The Terror

by Edgar Wallace

  ‘The next morning, as happy as a child, I drove off to St Pancras and Tilbury, and on the Saturday afternoon was steaming down the Channel, so excited that I hardly knew what to do with myself.

  ‘The boat had a full complement of passengers. I was travelling second class, because, although my brother had sent the first class fare, I wanted to save him as much as possible, and second class on a P. & O. steamer is extraordinarily comfortable.

  ‘This particular ship was crowded with people, the majority of whom were bound for India and quite a number for Colombo. We dropped the Indian passengers at Port Said or Suez—I’m not sure which—and now that the dining-room was thinned out and there was space to walk about the decks, one began to take notice of one’s fellow passengers.

  ‘I had seen Lorna Weston the day we left England, but I did not speak to her until we were passing through the Suez Canal, and then only to exchange a few words about the scenery.

  ‘It was at Colombo, where we both went ashore, that I came to know her. She was very pretty and vivacious, and was, she told me, travelling to Australia to take a position as nursery governess. Looking back from my present age, I can see that, if I had had more experience of life, I should have known she was much too young for the job, and should have guessed, what I later knew, that she was going out in the hope of finding easy money.

  ‘I told her very little about myself, except that I was a medical student, but for some reason or other she got it into her head that I was a wealthy young man or had wealthy relatives. She may have got this idea because I was travelling second from choice, or because I had a lot of money in my possession—I had a couple of hundred pounds in notes which I had managed to save from my allowance. I had an idiotic idea that it would please Walter if I handed him back this colossal sum, as it appeared to me, out of the money he had so generously sent me.

  ‘If you know anything about ship travel you will understand that it takes no more than a few days for an ordinary friendship between a young man and a girl to develop into a raging passion. We were not five days out of Colombo when, if she had asked me to jump over the side of the ship, I should have obeyed. I adored her. I loved her, and she loved me. So we told each other. I’m not complaining about her, I’m not reproaching her, and I don’t want to say one single word that’s going to make life any harder for her, except that I must tell the truth to explain why she was living in Tidal Basin.

  ‘She only loved one man in her life, and that was Bateman. I say this without bitterness or hatred. She probably loved the worst man she has ever met or is ever destined to meet. It is not necessary for me to tell you what happened during the remainder of the voyage. I had moments of exaltation, of despair, or heroic resolve, or terrible depression. I wondered what Walter would say when I told him that at the outset of my career, before I was in a position to earn a penny, I had engaged myself to a girl who had been a perfect stranger to me when I went on board.

  ‘He came down to the dock to meet me, and I introduced him to Lorna, but I did not tell him of my intentions until we were back in the hotel where he was staying and where he had rented a room for me. To my surprise, he took it very well.

  ‘“You’re a bit young, Tommy, but I’m not so sure that it’s a bad thing for you. If I had married I mightn’t have made such a fool of myself. But don’t you think you could wait for a year?”

  ‘I told him there were imperative reasons why we should marry almost at once, and his face fell.

  ‘“She told you that, I suppose? She may be mistaken.”

  ‘But I couldn’t argue the matter, and after a while Walter agreed.

  ‘“I’m going through a pretty bad time,” he said. “I’ve been speculating on the Stock Exchange, and I’ve lost quite a lot of money racing. But things will take a turn soon, and you shall have the best wedding present that money can buy.”

  ‘How bad was his financial position I only discovered by accident. He had sold his little property and for the moment was without occupation. His prison life had naturally brought him into contact with all sorts of undesirables, but so far he had resisted their solicitations, and had steered a straight path.

  ‘Walter was not a strong character. Viewed dispassionately, he was a weakling, because he invariably took the easiest route. But he had the heart of a good woman, and I can’t help feeling that again it was to make some provision for me that he fell back into his old ways. In fact, I am sure of it. His wedding present to me was five hundred pounds, and it didn’t make me a bit happy, because I had read in the papers that a country bank had been stuck up the day before and a considerable sum of money had been stolen. In fact, I taxed him with it, but he laughed it off.

  ‘It was a few days after the wedding that I made up my mind. I left Lorna at the hotel and went in search of Walter. I found him in a restaurant which was also a bar, and that was the first time I met Donald Bateman. Bateman went out, and I took this opportunity to put forward my proposal, which was no less than that I should share a little of his risk.

  ‘“You’re mad,” he said, when it dawned upon him what I meant.

  ‘I suppose I was. But if I were to analyse my motive from the standpoint of my experience, I should say I was no more than stupidly quixotic. He wouldn’t hear of it, but I insisted.

  ‘“You’ve been taking these risks for me all these years. You’ve suffered imprisonment. Every time you go out on one of your adventures you stand the risk of being killed. Let me take a little of it.”

  ‘Bateman came back at that moment, and I realised he was well in Walter’s confidence. I tried to put the matter hypothetically to Bateman, without betraying myself and Walter, but it was a fairly childish effort, and he saw through it at once.

  ‘“Why not, Walter? It’s better than taking in any of these roustabouts—Grayling or the Dutchman. Besides, he’s a gentleman, and nobody would imagine he was a member of a gang of crooks.”

  ‘Walter was furious, but his fury did not last long: he was, as I say, weak, though I’m not blaming him, for, if he had refused, I believe I should have gone off and stuck up a bank of my own out of sheer bravado.

  ‘We all three went back to the hotel, and I introduced my wife to Bateman. He was a good-looking fellow in those days and terribly popular with women; the worse they were the more was the fascination he seemed to exercise. Although I was only a kid, I could see she was tremendously attracted by him, and the next day, when I went out with Walter to talk matters over with him, I came back to find that Bateman had lunched with her, and thereafter they hardly left one another. I wasn’t jealous; I’d got over my first madness and realised that I’d made a ghastly mistake.

  ‘Naturally, I didn’t want any complications with Bateman, who I knew was married and had left his wife in England. As a matter of fact, he was married before he met and married the present Mrs Landor—the lady who came to my surgery on the night I killed Bateman and told me, to my amazement—however, that can wait.

  ‘Walter at last agreed that I should stand in and help him with the robbery of a country bank which carried a considerable amount of paper currency, especially during weekends. The job was to be done “two-handed”, as we say, and Bateman, of course, took no part in the actual hold-up, but was the man who spied out the land, supplied us with all particulars as to the movements and habits of the staff, and could discover, in some way I’ve never understood, almost to a pound how much cash reserve a branch office was holding.

  ‘It was a little town about sixty-five miles from Melbourne, and Walter and I drove out overnight in a motor-car and stayed with a friend of his till morning. Naturally I was wild with excitement, and I was all for carrying a gun. Walter wouldn’t hear of this. He never carried firearms, the only pistol he used being a dummy—that was a lesson I never forgot.

  ‘“You’re either going to murder or you’re not going to murder,” said Walter. “If you’re going out to rob, a dummy pistol’s as good as any. It’s its persuasive power and its frig
htening power that are important.”

  ‘He was a man of extraordinary principles, and held very strong views on criminals who used firearms.

  ‘“It’s the job of a bank official to defend his property, and if you kill him you’re a coward,” he said. “It’s the job of a copper to arrest you, and if you shoot at him you’re a blackguard.”

  ‘But he had no especial affection for the police; no faith in them; and before we went out, he had insisted on my having all my pockets sewn up with strong pack-thread.

  ‘“You only want a handkerchief, and you can carry that in your sleeve,” he said.

  ‘I didn’t see why he took this precaution, until he explained that it was not unusual, if the police caught a prisoner, to slip a gun into his pocket in order to get him a longer sentence. I don’t know whether this was true. It may be one of the yarns that crooks invent and believe in.

  ‘We carried our dummy pistols in a belt under our waistcoats. You’ll find all the particulars of the raid we made upon the branch bank, in a little scrap-book in my bedroom. It was successful. At the appointed minute we entered the bank with white masks on our faces; I held up the cashier and his assistant with my dummy pistol whilst Walter passed round the counter, pulled the safe open—it was already unfastened—and took out three bundles of notes. We were out of the town before the police had wakened up from their midday sleep.

  ‘We came back to Melbourne by a circuitous route, and I’ll swear there was nobody in the town who would have recognised us or who could have identified us in any way. That evening the Melbourne papers were full of the robbery, and announced that the Bank of Australasia were offering five thousand pounds for the arrest of the robbers, and this was supplemented by a statement issued on behalf of the Government, through the police, that a free pardon would be granted to any person, other than one of the perpetrators, or any accomplice, who might turn King’s Evidence. Walter was worried about this notice. He knew Donald Bateman better than I.

  ‘“If he gets the reward as well as the pardon, we’re cooked,” he said, and when he put through a telephone inquiry to the newspaper office and heard that the reward was to go to anybody, accomplice or not, he went white.

  ‘“Go and find your wife, Tommy,” he said. “We’ve got to slip out of this town quick! There’s a boat leaving for San Francisco this afternoon. We might both go on that. I’ll see the purser and we can travel in different classes.”

  ‘I went to the hotel, but Lorna was out; the porter told me she had gone with Mr Bateman to the races, and I returned to Walter and told him.

  ‘“Maybe he won’t see the offer until after the races are over. That is our only chance,” he said. “You’d better leave her a note and some money, tell her you’ll let her know where she can join you.”

  ‘Returning to the hotel, I packed a few things and wrote the note. When I walked out of the elevator into the vestibule, the first person I saw was Big Jock Riley, Chief of the Melbourne Detective Service. I only knew him because he’d been pointed out to me as a man to avoid. I’ll say this about him—he’s dead now, poor chap!—that he was a decent fellow. I knew what was going to happen when he came towards me and took the suitcase out of my hand and gave it to another man.

  ‘“You’d better pay your bill, Tommy,” he said. “It will save everybody a lot of bother.”

  ‘He went with me to the cashier, and I paid the bill, and then he took me to a taxi and we drove to the police station. The first person I saw when I got in was Walter. They’d taken him soon after I had left, and I learnt that I had been followed to the hotel, and they had only waited until I had collected my kit before they arrested me. That was one of Riley’s peculiarities, that he made all crooks pay their hotel bills before he arrested them. They said that his wife owned three hotels in Melbourne, but that is probably another invention.

  ‘The police found most of the money—not all, for Walter had planted four thousand pounds, and had paid two thousand to Bateman, which Bateman returned when he found he was going to get the five thousand reward.

  ‘Bateman was the informer, of course. He hadn’t gone to the races: he was sitting in another room at the police office when we were brought in, and he came out to identify us. Walter said nothing; he didn’t look at him. I think he must have had a premonition that this had been his last day of freedom, he was so utterly broken and dejected. But I met Bateman’s eyes, and he knew that if ever he and I met, there would be a reckoning. Is that melodramatic? I’m afraid it is.

  ‘There’s very little to tell about the court proceedings. The prosecution was fair, and we were sentenced, Walter to eight years and I to three. I never saw Walter after we left the cells until I was taken to the prison hospital where he was dying. He was too far gone to recognise me. Riley was there; he’d come to see if he could get any information about the four thousand that was cached. He told me, while I was waiting to be taken back, that if I would tell him he would get me a year’s remission of my sentence. I was so utterly miserable that I was on the point of telling him, but I thought better of it, and told him only half the truth.

  ‘There was two thousand planted in one place and two thousand in another. I needn’t tell you where, but one was a respectable bank. I told him the hardest, and I believe he went away and recovered it, because within a week I had my order of release. Riley never broke a promise.

  ‘I hung around Melbourne for a month. I didn’t have to look for Lorna: I knew she’d gone—you get news in prison—and that Bateman had gone with her. That didn’t worry me at all. I was certain that Bateman and I would meet sooner or later. It’s curious how Walter’s warning always stayed with me. I have never owned a pistol in my life, and even in my most revengeful mood I never dreamt of buying one.

  ‘The police left me alone when I came out. Riley may have suspected that there was more money to collect, but probably he wasn’t bothering his head about that. I had had all my English letters sent to a certain address in Melbourne, and when I went to this place I found a dozen old bills, receipts, letters from hospital friends, and a long envelope.

  ‘Sometimes when I was in prison I used to wonder what had been the result of those examinations, but after a time I ceased to take any interest in them. It seemed that whatever honest career I had had was finished. I should be struck off the Medical Register on conviction, and that was the end of my doctoring. I didn’t realise that the Australian authorities knew nothing of “Marford”—knew only Tommy Furse—and it was only when I opened the envelope and took out the stiff parchment certificate that the truth dawned on me. In England I was Dr Marford, a duly and properly qualified medical man. I could begin practice at once. A new and wonderful vista was opened, for I was terribly keen on my work, and had determined to specialise in the diseases of childhood.

  ‘I collected the two thousand, and after a reasonable interval left Australia for England, travelling third class as far as Colombo and transferring to first class from that port. It was a little too sultry in the steerage, and I could afford better accommodation. I stopped off in Egypt; I wanted to break completely all association with Australia, to snap the links of acquaintanceship formed on the ship which might extend to somebody who knew me and my record. In Cairo I presented my credentials to the British Minister, obtained a new passport in place of one which I said I’d lost, and travelled overland through Italy and Switzerland, arriving in London at the end of September.

  ‘My intentions were to buy a small practice, and I had no sooner arrived in London than I called on an agent, who promised me very considerable help, said he had the very thing for me, but who proved to be worse than useless, submitting propositions which I could not afford to buy or country practices which I knew I could not keep. Country people are very conservative where doctors are concerned, and do not trust any medical man until he has grown a white beard or lost his eyesight.’

  ‘I decided to build up a practice of my own in London. I had fifteen hundred pounds left of m
y money, and by a system of strict economy I knew I could live for five years without a patient—three years if I carried out my big plan, which was to establish a sunlight clinic for babies. I have always had a natural enthusiasm for work amongst children. I love children, and if I had not been interrupted by Donald Bateman and my wife, I should within a few years have opened a great institution, which would have cost twenty thousand pounds to build and ten thousand a year to maintain. That was my ambition.

  ‘It is common knowledge that I opened a surgery in Endley Street and started my practice as cheaply as any practice has ever been founded. From the first I was successful in obtaining patients. They were of the cheapest kind, and required nineteen shillings back for every pound they spent, but it was interesting work, and in a burst of enthusiasm I arranged to open my first clinic at the farther end of Endley Street. I reckoned that by the practice of the strictest economy I could live on the earnings from my practice, and that the money I had so carefully hoarded could keep the clinic running for two years.

  ‘And then one day a thunderbolt fell. A woman walked into my consulting-room. At the time I was at my desk, writing a prescription for a patient who had seen me a few minutes before. I saw her sit down without looking at her; and then, as I asked, “What can I do for you?” I looked up—into the eyes of Lorna Marford, my wife!

  ‘I had forgotten her. That is no exaggeration. Literally she had passed out of my life and out of my memory. I had half forgotten Donald Bateman. For a moment I did not recognise her, and then she smiled, and my heart felt like a piece of lead.

  ‘“What do you want?” I asked.

  ‘She was very poorly dressed and shabby-looking, and was lodging at that time with a Mrs Albert. She was, she told me, three or four weeks behind with her rent.