A Scream in Soho

by John G. Brandon

  The place itself consisted of a long, exceedingly dirty bar which opened from the street, along which was set a built-in wooden bench with a few tables in front of it. On the other side there was a counter, behind which were huge barrels of the vilest red, or white, poison ever sold to man as wine.

  Behind this, and entered by two swing doors, was another very large and dirty room which contained a billiards table and a number of smaller tables at which the clientele who patronized that particular place played cards, or dominoes, or other games of skill, or chance, favoured by the younger school of London-born Italians.

  That clientele was divided into three entirely different classes. The first the elders of Soho of the rougher type, who lined the bar and long bench-seat of the front compartment, and among which—as Scotland Yard well knew—were numbered several members of those dread societies, the Camorrista, and the Sicilian Mafia. Sinister-looking personages, these, about whom grim stories were whispered among their fellows.

  The second group was composed of a number of Germans—mostly restaurant workers—who had been deprived of their usual rendezvous when a certain notorious Bismarck Club had been raided and closed. These kept very much to themselves, and, despite the wavering Axis, were not over popular with the Latin patrons of the Circolo Venezia.

  The third and largest group of all frequented, and over-ran generally, the inner and much larger room generally known as the “club.” They were of the flashy type of young Soho-born Italians who, for the greater part, earned the daily crust infesting the courses where such war-time racing as there was took place by day, and the third-class West End restaurants and dance-halls, by night. Sleek, oily and over-dressed, wicked rats in the “mob” but arrant curs single-handed, they formed, really, the bulk of Fasoli’s customers. They were headed by, and gave implicit obedience to, that extremely good-looking personage, in a well-oiled, raffish and over-jewelled way, Floriello Mascagni.

  It was this gentleman who, shortly after seven o’clock passed through the front double-doors of Fasoli’s wine shop, and gave its ill-favoured proprietor a hard, but meaning look.

  “Nothing yet,” Fasoli said, in an underbreath. “Da lady has-a been here dis afternoon,” he went on, through lips that never moved. “She says a that he will-a be here to-night, later, and you are to wait for him. He will-a ring som’time dis evening.”

  Mascagni nodded. “Okay,” he returned, in the same still-mouthed way.

  “You weel-a find som’ of da boys inside,” he said, aloud. “Dey just-a com’ back from Cheltenham.”

  Passing through into the inner room, Mascagni beckoned to one huge hulking brute who was playing pool, and whose face was disfigured by a knife-slash which ran right across it. Promptly he put down his cue and came across to the small table at which Mascagni had seated himself.

  Taking from an inner pocket a thick roll of Treasury notes, he pushed them across to Mascagni.

  “‘Protection money,’’’ he said gruffly. “Not too good—the books went down badly on the first three races.”

  Taking up the notes—Mascagni’s soft Italian eyes had gone as hard as two agates at the sight of the money—he thumbed them over with the swiftness of long practice, then swore softly in Italian.

  “Rotten!” he commented. “I shall have to gyp things up on that course.”

  Taking ten one-pound notes, he pushed them across the table and stuffed the rest in his breast-pocket.

  “What else?” he asked sharply.

  From a wash-leather bag the other poured out upon the table a collection of jewellery, for the greater part tie-pins of somewhat lurid design though the stones were good enough, and three heavy gold watches and chains.

  “That’s the pickings for the day, Flo,” he was told.

  Mascagni sorted them over with a finger, then nodded to his henchman to replace them.

  “You know where to take them,” he said curtly. “And don’t let the old swine do you the way he did with the last lot. If he tries it, tell him we’ll put a fire-stick into his place, and pick a time when we know he’s in bed! Go on—get about it!”

  Four amongst those present he beckoned over to him, and to each passed some money from the roll. They were the working gang who had been out at the racecourse “levying” that afternoon.

  This business transacted, Mascagni sat on in brooding thought for a while. It was plainly evident that he was ill at ease and, indeed, as nervy as a cat. After a while he rang a bell upon the table, which Fasoli hurriedly answered.

  “Get the boys a drink,” he ordered abruptly, “and bring me something. But not that rot-gut that you sell out there. No word yet?” he asked quickly, and in the same undertone in which he had first inquired.

  Fasoli shook his unkempt head.

  “Notta yet,” he said in the same tone. “Any time-a now I expec’.”

  “Everything O.K. out there?” Mascagni asked, as a quick, excited jabber of conversation went up in the outer bar.

  Fasoli shrugged his shoulders.

  “Ever’t’ing all right,” he said. “Just-a that hell-hound, Vanadi, he com’ in. Always a noise when ’e com’.”

  “The first thing you know he’ll start a fight and you’ll have the cops in on you,” Mascagni growled. “Why do you stand him here at all? He only turns up about once every six months, and it’s a police job every time he does come.”

  “He spenda plentee money,” Fasoli answered. “Spenda more in two, t’ree hours than alla da rest put together.”

  “He’ll lose you your licence, one day,” Mascagni said. “Anyhow, keep him out of this room. He mauled one of my mob so badly last time that he was in the hospital three weeks. He’ll get what’s coming to him one of these nights.”

  Fasoli gave a quick glance back towards the bar, as if terrified that the customer in question might hear and promptly start something which would not be finished in a hurry.

  Signor Paolo Vanadi was, without any question, the most quarrelsome person who ever paid occasional, though fairly regular, visits to Soho, there to drink inordinate quantities of the wines of his native land. Where he came from no-one actually knew, though some said from the north of England, where he was supposed to be in the wholesale ice-cream trade. But upon these visits he spent money like water, comparatively speaking, and invariably drank himself into a state of sullen ferocity which, sooner or later burst like a volcano. He was an inveterate fighter and, moreover, could get on with it like a professional boxer.

  Upon more than one occasion, he had fallen foul of Mascagni’s gangsters, and what he had done to such of them as had jointly and severally tackled him was little less than a crime.

  “You notta talk that way, Flo,” Fasoli said uneasily. “Vanadi a Camorrista man. You notta can tell wit’ them. Getta foul of them, and plenty of trouble eet com’.”

  It was quite evident in the expression which flitted across Mascagni’s olive-skinned face that the mere mention of that brotherhood had very deep and significant meaning for him.

  “I don’t want any trouble with him,” he said. “All I want you to do is to keep him out of here.”

  It was, perhaps, five minutes later, and in the interim the sounds denoting that Signor Vanadi was getting to his usual state of belligerent drunkenness were increasing, that Fasoli put his head around the door and gave the gangster a meaning look. Instantly Mascagni got up and moved towards another door which all who frequented the place knew led to Fasoli’s private apartments upstairs.

  Scarcely had he turned towards it when the double-doors opened and the talked-of Vanadi lurched a foot or two into the room and stood glaring around him with unconcealed contempt.

  “There we all are,” he said in Italian, and with a twisted smile at his mouth. “All the little rats in their sewer! One day some honest citizen will come in and clean the whole lot of them up for the dirt they are!” />
  Not a word came from any of the mob around the billiards table.

  “Hallo, Vanadi,” Mascagni greeted with as much affability as he could in the attempt to ward off trouble.

  “And there talks the King-rat!” the gentleman addressed spat, looking for the moment as though he were about to move in Mascagni’s direction.

  Inwardly cursing bitterly, though outwardly he showed nothing but a smile, Mascagni hurried to the door and departed through it. For a full minute Vanadi stood and glared at the others in unmistakable invitation for them to start something. But as not one of them moved so much as a muscle, he spat upon the floor contemptuously and lurched out into the front bar again.

  Hurrying upstairs, Mascagni picked up the receiver Fasoli had left off for him, but first he saw that the two doors into the room were closed tightly.

  “Hallo?” he said in a scarcely audible voice.

  “Mascagni?” came across the line sharply.

  “That’s me, Boss,” he said quickly.

  “That package which was passed to you in Soho Square last night,” the voice went on in the same peremptory manner, and speaking perfect English with just the very faintest touch of Northern German accent. “You have it with you?”

  “No,” Mascagni answered promptly. “After what happened in the square last night, I reckoned it safer not to have it on me. I got Luigi to plant it down…you know where. If the cops knew what it was and were hunting for it, I didn’t want it found on me, if anything went wrong.”

  “And what is there that that great brain of yours thinks might go wrong, as far as you are concerned?” the other questioned, open contempt in his voice.

  Mascagni ground his teeth in silent rage; it took him all his time to keep that emotion out of his voice. “This,” he answered. “How do I know that I was not spotted when you tried to do McCarthy in this morning? I don’t think I was, but you never can tell with him; he gets to work in some dam’ queer ways when he starts, as we’ve reason for knowing in Soho. But suppose he had seen me and within an hour or two I’d been picked up by the police? Would it have been all right if I’d had that stuff you took off the woman in the square last night?”

  “Gott in Himmel!” burst from the other. “Are you a fool altogether to speak like that over the telephone! You know that it would not. Perhaps,” he conceded, though ungraciously, “you were right not to carry it with you. Tell Fasoli that I shall come for the packet to-night at about eleven o’clock.”

  “You wanted me to stand by for orders, didn’t you?” Mascagni growled.

  “I still do,” came back the sharp answer. “Though as far as that is concerned I can give them to you now. I want you…”

  “Just a minute,” Mascagni interrupted. “I’ve got a date for to-night—an important date. Can’t somebody else take on this job? I’ve got plenty of good men here that can be trusted…”

  “Doubtless quite as much as you can be yourself,” came icily from the other. “But I want you to do this work, Mascagni; you, and you alone.” The icy note gave place to an imperative one. “Those are my orders, you understand? Orders! I do not brook any argument concerning them.”

  The hot red blood surged up under Mascagni’s olive skin, but he held himself in check.

  “Do not forget, my friend,” the voice went on, coldly menacing, “that you are as much involved in what happened last night, as anyone else. You and your men removed the first obstacle in our path, and brought that coffee-stall along when the second obstacle was eliminated. You also it was who took a certain something and also that fool who followed me to the place where it—and he, were found. It was for that reason that I insisted upon you, personally, being in the car this morning when a certain attempt was made to remove yet another. Keep that in your mind, Mascagni, and also something else: that the first moment you make any move, or disobey any order which I conceive to be necessary for the success of my projects there will be another, and an extremely speedy elimination. I leave you to guess who that will be.”

  So sinister was the tone in which these words were uttered that whatever urge to open defiance the gang-boss had in him speedily ebbed away, to give place to something remarkably like fear. Utterly merciless as he could be towards those of his kind who incurred his displeasure amongst the denizens of the underworld, he had seen enough of the methods of the man now ordering him about like a dog to instil in him a wholesome terror of bringing his wrath down upon himself, personally. The sight he had witnessed in Soho Square had not been a pretty one; he had no wish for the scene to be repeated, with himself as one of the two principal actors in it.

  “Oh, all right, all right,” he snapped quickly. “Let’s have the orders. I can put the date off.”

  “I should,” came back to him in amazingly equable tones. “Since I saw you this morning certain information has come to me that this McCarthy is putting forth his very best efforts to clear up the mystery of the Soho Square death. Whether he has any knowledge of the cause of that unfortunate decease—the packet, which we will merely say you know of—I cannot tell. Nor have I any certain knowledge as to whether the identity of that person has been discovered yet. That is a matter of considerable importance to me, and I want you to get out at once, pick up the track of McCarthy and watch his movements closely. It may be that some act of his may reveal what I want to know. Set about that business at once and it may be that you will be able to report something useful to me at eleven o’clock. That is all.”

  “But I haven’t the faintest idea where to pick McCarthy up,” Mascagni protested. “He’s like a blasted jumping-jack; here, there, and everywhere.”

  “That is your business,” the other informed him coldly. “You will prosecute it to the very utmost of your ability—if you are wise. Until eleven o’clock.”

  There was no more. Flo. Mascagni could hear the other hang up his receiver, then the line went dead. Returning to the club room, he picked three of the older men of his gang, tough-looking specimens, who, he knew, could be depended upon to not only use cunning, but could put up a real fight if necessary.

  “The rest of you clear out of here sharp at closing time and make yourselves scarce.”

  For a moment or two he stood thinking, then slipping upstairs again to the telephone, dialled a certain number. A low, seductive female voice answered his call.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  “It’s me—Flo.,” he told her. “I can’t take you out dancing to-night as I promised, Tessa. He’s found me a job to do, dam’ him.”

  “He? Who?” she asked, but without exhibiting the disappointment in her voice that he had expected to hear.

  “The Big Shot. The one I told you about who’s been finding the big dough lately.”

  “The one whose name you don’t know?” she asked.

  “I know the name he’s travelling under,” he answered. “But it’s not his real one. The swine is a German. Don’t talk about him, he seems to have ears that reach everywhere!” he added viciously.

  “You sound as if you don’t like him, Flo.,” she said.

  A wicked laugh came from Mascagni.

  “Like him! I like him so much that if I could see a chiv in his throat I’d laugh for a fortnight! But I want his dough, Tessa, and he’s bad medicine to fall out with. But one of these days I’ll show him something that he won’t forget in a hurry.”

  “Why?” she asked laconically.

  “Why?” he echoed. “Because he thinks he’s everything and the rest don’t matter! Gives his orders as if you were a dog, and his threats at the same time. I suppose I’ve got to stick him while I want him, but one of the best days I’ll ever know will be the one when I’ll either see him dead or with handcuffs on. And one will be about the same as the other.”

  A low, musical laugh came to him over the line.

  “You love him not, Flo.,” she said.


  “I love him not!” Mascagni answered grimly. “And one day he’ll know it. Well, I’ve got to get going. I’ll phone you to-morrow.”

  “Leave it till the evening, Flo.,” she said. “I shall be free then.”

  “What do you mean by ‘free then’?” he asked jealously. “What are you doing the rest of the day?”

  But no answer came to him, and for the second time that evening he heard the receiver hung up on him. He was still muttering curses when he joined the three he had selected for the night’s work and left the Circolo Venezia.

  As he passed through the outer bar the wild-looking Signor Paolo Vanadi was holding forth luridly upon some subject or other. Pausing for a moment to throw one contemptuous stare at the quartette as they went through, he jerked a thumb towards them.

  “Rats!” he observed, that all might hear. “Rats on two legs instead of four! The only difference is that the four-legged ones have more courage!”

  Receiving no answer of any sort of kind to this jibe, he spat deliberately upon the highly-polished shoes of the gangster bringing up the rear, then went on with his impassioned harangue.

  Chapter XV

  The Packet Changes Hands

  At five to eleven to the minute, Fasoli cleared his place, then closed and barred the front doors of the Circolo Venezia. His unusual earliness brought savage expostulations from some of his patrons, of which he took no notice whatever. Strangely enough, the one he had expected most trouble with, Paolo Vanadi, he had none at all, for at about the time he commenced picking up the dirty glasses, that gentleman, having drunk himself into an almost lunatic state, simply disappeared.

  Having closed, Fasoli did not hang around his bar cleaning up as usual, but got to that upstairs room, and sat waiting by the telephone. At two minutes to eleven it rang. The same cold voice which had addressed Mascagni earlier in the evening came to his ears.