‘Vengeance is mine,’ said Ras Lal in English.
He sat through the next act which, as Mr Reeder had truly said, depicted the luring of an innocent girl into the hateful clutches of an easterner and, watching the development of the plot, his own scheme underwent revision. He did not wait to see what happened in the third and fourth acts – there were certain preparations to be made.
‘I still think that, whilst the story is awfully exciting, it’s awfully impossible,’ said Margaret, as they moved slowly through the crowded vestibule. ‘In real life – in civilized countries, I mean – masked men do not suddenly appear from nowhere with guns and say “Hands up!” – not really, do they, Mr Reeder?’ she coaxed.
Mr Reeder murmured a reluctant agreement.
‘But I have enjoyed it tremendously!’ she said with enthusiasm, and looking down into the pink face Mr Reeder felt a curious sensation which was not entirely pleasure and not wholly pain.
‘I am very glad,’ he said.
Both the dress circle and the stalls disgorged into the foyer, and he was looking round for a face he had seen when he arrived. But neither Ras Lal nor his companion in misfortune was visible. Rain was falling dismally, and it was some time before he found a cab.
‘Luxury upon luxury,’ smiled Margaret, when he took his place by her side.
Mr Reeder took a paper packet of cigarettes from his pocket, dubiously offered her one and when she refused selected a limp cylinder, and lit it.
‘No plays are quite like life, my dear young lady,’ he said, as he carefully pushed the match through the space between the top of the window and the frame. ‘Melodramas appeal most to me because of their idealism.’
She turned and stared at him.
‘Idealism?’ she repeated incredulously.
He nodded.
‘In melodrama even the villains are heroic and the inevitable and unvarying moral is “Truth crushed to earth will rise again” – isn’t that idealism? And unpleasant things are never shown in an attractive light – you come away uplifted.’
‘If you are young enough,’ she smiled.
‘One should always be young enough to rejoice in the triumph of virtue,’ said Mr Reeder soberly.
They crossed Westminster Bridge and bore left to the New Kent Road. Through the rain-blurred windows J G picked up the familiar landmarks and offered a running commentary upon them in the manner of a guide. Margaret had not realized before that history was made in South London.
‘There used to be a gibbet here – this ugly-looking goods station was the London terminus of the first railways – Queen Alexandra drove from there when she came to be married – the thoroughfare on the right after we pass the Canal bridge is curiously named Bird-in-Bush Road–’
A big car had drawn level with the taxi, and the man at the wheel was shouting something to the taxi driver. Even the suspicious Mr Reeder suspected no more than an exchange of offensiveness, till the cab suddenly turned into the road he had been speaking about. The car had fallen behind, but now drew abreast.
‘Probably the main road is up,’ said J G, and at that moment the taxi slowed and stopped.
He was reaching out for the handle when the door was pulled open violently, and in the uncertain light Mr Reeder saw a broad-shouldered man standing in the road.
‘Alight quickly!’
In the man’s hand was a long, black Colt, and his face was covered from chin to forehead by a mask.
‘Quickly – and keep your hands erect!’
Mr Reeder stepped out into the rain and reached to close the door.
‘The female also – come, miss!’
‘Here – what’s the game – you told me the New Cross Road was blocked.’ It was the cabman talking.
‘Here is a five – keep your mouth shut.’
The masked man thrust a note at the driver.
‘I don’t want your money–’
‘You require my bullet in your bosom perchance, my good fellow?’ asked Ras Lal sardonically.
Margaret had followed her escort into the road by this time. The car had stopped just behind the cab. With the muzzle of the pistol stuck into his back, Mr Reeder walked to the open door and entered. The girl followed, and the masked man jumped after them and closed the door. Instantly the interior was flooded with light.
‘This is a considerable surprise to a clever and intelligent police detective?’
Their captor sat on the opposite seat, his gun on his knees. Through the holes of the black mask a pair of brown eyes gleamed malevolently. But Mr Reeder’s interest was in the girl. The shock had struck the colour from her face, but he observed with thankfulness that her chief emotion was not fear. She was numb with amazement, and was stricken speechless.
The car had circled and was moving swiftly back the way they had come. He felt the rise of the Canal bridge, and then the vehicle turned abruptly to the right and began the descent of a steep hill. They were running towards Rotherhithe – he had an extraordinary knowledge of London’s topography.
The journey was a short one. He felt the wheels bump over an uneven roadway for a hundred yards, the body rocking uncomfortably, and then with a jar of brakes the car stopped suddenly.
They were on a narrow muddy lane. On one side rose the arches of a railway aqueduct, on the other an open space bounded by a high fence. Evidently the driver had pulled up short of their destination, for they had to squelch and slide through the thick mud for another fifty yards before they came to a narrow gateway in the fence. Through this they struck a cinder path leading to a square building, which Mr Reeder guessed was a small factory of some kind. Their conductor flashed a torch on the door, and in weatherworn letters the detective read:
‘The Storn-Filton Leather Company.’
‘Now!’ said the man, as he turned a switch. ‘Now, my false-swearing and corrupt police official, I have a slight bill to settle with you.’
They were in a dusty lobby, enclosed on three sides by plasterboard walls.
‘“Account” is the word you want, Ras Lal,’ murmured Mr Reeder.
For a moment the man was taken aback, and then, snatching the mask from his face:
‘I am Ras Lal! And you shall repent it! For you and for your young missus this is indeed a cruel night of anxiety!’
Mr Reeder did not smile at the quaint English. The gun in the man’s hand spoke all languages without error, and could be as fatal in the hands of an unconscious humorist as if it were handled by the most savage of purists. And he was worried about the girl: she had not spoken a word since their capture. The colour had come back to her cheeks, and that was a good sign. There was, too, a light in her eyes which Reeder could not associate with fear.
Ras Lal, taking down a long cord that hung on a nail in the wooden partition, hesitated.
‘It is not necessary,’ he said, with an elaborate shrug of shoulder; ‘the room is sufficiently reconnoitred – you will be innocuous there.’
Flinging open a door, he motioned them to pass through and mount the bare stairs which faced them. At the top was a landing and a large steel door set in the solid brickwork.
Pulling back the iron bolt, he pushed at the door, and it opened with a squeak. It was a large room, and had evidently been used for the storage of something inflammable, for the walls and floor were of rough-faced concrete and above a dusty desk an inscription was painted, ‘Danger. Don’t smoke in this store.’ There were no windows except one some eighteen inches square, the top of which was near the ceiling. In one corner of the room was a heap of grimy paper files, and on the desk a dozen small wooden boxes, one of which had been opened, for the nail-bristling lid was canted up at an angle.
‘Make yourself content for half an hour or probably forty minutes,’ said Ras Lal, standing in the doorway with his ostentatiou
s revolver. ‘At that time I shall come for your female; tomorrow she will be on a ship with me, bound for – ah, who knows where?’
‘Shut the door as you go out,’ said Mr J G Reeder; ‘there is an unpleasant draught.’
Mr Tommy Fenalow came on foot at two o’clock in the morning and, as he passed down the muddy lane, his torch suddenly revealed car marks. Tommy stopped like a man shot. His knees trembled beneath him and his heart entered his throat at the narrowest end. For a while he was undecided whether it would be better to run or walk away. He had no intention of going forward. And then he heard a voice. It was Ras Lal’s assistant, and he nearly fainted with joy. Stumbling forward, he came up to the shivering man.
‘Did that fool boss of yours bring the car along here?’ he asked in a whisper.
‘Yas – Mr Ras Lal,’ said Ram with whom the English language was not a strong point.
‘Then he’s a fool!’ growled Tommy. ‘Lord! he put my heart in my mouth!’
Whilst Ram was getting together sufficient English to explain what had happened, Tommy passed on. He found his client sitting in the lobby, a black cheroot between his teeth, a smile of satisfaction on his dark face.
‘Welcome!’ he said, as Tommy closed the door. ‘We have trapped the dog.’
‘Never mind about the dog,’ said the other impatiently. ‘Did you find the rupees?’
Ras Lal shook his head.
‘But I left them in the store – ten thousand notes. I thought you’d have got them and skipped before this,’ said Mr Fenalow anxiously.
‘I have something more important in the store – come and see my friend.’
He preceded the bewildered Tommy up the stairs, turned on the landing light and threw open the door.
‘Behold–’ he said, and said no more.
‘Why, it is Mr Fenalow!’ said Mr J G.
One hand held a packet of almost life-like rupee notes; as for the other hand – ‘You oughter known he carried a gun, you dam’ black baboon,’ hissed Tommy. ‘An’ to put him in a room where the stuff was, and a telephone!’
He was being driven to the local police station, and for the moment was attached to his companion by links of steel.
‘It was a mere jest or a piece of practical joking, as I shall explain to the judge in the morning,’ said Ras airily.
Tommy Fenalow’s reply was unprintable.
Three o’clock boomed out from St John’s Church as Mr Reeder accompanied an excited girl to the front door of her boarding-house.
‘I can’t tell you how I – I’ve enjoyed tonight,’ she said. Mr Reeder glanced uneasily at the dark face of the house.
‘I hope – er – your friends will not think it remarkable that you should return at such an hour–’
Despite her assurance, he went slowly home with an uneasy feeling that her name had in some way been compromised. And in melodrama, when a heroine’s name is compromised, somebody has to marry her.
That was the disturbing thought that kept Mr Reeder awake all night.
The Green Mamba
The spirit of exploration has ruined more promising careers than drink, gambling or the smiles of women. Generally speaking, the beaten tracks of life are the safest; and few men have adventured into the uncharted spaces in search of easy money who have not regarded the rediscovery of the old hard road from whence they strayed, as the greatest of their achievements.
Mo Liski held an assured position in his world, and one acquired by the strenuous and even violent exercise of his many qualities. He might have gone on until the end of the chapter, only he fell for an outside proposition and, moreover, handicapped himself with a private feud, which had its beginning in an affair wholly remote from his normal operations.
There was a Moorish grafter named El Rahbut, who had made several visits to England, travelling by the banana boats which make the round trip from London River to Funchal Bay, Las Palmas, Tangier and Oporto. He was yellow-faced, pock-marked and undersized; and he spoke English, having in his youth fallen into the hands of a well-meaning American missionary. This man Rahbut was useful to Mo because quite a lot of drugs are shipped via Trieste to the Levant, and many a crate of oranges has been landed in the Pool that had, squeezed in their golden interiors, little metal cylinders containing smuggled heroin, cocaine and other noxious medicaments.
Rahbut brought such things from time to time, was paid fairly and was satisfied. One day, in the saloon bar of The Four Jolly Seamen, he told Mo of a great steal. It had been carried out by a group of Anghera thieves working in Fez, and the loot was no less than the Emeralds of Suliman, the most treasured possession of Morocco. Not even Abdul Aziz in his most impecunious days had dared to remove them from the Mosque of Omar; the Anghera men being what they were, broke into the holy house, killed two guardians of the treasure, and had got away with the nine green stones of the great king. Thereafter arose an outcry which was heard from the bazaars of Calcutta to the mean streets of Marsi-Karsi. But the men of Anghera were superior to the voice of public opinion and they did no more than seek a buyer. El Rahbut, being a notorious bad character, came into the matter, and this was the tale he told to Mo Liski at The Four Jolly Seamen one foggy October night.
‘There is much profit in this for you and me, Mr Good Man,’ said Rahbut (all Europeans who paid on the nail were ‘Mr Good Man’ to El Rahbut). ‘There is also death for me if this thing becomes known.’
Mo listened, smoothing his chin with a hand that sparkled and flashed dazzlingly. He was fond of ornamentation. It was a little outside his line, but the newspapers had stated the bald value of the stolen property, and his blood was on fire at the prospect of earning half a million so easily. That Scotland Yard and every police headquarters in the world were on the look-out for the nine stones of Suliman did not greatly disturb him. He knew the subterranean way down which a polished stone might slide; and if the worst came to the worst, there was a reward of £5000 for the recovery of the jewels.
‘I’ll think it over; where is the stuff?’
‘Here,’ said Rahbut, to the other’s surprise. ‘In ten–twenty minutes I could lay them on your hands, Mr Good Man.’
Here seemed a straightforward piece of negotiation; it was doubly unfortunate that at that very period he should find himself mixed up in an affair which promised no profit whatever – the feud of Marylou Plessy, which was to become his because of his high regard for the lady.
When a woman is bad, she is usually very bad indeed, and Marylou Plessy was an extremely malignant woman. She was rather tall and good-looking, with sleek black hair, and a heavy black fringe that covered a forehead of some distinction.
Mr Reeder saw her once: he was at the Central Criminal Court giving evidence against Bartholomew Xavier Plessy, an ingenious Frenchman who had discovered a new way of making old money. His forgeries were well nigh undetectable, but Mr Reeder was no ordinary man. He not only detected them, but he traced the printer, and that was why Bartholomew Xavier faced an unimpassioned judge, who told him in a hushed voice how very wrong it was to debase the currency; how it struck at the very roots of our commercial and industrial life. This the debonair man in the dock did not resent. He knew all about it. It was the judge’s curt postscript which made him wince.
‘You will go to prison for twenty years.’
That Marylou loved the man is open to question. The probabilities are that she did not; but she hated Mr Reeder, and she hated him not because he had brought her man to his undoing, but because, in the course of his evidence, he had used the phrase ‘the woman with whom the prisoner is associated’. And Mr John Reeder could have put her beside Plessy in the dock had he so wished: she knew this too and loathed him for his mercifulness.
Mrs Plessy had a large flat in Portland Street. It was in a block which was the joint property of herself and her husband, for their graft had be
en on the grand scale and Mr Plessy owned racehorses before he owned a number in Parkhurst Convict Establishment. And here Marylou entertained lavishly.
A few months after her husband went to prison, she dined with Mo Liski, the biggest of the gang leaders and an uncrowned emperor of the underworld. He was a small, dapper man who wore glasses and looked rather like a member of one of the learned professions – apart from a weakness for jewellery. Yet he ruled the Strafas and the Sullivans and the Birklows, and his word was law on a dozen racetracks, in a score of spieling clubs and innumerable establishments less liable to police supervision. People opposing him were incontinently ‘coshed’ – rival leaders more or less paid tribute and walked warily at that. He levied toll upon bookmakers and was immune from police interference by reason of their two failures to convict him.
Since there are white specks on the blackest coat, he had this redeeming feature, that Marylou Plessy was his ideal woman; and it is creditable in a thief to possess ideals, however unworthily they may be disposed.
He listened intently to Marylou’s views but, though he loved her, his native caution held him to reason.
‘That’s all right, Marylou,’ he said. ‘I dare say I could get Reeder, but what’s going to happen then? There will be a squeak louder than a bus brake! And he’s dangerous. I never worry about the regular busies, but this old feller is in the Public Prosecutor’s office, and he wasn’t put there because he’s silly. And just now I’ve got one of the biggest deals on that I’ve ever touched. Can’t you “do” him yourself? You’re a clever woman: I don’t know a cleverer.’
‘Of course, if you’re scared of Reeder!’ she said contemptuously, and a tolerant smile twisted his thin lips.
‘Me? Don’t be silly, dear! Show him a point yourself. If you can’t get him, let me know. Scared of him! Listen! That old bird would lose his feathers and be skinned for the pot before you could say “Mo Liski” if I wanted!’
In the Public Prosecutor’s office they had no doubt about Mr Reeder’s ability to take care of himself, and when Chief Inspector Pyne came over from the Yard to report that Marylou had been in conference with the most dangerous man in London, the Assistant Prosecutor grinned his amusement.
The Mind of Mr. J. G. Reeder Page 10
