“Darling,” she said, “then perhaps you do know something?”
“If you’ll stop diving on the poor girl,” Wingless snapped, “she might even be able to tell us. Well, Mary?”
“But it was just a man, George. It can’t mean anything—the poor wretch. But when you asked me about anything odd that had happened—well, I suppose it was odd. He spoke to me on Jermyn Street.”
Mary, in spite of her delicate health, usually spent the most part of the bitter month of January in London, for she was a devoted mother and would not deprive her son of the pantomimes, children’s parties and Mickey Mouse festivals which are common to that season. A little after dusk on an unusually fine afternoon she was walking at her leisure up Jermyn Street, intending to rejoin her motor-car near the Ritz Hotel. She had just stopped outside Dunhill’s excellent shop window and, admiring the display of improved smoking novelties within, was wishing that she too smoked so that she might possess some of those pretty things, when to her dismay she became aware that a man’s face was looking at her intently over her shoulder. It was of course his reflection in the shop window that she saw, and of course she pretended to take no notice. He spoke. She walked on very quickly. Her heart was beating so, for such a thing had never before happened to her, that it was quite without her knowledge that she found herself within a narrow and elegant Arcade which seemed to her bemused senses to be entirely given up to men’s haberdashery in its most refined forms.
“Madam,” said a voice at her shoulder, “I must speak to you. Who are you?”
Distressed though she was, Mary could not help almost smiling at a sudden vision of herself tearing along an Arcade largely devoted to male undergarments and pursued by a man asking her who she was. The wretch must have seen the faint shadow of a smile on her profile, and been encouraged thereby, for the next thing she knew he was confronting her. She looked at him in only the most scattered way, but could not help gathering the impression that he was, in spite of his very peculiar behaviour, a presentable man.
He said: “Madam, please forgive my bad manners. It is only that I want very much to know who you are. I must know. You may think me mad, but I can’t help it.”
She said, and it sounded to her own ears extremely silly as she said it: “I don’t know you. Please let me go on.”
The wretch was, she now noted, of a striking sort of lean dark handsomeness. The very little she saw of his dark eyes had the queerest effect on her, as though he was trying to burn her with them.
He said: “Almost every other night for the last three years I have dreamt of you. I know every expression of your face. I know how you speak. You have become an obsession with me, Madam. Perhaps it will help me to cure this if I know who you are. Won’t you help me?”
She told him her name, at which he gave no evidence of surprise whatsoever, and left him even before he had thanked her. She never saw him again, and would have forgotten all about the stupid occurrence if some three or four days later Amy had not told her that, while she and Tommy had been at a matinée one afternoon, a man had called at the house, saying he had come in connection with a benevolent fund for the distressed widowers of transatlantic airwomen. The butler had shown him into the small library downstairs, to which Amy had presently come down to him. From her description of the man’s sardonically handsome looks it was obvious that it must have been the same wretch. Amy had admitted to being somewhat impressed by his looks and sincerity, and after a short interview had told him he might send the Duchess fuller particulars about the fund for which he was soliciting. But this, of course, he never did and had never intended to do, for some time after he had left it was found that he had stolen from its frame a recent photograph of Mary taken by Mr. Clarence Bray. This theft had annoyed Mary and Amy very much, since for one thing Mary was not given to indulging herself in the expense of photographs, and for another she had been so much taken by Mr. Bray’s success with the likeness that she had actually ordered two copies, of which now only one remained.
And that was all. She had never seen the creature again.
“Has Amy?” Wingless asked.
Mary didn’t think so. Amy was called for, and she said she hadn’t. Her description of the man was not really more substantial than Mary’s, except that she had at first thought the man might be a foreigner from the darkness of his complexion, and that he was about forty-five years of age.
Wingless said: “Now, Amy, Mary is going to a nursing-home for a good rest. We shall be going off within half an hour, so will you tell her maid to have the necessary things ready, and the rest can be sent along later?”
“I’ll do it myself,” Miss Gool said, “as Mary’s maid was sent away a few days ago and we haven’t yet troubled to engage another, as she goes out so seldom.”
“Oh, no,” Mary said, “I go out every night and have such fun in my girlish way. Haven’t you heard about it, Amy?”
At this Mrs. Nautigale’s expression became so distraught that it was as though the powerful edifice of her face was being demolished with a view to structural alterations. As she dived once again on to the helpless reclining Mary, and as Miss Gool left the room, Wingless took the opportunity of doing very quickly and quietly what he thought he had to do.
Signing to Mrs. Nautigale to keep Mary occupied, his fingers searched deftly among the flimsy feminine things in her drawers and cupboards. From beneath a cloud of dainty knickers, the touch of which made him feel like a bull among ospreys, he drew out and slipped into his breast-pocket a slender blade about six inches in length curiously attached to a short handle which had been encased in rubber.
Then, kissing Mary affectionately and telling Mrs. Nautigale not to let her out of her sight until she was safely in Dr. Lapwing’s charge, he left the house for Scotland Yard.
CHAPTER NINE
In Basil Icelin’s room at Scotland Yard the two men sat talking until late that night. They did not conceal from one another that they were completely flummoxed. Every now and then Superintendent Crust or a subordinate would come in with papers relating to one or other of the Jane the Ripper murders.
Colonel Wingless had detailed to the chief of the C.I.D. Mary’s experience with the man in Jermyn Street and also the companion’s supplementary narrative. Icelin carefully examined the blade with the curious handle, and his opinion as to the rubber covering agreed with Wingless’s, that it had been glued on so as to give a better purchase for a woman’s slender fingers. Wingless explained that he had searched for the knife because in a case so peculiar and evil it was wise to look for the impossible and to work backwards from the impossible to the possible.
The knife had already been examined by the chemical experts, and the gist of their report was this: the blade had been cleaned, but not expertly: in all probability it had not been used for at least six weeks to two months: a spot of dried blood extracted from between the blade and the handle belonged to the same blood-group as that of the victim of the Fulham Road Murder.
“I thought,” Wingless said, “we should get some such result as that.”
Icelin carefully shut the knife away in a narrow box, which would be labelled and placed among the exhibits of the Jane the Ripper crimes.
He said: “The murderess has now made two mistakes: the voice on the telephone: the knife in the Duchess’s room. But these mistakes are not at all helpful to us, Wingless. Let me put it this way. They are calculated mistakes flung at our heads by a criminal who thinks she is strong enough to be able to laugh at us. There is an arrogance about them. The person who put this knife among the Duchess’s whatnots did not for a moment think that I should be fool enough to believe that she knew of its existence. Now why did he or she, whatever sex this fiend is, do something which he knew would not delude the police?”
“Icelin,” Wingless said, “I have come to a conclusion about that. And I am bound to tell you that this conclusion really terrifies me. Now I will give you any odds you like that wi
thin the next few days we shall find there has been a leakage to the Press and to the public about the evidence connecting the Duchess of Dove with Jane the Ripper.”
Icelin said: “I’ll not take an even bet on that.”
“I didn’t think you would. Now do you see why I say I am frightened?”
“Not quite, since you are beefy enough to prevent even the prettiest woman from cutting your throat.”
Wingless said: “I can tell you jokes more amusing than that, Icelin, and one is that this criminal is not really interested in cutting throats.”
“Just absent-mindedness, you mean?”
“These murders are no more than part of a plan. The false evidence against a lady of position is also an essential part of this plan. I have it in my mind, Icelin, that this criminal is not just a sex-mad ripper but someone who is trying to create an anarchy throughout this country. That is why I think there will be another murder presently, even though Mary Dove is safely under guard in a nursing-home and the police will therefore know that she cannot have committed it. And I say that after this murder there will be a leakage to the Press, and the people will be very inflamed against the police for conspiring to protect a lady of high position from arrest. Do you see, Icelin, what is in my mind? England has been greatly disturbed by factions for a year past now. If I am not wrong I think it was you yourself, as chief of the C.I.D., who warned Winston Churchill on his formation of a Coalition in the autumn of 1936 that it would be very prejudicial to the peace of this country, and that it would be considered by the increasing number of Communists as a provocative gesture, to appoint Mosley, the head of the British Union of Fascists, to the War Office.”
“It’s far-fetched, Wingless. Here we have a pathological criminal who murders young men after having had her pleasure with them. And from this blood-mad nymphomaniac you deduce a crazy Catiline of political conspiracy whose ambition it is to destroy the foundations of the state. You are no fool, Wingless, but I take this opportunity of saying that you sometimes speak like one.”
“Don’t exaggerate, Icelin—I often speak like one. But may I suggest that even from the very little that has ever penetrated into your gross mind about the mysteries of religion, it must have occurred to you that even the wisest of men doesn’t know such a hell of a lot.”
“Look here,” Icelin said, “if you are trying to frighten me with spooks—don’t, because I am a susceptible bloke and it’s getting near my bedtime.”
Now Basil Icelin’s dark and clever eyes were serious when he said this.
“Wingless,” he added, “what are you getting at?”
The big fair man across the table smiled faintly.
“I don’t know. But one thing I do know is that someone or something is getting ready to give this world of ours one of the hardest kicks in the pants it’s had yet.”
“But what the devil,” Icelin said, “has that to do with this series of unsolved and senseless murders? I don’t deny what every intelligent man has known for years, that this present stage of industrial development and national expansion is nearing its end and that mankind is drifting towards a long period of world wars—which I for one hope not to see. But we are in my room at Scotland Yard, Wingless, and I am a policeman. What connection can you possibly see between our reasonable fears for the future and this sadistic murderess?”
Wingless said: “Icelin, the history of mankind is a story told in the worst possible taste and with an artistic vulgarity which would bring a blush to the cheeks of even a fashionable novelist. It is full of false melodrama, purple passages, sinister coincidences, and a sickening want of humanity. We can’t deny a certain dignity to men for their resignation to the degradations piled on them by the law of creation, but I fancy a man flatters himself who sees any grandeur in the history of the human species. It’s my experience that the only people who see any grandeur in the history of mankind are those who have attained leadership of some sort by trading on our worst instincts.
“But history has anyhow one quality which we must admire—its consistent co-relation of one fact with another through endless groups of facts from the beginning of time. Nothing happens which has not had a beginning in another happening. Nothing begins which has not already been begun. The seed of every event is sown by a hoary old predecessor. We cannot lift a finger which does not twitch an invisible string attached to an event in the future. That is no doubt what physicists mean when they state that the past, the present and the future are really co-existent and live together as a party of three in the house of time. And a damned uncomfortable party it is.
“Now let us descend from universal lunacies to the small backyard lunacies which have been such a help to our civilisation these last twenty years, like the Treaty of Versailles, the boycott of Russia, the collapse of the League of Nations idea, the fall of commodity prices below the cost of production, the childish malady which is still known in America as ‘banking,’ the peculiar default of a rather stupid man called Kreuger, then Stavisky, which led to the Paris riots of ’34, the minor civil war of the year after and the re-establishment of a French Directorate last year, and now our Jane the Ripper, who is so eager to establish a family connection with an aristocratic name in a time when aristocracy is not so popular with the people as it was.
“You say this is far-fetched, Icelin, but we shall see if you are right. I merely suggest to you that there is a strong impulse within our civilisation which is trying to hasten its destruction, and with that end in view this impulse projects a series of events—I count Kreuger and people like that as events and not as men—which act as agents provocateurs.”
“But all that,” said Icelin, “isn’t going to help us catch and hang our girl friend the Ripper.”
“I,” said Wingless, “I’ll catch little Jane with my bow and arrow. And do you know how?”
“Neither of us does, Wingless.”
“So you say. I shall start by thinking of the impossible in terms of the probable. From scratch, like a boy who believes in magic. You don’t believe in magic, do you, Icelin?”
“I certainly don’t believe there are fairies at the bottom of the garden.”
“You mustn’t be so whimsical, old chap. But isn’t it odd that you don’t believe in magic. For I am positive that you think a hell of a lot of science.”
Icelin said: “I certainly have more confidence in Einstein than in Conan Doyle.”
“The illusions created by words,” Wingless said, “are really very interesting. Let me try to remember my Chesterton. A man thinks it’s childish to believe in magic. But he thinks it quite grown-up to believe in mathematics. He thinks it idiotic to believe in miracles. But he worships Marconi. I see I shall have to appeal to your material side, Icelin. Now do you see any connection between these peculiar Jane the Ripper crimes and science?”
“My God,” said Icelin, “I believe I’ve got what you are driving at.” He called sharply into the buzzer, and Superintendent Crust came in, and he said: “This is urgent, Crust. I want you to take charge personally, for it needs great delicacy. I fancy we have no authority whatsoever to question the General Medical Council. You had better put it that the Secretary of the Council will be doing us a great favour if he gives us a list of the names and addresses of all doctors——”
“And surgeons,” said Wingless.
“—who have either been censured or barred from practising by the General Medical Council since, let us say, 1920.”
“There should be no difficulty about that, sir.”
Icelin glanced at Wingless. “Anything to suggest?”
“Yes, but I don’t think it’s possible. Photographs of these blokes would be helpful, but I don’t suppose the G.M.C. keeps a portrait gallery.”
“Sir,” said Crust, “there will be no difficulty about getting the names. But it won’t be easy tracing them to where they are living now. And it’s only by tracing them we can get photographs, if then.”<
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“Why should it be so difficult, Crust?”
“Sir, barred doctors are usually described as ‘of no occupation.’ And it’s easiest to trace a man by his occupation.”
Icelin said: “Go ahead, anyway. You have got only this to go on—our man can’t be more than fifty and maybe lives in London.”
As Crust went out Icelin glanced at his watch and yawned. It was just eleven o’clock. A long day’s work.
Wingless said: “What about walking with me to my club for a drink? I’ve got a feeling that there is something odd going on in London to-night and that we might see something of it.”
But Icelin was tired, and when they went out into Whitehall he hailed a taxi and said good-night.
CHAPTER TEN
Wingless, having passed through the crowd emerging from the Whitehall Theatre at the close of the performance, hesitated at the corner of Trafalgar Square. Should he walk through Admiralty Arch and up the Mall, or should he engage himself against fearful odds by crossing Trafalgar Square towards the National Gallery? The spiteful narrow mouth of the Strand, which captains the noisy cohorts of the W.C.2 district and is always ready to inconvenience its betters, the spacious squares and wide avenues of S.W.1 and W.1, was discharging against its enemies a roar of buses, a flight of taxis and a pride of limousines. Cockspur Street across Trafalgar Square received these missiles with the sullen dignity of the defenceless, for being a one-way street she got all the kicks and none of the fun. Wingless, bending at both knees and clutching his stick firmly as a support, tottered forth into the maelstrom in the guise of a cripple and, amid a howl of outraged brakes, but with the bored encouragement of a policeman, threaded his way across so slowly that the sympathy of bus drivers for the halt and the blind was put to a very severe strain.
This tomfoolery, which was doing his depression a world of good, came to an end when he caught sight of a small crowd by one of the lions on the National Gallery side of the Column. There were about fifteen people, all men but one, being addressed by a pot-bellied little man in an indignant voice of great carrying power. They looked the usual group of nondescripts who collect around speakers in some of London’s open spaces, and would not have attracted Wingless’s attention had he not heard above the roar of the traffic the words “Jane the Ripper.”
Hell! said the Duchess Page 6
