They Never Looked Inside (16 page)

The events of the next five minutes would probably never have taken place at all had not both sides been labouring under a delusion.

Miss McCann, unlike her brother, had no knowledge of violence in its extreme manifestations; any ideas on the subject which she possessed were culled from the politer school of detective fiction in which it was an invariable rule that, happen what might, no real harm ever came to the innocent.

Her gaoler, it was true, was a large and unpleasant-looking man but no larger than various porters who had carried her luggage for her at London railway stations, and less unpleasant looking than a drunken drayman whom she had once put in his place on New Year’s Eve in Glasgow.

Jock, on his part, imagined that he was dealing with a frail and spiritless old lady. He little guessed that opposite to him stood a lineal descendant, getting on in years but in full possession of her faculties, of Flora Macdonald, the heroine of Scotland – and a woman in whose veins also ran the blood of a remarkable lady known as “Nut-cracker Janet” who, some eight hundred years before, had disposed of an unwanted husband by melting down a leaden ingot and pouring a spoonful of the mixture piping hot down that gentleman’s throat as he lay in bed one night with his mouth open.

As the minutes passed, Miss McCann felt a dangerous contempt for her gaoler arising. That he should
dare
to coerce a member of one of the oldest families in Scotland – he – one of the lower classes (she was old-fashioned enough not to find the term incongruous).

At this point inspiration visited her. Though the room, as has been said, was devoid of furniture, an ancient mirror still hung on the wall. Without moving her position more than a few inches, Miss McCann found that she could see the reflection of the street in front of the house. She noticed also that the front window, though closed, was unlatched.

At that very moment the conjunction of events for which this shrewd old lady was hoping came about. Jock turned for a moment to extract another cigarette from the depths of his coat pocket – and, as she observed in the mirror, two working men who had been talking farther up the street, turned and started to approach the house.

She uttered a brief prayer to her illustrious ancestress, and sprang nimbly across to the window.

By the mercy of providence the old sash-cords were still sound.

She flung open the bottom of the window, thrust her head and shoulders out, and started to scream.

She felt two enormous hands round her waist, clung on desperately, gave a wild kick backwards, and redoubled her vocal efforts.

It was a splendid, high-pitched, sustained scream. The two workmen stopped in their tracks. Windows started to open and distant pedestrians turned at the sound.

Miss McCann felt that the pressure behind her was slackening – Jock was clearly losing grip. Having by now secured the attention of a large and growing audience she sealed it by ceasing to scream for a moment and ejaculating the single thrilling word: “Murder.”

Even from two stories up she could hear the murmur of satisfaction which arose from her public.

A thud of feet in the room behind her announced that Jock had abandoned the position and was making good his escape.

The arrival of a policeman and the subsequent explanations covered a period of about ten minutes. The policeman, though puzzled, acted with promptitude. A rapid search revealed the fact that 14A was quite empty.

Miss McCann accompanied him back to the police station, with a section of the crowd still hopefully in pursuit.

From there she rang up her brother – first at the flat, without success, and then, remembering the events of earlier in the afternoon, at Scotland Yard.

When Miss McCann had concluded her epic account the Major said with unwonted warmth: “Bravo, Polly, old girl – go and get yourself a cup of tea somewhere.”

He could sense, even over the telephone, that she was rattled, and it struck him that it would be a good thing if he hurried back and got home ahead of her.

“There’s been some attempt to rob my sister,” he said to Hazlerigg. “As far as I can make out some blackguard rang up pretending to be a member of a bridge committee and lured Polly out to Gospel Oak. I haven’t got the full strength of it yet. You don’t think,” he added in sudden alarm, “that it was anything to do with this other business?”

“Until we know a little more about the circumstances, it’s difficult to say. She was speaking from Highgate Police Station, wasn’t she? I’ll ask them for a full report. But I don’t really see how the two things could be connected – particularly as we’ve been so very careful so far never to associate you with the police—”

McCann remembered something.

“I
was
surprised,” he said, “that you risked a telephone call to me today on the public line.”

There was a moment of shocked silence, and then Hazlerigg and Inspector Pickup both started to say something at the same time and both thought better of it. Hazlerigg looked more than usually like the Great Protector – in one of his Drogheda and Wexford moods – Pickup was scarlet.

“Oh dear,” said McCann to himself. An intimate acquaintance with service life told him exactly what had happened. It was plain that Detective Inspector Pickup was going to be on the receiving end of a thundering departmental rocket, and equally clear (by the rigid etiquette governing these matters) that the rocket could not be delivered in the presence of a third party.

“This puts rather a different complexion on Polly’s jaunt this afternoon,” he said. “I can’t imagine what they wanted of her – anyway, thanks to the power of her lungs, they don’t seem to have got very far. I think I’d better hurry home and be there when the old girl gets back.”

“I think you’re right,” said Hazlerigg. “Keep in touch with us. In view of the latest development”—he shot a malevolent glance at Pickup, who seemed to be on the point of apoplexy—”we needn’t be so careful of approaching each other. If you want us, ring up my code number from a public box – or use a friend’s phone – your own line’s almost certainly tapped. I’ll get the post office on to tracing it back right away.”

When McCann reached the street in front of his flat he was still trying to puzzle out the reasons for such an extraordinary attack on his sister. Had They intended – a fantastic thought – to hold her as some sort of hostage? He was so deep in these meditations that he did not notice a shabbily dressed man busily doing nothing in the hall doorway of the next block to his own; a man who gave him a startled glance as he strode by, and then emitted a piercing and unmelodious whistle of the sort much favoured by errand boys with gaps in their front teeth but rarely employed by grown-up people.

McCann ran on upstairs, seeing and hearing nothing.

Two things jerked him suddenly back to reality. The front door of his flat was open – and beyond it, as he could see, at the end of the short front hall, the living room door was shut.

Now Miss McCann, as her brother knew, was a careful householder, most unlikely to leave her front door unlocked. Further, out of regard for her sedate Persian cat, she made a practice, when going out, of leaving the living room door ajar so that the careful beast might have the run of the ash-bucket in the kitchen.

McCann pondered these auguries for a moment and then stepped quietly into the little hall – and shut the front door behind him.

Three or four steps took him to the living room door; and again he waited.

From inside the room came one of those tiny, indefinable noises which suggest human presence – the creak of shoe leather, the click of an ankle joint, the brush of cloth against a table edge.

McCann turned the handle, kicked the door open, and stepped inside.

At the far end of the room, crouching against the bureau, was one of the nastiest, oiliest, curliest specimens of South European that McCann had ever seen. The opened drawers and spilt contents of the bureau told their own story. A cash box, its lid forced back, stood like a half-submerged rock among a sea of scattered papers.

From outside in the street, three stories below, came another despairing whistle.

“I expect that’s your friend whistling to you,” said McCann conversationally.

The intruder seemed to make up his mind reluctantly. He straightened up from his crouching position, and it was now apparent that he held a knife in his right hand.

The sight was a tonic to McCann.

If it had been a gun, his tactics would have been subject to drastic revision. As it was, the prospect was simple, enlivening and colourful.

The man was quite obviously armed with a weapon which he had not the faintest idea how to use. It was a Commando knife and he was holding it as a man might hold a date-stamp, with the business end downwards and his fingers curled round the handle.

McCann picked up a solid dining room chair, canted up the legs, and launched himself enthusiastically forward. He weighed nearly fifteen stone, and, coming the full length of the room, by the time he arrived his momentum was considerable. The chair caught the intruder just off centre – its upper leg paralysing his right arm and one, at least, of its lower legs landing with a satisfactory sound in the more than ample stomach.

For a second the man stood pinned against the desk.

Then his knife wavered ineffectually forward. McCann, still leaning on the chair, kicked hard in an upwards direction. It was not a gentlemanly thing to do; he was not feeling gentlemanly.

His uninvited guest gave a scream like the Flying Scotsman passing through Market Harborough and the knife dropped to the floor.

Judging the time to be ripe, McCann released his pressure on the chair and his visitor sagged to the ground, where he lay moaning.

Slipping from the room, McCann returned quickly with a leather strap from his valise and a cricket club tie (the colours of which he had never really liked), and in less time than it takes to tell, the stout gentleman – closer inspection suggested that he might be a Greek – was lying on the sofa, his hands and feet tied in a neat bundle behind his back.

He was still bubbling gently.

The Major moved over to the window. The shabbily dressed gentleman had disappeared. All was quiet.

“Here,” thought McCann, “is where fact and fiction part company. If I am Bulldog Drummond or the Saint or even one of the Four Just Men, my next step is childishly simple. Here I have one of the other side delivered into my hand. He is clearly a yellow rat. The merest suggestion of the application of a lighted match to the sole of his foot and he will tell me all he knows. He will reveal the name of the Great White Chief and the headquarters of the gang – whereupon I shall proceed to the latter and demolish the former.”

Fortunately – or perhaps unfortunately – there are two distinct types of people. Those who can torture a fellow being and those who can’t. The Major belonged, by operation of nature, to the second group, and his convictions on the subject had been fortified by certain glimpses of recently liberated France. He remembered in particular a quiet house in the back streets of Rouen, with its iron rings in the wall and criss-cross channels in the cement floor – a house which no Frenchman would ever inhabit again as long as memory lasted.

He trudged downstairs to the call-box and rang up Scotland Yard.

Inspector Pickup arrived in a squad car, and his face lighted up when he saw the figure on the sofa. “Why, Soapy,” he said cordially, “this is an unexpected pleasure; it really is, now. You’re entertaining quite a celebrity, Major. Soapy the Greek. So called from his habit of opening Yale locks with soft soap and paraffin wax.”

Leaving a sergeant to remove the Major’s tie and belt and replace them with a more orthodox pair of handcuffs, Pickup led the way out into the hall.

“That’s his trademark,” he said. Looking closely, McCann could see signs of waxy film across the face of the lock.

“It’s really very simple,” said Pickup, “like all great inventions. You force-feed the mixture into the front of the lock. Then, next time the door is opened by the householder, all the little spring-loaded tumblers, which normally act as catches, get caught up and stuck in the wax – see? All you need then to open the door is a blank key. They may have done the actual waxing weeks ago – you wouldn’t notice it unless you were expecting it.”

“They don’t tell nobody nothing these days,” said McCann. “What does the prudent householder do next?”

“The prudent householder,” said Pickup, “fits a mortice lock as well – and uses it. Yes, what is it, Sergeant?”

“I’ve searched him, sir. Usual private possessions, then there’s these three blank Yales on a ring, and I found this knife on the floor.”

“Yes,” said McCann with a grin, “he dropped it.”

“Also this notebook, sir.”

The notebook revealed nothing of startling interest except that on the last page there was a memorandum – evidently made in haste, presumably by Soapy himself. It consisted of McCann’s name and address – followed by one word: “Urgent”. Pickup considered this for a moment solemnly. Then he said: “I suppose that this is what Soapy took down over the telephone – they read out your name and address – and then someone said: ‘This is an urgent job, Soapy, a very urgent job . . .!’”

“That’s right,” said McCann. “What about it?”

“Well—” said Pickup slowly, “if you’re urgent to
them
– then you’re urgent to
us
. I think you’d better come along down with me to the Yard.”

“I’ve got to leave a message for my sister – she’ll be here at any moment.”

“Leave it with the constable – he’ll be stopping here—”

“All right,” said McCann, impressed in spite of himself by this evidence of his own importance, “so long as he doesn’t scare the old lady into fits.”

Pickup turned to the Sergeant. “Put Soapy in the car – we’ll have to drop him at the station and see to charging him. Detail one of your men to stay here. I’ll have him relieved by a local as soon as I can. Ready, sir? Come along then.”