‘That would rather turn it into a fancy-dress affair, sir,’ he said, ‘where, of course, any costume is permissible. Personally,’ he added, ‘I should never dream of dining in a den of lions under any circumstances.’
‘That’s the answer I’ve been waiting for; it is the most intelligent thing you’ve said this morning,’ said Johnny. ‘Nevertheless, I shall not follow your excellent advice. I will be dining at the Highlow Club on Thursday. Get me the morning newspaper: I haven’t seen it.’
He turned the pages apathetically, for the events which were at the moment agitating political London meant nothing in his life. On an inner page he found a brief paragraph which, however, did interest him. It was in the latest news column, and related to the arrest of a burglar, who had been caught red-handed breaking into a house in Berkeley Square. The man had given his name as Fenner. Johnny shook his head sadly. He had no doubt as to the identity of the thief, for burglary was Fenner’s graft. Since the news had come in the early hours of the morning, there were no details, and he put the paper aside and fell into a train of thought.
Poor Fenner! He must go back to that hell, which was only better than Keytown Jail. He would be spared the ordeal of Keytown, at any rate, if what Craig had said was true. Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was nearly eleven and jumped up. He was taking Marney to lunch and a matinée that day. Peter was bringing her up, and he was to meet them at Victoria.
Since his release from Dartmoor, Johnny had had no opportunity of a quiet talk with the girl, and this promised to be a red-letter day in his life. He had to wait some time, for the train was late; and as he stood in the broad hall, watching with abstracted interest the never-ceasing rush and movement and life about him, he observed, out of the corner of his eye, a man sidling toward him.
Johnny had that sixth sense which is alike the property of the scientist, the detective and the thief. He was immediately sensitive to what he called the approaching spirit, and long before the shabby stranger had spoken to him, he knew that he was the objective. Nearer at hand, he recognised the stranger as a man he had seen in Dartmoor, and remembered that he had come to prison at the same time as Fenner and for the same offence, though he had been released soon after Johnny had passed through that grim gateway.
‘I followed you down here, Mr Gray, but I didn’t like to talk to you in the street,’ said the stranger, apparently immersed in an evening newspaper, and talking, as such men talk, without moving his lips.
Johnny waited, wondering what was the communication, and not doubting that it had to do with Fenner.
‘Old Fenner’s been shopped by Legge,’ said the man, ‘He went to knock off some silver from a house in Berkeley Square, and Shilto was waiting in the hall for him.’
‘How do you know Legge shopped him?’ asked Johnny, interested.
‘It was a shop all right,’ said the other without troubling to explain. ‘If you can put in a good word for Fenner, he’d be much obliged.’
‘But, my dear fellow,’ said John with a little smile, ‘to whom can I put in a good word? In the present circumstances I couldn’t put a word in for my own maiden aunt. I’ll see what I can do.’
There was no need to tell the furtive man to go. With all a thief’s keen perceptions he had seen the eyes of Johnny Gray light up, and with a sidelong glance assured himself as to the cause. Johnny went toward the girl with long strides, and, oblivious to curious spectators and Peter Kane alike, took both her hands in his. Her loveliness always came to him in the nature of a glorious surprise. The grace and poise of her were indefinite quantities that he could not keep exactly in his mind, and inevitably she surpassed his impressions of her.
After he had handed the girl into a taxi, the older man beckoned him aside.
‘I’m not any too sure about this Highlow dinner,’ he said. ‘Love feasts are not Emanuel’s specialities, and there’s a kick coming somewhere, Johnny. I hope you’re prepared for it?’
Johnny nodded.
‘Emanuel isn’t usually so obvious,’ he said. ‘In fact, the whole thing is so patent and so crude that I can’t suspect anything more than an attempt to straighten matters as far as Marney is concerned.’
Peter’s face clouded.
‘There will be no straightening there,’ he said shortly. ‘If he has committed bigamy, he goes down for it. Understand that, Johnny. It will be very unpleasant because of Marney’s name being dragged into the light, but I’m going through with it.’
He turned away with a wave of his hand, and Johnny returned to the girl.
‘What is the matter with father?’ she asked as the taxi drew out of the station. ‘He is so quiet and thoughtful these days. I suppose the poor dear’s worrying about me, though he needn’t, for I never felt happier.’
‘Why?’ asked Johnny, indiscreetly.
‘Because – oh, well, because,’ she said, her face flushing the faintest shade of pink. ‘Because I’m unmarried, for one thing. I hated the idea, Johnny. You don’t know how I hated it. I understand now poor daddy’s anxiety to get me married into respectable society.’ Her sense of humour, always irrepressible, overcame her anxiety. ‘I wonder if you understand my immoral sense of importance at the discovery that poor father has done so many illegal things! I suppose it is the kink that he has transmitted to me.’
‘Was it a great shock to you, Marney?’ interrupted the young man quietly.
She nodded. ‘Yes, but shocks are like blows – they hurt and they fade. It isn’t pleasant to be twisted violently to another angle of view. It pains horribly, Johnny. But I think when I found –’ she hesitated.
‘When you found that I was a thief.’
‘When I found that you were – oh, Johnny, why did you? You had so many advantages; you were a University man, a gentleman – Johnny, it wasn’t big of you. There’s an excuse for daddy; he told me about his youth and his struggles and the fearful hardness of living. But you had opportunities that he never had. Easy money isn’t good money, is it, Johnny?’
He was silent, and then, with a quick, breath-catching sigh, she smiled again.
‘I haven’t come out to lecture you, and I shall not even ask you if, for my sake, you will go straight in the future. Because, Johnny’ – she dropped a cool palm on the back of his hand – ‘I’m not going to do anything like the good fairy in the storybooks and try to save you from yourself.’
‘I’m saved,’ said Johnny, with a quizzical smile. ‘You’re perfectly right: there was no reason why I should be a thief. I was the victim of circumstances. It was possibly the fascination of the game – no, no, it wasn’t that. One of these days I will tell you why I left the straight path of virtue. It is a long and curious story.’
She made no further reference to his fall, and throughout the lunch was her own gay self. Looking down at her hand, Johnny saw, with satisfaction, that the platinum wedding-ring she had worn had been replaced by a small, plain gold ring, ornamented with a single turquoise, and his breath came faster. He had first met her at a gymkhana, a country fair which had been organised for charity, and the ring had been the prize he had won at a shooting match, one of the gymkhana features – though it was stretching terminology to absurd lengths so to describe the hotch-potch of contests which went to the making of the programme – and had offered it to her as whimsically as it had been accepted. Its value was something under a pound. To Johnny, all the millions in the world would not have given him the joy that its appearance upon her finger gave him now.
After luncheon she returned to the unpleasant side of things.
‘Johnny, you’re going to be very careful, aren’t you? Daddy says that Jeff Legge hates you, and he is quite serious about it. He says that there are no lengths to which Jeffrey and his father will not go to hurt you – and me,’ she added.
Johnny bent over the table, lowering his voice. �
��Marney, when this matter is settled – I mean, the release from your marriage – will you take me – whatever I am?’
She met his eyes steadily and nodded. It was the strangest of all proposals, and Jeffrey Legge, who had watched the meeting at the station, had followed her, and now was overlooking them from one of the balconies of the restaurant, flushed a deeper red, guessing all that that scene meant.
Chapter 25
On Thursday afternoon, Emanuel Legge came out of the elevator at the Highlow Club, and, with a curt nod to Stevens, walked up the heavily carpeted corridor, unlocked the door of his tiny office and went in. For half an hour he sat before his desk, his hands clasped on the blotting-pad before him, motionless, his mind completely occupied by his thoughts. At last he opened his desk, pressed a bell by his side, and he had hardly taken his fingers from the push when the head waiter of the establishment, a tall, unpleasant-looking Italian, came in.
‘Fernando, you have made all the arrangements about the dinner tonight?’
‘Yes,’ said the man.
‘All the finest wines, eh? The best in the house?’
He peered at the waiter, his teeth showing in a smile.
‘The very best,’ said Fernando briskly.
‘There will be four: myself and Major Floyd, Mr Johnny Gray and Peter Kane.’
‘The lady is not coming?’ asked Fernando.
‘No, I don’t think she’ll be dining with us tonight,’ said Emanuel carefully.
When the waiter had gone, he rose and bolted the door and returned to an idle examination of the desk. He found extraordinary pleasure in opening the drawers and looking through the little works of reference which filled a niche beneath the pigeon-holes. This was Jeffrey’s desk, and Jeff was the apple of his eye.
Presently he rose and walked to a nest of pigeon-holes which stood against the wall, and, putting his hand into one, he turned a knob and pulled. The nest opened like a door, exposing a narrow, spiral staircase which led upward and downward. He left the secret door open and pulled down a switch, which gave him light above and below. For a second he hesitated whether he should go up or down, and decided upon the latter course.
At the foot of the stairs was another door, which he opened, passing into the cellar basement of the house. As the door moved, there came to him a wave of air so super-heated that for a moment he found difficulty in breathing. The cellar in which he found himself was innocent of furnishing, except for a table placed under a strong light, and a great, enclosed furnace which was responsible for the atmosphere of the room. It was like a Turkish bath, and he had not gone two or three paces before the perspiration was rolling down his cheeks.
A broad-shouldered, undersized man was sitting at the table, a big book open before him. He had turned at the sound of the key in the door, and now he came toward the intruder. He was a half-caste, and, beyond the pair of blue dungaree trousers, he wore no clothing. His yellow skin and his curiously animal face gave him a particularly repulsive appearance.
‘Got the furnace going, eh, Pietro?’ said Emanuel mildly, taking off his spectacles to wipe the moisture which had condensed upon the lenses.
Pietro grunted something and, picking up an iron bar, lifted open the big door of the furnace. Emanuel put up his hands to guard his face from the blast of heat that came forth.
‘Shut it, shut it!’ he said testily, and when this was done, he went nearer to the furnace.
Two feet away there ran a box-like projection, extending from two feet above the floor to the ceiling. A stranger might have imagined that this was an air shaft, introduced to regulate the ventilation. Emanuel was not a stranger. He knew that the shaft ran to the roof, and that it had a very simple explanation.
‘That’s a good fire you’ve got, eh, Pietro? You could bum up a man there?’
‘Burn anything,’ growled the other, ‘but not man.’
Emanuel chuckled.
‘Scared I’m going to put a murder point on you, are you? Well, you needn’t be,’ he said. ‘But it’s hot enough to melt copper, eh, Pietro?’
‘Melt it down to nothing.’
‘Burnt any lately?’
The man nodded, rubbing his enormous arms caressingly.
‘They came last Monday week, after the boss had been shot,’ said the other. He had a curious impediment in his speech which made his tone harsh and guttural. ‘The fellows upstairs knew they were coming, so there was nothing to see. The furnace was nearly out.’
Emanuel nodded.
‘The boss said the furnace was to be kept going for a week,’ said Pietro complainingly. ‘That’s pretty tough on me, Mr Legge. I feel sometimes I’d nearly die, the heat’s so terrible.’
‘You get the nights off,’ said Emanuel, ‘and there are weeks when you do no work. Tonight I shall want you . . . Mr Jeff has told you?’
The dwarf nodded. Emanuel passed through the door, closing it behind him; and, contrasted with the heat of the room, it seemed that he had walked into an ice wall. His collar was limp, his clothes were sticking to him, as he made his way up the stairs, and, passing the open door of his office, continued until he reached the tiny landing which scarcely gave him foothold. He knocked twice on the door, for of this he had no key. After a pause came an answering knock, a small spyhole opened and an enquiring and suspicious eye examined him.
When at last the door was opened, he found he was in a small room with a large skylight, heavily barred. At one end of the skylight was a rolled blind, which could be drawn across at night and effectively veil the glare of light which on occasions rose from this room.
The man who grinned a welcome was little and bald. His age was in the region of sixty, and the grotesqueness of his appearance was due less to his shabby attire and diminutive stature than to the gold-rimmed monocle fixed in his right eye.
In the centre of the room was a big table littered with paraphernalia, ranging from a small microscope to a case filled with little black bottles. Under the brilliant overhead light which hung above the table, and clamped to the wood by glass-headed pins, was an oblong copper plate, on which the engraver had been working – the engraving tool was in his hand as he opened the door.
‘Good morning, Lacey. What are you working at now?’ asked Emanuel with a benevolent air of patronage appropriate to the proprietor in addressing a favourite workman.
‘The new fives,’ said the other. ‘Jeff wants a big printing. Jeff’s got brains. Anybody else would have said, “Work from a photographic plate” – you know what that means. After a run of a hundred, the impression goes wrong, and before you know where you are, there’s a squeak. But engraving is engraving,’ he said with pride. ‘You can get all the new changes without photography. I never did hold with this new method – boobs are full of fellows who think they can make slush with a camera and a zinc plate!’
It was good to hear praise of Jeffrey, and Emanuel Legge purred. He examined the half-finished plate through his powerful glasses, and though the art of the engraver was one with which he was not well acquainted, he could admire the fine work which this expert forger was doing.
To the left of the table was an aperture like the opening of a service lift. It was a continuation of the shaft which led from the basement, and it had this value, that, however clever the police might be, long before they could break into the engraver’s room all evidence of his guilt would have been flung into the opening and consumed in the furnace fire. Jeffrey’s idea. ‘What a mind!’ said the admiring Lacey. ‘It reduces risk to what I might term a minimum. It is a pleasure working for Jeff, Mr Legge. He takes no chances.’
‘I suppose Pietro is always on the spot?’
Mr Lacey smiled. He took up a plate from the table and examined it back and front.
‘That is one I spoilt this morning,’ he said. ‘Spilt some acid on it. Look!�
��
He went to the opening, put in his hand, and evidently pressed a bell, for a faint tinkle came from the mouth of the shaft. When he withdrew his hand, the plate that it held had disappeared. There came the buzz of a bell from beneath the table.
‘That plate’s running like water by now,’ he said. ‘There’s no chance of a squeak if Pietro’s all right. Wide! That’s Jeffrey! As wide as Broad Street! Why, Mr Legge, would you believe that I don’t know to this day where the stuff’s printed? And I’ll bet the printer hasn’t got the slightest idea where the plates are made. There isn’t a man in this building who has got so much as a smell of it.’
Emanuel passed down to his own office, a gratified father, and, securely closing the pigeon-hole door, he went out into the club premises to look at Room 13. The table was already laid. A big rose-bowl, overflowing with the choicest blooms, filled the centre; an array of rare glass, the like of which the habitués of the club had never seen on their tables, stood before each plate.
His brief inspection of the room satisfied him, and he returned, not to his office but to Stevens, the porter.
‘What’s the idea of telling the members that all the rooms are engaged tonight?’ asked Stevens. ‘I’ve had to put off Lew Brady, and he pays.’
‘We’re having a party, Stevens,’ said Emanuel, ‘and we don’t want any interruption. Johnny Gray is coming. And you can take that look off your face; if I thought he was a pal of yours, you wouldn’t be in this club two minutes. Peter Kane’s coming too.’
‘Looks to me like a rough house,’ said Stevens. ‘What am I to do?’ he asked sarcastically. ‘Bring in the police at the first squeal?’
‘Bring in your friend from Toronto,’ snapped Emanuel, and went home to change.
Chapter 26
Johnny was the first of the guests to arrive, and Stevens helped him to take off his raincoat. As he did so, he asked in a low voice: ‘Got a gun, Captain?’
‘Never carry one, Stevens. It is a bad habit to get into.’
The Casefiles of Mr J. G. Reeder Page 15
