Room 13 (7 page)

Emanuel Legge licked his dry lips.

“Going in for the ‘con.’ business, Johnny?” he asked banteringly. There was no amusement in his voice. “What a confidence man you’d make! You look like a gentleman, and talk like one. Why, they’d fall for you and never think twice! But that confidence stuff doesn’t mean anything to me, Johnny. I’m too old and too wide to be bluffed–”

“There’s no bluff here,” interrupted Johnny. “I have got your boy like that!” He held out his hand and slowly clenched it.

For fully five minutes Emanuel Legge sat huddled in a corner of the compartment, staring out upon the flying scenery.

“You’ve got him like that, have you, Johnny boy?” he said gently. “Well, there’s no use deceiving you, I can see. Slush is funny stuff – they call it ‘phoney’ in America. Did you know that? I guess you would, because you’re well educated. But it’s good slush, Johnny. Look at this. Here’s a note. Is it good or bad?”

His fingers had gone into his waistcoat pocket and withdrew a thin pad of paper an inch square. Fold by fold he opened it out and showed a five-pound note. He caressed the paper with finger and thumb. The eyes behind the powerful glasses gleamed; the thin-lined face softened with pride.

“Is it good or bad, Johnny?”

Though the day was bright and hot, and not a cloud was in the sky, the four electric lamps in the carriage lit up suddenly. In the powerful light of day they seemed pale ghosts of flame, queerly dim. As the sunshine fell upon them their shadows were cast upon the white cornice of the carriage.

“There’s a tunnel coming,” said Emanuel. “It will give you a chance of seeing them at their best – feel ’em, Johnny! The real paper; bankers have fallen for ’em…”

With a roar the train plunged into the blackness of the tunnel. Emanuel stood with his back to the carriage door, the note held taut between his hands.

“There’s only one flaw – the watermark. I’m giving away secrets, eh? Look!”

He stretched his arms up until he held the note against one of the bracket lamps. To see, John Gray had to come behind him and peer over his shoulder. The thunder of the train in the narrow tunnel was almost deafening.

“Look at the ‘F’,” shouted Emanuel. “See…that ‘F’ in ‘Five’ – it’s printed too shallow…”

As Johnny bent forward the old man thrust at him with his shoulder, and behind that lurch of his was all the weight and strength of his body. Taken by surprise, John Gray was thrown from his balance. He staggered back against the carriage door, felt it give, and tried to recover his equilibrium. But the thrust was too well timed. The door flew open, and he dropped into the black void, clutching as he did so the window ledge. For a second he swayed with the in and out swinging of the door. Then Legge’s clenched fist hammered down on his fingers, and he dropped.

He struck a layer of thick sand and turned a complete somersault. The wall of the tunnel caught and almost dislocated his arm, and he rebounded toward the whirling wheels. One wheel flicked him back against the wall, and he slid, his arms covering his face, the flint ballast of the road ripping his sleeves to ribbons…

He was alive. The train had passed. He saw the red tail-lights closing to one another. Gingerly he moved first one leg and then the other; then he rolled over towards the wall and lay on his back without further movement. His heart was pounding furiously; he felt a soreness working through the numb overlay of shock. Shock…shock sometimes killed men. His heart was going faster yet; he experienced a horrible nausea, and he found himself trembling violently.

The proper thing to do was to inject a solution of gum acacia into his veins (his thoughts were curiously well ordered). Doctors did that; he remembered the doctor telling him at Dartmoor.

But there was no gum acacia to be had… Ten minutes later he lifted his body on his elbow and struggled to a sitting position. His head swam, but it did not ache; his arms…he felt them carefully. They were very sore, but no bones were broken.

A roadman at the exit of the tunnel nearly dropped with amazement as a grimy young man whose clothes were in rags emerged, limping.

“I fell out,” said Johnny. “Can you tell me if there is anywhere I can hire a car?”

The roadman was going off duty and was willing to act as guide. Johnny hobbled up the steep slopes of the railway cutting and with the assistance of the interested workman, traversed a wide field to the road. And then came a blessed sportsman on his way back from Gatwick Races, and he was alone in his car.

At first he looked suspicious at the bruised and ragged figure that had held him up. In the end he flung open the door by his side.

“Step up,” he said.

To the railway worker Johnny had a few words to say.

“Here’s five,” he said. “Two for your help and three to stop your talking. I don’t want this business to be reported, you understand? The truth is, I had been looking on the wire when it was red and gaveth its colour aright.”

Johnny had evidently touched a sympathetic chord.

“You mean you was boozed?” said the man. “You can trust me.”

The angel who drove him to London was not a talkative angel. Beyond expressing the wish that something drastic had happened to
him
before he went racing, and the advancement of his view that all racing was crooked and all jockeys thieves, he contributed little to the entertainment of his passenger, and the passenger was glad.

At the first cab-rank they struck – it was in Sutton – Johnny insisted upon alighting.

“I’ll take you home if you like,” said his gloomy benefactor.

Gently the other declined.

“My name is Lawford,” said the motorist in a sudden outburst of confidence. “I’ve got an idea I know your face. Haven’t I seen you on the track?”

“Not for some time,” said Johnny.

“Rather like a fellow I once met…well, introduced to…fellow named Gay or Gray…regular rascal. He got time.”

“Thanks,” said Johnny, “that was I!” and the hitherto reticent Mr Lawford became almost conversational in his apologies.

The young man finished the journey in a Sutton taxi and reached Queen’s Gate late in the afternoon.

Parker, who opened the door to him, asked no questions.

“I have laid out another suit for you, sir,” he returned to the study to say – the only oblique reference he made to his employer’s disorder.

As he lay in a hot bath, soaking the stiffness out of his limbs, Johnny examined his injuries. They were more or less superficial, but he had had a terribly narrow escape from death, and he was not wholly recovered from the violence of it. Emanuel had intended his destruction. The attempt did not surprise him. Men of Legge’s type worked that way. He met them in Dartmoor. They would go to a killing without fire or rage or frenzy of despair.

Once he had seen a convict select with deliberation and care a large jagged stone and drop it upon the head of a man working in the quarry below. Fortunately, a warder had seen the act, and his shout saved the intended victim from mutilation. The assailant had only one excuse. The man he had attacked had slighted him in some way.

In the hearts of these men lived a cold beast. Johnny often pictured it, an obscene shape with pale, lidless eyes and a straight slit of a mouth. He had seen the beast staring at him from a hundred distorted faces, had heard its voice, had seen its hatefulness expressed in actions that he shivered to recall. Something of the beast had saturated into his own soul.

When he came from his bath, the masseur whom Parker had summoned was waiting, and for half an hour he groaned under the kneading hands.

The evening newspaper that Parker procured contained no news of the ‘accident’ – Emanuel was hardly likely to report the matter, even for his own protection. There were explanations he could offer – Johnny thought of several.

Free from the hands of the masseur, he rested in his dressing-gown.

“Has anybody called?” he asked.

“A Mr Reeder, sir.”

Johnny frowned.

“Mr Reeder?” he repeated. “What did he want?”

“I don’t know, sir. He merely asked for you. A middle-aged man, with rather a sad face,” said Parker. “I told him you were not at home, and that I would take any message for you, but he gave none.”

His employer made no reply. For some reason, the call of the mysterious Mr Reeder worried him more than the memory of the tragic happening of that afternoon, more, for the moment, than the marriage of Marney Kane.

Marney made her journey to London that afternoon in almost complete silence. She sat in a corner of the limousine, and felt herself separated from the man she had married by a distance which was becoming immeasurable. Once or twice she stole a timid glance at him, but he was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he did not even notice. They were not pleasant thoughts, to judge by his unchanging scowl. All the way up he nibbled at his nails; a wrinkle between his eyes.

It was not until the big car was bowling across one of the river bridges that the strain was relieved, and he turned his head, regarding her coldly.

“We’re going abroad tomorrow,” he said, and her heart sank.

“I thought you were staying in town for a week, Jeff,” she asked, trouble in her eyes. “I told father–”

“Does it matter?” he said roughly, and then she found courage to ask him a question that had been in her mind during that dreary ride.

“Jeff, what did you mean this morning, on the way back from the church…? You frightened me.”

Jeff Legge chuckled softly.

“I frightened you, did I?” he sneered. “Well, if that’s all that’s going to happen to you, you’re a lucky girl!”

“But you’re so changed…” she was bewildered. “I – I didn’t want to marry you… I thought you wanted…and father was so very anxious…”

“Your father was very anxious that you should marry a man in good society with plenty of money,” he said, emphasising every word. “Well, you’ve married him, haven’t you? When I told you this morning that I’d got your father like that” – he put out his thumb suggestively – “I meant it. I suppose you know your father’s a crook?”

The beautiful face flushed and went pale again.

“How dare you say that?” she asked, her voice trembling with anger. “You know it isn’t true. You know!”

Jeffrey Legge closed his eyes wearily.

“There’s a whole lot of revelations coming to you, my good girl,” he said, “but I guess we’d better wait till we reach the hotel.”

Silence followed, until the car drew up before the awning of the Charlton, and then Jeff became his smiling, courteous self, and so remained until the door of their sitting-room closed upon them.

“Now, you’ve got to know something, and you can’t know it too soon,” he said, throwing his hat upon a settee. “My name isn’t Floyd at all. I’m Jeffrey Legge. My father was a convict until six months ago. He was put in prison by Peter Kane.”

She listened, open-mouthed, stricken dumb with amazement and fear.

“Peter Kane is a bank robber – or he was till fifteen years ago, when he did a job with my father, got away with a million dollars, and squeaked on his pal.”

“Squeaked?” she said, bewildered.

“Your father betrayed him,” said Jeffrey patiently. “I’m surprised that Peter hasn’t made you acquainted with the technical terms of the business. He squeaked on his pal, and my father went down for twenty years.”

“It is not true,” she said indignantly. “You are inventing this story. My father was a broker. He never did a dishonest thing in his life. And if he had, he would never have betrayed his friend!”

The answer seemed to amuse Legge.

“Broker, was he? I suppose that means he’s a man who’s broken into strong-rooms? That’s the best joke I’ve heard for a long time! Your father’s crook! Johnny knows he’s crook. Craig knows he’s crook. Why in hell do you think a broker should be a pal of a ‘busy’. And take that look off your face – a ‘busy’ is a detective. Peter has certainly neglected your education!”

“Johnny knows?” she said, horror-stricken. “Johnny knows father is – I don’t believe it! All you
have
told me is lies. If it were so, why should you want to marry me?”

Suddenly she realised the truth, and stood, frozen with horror, staring back at the smiling man.

“You’ve guessed, eh? We’ve been waiting to get under Peter’s skin for years. And I guess we’ve got there. And now, if you like, you can tell him. There’s a telephone; call him up. Tell him I’m Jeff Legge, and that all the wonderful dreams he has had of seeing you happy and comfortable are gone! Phone him! Tell him you never wanted to marry me, and it was only to make him happy that you did – you’ve got to break his heart, anyway. You might as well start now.”

“He’d kill you,” she breathed.

“Maybe he would. And that’d be a fine idea too. We’d have Peter on the trap. It would be worth dying for. But I guess he wouldn’t kill me. At the sight of a gun in his hands, I’d shoot him like a dog. But don’t let that stop you telling him, Marney darling.”

He stretched out his hand, but she recoiled from him in horror and loathing.

“You planned it all…this was your revenge?”

He nodded.

“But Johnny… Johnny doesn’t know.”

She saw the change in the man’s face, that suave assurance of his vanish.

“He does know.” She pointed an accusing finger at him. “He knows!”

“He knows, but he let you go, honey,” said Jeff. “He’s one of us, and we never squeak. One of us!” he repeated the words mechanically.

She sat down and covered her face with her hands, and Jeffrey, watching her, thought at first that she was crying. When she raised her face, her eyes were dry. And, more extraordinary to him, the fear that he had seen was no longer there.

“Johnny will kill you,” she said simply. “He wouldn’t let me go…like that…if he knew. It isn’t reasonable to suppose that he would, is it?”

It was Jeff Legge’s turn to be uncomfortable. Not at the menace of Johnny’s vengeance, but at her utter calmness. She might have been discussing the matter impartially with a third person. For a moment he lost his grip of the situation. All that she said was so obviously, so patently logical, and instinctively he looked round as though he expected to find Johnny Gray at his elbow. The absurdity of the situation struck him, and he chuckled nervously.