The Joker, Edgar Wallace [books you have to read TXT] 📗

the word?-dillytanty,

that’s it. There’s quite a lot of genuine Reds, but a whole lot of

people who hang on in the hope that one of the comrades will break a

jeweller’s window so that they can get away with the doin’s. Most people

are Red if they only knew it. Take the feller that keeps beehives. He

just waits for the old capitalist bee to pile up his honey reserves and

then he comes down on his bank-roll… ‘

 

He philosophised thus all the way across the park.

 

‘I am almost at the end of my theories—what is yours, Elk?’

 

‘Beer,’ said Elk absently, as they mounted the steps of the club.

 

‘Looks like he’s gettin’ ready for a quick money stunt,’ said Elk, as

they made their way to the coffee-room. ‘But, Lord, you can never follow

the minds of people like Ingle!

 

And he’s an actor too—that makes him more skittish. As likely as not

he’s goin’ to give lectures on “My Five Years of Hell”—they all do it.’

 

Jim shook his head helplessly.

 

‘I don’t know what to make of that film craze of his.’

 

‘Decadence,’ said Elk laconically. ‘All these birds go wrong some way or

another, I tell you.’

 

The waiter was hovering at their elbow.

 

‘Beer,’ said Elk emphatically.

 

It was a bitterly cold night, and in spite of the briskness of their walk

Jim had been glad to get into the comfort of his club. He had no

intention of returning to Scotland Yard that night, and was in fact

parting with Elk at the door that looks out upon Pall Mall when the club

porter called him.

 

There was an urgent message for him and, going into the booth, he spoke

to one of the chief inspectors.

 

‘I have been trying to get you all the evening,’ said the officer. ‘One

of the park-keepers has found the place where he thinks Mrs Gibbins was

thrown into the canal. I’m on the phone to him. He suggested you should

meet him outside the Zoological Society’s office.’

 

‘Tell him that I’ll come right along,’ said Jim quickly, and returning to

Elk, conveyed the gist of the message.

 

‘Can’t these amacher detectives find things in the Lord’s bright

sunlight?’ asked Elk bitterly. ‘Half-past nine and freezing like the

devil: what a time to go snooping round canals!’

 

Yet he insisted upon going along with his companion.

 

‘You might miss something,’ he grumbled as the draughty taxi moved

northward. ‘You ain’t got my power of observation and deduction. Anyway,

I’ll bet we’re wasting our time. They’ll show us the hole in the water

where she went in most likely.’

 

‘The canal is frozen,’ smiled Jim. ‘In fact, it’s been frozen since the

day after the body was found.’

 

Mr Elk growled something under his breath; whether it was an

uncomplimentary reference to the weather or to the tardiness of

park-keepers, Jim did not gather.

 

It was not a keeper but an inspector who was waiting for them outside the

Zoological offices. The discovery had been made that afternoon, but the

keeper had not reported the matter until late in the evening. The

inspector took a seat in their taxi and under his direction they drove

back some distance to the place where a bridge crosses the canal to

Avenue Road. Here the Circle roadway is separated from the canal by a

fifty-foot stretch of grassland and trees. This verge, in summer, affords

a playing ground for children, and has, from their point of view, the

attraction of dipping down in a steep slope to the banks of the canal,

which, however, is separated from the park by a row of wooden palings,

wired to form an unclimbable fence. The playground is reached from the

road by a broad iron gate running parallel with the bridge, and this,

explained the park inspector, was locked at nights.

 

‘Occasionally somebody forgets,’ he said, ‘and I remember having it

reported to me on the night after this woman’s disappearance, that the

gates were found open in the morning.’

 

He led the way cautiously down the steep declivity towards the fence

which runs by the canal bank. Here is a rough path and along this they

trudged over ground frozen hard.

 

‘One of our keepers had to make an inspection of the fence this

afternoon,’ the officer went on, ‘and we found that the palings had been

wrenched from one of the supporting posts. Afterwards somebody must have

put them up again and did the job so well that we have never noticed the

break.’

 

They had now reached the spot, and a powerful light thrown along the

fence revealed the extent of the damage.

 

A wire strand and one of the palings had been broken, and the officer had

only to push lightly at the fence to send it sagging drunkenly towards

the canal. He put his foot upon it and with a creak it lay over so that

he could have walked without any difficulty on to the canal bank.

 

‘Our man thought that the damage had been done by boys, until he saw the

hat.’

 

‘Which hat?’ asked Jim quickly.

 

‘I left it here for you to see, exactly as he found it.’

 

The superintendent’s light travelled along a bush, and presently focused

upon a crushed brown object, which had been caught between two branches

of the bush. Jim loosened the pitiable relic, a brown felt hat, stained

and cut about the crown. It might easily, he saw, have been dragged off

in a struggle, and against the autumnal colouring of the undergrowth

would have escaped notice.

 

‘Here is another thing,’ said the park officer. ‘Do you see that? It was

the first thing I looked for, but I have no doubt that you gentlemen will

understand better than I what it signifies.’

 

It was the impress of a heel in the frozen ground. By its side a queer,

flat footmark, criss-crossed with innumerable lines.

 

‘Somebody who wore rubbers,’ said Elk, going down on his knees. ‘There

has been a struggle here. Look at the sideways thrust of that heel!

And—’

 

‘What is this?’ asked Jim sharply.

 

His lamp was concentrated upon a tiny, frozen puddle, and Elk looked but

could see nothing but its grey-white surface. Kneeling, Jim took out a

knife from his pocket and began to scrape the ice; and now his companion

saw what had attracted his attention: a piece of paper. It was an

envelope which had been crushed into the mud. When he got the frozen

object into the light it was frozen to the shape of the heel that had

trodden upon it. Gently he scraped away the mud and ice until two lines

were legible. The first was at the top left-hand corner and was heavily

underlined.

 

‘By hand. Urgent.’

 

Only one line of the address was legible, but the word ‘Harlow’ was very

distinct.

 

They carried their find back to the superintendent’s office and before

his fire thawed it out. When the letter had become a limp and steaming

thing, Jim stripped the flap of the envelope and carefully withdrew its

contents.

 

‘DEAR MR HARLOW,

 

‘I am afraid I must disappoint you. I am in such a position, being an

ex-convict, that I cannot afford to take the slightest risk. I will tell

you frankly that what I have in my mind, is that this may be a frame-p up

organised by my friends the police, and I think that it would be, to say

the least, foolish on my part to go any farther until I know your

requirements, or at least have written proof that you have approached me.

 

‘Yours sincerely,

 

‘ARTHUR INGLE.’

 

The two men looked at one another.

 

‘That beats the band,’ said Elk. ‘What do you make of it, Carlton?’

 

Jim stood with his back to the fire, the letter in his hand, his brow

wrinkled in a frown.

 

‘I don’t know… let me try now… Harlow asked Ingle to meet him: I knew

that already. Ingle promised to go, changed his mind and wrote this

letter, which has obviously never been opened by Harlow, and as obviously

could not have been delivered to him before the interview, because, as I

know—and I had a cold in the head to prove it—these two fellows met

opposite the Horse Guards Parade and went joy-riding round the park for

the greater part of an hour.

 

Supposing Harlow is concerned with the slaying of this wretched

woman—and why he should kill her heaven knows!—would he carry about

this unopened letter and leave it for the first flat-footed policeman to

find?’

 

He sat down in a chair and held his head in his hands, and presently:

‘I’ve got it!’ he said, his eyes blazing with excitement. At least, if I

haven’t got the whole story, I know at least one thing—poor Mrs Gibbins

was very much in love with William Smith the platelayer!’

 

Elk stared at him.

 

‘You’re talking foolish,’ he said.