A Scream in Soho

by John G. Brandon

  The features of their friend shovelling away in the cellar were as black as the medium he worked with; so also were those of the men upstairs shooting the stuff down, while those of Withers, although at no time to be taken as a specimen of a well-groomed man, were as white as the driven snow in comparison. As for his own face, he was perfectly well aware that after his recent ablutions and despite the bruises he exhibited, it must fairly shine like that of a well-scrubbed infant. It had been a damned foolish oversight, and was no doubt the cause of this suspicious-natured man determining not to leave them for a moment. Well, it was too late to do anything about it now, and upstairs they had to get by hook or crook.

  The instant the man set foot in the passage again his hard little eyes fell upon McCarthy crouching there, a good five yards or more from the cellar in which he should have been at work.

  “Ach! Himmel!” he snarled, and turned with the obvious intention of shouting a warning to someone he must have known to have been within hearing up the stairs. That was as far as he got!

  Like a tiger McCarthy flung himself at him and any sound that might have come from his mouth was stopped by a crashing smash which split it to the gums. It was followed by a second which landed upon the man’s jaw and sent his head back with a jerk. The blow was one which would have dropped most men, but this bull-like creature shook it off and put his hand to his mouth to shout to those upstairs. Then, and before McCarthy could make another move to stop the dread sound, something cracked down upon the man’s skull which dropped him like a stone. It was Withers’ spanner.

  “Beg parding, sir,” that worthy said, “but I knows you ain’t got time to waste on the likes of ’im, and if ’e’d a-started ’ollerin’, nobody knows ’oo ’e’s a-goin’ t’ bring down. Wot do we do wiv ’im?”

  “Put him into one of these cellars,” McCarthy whispered. “They’ll hear nothing from him here.”

  An order no sooner given than carried out.

  Instantly the inspector crept to the bottom of the stairs, listened for a second, then began to make his way up them. He was nearly to the top when he discovered that Withers was on his heels.

  “I don’t know about you, Withers,” he whispered dubiously. “I can’t tell how strong the gang here is, and I don’t know that I’ve any right to risk you stopping a bullet or something equally pretty. After all you’re a civilian.”

  “You can call me a bleedin’ copper for the time being,” Mr. Withers gave back. “A sort of a ‘special’ like.”

  “Somewhere on this landing we’re going to run into a nest of servants,” the inspector continued. “A house of this size is bound to be pretty well staffed, and you can bet on all of them, men and women alike, belonging to the same breed. Once they realize what we are they’ll turn nasty.”

  “So much the worse f’r them,” “Big Bill” said stolidly. “What’s the move, guv’nor?”

  McCarthy pointed ahead to a door on the landing, from behind which they could hear the murmur of voices.

  “That I fancy will be the kitchen,” he whispered. “And with Heinrich out of the way, if we can only manage to fasten them up there, we’ll have a clear field ahead of us upstairs.”

  Withers nodded towards the key plainly to be seen in the lock.

  “What’s the matter with turning that on ’em, and there they are, so t’ speak.”

  McCarthy shook his head. “It’s a bit too easy to be true, Withers,” he returned. “We don’t know what other doors there may be leading out of that room that they can escape by, and perhaps land us in a trap. We’ve got to get in first, and make sure of that.”

  From his shoulder-holster he drew his automatic pistol, then from his coat pocket took its silencer, and jammed it down tight on the barrel.

  “We want no noise to give any warning above,” he explained. “The quicker and quieter this job is done, the better.”

  Without hesitation he walked to the door, opened it, and passed through, followed by Withers, his spanner ready for any emergencies. That luck was with them to the extent that the majority, at least, of the servants of the house seemed to be congregated there was very apparent, and equally so the fact that they were completely taken by surprise at this most unexpected arrival.

  The principal one seemed to be an enormously fat chef, garbed in the recognized uniform of his profession, and whose face went deadly pale as his eyes fell upon the weapon which McCarthy waved in an arc which covered the whole of the gathering.

  At a large kitchen table were seated four maids, and a couple of menservants; all, without exception, were definitely Teutonic in the cast of their features. One of the latter made to rise to his feet, but sat down again as McCarthy turned the barrel of his ugly-looking weapon upon him.

  “I think you’d better remain seated,” the inspector advised grimly. “I should be very sorry to have to perforate anyone here with this gun of mine, but I can assure you that I will without the slightest hesitation if there’s any attempt at resistance from any one of you.” The barrel moved round to cover the chef again. “I think,” he went on pleasantly, “that you’d better be seated as well, Herr Chef—and over in that corner there where there aren’t any drawers handy, likely to contain cutlery. You’ll quite understand that you’re under arrest, though how far you’re guilty of anything against the peace of this realm will be gone into later.”

  His eyes went slowly about the room taking in another two doors, one of which opened, he saw, into a large pantry. Crossing to it he found that it was illuminated and ventilated by a very small window, the outer side of which was covered with perforated zinc, and was certainly not one to be negotiated by any there who were all definitely of thick, not to say stodgy, build. Not even the slimmest of the maids could have been assisted through it, and as for the chef, himself, he would be as safe in there as behind bars.

  “I’ll trouble you all, ladies included, to lift your hands in the direction of the ceiling, and keep them there—otherwise…Withers,” he continued when the order had been promptly obeyed, “just go round and pass your hands over the gentlemen’s clothes for any concealed weapons they may have about them. They probably haven’t any, but on the other hand they may have. I don’t think you need trouble about the ladies. They don’t seem to be the sort that would carry arms, or use them with any skill if they did.”

  Mr. Withers having searched all the males so assiduously that the probability of their having anything lethal upon them was very remote, McCarthy indicated the door of the pantry with his pistol.

  “The gentlemen first,” he invited, “and keeping their hands well above their heads. By the way,” he addressed himself to the chef, who despite the almost waxen pallor of his face was sweating profusely. “How many more are there in the servants’ hall—if that’s the correct term?”

  He was told that with the exception of the major-domo, one Heinrich Buchel, the servants of the house were all present.

  “Splendid!” McCarthy exclaimed, in very genuine satisfaction. “And perhaps you can also inform me what guests are upstairs—with the exception of one that I happen to know of.”

  He was informed by one of the maids that the baroness was entertaining but one person at that moment, though they understood that she had others coming later to dinner.

  “I fear they are in for a lean time,” the inspector said with a sad shake of his head. “Now step in, please, and make yourselves as comfortable as may be. And understand this,” he warned, “that there’ll be a man on guard who will have no hesitation at all about making himself extremely unpleasant to anyone who attempts to break out. No hesitation whatever,” he emphasized.

  Closing the door, he carefully locked it, then proceeded to prop a chair beneath its handle. “I think we’ll have our friend the coalie upstairs just as a precaution,” he said. “If that professor of cookery chose to hurl his weight against the door I doubt either lock o
r chair would hold.”

  “He’s scared stiff; he won’t try no bustin’ aht. When I run me ’ands over ’im he was shakin’ like a jelly.”

  “We’ll take no chances,” McCarthy said, and, calling up the gentleman in question, proceeded to give him his instructions. As the gentleman, anticipating some such job, had brought his shovel with him, this latter article was considered quite sufficient weapon for the business in hand. As he assured McCarthy he would have no hesitation whatever in using it upon anyone of Germanic breed, male or female, having done two years in a German prison camp, he was left to the assignment with full confidence that his end of it would not go far wrong.

  “And now, Withers, although not garbed for such an occasion, in fact, very much otherwise, we’ll depart upstairs to the drawing-room, and pay our compliments to the baroness. I doubt she’ll be pleased to see us, but we can’t help that.”

  “I’ll bet as Sir William gets a surprise when we blow in,” “Big Bill” prophesied with a cavernous grin.

  “I’ll bet he does,” McCarthy agreed. “In fact the certainty that he would is one of the biggest things I had in mind in getting him here. ’Twill teach him that even Assistant Commissioners don’t know as much as they think they do.”

  Chapter XXIII

  The Inspector Clears Things Up!

  The baroness, in Sir William Haynes’ opinion, was at her very best that afternoon. Never, upon the several occasions that the Assistant Commissioner had the pleasure of being entertained by her in her own house, had she ever appeared so radiantly beautiful, so generally charming as upon that day. Whatever surprise may have filled her when the totally unexpected visit was announced, no sign of it or, indeed, perturbation of any kind, was permitted to show upon her features.

  Just what the devil McCarthy was playing at in insisting upon his taking her by surprise in the manner that he had was more than Sir William could make out, but he was quite certain that that engaging officer would find himself very badly in the cart before he was finished if he attempted to involve this particular lady in the robbery in Whitehall. For his own part, he kept things professional sedulously out of the conversation, and explained his visit by the fact that he had had a duty call to make at another house in Grosvenor Square, and had availed himself of the opportunity. Nor did he even mention the name of Detective Inspector McCarthy, though more than once the baroness gave him very definite leads in that direction. Unquestionably the debonair inspector was a source of considerable interest to her.

  But he noticed that, whilst the perfect hostess in every possible way, the lady was inclined to be somewhat restless, and moved about the room a good deal. In particular did she keep moving towards the huge bay windows of her drawing-room which opened out upon a marble and tessellated balcony overlooking the square and immediately overhanging a small, admirably-designed rock garden.

  Despite the fact that the lady was graciousness herself, Sir William, in the circumstances, was beginning to find it difficult to make conversation against time—and how long McCarthy expected him to go on with this damned senseless tomfoolery he had no more idea than the dead. He had, as requested, given considerable attention to the lady’s butler, or major-domo, whichever she preferred to call him, when that certainly saturnine-looking person had served the afternoon tea. He most certainly had been entirely typical of the German under-officer, and one thing was very certain: that despite the perfection of his manner as a servant his appearance, with his heavy, brutish features, was far from prepossessing.

  But, Sir William argued to himself even as he chatted gaily to the lady, that did not make his mistress party to a gigantic scheme of espionage. Plenty of thoroughly worthy people were ill-favoured, and it was no part of the English system of justice to judge a man by his looks alone. Had it been there were quite a number of eminently respectable officers at Scotland Yard itself who would have been sojourning upon the “Moor.”

  And yet, as he watched the wonderfully gowned figure of his hostess moving gracefully about her drawing-room, there was an uneasiness in the mind of Sir William. McCarthy was not the man to make horrible bloomers of the kind which involved persons of social, and financial consequence, where a mistake would have landed the administration of the Yard, and himself in particular, in the devil of a mess if things did not pan out the right way.

  Recalling to mind the extraordinary speed with which the indefatigable inspector had joined up the robbery at Whitehall with the murder in Soho Square, and also, later, that of Mascagni as well as that of the old coffee-stall man, nothing he could do managed to shake the doubt which insisted upon lingering in his mind. It seemed incredible that there should be the slightest connection between this lady and those ghastly happenings, and he could only hope that when McCarthy got down to rock bottom he would find that he had been following a false trail where she was concerned. In any case he meant giving the inspector but another five minutes’ grace and then taking his leave of Grosvenor Square, and herself, for the time being.

  But no more than two of those minutes had passed when he received what was very possibly the greatest shock of his professional career, for the folding doors of the drawing-room were suddenly flung open, and instead of the saturnine-looking Heinrich appearing to announce other guests, there upon the threshold stood McCarthy himself, while at the back of him towered the enormous figure of “Big Bill” Withers, his spanner clenched in his massive right fist.

  And that McCarthy had been through a strenuous time since he had last set eyes upon him was only too palpable. Upon his face were marks of battle but recently inflicted, and which certainly would not be removed in a hurry. Additionally the ancient suit he was wearing appeared to be grimed with coal dust although his much bruised face was fairly clear of that substance. But what troubled Haynes most, when he had got over the shock of this un-heralded appearance, was the look of quiet triumph which shone in the inspector’s soft, Italian-looking eyes; a look which he had seen too often to make any mistake about it. Whatever his appearance there and in that garb and condition might portend, there was no doubt in the mind of the Assistant Commissioner that, to use that pregnant American term, McCarthy had brought home the bacon once again.

  For perhaps five seconds there was dead silence in the room, other than that ejaculation which had been forced from Haynes at the appearance of this strangely assorted pair. It was broken first by the Baroness Eberhardt, who had stood staring at this very different McCarthy from the one she had met at Verrey’s as she might have done at some apparition from the grave.

  “This is a totally unexpected pleasure, Inspector,” she said without a sign of perturbation, but McCarthy noticed that the smile which came to her lips was fixed and rigid, and somehow gave a very different expression to her face.

  “Well, now,” he said smoothly, “I don’t doubt but that it would be. In the circumstances I’d probably be surprised myself. But, somehow or other I had the feeling when I left you at Verrey’s that it wouldn’t be long before we met again.”

  “Most interesting.” Then she turned to Sir William. “Had you any idea that Inspector McCarthy proposed to pay me this—er—unorthodox call?”

  Sir William Haynes started, then glared at the cause of his discomfiture. “Not the slightest,” he answered quickly. “Though, in a way,” he amended quickly, “I sort of had an idea that he—er—would be somewhere in—in this vicinity.”

  The baroness nodded. “I see,” she said thoughtfully. “Would it be asking official secrets to tell me the reason for this visit, Inspector? There is some motive behind your call, I feel sure.”

  “Well, in a sense ’tis the result of following up a ‘hunch’ of mine to begin with. I don’t know whether the word is familiar to you, Baroness, it’s an American one and means doing a thing without the slightest rhyme, reason, or anything else at the bottom of it all: I do that sort of thing, as Sir William here can tell you, and an infer
nal nuisance I generally make of myself while I’m at it. ’Twas just such a ‘hunch’ that made me have your friend Baron Hellner—I believe that’s the name—followed out of Soho Square after the murder of the so-called Madame Rohner.”

  “Ah, the Soho Square murder,” she returned lightly. “But first I should correct you upon one point. I have no friend of that name.”

  “It’s probably not the right one,” McCarthy said smoothly. “But ’twill do for the time being. As for his not being a friend of yours then I admit that I am under a misapprehension. I got the idea through his calling here last night, after the murder of Mascagni.”

  “Mascagni,” she murmured.

  “Exactly, Floriello Mascagni. The man whose gang, at Hellner’s instigation, killed an inoffensive old man called Anselmi to get hold of his coffee-stall as a medium for getting the body of the pseudo Madame Rohner out of Soho Square.”

  “Madame Rohner,” she murmured in the same vague way.

  McCarthy nodded. “Quite so,” he said. “And that was the second reason that brought me here to-day. If you hadn’t mentioned the fact at Verrey’s that you had that morning been to consult your especial medium, clairvoyant, or whatever the right term is, and moreover informed Sir William and me that you had made the appointment by telephone, I should probably never have given you a second thought—in connection with the murder and the theft of those dispositions from Whitehall, of course.”

  From him the baroness looked inquiringly at Haynes, who stared vacantly at the ceiling wondering what the devil was coming next, then back again at McCarthy. Her face was a perfect study in complete blankness.

  “I’m afraid,” she began, when McCarthy with a wave of his hand interrupted her.