A Scream in Soho

by John G. Brandon

  “I shall be there, at the rear door, in precisely three minutes,” it informed him. “Have the packet ready that Mascagni handed over to you for safekeeping to-day. I have no wish to stay there longer than is necessary. Is Mascagni there?”

  “No, signor, but I expect-a heem ever-a minute. Eet ees notta eleven yet, signor. Mascagni good-a boy,” he observed, almost timidly. “Somet’ing onexpec’ keep-a heem late. Trust Flo. to carry-a da orders out.”

  The words were hardly out of his mouth when there came a peculiar, low-noted whistle from the back yard.

  “Mascagni ees ’ere now—signor. I ’ear hees wheestl—a.”

  Putting back the receiver he hurried to the back door, unlocked it, and opened it cautiously. Mascagni entered alone.

  “He ’as just-a rung up,” Fasoli informed him. “Weel be-a ’ere in two, t’ree minutes.”

  “The best I wish him is that he’ll break his bloody neck getting here,” Mascagni growled. “He’s after the packet—you’d better have it ready. His Highness doesn’t like being kept waiting—blast him.”

  Fasoli glanced at him queerly, and for a second looked as though he was about to make some observation. But evidently he thought better of it and made again for his back door.

  “Lock eet after me,” he requested. “And open up when he com’.”

  Outside his door he listened while Mascagni shot the bolts. Suddenly, but at some distance away, there rose upon the still night air the sound of a fierce brawl, topped by altercation in a high-pitched hysterical voice. With a certain amount of relief Fasoli recognized the voice—it was that madman, Paolo Vanadi, fallen foul of the police again! Had it not been for the money he spent so liberally during his periodical visits, Fasoli could have wished that he could have remained in their hands for the rest of his existence. The brawl was still at its height as he made his way across a small yard which would have been a veritable deathtrap to any stranger who had endeavoured to negotiate it in this inky blackness, but the wine-shop keeper passed with the utmost certainty through the obstacles towards a ramshackle shed which stood in a corner of the yard. Into this he disappeared, and as he did so the sound of the faraway brawl ended with a suddenness which suggested that the unruly Vanadi had been laid low at last—possibly with a police truncheon.

  Scarcely had Fasoli disappeared than a back gate which led into an alley was opened cautiously, and two other persons entered the yard. The one who led the way must have had the eyes of a cat to avoid accident, or else, like Fasoli, was so well acquainted with the place that he could cross it blindfold. A moment later he tapped in a peculiar way upon the door; without hesitation Mascagni unlocked and opened.

  The first person to enter would have been promptly recognized by Inspector McCarthy, even by such portion of his face as could be seen, as the man who had supped in Signora Spadoglia’s the night before—the one he had mentally christened, and thought of, as the “man with the ice-blue eyes.” At the present moment those strange-looking members were not so much the colour of ice as of chilled steel. He was garbed in totally different fashion to the night before, wearing rough tweeds and a heavy overcoat of the same material, the collar of which was turned up to his ears. The soft felt hat which topped the lot was snapped down in front to cover those strange eyes, but the moment he entered the room he pushed it back clear of them and fixed Mascagni with a stare so steady that it seemed peculiarly malevolent in its intensity.

  But it was the person who accompanied and, by the way, the one who had led the way across the case- and cask-strewn yard, who was certainly the most noticeable of the two at that moment. He was, literally, a dwarf of certainly not more than four feet high, but with the shoulder-spread of a man two feet taller. To add to the queerness, indeed unnaturalness, of his appearance, his head and hands would have been in proper proportion upon a man of the latter height, yet his feet were tiny.

  He was dressed in a chauffeur’s uniform of dark grey, and carried a pair of leather gauntlets in his left hand. In features he was as repulsive as even a man of his unusual proportions could be. The whole of his face was heavily pock-marked, while his nose was of that natural order of snub which appears to have no bridge whatever, and just juts from the face in one wide-nostrilled point. His ears were huge and splayed out at right angles to his face, while his mouth, for sheer cruelty, would have done justice to a man-eating shark. The moment he had knocked upon the door and Mascagni had opened it, he dropped back behind the man who was apparently his master, and effaced himself in a corner by the door.

  “Well,” the newcomer asked, in that abrupt, harsh voice which seemed natural to him, “have you anything to report?”

  Mascagni shook his head sullenly.

  “No,” he answered. “I and three of my men have hunted everywhere I could think of to pick up traces of him, but we’ve had no luck. He’s not in Soho to-night, that I’m certain of.”

  “He was in the West End at two o’clock today,” the other said frowningly. “That I know for positive fact.”

  In the same sullen way Mascagni shrugged his shoulders. “He may be still for all I know,” he returned. “All I’ve got to say is that I’ve hunted Soho for him, and can’t find him, nor have I struck anyone who’s seen him to-night. I might have gone on further, only you wanted me here at eleven o’clock, and it takes time to go the rounds.”

  There was a certain note of surly defiance in the Soho-Italian’s voice as he spoke; a note which the other was not slow to pick up. The steely light in the pale eyes intensified ever so slightly, though by no other sign did he show annoyance or, for the matter of that, interest.

  “Perhaps I am wrong,” he said quietly, and, indeed, amiably, “but you sound somewhat disgruntled, Mascagni?”

  The tone in which the words were spoken gave the gangster courage to get something off his chest which had lain dormant there ever since his projected programme with Tessa Domenico had been upset by this man’s peremptory orders.

  “If that means that I’m sore, you can take it as right,” he spat, his native viciousness showing for the first time to the man who watched him with that unblinking stare. “It’s all dam’ fine you ordering this and that, and speaking to me as if I were some dog in the gutter. But don’t forget one thing…”

  “And what is that?” the other interrupted, in a strangely quiet voice.

  “That it wasn’t me who killed the woman in Soho Square last night—it’s not me McCarthy’s after.”

  “No?”

  “No! You can tell me that I had a cut in it as much as you like, and my answer to that is that I knew nothing about it until I saw it done, and if I had known, I wouldn’t have been where I was. You can bet on that.”

  “What is the difference, in so far as the law is concerned, between one murder and another?” the man with the icy eyes queried almost pleasantly. “Who killed the owner of the coffee-stall?”

  “Not me,” Mascagni snapped quickly. “I wasn’t mug enough for that.”

  “I think that if ever you stand in the dock for complicity in either charge, the mere fact that you did not actually commit the murders with your own hands will not stand you in very good stead. You are an accessory, as the English law puts it, both before and after both crimes.”

  Mascagni scowled. “When I stand in the dock for it,” he snarled, “you can bet every penny you’ve got that you’ll be there with me. Take that from me.”

  “Ach, so? That is the way of it, is it?” The speaker moved with a long gliding stride towards Mascagni, who promptly backed away from him and dropped his hand into his right coat pocket. “Be warned, fool, do not attempt to pull that weapon you have there if you value your own worthless and useless existence. To repeat your own phrase, you can take it from me that you would be a dead man, before you could as much as point it. You will be well advised to remove that hand before—before something extremely unpleasant happ
ens to you.”

  One quick look Mascagni took into those unmoving eyes, then slowly his hand came out of the pocket—empty.

  “That is better, much better. Now, you listen to me. The first movement that you make in any direction, which I consider inimical to either myself or my plans, will be your last. That you are too big a cur to ever whisper a word that might land you where you should have been long ago, in a felon’s dock, I am perfectly certain. However, here and now I give you fair warning, which is something I do not generally trouble myself to do where rats of your breed are concerned. Make one false step—and you know the consequences.”

  A tap, the same peculiar knock as that which had admitted them, came upon the door.

  “Open it, Ludwig,” he ordered curtly.

  Without a word the dwarf did so, and Fasoli hurried into the room and quickly closed and bolted the door after himself. One quick glance he shot at the two standing there, then took a flat, oilskin-wrapped packet from the inside of his shirt, and handed it over.

  “What you wanted, signor,” he said, utter subservience in his voice.

  “I wrap eet in-a da piece oilskin,” he said fawningly. “Eet damp—da blue colour she com’ off onna da fingers.”

  “Thanks.” Carefully and deliberately the man with the icy eyes unwrapped the oilskin and examined the contents, then as carefully rewrapped it and placed it in his breast-pocket. From a notecase he took two wads of treasury notes, the smaller of which he handed to Fasoli, whose eyes gleamed at the sight of the money.

  “I t’ank you, signor; I t’ank you,” the wine-shop keeper almost grovelled, clutching at the notes.

  The second packet he flung upon the floor at Mascagni’s feet. “The pay you were promised,” he said coldly. “Let it remind you, Mascagni, of a very important fact: that I keep my promises—pleasant, and unpleasant.” He made an abrupt gesture towards the door. “Get out,” he ordered curtly. “Get out—before I change my mind as to the method of dealing with you.”

  Without a word Mascagni picked up the packet of notes, and thrust them in his pocket, then crossed to the door, avoiding the glare in the eyes of the other. Fasoli, scenting the imminence of stark tragedy, opened the door hurriedly, and Mascagni slouched through it without a word. Five minutes later his other guests left, and, it was with a sigh of intense relief that he locked and bolted the door, for the last time he hoped, that night.

  “Madonna mia!” he muttered, as the last sound of their departure reached him from the yard. “I do not like that one! I am afraid of heem.”

  It was as the pair moved stealthily along in the blackness of the alley at the rear of Fasoli’s that the icy-eyed man spoke again.

  “I will drive the car home, Ludwig,” he said quietly. “I think it will be wiser for you to do a little job to-night, and not risk leaving it till later. A job,” he added, “which is one after your own heart. You understand?”

  “Ja, Herr Baron,” the dwarf chuckled. “One after my own heart, indeed!”

  A moment later, he had disappeared into the impenetrable gloom which was Greek Street in the black-out.

  His master kept along towards Oxford Street at a pace which suggested that those strange eyes of his had something of the feline power of seeing in the dark in them. Only once he paused as though he heard some movement not far away from him, stood listening a moment, then went on again.

  As he did so someone, moving with the stealth of a creature of the wild, kept a little behind him upon the other side of the road, though certain it was that if his game was shadowing, he could have seen nothing of his quarry. At one corner this unseen second person stopped as though in a quandary, then felt his way into a narrow alley which ran from Greek Street towards the rear of its business premises. A second later he had barely time to flatten himself against the wall when a car shot along the alley without lights of any sort, its mudguards almost brushing against him. It turned into Greek Street, and before the shadower could get to the corner its lights were switched on after it swung again into Oxford Street, running in an easterly direction. But one light was not on—that which should have illumined, even if ever so faintly, the rear number plate.

  “Lost him,” the shadower exclaimed ruefully. “I should have been prepared for something of this sort.”

  Chapter XVI

  Exit Floriello Mascagni!

  Floriello Mascagni, so summarily dismissed from the Circolo Venezia, landed out into the streets again in a condition of white-hot rage. Not a little of that violent emotion was caused by the fact of the poor showing he knew himself to have made in front of a man he despised, Luigi Fasoli. He, himself, had invariably treated the wine-shop keeper with unconcealed contempt; the contempt of a gang-boss whose mob would have wrecked the place without turning a hair if the older man had dared to show any open resentment. If he knew his Fasoli, the whisper that Flo. Mascagni had taken a verbal trouncing without as much as lifting a finger, would be well around Soho before he was so much older.

  His rage was further aggravated by the thought that, but for this German swine’s autocratic orders to meet, and report, to him there at eleven o’clock, he would have been dancing, or otherwise enjoying himself, with Tessa. A moment’s reflection upon this point brought him realization that, when all was said and done, it was but a little after eleven o’clock now—quite time enough for them to enjoy an hour or two at one or two of the underworld dance dives where he and his kind were especially catered for, and where closing hours were an extremely elastic business.

  Making for the nearest telephone-booth he dialled her lodgings in Doughty Street—Tessa had months ago left the home circle for brighter surroundings: the simple ways of Giacomo Domenico, the wine-cask maker, and his wife, Lucia, were not hers, these days.

  His ring was answered by her landlady, who informed him that Tessa had gone out an hour or so ago, and had evidently gone to some restaurant or night club since she had arrayed herself in her latest finery. She had left no word, either as to where she was going, or as to what time she might be expected to return.

  A quick stab of jealousy aggravated still further the savage passions already burning in his breast. Knowing her, it was not feasible that she had dressed in that style to spend what was left of the night by herself. Who, then, had she gone to meet?

  He prowled the streets for a while, then decided to put in an hour or two at a certain club frequented by gamblers, which also had the convenient tab “Circolo” tacked on to it for obvious reasons—this particular dive was glorified by the title of the Circolo Romagna, though the Romans who entered its portals were few and far between. He had plenty of money on him, and there was invariably a hot “school” to be found there.

  He had been playing for perhaps half an hour and winning steadily, when he asked the club proprietor to give Tessa’s number a ring. The man later on remembered that it was at just on half-past twelve. He got an answer to the effect that Tessa was not home yet; a reply which had the result of rousing the brooding devil which was eating at Mascagni to fever pitch.

  Where the hell was she? Who was she out with?

  “Dio mio, Flo.!” one of the card-players grunted as for the third time Mascagni raked in a heavy pool. “Like-a dese Engleesa say: you lucky da cards, unlucky da love!”

  Mascagni half-rose with a snarl, and in an instant would have been at the throat of the jester, but that he suddenly remembered that the fellow was a Camorrista man, and the come-back from a quarrel with him might be extremely unpleasant. With a muttered oath, he went on playing.

  But, strangely enough, from that moment Mascagni’s luck turned. He began to lose even more heavily than he had been winning before.

  It was at about one o’clock that the phone rang, and Olinto Delmorti, the proprietor of the club, went to the instrument. It was Tessa Domenico, ringing Flo. Mascagni.

  What transpired at the telephone must have
been something which pleased the gangster, for, for the first time that night, the brooding scowl left his face and something like a smile took its place. When he came back to the card-table he was whistling.

  “Not so unlucky in love, Giacomo,” he observed to the elder man who had spoken. “I got a date in an hour so you’ll know that I’m quitting then.”

  “Si!” the other answered. “But you lose-a da cards, now, Floriello. When I spoke, you win ever’t’ing.”

  But, by a strange coincidence, Mascagni’s luck changed again. In the next three-quarters of an hour all, and more, of the bundle of notes he had passed over had returned to him, and he got up a good winner. With a careless nod and the remark that they would finish it out another time, he left the club and turned up towards Oxford Street.

  In a sort of subconscious way he noticed a little figure in a doorway opposite the Circolo; someone who, as far as height went, might have been a lad of twelve. As Mascagni moved on up the street, so also did he, but the gangster took no further notice of him.

  Suddenly rain began to fall in a light drizzle, and Mascagni turned towards a back alley which he knew would give him a short cut towards that part of Oxford Street for which he was heading. He noticed, almost without realizing, that the small figure which had kept pace with him along the other side of the street had disappeared; then he heard him scuttling along the alley well in front of him. One of those pests of homeless kids who are to be found dossing in every second doorway in Soho, he supposed.

  Along the alley he went, keeping under the lee side of the wall. Something, a shadow, suddenly moved in the recessed doorway of a warehouse right opposite him. He supposed it was that kid who had dodged in there out of the rain. Then, suddenly, and without the slightest sound or warning, the beam of a powerful torch shot straight into his face from that doorway opposite, momentarily blinding him. He flung his hand up to cover his eyes—and that was the last action of Floriello Mascagni on earth.