A Scream in Soho

by John G. Brandon

  He was about to pass on to the third of the doors when a sound reached his ear which sent him tense and listening intently for all that he was worth. Although two rooms and a corridor separated him from it he was quite certain that he had heard the snap of the outer door lock, if not that of the one which led into that magnificent drawing-room. Retracing his steps quickly to the dressing-room he listened there a moment; it was all he needed to assure him that the occupants of the flat had quite unexpectedly returned, and that he was caught in an anything but enviable position.

  Slipping back again into the corridor he searched for a service door of any kind which might afford an exit, but there was none. The dining-room of the flat, from which there probably was a service door, was entered from the drawing-room and lay back from the front. To get at it he would have to pass through the bedroom and drawing-room, the chances of which, without being observed, were absolutely a million to one against. While he was endeavouring to make up his mind as to his best line of action, Tessa Domenico sailed through into the bedroom, followed by her male companion, and rendered those chances absolutely nil.

  On tip-toe McCarthy crept to the bathroom door, opened it noiselessly the tiniest bit to see just how the land lay. More than ever were things unpropitious, for while Tessa had thrown off the magnificent chinchilla coat she had been wearing and tossed it upon the bed with her hat, and was evidently about to repair the ravages of her toilet, the man with the icy eyes simply leaned lazily against the door through which McCarthy must necessarily pass to get out. Which, in the inspector’s opinion, put the tin hat on things entirely.

  That neither had the faintest suspicion that there was any third party in the flat became evident from the turn their conversation took. The man was as calm and as placid as he had been when he had walked out of Signora Spadoglia’s restaurant the night before, but the tone of Tessa Domenico’s voice proved that she was at least agitated, if some much stronger emotion was not dominating her at the moment.

  “Where did you hear that they were hard at work following up his”—her voice trembled for an instant—“his, Mascagni’s death?” she asked.

  He took a cigarette from his case and lit it before replying.

  “Did you not expect that they would?” he returned with complete casualness. “My dear Tessa, such are the strange ways of this country of yours that the police give just as much attention to the murder of a gangster as they would to that of the Prime Minister. The outcry in the newspapers will of course be less, but otherwise the modus operandi will be exactly the same.”

  It struck instantly upon McCarthy, experienced as he was in the different gradations of the English tongue as spoken in cosmopolitan Soho, that this man was unquestionably German although speaking perfect, but pedantic, English. There was nothing colloquial in his phrasing. He reminded McCarthy both in his method of speech and his idiom more of that unconscious humorist, Lord Haw-Haw of Hamburg, than anyone he had ever heard. The only difference lay in a certain sinisterness which was behind this man’s voice which the German broadcaster completely lacked.

  “Speaking entirely personally,” he went on, “I think there is little to fear from the outcome of Scotland Yard’s activities. They do not strike me as having anything of either genius or inspiration behind them. For your reassurance I may say that Ludwig has performed the act of, shall we say, elimination too often to leave behind him any trace whatever for them to take hold of. ‘Clue’ is, I believe, the word I should have used.”

  McCarthy watching her as she sat before her mirror, saw a shudder of repulsion run through the beautiful Tessa.

  “I hate that horrible dwarf!” she exclaimed. “I am afraid of him.”

  “Alliterative—and most unfair,” he observed. “You have nothing whatever to fear from Ludwig. As a matter of fact he performed you a signal service in removing what threatened to be a very considerable danger from your path.”

  Had McCarthy been one of the animal species he would, to use that well-frayed term, have “pricked up his ears.” So that dwarf chauffeur had been the actual killer of Floriello Mascagni—at the instigation of this cold-blooded German, of course. Had that freak also been the murderer of the Rohner individual? McCarthy doubted it, certain evidences plainly to be seen in the doorway in which the gangster had been murdered, showed that he had been first struck by a well-flung knife. In the Soho Square case the situation must have been entirely different: whoever had killed Rohner had certainly grappled with him, and held him by sheer strength while the ghastly deed was committed. To judge by the physique of the female impersonator that would have been entirely out of the question in the case of the dwarf despite the strength of trunk and arms he undoubtedly was possessed of. Again in the case of Harper, McCarthy was certain that the wound which had given the unusually tall, and powerful, constable his quietus had been delivered direct by hand—the dwarf could scarcely have reached the point below Harper’s shoulder where the death wound had been inflicted. Unless he was entirely mistaken the man who had committed the dual murders in Soho Square was standing but a few feet from him at that moment.

  “All the same,” she said nervously, “I wish some other way had been found to get rid of Floriello.”

  Again he shrugged those athletic-looking shoulders of his and glanced at her amusedly.

  “And what other way could possibly have been so efficacious?” he asked, and his tone suggested that the whole matter was one of the most complete indifference to him. “Do you think that a gangster and blackmailer such as he was could have been bought off—for any length of time? He had threatened your life repeatedly in the event of your having the audacity to look with favourable eyes upon any other but himself. You had no doubt whatever in your mind that he meant those threats, and would most assuredly carry them out.”

  “That is true enough,” she admitted. “He would have killed me sooner or later.”

  He nodded his agreement. “Exactly; he had all the instincts of a wild beast, without the courage of one. Extermination was the only way to deal with him. He also had had the temerity to threaten me, though in a totally different connection. You, yourself, informed me that he was uttering threats against me no later than last night.”

  “I repeated to you just what he said; that he meant it, I have no doubt whatever.”

  “Nor I; he was that class of human rat. It so happens,” he continued, “that I am not the man to brook threats of any sort or kind from anyone. I gave him the very fullest opportunity to translate his vicious words into action last night at Fasoli’s. I humbled him into the dirt where he belonged, but there was nothing coming from him.” He gave a short, hard laugh. “That sealed his fate as far as I was concerned. And now,” he said, “let us have an end of it. He was useful for a time and, having outlived that usefulness, has met the only fate possible to the useless of this world.”

  He concluded with a gesture which McCarthy read as dismissing the subject of Floriello Mascagni once and for all, then with that slow step of his crossed the room and deposited the butt of his cigarette in a receptacle in the centre of the room. At the same moment the girl got up, lifted her hat from the bed and pulled it on again, eyeing herself in the mirror as she did so. The man, Hellner, Delaney had called him, lifted the chinchilla coat and held it for her. Evidently, McCarthy thought gleefully, the pair were off out again—the well-known Luck of the McCarthy’s was doing its bit splendidly! In that noiseless way of his he backed out through the dressing-room and into that corridor in which were the four bedrooms, closing the doors cautiously behind him.

  He did not move again until he heard for the second time that sharp sound of that outer door being closed after them, and even then it was only as far as the bathroom door to make sure that both had departed. For some minutes he stood listening intently, but not the slightest sound came to him. He might have chanced creeping as far as the drawing-room windows and taking a peep down bu
t for the fact that the curtains of the ornate apartment were drawn, and a quick glance upwards on the part of either Hellner or the girl might upset his apple-cart completely. He determined first to continue his examination of those bedrooms; in one or other of them must be the man’s luggage, since he had seen no sign whatever of it in the rooms he had already been through. Delaney had said something about it, but just what, had slipped his memory. He questioned much if Tessa’s new belongings would hold anything to interest him.

  One by one he completed his examination of the rooms, to find nothing of what he sought. Evidently Hellner’s personal belongings had not yet arrived.

  He was turning back into the corridor again when he caught sight of some inset panelling which might be quite easily the well-camouflaged entrance to a box-room. He was stooping to examine it when without the slightest warning that meticulously spoken voice he had been listening to but a little while before invited him to lift his hands, and quickly; at the same moment what was only too palpably the muzzle of a revolver or automatic pistol was jammed hard into the small of his back. The menace behind the quiet tone was all-sufficient to tell McCarthy that the quicker that request was obeyed the better.

  But, almost involuntarily, McCarthy had swung round, to find the weapon speedily transferred to the pit of his stomach and himself staring into the utterly unmoving, though now narrowed ice-blue eyes. He now saw that that which had prodded him in the back was an automatic pistol, complete with its silencer, of a calibre to make short work of anyone it was discharged into. For just one split-second there flashed through the inspector’s brain the thought that he would take a chance and attack, but the eyes so contemptuously regarding him were no longer blank and expressionless; there was that in their pale hardness which told McCarthy that this man would kill without the slightest compunction. The one hope he had was to play for a bit of time and seize upon whatever chance the other might give him—which was not likely to be much.

  “Things,” he remarked pleasantly, and with his unquenchable smile, “seem to have come slightly unstuck.”

  “Very much so, as far as you are concerned,” the other retorted in an equally equable tone.

  “Perhaps,” McCarthy bluffed. “I think I have the pleasure of speaking to Mr.—or is it Baron?—Hellner?”

  “That name will do as well as any other. To simplify matters we will agree upon Hellner—Baron Hellner. And you, I understand, are Detective Inspector McCarthy, of Scotland Yard.”

  “New Scotland Yard,” McCarthy corrected in the same affable way. “Though it’s a common error among foreigners.”

  The other gave him a cold smile—too chill and wintry to be propitious, the inspector thought.

  “May I ask what you are doing here?” Hellner questioned.

  “Now I should have thought that that would have been instantly apparent to a gentleman of your intelligence,” McCarthy countered brightly. “Still if you want it in so many words I was endeavouring to search the place, under the mistaken idea that yourself and the Signorina Domenico had gone out again.”

  “We should have done so but for the blindest piece of chance,” Hellner informed him, in that pedantic English of his. “Fortunately for me, and definitely unfortunately for you, in assisting the ‘signorina,’ as you call her, on with her coat, I chanced to glance into her mirror at a certain angle. That angle gave me a perfect view of yourself, concealed behind, and peeping out from the bathroom door. I could have shot you down there and then, McCarthy,” he went on grimly, “and, under other circumstances would most assuredly have done so. But as the lady happens to be already in a highly nervous condition, I had no wish to startle her into some hysterical action which might not have suited my purpose. One has to think of these things.”

  Chapter XXI

  The Tables are Turned

  McCarthy nodded. “I see your point,” he said gravely. “It’s a thousand to one she’d have screamed like the divil and probably brought people on to the scene that ye’d not be wanting here—not at the moment. And after all,” he proceeded as though arguing some point of interest quite detachedly, “it’s only to be expected that a woman of that type would be in a high state of nerves when she knows that, not only is she connected with a wholesale murderer, but has been part and parcel, not to say an accessory before and after, the fact of one particular killing last night, which the police have already well in hand. Indeed, as the officer in charge of the case, I don’t think there is a great deal of doubt that the gentle Tessa sent the telephone message that put Mascagni on the spot for that dirty little dwarf of yours to kill. Ludwig, d’ye call him?”

  The pale eyes, watched so closely by McCarthy, seemed to become even fainter in colour if that were possible, and most certainly the look of menace in them deepened. But the man had evidently tight hold upon himself and never for one second did he betray anger or even exasperation.

  “I think Inspector McCarthy can scarcely claim credit for information gained by listening-in to a private conversation?” he remarked.

  “Not at all; not at all,” the inspector hastened to agree. “But it was mighty helpful and is going to save a lot of time, and money. It’ll be a matter of a very few hours before Herr Ludwig will find himself behind bars, on his way to the gallows via the Old Bailey.”

  “That is as maybe,” Hellner said acidly. “To quote your English saying, a lot of water will run under the bridges between this and then.”

  “Don’t you believe it, Herr Baron,” McCarthy said heartily. “We don’t make many mistakes about murderers in this country, once we know that they are. And social status makes no difference. We’ll hang you just as quickly for the murder of the spy who called himself ‘Madame Rohner,’ and also for the wicked killing of Constable Harper at the back gate, as we will that misshapen chauffeur of yours.”

  “Is that so?” the German asked quietly, and McCarthy glancing down noticed that his finger tensed upon the trigger.

  “That is so,” he answered promptly. “Now that is a little bit of work I rather pride myself on,” he continued, “particularly when you consider the time I’ve had on the job. My first impression that you were the murderer was what I’d call a pure ‘hunch.’ That’s an American word, by the way; I don’t know whether you’ve anything in German to exactly correspond with it. It merely means a sort of instinct. It was owing to that ‘hunch’ that I followed you out of Soho Square, and later set a certain friend of mine to follow you up. And it was there, Herr Baron, that you made your first big mistake—if you don’t mind my pointing it out.”

  “Certainly not. One lives and learns.”

  “I somehow have the feeling that you’ll not be doing either for long,” McCarthy informed him, with a shake of his head. “Your first mistake was in not leaving Danny Regan just where your friends—men of Flo. Mascagni’s gang, by the way—laid him out. It wouldn’t have altered things actually, but it would have taken a little more time before I, personally, could have connected up the woman found dead on Hampstead Heath with the person killed in Soho Square. And equally,” he went on significantly, “before I connected the pseudo Madame Rohner with the person who had stolen plans of certain anti-aircraft dispositions from Whitehall that afternoon.”

  That that was a totally unexpected shaft, and one which struck home, was very palpable to the inspector. For just an instant the pale eyes seemed to glaze and again that trigger finger tautened. But the man kept complete command of his voice when he put his next question.

  “And how did that miracle of efficiency come to pass?”

  “Perfume,” McCarthy answered laconically. “A certain odour was unmistakable in the room at Whitehall from which the plans were stolen. It hung heavily upon the air at the scene of the Rohner killing—where, by the way, you left a stiletto and a lace handkerchief behind you. That same scent was present unmistakably when the body was brought in to the mortuary by the Golders G
reen men. Not only that but there was a certain stain upon the underclothes of the—er—‘lady’ which told me that she had most certainly handled and, indeed, carried the stolen prints about on her—him, I should say, of course. The inference was obvious—that the murder had been committed to get them.”

  “I see that I have been underrating your intelligence, Inspector,” Hellner said quietly. “Go on.”

  “When, still later, I found those same stains upon the finger-tips of the murdered Mascagni, it wasn’t difficult to put that two and two together and make four of them. I already knew that Mascagni was mixed up in the business, from the mere fact that he was one of the gentry in the car that tried to put paid to myself and Danny Regan as we were coming back from the mortuary. You must have had a very good suspicion even then, Baron, that you were extremely prominent in my mind in connection with the murder.”

  “For some reason not altogether explainable even to myself, I had,” Hellner answered, those unmoving eyes of his still fixed upon the soft and extremely deceptive ones of the inspector. “Please go on; this is most interesting.”

  “You had another stroke of bad luck,” McCarthy proceeded. “After you left Fasoli’s last night, you very nearly crashed a taxi of a highly-esteemed friend of mine who, as a matter of fact, was turning into Soho to pick me up. As, apparently, you treated his protest with that contempt you seem to have for less fortunate persons of a humbler state than yourself, he turned and followed you, Baron.”

  “Followed me!”

  “Followed you,” McCarthy repeated. “As far as Grosvenor Square, and then again to this place.”