’ll think I’m not sincere.’

‘You see, you are the only policeman I know and I don’t know you very well, but I thought you wouldn’t mind. Mrs Gibbins has disappeared; she didn’t go home last night nor the night before.’

‘I’m thrilled,’ he said. ‘And her husband fears the worst?’

‘She hasn’t a husband; she’s a widow. Her landlady came in to see me this morning. She’s dreadfully upset.’

‘But who’s Mrs Gibbins?’

‘Mrs Gibbins is the charwoman at Uncle’s flat. Rather a wretched-looking lady with untidy hair. I’m rather worried about it because she’s a woman without friends. I called up my Uncle’s flat this morning and he was almost polite, and told me that she didn’t arrive yesterday morning and she hasn’t been there today.’

‘She may have met with an accident,’ was his natural suggestion.

‘I’ve telephoned to the big hospitals, but nothing has been heard of her. I want you to tell me what I can do next. It’s such a little matter that I’ll listen meekly to any rude comment you care to think up!’

He was not interested in Mrs Gibbins; the case of a lonely woman who disappears as from the face of the earth was so common a phenomenon in the life of any great city that he could hardly work up enthusiasm for the search. But Aileen was so concerned that he would have been a brute to have treated her request lightly; and after lunch, the day being his own, he went to Stanmore Rents in Lambeth, a little riverside slum and made a few inquiries at first hand.

Mrs Gibbins had lived there, the slatternly landlady told him, for five years. She was a good, sober, honest woman, never went out, had no friends, and subsisted on what she earned and a pound a week which was paid to her quarterly by some distant relation. In fact, she was due to receive the money on the following Monday. Her chief virtue was that she paid her rent every Monday morning and gave no trouble.

‘Do you mind if I search her room?’

The landlady wished that and showed him the way; it gave her a nice feeling of authority to be present during the operation.

Jim was shown into a small back room, scrupulously clean, with a bed and a sort of home-made hanging cupboard that had been fixed in one corner and was shrouded by a cheap curtain. Here was the meagre wardrobe of the missing charwoman: a skirt or two, a light summer coat that had seen its brightest days, and a best hat. He tried the chest of drawers and found one drawer locked. This he opened with the first key on his own bunch, to the awe and admiration of the landlady. Here was proof of the woman’s affluence - a post office bank-book showing PS87 to her credit, four new PS1 Treasury notes, and a threadbare bag with a broken catch.

Inside this were one or two proofs of the vanity of the eternal feminine - a greasy powder-puff, a cheap trinket or two, and between lining and outer cover a folded paper of some sort.