Elk 04 White Face (5 page)

“So you’d have a better view of the fight, eh, Doctor?” Mason smiled blandly.

Marford could return the smile now.

“Not exactly,” he said. “Fights are not a novelty in this particular neighbourhood. I was going out to see a case—a maternity case. When I came out I heard the commotion. The policeman was arresting a man when I came over—”

“Wait,” said Mason sharply. “You saw two men fighting—could you distinguish them?”

“Not plainly,” Marford shook his head, “although they were opposite my surgery.”

“Very handy for them,” said Mason. “Was one of them this man?”

Marford could not swear. He was rather inclined to think it was. He was certain one of them was in evening dress.

“You don’t know him?”

Marford shook his head again.

“I should think he’s a stranger in this neighbourhood; I’ve never seen him here before. When I saw him lying on the ground I thought that it was a resumption of the fight I had witnessed.”

Mr. Mason whistled softly, fixing his eyes just under the doctor’s chin. Marford thought his collar was awry and put up his hand, but that was a practice of Mr. Mason, who was sometimes called “Sympathetic Mason.”

“Hartford.” He beckoned the constable forward. “What did you see?”

P.C. Hartford saluted.

“Sir,” said the constable punctiliously, “I had seen the deceased—”

A look of weariness passed across the face of Mr. Mason. He was not sympathetic with loquacious constables.

“Yes, yes, my boy, but you’re not in court now, you know. You needn’t call him ‘the deceased.’ I don’t mind what you call him. You saw him before he fell?”

P.C. Hartford saluted again.

“Yes, sir, I saw him. He stopped me when I was passing and asked me if I’d met a man he’d had an argument with. I said ‘No.’”

“Did he describe the man?”

“No, sir,” said Hartford.

“He said nothing else?”

Hartford thought for a long time, and then repeated, as best he could remember, all that the white-faced man had said.

“You didn’t meet his assailant—I mean, you weren’t dreaming about the beer you were going to have for supper?”

P.C. Hartford was prepared with an indignant repudiation, but swallowed it.

“No, sir. A few minutes later, when I came back this way, I saw him lying under the lamp, and I saw another man walking away and I stopped him. Then I saw the doctor coming across. By this time I’d arrested Lamborn, who tried to run away.”

“Oh, no!” said Mason, pained.

Mr. Lamborn grew voluble. He was running for a doctor, he protested.

“The man was on the ground before you touched him: is that what you’re suggesting?” asked Mason.

The prisoner not only suggested but swore to this fact. He had a witness, a woman who carried a can in her hand. She might have preferred to remain anonymous, but that natural sense of justice which is the possession of poor and innocent people overcame her modesty. She was haled forward into the clear circle. She was a respectable woman. She had seen the man fall, had been a witness of Lamborn going across to him. If she had any private views as to the motive for his attentions she wisely restrained them.

Mason looked at her thoughtfully.

“What is in that can?” he asked.

There was a lid to the can. All her inclinations were against satisfying his curiosity, but she had a respect for the law and told the truth.

“Beer.”

Mason seemed oblivious of the dead man behind him, of the thief in custody, and of the very existence of secret murderers who stalked their prey on the highway.

“Beer—that’s funny.” A clock chimed half-past ten. “Why are you carrying beer about the street at half-past ten, Mrs.—”

Her name was Albert. She had no explanation for the beer, except, she explained tremulously, that she was taking it home. There was a sympathetic murmur in the crowd. An anonymous revolutionary said “Leave the woman alone!” There are always voices that offer the same advice to policemen in all parts of the world in similar circumstances.

P.C. Hartford was desperate. He had something to say—something vital, a solution which would sweep aside all the cobwebs of mystery which surrounded the pitiful heap lying under the electric light standard and yielding very little to the busy men who were searching it.

“I wanted to say, sir, that I saw this man throwing something over the wall.”

Mason looked at the wall, as though he expected it to give confirmation of this statement.

“Lamborn, you mean?” He glanced keenly at the thief and jerked his head significantly. “Take him away,” he said; “I’ll see him at the station.”

Mr. Lamborn went between two policemen, hurling back sanguinary defiance. There is something of a terrier in the habitual crook: he stands up to punishment most gallantly.

“I’ll see you at the station, too, ma’am,” said Mason.

Mrs. Albert nearly dropped her can in her agitation. She was a married woman with four children, and had never entered a police station in her life.

“It’s never too late to learn,” said Mason sympathetically.

Another ambulance came, one of the baser kind, hand-pushed, and then a police car, with photographers, cheerful finger-print experts and men of the Identification Bureau. Wilful murder lost its romance and passed into its business stage.

“Just plain murder,” said Mason to his subordinates as he moved towards his car. “One or two queer features about it, though.”

And then through the crowd came a woman. He thought she was a girl, but in the cruel light of the arc lamp saw that she had left girlhood a long way behind her. She was white-faced, wide-eyed, a ghost of a woman; her trembling lips parted, for the moment inarticulate. She stared from one to the other. Dr. Marford, from the shadows, watched her curiously; knew her for Lorna Weston, a lady of uncertain profession.

“Is it—he?”

Her voice, starting as a croak, ended in a wail.

“Who are you?” Mason stood squarely before her.

“I’m—I live around here.” She spoke spasmodically; every sentence seemed an effort. “He came to see me to-night, and I warned him…of the danger. You see, I—I know my husband. He’s a devil! I somehow know it.”

“Your husband killed this man, eh?”

She tried to push past him, but he held her back with some difficulty, for fear had given this frail body the strength of a man.

“Steady, steady, my girl. It may not be your friend at all. What’s his name?”

“Donald—” She checked herself. “May I see him?…I’ll tell you.”

But Mr. Mason must proceed methodically, in the way of his kind, consolidating the foundations of fact.

“This is what you say, that this man came to visit you to-night, and you warned him against your husband. Now, is your husband living in this area?”

She looked at him blankly. He realised that her mind was not upon his questions and repeated it.

“Yes,” she said. There was a certain defiance in her voice.

“Where does your husband live? What’s his name?”

She was moving from side to side, and stooped once to look under his arm at the still thing on the ground,

“Let me see him,” she pleaded. “I shan’t faint…it may not be he. I’m sure it’s not he. Let me see him!” Her voice was a whine now.

Mr. Mason nodded to Elk, and Elk took her by the arm and led her to where the man lay, half in and half out of the circle of light. She looked down, speechless; opened her lips but could say nothing. And then:

“Donald…he did it! The swine! The murderer!”

She stopped speaking. Elk felt her sagging away from him and caught her round the waist. The Tidal Basin crowd watched the drama. It was well worth the loss of a night’s sleep.

Mason looked round, caught Marford’s eye and beckoned him forward.

“Do you mind taking this woman to the station? I think it’s only a faint.”

Dr. Marford protested wearily. He and a policeman carried the woman to a closed police car and they drove off. Outside a chemist’s shop at the end of Basin Street, Marford stopped the car and sent the constable to ring the night bell; but the restorative he secured did not bring the woman back to consciousness. She was still silent when he got her to the station.

Mr. Mason, waiting for the return of the car, delivered himself of certain observations.

“There’s murder plain and murder coloured,” he said to the patient Inspector Bray. “This is murder plain. No music, no fireworks, no lady’s boudoir, nothing sexy. A man stabbed to death under three pairs of eyes and nobody saw the murderer. No knife, no motive, no clue, no name of the dear departed.”

“The woman,” began Bray, “talked about a devil—”

“Let’s keep religion out of it,” said Mason wearily. “Who was the man that threw the knife, and how did he get it back again? That’s the mystery that’s beating me.”

“The devil of Tidal Basin is again abroad. This slinking and sinister shadow passed unseen through deserted Endley Street and left a dead man sprawling upon the sidewalk, stabbed to the heart. Whence he came, whither he went, none knows. Under the eyes of three independent witnesses, including Mrs. Albert, the wife of the night watchman at the Eastern Trading Company, Dr. Warley” (names were Quigley’s weak point), “a highly respected medical practitioner, and Police-Constable Hartford, an innocent pedestrian was seen to stagger and fall. When the horrified spectators reached his side they were dumbfounded to see that he was stabbed. The identity of the murdered man has not yet been established. Who was this stranger in evening dress, wandering in the purlieus of Tidal Basin? What ruthless hand destroyed him, and in what mysterious manner did the unseen murderer make his escape? These are the questions which Central Detective Mason has to solve. Mason, one of the Big Five, was fortunately in the neighbourhood, and immediately took charge of the case. A man has been detained, but is he the devil of Tidal Basin?”

(“Cut out all that devil stuff,” said the night editor as he handed the copy to a sub. “It’s been overworked.”)

Elk came to the police station and into the inspector’s room, where Mason was sitting, ten minutes after his chief arrived. He laid two articles on the table before the great man.

“That night watchman takes a lot of waking. By the way, he’s the husband of Mrs. Albert—”

“The woman with the beer?”

Elk nodded.

“I found these in the yard—obviously Lamborn threw them over when he saw the policeman.”

He enumerated his finds.

“Notebook and watch; glass broken, watch stopped at ten p.m. Swiss made, and has the name of a Melbourne jeweller on the face.”

Mason examined the watch.

“Careful,” warned Elk. “There’s a smudgy thumb-print on the back.”

Mason shifted his chair a little, and invited Elk by a gesture to draw another up to his side.

“What else?” he asked.

Elk took from an inside pocket a quantity of loose paper money and put it on the table. The pocket-case, which also contained a memorandum book, he opened, and extracted two new bank-notes, each for a hundred pounds. On their backs was the stamp of the Maida Vale branch of the Midland Bank; it was a round rubber stamp, and in the centre was a date line.

“Issued yesterday.”

“If he’d got an account there—” began Elk.

Mason shook his head.

“He hadn’t. You don’t draw hundred-pound notes out of your own account and carry them about with you. You draw them out because you want to send them away. You couldn’t change a hundred-pound note in London without running the risk of being arrested. No, these notes were drawn from somebody else’s account and given to him. Which means that he hasn’t a banking account of his own or they’d have been paid in. Therefore he’s not in trade, or he’d have a banking account.”

Elk sniffed.

“Sounds like the well-known Shylock Holmes to me,” he said.

He was a contemporary of Mason’s who had missed promotion, and his sarcasms were licensed. “What else?” asked Mason.

“Visiting-cards—any number of them.” Elk took them out and laid them on the table. Mason examined them carefully. There were addresses in Birmingham and Leicester and London, but a large proportion of them were the visiting cards of people who had a permanent address in South Africa.

“All the same colour,” he said. “They’ve all been collected within a couple of months. That means he’s been a sea voyage lately—it’s extraordinary how people give away their cards to perfect strangers when they’re taking an ocean trip.”

He looked at the backs of one or two of them; there were pencilled notes. One said: “PS10,000 a year”; another: “Made a lot of money in Namaqualand Diamonds; staying Ritz, London.”

Mason smiled.

“I’ll give you two guesses as to what his trade is.” He picked up a third card; this time the inscription on the back was in ink: “Cheque stopped; Adam & Sills.”

“I’ll give you one guess now. He’s a crook and a card-sharp. Adam & Sills are the lawyers who do the barking for these kind of birds. That places him. Now we’ll find his name. Get on to the Yard, tell ‘em to call every hotel, big and small, in the West End, and find if a man has arrived there from abroad. Say that his first name is Donald. You’ll find out where he came from–-“

“Cape Town,” said Elk.

Mason nodded. “I expected that. How do you know?”

“His boots are new; they’ve got a tag to them, ‘Cleghorn, Adderley Street.’”

“Then make it South Africa,” said Mason. Elk was half-way across the room when Mason shouted him back.

“Ask the bureau to give you the name, private address and telephone number of the manager of the Maida Vale branch of the Midland Bank. Wait a minute, don’t rush me—tell the bureau to get on to the manager and find if he remembers on whose account two notes for a hundred pounds”—he scribbled down the numbers on a slip of paper and handed them to Elk—“were issued, and, if possible, to whom they were issued. I’ve got an idea we shan’t discover that.”

When Elk returned, Mr. Mason was sitting, chin in hand, his heavy, round face more than ordinarily blank. “I’ll see Lamborn,” he said.

Mr. Lamborn was brought from the detention-room, voluble and truculent.

“If there’s a law in this country–-” he began.

“There isn’t,” said Mr. Mason genially. “You’ve broken ‘em all. Sit down, Harry.”

Mr. Lamborn looked at him suspiciously. “You goin’ to be sympathetic?” he asked. The glamour of legend surrounded Mr. Mason. He was indeed a sympathetic man, and under the genial influence of his understanding and sympathetic heart many wrongdoers had, with misguided confidence, told him much more than they ever intended to tell, a fact which they had bitterly regretted when they stood before a jury and heard their frankness exploited with disastrous effect.

Mason beamed.

“I can’t be wicked with you fellows—naturally I can’t.” His voice was at its most unctuous. “Life’s a bit difficult for all of us, and I know just how hard it is for some of you birds to get an honest living.”

“I dessay,” said Lamborn icily.

“You never do any harm, Harry”—Mr. Mason laid his hand upon the other’s knee and patted it softly—“by telling the police all you know. It isn’t much, because, if you knew enough to come in out of the rain, you wouldn’t be thieving for a living. But this is a case of murder.”

“Nobody says I did it,” said Lamborn quickly.

“Nobody says so at the moment,” agreed Mr. Mason pleasantly; “but you never can tell what stories get around. You know Tidal Basin, Harry—they’d swear your life away for a slice of pineapple. Now let’s be perfectly open and above-board.”

He leaned back in his chair and surveyed the other with fatherly benevolence.

“The constable saw you go over to this man and put your hand in his pocket, take out a pocket-book and possibly a watch. When you were detected you threw them over the wall, where they have since been found by Detective-Sergeant Elk. Isn’t that so, Elk?”

“I know nothing about ‘em,” said Lamborn loudly, and Mr. Mason shook his head with a sad smile.

“You saw this fellow fall and you thought he was soused. You went over and you dipped him for his clock and pack.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” said Mr. Lamborn rapidly. “I’ve never heard such expressions in me life.”

“Let me put it in plain English,” said Mason gently. “You put your hand in his pocket and took out his pocket-case and his watch.”

“That,” said Lamborn emphatically, “is a damn dirty lie’.”

Mr. Mason sighed, and looked at Elk despairingly.

“What can you do with ‘em?” he asked.

“I don’t want none of your sympathy,” said the ungracious Lamborn. “There’s too many people in stir through listening to your smarming. I see the gentleman fall and I went over to render him assistance.”

“Medical assistance, I’m sure,” murmured Mason, “you being an M.D. of Dartmoor and having learnt first aid at Wormwood Scrubs. Now come across, Harry. You can save me a lot of trouble by telling the truth.”

“I—” began Lamborn

“Wait a moment.” The reservoir of Mr. Mason’s urbanity was running low and his voice was a little sharper. “If you’ll tell me the truth I’ll undertake not to charge you. I shall hold you as a Crown witness—”

“Look here, Mr. Mason,” said Lamborn hotly, “what sort of a can do you think I am? I’ve been treated disgraceful since I’ve been at this station. They stripped me naked and took all me clothes away. They haven’t even a sense of decency! Give me these old duds to put on. And why did they take me clothes away? To frame up evidence by puttin’ stuff in me pocket—I know the police!”

Mason sighed, and when he spoke it was very deliberately and offensively.

“If you had a little more brains you’d be half-witted,” he said. “That’s not an original remark, but it applies. There are men twice as sane as you living in padded cells. You poor, ignorant gutter scum, don’t you understand that your clothes were taken away to see if there was any blood on them, and that your dirty hands were examined for the same reason? And don’t you realise that a man of my rank wouldn’t trouble even to spit at you if he hadn’t a very good reason? I don’t want you for murder—get that into your sawdust. I don’t even want you for robbery. I want you to tell me the truth: did you, or did you not, dip this man when he was lying on the ground? And if you tell me the truth I’ll otter no against you. Let me tell you this.” He leaned forward and tapped the other’s knee with a heavy knuckle. “You won’t be able to understand it, but I’m doing my duty when I tell you. The whole of this case may swing upon whether you make a voluntary statement that you took this man’s pocket-case out of his pocket—the watch doesn’t matter—whilst he was lying on the ground, or that you did not.”

“I didn’t,” said Lamborn loudly. “I defy you to prove it!”

The chief inspector groaned.

“Take him away before I forget myself,” he said simply.

Elk gripped the arm of his prisoner and marched him to the desk.

“You fool,” he said en route, “why didn’t you speak?”

Lamborn snorted.

“Why didn’t I speak?” he demanded scornfully. “Blimey, look what I’m getting for saying nothin’!”

A minute later he was charged before an apathetic station-sergeant, and went noisily to the cells.

Elk came back to his chief with information that had come through whilst the charge was in progress.

“The two notes were issued on the account of Mr. Louis Landor, of Teign Court, Maida Vale. Landor is either an American or has lived in America. He’s an engineer, a fairly rich man, and drew out another three thousand pounds this morning—he’s going abroad.”

“Bon voyage to him,” said Mason, in a cynical humour. “Going abroad, is he?”

He gazed at the knife-sheath lying on a sheet of paper before him, and pointed with his little finger to ornate initials engraved on a small gold plate.

“L.L.—they may stand for Leonard Lowe: on the other hand, they may stand for Louis Landor.’

“Who’s Leonard Lowe?” asked Elk, momentarily dense.

“There is no such person,” said the superintendent patiently. “Listen, Elk—living in Tidal Basin hasn’t sharpened your wits, has it? I’ll be moving you to the West End soon—‘C’ Division. You’ll shine amongst that batch of suckers.”

He got up from the table and walked heavily through the charge-room to the little apartment which the police matron used as a duty-room, lay Lorna Weston; her face was pale, her lips colourless.

“She might be dead,” said Mason.

Dr. Marford sighed, took out his cheap American watch and looked at it.

“So might be quite a large number of my patients,” he said listlessly. “I don’t know whether you’re interested in the phenomena of life and death, Mr. Mason—my own interest is strictly professional—but at this moment there is a lady waiting for me—”

“Yes, yes,” interrupted Mason good-humouredly. “We forget nothing. I’ve arranged for your district nurse to phone you through to the station. We’ll have to do something with this woman.”

He looked dubiously down at the still figure on the bed, moved slightly the blanket that covered her and felt her hand.

“She’s a dope?” he asked.

Dr. Marford nodded.

“I found a hypodermic in her bag,” he said.

“Rudd thinks she should be taken a hospital or infirmary.”

Marford assented reluctantly. Here was the inevitable key witness, and he was loath to leave her out of his sight.

Rudd came bustling in importantly.

“I’ve fixed a bed at the infirmary.” he said. “Of course they told me they had no accommodation, but as soon as I mentioned my name—” He smiled jovially at Marford. “Now if it had been you dear fellow—”

“I shouldn’t have asked. I should simply have taken the case there and they’d have had to find a bed for her.” said Marford.

Dr. Rudd was a little ruffled.