Adventures of Martin Hewitt (17 page)

Hoker, of course, was anxious to know where the house in question stood,
but this Luker and Birks would on no account inform him. “You’ve done your
part,” they said, “and now you leave us to do ours. There’s a bit of a job
about gettin’ the tenants out. They won’t go, and it’ll take a bit of time
before the landlord can make them. So you just hold your jaw and wait. When
we’re safe in the ‘ouse, and there’s no chance of anybody else pokin’ in,
then you can come and help find the stuff.”

Hoker went home that night sober, but in much perplexity. The thing might
be genuine, after all; indeed, there were many little things that made him
think it was. But then, if it were, what guarantee had he that he would get
his share, supposing the search turned out successful? None at all. But then
it struck him for the first time that these jewels, though they may have lain
untouched so long, were stolen property after all. The moral aspect of the
affair began to trouble him a little, but the legal aspect troubled him more.
That consideration however, he decided to leave over for the present. He had
no more than the word of Luker and Birks that the jewels (if they existed)
were those of Lady Wedlake, and Luker and Birks themselves only professed to
know from hearsay. At any rate, he made up his mind to have some guarantee
for his money. In accordance with this resolve, he suggested, when he met the
two men the next day, that he should take charge of the slip of music and
make an independent study of it. This proposal, however, met with an instant
veto.

Hoker resolved to make up a piece of paper, folded as like the slip of
music as possible, and substitute one for the other at their next meeting.
Then he would put the Flitterbat Lancers in some safe place, and face his
fellow conspirators with a hand of cards equal to their own. He carried out
his plan the next evening with perfect success, thanks to the contemptuous
indifference with which Luker and Birks had begun to regard him. He got the
slip in his pocket, and left the bar. He had not gone far, however, before
Luker discovered the loss, and soon he became conscious of being followed. He
looked for a cab, but he was in a dark street, and no cab was near. Luker and
Birks turned the corner and began to run. He saw they must catch him.
Everything now depended on his putting the Flitterbat Lancers out of their
reach, but where he could himself recover it. He ran till he saw a narrow
passageway on his right, and into this he darted. It led into a yard where
stones were lying about, and in a large building before him he saw the window
of a lighted room a couple of floors up. It was a desperate expedient, but
there was no time for consideration. He wrapped a stone in the paper and
flung it with all his force through the lighted window. Even as he did it he
heard the feet of Luker and Birks as they hurried down the street. The rest
of the adventure in the court I myself saw.

Luker and Birks kept Hoker in their lodgings all that night. They searched
him unsuccessfully for the paper; they bullied, they swore, they cajoled,
they entreated, they begged him to play the game square with his pals. Hoker
merely replied that he had put the Flitterbat Lancers where they couldn’t
easily find it, and that he intended playing the game square as long as they
did the same. In the end they released him, apparently with more respect than
they had before entertained, advising him to get the paper into his
possession as soon as he could.

“And now,” said Mr Hoker, in conclusion of his narrative, “perhaps you’ll
give me a bit of advice. Am I playin’ a fool-game running after these toughs,
or ain’t I?”

Hewitt shrugged his shoulders. “It all depends,” he said, “on your friends
Luker and Birks. They may want to swindle you, or they may not. I’m afraid
they’d like to, at any rate. But perhaps you’ve got some little security in
this piece of paper. One thing is plain: they certainly believe in the
deposit of the jewels themselves, else they wouldn’t have taken so much
trouble to get the paper back.”

“Then I guess I’ll go on with the thing, if that’s it.”

“That depends, of course, on whether you care to take trouble to get
possession of what, after all, is somebody else’s lawful property.”

Hoker looked a little uneasy. “Well,” he said, “there’s that, of course. I
didn’t know nothin’ of that at first, and when I did I’d parted with my money
and felt entitled to get something back for it. Anyway, the stuff ain’t found
yet. When it is, why then, you know, I might make a deal with the owner. But,
say, how did you find out my name, and about this here affair being jined up
with the Wedlake jewels?”

Hewitt smiled. “As to the name and address, you just think it over a
little when you’ve gone away, and if you don’t see how I did it. You’re not
so cute as I think you are. In regard to the jewels—well, I just read
the message of the Flitterbat Lancers, that’s all.”

“You read it? Whew! And what does it say? How did you do it?” Hoker turned
the paper over eagerly in his hands as he spoke.

“See, now,” said Hewitt, “I won’t tell you all that, but I’ll tell you
something, and it may help you to test the real knowledge of Luker and Birks.
Part of the message is in these words, which you had better write down:
Over the coals the fifth dancer slides, says Jerry Shield the
homey
.’”

“What?” Hoker exclaimed, “fifth dancer slides over the coals? That’s
mighty odd. What’s it all about?”

“About the Wedlake jewels, as I said. Now you can go and make a bargain
with Luker and Birks. The only other part of the message is an address, and
that they already know, if they have been telling the truth about the house
they intend taking. You can offer to tell them what I have told you of the
message, after they have told you where the house is, and proved to you that
they are taking the steps they talked of. If they won’t agree to that, I
think you had best treat them as common rogues and charge them with obtaining
your money under false pretenses.”

Nothing more would Hewitt say than that, despite Hoker’s many questions;
and when at last Hoker had gone, almost as troubled and perplexed as ever, my
friend turned to me and said, “Now, Brett, if you haven’t lunched and would
like to see the end of this business, hurry!”

“The end of it?” I said. “Is it to end so soon? How?”

“Simply by a police raid on Jerry Shiels’s old house with a search
warrant. I communicated with the police this morning before I came here.”

“Poor Hoker!” I said.

“Oh, I had told the police before I saw Hoker, or heard of him, of course.
I just conveyed the message on the music slip—that was enough. But I’ll
tell you all a out it when there’s more time; I must be off now. With the
information I have given him, Hoker and his friends may make an extra push
and get into the house soon, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to give the
unfortunate Hoker some sort of sporting chance—though it’s a poor one,
I fear. Get your lunch as quickly as you can, and go at once to Colt Row,
Bankside—Southwark way, you know. Probably we shall be there before
you. If not, wait.”

Colt Row was not difficult to find. It was one of those places that decay
with an excess of respectability, like Drury Lane and Clare Market. Once,
when Jacob’s Island was still an island, a little farther down the river,
Colt Row had evidently been an unsafe place for a person with valuables about
him, and then it probably prospered, in its own way. Now it was quite
respectable, but very dilapidated and dirty. Perhaps it was sixty yards
long—perhaps a little more. It was certainly a very few yards wide, and
the houses at each side had a patient and forlorn look of waiting for a
metropolitan improvement to come along and carry them away to their rest.

I could see no sign of Hewitt, nor of the police, so I walked up and down
the narrow pavement for a little while. As I did so, I became conscious of a
face at the window of the least ruinous house in the row, a face that I
fancied expressed particular interest in my movements. The house was an old
gabled structure, faced with plaster. What had apparently once been a
shop-window on the ground floor was now shuttered up, and the face that
watched me—an old woman’s—looked out from the window above. I had
noted these particulars with some curiosity, when, arriving again at the
street corner, I observed Hewitt approaching, in company with a police
inspector, and followed by two unmistakable plainclothesmen.

“Well,” Hewitt said, “you’re first here after all. Have you seen any more
of our friend Hoker?”

“No, nothing.”

“Very well—probably he’ll be here before long, though.”

The party turned into Colt Row, and the inspector, walking up to the door
of the house with the shuttered bottom window, knocked sharply. There was no
response, so he knocked again, equally in vain.

“All out,” said the inspector.

“No,” I said; “I saw a woman watching me from the window above not three
minutes ago.”

“Ho, ho!” the inspector replied. “That’s so, eh? One of you—you,
Johnson—step round to the back, will you?”

One of the plainclothesmen started off, and after waiting another minute
or two the inspector began a thundering cannonade of knocks that brought
every available head out of the window of every inhabited room in the Row. At
this the woman opened the window, and began abusing the inspector with a
shrillness and fluency that added a street-corner audience to that already
congregated at the windows.

“Go away, you blaggards!” the lady said, “you ought to be ‘orse-w’ipped,
every one of ye! A-comin’ ‘ere a-tryin’ to turn decent people out o’ ‘ouse
and ‘ome! Wait till my ‘usband comes ‘ome—‘e’ll show yer, ye
mutton-cadgin’ scoundrels! Payin’ our rent reg’lar, and good tenants as is
always been—and I’m a respectable married woman, that’s what I am, ye
dirty great cowards!”—this last word with a low, tragic emphasis.

Hewitt remembered what Hoker had said about the present tenants refusing
to quit the house on the landlord’s notice. “She thinks we’ve come from the
landlord to turn her out,” he said to the inspector. “We’re not here from the
landlord, you old fool!” the inspector said. “We don’t want to turn you out.
We’re the police, with a search warrant, and you’d better let us in or you’ll
get into trouble.”

“‘Ark at ‘im!” the woman screamed, pointing at the inspector. “‘Ark at
‘im! Thinks I was born yesterday, that feller! Go ‘ome, ye dirty pie-stealer,
go ‘ome!”

The audience showed signs of becoming a small crowd, and the inspector’s
patience gave out. “Here, Bradley,” he said, addressing the remaining
plainclothesman, “give a hand with these shutters,” and the two—both
powerful men—seized the iron bar which held the shutters and began to
pull. But the garrison was undaunted, and, seizing a broom, the woman began
to belabour the invaders about the shoulders and head from above. But just at
this moment, the woman, emitting a terrific shriek, was suddenly lifted from
behind and vanished. Then the head of the plainclothesman who had gone round
to the back appeared, with the calm announcement, “There’s a winder open
behind, sir. But I’ll open the front door if you like.”

In a minute the bolts were shot, and the front door swung back. The placid
Johnson stood in the passage, and as we passed in he said, “I’ve locked ‘er
in the back room upstairs.”

“It’s the bottom staircase, of course,” the inspector said; and we tramped
down into the basement. A little way from the stair-foot Hewitt opened a
cupboard door, which enclosed a receptacle for coals. “They still keep the
coals here, you see,” he said, striking a match and passing it to and fro
near the sloping roof of the cupboard. It was of plaster, and covered the
underside of the stairs.

“And now for the fifth dancer,” he said, throwing the match away and
making for the staircase again. “One, two, three, four, five,” and he tapped
the fifth stair from the bottom.

The stairs were uncarpeted, and Hewitt and the inspector began a careful
examination of the one he had indicated. They tapped it in different places,
and Hewitt passed his hands over the surfaces of both tread and riser.
Presently, with his hand at the outer edge of the riser, Hewitt spoke. “Here
it is, I think,” he said; “it is the riser that slides.”

He took out his pocketknife and scraped away the grease and paint from the
edge of the old stair. Then a joint was plainly visible. For a long time the
plank, grimed and set with age, refused to shift; but at last, by dint of
patience and firm fingers, it moved, and was drawn clean out from the
end.

Within, nothing was visible but grime, fluff, and small rubbish. The
inspector passed his hand along the bottom angle. “Here’s something,” he
said. It was the gold hook of an old-fashioned earring, broken off short.

Hewitt slapped his thigh. “Somebody’s been here before us,” he said “and a
good time back too, judging from the dust. That hook’s a plain indication
that jewellery was here once. There’s plainly nothing more,
except—except this piece of paper.” Hewitt’s eyes had
detected—black with loose grime as it was—a small piece of paper
lying at the bottom of the recess. He drew it out and shook off the dust.
“Why, what’s this?” he exclaimed. “More music!”