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

was discussed by any chance? Was it the so-called

Bonn incident?’

 

‘Harlow says that they just talked about the Middle East and nothing else

during the few minutes the Foreign Minister vas in his house. And really,

sir, I don’t see how they could have had any very lengthy discussion;

they were not together more than a few minutes. Apparently Sir Joseph

went into a little room which Harlow uses for his more confidential

interviews and drank a glass of wine. They then talked about the

reception and Sir Joseph congratulated him on bringing the warring

elements together. It seems to have been, according to Harlow’s account,

the most uninteresting talk.’

 

The Prime Minister walked up and down the room with long strides, his

chin on his chest.

 

‘I can’t understand it, I can’t understand it!’ he muttered. And then,

abruptly: ‘Find Sir Joseph Layton.’ That terminated the interview for

Jim.

 

He was rattled, badly rattled, and in his distraction he could think of

only one sedative. He rang up Aileen Rivers at her office and asked her

to come to tea with him at the Automobile Club.

 

Aileen realised from the first that Jim was directly occupied by a

mystery that was puzzling not only the country but the whole of the

civilised world. But she understood also the reason he had sent for her,

and the thought that she as being of use to him was a very pleasant one.

 

As soon as he met her he plunged straight into the story of his trouble.

 

‘He may have been kidnapped, of course, and I should say it was very

likely, though the distance between Palace Yard and Whitehall Gardens is

very short; and Whitehall so full of police that it hardly seems

possible. We have advertised for the taximan who drove him away from the

House, but so far have had no reply.’

 

‘Perhaps the taximan was also kidnapped?’ she suggested.

 

‘Perhaps so,’ he admitted. ‘I do wish Foreign Ministers weren’t so

godlike that they have to travel alone! If he’d only waited a few minutes

I would have joined him.’ And then, with a smile: ‘I’m laying my burdens

upon you and you’re wilting visibly.’

 

‘I’m not,’ she affirmed.

 

She considered a moment before she asked:

 

‘Could I not help you?’

 

He stared at her in amused wonder.

 

‘How on earth could you help me? I’m being rude I know, but I can’t

exactly see—’

 

She was annoyed rather than hurt by his scepticism.

 

‘It may be a very presumptuous thing to offer assistance to the police,’

she said with a faint hint of sarcasm, ‘but I think what may be wrong

with you now is that you want—what is the expression?—a new angle?’

 

‘I certainly want several new angles,’ he confessed ruefully.

 

‘Then I’ll start in to give you one. Have you seen my uncle?’

 

His jaw dropped. He had forgotten all about Arthur Ingle; and never once

had he associated him with the Minister’s disappearance.

 

‘What a fool I am!’ he gasped.

 

She examined his face steadily, as though she were considering whether or

not to agree. In reality her mind was very far away.

 

‘I only suggest my uncle because he called upon me this morning,’ she

said. ‘At least, he was waiting for me when I came out to lunch. It is

the first time I have seen him since the night he came back from

Devonshire.’

 

‘What did he want to see you about?’

 

She laughed softly.

 

‘He came with a most extraordinary offer, that I should keep house for

him. And really, he offered me considerably more than the salary I am

getting from Stebbings, and said he had no objection to my working in the

daytime.’

 

‘You refused, of course?’

 

‘I refused, of course,’ she repeated, ‘but he wasn’t at all put out. I’ve

never seen him in such an amiable frame of mind.’

 

‘How does he look?’ asked Jim, remembering the unshaven face he had seen

through the window.

 

‘Very smart,’ was the surprising reply. ‘He told me he had been amusing

himself with some of the big films that had appeared since he went to

prison. He had hired them and bought a small projector. He really was

fond of the pictures, as I know,’ the girl went on, ‘but it seems a queer

thing to I have shut oneself up for days just to watch films! And he

asked after you.’ She nodded. ‘Why should he ask after you, you are going

to say, and that is the question that occurred to me. But he seems to

have taken for granted that I am a very close friend of yours. He asked

who had introduced me, and I told him your wretched little car on the

Thames Embankment!’

 

‘Speak well of the dead,’ said Jim soberly. ‘Lizzie has cracked a

cylinder.’

 

‘And now,’ she said, ‘prepare for a great shock.’

 

‘I brace myself,’ said Jim.

 

‘He asked,’ the girl went on, a twinkle in her eyes, ‘whether I thought

you would object to seeing him. I think he must have taken a sudden

liking to you.’

 

‘I’ve never met the gentleman,’ said Jim, ‘but that is an omission which

shall be rectified without delay. We’ll go round together! He will

naturally jump at the conclusion that we’re an engaged couple, but if you

can stand that slur on your intelligence—’

 

‘I will be brave,’ said Aileen.

 

Mr Arthur Ingle was only momentarily disconcerted by the appearance of

his niece and the man who had filled his mind all that afternoon. Jim had

met him once before, but only for a few seconds, when he had called to

make an inquiry about Mrs Gibbins. Now he was almost jovial.

 

‘Where’s friend Elk?’ he asked, with a smile. ‘I understood you never

moved without one another in these perilous times, when lunatic ministers

are wandering about the country, and no man knows the hour or the day

when he will be called up for active service! So you are Mr James

Carlton!’

 

He opened a silver cigar-box and pushed it across to Jim, who made a

careful selection.

 

‘Aileen told you I wanted to see you, I suppose? Well, I do. I’m a bit of

a theorist, Mr Carlton, and I have an idea that my theory is right. I

wonder if you would be interested to know what it is?’

 

He pointedly ignored the presence of the girl except to put a chair for

her.

 

‘I’ve been making inquiries,’ said this surprising ex-convict, ‘and I’ve

discovered that Sir Joseph is in all sorts of financial difficulties.

This is unknown to the Prime Minister or even to his closest friend, but

I have had a hint that he was very short of ready money and that his

estates in Cheshire were heavily mortgaged. Now, Mr Carlton, do you

conceive it as possible that the speech in the House was made with the

deliberate intention of slumping the market and that Sir Joseph was paid

handsomely for the part he played?’

 

As he was speaking, he clasped his hands before him, his fingers

intertwined; he emphasised every point with a little jerk of his clasped

hands and, watching him, the mist rolled from Jim Carlton’s brain, and he

instantly solved the mystery of those private film shows which had kept

Mr Ingle locked up in his flat for a week. And to solve that was to solve

every mystery save the present whereabouts of Sir Joseph Layton.

 

He listened in silence whilst Ingle went on to expound and elaborate his

theory and when the man had finished: ‘I will bring your suggestion to

the notice of my superiors,’ he said conventionally.

 

It was evidently not the speech that Mr Ingle expected. For a moment he

looked uncomfortable, and then, with a laugh: ‘I suppose you think it

strange that I should be on the side of law and order—and the governing

classes! I felt a little sore when I came out of prison. Elk probably

told you of the exhibition I made of myself in the train. But I’ve been

thinking things over, Carlton, and it has occurred to me that my

extremism is not profitable either to my pocket or my mind.’

 

‘In fact,’ smiled Jim, ‘you’re going to become a reformed character and a

member of the good old Tory party?’

 

‘I don’t know that I shall go as far as that,’ demurred the other,

amused, ‘but I have decided to settle down. I am not exactly a poor man,

and all that I have got I have paid for—in Dartmoor.’

 

Only for a second were the old harsh cadences audible in his voice. He

nodded towards Aileen Rivers.

 

‘You’ll persuade this girl to give me a chance, Mr Carlton? I can well

understand her hesitation to keep house for a man liable at any moment to

be whisked off to durance, and I fear she does not quite believe in my

reformation.’

 

He smiled blandly at the girl, and then turned his eyes upon Jim.

 

‘Could you not persuade her?’

 

‘If I could persuade her to any course,’ said Jim deliberately, ‘it would

not be the one you suggest.’

 

‘Why?’ challenged the other.

 

‘Because,’ said Jim, ‘you are altogether wrong when you say that there is

no longer any danger of your being whisked off to durance. The danger was

never more pressing.’

 

Ingle did not reply to this. Once his lips trembled as though he were

about to ask a question, and then with a laugh he walked to the table and

took a cigar from the box.

 

‘I guess I won’t detain you,’ he said. ‘But you’re wrong, Carlton. The

police have nothing on me! They may frame something to catch me, but

you’ll have to be clever to do even that.’

 

As they passed out of the building:

 

‘I seem to spend my days giving warnings to the last people in the world

who ought to be warned,’ said Jim bitterly. ‘Aileen, maybe you’ll knit me

a muzzle in your spare moments? That will help considerably!’

 

The outstanding feature of this little speech from the girl’s point of

view was that he had called her by her name for the first time. Later,

when they were nearing her boarding house, she asked: ‘Do you think you

will find Sir Joseph?’

 

He shook his head.

 

‘I doubt very much if he is alive,’ he said gravely.

 

But his doubts were to be dispelled, and in the most surprising manner.

That night a drunken black-faced comedian hit a policeman over the head

with a banjo, and that vulgar incident had an amazing sequel.