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

the flat of a man

called Ingle; and whilst he was there a charwoman had come in and he had

recognised her voice.

 

‘He was engaged at that time with Ingle in manoeuvring an amazing

swindle. It was none other than the impersonation of the Foreign Minister

by Ingle, who was a brilliant actor. The plot was to get the Minister to

Park Lane, where he would be drugged and his place taken by Ingle, who,

to make himself perfect in the part, had spent a week examining films of

Sir Joseph Layton. In this way he had familiarised himself with Sir

Joseph’s mannerisms; and he had paid one stealthy visit to a public

meeting which Sir Joseph had addressed, in order to study his voice. The

plan worked. Sir Joseph went into a room with Marling, drank a glass of

wine and was immediately knocked out—I think that is the expression.

Ingle waited behind the door all ready made up; and Marling told me he

bore a striking resemblance to the Minister. He went out from the house,

drove to the House of Commons and delivered a war speech which brought

the markets tumbling down.

 

‘But before this happened there was a tragedy at 704, Park Lane.

Apparently, when Marling approached Ingle the actor-convict had been in

some doubt as to whether he should go to meet him. Ingle at first

suspected a trap and wrote a letter declining to meet. Afterwards he

changed his mind, but left the letter on his writing desk and the

charwoman, Mrs Gibbins, seeing the envelope was marked “Urgent, By Hand,”

came to the conclusion that her master had gone out and forgotten the

letter; and with a desire to oblige, she herself brought it to Park Lane.

Marling opened the door to her and had the shock of his life, for

immediately he recognised her. He invited her into the library and there

she slipped on the parquet floor and fell, cutting her head again the

corner of the desk. They made every effort to restore her: that I can

vouch for. They even brought me down to help, but she was dead, and there

arose the question of disposing of the body.

 

‘Marling never ceased to blame himself that he did not call in the police

immediately and tell them the truth, but he was afraid to have his name

mentioned in connection with a man who had recently been discharged from

prison; and in the end he and Mrs Edwins took the body to Hyde Park and

dropped it in the water. You tell me there were signs of a struggle, but

that is not so. The footprints were Mrs Edwins’ and not the dead woman’s.

 

‘Marling never saw the letter which the woman brought, it must have

fallen from her pocket when they were carrying her down the slope towards

the canal. He told me all about it afterwards; and I know he spoke the

truth.’

 

(Here Mr Harlow’s narrative was interrupted for two hours as he showed

some signs of fatigue. It was resumed at his own request just before

midnight.)

 

‘Marling regarded his crimes as jokes, and always referred o them as

such. It is, I believe, a common expression amongst the criminal classes

and one which took his fancy. The great “joke” about Sir Joseph was the

plan to restore him to his friends. I think it was partly Ingle’s idea,

and was as follows. Two nigger minstrel suits were procured, exactly

alike, and it was arranged that Ingle, at a certain hour, should get

himself locked up and conveyed to what Marling invariably called “the

lifeboat”—’

 

‘Lifeboat?’ interrupted Jim quickly. ‘Why did he call it that?’

 

‘I will tell you,’ resumed Mr Harlow. ‘You will remember that he

presented a police station which he had built only about fifty yards from

this house; he made this presentation with only one idea in his mind: if

he were arrested it was to that police station that he would be taken!

 

‘Sir Joseph lay under the influence of drugs in the room off the

underground garage until the moment arrived, when he was stripped, his

upper lip shaved and his face covered with the black make-up of a

minstrel. He was then taken through the little door, which you say you

have seen, along a locked passage to one of the stairways beneath the

cells, and the substitution was an easy matter. Every bed in every cell

lilts up, if you know the secret, like the lid of a box; beneath each bed

is a flight of steps leading to the passage and to the garage—’

 

Jim ran into Evory Street station.

 

‘I want to sec Harlow quick!’ he said breathlessly.

 

‘He’s all right; he was asleep the last time I saw him,’ said the

inspector on duty.

 

‘Let me see him,’ said Jim impatiently; and followed the jailer down the

corridor till they stopped outside Cell No 9.

 

The jailor squinted through the peep-hole. Suddenly he uttered an

exclamation and turned the lock. The cell was empty!

 

When they visited the garage, the dark blue car was gone; and though this

was found later abandoned on the Harwich road, the Splendid Harlow had

vanished as though the earth had opened; nor was he ever seen again,

though sometimes there came news from the continent of gigantic

operations engineered through Spanish banks by an unknown plutocrat.

 

The Splendid Harlow had cached most of his money in Spain, but though Jim

visited that country, he pursued no inquiries. People on their honeymoon

have very little time for criminal investigation.

 

‘If I had only known about that infernal police station!’ he said once,

as they were loafing through the Puerta del Sol.

 

Aileen changed the subject at the earliest possible moment.

 

For she had known about the plank beds which were doors to freedom.

 

It was too good a joke for Harlow to keep to himself. And in telling her

he ran very little risk. He was an excellent judge of human nature.