The Ringer, Book 1

by Edgar Wallace

  “Mr. Bliss?” To say that Wembury was surprised is to describe his emotions mildly.

  “I said to him ‘What are you doin’ up here?’“ said Sam impressively.

  Wembury shook his head. “You’re lying,” he said.

  “All right,” retorted the disgusted Sam. “All you fellers hang together.”

  The feet of Lomond sounded on the stairs, and presently he came in.

  “Is he all right, doctor?” asked Wembury.

  “Meister? O, Lord, yes. What a lad! Meister? Good old English family that. Nearly came over with the Conqueror—only the Conqueror lost the war.”

  Lomond smelt at the decanter that was on the table, and Wembury nodded. “That’s the poison that is killing him.”

  Lomond sniffed again. “It’s no’ poison, it’s Scotch! It’s the best way of poisoning yourself I know. No!”—he took a pinch of snuff from an imaginary box. “Cocaine, Wembury—that’s the stuff that’s settling Meister.”

  He looked round the room. “This is a queer kind of office, Wembury.”

  “Yes,” said Alan soberly, “and some queer things have happened in this room, I should imagine. Have they put the window bars in?” he asked, addressing Sam, and the man nodded.

  “Yes, sir. What are they for?”

  “To keep The Ringer out!”

  Sam Hackitt’s face was a study. “The Ringer!” he gasped. “That’s what they’re for? Here! I’m through with this job! I wondered why he had the bars put in and why he wanted me to sleep on the premises.”

  “Oh—you’re afraid of The Ringer, are you?” Lomond asked, interested, and Wembury intervened.

  “Don’t be a fool, Hackitt. They’re all scared of The Ringer.”

  “I wouldn’t stay here at nights for a hundred thousand rounds,” said Sam fervently, and the doctor sniffed.

  “It seems a fearful lot of money for a very doubtful service,” was his dry comment. “I’d like you to go away for a while, Mr. Hackitt.”

  He himself closed the door on the perturbed Sam.

  “Come up and look at Meister,” he said, and Alan followed the slow-moving doctor up the stairs.

  “He’s alive all right,” said Lomond, standing in the doorway.

  Meister lay on his tumbled bed, breathing stertorously, his face purple, his hands clutching at the silken coverlet.

  A commonplace sordid ending to what promised to be high tragedy, thought Alan.

  And at that moment something gripped his heart, as though an instinctive voice whispered tremendously that in this end to his first scare was the beginning of the drama which would involve not only Maurice Meister, but the girl who was to him something more than the little carriage child who passed and who swung on the gate of his father’s cottage, something more than the sister of the man he had arrested, something more than he dared confess to himself.

  CHAPTER 30

  Once or twice during the hour of strenuous work which followed, he heard Sam Hackitt’s stealthy feet on the stairs, and once caught a glimpse of him as he disappeared in a hurry. When he came down it was nearly seven o’clock. Sam, very businesslike in his green baize apron, with a pail of water and a wash-leather in his hand, was industriously cleaning the windows, somewhat hampered by the bars.

  “How is he, sir?” he asked.

  Alan did not reply. He was at the mysterious door, the bolted door that was never opened and led to nowhere.

  “Where does this door lead?”

  Sam Hackitt shook his head. It was a question that had puzzled him, and he had promised himself the pleasure of an Inspection the first time he was left alone in the house.

  “I don’t know, I’ve never seen it open. Maybe it’s where he keeps his money. That fellow must be worth millions, Wembury.”

  Alan pulled up the bolts, and tried the door again. It was locked, and he looked round. “Is there a key to this?”

  Sam hesitated. He had the thief’s natural desire to appear in the light of a fool.

  “Yes, there is a key,” he said at last, his anxiety for information overcoming his inclination towards a reputation for innocence. “It’s hanging up over the mantelpiece. I happen to know because—”

  “Because you’ve tried it,” said Alan, and Sam protested so violently that he guessed that whatever plan he may have formed had not yet been put into execution.

  Alan walked to the door leading to the room above and listened: he thought he heard Meister talking. By the time Lomond returned, Alan Wembury was growing a little weary of a vigil which he knew was unnecessary. If he had admitted the truth to himself, he was waiting to see Mary Lenley.

  Lomond worried him a little. This enthusiastic amateur in crime detection seemed to have come under the fascinating influence of Cora Ann. He had seen them together twice and had remonstrated.

  “She’s a dangerous woman, doctor.”

  “And I’m a fearfully dangerous man,” said Lomond. “I like her—I’m sorry for the poor wee thing. That is my pet vice—being sorry for women.”

  “Mind that you aren’t sorry for yourself some day!” said Wembury quietly, and the doctor chuckled.

  “Eh? What is that? A warning to young lads?” he asked, and changed the subject.

  Wembury was standing outside the house when the police surgeon returned.

  “I’ll go up and see this poor laddie,” he said sardonically. “Are ye waiting for somebody?”

  “Yes—no. I’m waiting for one of my men,” said Alan, and the doctor grinned to himself—he had at last succeeded in making a police officer blush.

  Meister was dozing when he looked in at him, and he came downstairs to inspect again the room which was both office and drawing-room of Meister’s establishment.

  Sam came in and watched the doctor’s inspection with interest.

  “I saw Wembury outside,” he said, with the easy familiarity of his class. “I suppose he’s waiting to see Miss Lenley.”

  The doctor looked round.

  “Who is Miss Lenley?”

  “Oh, she’s the typewriter,” said Sam, and the doctor’s eyebrows rose.

  “Typewriter? They have a sex, have they? What a pretty idea!” He lifted the cover of the machine. “What’s that one—male or female?”

  “I’m talking about the young lady, sir—the lady who works it,” said the patient Sam.

  “Oh, the typist? Who is she?” Lomond was interested. “Oh, yes! She’s the sister of the man in prison, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, sir—Johnny Lenley. Got three for pinchin’ a pearl necklace.”

  “A thief, eh?” He walked over to the piano and opened it.

  “A gentleman thief,” explained Sam.

  “Does she play this?” The doctor struck a key softly.

  “No, sir—him.”

  “Meister?” Lomond frowned. “Oh, so I’ve heard!”

  “When he’s all dopy,” explained Sam. “Can’t hear nothing! Can’t see nothing. He gives me the creeps sometimes.”

  “Musical. That’s bad.”

  “He plays all right,” said Sam with fine contempt for the classics. “I like a bit of music myself, but the things he plays—” He gave a horrible imitation of Chopin’s Nocturne—“Lummy, gives you the fair hump!”

  The front door bell called the ex-convict from the room, and Dr. Lomond, sitting on the piano stool, his hands thrust into his pockets, continued his survey of the room. And as he looked, a curious thing happened. Above the door, concealed in the architrave, the red light suddenly glowed. It was a signal—from whom? What was its significance? Even as he stared, the light went out. Lomond went on tiptoes to the door and listened. He could hear nothing.

  Just then Hackitt returned with half-a-dozen letters in his hand.

  “The post—” he began, and then suddenly saw Lomond’s fac
e.

  “Hackitt,” asked the doctor softly, “who else is in this house beside you and Meister?”

  He looked at him suspiciously. “Nobody. The old cook’s ill.”

  “Who gets Meister’s breakfast?”

  “I do,” nodded Sam; “a biscuit and a corkscrew!”

  Lomond looked up at the ceiling. “What’s above here?”

  “The lumber-room.” Hackitt’s uneasiness was increasing. “What’s up, doctor?”

  Lomond shook his head. “I thought—no, nothing.”

  “Here! You ain’t half putting the wind up me! Do you want to see the lumber room, doctor?”

  Lomond nodded and followed the man up the stairs, past Meister’s room to a dingy apartment stacked with old furniture. He was hardly out of the room when Wembury came in with Mary Lenley.

  “You’re getting me a bad name, Alan,” she smiled. “I suppose I shouldn’t call you Alan when you are on duty? I ought to call you Inspector Wembury.”

  “I’d be sorry if you didn’t call me Alan. Now it does require an effort to call you Mary. Never forget that I was brought up to call you Miss Mary and take off my cap to your father!”

  Mary sighed.

  “Isn’t it odd—everything?”

  “Yes—it’s queer.” He watched her as she took off coat and hat. “People wouldn’t believe it if you put it in a book. The Lenleys of Lenley Court, and the Wemburys of the gardener’s cottage!”

  She laughed aloud at this.

  “Don’t be stupid. Heavens, what a lot of letters!”

  There was only one which interested her: it was addressed in pencil in Maurice Meister’s neat hand. Evidently its contents were of such engrossing interest that she forgot Alan Wembury’s presence. He saw the colour surge to her pale cheek and a new light come to her eyes, and his heart sank. He could not know that Meister had repeated his invitation to supper and that the flush on Mary’s cheek was one of anger.

  “Mary,” he said for the second time, “are you listening?”

  She looked up from the letter she was reading.

  “Yes.”

  How should he warn her? All that morning he had been turning over in his mind this most vital of problems.

  “Are you all right here?” he asked awkwardly.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I mean—well, Meister hasn’t the best of reputations. Does your brother know you’re working here?”

  She shook her head and a shadow came to her face. “No—I didn’t want to worry him. Johnny is so funny sometimes, even in his letters.”

  Alan drew a long breath. “Mary, you know where I am to be found?”

  “Yes, Alan, you told me that before.” She was surprised.

  “Well—er—well, you never know what little problems and difficulties you may have. I want you—I’d like you to—well, I’d rather like to feel that if anything unpleasant occurred—” He floundered on, almost incoherently.

  “Unpleasant?” Did he guess, she wondered? She was panic stricken at the thought.

  “And you were—well, distressed,” he went on desperately, “you know what I mean? Well, if anybody—how shall I put it? … If anybody annoyed you, I’d like you to come to me. Will you?”

  Her lips twitched. “Alan! You’re being sentimental!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  As he reached the door she called him by name. “You’re rather a dear, aren’t you?” she said gently.

  “No, I think I’m a damned fool!” said Alan gruffly, and slammed the door behind him.

  She stood by the table thinking; she had a vague uneasiness that all was not well; that behind the habitual niceness of Maurice Meister was something sinister, something evil. If Johnny was only free—Johnny, who would have sacrificed his life for her.

  CHAPTER 31

  There was a way into Meister’s house which was known to three people, and one of these, Maurice hoped, was dead. The second was undoubtedly in prison, for John Lenley had surprised the lawyer’s secret. Meister’s grounds had at one time extended to the bank of a muddy creek, and even now, there was a small ramshackle warehouse standing in a patch of weed-grown grass that was part of Meister’s demesne, although it was separated from the house in Flanders Road by a huddle of slum dwellings and crooked passage-ways.

  That morning there walked along the canal bank a young man, who stopped opposite the factory, and, looking round to see if he was observed, inserted a key in the weather-beaten door and passed into the rank ground. In one corner was a tiny brick dwelling which looked like a magazine, and the same key that had opened the outer gate opened the door of this, and the stranger slipped inside and locked the door after him before he began to go down a winding staircase that had a been put there in recent years.

  At the bottom of the stairs was a brick-vaulted passage, high enough for a short man to walk without discomfort, but not sufficiently elevated to admit the stranger’s progress without his stooping. The floor was unlittered, and although there were no lights the newcomer searched a little niche half a dozen steps up the passage and found there the four electric torches which Meister kept there for his own use. The passage had recently been swept by the lawyer’s own hands.

  He expected that very soon a delicious visitor would pass that way, escaping the observation of the men who guarded the house, and he himself had conducted Mary Lenley through the passage which held none of the terrors that are usually associated with such subterranean ways.

  The stranger walked on, flashing his light ahead of him. After three minutes’ walk the passage turned abruptly to the left, and finally it terminated in what had the appearance of a cellar, from which there led upward a flight of carpeted steps. The stranger went cautiously and noiselessly up these stairs. Half-way up he felt the tread give and grinned. It was, he knew, a pneumatic arrangement by which a warning lamp was lit in Meister’s room. He wondered who was with him now, and whether his forgetfulness of the signal embarrassed the lawyer.

  He came to a long panel and listened. He could hear voices: Meister’s and—Mary Lenley’s. He frowned. Mary here? He thought she had given up the work. Bending his ear close to the panel, he listened.

  “… my dear,” Meister was saying, “you’re exquisite—adorable. To see your fingers move over that shabby old typewriter’s keys is like watching a butterfly flit from flower to flower.”

  “How absurd you are, Maurice!” said Mary. Then came the slow sound of music as Meister sat at the piano. Mary’s voice again, and the sound of a little struggle.

  Meister caught her by the shoulders and was drawing her to him when, staring past her, he saw a hand come round the corner of the door.

  He only saw this and in another second, with a scream of terror, Meister had flown from the room, leaving the girl alone.

  She stood rooted to the spot terror-stricken. Farther and farther along the wall crept the hand and then the panel swung open and a young man stepped into the room.

  “Johnny!”

  In another instant, Mary Lenley was sobbing in the arms of her brother.

  CHAPTER 32

  It was Johnny Lenley!

  “Darling—why didn’t you tell me you were coming back? … This is a wonderful surprise! Why, I only wrote to you this morning!”

  He put her away at arm’s length and looked into her face.

  “Mary, what are you doing in Meister’s office?” he asked quietly, and something in his tone chilled her.

  “I’m working for him,” she said. “You knew I was, Johnny, before —before you went away.” And then her hand went up to his face. “It’s wonderful to see you—wonderful! Let me look at you. You poor boy, have you had a bad time?”

  To the watchful and interested Mr. Hackitt, who had made an unobtrusive entrance and with whom sentiment was a weak point, this seemed an unn
ecessary question.

  “Not so bad as it might have been,” said Johnny carelessly. Then: “Why did you go to work at all? I left money with Maurice and told him I didn’t want you to work any more. It was the last thing I told him at the Old Bailey.”

  Hackitt clicked his lips impatiently. “Left money with Meister? You’re mad!”

  But Lenley did not hear. “Did he stop the allowance?” he asked, his anger rising at the thought.

  “No, Johnny, he didn’t … I didn’t know there was an allowance even.”

  The brother nodded. “I see,” he said.

  “You’re not angry with me, are you, Johnny?” She raised her tearful eyes to his. “I can’t believe it is you. Why, I didn’t expect you home for an awful long time.”

  “My sentence was remitted,” said Lenley. “A half-lunatic convict attacked the deputy governor, and I saved him from a mauling. I had no idea that the authorities would do more than strike off a few days from my sentence. Yesterday at dinner-time the governor sent for me and told me that I was to be released on licence.”

  Again Mr. Hackitt registered despair. Johnny Lenley’s notions had never been as professional as he could have desired them, and here he was admitting without shame that he had saved the life of one of his natural enemies! The girl’s hands were on her brother’s shoulders, her grave eyes searching his face.

  “You’re finished with that dreadful life, haven’t you?” she asked in a low voice. “We’re going somewhere out of London to live. I spoke to Maurice about it. He said he’d help you to go straight. Johnny, you wouldn’t have had that terrible sentence if you had only followed his advice.”

  John Lenley bit his lip. “Meister told you that, did he?” he asked slowly. “Mary, are you in love with Maurice?” She stiffened, and he mistook her indignation for embarrassment. “Do you love him?”

  “He has been kind,” she said coldly. She struggled hard to think of some favourable quality of Meister.

  “I realise that, dear,” he nodded, “but how has he been kind?” And then, seeing her distress, he gripped her shoulders and shook her gently, and the hard face softened, and into the grey, deep-set eyes came the old mother look she had loved in him. “Anyway, you’ll work no more.”