Elk 02 The Joker

by Edgar Wallace

  But what was the picture he was viewing so intently? Jim screwed his head round, but on the left-hand side of the window the blind ran flush with the sash. There was nothing to but to make his way back and noiselessly he edged towards the fire ladder.

  He had not gone more than halfway before he had a shock. He felt a stone yield beneath his feet, the edge broke off and fell into the courtyard below. It might be one rotten piece, he argued, but stepped more carefully. If the parapet gave under his weight while he was traversing a wall space, nothing could save him from death; but he did not allow his mind to dwell upon this aspect of the adventure.

  He had reached the window nearest to the iron stairs and was feeling cautiously along with his feet when, without warning, the narrow parapet beneath him cracked. He managed to grip the wooden window; and in another second was hanging with his legs in space. He heard Elk’s agitated whisper, saw the elderly detective thrust up the crook of his umbrella, but knew that this was beyond his reach.

  There was only one hope; taking off his soft felt hat, he put his hand inside and drove straight at the glass of the window. The shock of the blow almost dislodged him, but clearing off the broken edge of glass, he took a firm grip of the window-sash and drew himself up. A second pane was broken in the same way and, reaching in, with some difficulty he turned the window catch and pushed up the sash.

  In another second he was in a room. He stopped to listen.

  The smashing of the glass had evidently not aroused the inmates and he passed out the news to the agitated Elk.

  ‘I don’t know whose flat it is,’ he whispered. ‘Meet me at the front of the building.’

  Tiptoeing across the room, he felt for the light and turned it on. He was in a small bedroom, which had evidently not received any attention for a very considerable time, for dust lay thick upon the furniture and upon the folded blankets at the foot of the bed. Yet the room was handsomely furnished and in a style that harmonised with the general furnishings of Ingle’s apartment. Evidently this was one of the rooms which he had not visited.

  He opened the door carefully. The dining-hall was in darkness; from the lumber-room came the ceaseless clickety-click of the projector.

  Should he risk being discovered and satisfy his curiosity?

  It was almost worth while. As he debated the point, the telephone rang noisily in the dining-room and he drew back, pulling the door close. He heard the snap as Ingle turned on the lights…

  ‘Hullo! - yes, Jackson…oh, is that you? Speaking from a call-box, I hope? Good! Yes, everything is OK…Yes, I’ve heard him - but only on the radio. I shall have to go to a meeting. He’s a good speaker? Huh! So am I! A spell-binder - you can laugh! I’ve had four thousand people cheering for two minutes. Don’t worry…no, thanks, I have all the money I need.’

  The receiver thudded down and presently the lights went out and the lumber-room door closed.

  A spell-binder? Who was to be bound by the eloquence of Mr Arthur Ingle? He waited until he heard the projector whirring again, and then, tiptoeing across the room, reached the passage. He was sorely tempted to take one look at the film show, but obviously he could only do this with the certainty that he would be seen, and Jim had all a detective’s horror of a ‘police persecution’ charge.

  He turned his flashlight on the table: there might be something there which would give him a clue. He saw a fat envelope bearing the name of the Cunard Company. This had not been opened, but he could guess its contents. Mr Ingle contemplated a visit to the United States - or Canada, perhaps.

  The turning of the projector ceased. He passed quickly to the hall, opened the door and closed it quietly after him. The elevator was ascending as he went down, and he was spared an explanation of his surprising presence. He found the patient Elk flapping his hands to keep warm and puffing at the last few centimetres of his cigar.

  Fortunately Jim’s club was within a quarter of an hour’s walk and as they crossed the park Elk asked:

  ‘You got into old man Ingle’s flat, didn’t you?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘What’s thrillin’ him?’ asked Elk. ‘I hate admittin’ it, but the cinema’s my favourite sleepin’ place. Or was he runnin’ through the cartoons?’

  ‘I’d give a lot to know,’ said Jim, and repeated the conversation he had overheard.

  ‘Never know whether Arthur’s red because he’s wild, or wild because he’s red,’ mused Elk. ‘He’s a bit of a dilly - what’s the word? - dillytanty, that’s it. There’s quite a lot of genuine Reds, but a whole lot of people who hang on in the hope that one of the comrades will break a jeweller’s window so that they can get away with the doin’s. Most people are Red if they only knew it. Take the feller that keeps beehives. He just waits for the old capitalist bee to pile up his honey reserves and then he comes down on his bank-roll…’

  He philosophised thus all the way across the park.

  ‘I am almost at the end of my theories - what is yours, Elk?’

  ‘Beer,’ said Elk absently, as they mounted the steps of the club.

  ‘Looks like he’s gettin’ ready for a quick money stunt,’ said Elk, as they made their way to the coffee-room. ‘But, Lord, you can never follow the minds of people like Ingle!

  And he’s an actor too - that makes him more skittish. As likely as not he’s goin’ to give lectures on “My Five Years of Hell” - they all do it.’

  Jim shook his head helplessly.

  ‘I don’t know what to make of that film craze of his.’

  ‘Decadence,’ said Elk laconically. ‘All these birds go wrong some way or another, I tell you.’

  The waiter was hovering at their elbow.

  ‘Beer,’ said Elk emphatically.

  It was a bitterly cold night, and in spite of the briskness of their walk Jim had been glad to get into the comfort of his club. He had no intention of returning to Scotland Yard that night, and was in fact parting with Elk at the door that looks out upon Pall Mall when the club porter called him.

  There was an urgent message for him and, going into the booth, he spoke to one of the chief inspectors.

  ‘I have been trying to get you all the evening,’ said the officer. ‘One of the park-keepers has found the place where he thinks Mrs Gibbins was thrown into the canal. I’m on the phone to him. He suggested you should meet him outside the Zoological Society’s office.’

  ‘Tell him that I’ll come right along,’ said Jim quickly, and returning to Elk, conveyed the gist of the message.

  ‘Can’t these amacher detectives find things in the Lord’s bright sunlight?’ asked Elk bitterly. ‘Half-past nine and freezing like the devil: what a time to go snooping round canals!’

  Yet he insisted upon going along with his companion.

  ‘You might miss something,’ he grumbled as the draughty taxi moved northward. ‘You ain’t got my power of observation and deduction. Anyway, I’ll bet we’re wasting our time. They’ll show us the hole in the water where she went in most likely.’

  ‘The canal is frozen,’ smiled Jim. ‘In fact, it’s been frozen since the day after the body was found.’

  Mr Elk growled something under his breath; whether it was an uncomplimentary reference to the weather or to the tardiness of park-keepers, Jim did not gather.

  It was not a keeper but an inspector who was waiting for them outside the Zoological offices. The discovery had been made that afternoon, but the keeper had not reported the matter until late in the evening. The inspector took a seat in their taxi and under his direction they drove back some distance to the place where a bridge crosses the canal to Avenue Road. Here the Circle roadway is separated from the canal by a fifty-foot stretch of grassland and trees. This verge, in summer, affords a playing ground for children, and has, from their point of view, the attraction of dipping down in a steep slope to the banks of the canal, which, however, is separated from the park by a row of wooden palings, wired to form an unclimbable fence. The playground is reached from
the road by a broad iron gate running parallel with the bridge, and this, explained the park inspector, was locked at nights.

  ‘Occasionally somebody forgets,’ he said, ‘and I remember having it reported to me on the night after this woman’s disappearance, that the gates were found open in the morning.’

  He led the way cautiously down the steep declivity towards the fence which runs by the canal bank. Here is a rough path and along this they trudged over ground frozen hard.

  ‘One of our keepers had to make an inspection of the fence this afternoon,’ the officer went on, ‘and we found that the palings had been wrenched from one of the supporting posts. Afterwards somebody must have put them up again and did the job so well that we have never noticed the break.’

  They had now reached the spot, and a powerful light thrown along the fence revealed the extent of the damage.

  A wire strand and one of the palings had been broken, and the officer had only to push lightly at the fence to send it sagging drunkenly towards the canal. He put his foot upon it and with a creak it lay over so that he could have walked without any difficulty on to the canal bank.

  ‘Our man thought that the damage had been done by boys, until he saw the hat.’

  ‘Which hat?’ asked Jim quickly.

  ‘I left it here for you to see, exactly as he found it.’

  The superintendent’s light travelled along a bush, and presently focused upon a crushed brown object, which had been caught between two branches of the bush. Jim loosened the pitiable relic, a brown felt hat, stained and cut about the crown. It might easily, he saw, have been dragged off in a struggle, and against the autumnal colouring of the undergrowth would have escaped notice.

  ‘Here is another thing,’ said the park officer. ‘Do you see that? It was the first thing I looked for, but I have no doubt that you gentlemen will understand better than I what it signifies.’

  It was the impress of a heel in the frozen ground. By its side a queer, flat footmark, criss-crossed with innumerable lines.

  ‘Somebody who wore rubbers,’ said Elk, going down on his knees. ‘There has been a struggle here. Look at the sideways thrust of that heel! And - ‘

  ‘What is this?’ asked Jim sharply.

  His lamp was concentrated upon a tiny, frozen puddle, and Elk looked but could see nothing but its grey-white surface. Kneeling, Jim took out a knife from his pocket and began to scrape the ice; and now his companion saw what had attracted his attention: a piece of paper. It was an envelope which had been crushed into the mud. When he got the frozen object into the light it was frozen to the shape of the heel that had trodden upon it. Gently he scraped away the mud and ice until two lines were legible. The first was at the top left-hand corner and was heavily underlined.

  ‘By hand. Urgent.’

  Only one line of the address was legible, but the word ‘Harlow’ was very distinct.

  They carried their find back to the superintendent’s office and before his fire thawed it out. When the letter had become a limp and steaming thing, Jim stripped the flap of the envelope and carefully withdrew its contents.

  ‘DEAR MR HARLOW,

  ‘I am afraid I must disappoint you. I am in such a position, being an ex-convict, that I cannot afford to take the slightest risk. I will tell you frankly that what I have in my mind, is that this may be a frame-up organised by my friends the police, and I think that it would be, to say the least, foolish on my part to go any farther until I know your requirements, or at least have written proof that you have approached me.

  ‘Yours sincerely,

  ‘ARTHUR INGLE.’

  The two men looked at one another.

  ‘That beats the band,’ said Elk. ‘What do you make of it, Carlton?’

  Jim stood with his back to the fire, the letter in his hand, his brow wrinkled in a frown.

  ‘I don’t know…let me try now…Harlow asked Ingle to meet him: I knew that already. Ingle promised to go, changed his mind and wrote this letter, which has obviously never been opened by Harlow, and as obviously could not have been delivered to him before the interview, because, as I know - and I had a cold in the head to prove it - these two fellows met opposite the Horse Guards Parade and went joy-riding round the park for the greater part of an hour.

  Supposing Harlow is concerned with the slaying of this wretched woman - and why he should kill her heaven knows! - would he carry about this unopened letter and leave it for the first flat-footed policeman to find?’

  He sat down in a chair and held his head in his hands, and presently: ‘I’ve got it!’ he said, his eyes blazing with excitement. At least, if I haven’t got the whole story, I know at least one thing - poor Mrs Gibbins was very much in love with William Smith the platelayer!’

  Elk stared at him.

  ‘You’re talking foolish,’ he said.

  CHAPTER 11

  AILEEN RIVERS had made one attempt to see her relative. She called up her uncle on the telephone and asked if she might call.

  ‘Why?’ was the uncompromising question.

  Only a very pressing cause would have induced the girl to make the attempt - a fact which she conveyed to Ingle in the next sentence.

  ‘I’ve had a big bill sent to me for the redecoration of your flat. You remember that you wished this done. The decorators hold me responsible - ‘

  ‘Send the bill to me; I’ll settle it,’ he interrupted.

  ‘I’m not sure that all the items are exact,’ she began.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he broke in again. ‘Send the bill: I’ll settle it. Good morning.’

  She hung up with a little smile, relieved of the necessity for another interview.

  There were times when Aileen Rivers was extremely grateful that no drop of Arthur Ingle’s blood ran in her veins.

  He had married her mother’s first cousin, and the avuncular relationship was largely a complimentary one. She felt the need of emphasizing this fact upon Jim Carlton when he called that night - a very welcome visit, though he made it clear to her that the pleasure of seeing her again was not his sole object.

  He had come to make inquiries which were a little inconsequent, she thought, about Mrs Gibbins. He seemed particularly anxious to know something about her nature, her qualities as a worker, and her willingness to undertake tasks which are as a rule outside the duties of a charwoman.

  She answered every question carefully and exactly, and when her examination had been completed: ‘I won’t ask you why you want to know all this,’ she said, because I am sure that you must have a very good reason for asking. But I thought the case was finished?’

  He shook his head. ‘No murder is finished until the assassin is caught,’ he said simply.

  ‘It was murder?’

  ‘I think so - Elk doesn’t. Even the doctors at the inquest disagreed. There is just a remote possibility that it may have been an accident.’ And then blandly: ‘How is your attentive fellow-boarder?’

  ‘Oh, Mr Brown?’ she said with a smile. ‘I don’t know what has happened, but since I spoke to you I’ve hardly seen him. Yes, he is still staying at the house.’

  His visit was disappointingly short, though in reality she should not have been disappointed, because she had brought home a lot of work from the office - Mr Stebbings was preparing his annual audit, and she had enough to keep her occupied till midnight. Yet she experienced a little twinge of unhappiness when Jim Carlton took an abrupt adieu.

  Though in no mood for work, she sat at her table until one o’clock, then, putting down her pen, opened the window and leaned out, inhaling the cold night air. The sky was clear and frosty; there was not a suspicion of the fog which had been predicted by the evening newspapers; and Coram Street was singularly peaceful and soothing. From time to time there came a distant whirr of wheels as cars and taxis passed along Theobald’s Road, but this was the only jar in the harmony of silence. It was one of London’s quiet nights.

  She looked up and down the street - the deserted
pavement was very inviting. She was stiff and cramped through sitting too long in one position, and a quarter of an hour’s walk was not only desirable, but necessary, she decided. Putting on her coat, she opened the door other room and crept silently down the stairs, not wishing to disturb the other inmates of the house.

  At the foot of the first flight of stairs she had a surprise.

  The door of the attentive boarder was wide open, and when she came abreast of it she saw him sitting in an armchair, a pipe gripped between his teeth, his hands clasped unromantically across his front and he was nodding sleepily. But she made sufficient noise to rouse him, and suddenly he sat up.

  ‘Hullo!’ he croaked, in the manner of one awaking from slumber. ‘Are you going out?’

  The impertinence of the man took her breath away.

  ‘I thought of going for a stroll too,’ he said, rising laboriously. ‘I’m not getting enough exercise.’

  ‘I’m going to post a letter, that is all,’ she said, and had the humiliation of making a pretence to drop an imaginary letter into the pillar-box under his watchful eye.

  She brushed past him as he stood in the doorway, blowing great clouds of smoke from his pipe, and almost ran up the stairs, angry with herself that she could allow so insignificant a thing to irritate her.

  She did not see the man at breakfast, but as she walked up the steps to the office, she happened to glance round and, to her annoyance, saw him lounging on the corner of the square, apparently interested in nothing but the architecture of the fine old Queen Anne mansion which formed the corner block.

  This day was to prove for Aileen Rivers something of an emotional strain. She was clearing up her desk preparatory to leaving the office when Mr Stebbings’s bell rang. She went in with her notebook and pencil.

  ‘No, no, no letter; I just have a curious request,’ said Mr Stebbings, looking past her. ‘A very curious and yet a very natural request. An old client of mine…his secretary has a sore throat or something. He wanted to know if you’d go round after dinner and take a few letters.’