The Man Who Hated Banks & Other Mysteries

by Michael Gilbert

  “I’ve taken to wearing a bowler hat,” he said. “It’ll be some protection when they start throwing bottles.”

  It was bravely said, but as he adjusted the hat at a defiant angle, Mercer noticed his hand shaking slightly.

  Mercer said, “I hope it won’t come to that.”

  At seven o’clock the old age pensioner who locked up the office made his rounds. Mercer’s room was empty. He collected a few late letters for the post, turned out the electricity at the main, and went out to lock up the front door. The pickets, who were themselves getting ready to pack up, greeted him with shouts of “Grandad,” and sang a verse of Old Lang Syne. By half past seven the street was quiet.

  Two hours later Mercer came out of the lavatory where he had been sitting and made his way back to his own room. From the locked drawer in his desk he extracted a number of items including a long coil of wire, several insulated two-pronged pins, and a telephonist’s handset. He then attacked the lock on the inner door leading to Arnold Rowe’s private office. He had a small shaded torch, but since there were no curtains on his window and the window gave directly onto the street, he had to use it with caution.

  It took him ten minutes to open the inner door. Once it was shut behind him he was able to use his torch more freely. He set to work dismantling and reassembling the G.P.O. telephone on Rowe’s desk. When he had finished there was no visible sign that the instrument had been tampered with. The only addition was a single thin black wire which ran from the telephone junction box down on the wainscoting and disappeared through a small hole at the far end. It would have needed close inspection to spot it.

  After relocking the door. Mercer sat down at his own desk, propped up his torch so that it shone away from the window, and set to work on his own telephone. The light was so dim that he had to work largely by touch. It was eleven o’clock before he finished. He let himself quietly out the front door, using his own key to open and relock it.

  Other people were busy that evening.

  The offices of Tom Hobhouse, Union Coordinator, were on the first floor of a building in a quiet side street off Mears Road. The other floors were occupied by surveyors, accountants, and insurance agents, and the building boasted a resident caretaker, an old man named Salter, who lived in the basement with an imbecile granddaughter. At eight o’clock that evening the bell of the street door sounded. Salter ignored it, on principle, for the first two minutes. When it continued to sound he climbed the stairs grumbling and opened the door.

  His first impression was that the three men outside had no faces. Then he realised that they were wearing silk-stocking masks. His next im pressions were uncomfortable. Two of the men picked him up and trundled him downstairs to the basement. The third had preceded them and was looking at the granddaughter, who was slobbering excitedly. Salter got enough breath back to say, “Don’t you touch her. She’s not all there. You’ll be in dead trouble if you touch her.”

  “That’s all right, Grandad,” said the leader. “We’ve got nothing against you or her. Just you keep her quiet. Otherwise we’ll have to tie you up and gag you.”

  The granddaughter was pointing at their masks and giggling.

  “She thinks it’s a game,” said the second man. “That’s all it is, lovely. Only we haven’t got time to play with you tonight.”

  They went out and locked the door. Salter sat down to get his breath back. He heard occasional thuds and crashes from above, as though the occupants of one of the offices was dropping things on the floor. None of this worried him. He wasn’t paid to be a guard. And, anyway, three to one! Let ’em get clear, then he’d ring up the police …

  “You did what?” said Mercer incredulously.

  “I wasn’t going to let them have it all their own way,” said Arnold Rowe. “Give ’em a taste of their own medicine.”

  “You sent round three men to wreck Hobhouse’s office?”

  “Right. And they made a thorough job of it.”

  Tom Hobhouse, who had been summoned to the building by the police at eleven o’clock the night before, would have agreed with him. Typewriters had been smashed, filing cabinets broken open, all his papers strewn about, with the contents of two or three ink bottles emptied onto them.

  Hobhouse said, “Right. If that’s the way they want to play it.”

  First thing next morning he telephoned the secretaries of three unions. By that evening they had massive support out in Lower Creek Street. When Rowe tried to leave he was manhandled and it took a heavy reinforcement of police to get him out safely. When he reached home, a service flat in an expensive block behind Theobald’s Row, he poured out and drank half a tumbler of brandy. He was contemplating a refill when the telephone rang. With a sinking feeling he recognised the voice of Bobby, who was Mr. Henderson’s chauffeur and performed a number of other duties as well.

  Bobby said, “You’re to come right over, Arnold. And I should advise you to wear your thickest pair of pants. Because you’re in for a caning.”

  Mr. Henderson, tall, thin, grey-moustached, was standing rigidly upright in front of the fireplace in his beautiful drawing room. He looked not unlike a headmaster dealing with an erring schoolboy. He did not invite Rowe to sit down.

  He said, “Do I understand that it was on your instructions that three of my men went round and wrecked that union man’s office?”

  Rowe managed to gulp, “Yes.”

  “I hope you realise what you’ve done. If you had gone out of your way to attract publicity you could not have done it more effectively. You have made it impossible for me to use the organisation, which I have been at great trouble and expense to establish, for several months at least. And that at a time when I had a number of extremely valuable cargoes which I was preparing to run.”

  “I didn’t know. If I had known, perhaps—”

  Mr. Henderson ignored him. He said, “I have, of course, been forced to buy those cargoes. The people I deal with don’t give tick. The net result of your incredible stupidity is that I am out of pocket several thousand pounds. I don’t like that. I look to you to clear up the mess you’ve made.”

  “How?”

  “That I shall leave to you. I hope you will be successful.” The impersonal coldness in his voice reminded Rowe of a judge pronouncing sentence.

  Some evenings later, when Millicent Ford came home from a Salvation Army Concert at which she had been allowed to play a side drum, she found Mercer sitting in her room.

  He got up as she came in and said, “I’ve got a lot to tell you and there isn’t much time, so we’ll consider you excused from all the usual opening remarks when you find a man in your bedroom. Sit down and take your coat off. It must be very heavy in this warm weather. That’s better.”

  “What—?”

  “Give me the floor for a few minutes. About a week ago, in a mood of reminiscence which you may later have regretted, you supplied me with a number of facts about your family and yourself. They were none of them true. Neither of the last two Rectors of Christchurch was named Ford and in any event one of them was unmarried and the other was a widower. The records of the Teacher Training College at Bristol contains no Millicent Ford. Inquiries were made for you, by an anxious relative, with the Probationary Service Training Department. They were equally unfruitful. I deduced from all this that you were not quite what you seem.”

  “So?” said Millicent. She seemed to have recovered her composure.

  “So, after rejecting a number of other unlikely solutions, I came to the conclusion that you’d been put in by A10 to make a preliminary assessment of the position. That’s the way they usually work, although the idea of using a woman officer is a novel one. Three days ago you got an anonymous letter advising you that a certain Detective Sergeant Russ, attached to Superintendent Browning’s Divisional Headquarters Station, was receiving bribes to give advance information of intended police raids. It’s no use denying it, because I sent the letter myself. Russ was a fairly obvious candidate anyway.
Old and soured by lack of promotion, with an expensive wife, two children, and a heavily mortgaged house, Number 23 Swains Lane, Charlton. When I say heavily mortgaged, it was heavily mortgaged. Not any longer. Most of the mortgage has been paid off in lump sums of £250 over the past two years. £3,000 altogether. Significant, don’t you agree?”

  The girl nodded. She had started scribbling notes.

  “As soon as you got the tipoff I take it you had him followed?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Then you can tell me from your records whether he made calls from a public phone box at two thirty on Tuesday and at five thirty on Wednesday.”

  “I believe that’s correct. I’ll have to check.”

  “I hope it is. Because I can give you tape recordings taken at the receiving end, in Arnold Rowe’s office. If the times coincide, I think that should tie the case up, shouldn’t it?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I told you the answer once, but you didn’t seem to believe it. I do nothing unless I can see some cash at the end of the corridor. I’m going to give you these tapes on one condition.”

  “I don’t know that I can bargain—”

  “It’s a very simple condition. You’re to let it be known – I don’t care how you do it as long as it gets known – that you got onto Russ through some indiscretion by Arnold Rowe. Something he said to someone who passed it on to someone else. Can you do that?”

  “I expect so. Yes. But what—?”

  “A word of advice. Tie the whole thing up and get out quick. There’s going to be trouble in this part of the world quite soon – not the sort of trouble I’d care to see a nice girl like you getting involved in, police training or no police training.”

  When Mercer got to the office on the following morning, the number of people on picket duty seemed to have doubled; the number of policemen also. He found the rest of the staff still in reasonably good spirits. This was probably because the fury of the pickets seemed to be directed, with personal venom, against Rowe himself. He listened to the chants of “Rotten Rowe – Rotten Rowe – Rotten Rowe,” and thought, “He’ll break soon; I wonder he’s stood it so long.”

  At that moment the click of his own telephone told him that Rowe was putting through a call on his outside line. Mercer lifted the receiver of his own instrument and listened. He waited until Rowe had finished speaking before replacing his own receiver. Then he lay back in his chair and gave himself over to contemplation of a patch of blue sky which was visible over the roof of the building opposite. He remained so without moving for some minutes. A close observer might have been disturbed by the look on his face.

  Finally he heaved himself up onto his feet and made his way out of the building, through the crowd – the pickets seemed more pleased to see him than the policemen – and round the corner at the end of the street. Thereafter he walked fast, doubling back more than once on his tracks, ending up at a telephone booth about half a mile from the office. From there he put through a call to a number in the Victoria district.

  Arnold Rowe left the office at half past four. This unusual manoeuvre caught the pickets unaware and he got through the crowd almost unscathed. At the very last moment a burly docker recognised him, swung his fist, and shouted, “We’ll get you!” A camera clicked.

  Rowe dodged the blow and got away escorted by two bored looking policemen. At the corner of the street he thanked them with unusual warmth and was lucky enough to pick up a cruising taxi which took him back to Theobald’s Row.

  He had a lot to do and not much time to do it in.

  The aeroplane tickets which he had ordered by telephone that morning had arrived. He checked them and stowed them away in his wallet together with the money and travellers cheques. He tried to make a telephone call to a bank in Lausanne and learned that there would be a thirty-minute delay. Then he sent for the manager of the service flats, who arrived promptly. Arnold Rowe was a long-standing and favoured tenant.

  Rowe said, “It’s an awful nuisance. I have to go to the Continent on business. Almost at a moment’s notice.”

  The manager smiled sympathetically.

  “Since I’ve no idea how long I’ll be away, I’d better give you a cheque for next month’s rent and service charge. Perhaps you could take this opportunity of having the curtains and carpets cleaned. They’re getting a bit dusty.”

  The manager agreed that this would be a good idea. “And could you order me a car for nine o’clock? I have to be at Heathrow by ten.”

  This would be arranged. The manager hoped that Mr. Rowe would not find the journey too fatiguing.

  The call from Lausanne came through at six o’clock and seemed to be satisfactory. Since he did much of his important work at home, one of the rooms in the flat had been equipped as an office. Rowe spent a busy hour in it, sorting out and destroying papers using a shredder. Then he completed the packing of two suitcases and one large air bag and went down to have dinner in the restaurant which served the apartments.

  At five to nine the manager rang up to say that the hired car was on its way. Rowe gave a last look round, slammed the door behind him, and took the elevator down to the front hall. The commissionaire was absent, probably having his own evening meal. Rowe carried the suitcases to the front door and went out onto the pavement.

  It was a beautiful evening, dusk but not dark. He was a perfect target for Bobby, sitting in a parked car on the other side of the road. It is likely that Rowe never even heard the shot that killed him.

  Mercer had often marvelled at the skill with which newspapers used the delicate weapon of innuendo. When he heard the news at eight o’clock next morning, he made Shallini go out and buy every paper she could lay her hands on.

  Most of them had the picture, which had been taken by a News Agency man, of the docker striking at Rowe, with the words underneath it: “We’ll get you!” This was followed by a factual account of the discovery of Rowe, shot through the heart, lying in the gutter outside the block of apartments.

  When he had read them all he made a telephone call and by half past nine was in the hastily patched-up office of Tom Hobhouse. Here he spent an hour, before walking unhurriedly to the offices in Lower Creek Street. He noticed that the number of picketers had shrunk and the ones who were there seemed subdued.

  When he reached his room the telephone was ringing. It was Bobby. He seemed to be in high spirits. “Naughty, naughty,” he said. “That’s the third time I’ve rung you. Where is Mr. Mercer? Not in yet, they said. When the cat’s away, eh?”

  “Well,” said Mercer, “now you’ve found me. What do you want?”

  “It’s not me. It’s the Great White Chief. You’re to come right over. Aussi vite que possible. Schnell, schnell!”

  “All right,” said Mercer.

  When he had put down the telephone he sat for a long time undecided. He was under no illusion as to the dangers of his position. There were alternatives, which he considered cold-bloodedly, and rejected. In the end he got into his car and drove slowly towards Victoria, parking it on the Old Stag Brewery site among a forest of No Parking signs.

  The door of the house in Wilfred Street was opened for him before he had even touched the bell, Bobby showed him into the room at the back, where Mr. Henderson was waiting for him.

  He was sitting in one of the armchairs in front of the fireplace. He did not get up, but indicated by a gesture that Mercer could take the other chair. Mercer ignored the invitation, pulled out one of the hard chairs from beside the table, and sat on it, his right hand in his pocket, his left-hand swinging freely to one side.

  “You saw the papers?” said Mr. Henderson.

  “Yes. A remarkably slanted piece of reporting. Some of them did mention the packed suitcases. It was assumed that Rowe was going abroad on business.”

  “Assumed?”

  “He was running away.”

  “Why should he do that?”

  “He’d made a mess of things and he knew that pe
ople in your organisation who make a mess of things are bad insurance risks.”

  “You infer that I knew he was running away.”

  “Of course you knew it,” said Mercer. The predominant note in his voice was irritation. “I passed the information to a friend of yours yesterday morning. I don’t suppose he sat on it.” There was a long silence. Mr. Henderson seemed disinclined to break it. Mercer said, “Actually, it may have turned out rather well. I saw the union man this morning. He was glad of the chance of making a deal. The one thing unions can’t stand is any suggestion that they use criminal methods to achieve their ends. People start confusing them with the Mob, with organised crime.”

  “What sort of deal did you propose?”

  “The obvious one. I said I’d give them what they wanted. They can have every facility for trying to recruit our staff. And a lot of good may it do them. Hobhouse seemed to think that my influence would insure the deal being carried through peacefully.”

  “That would mean that you would have to take Rowe’s place.”

  “It seems the logical solution, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Henderson. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

  He spent the next half hour giving Mercer instructions and a limited amount of information. Mercer listened impassively.

  After Mercer left, Mr. Henderson sat for a time contemplating the line of exquisite silver cups on the ledge above the fireplace. A technician himself, he admired technique in others.

  “The logical solution,” he said. “First move, to replace Parker. Second move, to dispose of Rowe. Now I wonder what he is planning as his third move. To dispose of me, perhaps?”

  Mr. Henderson smiled gently and stroked his moustache with the tip of one well-manicured finger.

  Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, May 1979.

  THE MAN AT THE TOP

  “THIS MAN,” SAID SHALLINI, “has taken a room. It is the room inside the front door, on the left.”

  “Why shouldn’t he?” said Mercer.

  “But you remember, when we came. The landlady told us it was a room she never let. Never. It was her own spare room.”