A Scream in Soho

by John G. Brandon

  McCarthy gingerly did as he was told, to find, beyond any question of doubt, that under his hand was unquestionably the bristles of a strong beard, but so skilfully covered by the make-up that, in the ordinary way, they were absolutely undetectable.

  “A common enough type in Germany nowadays,” the D.S. commented. “The last time I was in Berlin the lounges of the Hotel Adlon, and similar places, were full of them. The pure Aryan,” he continued sarcastically, “seems to have a very definite leaning in that direction. As far as the bristles go, he probably shaves two or three times a day; had he been alive and he’d done that this morning, we wouldn’t have found a trace of them. The D.S. at Golders Green must have taken a very cursory glance at him—the teeth alone ought to have told him the truth, though I’ll admit that they are exceptionally small.”

  “They didn’t me,” McCarthy said ruefully.

  “Which is only proof, if you need any, that you don’t know as much as you think you do, Mac,” the surgeon returned dryly.

  “But what the divil is he got up in this way, here in England, for?” McCarthy questioned, though more to himself than anyone else.

  The D.S. shrugged his shoulders. “That’s your job to find out. Personally, I’d say it was a case of espionage in some form or other. There are any amount of them here among the ‘refugees’ and ‘anti-Nazis.’ We’re the dam’dest fools on earth when it comes to that sort of thing.”

  “You’re telling me!” McCarthy exclaimed. “You want to hear the Special Branch men on that.”

  “I don’t,” the other said shortly. “I’ve got plenty of grouses of my own, without having to listen to theirs. However, you’re aware now that it’s the murder of a man you’re investigating, and not a woman. Though,” he amended, “and speak with all caution, I’d say that he was in the habit of wearing female clothes habitually, if I make myself clear.”

  McCarthy nodded. “You mean that I’m investigating the case of the murder of a man who isn’t known in the country as a man at all, but as a woman?”

  “That’s it. And now, I’ll thank you to clear out and let me get on with my job. Unless,” he added, with a jerk of his head towards another still figure stretched out upon a slab at the other end of the chill room, “there’s anything you want to know about the murdered constable. I made a thorough examination of his wound, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s more than likely that he was stabbed with an exact counterpart of that weapon you showed me. The sooner you can let me have it, the better, and I’ll get on with the blood test you wanted.”

  “I’ll give the ‘dabs’ artist’s a ring and hustle them up,” McCarthy promised. He was turning away towards the office, in which “Danny the Dip” was now being regaled with a huge mug of tea, which, from the steam arising from it, must have been well-nigh scalding, when something else crossed his mind. “Then that hair,” he said, with a nod towards the cadaver stretched out before them, “must be a wig.”

  “Of course; no man living could ever train his hair to grow that way, even though it is on the short side.”

  Lifting the head, the D.S. unfastened several almost invisible hairpins, and drew an amazingly perfect wig of dark brown hair, very slightly touched with grey, from it. “Wonderful piece of real-hair work,” he commented. “Quite the best I’ve ever come across, must have been made by an artist in that line. Practically undetectable in the ordinary way.”

  Holding out his hand for the wig, McCarthy took it, and examined it thoroughly. Among the odds and ends of miscellaneous information he had picked up from theatrical friends, was the fact that first-class wig-makers invariably stitched a tab with their name and the date of making, and very often the name of the person the wig was made for, upon the inside webbing on which the hair was threaded. If by any lucky chance it should be so in this case—and certainly the magnificent wig the “woman” had worn could only have been the work of a first-class maker—then here might be a direct clue which might, eventually, lead to the identity of the murdered man. Surely enough upon one corner of the tapes, which held the springs which formed the foundation of the wig, he came across a small printed tab bearing the inscription, “Heinrich, London.” But he could find no date or anything else that would give the slightest clue as to who the wig had been made for.

  “I’ll want this for a bit,” he said to the attendant. “Parcel it up, and I’ll sign for it. How’s Regan going on?”

  “Foine,” he was told. “The tay done ’im all the good in the world, like the D.S. said it would. But there’s one thing, Inspector, ye’ll need get him an overcoat of some sort or other before ye can take ’im out of this. If he goes out on the street the way he is, with the blood dried all over him, he’ll be pinched for murder before he gets a hundred yards, even with you with him.”

  A glance into the office where Regan sat sipping at the scalding tea and pulling horrible faces in the process, satisfied McCarthy of the truth of the observation. “Find him something for the time being,” he requested. “I’ll take him home with me to hear his story, and return anything you can dig him up later in the day.

  “How are you feeling now, Dan?” he asked, as he entered the office.

  The pickpocket looked up at him through still half-vacant eyes.

  “Bloody awful,” he answered in a tone which left no doubt in McCarthy’s mind as to the truth of his words. “They musta soaked me proper, Inspector, while they was at it,” he continued, with a shake of his head. “Blimey, many’s the time I been put down with bars an’ bottles and coshes, but I never felt like this.”

  “They gave you something else, to make sure of you, Dan,” McCarthy explained. “A shot of something that would keep you where they wanted you for as long as it suited them.”

  As he spoke his eyes were travelling over the thick, dark stains upon Regan’s clothes. “You’ve no idea what happened to you after they knocked you out, Danny?” he inquired.

  Regan shook his head. “After they dotted me, guv’nor, an’ I seen a million stars, I dunno nothink. I ’spect I must’ve been dumped into a car, because it was out of one that they dived on me, and I couldn’t ’ave got all the way to ’Ampstead any other way, like I must’ve done.”

  McCarthy nodded his agreement.

  “No, Danny,” he said, “it was a car, right enough. I’ll take you home with me for a bit of breakfast, and hear your story up to that point there. The thing that’s interesting me most at the moment, is where, and how, did you come by all this blood on your clothes. You certainly never got it from that crack on the skull.”

  Regan shook his head wearily. “Don’t ask me, Inspector,” he returned. “You know as much abaht that as I do.”

  Taking a small penknife from his pocket, McCarthy wiped the blade clean, then carefully scraped some of the glutinous, and still moist in parts, blood from Regan’s coat. Spreading it carefully upon a sheet of white paper he got from the mortuary attendant, he took it back to the doctor and requested him to make a test with that of the man in female clothing.

  “I’ve the idea, Doc,” he said, “that the body of this man was already in the bottom of the car that Regan was pitched into, and the blood from this one will be found to be the same that he’s covered with.”

  “Leave it here,” the D.S. said brusquely. “I’ll do the lot at the same time. And if there’s anything else you can think up to keep me stuck at it here all day, don’t hesitate to rush it along. My time is of no account whatever,” he added sarcastically.

  “I’ll not forget,” McCarthy said, with a grin, and, first seeing his battered assistant arrayed in an ancient rain-coat six sizes too big for him, led the way towards the door.

  Taking a last glance back at the figure upon which the disgruntled doctor was now engaged in stripping of its misleading apparel, something struck him concerning it which, until that moment, had not.

  The shaven head without t
he wig intensified tremendously the Teutonic caste of the dead man’s face, even masked in make-up as it was. There, unquestionably, was your Prussian of the officer class. During his many visits to the Continent upon police business he had seen dozens who might have been blood brothers of the dead man. He had little doubt that, when the face was eventually cleaned off, the scars of student duelling affairs would be found bitten into it.

  “Espionage, right enough,” he murmured. “But in what connection, and who was sufficiently antagonistic to what you were up to, to make a slaughterhouse end of you, such as they have done?”

  Chapter IX

  The Inspector Gets Yet Another Shock

  It was, McCarthy’s watch told him, a little after seven o’clock when he left the mortuary, followed by Regan, still a little shaky upon his feet. Away to the east, light was beginning to disperse the gloom of the black-out, and for the first time the inspector was thankful for the resumption of normal time. Otherwise it would have meant another groping journey back to Dean Street; quite bad enough in those narrow thoroughfares, even with a torch.

  They pushed along in silence, McCarthy feeling in no mood for talking after the recent major surprise discovery, and, apparently, Mr. Regan still less so—unless his particular silence was to be put down to an observance of the golden rule of speaking when he was spoken to. By the time they arrived in Regent Street it was quite daylight.

  “We’ll turn down as far as Glasshouse Street, Danny, and cut through to my crib that way,” the inspector said suddenly. “It’ll have to be a hasty breakfast, because I’m due in Soho Square before eight o’clock.”

  At Glasshouse Street the pair turned, cutting through Brewer Street and working in a northerly direction. The streets were comparatively empty—Soho, like its much richer neighbour, Mayfair, not being given to early rising. An odd milk-cart or two were about, pushed by men who seemed about as half-awake as the district they were serving, and paper boys were here and there to be seen scurrying along, only stopping to push the morning sheets under doors, or through letter boxes. Suddenly, that strange sixth sense which seems to be the heritage of both criminals and the men who hunt them, alike, warned him that he was under observation. From some point or other he was being watched by some unseen person! Or was it Regan? That, too, was possible—in the circumstances. Although particularly careful to show no sign that he realized the fact, his eyes sought everywhere in the narrow street to pick up the person who was interested in one or the other of them, but for the life of him he could not. He was quite certain that they were being watched, but whoever was at this shadowing business was certainly an adept.

  At the corner of Lexicon Street, at which point he turned to cut through into Dean Street, he gave another seemingly casual, but in reality exceedingly keen glance about him, but could still see no one. Nevertheless, the feeling was stronger than ever upon him that they were under surveillance.

  It was as they turned into Dean Street, itself, and crossed the road towards his lodging, that, without the slightest warning, a car shot out of nowhere, for all he could tell, and travelling at an entirely illegal pace, made straight at them. But for a lightning-like grab at Regan, which sent that already shaken person sprawling upon the pavement, and an equally sudden lurch to one side upon his part, it would have unquestionably run them down, and, by the size of the car and the speed it was travelling, with quite fatal results. As it was, its near-side mudguard caught him a glancing blow with such force as to send him in an entirely inelegant, and certainly undignified, dive upon the top of Regan. Before he could get to his feet again, it had accelerated to a still higher speed, shot around Carlisle Street into Soho Square and was gone. Its rear number-plate, he noticed, was so thickly plastered with mud as to be quite undecipherable. Which, as there had been no rain in the last forty-eight hours, told its own story.

  He was helping Regan to his feet when, for the first time, he noticed that the occurrence had been watched by a trio of L.C.C. workers engaged in hosing down the gutters from a hydrant a little higher up the street. He was known to them, as he was to most of the denizens of this cosmopolitan quarter.

  “Lor’ lumme, Inspector,” the hose operator exclaimed, “them there bleeders didn’t ’arf mean puttin’ paid to you! They came straight at you from about fifty yards back.”

  “It certainly looks as though they were displeased with me for something or other,” the inspector said, with his infectious smile. “Though perhaps it may have been a quite unintentional skid,” he suggested.

  “There was no skid about that,” the hose-man informed him, very positively. “They came straight at y’, like I’m tellin’ you. It might have been a skid if we’d had the hose down that far, but the road’s as dry as a flint down there.”

  “You didn’t happen to spot the number on the front plate, I suppose?” McCarthy asked.

  Hose-man shook his head. “It was all plastered up,” he answered. “If I’d only ’ad me nut screwed on right I’d have hosed it clean, though it wouldn’t have been much good at the rate they was going.”

  “Didn’t happen to spot the driver as anyone you knew, I suppose?” McCarthy asked.

  The other shook his head.

  “No, Inspector,” he said. “To tell y’ the truth it ’appened so sudden, I was took all of an ’eap.”

  “There was three of them in the car,” one of his mates averred. “One of ’em was that dirty crook, Mascagni. He was crouching back in a corner trying’ to ’ide ’isself, but I spotted him.”

  “You’re quite sure of that?” McCarthy asked quietly.

  “Certain, Inspector. I’d take me oath on that.”

  “Well, well,” McCarthy said softly. “Our esteemed friend Floriello Mascagni doesn’t like us any more, Danny. We’ve done something to upset him, it seems.”

  “’E never did ’ave no time for me,” the pickpocket growled. “I ain’t flash enough for him.”

  “Perhaps he’ll find some for me,” McCarthy said grimly. “Or, rather, I’ll find some for him, before he’s so much older,” he corrected himself. “And, somehow, I don’t think Floriello will like that.” He slipped his arm through that of the considerably shaken Regan. “Come on, Daniel, we won’t allow this little episode to put us off our appetite, and I’ve got to be in Soho Square before eight.”

  But it seemed that there was yet another minute or two to be filched from the rapidly shortening time at the inspector’s disposal. He was almost at his own door when a police ambulance, which had been flying down Dean Street towards Shaftesbury Avenue, pulled up beside him with a jerk. In the front of it, beside the driver, was the sergeant who had gone through the house in Soho Square with him, a few hours before.

  “Do you know the latest, Inspector?” he hailed in a state of great excitement.

  “The latest?” McCarthy questioned back. “The latest of what?”

  “Old Joe Anselmi has been found stiff in death in his own back yard, not three-quarters of an hour ago. Some of the neighbours saw the body lying there from their upper windows and notified us. The doctor who ran the rule over him says that he was killed somewhere between midnight and one o’clock this morning as far as he can tell. We know it must have been after half-past eleven, because he was seen going to his yard at that time.”

  “Joe Anselmi,” McCarthy repeated, as staggered a man as he had been in many a long day. “Then—then it couldn’t have been he that pushed that coffee-stall out of Soho Square last night, just at the time that that scream was heard.”

  “That’s a certainty,” the sergeant snapped, then went on irately: “If the blasted fools had only notified me that he had done so I’d have known something was wrong, because Anselmi had his permit for the coffee-stall to stand where it did, revoked five days ago, owing to the black-out. It hasn’t stood there this week.”

  “So that’s how the body was got out of Soho Square last
night,” McCarthy said thoughtfully.

  “Must have been,” the sergeant agreed; “there was no other way it could have been managed. And now,” he continued, a certain sly look in his eyes, “all y’ have to do now, Inspector, is find the body.”

  “That’s been done,” McCarthy told him. “I’ve just come away from the mortuary. Oh, and by the way, Sergeant, for your later guidance I’ll just tell you that that scream came from a man, and not a woman. Tell me,” he continued quickly, before the sergeant had time to do more than open his mouth in astonishment, “how was poor old Joe killed?”

  “Stabbed,” the sergeant answered tersely. “And they did it as though they liked doing it, the murdering swine,” the sergeant growled. “They made a terrible mess of him. If ever I want to see a man swing—or maybe it’s men—it’s whoever killed Joe Anselmi. He was a decent man.”

  “He was all that,” McCarthy said quietly. “And you’ll get your wish, Sergeant. Stand on me, you’ll get it before you’re so much older. Many’s the feed old Joe has stood me when I was a kid about these streets; I reckon hanging his murderers is up to me.”

  It was not until McCarthy had finished his hastily eaten breakfast—a meal for which the sergeant’s news had taken all his appetite—that he turned to the well-nigh ravenous Mr. Regan, who was getting on with it as might a man who never expected to see food again.

  “Now, Danny,” he said, “as I’ve told you before, time is precious with me this morning, so begin talking. Out with it—from the moment I left you in Oxford Street until they knocked you cold in Park Lane. Give me the lot, with all the detail you can remember.”

  ***

  When Inspector McCarthy left “Danny the Dip,” that worthy proceeded to put his whole heart and soul into the business before him. To start with, he had unquestionably been upon criminal-pursuit bent when Inspector McCarthy had landed upon him like a bolt from the blue, and he was well aware that the inspector knew just what he was at, as well as he, himself, did. As far as his own mean little mind would permit him, he was not ungrateful for the let-off.