‘Make yourself content for half an hour or probably forty minutes,’ said Ras Lal, standing in the doorway with his ostentatious revolver. ‘At that time I shall come for your female; tomorrow she will be on a ship with me, bound for – ah, who knows where?’
‘Shut the door as you go out,’ said Mr J G Reeder; ‘there is an unpleasant draught.’
Mr Tommy Fenalow came on foot at two o’clock in the morning and, as he passed down the muddy lane, his torch suddenly revealed car marks. Tommy stopped like a man shot. His knees trembled beneath him and his heart entered his throat at the narrowest end. For a while he was undecided whether it would be better to run or walk away. He had no intention of going forward. And then he heard a voice. It was Ras Lal’s assistant, and he nearly fainted with joy. Stumbling forward, he came up to the shivering man.
‘Did that fool boss of yours bring the car along here?’ he asked in a whisper.
‘Yas – Mr Ras Lal,’ said Ram with whom the English language was not a strong point.
‘Then he’s a fool!’ growled Tommy. ‘Lord! he put my heart in my mouth!’
Whilst Ram was getting together sufficient English to explain what had happened, Tommy passed on. He found his client sitting in the lobby, a black cheroot between his teeth, a smile of satisfaction on his dark face.
‘Welcome!’ he said, as Tommy closed the door. ‘We have trapped the dog.’
‘Never mind about the dog,’ said the other impatiently. ‘Did you find the rupees?’
Ras Lal shook his head.
‘But I left them in the store – ten thousand notes. I thought you’d have got them and skipped before this,’ said Mr Fenalow anxiously.
‘I have something more important in the store – come and see my friend.’
He preceded the bewildered Tommy up the stairs, turned on the landing light and threw open the door.
‘Behold–’ he said, and said no more.
‘Why, it is Mr Fenalow!’ said Mr J G.
One hand held a packet of almost life-like rupee notes; as for the other hand – ‘You oughter known he carried a gun, you dam’ black baboon,’ hissed Tommy. ‘An’ to put him in a room where the stuff was,
and
a telephone!’
He was being driven to the local police station, and for the moment was attached to his companion by links of steel.
‘It was a mere jest or a piece of practical joking, as I shall explain to the judge in the morning,’ said Ras airily.
Tommy Fenalow’s reply was unprintable.
Three o’clock boomed out from St John’s Church as Mr Reeder accompanied an excited girl to the front door of her boarding-house.
‘I can’t tell you how I – I’ve enjoyed tonight,’ she said. Mr Reeder glanced uneasily at the dark face of the house.
‘I hope – er – your friends will not think it remarkable that you should return at such an hour–’
Despite her assurance, he went slowly home with an uneasy feeling that her name had in some way been compromised. And in melodrama, when a heroine’s name is compromised, somebody has to marry her.
That was the disturbing thought that kept Mr Reeder awake all night.
The spirit of exploration has ruined more promising careers than drink, gambling or the smiles of women. Generally speaking, the beaten tracks of life are the safest; and few men have adventured into the uncharted spaces in search of easy money who have not regarded the rediscovery of the old hard road from whence they strayed, as the greatest of their achievements.
Mo Liski held an assured position in his world, and one acquired by the strenuous and even violent exercise of his many qualities. He might have gone on until the end of the chapter, only he fell for an outside proposition and, moreover, handicapped himself with a private feud, which had its beginning in an affair wholly remote from his normal operations.
There was a Moorish grafter named El Rahbut, who had made several visits to England, travelling by the banana boats which make the round trip from London River to Funchal Bay, Las Palmas, Tangier and Oporto. He was yellow-faced, pock-marked and undersized; and he spoke English, having in his youth fallen into the hands of a well-meaning American missionary. This man Rahbut was useful to Mo because quite a lot of drugs are shipped via Trieste to the Levant, and many a crate of oranges has been landed in the Pool that had, squeezed in their golden interiors, little metal cylinders containing smuggled heroin, cocaine and other noxious medicaments.
Rahbut brought such things from time to time, was paid fairly and was satisfied. One day, in the saloon bar of The Four Jolly Seamen, he told Mo of a great steal. It had been carried out by a group of Anghera thieves working in Fez, and the loot was no less than the Emeralds of Suliman, the most treasured possession of Morocco. Not even Abdul Aziz in his most impecunious days had dared to remove them from the Mosque of Omar; the Anghera men being what they were, broke into the holy house, killed two guardians of the treasure, and had got away with the nine green stones of the great king. Thereafter arose an outcry which was heard from the bazaars of Calcutta to the mean streets of Marsi-Karsi. But the men of Anghera were superior to the voice of public opinion and they did no more than seek a buyer. El Rahbut, being a notorious bad character, came into the matter, and this was the tale he told to Mo Liski at The Four Jolly Seamen one foggy October night.
‘There is much profit in this for you and me, Mr Good Man,’ said Rahbut (all Europeans who paid on the nail were ‘Mr Good Man’ to El Rahbut). ‘There is also death for me if this thing becomes known.’
Mo listened, smoothing his chin with a hand that sparkled and flashed dazzlingly. He was fond of ornamentation. It was a little outside his line, but the newspapers had stated the bald value of the stolen property, and his blood was on fire at the prospect of earning half a million so easily. That Scotland Yard and every police headquarters in the world were on the look-out for the nine stones of Suliman did not greatly disturb him. He knew the subterranean way down which a polished stone might slide; and if the worst came to the worst, there was a reward of £5000 for the recovery of the jewels.
‘I’ll think it over; where is the stuff?’
‘Here,’ said Rahbut, to the other’s surprise. ‘In ten–twenty minutes I could lay them on your hands, Mr Good Man.’
Here seemed a straightforward piece of negotiation; it was doubly unfortunate that at that very period he should find himself mixed up in an affair which promised no profit whatever – the feud of Marylou Plessy, which was to become his because of his high regard for the lady.
When a woman is bad, she is usually very bad indeed, and Marylou Plessy was an extremely malignant woman. She was rather tall and good-looking, with sleek black hair, and a heavy black fringe that covered a forehead of some distinction.
Mr Reeder saw her once: he was at the Central Criminal Court giving evidence against Bartholomew Xavier Plessy, an ingenious Frenchman who had discovered a new way of making old money. His forgeries were well nigh undetectable, but Mr Reeder was no ordinary man. He not only detected them, but he traced the printer, and that was why Bartholomew Xavier faced an unimpassioned judge, who told him in a hushed voice how very wrong it was to debase the currency; how it struck at the very roots of our commercial and industrial life. This the debonair man in the dock did not resent. He knew all about it. It was the judge’s curt postscript which made him wince.
‘You will go to prison for twenty years.’
That Marylou loved the man is open to question. The probabilities are that she did not; but she hated Mr Reeder, and she hated him not because he had brought her man to his undoing, but because, in the course of his evidence, he had used the phrase ‘the woman with whom the prisoner is associated’. And Mr John Reeder could have put her beside Plessy in the dock had he so wished: she knew this too and loathed him for his mercifulness.
Mrs Plessy had a large flat in Portland Street. It was in a block which was the joint property of herself and her husband, for their graft had been on the grand scale and Mr Plessy owned racehorses before he owned a number in Parkhurst Convict Establishment. And here Marylou entertained lavishly.
A few months after her husband went to prison, she dined with Mo Liski, the biggest of the gang leaders and an uncrowned emperor of the underworld. He was a small, dapper man who wore glasses and looked rather like a member of one of the learned professions – apart from a weakness for jewellery. Yet he ruled the Strafas and the Sullivans and the Birklows, and his word was law on a dozen racetracks, in a score of spieling clubs and innumerable establishments less liable to police supervision. People opposing him were incontinently ‘coshed’ – rival leaders more or less paid tribute and walked warily at that. He levied toll upon bookmakers and was immune from police interference by reason of their two failures to convict him.
Since there are white specks on the blackest coat, he had this redeeming feature, that Marylou Plessy was his ideal woman; and it is creditable in a thief to possess ideals, however unworthily they may be disposed.
He listened intently to Marylou’s views but, though he loved her, his native caution held him to reason.
‘That’s all right, Marylou,’ he said. ‘I dare say I could get Reeder, but what’s going to happen then? There will be a squeak louder than a bus brake! And he’s dangerous. I never worry about the regular busies, but this old feller is in the Public Prosecutor’s office, and he wasn’t put there because he’s silly. And just now I’ve got one of the biggest deals on that I’ve ever touched. Can’t you “do” him yourself? You’re a clever woman: I don’t know a cleverer.’
‘Of course, if you’re scared of Reeder!’ she said contemptuously, and a tolerant smile twisted his thin lips.
‘Me? Don’t be silly, dear! Show him a point yourself. If you can’t get him, let me know. Scared of him! Listen! That old bird would lose his feathers and be skinned for the pot before you could say “Mo Liski” if I wanted!’
In the Public Prosecutor’s office they had no doubt about Mr Reeder’s ability to take care of himself, and when Chief Inspector Pyne came over from the Yard to report that Marylou had been in conference with the most dangerous man in London, the Assistant Prosecutor grinned his amusement.
‘No – Reeder wants no protection. I’ll tell him if you like, but he probably knows all about it. What are you people doing about the Liski crowd?’
Pyne pulled a long face.
‘We’ve had Liski twice, but well-organized perjury has saved him. The Assistant Commissioner doesn’t want him again till we get him with the blood on his hands, so to speak. He’s dangerous.’
The Assistant Prosecutor nodded.
‘So is Reeder,’ he said ominously. ‘That man is a genial mamba! Never seen a mamba? He’s a nice black snake, and you’re dead two seconds after he strikes!’
The chief inspector’s smile was one of incredulity.
‘He never impressed me that way – rabbit, yes, but snake, no!’
Later in the morning a messenger brought Mr Reeder to the chief’s office, and he arrived with that ineffable air of apology and diffidence which gave the uninitiated such an altogether wrong idea of his calibre. He listened with closed eyes whilst his superior told him of the meeting between Liski and Marylou.
‘Yes, sir,’ he sighed, when the narrative came to an end. ‘I have heard rumours. Liski? He is the person who associates with unlawful characters? In other days and under more favourable conditions he would have been the leader of a Florentine faction. An interesting man. With interesting friends.’
‘I hope your interest remains impersonal,’ warned the lawyer, and Mr Reeder sighed again, opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, and then:
‘Doesn’t the continued freedom of Mr Liski cast – um – a reflection upon our department, sir?’ he asked.
His chief looked up: it was inspiration which made him say: ‘Get him!’
Mr Reeder nodded very slowly.
‘I have often thought that it would be a good idea,’ he said. His gaze deepened in melancholy. ‘Liski has many foreign acquaintances,’ he said at last, ‘and he knows a Moor.’
The chief looked up quickly.
‘A Moor – you’re thinking of the Nine Emeralds? My dear man, there are hundreds of Moors in London and thousands in Paris.’
‘And millions in Morocco,’ murmured Mr Reeder. ‘I only mention the Moor in passing, sir. As regards my friend Mrs Plessy – I hope only for the best.’
And he melted from the room.
The greater part of a month passed before he showed any apparent interest in the case. He spent odd hours wandering in the neighbourhood of Lambeth, and on one occasion he was seen in the members’ enclosure at Hurst Park racetrack – but he spoke to nobody, and nobody spoke to him.
One night Mr Reeder came dreamily back to his well-ordered house in Brockley Road, and found waiting on his table a small flat box which, his housekeeper told him, had arrived by post that afternoon. The label was addressed in typewritten characters ‘John Reeder, Esq.’ and the postmark was Central London.
He cut the thin ribbon which tied it, stripped first the brown paper and then the silver tissue, and exposed a satiny lid, which he lifted daintily. There, under a layer of paper shavings, were roll upon roll of luscious confectionery. Chocolate, with or without dainty extras, had an appeal for Mr Reeder, and he took up a small globule garnished with crystallized violets and examined it admiringly.
His housekeeper came in at that moment with his tea tray and set it down on the table. Mr Reeder looked over his large glasses.
‘Do you like chocolates, Mrs Kerrel?’ he asked plaintively.
‘Why, yes, sir,’ the elderly lady beamed.
‘So do I,’ said Mr Reeder. ‘So do I!’ and he shook his head regretfully, as he replaced the chocolate carefully in the box. ‘Unfortunately,’ he went on, ‘my doctor – a very excellent man – has forbidden me all sorts of confectionery until they have been submitted to the rigorous test of the public analyst.’
Mrs Kerrel was a slow thinker, but exposure to current advertisements had enlarged to a very considerable extent her scientific knowledge.