The Ringer, Book 1

by Edgar Wallace

  “That’s a lie! There never was another woman.” Recovering herself, she laughed. “Aw, listen! You put a raw one over there! I’m a fool to get sore with you! I don’t know anything, that’s all. You’ve got nothing on me —I needn’t answer a single question. I know the law; there’s no third degree in England, don’t forget it. I’m going.”

  She moved towards the door, Wembury waiting to open it, his hand upon the knob.

  “Open the door for Mrs. Milton,” said Lomond, and added innocently: “It is Mrs. Milton, isn’t it?”

  She flung round at this. “What do you mean?”

  “I thought it might be one of those artistic marriages that are so popular with the leisured classes,” suggested Lomond, and she walked slowly back to him.

  “You may be a hell of a big doctor,” she said, a little breathlessly, “but your diagnosis is all wrong!”

  “Really—married and everything?” Scepticism was in his voice.

  She nodded. “First on the ship by a parson, and that’s legal, and then at St. Paul’s Church, Deptford, to make sure. Deptford is a kind of home town to me. Next to an ash-pit I don’t know any place I’d hate worse to be found dead in. Folks over home talk about Limehouse and Whitechapel—they’re garden cities compared with that hell-shoot! But I was married there by a real reverend gentleman. There was nothing artistic about it—except my trousseau!”

  “Married, eh?” The old Scot’s voice spoke his doubts. “Liars and married men have very short memories—he forgot to send you your favourite orchids.”

  She turned suddenly in a cold fury—a fury which had grown out of her increasing fear of this old man.

  “What do you mean?” she asked again.

  “He always sent you orchids on the anniversary of your wedding,” said Lomond carefully, and never once did his eyes leave hers. “Even when he was hiding in Australia, he in one town, you in another—when he was being watched for, and you were shadowed, he sent you flowers. But this year he didn’t. I suppose he forgot, or possibly he had other use for orchids?”

  She came nearer to him, almost incoherent in her rage.

  “You think so!” She almost spat the words. “That’s the kind of thought a man like you would have! Can’t get that bug out of your head, can you? Another woman! Arthur thought of nobody but me—the only thing that hurt him was that I couldn’t be with him. That’s what! He risked everything just to see me—just to see me. I must have met him on Collins Street but didn’t know him—he took the chance of the gallows just to stand there and see me pass.”

  “And well worth the risk. So he was in Melbourne when you were there —but he did not send you your orchids?”

  She flung out her hand impatiently.

  “Orchids! What do I want with orchids? I knew when they didn’t come—” She stopped suddenly.

  “That he had left Australia,” accused Lomond. “That is why you came away in such a hurry. I’m beginning to believe that you are in love with him!”

  “Was I?” she laughed. “I kind of like him,” Cora took up her bag. “Well, that is about all, I guess.” She nodded to the Colonel and walked a step nearer the door. “You’re not going to arrest me or anything?”

  “You are at liberty to go out, when you wish, Mrs. Milton,” said Walford.

  “Fine!” said Cora Ann, and made a little curtsy. “Good morning, everybody.”

  “Love is blind.” The hateful voice of the inquisitor arrested her. “You met him and didn’t recognise him! You want us to believe that he was so well disguised that he could venture abroad in Collins Street in daylight—oh no, Cora Ann, that won’t do!”

  She was very near the end of her control. Rage shook her as she turned back to her tormentor.

  “On Collins Street? He’d walk on Regent Street—in daylight or moonlight. Dare? If he felt that way, he’d come right here to Scotland Yard—into the lions’ den, and never turn a hair. That’s the fool thing he would do. You could guard every entrance and he’d get in and get out! You laugh—laugh, go on, laugh, but he’d do it—he’d do it—”

  Bliss had come into the room.

  Looking past the doctor, she might see him. Alan Wembury did not follow the direction of her eyes—only he saw her face go white, saw her sway and caught her in his arms as she fell.

  CHAPTER 28

  No woman is wholly saint, or, in this enlightened age, innocent of the evil which rubs elbows with men and women alike in everyday life. Mary Lenley had passed through all the stages of understanding where Maurice Meister was concerned, beginning with the absolute trust which was a legacy of her childhood, and progressing by a series of minor shocks to a clearer appreciation of the man as he really was, and not as she, in her childish enthusiasm, had pictured him. And with this understanding ran a nice balance of judgment. She was neither horrified nor distressed when there dawned upon her mind the true significance of Gwenda Milton’s fate. Nobody spoke to her plainly of that unhappy girl. She had perforce to piece together from extrinsic evidence, the scraps of information so grudgingly given, and fill in the gaps from her imagination.

  It was a curious fact that she did not regard herself as being in any danger from Maurice. They had been such good friends; their earlier relationships had been so peculiarly intimate that never once did she suspect that the pulse of Maurice Meister quickened at the sight of her. His offer to place the suite upstairs at her disposal, she had regarded merely as an act of kindness on his part, which, had it been considered, he would have made, and her own refusal was largely based upon her love of independence and a distaste for accepting a hospitality which might prove irksome, and in the end, unworkable. Behind it all, was the instinctive dislike of the woman to place herself under too deep an obligation to a man. Two days after the interview at Scotland Yard, she came one morning to find the house filled with workmen who were fitting a new sash to the large window overlooking the leads.

  “Putting some bars up at the window, miss,” said one of the workmen. “I hope we’re not going to make too much noise for you.”

  Mary smiled. “If you do I’ll take my work into another room,” she said.

  Why bars at the window? The neighbourhood was an unsavoury one, but never once had Mr. Meister been subjected to the indignity of harbouring an uninvited guest in the shape of a burglar. There was precious little to lose, so far as she could see, though Mr. Meister’s silver was of the finest. Hackitt was never tired of talking about the silver; it fascinated him.

  “Every time I polish that milk jug, miss, I get nine months,” her told her, and the mention of imprisonment brought her mind back to Scotland Yard.

  “Yes, miss,” said Sam, “I saw the Chief Commissioner—it’s funny how these coppers can never find anything out, without applying to us lags!”

  “What did he want to see you about, Hackitt?”

  “Well, miss”—Sam hesitated—“it was about a friend of mine, a gentleman I used to know.”

  He would tell her nothing but this. She was intrigued. She asked Meister at the first opportunity what the ex-convict had meant, and he also evaded the question.

  “It would be wise, my dear, if you did not discuss anything with Hackitt,” he said. “The man is a liar and wholly unscrupulous. There’s nothing he wouldn’t say to make a little bit of a scare. Have you heard from Johnny?”

  She shook her head. A letter had been due that morning but it had not arrived, and she was unaccountably disappointed. “Why are you putting these bars up, Maurice?”

  “To keep out bad characters,” he said flippantly. “I prefer that they should come through the door.”

  The little jest amused him. His general manner suggested that he had had recourse to his old system of stimulation.

  “It’s terribly lonely here at night,” he went on. “I wonder if you realise how lonely a man I am, Mary?”

 
“Why don’t you go out more?” she suggested.

  He shook his head.

  “That is the one thing I don’t want to do—just now,” he answered. “I wouldn’t mind so much if I could get somebody to stay later. In fact, my dear Mary, I won’t beat about the bush, but I should be very greatly obliged to you if you would spend a few of your evenings here.”

  He probably anticipated the answer he received.

  “I’m sorry, Maurice, but I don’t wish to,” she said. “That sounds very ungrateful, I know, after all you have done for me, but can’t you see how impossible it is?”

  He was looking at her steadily from under his lowered lids, and apparently did not accept her refusal in the light of a rebuff.

  “Won’t you come to supper one night and try me? I will play you the most gorgeous sonata that composer ever dreamt! It bores me to play to myself,” he went on, forestalling her reply. “Don’t you think you could be very sociable and come up one evening?”

  There was really no reason why she should not, and she hesitated.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said.

  That afternoon an unusual case came to Mr. Meister, the case of a drunken motorist who was arrested whilst he was driving a car, and she was preparing to go home that night when Mr. Meister came hurrying in from a visit to the unfortunate.

  “Don’t go yet, Mary,” he said. “I have a letter I want to write to Dr. Lomond about this wretched prisoner. Lomond has certified him as being drunk, but I am getting his own doctor down, and I want this old Scotsman to be present at the examination.”

  He dictated the letter, which she typed and brought to him for his signature.

  “How can I get this to Lomond’s house?” he asked, and looked up at her. “I wonder if you would mind taking it? It is on your way—he has lodgings in Shardeloes Road.”

  “I’ll take it with pleasure,” said Mary with a smile. “I am anxious to meet the doctor again.”

  “Again? When did you see him last?” he asked quickly.

  She told him of the little conversation they had had outside Scotland Yard. Meister pinched his lip.

  “He’s a shrewd old devil,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m not so sure that he hasn’t more brains than the whole of Scotland Yard together. Give him your brightest smile, Mary: I particularly want to get this man off a very serious charge. He is a very rich stockbroker who lives at Blackheath.”

  Mary wondered, as she left the house, what effect her bright smile might have in altering the diagnosis the doctor had made; she very rightly surmised that the police surgeon was not the type of man who was susceptible to outside influence.

  Dr. Lomond’s rooms were in a dull little house in a rather dull little road, and the landlady who answered her knock seemed to have taken complete control of the doctor’s well-being.

  “He’s only just come in, miss, and I don’t think he’ll see you.”

  But Mary insisted, giving her name, and the woman went away, to return immediately to usher her into a very Victorian parlour, where, on the most uncomfortable of horsehair chairs, sat the doctor, an open book on his knees and a pair of steel-rimmed pince-nez gripped to the end of his nose.

  “Well, well, my dear,” he said, as he closed the book and came cautiously to his feet. “What is your trouble?”

  She handed him the letter and he opened it and read, keeping up a long string of comment in an undertone, which she supposed was not intended to reach her.

  “Ah … from Meister … the slimy scoundrel … About the drunk … I thought so! Drunk he was and drunk he is, and all the great doctors of Harley Street will no’ make him sober … Verra well, verra well!”

  He folded the letter, put it in his pocket and beamed over his glasses at the girl.

  “He’s made a messenger of ye, has he? Will ye no’ sit down. Miss Lenley?”

  “Thank you, doctor,” she said, “I am due at my flat in a few minutes.”

  “Are ye now? And ye’d be a wise young leddy if ye remained in your flat.”

  What made her tell the doctor, she did not know: before she realised what she was saying, she was halfway through the story of her burglary.

  “Inspector Bliss?” he mused. “He was the man—yes, I heard of it. Alan Wembury told me. That’s a nice boy, Miss Lenley,” he added, looking at her shrewdly. “I’ll tell you something. You wonder why Bliss went into your flat? I don’t know, I can’t tell you with any accuracy, but I’m a psychologist, and I balance sane probabilities against eccentric impulses. That’s Greek to you and almost Greek to me too, Miss Lenley. Bliss went into your room because he thought you had something that he wanted very much, and when a police officer wants something very much, he takes unusual risks. You missed nothing?”

  She shook her head.

  “Nothing except a letter which didn’t belong to me. It was left in my place by Mrs. Milton. I found it and put it in the drawer. That was the only thing taken.”

  He rubbed his stubbly chin.

  “Would Inspector Bliss know it was there? And if he knew it was there, would he think it worth while risking his neck to get it? And if he got it, what would he discover?”

  Lomond shook his head.

  “It’s a queer little mystery which you’ve got all to yourself, young leddy.”

  He walked out into the passage with her and stood in his carpeted feet on the top step, waving her farewell, a limp cigarette drooping from under the white moustache.

  CHAPTER 29

  One unpleasant change had come over Maurice Meister since his visit to Scotland Yard: he was drinking heavily, the brandy bottle was never far away from his table. He looked old and ill in the mornings; did what he had never done before—wandered into his big room soon after breakfast, and, sitting down at the piano, played for hours on end, to her great distraction. Yet he played beautifully, with the touch of a master and the interpretation of one inspired. Sometimes she thought that the more dazed he was, the better he played. He used to sit at the piano, his eyes staring into vacancy, apparently seeing and hearing nothing. Hackitt used to come into the room and watch him with a contemptuous grin, speaking to him sometimes, well assured that the mind of Meister was a million years away. Even Mary had to wait by him patiently for long periods before she could obtain any intelligible answer to her questions.

  He was afraid of things, jumped at the slightest sound, was reduced to a quivering panic by an unexpected knock on his door. Hackitt, who was sleeping in the house, had dark stories to hint at as to what happened in the night. Once he came and found Maurice’s table littered with brandy bottles, all empty save one. Two days after the workmen had left the house, Alan Wembury, dozing in the charge room at Flanders Lane, waiting for the arrival of a prisoner whom he had sent his men to “pull in”, heard the telephone bell ring and the exchange between the desk sergeant and somebody at the other end of the line.

  “For you, Mr. Wembury,” said the sergeant, and Alan, shaking himself awake, took the instrument from his subordinate’s hand.

  It was Hackitt at the other end, and his voice was shrill with apprehension.

  “… I don’t know what’s the matter with him. He’s been raisin’ hell since three o’clock this morning. Can’t you bring a doctor along to see him, Mr. Wembury?”

  “What is the matter with him?” asked Alan.

  The scared man at the other end would not vouchsafe an opinion.

  “I don’t know—he’s locked up in his bedroom and he’s been shoutin’ an’ screamin’ like a lunatic.”

  “I’ll come along,” said Alan, and hung up the ‘phone, as Dr. Lomond appeared from the cells.

  This was the second time he had been called that night to deal with a case of delirium, and his presence at the police station at that hour of the morning was very providential. In a few words Alan retailed Hackitt’s report.

&nb
sp; “Drink it may be, dope it certainly is,” said Dr. Lomond, pulling on his cotton gloves deliberately. “I’ll go along with ye. Maybe I’ll save an inquest!”

  But Alan was half-way out of the station-house by now, and Dr. Lomond had to run to overtake him.

  In a quarter of an hour Wembury was pressing the bell in the black door. It was opened immediately by Hackitt, dressed in shirt and trousers, his teeth chattering, a look of genuine concern on his face.

  “This is a new stunt, isn’t it, Sam?” asked Wembury sternly. “Ringing up the police station for the divisional surgeon? Why didn’t you send for Meister’s own doctor?”

  Hackitt thought that this was a foolish question but did not say so.

  “I didn’t know who his doctor was, and he’s been shouting blue murder—I didn’t know what to do with him.”

  “I’ll step up and see him,” said Lomond. “Where is his room?”

  Going to a door, Sam opened it.

  “Up here, sir.”

  Lomond looked up and presently the sound of his footsteps treading the stairs grew fainter. “You were afraid you’d be suspected if he died, eh?” asked Wembury. “That’s the worst of having a bad record, Hackitt.”

  He picked up a silver salver from the table—Meister had surprisingly good silver. Sam was an interested spectator.

  “That’s heavy, ain’t it?” said Sam with professional interest. “That’d sell well. What would I get for that?”

  “About three years,” said Alan coldly, and Mr. Hackitt closed his eyes.

  Presently he remembered that he had a communication to make. “‘Ere, Mr. Wembury, what’s Bliss doin’ on your manor?” [Manor = district. E.W.]

  “Bliss? Are you sure, Sam?”

  “I couldn’t make any mistake about a mug like that,” said Sam. “He’s been hanging about since I’ve been here.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” confessed the ex-convict. “I found him hiding upstairs yesterday.”