The Joker, Edgar Wallace [books you have to read TXT] 📗
- Author: Edgar Wallace
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things that may not be written about… he could not think back without
feeling physically sick. In truth he would not have stretched out his
hand if, by so doing, he could have opened those cell doors and released
to the world the social sweepings whom it was his professed mission to
salve.
His work finished, he lit a cigarette, fitted it carefully into an amber
holder and, adjusting the cushions, lay down on the settee and smoked and
thought till the telephone bell roused him and he got up.
The voice that spoke to him was quite unfamiliar. ‘Is that Mr Ingle?’
‘Yes,’ he said shortly.
‘Will you make a sacrifice of your principles?’ was the astonishing
request, and the man smiled sourly.
‘What I have left, yes. What do you wish?’
It might be an old friend in need of money, in which case the
conversation would be short. For Arthur Ingle had no foolish ideas about
charity.
‘Could you meet me tonight on the sidewalk immediately opposite Horse
Guards Parade?’
‘In the park, you mean?’ asked Ingle, astonished. ‘Who are you? I’ll tell
you before you go any further that I’m not inclined to go out of my way
to meet strangers. I’m a pretty tired man tonight.’
‘My name is—’ a pause—‘Harlow.’
Involuntarily, Ingle uttered an exclamation.
‘Stratford Harlow?’ he asked incredulously.
‘Yes, Stratford Harlow.’
There was a long pause before Arthur Ingle spoke. ‘It’s rather an
extraordinary request, but I realise that it isn’t an idle one. How do I
know you’re Harlow?’
‘Call me up in ten minutes at my house and ask for me,’ said the voice.
‘Will you come?’
Again Mr Ingle hesitated. ‘Yes, I’ll come,’ he said. ‘At what time?’
‘At ten o’clock exactly. I won’t keep you hanging about this cold night.
You can get into my car and we’ll drive somewhere.’
Ingle hung up the telephone a little bewildered. He was a cautious man
and after ten minutes had expired he put through the number he discovered
in the phone directory, and the same voice answered him. ‘Are you
satisfied?’
‘Yes, I’ll be there—ten o’clock,’ he said.
He had two hours to wait. The charwoman did not arrive till nine. He gave
her instructions, made arrangements for the following day; and went back
to the dining-room to think out the extraordinary request which Stratford
Harlow had made of him. And the more he thought, the less inclined he as
to keep the appointment. At last he turned to his writing table, took out
a sheet of paper and scrawled a note.
“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 I frankly that what I have in my mind is that this may be a frame-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.”
He put the letter in an envelope, addressed it, and marked in the corner
in bold letters ‘By hand. Urgent.’ Even now he was not satisfied. He went
to the telephone to call a district messenger, but he did not lift the
receiver. His curiosity was piqued. He felt he must know, with the least
possible delay, just why Stratford Harlow had summoned Arthur Ingle, late
of Dartmoor convict establishment. And why should the meeting be secret?
A man of Harlow’s standing would not lose caste, even if he sent for him
to go to his house. He came to a sudden resolve, pitched the letter on to
the table, went into his bedroom and changed into a dark suit.
By the time he had climbed into his overcoat he was satisfied that he was
taking the wisest course. The charwoman was in the kitchen and he opened
the door to pass his last admonition. She was on her knees,
scrubbing-brush in hand, and he looked down into a long, weak face over
which strayed lank wisps of grey-black hair.
‘I’m going out. You needn’t wait. Finish your work and be here in the
morning before eight,’ he barked and slammed the door on this
inconsiderable member of the proletariat and went down the stairs in a
spirit of adventure that made him feel almost young.
As the Horse Guards clock was chiming the three-quarters he came into
Birdcage Walk and turned along the lonely footpath that runs parallel
with the House Guards and flanks the broad parade ground. There was no
hurry; he fell into a gentle stroll, fast enough to keep him warm and to
avoid any suspicion of loitering within the meaning of the act.
It could not be a frame-up, he had decided. A man of Harlow’s character
would hardly lend himself to such a plot; and in his heart of hearts, for
all his bitter gibes at the police, he did not believe seriously in the
prison legend of innocent men being trapped by cunning police plots.
He looked at his watch under a street standard; it was five minutes to
ten, and he strolled back the way he had come, and stopped immediately in
a line with the gates that closed the arch of the Horse Guards. As he did
so a car came noiselessly along the sidewalk from the direction of
Westminster.
It stopped in front of him and the door opened.
‘Will you come in, Mr Ingle?’ said a low voice; and without a word he
stepped inside, pulling the door close after him and sank down on a soft
seat by the side of a man who, he at once recognised, was that Splendid
Harlow, whose name, even in Dartmoor, symbolised wealth beyond dreams.
The car, gathering speed, turned into the Mall, swung round towards
Buckingham Palace and across the Corner into Hyde Park. It slackened
speed now, and Stratford Harlow began to talk…
For an hour the car moved at a leisurely pace round the Circle. Sleet was
falling. Ingle listened like a man in a dream to the amazing proposition
which his companion advanced.
He, at any rate, sat in comfort. Inspector Jim Carlton, following in an
aged convertible was chilled and wet, and the highly sensitive microphone
which he had placed in Harlow’s car failed to transmit the talk it was so
vital he should hear.
Arthur Ingle arrived home at his flat soon after eleven. The cleaner had
gone and he was glad; dull clod and unimaginative as she was she yet
might have read and interpreted the light that shone in his eyes or have
sensed the exultation of his heart.
Brewing himself some coffee, he sat down at his desk and in to make
notes. Once he rose and, entering his bedroom, turned on the light above
his dressing-table and stared at himself for five minutes in the glass.
The scrutiny seemed to afford him a certain amount of satisfaction, for
he; smiled and returned to his notemaking.
That smile did not leave his lips; and once he laughed out loud.
Evidently something had happened that afforded him the most exquisite
happiness.
‘Could you please come and see me in the lunch hour?—A.R.’
JIM CARLTON looked at the ‘A.R.’ blankly before he placed ‘A’ as
indicating Aileen—he was under the impression that she spelt her name
with an ‘E’. It had been delivered at Scotland Yard by a messenger half
an hour before he arrived. Literally he was waiting on the mat when she
came out; and she seemed very glad to see him.
‘You will probably be very angry that I’ve sent for you about such a
little thing,’ she said, ‘and you’re so busy—’
‘I won’t tell you how I feel about it,’ he interrupted, ‘or you’ll think
I’m not sincere.’
‘You see, you are the only policeman I know and I don’t know you very
well, but I thought you wouldn’t mind. Mrs Gibbins has disappeared; she
didn’t go home last night nor the night before.’
‘I’m thrilled,’ he said. ‘And her husband fears the worst?’
‘She hasn’t a husband; she’s a widow. Her landlady came in to see me this
morning. She’s dreadfully upset.’
‘But who’s Mrs Gibbins?’
‘Mrs Gibbins is the charwoman at Uncle’s flat. Rather a wretched-looking
lady with untidy hair. I’m rather worried about it because she’s a woman
without friends. I called up my Uncle’s flat this morning and he was
almost polite, and told me that she didn’t arrive yesterday morning and
she hasn’t been there today.’
‘She may have met with an accident,’ was his natural suggestion.
‘I’ve telephoned to the big hospitals, but nothing has been heard of her.
I want you to tell me what I can do next. It’s such a little matter that
I’ll listen meekly to any rude comment you care to think up!’
He was not interested in Mrs Gibbins; the case of a lonely woman who
disappears as from the face of the earth was so common a phenomenon in
the life of any great city that he could hardly work up enthusiasm for
the search. But Aileen was so concerned that he would have been a brute
to have treated her request lightly; and after lunch, the day being his
own, he went to Stanmore Rents in Lambeth, a little riverside slum and
made a few inquiries at first hand.
Mrs Gibbins had lived there, the slatternly landlady told him, for five
years. She was a good, sober, honest woman, never went out, had no
friends, and subsisted on what she earned and a pound a week which was
paid to her quarterly by some distant relation. In fact, she was due to
receive the money on the following Monday. Her chief virtue was that she
paid her rent every Monday morning and gave no trouble.
‘Do you mind if I search her room?’
The landlady wished that and showed him the way; it gave her a nice
feeling of authority to be present during the operation.
Jim was shown into a small back room, scrupulously clean, with a bed and
a sort of home-made hanging cupboard that had been fixed in one corner
and was shrouded by a cheap curtain. Here was the meagre wardrobe of the
missing charwoman: a skirt or two, a light summer coat that had seen its
brightest days, and a best hat. He tried the chest of drawers and found
one drawer locked. This he opened with the first key on his own bunch, to
the awe and admiration of the landlady. Here was proof of the woman’s
affluence—a post office bank-book showing �87 to her credit, four new �1
Treasury notes, and a threadbare bag with a broken catch.
Inside this were one or two proofs of the vanity of the eternal
feminine—a greasy powder-puff, a cheap trinket or two, and between
lining and outer cover a folded paper of some sort.
It had not got there by accident, he saw, when he carried the bag to the
light, for it was carefully sewn into the lining. He took out his pocket
knife and, picking the stitches, extracted what he thought was one sheet
of paper, lightly folded. When he opened the paper out he found there
were two sheets.
The landlady ducked her head sideways in an effort to catch a glimpse of
the writing, but Jim was aware of this manoeuvre.
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