‘I tell you, she has gone home. If you don’t believe me, search the house – either of you.’
He was not bluffing: Leon was sure of that. He turned to the detective.
‘I personally have no wish to trouble this gentleman any more.’
He was leaving the room when, from over his shoulder: ‘That snake is busy again, Newton.’
‘What snake are you talking about?’
‘He killed a man tonight on the Thames Embankment. I hope it will not spoil Lisa Marthon’s evening.’
Meadows, watching the man, saw him change colour.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said loudly.
‘You arranged with Lisa to pick up Barberton tonight and get him talking. And there she is, poor girl, all dressed to kill, and only a dead man to vamp – only a murdered man.’ He turned suddenly, and his voice grew hard. ‘That is a good word, isn’t it, Newton – murder?’
‘I didn’t know anything about it.’
As Newton’s hand came towards the bell: ‘We can show ourselves out,’ said Leon.
He shut the door behind him, and presently there was a slam of the outer door. Monty got to the window too late to see his unwelcome guests depart, and went up to his room to change, more than a little perturbed in mind.
The footman called him from the hall.
‘I’m sorry about that affair, sir. I thought it was a “busy”.’
‘You think too much, Fred’ – Newton threw the words down at his servitor with a snarl. ‘Go back to your place – which is the servants’ hall. I’ll ring you if I want you.’
He resumed his progress up the stairs and the man turned sullenly away.
He opened the door of his room, switched on the light, had closed the door and was half-way to his dressing-table, when an arm like steel closed round his neck, he was jerked suddenly backward on to the floor, and looked up into the inscrutable face of Gonsalez.
‘Shout and you die!’ whispered a voice in his ear.
Newton lay quiet.
‘I’ll fix you for this,’ he stammered.
The other shook his head.
‘I think not, if by “fixing” me you mean you’re going to complain to the police. You’ve been under my watchful eye for quite a long time, Monty Newton, and you’ll be amazed to learn that I’ve made several visits to your house. There is a little wall safe behind that curtain’ – he nodded towards the corner of the room – ‘would you be surprised to learn that I’ve had the door open and every one of its documentary contents photographed?’
He saw the fear in the man’s eyes as he snapped a pair of aluminium handcuffs of curious design about Monty’s wrists. With hardly an effort he lifted him, heavy as he was, threw him on the bed, and, having locked the door, returned, and, sitting on the bed, proceeded first to strap his ankles and then leisurely to take off his prisoner’s shoes.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Monty in alarm.
‘I intend finding out where Miss Leicester has been taken,’ said Gonsalez, who had stripped one shoe and, pulling off the silken sock, was examining the man’s bare foot critically. ‘Ordinary and strictly legal inquiries take time and fail at the end – unfortunately for you, I have not a minute to spare.’
‘I tell you she’s gone home.’
Leon did not reply. He pulled open a drawer of the bureau, searched for some time, and presently found what he sought: a thin silken scarf. This, despite the struggles of the man on the bed, he fastened about his mouth.
‘In Mosamodes,’ he said – ‘and if you ever say that before my friend George Manfred, be careful to give its correct pronunciation: he is rather touchy on the point – some friends of yours took a man named Barberton, whom they subsequently murdered, and tried to make him talk by burning his feet. He was a hero. I’m going to see how heroic you are.’
‘For God’s sake don’t do it!’ said the muffled voice of Newton.
Gonsalez was holding a flat metal case which he had taken from his pocket, and the prisoner watched him, fascinated, as he removed the lid, and snapped a cigar-lighter close to its blackened surface. A blue flame rose and swayed in the draught.
‘The police force is a most excellent institution,’ said Leon. He had found a silver shoe-horn on the table and was calmly heating it in the light of the flame, holding the rapidly warming hook with a silk handkerchief. ‘But unfortunately, when you are dealing with crimes of violence, moral suasion and gentle treatment produce nothing more poignant in the bosom of your adversary than a sensation of amused and derisive contempt. The English, who make a god of the law, gave up imprisoning thugs and flogged them, and there are few thugs left. When the Russian gunmen came to London, the authorities did the only intelligent thing – they held back the police and brought up the artillery, having only one desire, which was to kill the gunmen at any expense. Violence fears violence. The gunman lives in the terror of the gun – by the way, I understand the old guard is back in full strength?’
When Leon started in this strain he could continue for hours.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ mumbled Monty.
‘You wouldn’t.’ The intruder lifted the blackened, smoking shoe-horn, brought it as near to his face as he dared.
‘Yes, I think that will do,’ he said, and came slowly towards the bed.
The man drew up his feet in anticipation of pain, but a long hand caught him by the ankles and drew them straight again.
‘They’ve gone to the Arts Ball.’ Even through the handkerchief the voice sounded hoarse.
‘The Arts Ball?’ Gonsalez looked down at him, and then, throwing the hot shoe-horn into the fire-place, he removed the gag. ‘Why have they gone to the Arts Ball?’
‘I wanted them out of the way tonight.’
‘Is Oberzohn likely to be at the Arts Ball?’
‘Oberzohn?’ The man’s laugh bordered on the hysteric.
‘Or Gurther?’
This time Mr Newton did not laugh.
‘I don’t know who you mean,’ he said.
‘We’ll go into that later,’ replied Leon lightly, pulling the knot of the handkerchief about the ankles. ‘You may get up now. What time do you expect them back?’
‘I don’t know. I told Joan not to hurry, as I was meeting somebody here tonight.’
Which sounded plausible. Leon remembered that the Arts Ball was a fancy dress affair, and there was some reason for the departure from the mews instead of from the front of the house. As though he were reading his thoughts, Newton said: ‘It was Miss Leicester’s idea, going through the back. She was rather shy . . . she was wearing a domino.’
‘Colour?’
‘Green, with a reddish hood.’
Leon looked at him quickly.
‘Rather distinctive. Was that the idea?’
‘I don’t know what the idea was,’ growled Newton, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling on a sock. ‘But I do know this, Gonsalez,’ he said, with an outburst of anger which was half fear; ‘that you’ll be sorry you did this to me!’
Leon walked to the door, turned the key and opened it.
‘I only hope that you will not be sorry I did not kill you,’ he said, and was gone.
Monty Newton waited until from his raised window he saw the slim figure pass along the sidewalk and disappear round a corner, and then he hurried down, with one shoe on and one off, to call New Cross 93.
Chapter 8
The house of Oberzohn
In a triangle two sides of which were expressed by the viaducts of converging railroads and the base by the dark and sluggish waters of the Grand Surrey Canal, stood the gaunt ruins of a store in which had once been housed the merchandise of the O. & S. Company. A Zeppelin in passing had dropped an incendiary bomb at random, and torn a gr
eat ugly gap in the roof. The fire that followed left the iron frames of the windows twisted and split; the roof by some miracle remained untouched except for the blackened edges about the hole through which the flames had rushed to the height of a hundred feet.
The store was flush with the canal towing-path; barges had moored here, discharging rubber in bales, palm nut, nitrates even, and had restocked with Manchester cloth and case upon case of Birmingham-made geegaws of brass and lacquer.
Mr Oberzohn invariably shipped his spirituous cargoes from Hamburg, since Germany is the home of synthesis. In the centre of the triangle was a red-brick villa, more unlovely than the factory, missing as it did that ineffable grandeur, made up of tragedy and pathos, attaching to a burnt-out building, however ugly it may have been in its prime.
The villa was built from a design in Mr Oberzohn’s possession, and was the exact replica of the house in Sweden where he was born. It had high, gabled ends at odd and unexpected places. The roof was shingled with grey tiles; there were glass panels in the curious-looking door, and iron ornaments in the shape of cranes and dogs flanking the narrow path through the rank nettle and dock which constituted his garden.
Here he dwelt, in solitude, yet not in solitude, for two men lived in the house, and there was a stout Swedish cook and a very plain Danish maid, a girl of vacant countenance, who worked from sun-up to midnight without complaint, who seldom spoke and never smiled. The two men were somewhere in the region of thirty. They occupied the turret rooms at each end of the building, and had little community of interest. They sometimes played cards together with an old and greasy pack, but neither spoke more than was necessary. They were lean, hollow-faced men, with a certain physiognomical resemblance. Both had thin, straight lips; both had round, staring, dark eyes filled with a bright but terrifying curiosity.
‘They look,’ reported Leon Gonsalez, when he went to examine the ground, ‘as if they are watching pigs being killed and enjoying every minute of it. Iwan Pfeiffer is one, Sven Gurther is the other. Both have escaped the gallows or the axe in Germany; both have convictions against them. They are typical German-trained criminals, as pitiless as wolves. Dehumanized.’
The ‘Three’, as was usual, set the machinery of the law in motion, and found that the hands of the police were tied. Only by stretching the law could the men be deported, and the law is difficult to stretch. To all appearance they offended in no respect. A woman, by no means the most desirable of citizens, laid a complaint against one. There was an investigation – proof was absent; the very character of the complainant precluded a conviction, and the matter was dropped – by the police.
Somebody else moved swiftly.
One morning, just before daybreak, a policeman patrolling the tow-path heard a savage snarl and looked round for the dog. He found instead, up one of those narrow entries leading to the canal bank, a man. He was tied to the stout sleeper fence, and his bare back showed marks of a whip. Somebody had held him up at night as he prowled the bank in search of amusement, had tied and flogged him. Twenty-five lashes: an expert thought the whip used was the official cat-o’-nine-tails.
Scotland Yard, curious, suspicious, sought out the Three Just Men. They had alibis so complete as to be unbreakable. Sven Gurther went unavenged – but he kept from the tow-path thereafter.
In this house of his there were rooms which only Dr Oberzohn visited. The Danish maid complained to the cook that when she had passed the door of one as the doctor came out, a blast of warm, tainted air had rushed out and made her cough for an hour. There was another room in which from time to time the doctor had installed a hotchpotch of apparatus. Vulcanizing machines, electrical machines (older and more used than Mirabelle had seen in her brief stay in the City Road), a liquid air plant, not the most up-to-date but serviceable.
He was not, curiously enough, a doctor in the medical sense. He was not even a doctor of chemistry. His doctorate was in Literature and Law. These experiments of his were hobbies – hobbies that he had pursued from his childhood.
On this evening he was sitting in his stuffy parlour reading a close-printed and closer-reasoned volume of German philosophy, and thinking of something else. Though the sun had only just set, the blinds and curtains were drawn; a wood fire crackled in the grate, and the bright lights of three half-watt lamps made glaring radiance.
An interruption came in the shape of a telephone call. He listened, grunting replies.
‘So!’ he said at last, and spoke a dozen words in his strange English.
Putting aside his book, he hobbled in his velvet slippers across the room and pressed twice upon the bell-push by the side of the fire-place. Gurther came in noiselessly and stood waiting.
He was grimy, unshaven. The pointed chin and short upper lip were blue. The V of his shirt visible above the waistcoat was soiled and almost black at the edges. He stood at attention, smiling vacantly, his eyes fixed at a point above the doctor’s head.
Dr Oberzohn lifted his eyes from his book.
‘I wish you to be a gentleman of club manner tonight,’ he said. He spoke in that hard North-German tongue which the Swede so readily acquires.
‘Ja, Herr Doktor!’
The man melted from the room.
Dr Oberzohn for some reason hated Germans. So, for the matter of that, did Gurther and Pfeiffer, the latter being Polish by extraction and Russian by birth. Gurther hated Germans because they stormed the little jail at Altostadt to kill him after the dogs found Frau Siedlitz’s body. He would have died then but for the green police, who scented a Communist rising, scattered the crowd and sent Gurther by road to the nearest big town under escort. The two escorting policemen were never seen again. Gurther reappeared mysteriously in England two years after, bearing a veritable passport. There was no proof even that he was Gurther – Leon knew, Manfred knew, Poiccart knew.
There had been an alternative to the whipping.
‘It would be a simple matter to hold his head under water until he was drowned,’ said Leon.
They debated the matter, decided against this for no sentimental or moral reason – none save expediency. Gurther had his whipping and never knew how near to the black and greasy water of the canal he had been.
Dr Oberzohn resumed his book – a fascinating book that was all about the human soul and immortality and time. He was in the very heart of an analysis of eternity when Gurther reappeared dressed in the ‘gentleman-club manner’. The dress-coat fitted perfectly; shirt and waistcoat were exactly the right cut. The snowy shirt, the braided trousers, the butterfly bow, and winged collar . . .
‘That is good.’ Dr Oberzohn went slowly over the figure. ‘But the studs should be pearl – not enamel. And the watch-chain is démodé – it is not worn. The gentleman-club manner does not allow of visible ornament Also I think a moustache . . . ?’
‘Ja, Herr Doktor!’
Gurther, who was once an actor, disappeared again. When he returned the enamel studs had gone: there were small pearls in their place, and his white waistcoat had no chain across. And on his upper lip had sprouted a small brown moustache, so natural that even Oberzohn, scrutinizing closely, could find no fault with it. The doctor took a case from his pocket, fingered out three crisp notes.
‘Your hands, please?’
Gurther took three paces to the old man, halted, clicked his heels and held out his hands for inspection.
‘Good! You know Leon Gonsalez? He will be at the Arts Ball. He wears no fancy dress. He was the man who whipped you.’
‘He was the man who whipped me,’ said Gurther without heat.
There was a silence, Dr Oberzohn pursing his lips.
‘Also, he did that which brands him as an infamous assassin . . . I think . . . yes, I think my dear Gurther . . . there will be a girl also, but the men of my police will be there to arrange such matters. Benton will give you instructions.
For you, only Gonsalez.’
Gurther bowed stiffly.
‘I have implored the order,’ he said, bowed again and withdrew. Later, Dr Oberzohn heard the drone of the little car as it bumped and slithered across the grass to the road. He resumed his book: this matter of eternity was fascinating.
* * *
The Arts Ball at the Corinthian Hall was one of the events of the season, and the tickets, issued exclusively to the members of three clubs, were eagerly sought by society people who could not be remotely associated with any but the art of living.
When the girl came into the crowded hall, she looked around in wonder. The balconies, outlined in soft lights and half-hidden with flowers, had been converted into boxes; the roof had been draped with blue and gold tissue; at one end of the big hall was a veritable bower of roses, behind which one of the two bands was playing. Masks in every conceivable guise were swinging rhythmically across the polished floor. To the blasé, there was little difference between the Indians, the pierrots and the cavaliers to be seen here and those they had seen a hundred times on a hundred different floors.
As the girl gazed round in wonder and delight, forgetting all her misgivings, two men, one in evening dress, the other in the costume of a brigand, came from under the shadow of the balcony towards them.
‘Here are our partners,’ said Joan, with sudden vivacity. ‘Mirabelle, I want you to know Lord Evington.’
The man in evening dress stroked his little moustache, clicked his heels and bent forward in a stiff bow. He was thin-faced, a little pallid, unsmiling. His round, dark eyes surveyed her for a second, and then:
‘I’m glad to meet you, Miss Leicester,’ he said, in a high, harsh voice, that had just the trace of a foreign accent.
This struck the girl with as much surprise as the cold kiss he had implanted upon her hand, and, as if he read her thoughts, he went on quickly: ‘I have lived so long abroad that England and English manners are strange to me. Won’t you dance? And had you not better mask? I must apologise to you for my costume.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘But there was no gala dress available.’
The Complete Four Just Men Page 74
