The Paddington Mystery

by John Rhode

  The tram, into which he had changed at Victoria, as Mr Boost had directed him, crawled along with much clanging of its insistent bell, and at last Harold, awakening from his reverie, realised that he had reached Camberwell. He got out of the vehicle, and began to make enquiries as to the whereabouts of Inkerman Street. He found it, not without some difficulty, for it seemed to lie some little distance off the tram and bus routes. Turning into it from a long street of mean houses, he noticed a public-house at the corner, and an untidy litter of paper and orange-peel stretching before him. A few loud-voiced children were playing in the roadway, and an iron-shod lorry, laden with bars of iron, progressed over the irregular asphalt with a deafening clatter. Harold waited till it was out of earshot, then turned the corner and followed it.

  Inkerman Street had obviously been designed by its optimistic builder as a residential neighbourhood of the middle class. Its houses, though probably jerry-built, had at one time worn the stucco of respectability, and might have attracted the careful minds of conscientious clerks with inconveniently large families. But if such tenants had ever inhabited these rather featureless houses, they had departed long ago, and the neighbourhood had fallen from its early promise. Most of the stucco had peeled off, leaving ugly scars of dirty brickwork; the landlords, deriving what income they could from letting off rooms to the poorest classes, had very little left to spend on paint. Inkerman Street was, in fact, a slum, a district which had fallen upon evil days, and the tokens of its former respectability served only to emphasise its downfall.

  Some of the houses had been converted into shops, most of which dealt in sweets, tobacco, and queer-looking picture papers with unfamiliar titles. Harold noticed a combined baker and milkman, through the open door of which he could read the staring and ominous words of a prominent notice: ‘Please do not ask for credit, as a refusal often offends.’ Here and there, at the open door of one of the houses, stood a slatternly woman, calling shrilly to Alf or Ivy, threatening them with unheard-of penalties for incomprehensible misdeeds.

  Riverside Gardens was Mayfair compared with this, but Harold had no qualms where slums were concerned. He walked slowly down the dirty pavement, looking for Number 36. It proved to be one of the largest houses in the street, and was peculiar from the fact that its door was shut. The windows were uncurtained, and were covered with the grime of ages, but it was just possible to discern through them that the rooms were full of heavy tattered furniture and rubbish of all descriptions, piled up in the utmost disorder. Harold smiled; the place was an exact replica of Mr Boost’s shop; larger, certainly, but filled with the same curious and apparently valueless merchandise.

  Printed above the shop in bold letters was the name Isaac Samuels, but Harold hardly needed to glance at this. He had obviously reached the place he sought; the owner of all this trash was the very man to have dealings with Mr Boost. He mounted a couple of steps, tried the door, and found it locked. An old and rusty knocker hung precariously close to his hand, and with this he rapped smartly and waited. The noisy life of the street surged round him disinterestedly, and he could hear no sound from within above its clamour. He knocked again, more violently, and a man, unshaven and in his shirt-sleeves, appeared at the door of one of the houses opposite and cast a reflective eye upon him. As Harold knocked for the third time, the man took his pipe from his mouth, spat on the pavement, and called across the road. ‘’Tain’t no good knockin’ on that door, mister,’ he said.

  Harold desisted from his attempts, and, seeing that his informant still stood watching him, crossed the street and walked up to him.

  ‘Isn’t Mr Samuels at home?’ he enquired.

  The man spat again, turned the question over in his mind, and then replied slowly. ‘Oh, yes, he’s at home all right,’ he said. ‘But ’e don’t answer no knocks, an’ if yer wants anything from ’im, that’s not the way ter go about it.’

  ‘But how am I to get in without knocking?’ enquired Harold.

  ‘You can’t,’ replied the man conclusively.

  ‘Well, I’ve got a message for him from a friend of his,’ persevered Harold, aware that an explanation of his own business was the only way of gaining any information. ‘How am I to give it to him if I can’t get in?’

  ‘Ah! That’s the rub,’ said the man in shirt-sleeves, with a frown of consideration. ‘Old Samuels, ’e won’t open the door, never mind how hard you knock. Ill in bed, ’e is, and ’e won’t thank you for disturbing of ’im, neither. Why, I ain’t seen ’im myself for over a week. ’Eard ’im, though, ’eard ’im cough and swear at that young nevvy of ’is, young Isidore. Best write a note and slip it under the door. Isidore ’ll find it when ’e comes home.’

  Harold considered a moment. ‘Isidore’s out, I take it?’ he suggested.

  ‘’Course ’e is,’ replied the man. ‘’E don’t come ’ome till after five, and if anyone’s got business with Samuels, they’ve got to wait till ’e opens up the place then. So now you know.’

  A door opened somewhere in the house behind them, and a shrill voice was heard declaiming with the utmost volubility. ‘That’s the missus,’ said the man, as he turned on his heel. ‘Best thing you can do is to wait for the nevvy,’ and with that he disappeared.

  Harold made up his mind that since he had come so far he had better wait for the ‘nevvy.’ After all, according to Mr Boost’s account, it was this young man who had delivered the bale of goods to George, so that he might be expected to know the nature of its contents. Besides, Harold was by no means sorry at the chance of escaping from an interview with the formidable Mr Samuels. There was more than a likelihood that that worthy would tell him to go away and mind his own business.

  He looked at his watch, and found that it was already past four o’clock. The ‘nevvy’ was reputed to come home after five, so that he had about an hour in front of him. He strolled along to the end of Inkerman Street, and found it led to a very similar thoroughfare, which seemed to be a minor artery of traffic. There was a similar public-house at this corner as well, which looked as though it was the only flourishing thing in its immediate neighbourhood. There seemed to be nothing in the district to enliven the period of waiting.

  After a short stroll of exploration, Harold discovered that parallel with Inkerman Street ran an almost identical thoroughfare, which he identified as Balaclava Street. The houses bearing even numbers in Inkerman Street stood back to back with those bearing odd numbers in Balaclava Street, with only narrow back-yards, divided by a low wall, between them. But, walking down Balaclava Street, Harold noticed that there was an exception to this rule. Between numbers 35 and 37 was the opening of a narrow passage, not more than four feet wide, running between the high walls of the houses on either side. Harold stopped and looked down it, wondering vaguely if it led through to Inkerman Street, and if so, why he had not noticed its opposite end. He found, however, that it was apparently a cul-de-sac, terminated by doors on either side, which presumably opened into the back-yards of two of the houses, but whether these fronted Inkerman or Balaclava Street he could not determine.

  It was rapidly growing dark, and a fine rain was beginning to fall. A lamplighter was coming along Balaclava Street, kindling the yellow gas-flames as he came along. He stopped opposite Harold, pushed a long stick into the lamp beside him, and went on his way. Harold shivered suddenly. This was a beastly neighbourhood, the sort of place where one might expect anything to happen. The gloomy passage appeared all at once dark and furtive, as though it might harbour any kind of evil shadows. The light of the lamp scarcely penetrated it more than a few feet; beyond that it stretched dark and sinister. Harold glanced at it once more, then, almost with a feeling of relief, moved on. It was nearly five o’clock.

  He had not proceeded many steps before a man, walking rapidly and muffled up in a heavy overcoat and scarf, hurried past him. Harold, with plenty of time on his hands to kill, had sufficient curiosity to glance over his shoulder to have another look at him. There was somethi
ng about the man, his clothes, his walk, that seemed ill-fitted to the squalor of Balaclava Street. It was as though he were not flesh and blood, but the ghost of one of those respectable clerks of long ago, come back to revisit the scene of his former life. And then, just as Harold turned to continue his way, the man dived suddenly into the dark passage.

  The illusion of his spiritual origin seemed complete for the moment, and Harold smiled at the illustration of his thought. That passage looked haunted, it was quite natural that a ghost should choose it as his terrestrial habitat. As a matter of fact, the man must be some poor devil who owned a room at the back of one of these decayed houses, and preferred to let himself in at the back door rather than traverse a filthy hall such as had been revealed by many of the open doors he had passed. No doubt the district held many such tragedies. Harold felt the place getting on his nerves. In ten minutes or so, the time it would take him to stroll out of Balaclava Street round into Inkerman Street, he would knock once more on the door of Number 36. If the ‘nevvy’ were there, so much the better. If not, he would chuck the business up and go home.

  As it happened, he was lucky. The door of Mr Samuels’ shop was open when he reached it. He mounted the steps, paused a moment on the threshold, then grasped the handle. The door opened inwards with a prodigious creaking of hinges, and Harold was immediately aware of a strange coughing and wheezing somewhere in the interior of the house. Evidently Mr Samuels’ complaint was some form of asthma or bronchitis. Harold found himself hoping that it was sufficiently serious to keep him in bed during his visit.

  The front door opened into a narrow hall, off which was a second door leading into what he recognised as the front shop. Just enough space had been cleared among the rubbish that lumbered it to allow of a passage from the door to a dirty counter, almost hidden beneath the miscellaneous articles which covered it, and another passage from the back of the counter to a second door. Judging by the sounds which came through this, Harold guessed that it led to a back room in which the invalid was living. Mr Samuels appeared to be engaged in an altercation with someone, no doubt his nephew. Harold could hear muttered words between the fits of coughing, and occasionally a sharp, almost falsetto voice, apparently raised in self-excuse. He rapped on the counter and waited.

  The shop was very dark. A gleam of light came through the slightly-opened door leading into the back room; the last fading rays of daylight, aided by the reflection of a street lamp outside, fell upon the dirty furniture just inside the uncurtained window. It was evident that artificial light was not one of Mr Samuels’ extravagances, and it suddenly struck Harold that perhaps this economy was in part practised out of consideration for his visitors. From what he had learnt from Mr Boost, it seemed quite probable that the antique business was nothing but a blind to cover more sinister dealings. Harold began to wonder whether he had not set his feet on perilous ground, in thus undertaking to be an intermediary between Mr Boost and Mr Samuels, alias Szamuelly.

  The argument in the back room continued meanwhile, and Harold rapped on the counter a second time, more loudly. There was a hoarse growl from the back, a fit of coughing, then silence. Suddenly the door opened. Harold caught a glimpse of an untidy room, and the door shut again behind the form of a young man, whose face was indistinguishable in the prevailing darkness.

  The young man advanced warily to the back of the counter, and peered at his visitor. ‘What d’yer want?’ he enquired in the curious falsetto voice Harold had already overheard.

  ‘I came to make an enquiry on Mr Boost’s behalf,’ began Harold. ‘He asked me to come and see Mr Samuels—’

  The young man leaned over the counter confidentially, and Harold saw that he had long black hair falling down on either side of his face, like the typical Galician Jew.

  ‘’E’s in bed,’ he whispered. ‘Ha, ha, ha! In bed, an’ that bad-tempered I ’ardly dare go near ’im. ’Ush, ’e’s listening!’

  The young man drew back, and stood bolt upright for a minute, as though expecting a minatory voice from the back room. But the silence remained unbroken, and the young man turned to Harold once more.

  ‘You daren’t say much when ’e’s about,’ he explained. ‘Wot is it you want to know?’

  ‘I understand that some days ago, last Monday week to be exact, Mr Samuels sent a bale of goods to Mr Boost,’ replied Harold. ‘He asked me to find out what was in it.’

  ‘Oh, my! ain’t ’e got it then?’ exclaimed the young man in alarm. ‘Uncle’ll raise ’ell if he ’ears of that. Packed ’em up myself and gave ’em to the carter, I did. “See you takes that to Mr Boost’s shop at once,” I says. “If ’e ain’t there, shove ’em under the porch, they’ll be all right.” Oh, lor, if ’e ain’t got ’em!’

  ‘I expect he’ll get them all right,’ replied Harold, mindful of Mr Boost’s injunction not to let Samuels know of the disappearance of the bale. ‘You see, he’s away, and he asked me to find out what the stuff was, as he hadn’t heard from Mr Samuels.’

  ‘You workin’ for old Boost, then?’ whispered the young man.

  Harold nodded. After all, in a sense, he was.

  ‘That’s all right then,’ replied the young man. ‘I’ll tell you. It was some stuff Uncle thought ’e could do with. One o’ them grandfather clock-cases, no works with it, and ’alf a dozen brass statuettes. ’Eavy they was, too. The statuettes was put inside the case, and the lot wrapped up in matting. That’ll be the bale ’e means?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Harold. This fitted the description given by George. ‘Thanks very much, I’ll tell Mr Boost.’

  He turned to leave the shop, then hesitated. ‘I don’t think you need mention it to Mr Samuels,’ he said.

  The young man giggled. ‘I won’t tell ’im, never fear,’ he replied.

  As Harold left the shop he once more heard the menacing voice from the back room, apparently raised in anger.

  CHAPTER VI

  AS Harold made his way back to Riverside Gardens he fully determined never again to run errands for Mr Boost to his friends. The Samuels’ menage, the formidable and asthmatic old man, whose voice was quite sufficient to confirm Mr Boost’s unfavourable description, and his apparently half-witted nephew, were quite enough to deter him from any further experiments in that direction.

  Mr Boost, to whom he disclosed this intention with considerable emphasis, received it with much amusement. ‘Inkerman Street too rough for you, was it?’ he said. ‘You want to wait till the Dictatorship of the Proletariat comes along, young man. Then you’ll be glad enough to pick up crusts in a tidy sight worse place than that. We’ll give you blinkin’ bourgeois a taste of what the workers have to suffer now, that we will. You wait an’ see!’

  Mr Boost paused for a moment, rapt in contemplation of that millennium of which he never ceased to dream.

  ‘However, perhaps you could learn to be useful in time,’ he continued in a more kindly tone, as of one who sees a faint hope of promise in an otherwise desperate character. ‘Lucky for you you saw young Isidore, and not the old man. He’d have sent you about your business sharp enough. Grandfather clock-case, was it? That’s true enough, I expect. Old Samuels knows I plants new works in ’em and sells ’em all about the country for capitalists to buy at big prices. And the statuettes? Like enough. Wonderful what a bit o’ faking will do for them, too.’

  ‘But who on earth would steal stuff like that?’ enquired Harold, interested far more in the bale itself than in its contents.

  Mr Boost shrugged his shoulders. ‘Somebody who wanted to do me a bad turn, I suppose,’ he replied. ‘This world ain’t full o’ dear friends, not by a long chalk. Lots o’ people know I have valuable stuff lying about sometimes. Nice suck-in they must have had when they opened that lot, though.’ And Mr Boost chuckled with some approach to pleasantry.

  Harold left him, still convinced that there must be some connection between the disappearance of the grandfather clock and the dead man in his bedroom. Two such unusual occurre
nces would hardly have taken place on the same evening entirely independently of one another. He spent the remainder of the evening racking his brains for some possible connection between the two, and finally decided to tell the whole story to Professor Priestley.

  In pursuance of this idea, he arrived at Westbourne Terrace about three o’clock the following afternoon, and found the eminent mathematician in his study. He was greeted with considerable affability, tempered with a suggestion of stern scrutiny of which he could scarcely fail to be conscious. It was without surprise that he heard the Professor’s first question.

  ‘Well, my boy, and what have you been doing since I saw you last?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of this business, sir,’ replied Harold. ‘I haven’t seen any of the set I used to spend my time with since it happened.’

  The Professor nodded his head appreciatively. ‘I am delighted to hear it,’ he said. ‘May I assume that you adhere to your intention to lead a more useful life in future?’

  ‘You may, sir,’ replied Harold fervently. ‘If only I could get clear of this beastly suspicion—’

  ‘You must not let that weigh too heavily upon you,’ interrupted the Professor. ‘You have friends, myself among them, who are convinced that you are in no way implicated in the events of that unfortunate night. I have been considering the matter, and have reached certain conclusions, deduced logically, from the facts I have ascertained. I do not propose to repeat these conclusions at the present stage, lest they should prejudice you in favour of any particular theory. Now, have you discovered any additional data of which you consider I should be informed?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, sir,’ replied Harold doubtfully. ‘It may or may not be a coincidence, but there was rather a curious robbery at Number 16 that very night.’