The sergeant shook his head.
“Been racking my brain, but it’s useless.”
“Well,” replied Spike suavely, “when you remember, Spring, I’ll tell you and McGonagle what I’ve discovered ... It’s a promise ... ”
He laughed callously at their long faces; but McGonagle was not perturbed. He knew his man. He knew that when action was taken he and Spring would be called into the fray; and he was not, therefore, unduly disappointed in having to wait some time upon the great man’s pleasure. He realized that they would be the first to be allowed into Spike’s confidence regarding the identity of the murderer ... Spring, being younger, strove loyally to hide chagrin.
Simulating carelessness, the inspector took a newspaper from his pocket.
“Begorra, Spike!” he chuckled. “I almost forgot the booby-trap.”
Spike leaned over and followed the inspector’s broad finger as it wandered down the “Agony Column” on the front page of the Daily Star. And then, when the finger stopped, he read this announcement:
“BLACK AND WHITE. You win. Wallace Common, Roman Ruin, to-night, 11.30. Bring instructions for lifesaving. S.D.”
“Well.” commented Spike, “that may draw him, though I’m doubtful. If I were ‘Black and White’ it wouldn’t draw me. I’d wait until the Naval Pact was shelved. Then I’d send the formula for the cure through the post ... However, we’ll keep the appointment anyway ... Now, old lads! Scram! I’ve a date with Mexico Madge and Italian George. Take a good supper before to-night’s job, Spring!”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE atmosphere of the apartment was cold and cheerless. In the middle of the stone floor there stood a plain deal table. On one side of this table a man and a woman sat, crouched forward a little as if desperately wary.
The man was thin, dark complexioned. His black hair hung in dishevelled streamers on either side of a bullet head. His features were those of an Italian. The woman’s platinum coloured hair was uncombed and rumpled. The outline of her supple figure was revealed by a close-fitting yellow jumper. Below the short tweed skirt were crossed long silken legs, and the toe of one shoe drummed incessantly on the flags. Her coarse red mouth was twitching.
Behind the man and the woman there stood silently two stocky detectives.
There was tension in the bare room, and this tension was unrelieved when the door opened briskly to admit a tall young man dressed in a light grey suit. The newcomer sat down in a chair opposite the prisoners, leaned back and smiled. His attitude was expressive of triumph.
Italian George and Mexico Madge shifted their positions, watched carefully by the two plain-clothes men. At a nod from his superior, one of the latter touched a piece of mechanism hidden in the shadows behind the table. There was a quick, quiet hum which did not seem to be noticed by the criminals.
“Do you mind if I smoke, Mrs. — er — Mallinson?” inquired Spike. “Perhaps you’d appreciate a gasper yourself? Have one of mine ... ”
The lady cursed. Her curses were original and extremely filthy.
“Keep your bloody smokes! What the hell do you want? You’ll get no information from us!”
Deliberately Spike selected a cigarette from his case. Deliberately he lit a match. Deliberately he returned cigarette-case and match-box to his pockets. Deliberately he exhaled a long jet of smoke.
“Dear, dear!” he murmured at last. “D’you realize, Mrs. Mallinson, that your language may have a most corruptin’ influence on the morals of the Yard? D’you realize that anything you say at this interview may be used as evidence?”
She half-rose in her chair. Her blue eyes held a wild gleam. Obviously her nerves were at breaking-point. Spike noted the clenched hands and the throb of the pulse in her throat.
“Cut the cackle!” she screamed. “Why the hell are you so happy with yourself?”
As one of the detectives replaced Mexico Madge in a sitting posture, the head of Department Q7 congratulated himself upon his acting. The assumed air of triumph had begun to have its effect upon one prisoner at least. He shot a glance at Italian George; but that gentleman did not seem to be perturbed. He was glowering at his companion, however, as if in an attempt to warn her to keep control of her tongue.
Spike grinned as the woman slumped back in the chair. He flicked a fragment of ash from his trousers.
“Did you know,” he said, addressing the ceiling, that there has been another murder — another murder in connection with ‘the scourge of the flowers’?”
There was a moment of utter silence. Then Mexico Madge leaned forward, beating her hands on the table.
“Who was it?” she shouted. “Who did it?”
The head of Department Q7 realized that the strain of keeping silent under continual interrogation was beginning to tell on the woman. He realized that with luck he might be able to break down the wall of secrecy which, since being taken to gaol, the “Mallinsons” had built around themselves.
“Poor old man!” muttered Spike. “He must, I think, have been forced to do it ... His victim, by the way, was the Hon. Miss Nancy Sanders. Shot her last night. ’Fraid the game’s up, Mrs. Mallinson.”
“My father killed her?” whispered Mexico Madge, face white as death, head thrust forward from her shoulders as if she were some fantastic incarnation of Fear. “You say my father killed her?”
“So he is your father!” returned Spike. “I wondered ... ”
“Where’s he now?” breathed Mexico Madge. “Listen, you b —! What have you done with him?”
“Poor old man!” repeated Spike. “Oh — er — tell me: what’s his real name? We haven’t, of course, discovered that.”
She seemed to have gone suddenly limp. She was trembling.
“His name — my maiden name — is Passos. We called him Peter Passos.”
“Interestin’!” remarked Spike. Then he continued, in a deliberately harsh voice: “Well, it’s a pity; but Peter Passos will be goin’ for a short walk one bright morning.”
“You’re lying!” Italian George opened his mouth for the first time. His thick lips were twisted in a sneer. “You’re lying, I say. You’re bluffing us ... You haven’t taken Peter.”
“Every word I have uttered,” answered Spike slowly, “is the truth ... Furthermore, I may tell you both that unless you speak, unless you give me all the information you’ve got tucked away, the associates of Peter Passos may walk side by side with him ... Curious ceremony that little promenade to the gallows. It must be nerve-rackin’ for a woman. And the priest comes after breakfast —”
“Stop!” Again Mexico Madge was screaming. Her hands clutched her hair. Her coarse mouth was wide with terror. “That devil! Did he give my father away? Did he make him murder the Sanders woman?”
Spike shrugged his shoulders.
“You picked your company,” he observed sententiously. “You’ve got to take the consequences.”
“But he’s got nothing on us ... George and I only —”
“Shut up, you blasted sow!”
The Italian shot out a hand to strike his wife; but one stocky detective prevented the assault.
Mexico Madge stood up, leaning forward on the table. She disregarded the mouthing of her companion. Her eyes were red-rimmed. Her body shook with passion.
“I’ll tell!” she shrilled. “We were loyal to him. But if he has put something over on my father, why the hell should we be silent? He can’t send us to the gallows with my father. I don’t give a damn for him ... He threatened to kill us with the flowering death if we spoke. But you’ll not let him do that! You’ll not let the bastard do that!”
“It’s a promise,” agreed Spike, his dark eyes eager on the tormented face of the woman. “Don’t be afraid ... Who is this man you’re talkin’ about?”
The chill, cheerless room was very quiet, except for the scarcely perceptible hum that came from the dark corner. Italian George, warned by one of the detectives, had ceased his muttering. Spike, in the midst of excitement, p
ressed out the stub of his cigarette with a steady hand. He was thinking sardonically that Mexico Madge’s loyalty to “Black and White” must largely have been based on fear. He was wondering, too, if even now he would get the direct evidence that he sought — evidence regarding the murderer of Dr. Abraham McIntee. But he was pessimistic.
Then the woman spoke again.
“Who is this man?” she shrilled. “I wish I could tell you. I wish I could tell you ... Christ, if I could tell you I’d do it and sing for joy. He’s made my father a murderer ... Wait! George and I met him in Bombay three years ago. We were doing a knife-throwing act at Scarlet’s Club and my father was our manager ... Stranger used to come in every night to watch us. He wore a straggly black beard. He still wears it when he visits us. He’s tall, thin. Skin seems wrinkled somehow ... One night the three of us were at a table in the club — after our show. He came over and sat down beside us. He spoke in a deep quiet voice. He didn’t tell us his name — or about his job or his home. He said we were to call him Stranger. He said he’d pay us a hundred dollars a month it’ we’d do certain easy jobs for him when he gave us instructions.”
She paused. Somewhere outside a policeman was tramping up and down whistling the Skaters’ Waltz. Spike nodded.
“We were in pretty low water at the time,” continued Mexico Madge, “and we accepted his offer without question ... We didn’t get much to do, and he paid us regularly. He said once that he was a theatrical agent; but our idea was that he’d got mixed up in the white slave traffic. Every month or so we had to find some destitute girl for him, and we managed to do this without much difficulty. We didn’t know what happened to the girls ... ”
Spike had difficulty in restraining an expression of disgust at the character of his informant. Furthermore, as had occurred after the death of Nan Li-San, there welled up in his heart an overweening hatred of “Black and White”. His lean hands twitched as if he longed to hold the throat of the murderer between them.
He forced himself to listen and understand.
“Then after a couple of years,” resumed the coarse-mouthed woman, “he said we’d to follow him to London. We introduced him here to a little Chinese prostitute called Nan Li-San. We knew her manager, Mary the Milker ... And then, about ten o’clock on the morning after the McIntee murder, he came to us and offered to pay us two hundred pounds, over and above our salary, if George and my father would abduct the Nevinson girl and keep her hidden at Aldersyde for a day or two. We didn’t want to be mixed up in the murder business — but then he told us of ‘the scourge of the flowers’. He told us that old McIntee had been the only man in the world to know of the antidote; but that since the old doctor’s death the knowledge had passed to him. He impressed us with the power it gave him. He said he was going to hold the government up to ransom just to show people. ... After that, he said, we’d have the world at our feet. We’d all be millionaires — ten times over. And then, when we were still dubious, he took out a little phial. He laughed and we saw his white teeth. He said if we didn’t do what he wanted he’d infect us all with the flower-disease ... We fell for it, the bloody suckers that we were! We might have known he was mad. We might have known that once we’d got mixed up in a killing there would be more killings. We might as well have died ... And now he’s got my father …”
Mexico Madge giggled hysterically. A stream of saliva ran down from one corner of her red mouth.
“I hated Stranger. I always hated him. But he gave us a steady income. He promised us more and more money. I hated him — the bastard. There was something queer about him. His wrinkled skin was waxy. He was always scratching that straggly black beard of his ... I wouldn’t let him touch me ... You’ve got to find him — you policemen. My God! You’ve got to find him. I never want to see him again. For Christ’s sake burn him on the hottest chair — hang him from the highest gallows in the world ... ”
She buried her face in her hands. Spike saw that the face of Italian George was like dough. And still the quiet hum went on.
Suddenly the woman raised a lined and raddled face.
“And listen to me!” she muttered. “We don’t know who he is. We don’t know ... We never knew what he did in Bombay. Don’t look at me like that! We don’t know what he did in London. He always came to us ... Always, I tell you! But he arranged that if ever we had to make a quick getaway from Aldersyde he’d learn about it and, if possible, meet us or ’phone us at the Café Liano in the East End. That’s how he must have got into communication with my father. He must have ’phoned the Café Liano and told my father what to do ... Oh, my God!”
Spike stood up. He was only very slightly disappointed that he had failed to secure definite proof of the identity of “Black and White”, He had not, indeed, expected it. And yet he had been assured indirectly that his ideas regarding Dr. McIntee’s murderer were true ones.
“Black and White”, according to the disjointed, passionate evidence of Mexico Madge, had lived in Bombay. He had come to England. He was intimately connected with Dr. Abraham McIntee ... And the black beard, the tall figure, the waxy wrinkled cadaverous skin, the reference to “the scourge of the flowers” — they all fitted his theory. Slowly but surely the unknown history of the movements of “Black and White” was being put together. Soon — probably subsequent to arrival of the police cables from Burma and Bombay — another motive for the murders of Dr. Abraham McIntee, Nan Li-San and the Hon. Miss Nancy Sanders would be made evident. The flower-theme of the murder had still to be explained.
“Thank you, Mrs. — er — Mallinson,” he said. “I don’t think you will regret having spoken.”
He nodded to one of the detectives and when the latter had fingered something in the shadows the quiet hum died away. Spike moved towards the door.
And as he was about to put his hand on the knob there was a sharp double knock. A young plain-clothes policeman with dark sleek hair and the unmistakable accent of a great University thrust his head into the apartment.
“A.C. wants to speak to you, sir, before you leave. They’ve taken the Sanders murderer. Nabbed him in the Café Liano half an hour ago. Man by the name of Peter Passos. They’ve found out all about him in the Criminal Records Department ... Says he’s the father of Mexico Madge in there.”
Spike smiled.
“I know about him,” he said. “Poor devil!”
There was a sudden gasp from the woman seated at the table. Italian George called Spike an unprintable name.
“You double-crossed us!” shrieked Mexico Madge. “You hadn’t found my father ... You liar! You told us lies about my father being captured ... I’ll tell the Assistant Commissioner that you got my evidence by false pretences. I’ll deny it, every word, at the trial ... The ’tees behind us weren’t taking down what I said.”
Spike’s eyebrows went up. He was guileless.
“I told no lies, Mrs. Mallinson. See it wet, see it dry! And I’m afraid you can’t go back on your evidence now ... One of the — er — ’tees, as you call them, will play over for your benefit a phonograph record we’ve just made of our conversation. When you hear it you will realize that you gave your evidence voluntarily, after having been warned in the usual manner. You will realize that from beginning to end I made no false statement ... You will also realize the futility of denying what you’ve said.”
He left the room. Italian George and Mexico Madge kept looking at the closed door.
CHAPTER XIX
IMMEDIATELY after his interview with Mexico Madge and Italian George, Spike spoke with Sir Percival Merridew on the subject of Peter Passos’s arrest. He learned that the oldish, grizzle-headed man, on being taken to the Yard for interrogation, had completely lost his nerve. He had admitted the murder of the Hon. Miss Nancy Sanders, and as a background supplied the police with a story similar in all essentials to that related by his daughter. It had become clear that Peter Passos knew nothing of the real identity of Stranger.
The tale had borne out the t
heory put forward by Mexico Madge that “Black and White” had ’phoned her father at the Café Liano and, by threats of immediate exposure to the police and promises of illimitable wealth if he carried out instructions, had persuaded the experienced criminal to accomplish the murder of the girl.
Furthermore, Peter Passos’s story substantiated the idea, based upon the discovery in the death-room at Arundel House of the “Lady Charlotte Hamilton” rose, that “Black and White” had known intimately the Hon. Nancy. It also made clear that Stranger had been aware of her intention to dine with Spike at Harpagon’s on the previous evening and to reveal her part in the McIntee murder.
How “Black and White” learned of his friend’s purpose is a point which has never fully been explained. At the time, however, Sir Percival Merridew and Spike were of the opinion that the Hon. Nancy, following Spike’s visit to Sanders Grange, had ’phoned “Black and White”, explaining that she meant to rid herself of a burden of guilt and giving him, because he had been her lover, the chance of making an effort to escape that night.
Whatever the reason for its owner’s knowledge, however, the unknown voice had informed Passos over the wire that the girl intended leaving Sanders Grange at seven o’clock. It had instructed the criminal to intercept her at a point five miles outside of London, which, it stated definitely, she would reach at about seven-thirty. Stranger had described in meticulous detail the Hon. Nancy’s Bianca. He had stressed his opinion, based on a reference to the girl’s punctuality, that she would arrive at the lonely cross-roads within a minute or two of the half-hour.
The father of Mexico Madge, his stout face grey and covered with beads of perspiration, had told of his journey by hired car to the cross-roads. He had told of his short wait with the lonely woods stretching around him. He had told of his sudden view of the Bianca half-a-mile away; of his quick trailing of a rotten branch across the road; of his equally quick return of the branch to the wood immediately the Bianca had come to a stand-still. He had told of his leap to the footboard of the girl’s car; of the shooting.
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