“Say that again,” said Larry slowly. “You offered your hand and he took it?”
She nodded.
“Don’t you know that when you shake hands with the blind, you always reach out and take their hand, because they cannot see yours offered; but Dearborn raised his just as soon as I raised mine.”
Larry was staring helplessly at her.
“If he is not blind, why is he there?” he asked. “He is a clergyman.”
“There is no John Dearborn in the Clergy List,” said the girl calmly. “I went carefully through the list; and he is not amongst the Congregational, the Baptist, or the Wesleyan ministers.”
Larry looked at her, lost in admiration.
“You’re a wonder! But don’t forget that he came from Australia.”
“The Australian lists are available,” said the girl immediately, “and the only John Dearborn is an aged gentleman who lives at Totooma, and is obviously not our John Dearborn.”
She had come to the table and had drawn a chair up close. She now leant forward, her hands clasped in front of her.
“Larry,” she said—“I’m going to call you Larry out of office hours—has it not struck you as strange that John Dearborn’s plays should be produced at a theatre, remembering that he has written a succession of failures?”
“I’ve always thought that,” Larry admitted, and she nodded her head.
“I wish you would look into the directorate of the Macready,” she said. “Find out what comprises the syndicate which puts up the money for producing these plays. I don’t forget that Mr. Stuart disappeared from that theatre.”
“Nor I,” said Larry quietly. “But John Dearborn! You amaze me.”
She rose.
“I feel sleepy now that I have got that off my mind,” she smiled. “Are you”—she hesitated—“watching the laundry?”
“I have two men there who are instructed to stop any car coming out and discover who is the driver and what the car contains.”
“Then I can go to bed cheerfully,” she said with a little laugh, and passing him, she rested her hand gently on his head. “They will keep—Emma alive for some time yet. The only danger is that they may take her away from the laundry.”
“You can rest your mind on that,” said Larry quietly, and with this assurance she went to bed and he heard her door close.
The next day was uneventful. The police had made a further search of the laundry, and had discovered a room above that in which the girl had been imprisoned. It was a very tiny attic apartment, but showed signs of having been occupied, though it was empty when the police made their call.
Larry cursed himself that he had not made a more thorough inspection of the premises. He had been so relieved at the discovery of the girl that he had not been as painstaking as he should have been—this he told himself disgustedly.
There were two people whom he desired greatly to meet. The first of these was the man who had lost the little finger of his left hand. That curious individual who had preceded him the day he was investigating the reason for Gordon Stuart’s mysterious visits to a country churchyard. The second was the mysterious Emma. In his heart of hearts he knew that Emma would supply the key which would unlock the door to great and conclusive revelations.
“I shall never forgive myself,” he told Diana, “if any harm comes to this woman.”
She shook her head.
“You need not fear that they will do her harm,” she said. “She is much too valuable, and I shall know just when her danger period commences.”
“You!” he said in surprise. “Really, Diana, you scare me sometimes.”
She laughed, and her laughter was drowned in the rattle of her typewriter.
“Flash Fred has not recovered consciousness yet,” he told her, “but there’s a big chance that he will. The doctors say that there is no actual fracture, and that there is a possibility that the pressure which now keeps him unconscious will disperse.”
“Where is he?” she asked.
“In St. Mary’s Hospital,” replied Larry. “I have him in a private ward with a police officer on guard. Not that poor Fred could escape,” he smiled, “but there are people in this city who will probably be most anxious that he escape by the only way which leaves them safe…”
She did not need to ask which way that was. He put down the pen he had been holding, though he had done very little writing.
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea if we went along to St. Mary’s and discovered at first hand how the man is,” he said. “Will you come?”
As she put on her hat before the four-inch square of looking-glass which she had imported into the building, she asked, without turning her head:
“What are you going to do about John Dearborn?”
Larry rubbed his chin.
“I hardly know,” he said. “It is not an offence for a man to pretend to be blind if he isn’t. Besides,” he continued, “he might have had sufficient sight to have seen your hand. There may be a dozen explanations. He could have offered his hand mechanically, almost instinctively.”
She nodded.
“It is possible,” she said quietly, “but he smiled, too, when I smiled.”
“Who wouldn’t?” said Larry gallantly.
In the business-like office of the senior house surgeon at St. Mary’s they met the surgeon in charge of the case.
“You’ve come at a very fortunate moment,” he smiled. “Your man has recovered consciousness.”
“Can he talk?” asked Larry eagerly.
“I think so. At any rate, I see no particular reason why he shouldn’t, if there is urgent necessity for your questioning him. Naturally, he is still very weak, and in ordinary circumstances I should not allow anybody to interview him; but I gather that you have particular police business.”
“Very particular,” said Larry grimly.
The surgeon led the way to the ward. At the door of the ward the girl hesitated.
“Shall I come?” she said.
“Your presence is necessary,” said Larry, “if it is only in a professional capacity. Have you got your notebook?”
She nodded and they went into the little private ward where Fred Grogan lay. His head was swathed in bandages and his face was white and drawn, but his eyes lit up at the sight of Larry.
“I never expected to look forward to seeing you,” he said. “But first of all, governor,”—his voice was earnest—“you ought to get hold of that woman in the boiler-house.”
“The woman in the boiler-house?” repeated Larry quickly. “What do you mean?”
“Clarissa’s nurse,” was the staggering reply; “and who ‘Clarissa’ is, the Lord knows!”
“Now I’m going to give it to you straight, governor,” said Fred, settling himself comfortably in bed. “I won’t say that I couldn’t tell a lie—that’s the one saying of Napoleon’s that I’ve never believed.”
“The same period, but another man,” said Larry, concealing a smile; “but don’t worry about your history, Fred. I want you to get this story off your mind as quickly as you can.”
“I’ve done a lot of reading in my time,” said the sick man reminiscently. “Histories and high-class novels—they’ve got a pretty good library in Portland Prison, but they’re not so good as the books you get in Wormwood Scrubs. Anyway, I am going to tell you the truth, Mr. Holt. I might as well start at the beginning, and I know I’m going to put myself in wrong, but you’ll have to forget a lot of the things I tell you, because they make me look as if I was a dishonest person.”
“I should hate that impression to get abroad,” said Larry without a smile, “and I promise you that anything which doesn’t relate directly to the murder of Gordon Stuart will be discreetly forgotten.”
“Cheerio!” said Fred, visibly brighter. “Well, this story begins about four or five years ago in Montpellier. You don’t know Montpellier, perhaps?”
“I know it,” said Larry. “You can cut out all the topographical details. I know it from the Coq d’Or to the Palace.”
“I happened to be there,” said Fred, “looking round and enjoying myself, and I drifted into a little game that was run by a man named Floquart on the quiet. It was baccarat, and I’m very lucky at baccarat, especially when I’ve made friends with the dealer. But this time the dealer and me weren’t on speaking terms, as you might say, and for three days I never felt money that wasn’t my own. And each day there was less of my own to feel. Then one night they cleaned me out proper, and I left Floquart’s with just enough to get me home to the hotel if I walked.
“I was turning out of the rue Narbonne when I heard a shot, and, looking across the place, I saw a man lying on the ground and another fellow walking away pretty slick. In those days the police arrangements at Montpellier weren’t all they could have been, and there wasn’t a gendarme in sight. The fellow who was walking must have thought he’d got away with it, when I suddenly came up to him. There was just enough light, for the day was breaking, for me to distinguish his face. A fine-looking fellow he was, with a big yellow beard, and I think he was scared sick when I suddenly stepped out and claimed him as my own. It was not my business to butt into private disturbances, but you understand that I was broke, and I thought that here was a chance of helping a fellow creature in distress to get rid of any incriminating money he might have in his possession. He told me a yarn that the man he’d shot had done him a very bad injury, which I won’t refer to in front of the young lady, and then he slipped me about sixteen thousand francs and I let him go, because I was sorry for him.”
He glanced slyly up at Larry and grinned.
“Well,” he went on, “seeing that no gendarme had appeared, I walked over and had a look at the lad who was shot, though I knew I was taking a risk by being seen in the company of a soon-to-croak. They say he was shot and must have died immediately, but that isn’t true: he was alive when I got to him, and when I was bending over him, it was to find out if I could do anything for the poor devil before he passed out. I asked him who had shot him, and he replied”—he paused impressively—“ ‘David Judd.’ ”
Larry’s eyebrows went up.
“David Judd?” he asked. “Is he any relation to the doctor?”
“His brother,” said Fred. “That’s how I came to know him. I’ve always told Judd that I recognized him in the street; as a matter of fact, it was the poor guy on the ground who gave him away. I was trying to find out why he was shot, when he croaked. I knew there was nothing to be gained by being found attached to a murdered man, though fortunately I hadn’t a gun in my possession and could have proved an alibi. Then I heard a gendarme’s heavy feet coming down one of the side turnings, and I got away as quickly as I could. But the swine recognized me, though, and I had to go before an examining magistrate and prove that I had nothing to do with the murder and that I was going for a doctor when I was spotted. I had the good sense to go for a doctor,” he added, “the moment I realized that the copper had seen me.”
He paused, finding it rather difficult to explain subsequent action in language which would be wholly creditable to himself.
“When I got back to London I thought it my duty to call on Mr. David Judd,” he said. “He wasn’t in his office—he used to have a room at the Greenwich Insurance—but I saw his brother, and I unloaded my trouble.”
“Your trouble being to discover how much they’d ‘drop’ for keeping your mouth shut, I suppose,” said Larry.
“You’ve got it at once, Mr. Holt. What a mind!” said the admiring Fred. “He was terribly upset, was Dr. Judd, and said he would see his brother as soon as he came back from the country. And then happened an event which looked like spoiling all my beautiful prospects. Dr. David died. He caught a cold coming down from Scotland and died in twenty-four hours. I went to the funeral,” said Fred, “as a mourner, and I bet that nobody mourned more than I did. Anyway, I must say that Dr. Judd acted like a gentleman. He sent for me after his brother’s funeral and said that he wanted to save his brother’s memory from disgrace, and offered me a yearly income if I would keep my mouth shut.”
“The man who was killed was a clerk, was he not?” asked Larry.
“He was a clerk,” said Fred slowly, “a clerk in the employ of the Greenwich Insurance Company, who had blackmailed David Judd.”
Larry whistled softly.
“The Greenwich Insurance Company,” he said; “and blackmailed David! Why, what crime had David committed?”
Fred shook his head.
“I can’t tell you that, Mr. Holt. If I could, I would. But it was something pretty bad, you can bet. Dr. Judd said that this clerk had pinched a lot of money, and I think that’s true, because I remember his playing, and playing very high, at Floquart’s.
“Well, to cut this story short, I’ve drawn about four years’ income from Dr. Judd. I’m not apologizing or trying to prove to you that I acted like a little gentleman; that doesn’t interest you, anyway. The other day I met the doctor at a wedding. He was invited, but I wasn’t,” explained Fred shamelessly, “but that didn’t make any difference: I went. He asked me if I’d go to dinner with him last night at his house in Chelsea. He’s got a real fine house, has Dr. Judd, full of wonderful pictures and sparklers. And as he was going to pay me a lump sum to get rid of me, I decided to go.
“There is a man at the doctor’s,” he said after a pause, “a valet. I don’t want to give him away, Mr. Holt, but he’s an old lag and was in the next cell to me at Portland.”
“His name is Strauss,” said Larry. “He takes drugs, and has had three convictions.”
“Oh, you know that, do you?” said Fred in surprise. “Well, anyway, I know him. I met him in Piccadilly the other day. He was going to fence a few articles that he’d pinched from his boss, and he dropped me a pair of sleeve-links——”
Larry gasped.
“Oh, that is where they came from; they were Dr. Judd’s?”
“I ain’t so sure that they were Dr. Judd’s,” said Fred. “From what I have heard, the doctor has people who stay with him over week-ends, and Strauss may have pinched them from one of these. Anyway”—again he hesitated, finding it difficult to express his plans in such a manner as would save him from the charge of ingratitude—“I had an idea of helping myself to a few souvenirs of Dr. Judd before I went,” he explained, “and I’d fixed it up with Strauss so that I could just look over the premises and pick a few things that would remind me of my old friend. So when I was asked to dinner, naturally I jumped at the chance. I don’t say that I’d have gone alone to dinner, because the doctor and me aren’t quite bosom companions; but he told me that there was a lot of people coming, so I went. I was supposed to go at eight, which is well after dark, but to the opposite side of the street, because I was anxious to see Dr. Judd’s guests arrive before I got in. I waited till eight and nobody came. I waited till half-past eight, and then I saw the doctor come out and look up and down the road. I was so hungry that I nearly went over to him, but I didn’t see myself dining alone with a fellow that I’ve been swindling. So I waited and waited, and presently a motor-car drove up and went straight to the gates at the side of the house. I thought he was going to push them in, but the moment the head-lamps touched the gates they opened. ‘That’s funny,’ says I to myself, and I crossed the road and had a look over the top of the gate. It meant a bit of a climb, but I did it without making any noise; and the first fellow that got out of the car was that big stiff who tried to croak me in Jermyn Street.”
“Blind Jake?” said Larry.
“I’ve never been introduced,” replied the other sardonically. “I saw him plain for a minute because he passed in front of the head-lamps, and then the lights went out and I saw nothing more. At ten o’clock the gates opened—like magic it was, for there was nobody near them—and a car came out. It passed me, going slow, and I ran behind and jumped on to the luggage-carrier, which was down. I got off as it went into the King’s Road, Chelsea, because there is a lot of light there and a copper might have seen me and given me away. But there were plenty of taxis about, and I hired one and told him to keep the car in sight. I wanted to know where Blind Jake—that’s his name, is it?—was living, and I didn’t have much difficulty in keeping the car in sight. We went up past Victoria, along Grosvenor Place, up Park Lane. I was afraid the car would turn into the park, for private cars are allowed there but taxis aren’t, and I should have lost him. But, luckily or unluckily, it didn’t. The car went up Edgware Road—Tyburn Tree, where they hanged them in the old days, used to be there,” he said, apropos of nothing. “I read that in a book when I was in stir.”
“Cut out those memories of Old London,” begged Larry.
“I followed up close behind, and then the machine turned into some side-streets,” said Fred, “and I took the risk of paying off the cabman and following on foot. I know that district pretty well, and I hadn’t been searching for ten minutes before I saw the car pulling up against a gate which was set into a high wall. The driver must have missed the way, because I was there almost as soon as the doctor.”
“Dr. Judd? Was he there?” asked Larry.
Flash Fred nodded, and was very sorry for himself that he had done so. It was some time before he could speak again.
“If I don’t keep my blinking head still,” he said good-humouredly, “I shall lose it. Yes, the doctor was there. I was close up to them; as a matter of fact, I was standing behind the car when they all three got out. Blind Jake was one; a fellow I didn’t recognize was another, and the doctor was the third. He had a bag in his hand, and he seemed to be a bit put out.
“ ‘I protest against being sent for at this hour of the night,’ he said.
“The other man, not Blind Jake, said something in a low voice which I didn’t catch.
“ ‘Why couldn’t you have got another doctor? Remember that you have forced me to come here, and I come under protest. Where is this woman?’ he asked, and I don’t think the reply was intended for my ears, for the big blind man said, ‘In the boiler-house,’ and laughed, and the other fellow turned to him with a curse and told him to keep quiet.
“They went through the gates, and presently the car moved on. I think it had to turn, and the street wasn’t wide enough. The gate was locked and it had been painted black, but I saw that the word ‘Laundry’ had been there before the new coat had been put on.”
“Did you notice the name of the street?” asked Larry.
“Reville Street,” said the other, to Larry’s surprise, and then he remembered.
“That is the street behind and running parallel with Lissom Lane,” he said. “Go on, Fred.”
“Well, I had to slip away; otherwise I should have been seen. I went all round the house and came back behind it, just as the doctor came out, and this time there were only two of them; the big blind man had gone. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but presently I heard the doctor say good-night and the car drove off. The other man was looking after the tail-lights, and I had nothing to do but to slouch past as though I had been coming along, walking all the time. If there’s one bad habit that’s worse than another,” said Fred reflectively, “it’s talking to yourself, whether you talk in your sleep or while you’re awake. But there are some men who can’t help it. There was a pal of mine in Barcelona—however, I won’t talk about him, Mr. Holt. Well, this man that was left standing was one of that kind. A brooder, I should think. And before I got opposite to him, I heard him muttering, as he stood stock-still, his hands behind him, looking after the car; and the words that I heard as I passed were these. I remember them—sort of committed them to memory. And the words were: ‘Clarissa’s nurse.’ He said it twice. I walked on, never dreaming that he’d spotted me, and as I walked I thought: ‘Now the best thing you can do, Fred, is to go straight to Mr. Holt and tell him what you’ve seen and what you’ve heard.’ ”
Larry nodded.
“I was only a few hundred yards from your house, so I made up my mind I’d do it. I hadn’t gone very far when I got an uncomfortable feeling that I was being followed. I couldn’t see anybody, but I had that creepy sensation that you get when the splits are after you, and I couldn’t shake it off. I got into your street and began looking for the block where your flat was. I passed it once and was directed back here; and I think that the people who were following me must have slipped in and got upstairs and were waiting for me when I came up. I remember putting my hand up to the knocker of your flat, and then I don’t remember anything more.”
The girl had been writing rapidly, and now she closed her book.
“I think that’s about all,” said Fred weakly. “I’d like a drink.”
Ten minutes later two motor-cars laden with plain-clothes officers were on their way westward, and the inhabitants of the little street upon which the laundry backed were interested spectators of another raid.
“What is this wall?” asked Larry of his assistant.
“It is the wall of the laundry building proper,” said Harvey. “I inspected it very carefully, but there was nothing there.”
“Did you see the boiler-house?”
“Yes, sir, it is a very ordinary underground room with one large boiler and a steam engine.”
“Get that door open,” said Larry. “You have got some men in Lissom Lane to watch the other gate?”
“Yes, sir,” reported the sergeant, and with an expert hand he manipulated the lock and presently the door swung wide.
The room into which the door directly led was in darkness. It proved, when lights were obtained, to be a long brick shed, with a concrete floor, and four rows of trestles down the centre, where, in the days of the laundry, the washerwomen worked. A flight of steps, guarded by a rail, went down to a lower floor, and Larry led the way into the boiler-house.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Blind Jake, shaking his huge head.
He sat huddled up at one side of the tubular room, and his remarks were addressed to a wretched-looking woman who sat on the other side, her arms folded on her knees, her head bent in dejection. She was miserably clad; her hanging hair was streaked with gray, and her hands and face were grimy.
The room itself could hardly be described as a room. It was like an enlarged gas main. The floor was littered with fragments of rubble and broken concrete. One end was a steel door, just large enough for a medium-sized person to squeeze through, and the other was a jagged hole torn in the steel wall, and disclosing beyond a black void which, in the light of the candle, was also littered with rubbish.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” reproved Blind Jake. “Here are They doing all They can for ye, ye ugly old devil, and ye’re whining and snarling! Like a pup who’s had his tail bit!”
The woman moaned and said something.
“You’d have something to snivel about if I had my way,” said Blind Jake. “Don’t we feed ye? Didn’t we give ye a good bed to lie on, till that dog came nosing about?”
“I want to go away,” said the woman. “You’re killing me here.”
“Not yet,” said Blind Jake with a chuckle. “Maybe they’ll want ye killed, and then ye’ll be killed, sure.”
“I want to go out of this horrible place,” cried the woman with a sob. “Why am I here?”
“Do ye want to be down with the rats?” growled Blind Jake. “Didn’t ye squeak and squeal when I took ye down in the long passage under the street, because the little fellows squeaked at you? And now ye’re safe and sound where a rat couldn’t get ye, and to-morrow you’re going into a nice house to live, with fine sheets on your bed. You ungrateful old devil!”
She raised her woebegone face and looked at the blind man curiously.
“You talk about ’em as though they were gods,” she said. “One of these days they’ll betray you——”
“Shut up!” snapped the man. “You don’t know ’em! What have they done for me? They’ve given me a lovely life—all the money I want, everything I can eat and drink. They gave me a young wife,” he chuckled, but the chuckle ended with a hideous distortion of face. “I’ll have her yet; she nearly killed me, that wench.”
“Who was she?” asked the woman.
“Never ye mind. Nobody ye know,” said Jake, but did not seem disinclined to talk on the matter. “A young, white, sleek girl she was,” he said. “They wanted her because she’s police, too.”
She was silent for so long that he leant forward and touched her with his big hand.
“You’re not having a fit, are ye?” he said with a note of anxiety. “Not another one of them fits? We can’t always bring a doctor. The next time I’ll rouse ye,” he said menacingly. “I’ll make ye wake.” He shook her savagely.
“I’m awake, I’m awake,” she said, terrified. “Please don’t do that; you will break my arm.”
“Well, behave yourself,” he grumbled, and then began to crawl slowly toward the farther end of the tubular room. Even the woman, though she was far from tall, could not have stood upright in that cramped space. It was wonderful how a man so big could manœuvre himself through the jagged hole in the steel and crawl into the space beyond. She heard him tossing bricks about and enlarging the cavity at which he had been working all the day. She wondered where she was, for she had been a sick woman when she had been dragged into that terrible chamber, and had no recollection of how she had come in. Only she knew that people were searching for her, and that the awful forces which now held her prisoner were determined that she should not be found. She had been hidden in the depths of the earth, in hideous places alive with terrifying life, and this at least was better.
When he came back she said:
“Mr. Stuart would give you a lot of money if you took me to him.”
He chuckled.
“Ye’ve told me that a hundred times, ye fool!” he said, and mimicked her: “ ‘If you take me to Mr. Stuart he’ll give ye a lot of money!’ A lot of money he’ll give me!”
“I nursed his children,” she wailed, “and his poor wife. And when I got married he gave me a beautiful wedding ring.”
“Aw, shut up!” snarled the man. “Haven’t ye got anything more to talk about? A hundred million times ye’ve told me about nursing his babies and your blasted wedding ring!”
“When I told him about Clarissa, he said he’d give me a thousand pounds,” whispered the woman. “I was that surprised to see him I nearly fell down!”
Blind Jake ignored her. He had heard this story before, and it had lost all its novelty.
“He never knew about the twins, and thought he had no children alive.”
“If ye hadn’t been a hook or a soak, y’ could have told him where she was; but don’t worry yer head: They’ve found her. A fine lady she is, with plenty of money! I heard ’em say that she was a fine lady with plenty of money,” he added simply.
His faith in these mysterious employers of his knew no bounds.
“I was fond of my drop,” confessed the half-witted woman, “and they sent me to prison for nothing at all. And the home was awful!”
Suddenly Blind Jake lurched forward and dropped his hands upon her shoulders. She opened her mouth to scream, but he put his face close to hers.
“If y’ squeal ye’re dead, my lady! Be quiet!”
His sensitive ears had caught the sound of footsteps on the floor above, though they were so completely deadened that none but a blind man would have heard them. He crept closer to her side, put one great arm around her shoulder, the other he held just in front of her face.
“If y’ squeal, ye’re dead,” he said again, and then somebody knocked at the little door at the end of the chamber and the voice of Larry Holt demanded:
“Is there anybody here?”
It had been Diana Ward who had called Larry’s attention to the great rusty boiler at one end of the house, the boiler which had supplied the steam and the power for the laundry. Larry tried the thick iron door which opened into the furnace, but it was fast. He tugged again and it did not move.
“Nobody could be here,” he said, shaking his head. “What do you think, Harvey?”
“They would suffocate anyway in there, sir,” replied Sergeant Harvey.
The girl was looking distressed.
“Is there nowhere else?” she asked. “I did hope——”
She did not finish her words.
“No, miss, we’ve searched the whole of the place now,” said the sergeant. “Would you like that door forced open, sir?” he asked. “It will take some hours.”
Larry shook his head.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I am inclined to agree with you that if anybody was concealed in the boiler, supposing there were room enough, which is unlikely, they would die of suffocation.”
“Do you think,” asked the girl as they came away, “that Mr. Grogan was telling the truth? I know he was,” she added quickly. “I don’t know why I ask such stupid questions.”
“Oh, he was telling the truth, all right,” said Larry. “Fred isn’t a model of virtue, but in this case I believe him. It’s just the luck of the game,” he said bitterly. “Sometimes I feel that I’m never going to fathom this mystery.”
“It will be solved, and solved within a week,” she said, and she spoke with such assurance that he could only stare at her.
“Then you’re going to solve it,” he said, “for I have reached the point, and it is the most dangerous point that a detective can arrive at, when I am suspicious of everybody. Suspicious of Dr. Judd, of the innocent Mr. Dearborn, of Flash Fred, the Chief Commissioner, and you,” he added good-humouredly. But she did not smile.
“I wondered how long it would be before you suspected me,” she said gravely.
She went off with Harvey and he returned to the hospital, for he had a few more questions to ask the injured crook.
Flash Fred listened attentively, and when Larry had finished:
“God knows I have never trusted a policeman in my life,” he said piously, “but I think you’re different, Mr. Holt. In one of my pockets you will find the key of my safe deposit. The hospital people have the clothes. It’s the deposit in Chancery Lane, and I’m trusting you,” he said whimsically. “There are things in that box that I shouldn’t like anybody to see, but you will find what you are looking for without disturbing them. There’s a bundle of war stock,” he said uneasily, “which I bought by the sweat of my brow.”
“Somebody sweated, I’ll bet,” said Larry cheerfully. “You needn’t be afraid, Fred. I shan’t pry into your secrets, nor shall I use anything I find there to jail you.”
Fred was ill at ease.
“I knew I was taking a risk when I told you about this business,” he said, “because you were certain to go farther in it, and I was just as certain to help you. If I’d been out and about, it would have been easy, because I could have given you the keys.”
“What are the keys?” asked Larry.
“They’re duplicates that I had made,” said Fred without a blush. “Strauss got them from the doctor’s key-ring when he was asleep and took the impressions. Strauss ain’t a bad fellow, but he dopes; I never did hold with those evil practices,” said the virtuous Fred. “You want a clean eye and a clear brain to get on in life, don’t you, Mr. Holt?”
“And eight nimble fingers, plus two nippy thumbs,” said Larry.
He secured the keys without difficulty, and half an hour later he walked into Room 47, humming a tune and jingling Flash Fred’s nefarious possessions in his pocket.
Diana, after a great deal of persuasion, had been induced to take up her residence under Larry’s eye. The motherly nurse had become a permanent institution at Regent’s Gate Gardens, a circumstance which was not wholly to the liking of Mr. Patrick Sunny, who found himself forced to sleep on a camp bed in the kitchen.
“I am sorry to inconvenience you, Sunny,” said Larry Holt that night, “and it is an inconvenience, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir,” said Sunny. “It is an inconvenience.”
“Not a painful one, I hope?”
“No, sir,” said Sunny. “It is not a painful one.”
“The lady was in danger,” said Larry, and this Sunny knew because the matter had been discussed very freely in his presence, “and it was impossible to leave her in her apartment.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Sunny. “What collar will you be wearing to-day, sir?”
“Any old collar,” said Larry with a smile. “Anyway, Sunny, the lady is safe sleeping in this flat.”
“No, sir,” said Sunny, and Larry was shocked, for it was the first time in his life that Sunny had ever disagreed with him.
“No?” he said incredulously. “Didn’t you hear what I said? I said the lady is safe here.”
“No, sir,” said Sunny. “I’m very sorry, sir, and I beg your pardon.”
“But no you mean, I suppose? Why isn’t she safe?”
“Because you’re not safe, sir,” said Sunny calmly, “and if you’re not safe, the lady’s not safe, sir.”
Larry laughed.
“All right, have your own way,” he said; “and, Sunny——”
“Yes, sir.”
“Will you close the kitchen door to-night? I could hear you turning around in your bed and it woke me up.”
“Very good, sir, I will close the kitchen door,” said Sunny, and in truth he did.
After Larry had gone to bed and the flat was in silence, Sunny carried his little camp-bedstead into the hall, placed it so that its foot was about fifteen inches from the door, balanced a broom, the head against the door, the end of the handle resting on the bed, and then he retired. But he shut the kitchen door.
At two o’clock in the morning a key was placed noiselessly in the lock and the door was pushed open a few inches, and the broom fell ruthlessly on Sunny’s head. It might have brained him, but, by a fortunate accident, didn’t.
Larry heard three shots fired in rapid succession and leapt out of bed and came into the passage, gun in hand. He saw an empty camp-bedstead, an open door, but Sunny was gone. He ran down the stairs and met that worthy man returning, leading by the collar a diminutive ruffian upon whose evil face was stamped a twisted grin of pain, for he had a bullet in the fleshy part of his leg.
“Bring him in,” said Larry, and closed the door.
Diana was standing in the passage when the man was marched through and hastily withdrew, to reappear again at the informal inquiry which Larry instituted.
It was an inquiry prefaced by a respectful apology on the part of Sunny.
“I beg your pardon, sir, for taking the loan of your pistol,” he said, “and as to my bed being in the passage and disturbing you——”
“Say no more about that, Sunny my lad,” said Larry with a grateful glance at his valet. “We’ll talk about that afterwards. Now, my boy, what have you to say for yourself?” He addressed the unpleasant-looking prisoner.
“He ain’t got no right to use firearms,” said the man hoarsely.
Larry thought his hoarseness was due to his emotion, but it would seem that it was his natural voice.
“I’m shot, I am! I was coming down the stairs as quiet and as peaceful as possible when this fellow came out and shot me.”
“Innocent child!” said Larry unpleasantly. He felt over the man’s pocket and took out a long-bladed knife, the edge of which he tested with his finger and thumb. It was razor-sharp.
Larry looked at the man again. He was about thirty-five, hollow-cheeked and sunken-eyed.
“Let me see your hands,” said Larry, and the man, with a scowl, put them out. “Have you any convictions?”
“No, sir,” said the man sullenly.
“Who sent you here?”
“Find out!”
“I am going to find out,” said Larry softly, “and you will be a little damaged in the finding. Who sent you here?”
“I’m not going to tell,” said the man.
“I think you will,” said Larry, and led him into the kitchen and shut the door.
When the police arrived ten minutes later they took charge of a very shaky man.
“He has told all he knows,” said Larry. “He was sent here to cover another man who escaped. He swears he does not know who the other man was, but it was evidently not Blind Jake.”
“How did you induce him to tell?” asked the girl, a little fearfully.
“I threatened to wash him,” said Larry, and he spoke no more than the truth. “It was not the threat of the washing, of course,” he explained, “it was the being in that room alone with me and the fact that I could strip off his coat without an effort, and the possibility that the washing was merely a preliminary to some form of horrible torture which I had invented which made him talk—his wound is nothing, by the way. It will probably be healed by the time he sees the divisional surgeon. And now I think we can all go to bed. I want to see you, Sunny, before you retire for the night.”
What he said to Sunny set that stolid man strutting for the rest of the week.
A thin white mist overhung the park and shrouded the deserted stretch of Rotten Row, and the one or two riders who had come out at this early hour for their constitutional merely served to emphasize the desolation of the place.
One of these horsemen was Sir John Hason, Chief Commissioner of Police, who made it a practice to ride before breakfast, and he neither expected nor invited company. He was, therefore, surprised and a little annoyed when a horseman came up from behind him and, checking his mount to a walk, fell in by Sir John’s side.
“Hallo, Larry,” said John Hason in surprise. “This is an unexpected apparition! I thought you were a ghost.”
“I shall be that, too, one of these fine mornings,” said Larry, “unless I’m jolly careful. I knew you would be riding, so I hired a hack from the local livery stable and came out. Besides,” he said, “I want a change of air and I want to talk outside the stultifying atmosphere of your office.”
“Anything new?” asked Sir John.
“There was an attempt at assassination last night, but that’s so usual that I hate reporting it as a novelty,” said Larry, and told the story of the two-o’clock visitation.
“It’s the queerest case I’ve ever heard about,” said Sir John Hason thoughtfully. “Not a day passes but somebody new comes in. You still attach importance to the charwoman?”
Larry nodded.
“You know London better than I, John,” he said, for between him and his old schoolmate there was no formality on such occasions as this. “Who is Judd?”
“Oh, Judd!” laughed the Commissioner. “I don’t think you need worry your head about him. He is a man of some standing in the City, though I seem to have heard that his brother was rather a waster. The Judds practically own all the shares in the Greenwich Insurance Company. It is not a very big concern, but it has successfully resisted every attempt on the part of the insurance trusts and the big companies to absorb it. That shows character which I admire. They inherited the shares from their father and built up what looked to be a very shaky concern into a fairly prosperous business.”
“I was looking at the board of directors last night,” said Larry. “It is in the Stock Exchange year-book. I sat up after everybody had gone to bed and tried to puzzle things out. Do you know that John Dearborn is a director of that company?”
“Dearborn the dramatist?” asked Hason quickly. “No, I did not know. Of course, the directors in a company like that,” he smiled, “are merely the nominees of Judd. Judd is a very good fellow, I am told, and spends a lot of money in charity. He practically supports the Home which Dearborn is running. He may have been given an ornamental directorship in order to bring in a little money to his institute.”
“I thought of that, too,” nodded Larry. “Who is Walters?”
“Never heard of him,” said John Hason.
“He’s another director of the Company, and also an ornamental person, I should imagine. And Cremley? Ernest John Cremley, of Wimbledon.”
“He is most certainly an ornamental person,” said the Commissioner. “I know him slightly, a man with very little brains and an insatiable appetite for cards. Why do you ask?”
“Because these two men are also directors of the Macready Theatre Syndicate,” said Larry quietly. “Judd’s name does not appear, but there is another strange name, which is probably a nominee of his.”
“Where are we getting to?” asked the Commissioner.
“We’re getting here,” said Larry, reining in his horse and bringing it round so that he stood side by side and facing his chief, “that Judd controls the theatre where Dearborn’s plays are produced. So there is some association between Judd and the superintendent of the Blind Mission in Paddington.”
Sir John digested this fact before he spoke.
“I don’t see that there is anything particularly blameworthy about that,” he said; “after all, Dearborn is only the victim of Blind Jake, and from what you told me in your report last night, Judd is the victim of nobody except our friend Flash Fred. I can well understand why the doctor wanted to save his brother’s name,” he went on. “Judd adored that younger brother of his, thought he was the finest fellow in the world. I have never seen a case where brothers entertained such affection one for the other. The week David Judd died the doctor shut himself up and would not see anybody. What the——!”
The Commissioner’s note of startled surprise was justified, for Larry had suddenly brought round his horse and was riding furiously across the park, taking no small risk from the low railings he leapt.
He had seen a figure, unmistakably tall, muffled to the chin in a pea-jacket, slouching along the path that led to one of the gates of the park.
The man heard the gallop of hoofs and ran as straight and as swift as a deer, gained the gates and ran out into the street. The gate was too small for Larry to ride his horse through, and he flung himself off and, leaving his mount to his own devices, he ran out into the street. He saw no more than a car pull away from the kerb and move rapidly eastward.
He looked around for a cab, but there was none in sight, and with a shrug he came back, found his horse, mounted and trotted slowly back to where Sir John was sitting.
“Where the devil did you go?” asked Sir John.
“I saw a gentleman I am most anxious to meet,” said Larry a little breathlessly. “One Blind Jake, who was taking his morning constitutional in the park, with his car waiting to pick him up like a perfect gentleman. If I had had a gun I would have given Tarling another Daffodil Mystery to solve. I should have been glad to find flowers for Blind Jake!”
When he got back to the house Diana was dressed and sitting down to breakfast.
“I thought you weren’t coming back,” she said with a little sigh.
“Why the sigh?” asked Larry.
“Because—I thought you weren’t coming back to breakfast,” she said.
He told her of the chase in the park.
“That rather upsets my theory that Blind Jake is still at the Home or at the laundry,” she said, “because the house is being watched, isn’t it?”
“On both sides,” said Larry. “But there are a dozen ways this fellow could get out, and the fact that he goes for an early morning constitutional, and the people who are behind him consider that his health is of sufficient importance to put a car at his disposal, rather proves that he is confined during the day.”
They were alone, for the nurse chaperon had not finished dressing.
“I don’t know how this case is going to end, Diana,” said Larry after a little silence, “and this is a most prosaic moment to say what I want to say, but—but—but after this case is ended, I don’t want you to remain at the Yard.”
She went a little pale.
“You mean I am not satisfactory?” she said. “As a secretary?”
“You’re very satisfactory, both as a secretary and an individual,” said Larry, trying hard to maintain command of his voice. “I don’t like your—I don’t like your working.”
There was another silence.
“I don’t think I shall work after this case,” she said quietly. “I thought of leaving, too.”
This was an unexpected reply, and it filled him with a sense of panic.
“You’re not going away?” he asked, and she laughed.
“You’re really a most inconsistent person. You dismiss me in one breath and hope I’m not leaving you in another,” she said, and she was treading on dangerous ground and was well aware of the fact. “After all,” she went on, solemnly mischievous, “there are so many jobs where competent girls are wanted.”
“I know a job where a competent girl is wanted,” said Larry, swallowing something, “and her job is to look after a flat and share the modest fortune of a detective-inspector who may be something better one of these fine days.”
She was helping herself to a triangular piece of toast when he spoke, and she let the toast drop.
“I don’t quite know what you mean,” she faltered.
“I mean,” said Larry. “I want to marry you—go to the devil!”
She looked up open-mouthed, in time to see the door shut upon the outraged Sunny.
“I’m awfully sorry,” stammered Larry. “I didn’t mean that last remark for you, dear. I really mean——”
“I know what you mean,” she said, and laid her hand on his. “You mean you want me?”
“I want you so much,” said Larry, “that I can’t find words to make my want plain.”
She did not speak. She suffered her hand to stay under his, and her eyes catching the distorted reflection of her face in the polished coffee-pot, she laughed. Larry drew his hand away quickly, for he was a sensitive man.
“I’m rather a fool, I’m afraid,” he said quietly. She had not moved.
“Put your hand back.” Her voice was no higher than a whisper, but he obeyed. “Now tell me what you were saying. I was laughing at myself in the coffee-pot. I don’t look like a person that anybody could propose to at half-past eight in the morning.”
“Then—then you know that you are being proposed to?” he said huskily.
She nodded, and her shining eyes turned to meet his.
“And—will you?” he asked, finding it difficult to frame the words.
“Will I what—be proposed to?” she answered innocently. “I think I will, Larry dear: I rather like it.”
And then she was in his arms, and he was holding her tightly, tightly.
And then Sunny came in, and they did not see him. He stole forth silently and made his way to the landing outside the door and rang the elevator bell. The girl who worked the elevator was a great friend of his and supplied him with much information which was of value.
“Louie,” he said, and he was more than usually sober, “can you tell me where I can get lodgings near at hand? I think I shall soon be sleeping out.”
“Sleeping out, Pat?” said the wondering Louie. (She called him Pat because it was his name, but more because he had graciously permitted her that liberty.) “Is your master getting a housekeeper?”
“I think so,” said Sunny very gravely indeed. “I think so, Louie.”
Larry may have walked to the office that morning, or he may have ridden, or floated. He had no distinct recollection of what happened, or how he got there, except that he knew that Diana Ward was by his side and that he was hopelessly, ridiculously, overwhelmingly happy in his love. It had been the most extraordinary courting, and the proposal had been as amazingly unconventional. He had pictured such a scene, but it had been set in a quiet drawing room under shaded lights, or in some bosky dell, or in the shade of an old tree along some backwater of the ancient river.
“Not at breakfast,” he said aloud, “oh, dear, no.”
“Not at breakfast?” repeated the girl. “Oh, you are thinking—— Yes, it was funny.”
“It was wonderful!” said Larry. “I feel all puffed up.”
“Then I’m going to take some of the puffed-up feeling out of you,” she said calmly. “I want you to make me a promise.”
“I’ll promise you anything in the world, Diana,” he said extravagantly. “Ask me for the top brick off the chimney pots, or a slice of the moon——”
“Nothing so difficult as that. I merely want to—— And yet perhaps it will be more difficult,” she said seriously. “Will you promise me that under no circumstances you will ask to be released from your engagement?”
He turned round to her, and almost stopped in his walk.
“That’s an easy one,” he said. “Whatever makes you think I should want to break off this wonderful——”
“I know, I know,” she interrupted. “It’s very wonderful to me, and yet”—she shook her head—“will you promise that whatever happens, whatever be the outcome of the Stuart case, whether you fail or succeed, whatever revelations come, you will not break your engagement?”
“I promise you that,” said Larry eagerly. “There’s nothing in the world which would induce me to take back a word I’ve said. I am living in mortal terror lest you discover how you are throwing yourself away upon somebody who is not worthy of you. If you do, I swear I will sue you for breach of promise! My fine feelings are not to be trifled with.”
When they reached Room 47 they found two men waiting in the corridor. One was a plain-clothes officer, the other was a wizened little man who sat pensively on a form, his hands on his knees, staring with unseeing eyes at the floor.
Larry stopped at the sight.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the girl penitently, “I should have told you—I sent for him.”
“Why, it’s Lew!” said Larry in surprise, and Diana nodded.
“You told me that I could call for any witness I wanted,” she began, and he stopped her.
“My dear, of course you can,” he said.
He looked at the old man curiously, and Lew, oblivious of all things, sat in his dark and silent world, consuming his own thoughts.
“Bring him in,” said Larry. “How are you going to make him talk, or convey our wishes to him?” He shook his head pityingly. “I never realized before what a terrible affliction this combination of circumstances might be,” he said. “Can you talk to him?”
“I think so,” said the girl quietly, “but you must realize that he has no idea where he is. For all he knows, he may still be in that dreadful house of the blind, still under the care of the men who have treated him so cruelly.”
Larry nodded.
“When you said he was dead I thought you were mad,” he said; “but I understand now.”
“I want a shotgun,” said the girl, “and I want a uniformed officer.” She turned to Larry. “I am going to see whether I have forgotten all I learnt in the Blind Hospital,” she said. She took the old man by the hand and he followed her obediently.
She caught his two wrists gently and raised them to her face.
“A woman,” he said; then she took up the little vase of flowers on her desk and held them under his nose.
“Roses, ain’t they?” he said. “This is a hospital.”
She beckoned the uniformed policeman who stood at the door and again raised the old man’s hands, letting them rest lightly on the collar of his tunic, and his buttons, then she raised them to his helmet.
“A copper!” said Lew, and shrank back.
She gave him the flowers again, and again raised his gnarled old hand and brought it to her cheek.
“I’m in a hospital and a policeman’s looking after me. Am I wanted for anything?”
She took his head between her hands and gently shook it.
“I’m not, eh?” he said, relieved.
Larry was watching the play, fascinated.
“Am I safe from them swine?”
She took his head between her hands and forced him to nod.
“Do you want me to talk?”
She repeated the movement, and pushed a chair up to him, guiding him down to it.
The plain-clothes officer had brought the gun and she took it from him, and lifting Lew’s hand passed it lightly over the barrel and the stock. He shivered.
“Yes, that’s what they’ve done to me,” he said. “You want them for that, don’t you? It was cruel hard on a blind man. What are you pinching my left hand for?”
Again she made him nod, then she pinched the right hand, and without waiting for his question made him shake his head.
“I see, I see,” he said eagerly. “The right hand is no and the left hand is yes. Is there somebody here—high?”
She signalled yes.
“Do they want me to tell?”
Again she signalled the affirmative, and he began his story.
He and Blind Jake had been companions in misfortune. He had been a slave to the big man, almost since his youth, and had lived a life of terror, dominated by this extraordinary villain.
“He done things that would make you curl up if you knew! Jake did,” nodded Lew. “Things that I don’t like thinking about, that haunt me at nights.”
Then five or six years before Lew’s own brother had joined this extraordinary band of criminals.
“A fine big fellow he was, too,” said Lew proudly, “and he could see! He used to go round the fairs pretending he couldn’t, but he had grand eyesight, could read newspapers and books. A big chap, sir, with long bushy whiskers down to here. A grand fellow was Jim, but a hook.”
Then they had come under the influence of this extraordinary power, to which Blind Jake was used to refer in reverent tones. They had been sent to carry bodies from a house, and Jake had assisted, and so had Jim and Lew. He didn’t know that they were murdered, but he thought they were.
“A clever gang they are. Why, six years ago, do you know what they did?” He seemed almost proud of the genius of these terrible men. “We chucked a man in the river with a weight round his legs. You’d think they’d be suspicious, wouldn’t you, when they found the body? Not they! What do you think the weight was attached to, guv’nor? A big block of salt that fitted just round the cove’s legs, and as soon as the salt dissolved, up he came.”
“Was he alive when you put him in?” asked Larry, and the girl shivered.
The man could not hear, but he answered almost as though he could.
“He may have been dead, I forget,” Lew went on. “He didn’t holler or anything. God’s truth, I didn’t know they was going to put him in the water! How was I to know? But in the water he went. And then Jim disappeared. I don’t know what happened to him. He just went away and we never saw him again. That was four years ago in May, as far as I can remember.”
Lew had got frightened after a while and began to suspect the danger to himself, if he did not know it already, and was fearful of Jake and his threats, more fearful of the mysterious vanishing of his brother. He could not write Braille, but he had got a man in Todd’s Home, a “straight ’un,” to write the message that he intended putting in the pocket of the next victim. Possibly he had heard from Jake that there was a “job” at hand.
“I think I will go now,” said the girl, suddenly white.
Larry took her out into the corridor and brought her a glass of water.
“I’m quite all right,” she smiled bravely. “Go back and listen.”
Lew was talking when Larry returned, and when he had finished, Larry knew almost all there was to be known about the murder of Gordon Stuart.
That evening there was a conference of all heads of departments, presided over by the Chief Commissioner.
“We may not be able to convict on the evidence of this man,” said Sir John gravely; “we will get the warrants if you like, but I think with a little more rope, and the knowledge we have, we could catch them red-handed.”
Larry came back to his office—the girl had gone home—in time to hear his telephone bell ringing.
“Is that Mr. Holt?” said a strange voice.
Now it is unusual to receive a call at Scotland Yard from anybody but police or public officials because the numbers of the various departments do not appear in the telephone book.
“I am Inspector Holt,” replied Larry.
“Dr. Judd asks you whether you can come to his office at once. He has something important to communicate.”
Larry thought a moment.
“Yes, I will come immediately,” he said.
He picked up Harvey, and a cab deposited them at Bloomsbury Pavement.
At this hour Larry expected the building to be deserted, but there was a light showing in one of the upstairs windows. The long, narrow vestibule was also illuminated.
Larry walked quickly through the vestibule; the porter’s little recess was empty. At the far end were the doors of two automatic lifts, one of which was in position.
“Shall I come up with you?” asked the sergeant.
There was no reason why he shouldn’t, and yet——
“No, no, stay here,” said Larry.
He stepped into the lift and pushed the ivory button marked “Fourth Floor” and the elevator jerked upward. At the fourth floor it stopped and Larry, pushing open the grille, stepped out on to the landing. Immediately opposite him was a glass door, behind which a light shone. The words “Dr. Judd” were written legibly enough, and he turned the handle of the door and stepped into an empty room. He called, but nobody answered him, and, puzzled, he came back to the landing.
Every sense in Larry Holt’s system was alert. Dr. Judd was not the kind of individual who would indulge in a silly practical joke, or attempt to hoax him.
Then he had a mild surprise. He had come by the left-hand elevator, which had now disappeared, and in its place was the right-hand lift, which must have been on a higher floor when he had reached the landing. What was more remarkable, the lift door was wide open.
Who had come up?
He looked along the corridor, but there was nobody in sight.
“Is everything all right?”
It was the hollow voice of Harvey coming up the elevator shaft.
“I’m coming down,” said Larry, and stepped through the open grille into the waiting elevator.
His foot was poised, he was in the very act of bringing it down upon the floor of the lift, when he realized in a flash that what he had thought was solid wood flooring was no more than paint and paper. There was no possibility of drawing back. His balance had shifted, and the full weight of his body was thrown forward.
He had the fraction of a second to think, and then, utilizing every ounce of strength, every atom of impetus he could get from his left foot, which still rested on the solid edge of the landing, he leapt forward and gripped the moulding of one of the panels at the back of the elevator. He had less than half an inch to hold on by, but by the extraordinary strength in his hands he maintained his hold, even as his feet crashed through the paper flooring and the whole weight of his body was flung upon his finger-tips. He hung thus, suspended in space, a fifty-foot fall upon the stone flags beneath him.
“Quick, come up!” he shouted. “Fourth floor. I’m trapped!”
He heard the rattle of the other lift and the whine of the motor, and at the same time he heard another sound above him, and, glancing up, saw a face looking down from the opening on the fifth floor.
Then something whizzed past him and struck the panelling of the elevator with a crash. For a second he nearly released his hold. He felt the lift shaking unaccountably, and then, to his horror, the ascending lift passed him.
“Here, here!” he shouted.
The face above seemed to be growing dimmer; but again he saw the hand poised, something struck him on the shoulder, he released his hold and fell.