‘I’ll give you one guess now. He’s a crook and a card-sharp. Adam & Sills are the lawyers who do the barking for these kind of birds. That places him. Now we’ll find his name. Get on to the Yard, tell ’em to call every hotel, big and small, in the West End, and find if a man has arrived there from abroad. Say that his first name is Donald. You’ll find out where he came from—’
‘Cape Town,’ said Elk.
Mason nodded.
‘I expected that. How do you know?’
‘His boots are new; they’ve got a tag to them, “Cleghorn, Adderley Street”.’
‘Then make it South Africa,’ said Mason.
Elk was half-way across the room when Mason shouted him back.
‘Ask the bureau to give you the name, private address and telephone number of the manager of the Maida Vale branch of the Midland Bank. Wait a minute, don’t rush me—tell the bureau to get on to the manager and find if he remembers on whose account two notes for a hundred pounds’—he scribbled down the numbers on a slip of paper and handed them to Elk—‘were issued, and, if possible, to whom they were issued. I’ve got an idea we shan’t discover that.’
When Elk returned, Mr Mason was sitting, chin in hand, his heavy, round face more than ordinarily blank.
‘I’ll see Lamborn,’ he said.
Mr Lamborn was brought from the detention-room, voluble and truculent.
‘If there’s a law in this country—’ he began.
‘There isn’t,’ said Mr Mason genially. ‘You’ve broken ’em all. Sit down, Harry.’
Mr Lamborn looked at him suspiciously.
‘You goin’ to be sympathetic?’ he asked.
The glamour of legend surrounded Mr Mason. He was indeed a sympathetic man, and under the genial influence of his understanding and sympathetic heart many wrongdoers had, with misguided confidence, told him much more than they ever intended to tell, a fact which they had bitterly regretted when they stood before a jury and heard their frankness exploited with disastrous effect.
Mason beamed.
‘I can’t be wicked with you fellows—naturally I can’t.’ His voice was at its most unctuous. ‘Life’s a bit difficult for all of us, and I know just how hard it is for some of you birds to get an honest living.’
‘I dessay,’ said Lamborn icily.
‘You never do any harm, Harry’—Mr Mason laid his hand upon the other’s knee and patted it softly—‘by telling the police all you know. It isn’t much, because, if you knew enough to come in out of the rain, you wouldn’t be thieving for a living. But this is a case of murder.’
‘Nobody says I did it,’ said Lamborn quickly.
‘Nobody says so at the moment,’ agreed Mr Mason pleasantly; ‘but you never can tell what stories get around. You know Tidal Basin, Harry—they’d swear your life away for a slice of pineapple. Now let’s be perfectly open and above-board.’
He leaned back in his chair and surveyed the other with fatherly benevolence.
‘The constable saw you go over to this man and put your hand in his pocket, take out a pocket-book and possibly a watch. When you were detected you threw them over the wall, where they have since been found by Detective-Sergeant Elk. Isn’t that so, Elk?’
‘I know nothing about ’em,’ said Lamborn loudly, and Mr Mason shook his head with a sad smile.
‘You saw this fellow fall and you thought he was soused. You went over and you dipped him for his clock and pack.’
‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about,’ said Mr Lamborn rapidly. ‘I’ve never heard such expressions in me life.’
‘Let me put it in plain English,’ said Mason gently. ‘You put your hand in his pocket and took out his pocket-case and his watch.’
‘That,’ said Lamborn emphatically, ‘is a damn dirty lie!’
Mr Mason sighed, and looked at Elk despairingly.
‘What can you do with ’em?’ he asked.
‘I don’t want none of your sympathy,’ said the ungracious Lamborn. ‘There’s too many people in stir through listening to your smarming. I see the gentleman fall and I went over to render him assistance.’
‘Medical assistance, I’m sure,’ murmured Mason, ‘you being an M.D. of Dartmoor and having learnt first aid at Wormwood Scrubs. Now come across, Harry. You can save me a lot of trouble by telling the truth.’
‘I—’ began Lamborn
‘Wait a moment.’ The reservoir of Mr Mason’s urbanity was running low and his voice was a little sharper. ‘If you’ll tell me the truth I’ll undertake not to charge you. I shall hold you as a Crown witness—’
‘Look here, Mr Mason,’ said Lamborn hotly, ‘what sort of a can do you think I am? I’ve been treated disgraceful since I’ve been at this station. They stripped me naked and took all me clothes away. They haven’t even a sense of decency! Give me these old duds to put on. And why did they take me clothes away? To frame up evidence by puttin’ stuff in me pocket—I know the police!’
Mason sighed, and when he spoke it was very deliberately and offensively.
‘If you had a little more brains you’d be half-witted,’ he said. ‘That’s not an original remark, but it applies. There are men twice as sane as you living in padded cells. You poor, ignorant gutter scum, don’t you understand that your clothes were taken away to see if there was any blood on them, and that your dirty hands were examined for the same reason? And don’t you realise that a man of my rank wouldn’t trouble even to spit at you if he hadn’t a very good reason? I don’t want you for murder—get that into your sawdust. I don’t even want you for robbery. I want you to tell me the truth: did you, or did you not, dip this man when he was lying on the ground? And if you tell me the truth I’ll offer no charge against you. Let me tell you this.’ He leaned forward and tapped the other’s knee with a heavy knuckle. ‘You won’t be able to understand it, but I’m doing my duty when I tell you. The whole of this case may swing upon whether you make a voluntary statement that you took this man’s pocket-case out of his pocket—the watch doesn’t matter—whilst he was lying on the ground, or that you did not.’
‘I didn’t,’ said Lamborn loudly. ‘I defy you to prove it!’
The chief inspector groaned.
‘Take him away before I forget myself,’ he said simply.
Elk gripped the arm of his prisoner and marched him to the desk.
‘You fool,’ he said en route, ‘why didn’t you speak?’
Lamborn snorted.
‘Why didn’t I speak?’ he demanded scornfully. ‘Blimey, look what I’m getting for saying nothin’!’
A minute later he was charged before an apathetic station-sergeant, and went noisily to the cells.
Elk came back to his chief with information that had come through whilst the charge was in progress.
‘The two notes were issued on the account of Mr Louis Landor, of Teign Court, Maida Vale. Landor is either an American or has lived in America. He’s an engineer, a fairly rich man, and drew out another three thousand pounds this morning—he’s going abroad.’
‘Bon voyage to him,’ said Mason, in a cynical humour. ‘Going abroad, is he?’
He gazed at the knife-sheath lying on a sheet of paper before him, and pointed with his little finger to ornate initials engraved on a small gold plate.
‘L.L.—they may stand for Leonard Lowe: on the other hand, they may stand for Louis Landor.’
‘Who’s Leonard Lowe?’ asked Elk, momentarily dense.
‘There is no such person,’ said the superintendent patiently. ‘Listen, Elk—living in Tidal Basin hasn’t sharpened your wits, has it? I’ll be moving you to the West End soon—“C” Division. You’ll shine amongst that batch of suckers.’
He got up from the table and walked heavily through the charge-room to the little apartment which the police matron used as a duty-room. On the plain truckle bed lay Lorna Weston; her face was pale, her lips colourless.
‘She might be dead,’ said Mason.
Dr M
arford sighed, took out his cheap American watch and looked at it.
‘So might be quite a large number of my patients,’ he said listlessly. ‘I don’t know whether you’re interested in the phenomena of life and death, Mr Mason—my own interest is strictly professional—but at this moment there is a lady waiting for me—’
‘Yes, yes,’ interrupted Mason good-humouredly. ‘We forget nothing. I’ve arranged for your district nurse to ’phone you through to the station. We’ll have to do something with this woman.’
He looked dubiously down at the still figure on the bed, moved slightly the blanket that covered her and felt her hand.
‘She’s a dope?’ he asked.
Dr Marford nodded.
‘I found a hypodermic in her bag,’ he said.
‘Rudd thinks she should be taken away to a hospital or infirmary.’
Marford assented reluctantly. Here was the inevitable key witness, and he was loath to leave her out of his sight.
Rudd came bustling in importantly.
‘I’ve fixed a bed at the infirmary,’ he said. ‘Of course they told me they had no accommodation, but as soon as I mentioned my name—’ He smiled jovially at Marford. ‘Now if it had been you, my dear fellow—’
‘I shouldn’t have asked. I should simply have taken the case there and they’d have had to find a bed for her.’ said Marford.
Dr Rudd was a little ruffled.
‘Yes, yes; but that is hardly the way, is it? I mean, there are certain professional—um—courtesies to be observed. The resident surgeon is a friend of mine, as it happens—Grennett; he was with me at Guy’s.’
He dropped Marford as being unworthy of his confidence, and addressed the superintendent.
‘I’m getting the ambulance down right away.’
‘Have you seen the man again?’ asked Mason.
‘The man?’ Dr Rudd frowned. ‘Oh, you mean the dead man? Yes. Your Mr Elk was there, searching him. I made one or two observations which I think may be useful to you, superintendent. For instance, there’s a bruise on the left cheek.’
Mason nodded.
‘Yes, he was fighting. Dr Marford saw that.’
Rudd was called away at that moment, and bustled out with an apology. The very apology was offensive to Mr Mason, for it inferred that investigations were momentarily suspended until the police surgeon returned.
The woman on the bed showed no sign of life. The doctor, at Mason’s request, exhibited two tiny punctures on the left arm.
‘Recently made,’ he explained, ‘but there’s no evidence that she’s an addict. I can find no other punctures, for example, and the mere fact that the shot has had such an extraordinarily deadening effect upon her rather suggests that she’s a novice.’
He lifted the arm and dropped it; it fell lifelessly.
‘When will she recover consciousness?’
Marford shook his head.
‘I don’t know. At present she’s not in a state where I could recommend giving restoratives, but I’ll leave that to the infirmary people. The resident surgeon is a personal friend of Dr Rudd’s and is therefore in all probability a man of genius.’
The eyes of the two men met. Mr Mason did not attempt to disguise his own amusement.
‘Fine,’ he said. And then: ‘Have you ever been in a murder case before?’
The doctor’s lips twitched with the hint of a smile.
‘Manslaughter—this evening,’ he said. ‘No, I have not been called in professionally. Not one doctor in eight thousand ever attends a murder case in the whole course of his practice—not if he’s wise,’ he added.
Mason became suddenly interested in this shabby figure with the pained eyes and the thin, starved face.
‘You find living not particularly pleasant in this neighbourhood, doctor? Couldn’t you work your clinic somewhere more salubrious?’
Marford shrugged.
‘It’s all one to me,’ he said. ‘My own wants are very few and they are satisfied. The clinic must be where it is wanted. For myself, I do not crave for the society of intellectual men, because intellectual men bore me.’
‘And you’ve no theory about this murder?’
Mason’s good-humoured eyes were smiling again.
The doctor did not answer immediately; he bit his lip and looked thoughtfully past the superintendent.
‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘To my mind, this case is obviously a case of revenge. He was not murdered for profit, he was deliberately assassinated to right some wrong probably committed years before. And it was not in the larger sense premeditated: the murder was committed on the spur of the moment as opportunity offered.’
Mason stared at him.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because I think it.’ Marford was smiling. ‘Unless you believe that this man was definitely lured to this spot with the object of killing him, and that a most elaborate scheme was formed for enticing him into this neighbourhood, you must believe that it was unpremeditated.’
Superintendent Mason, fists on hips, legs wide apart, peered at Marford.
‘You’re not one of these amateur detectives I’ve been reading about, doctor?’ he challenged. ‘The sort of man who’s going to make the police look foolish in chapter thirty-nine and take all the credit for the discovery?’
Then unexpectedly he clapped his hand on Marford’s bony shoulder.
‘You talk sense, anyway, and every doctor doesn’t talk that. I could name you one, but you’d probably report me to the British Medical Association. You’re quite right—your theory is my theory.’
And then, suddenly: ‘Do you exclude the possibility that Lamborn may have knifed him?’
‘Entirely,’ said the other emphatically, and Mason nodded.
‘I might tell you’—he dropped his voice confidentially—‘that that is the ground plan of Dr Rudd’s theory.’
‘He has another,’ said Marford. ‘I wonder he hasn’t told you.’
CHAPTER VIII
MASON looked down at the woman again. She had not moved, so far as the eye could see had not even breathed, since she came in.
‘She’s got it locked up there.’ He touched the white forehead lightly. ‘No, it’s an ordinary police case, doctor. Everything looks mysterious until somebody squeals, and then the case is so easy that even a poor old gentleman from Scotland Yard could work it out.’
He frowned at the woman.
‘All right, shoot her into hospital,’ he said brusquely, and returned to his room.
It was Inspector Bray’s room really; a cupboard of a place, with a table and chair, a last year’s almanac on the wall, two volumes of the Police Code, a telephone list a foot long—and three reprints of popular fiction. They were decently hidden from view by the Police Code, and Mr Mason took one down to the table and opened it.
A taste for thrilling fiction is not phenomenal in a detective officer. With this particular story Mr Mason was well acquainted, and he turned the leaves casually and disparagingly. Here was a murder the like of which never came the way of the average police officer. There were beautiful ladies involved, ladies who had their own Rolls-Royces and lived in exotic apartments; gentlemen who dressed for dinner every night—even the detectives did that. Here murder had a colour and a fragrance; it was set in scenes of beauty, in half-timbered country houses, with lawns that sloped down to a quiet river; in Park Lane mansions, where nothing less than a footman in resplendent uniform could find the dead body of his master lying by the side of a broken Sèvres vase. High politics came into the story; ministers of state were suspected; powerful cars sped seaward to where the steam cutter was waiting to carry its murderous owner to his floating den of vice.
Mr Mason shook his head, scratched his cheek and closed the book, and returned to his own murder, to the drabness of Tidal Basin, with its innumerable side streets and greasy pavements, jerry-built houses all of a plan, where three families lived in a space inadequate for a Park Lane bathroom. Silent Tida
l Basin, with its swing bridges over the narrow entrance to docks, and its cold electric standards revealing ugliness even on the darkest night. People were living and dying here; one death more or less surely made no difference. But because a man who was a card-sharp, probably a blackguard, had met his just end, there were lights burning in all sorts of odd rooms at Scotland Yard, men searching records, a printing press working at feverish speed, police cyclists flying to the ends of the area carrying the wet sheets which described the dead man, and in ten thousand streets and squares policemen were reading, by the light of their electric lamps, the description of a man unknown, killed by one known even less.
The machinery was working; the wheels and pistons whirled and thundered—purposeless, it would seem, save to entertain the tall men on their lonely beats with first-hand news of tragedy.
Mason got up and walked out to the entrance of the station. A dim blue light painted his bronzed cheek a sickly hue. The street was deserted. Rain was falling steadily; every window of every house that faced the station was black and menacing.
Why he shivered he did not know. He was too serious a police officer to be influenced by atmosphere. And yet the unfriendliness of this area, all its possibilities of evil, penetrated his armour of indifference.
A queer, boozy lot of people…A thought struck him, and he slapped the palm of his hand. There were three C.I.D. men in the charge-room; he called them and gave them instructions.
‘Take a couple of guns,’ he said. ‘You may need them.’
After he had seen them depart, he sent an urgent ’phone message to Scotland Yard. Then he went across to where Dr Marford was standing, talking to the station clerk.
‘What about this man with the white mask? You know everything that happens in this pitch. Is it a yarn, or is there any foundation for it? There used to be a man up west—had some sort of accident that upset his features—he used to wear that kind of thing.’
The doctor nodded slowly.
‘I think that is the man I have met,’ he said.
‘You’ve met him?’ asked Mason in surprise.
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