THE “BOROUGH LOT”
It was not a bit like Scotland Yard as Kathleen Kent had pictured it.
It was a kind of a yard certainly, for the grimy little street, flanked
on either side with the blank faces of dirty little houses, ended
abruptly in a high wall, over which were the gray hulls and fat scarlet
funnels of ocean-going steamers.
The driver of the cab had pulled up before one of the houses near the
wall, and a door had opened. Then the man who had sat with her in
glum silence, answering her questions in mono-syllables, grasped her
arm and hurried her into the house. The door slammed behind, and she
realized her deadly peril. She had had a foreboding, an instinctive
premonition that all was not well when the cab had turned from the
broad thoroughfare that led to where she had imagined Scotland Yard
would be, and had, taking short cuts through innumerable mean streets,
moved at a sharp pace eastward. Ignorant of that London which begins at
Trafalgar Square and runs eastward to Walthamstow, ignorant, indeed,
of that practical suburb to which the modesty of an income produced by
£4,000 worth of Consols had relegated her, she felt without knowing,
that Scotland Yard did not lay at the eastern end of Commercial Road.
Then when the door of the little house slammed and a hand grasped
her arm tightly, and a thick voice whispered in her ear that if she
screamed the owner of the voice would “out” her, she gathered, without
exactly knowing what an “outing” was, that it would be wiser for her
not to scream, so she quietly accompanied her captor up the stairs. He
stopped for a moment on the rickety landing, then pushed open a door.
Before the window that would in the ordinary course of events admit
the light of day hung a heavy green curtain; behind this, though she
did not know it, three army blankets, judiciously fixed, effectively
excluded the sunlight, and as effectually veiled the rays of a
swing-lamp from outside observation.
The girl made a pathetically incongruous figure, as she stood white but
resolute before the occupants of the room.
Kathleen Kent was something more than pretty, something less than
beautiful. An oval face with gray, steadfast eyes, a straight nose and
the narrow upper lip of the aristocrat, her lips were, perhaps, too
full and too human for your connoisseur of beauty.
She looked from face to face, and but for her pallor she exhibited no
sign of fear.
Although she was unaware of the fact, she had been afforded an
extraordinary privilege. By the merest accident, she had been ushered
into the presence of the “Borough Lot.” Not a very heroic title for
an organized band of criminals, but, then, organized criminals never
take unto themselves generic and high-falutin’ titles. Our “Silver
Hatchets” and “Red Knives” are boy hooligans who shoot off toy pistols.
The police referred to them vaguely as the “Borough Lot.” Lesser lights
in the criminal world have been known to boast that they were not
unconnected with that combination; and when some desperate piece of
villainy startled the world, the police investigating the crime started
from this point: Was it committed by one of the Borough Lot, or was it
not?
As Kathleen was pushed into the room by her captor, a hum of subdued
conversation ended abruptly, and she was the focus of nine pairs of
passionless eyes that looked at her unsmilingly.
When she had heard the voices, when she took her first swift glance at
the room, and had seen the type of face that met hers, she had steeled
herself for an outburst of coarse amusement. She feared--she did not
know what she feared. Strangely enough, the dead silence that greeted
her gave her courage, the cold stare of the men nerved her. Only one
of the men lost his composure. The tall, heavy-looking man who sat at
one end of the room with bowed, attentive head listening to a little
clean-shaven man with side-whiskers, who looked for all the world like
an old-fashioned jockey, started with a muttered oath.
“Upstairs!” he roared, and said something rapidly in a foreign tongue
that sent the man who held the girl’s arm staggering back with a
blanched face.
“I--I,” he stammered appealingly, “I didn’t understand.”
The tall man, his face flushed with rage, pointed to the door, and
hastily opening the door, her captor half dragged the bewildered girl
to the darkness of the landing.
“This way,” he muttered, and she could feel his hand trembling as he
stumbled up yet another flight of stairs, never once relinquishing his
hold of her. “Don’t you scream nor nothing, or you’ll get into trouble.
You see what happened to me for takin’ you into the wrong room. Oh,
he’s a devil is Connor--Smith, I mean. Smith’s his name, d’ye hear?”
He shook her arm roughly. Evidently the man was beside himself with
terror. What dreadful thing the tall man had said, Kathleen could only
judge. She herself was half dead with fright. The sinister faces of
these men, the mystery of this assembly in the shuttered room, her
abduction, all combined to add terror to her position.
Her conductor unlocked a door and pushed her in. This had evidently
been prepared for her reception, for a table had been laid, and food
and drink stood ready.
The door was closed behind her, and a bolt was slipped. Like the
chamber below, all daylight was kept out by a curtain. Her first
thoughts were of escape. She waited till the footsteps on the rickety
stairs had died away, then crossed the room swiftly. The drop from the
window could not be very far; she would risk it. She drew aside the
curtain. Where the window should have been was a sheet of steel plate.
It was screwed to the joists. Somebody had anticipated her resolve to
escape by the window. In chalk, written in an illiterate hand, was the
sentence:--
“You wont be hert if your senserble.
We want to know some questions
then well let you go. Dont make
a fuss or it will be bad for you.
Keep quite and tell us these questions
and well let you go.”
What had they to ask, or she to answer? She knew of nothing that she
could inform them upon. Who were these men who were detaining her?
During the next hours she asked herself these questions over and
over again. She grew faint with hunger and thirst, but the viands
spread upon the table she did not touch. The mystery of her capture
bewildered her. Of what value was she to these men? All the time the
murmur of voices in the room below was continuous. Once or twice she
heard a voice raised in anger. Once a door slammed, and somebody went
clattering down the stairs. There was a door-keeper, she could hear
him speak with the outgoer.
Did she but know it, the question that perplexed her was an equal
matter of perplexity with others in the house that evening.
The notorious men upon whom she had looked, all innocent of their claim
to notoriety, were themselves puzzled.
Bat Sands, the man who looked so ill--he had the unhealthy appearance
of one who had just come through a long sickness--was an inquirer.
Vennis--nobody knew his Christian name--was another, and they were two
men whose inquiries were not to be put off.
Vennis turned his dull fish eyes upon big Connor, and spoke with
deliberation.
“Connor, what’s this girl business? Are we in it?”
Connor knew his men too well to temporize.
“You’re in it, if it’s worth anything,” he said slowly.
Bat’s close-cropped red head was thrust forward.
“Is there money in it?” he demanded.
Connor nodded his head.
“Much?”
Connor drew a deep breath. If the truth be told, that the “Lot” should
share, was the last thing he had intended. But for the blundering of
his agent, they would have remained in ignorance of the girl’s presence
in the house. But the very suspicion of disloyalty was dangerous. He
knew his men, and they knew him. There was not a man there who would
hesitate to destroy him at the merest hint of treachery. Candor was the
best and safest course.
“It’s pretty hard to give you any idea what I’ve got the girl here for,
but there’s a million in it,” he began.
He knew they believed him. He did not expect to be disbelieved.
Criminals of the class these men represented flew high. They were out
of the ruck of petty, boasting sneak-thieves who lied to one another,
knowing they lied, and knowing that their hearers knew they lied.
Only the strained, intent look on their faces gave any indication of
how the news had been received.
“It’s old Reale’s money,” he continued; “he’s left the lot to four of
us. Massey’s dead, so that makes three.”
There was no need to explain who was Reale, who Massey. A week ago
Massey had himself sat in that room and discussed with Connor the
cryptic verse that played so strange a part in the old man’s will. He
had been, in a way, an honorary member of the “Borough Lot.”
Connor continued. He spoke slowly, waiting for inspiration. A judicious
lie might save the situation. But no inspiration came, and he found his
reluctant tongue speaking the truth.
“The money is stored in one safe. Oh, it’s no use looking like that,
Tony, you might just as well try to crack the Bank of England as that
crib. Yes, he converted every cent of a million and three-quarters
into hard, solid cash--banknotes and gold. This he put into his damned
safe, and locked. And he has left by the terms of his will a key.”
Connor was a man who did not find speaking an easy matter. Every word
came slowly and hesitatingly, as though the speaker of the story were
loth to part with it.
“The key is here,” he said slowly.
There was a rustle of eager anticipation as he dipped his hand in his
waistcoat pocket. When he withdrew his fingers, they contained only a
slip of paper carefully folded.
“The lock of the safe is one of Reale’s inventions; it opens to no key
save this.” He shook the paper before them, then lapsed into silence.
“Well,” broke in Bat impatiently, “why don’t you open the safe? And
what has the girl to do with it?”
“She also has a key, or will have to-morrow. And Jimmy----”
A laugh interrupted him. “Curt” Goyle had been an attentive listener
till Jimmy’s name was mentioned, then his harsh, mirthless laugh broke
the tense silence.
“Oh, Lord James is in it, is he? I’m one that’s for ruling Jimmy out.”
He got up on his feet and stretched himself, keeping his eye fixed
on Connor. “If you want to know why, I’ll tell ye. Jimmy’s a bit too
finicking for my taste, too fond of the police for my taste. If we’re
in this, Jimmy’s out of it,” and a mutter of approval broke from the
men.
Connor’s mind was working quickly. He could do without Jimmy, he could
not dispense with the help of the “Lot.” He was just a little afraid of
Jimmy. The man was a type of criminal he could not understand. If he
was a rival claimant for Reale’s millions, the gang would “out” Jimmy;
so much the better. Massey’s removal had limited the legatees to three.
Jimmy out of the way would narrow the chance of his losing the money
still further; and the other legatee was in the room upstairs. Goyle’s
declaration had set loose the tongues of the men, and he could hear no
voice that spoke for Jimmy. And then a dozen voices demanded the rest
of the story, and amid a dead silence Connor told the story of the will
and the puzzle-verse, the solving of which meant fortune to every man.
“And the girl has got to stand in and take her share. She’s too
dangerous to be let loose. There’s nigh on two millions at stake and
I’m taking no risks. She shall remain here till the word is found.
We’re not going to see her carry off the money under our very noses.”
“And Jimmy?” Goyle asked.
Connor fingered a lapel of his coat nervously. He knew what answer the
gang had already framed to the question Goyle put. He knew he would be
asked to acquiesce in the blackest piece of treachery that had ever
disfigured his evil life; but he knew, too, that Jimmy was hated by the
men who formed this strange fraternity. Jimmy worked alone; he shared
neither risk nor reward. His cold cynicism was above their heads. They
too feared him.
Connor cleared his throat
“Perhaps if we reasoned----”
Goyle and Bat exchanged swift glances.
“Ask him to come and talk it over to-night,” said Goyle carelessly.
* * * * *
“Connor is a long time gone.”
Sands turned his unhealthy face to the company as he spoke.
Three hours had passed since Connor had left the gang in his search for
Jimmy.
“He’ll be back soon,” said Goyle confidently. He looked over the
assembly of men. “Any of you fellers who don’t want to be in this
business can go.” Then he added significantly, “We’re going to settle
with Jimmy.”
Nobody moved; no man shuddered at the dreadful suggestion his words
conveyed.
“A million an’ three-quarters--it’s worth hanging for!” he said
callously. He walked to a tall, narrow cupboard that ran up by the
side of the fireplace and pulled open the door. There was room for
a man to stand inside. The scrutiny of the interior gave him some
satisfaction.
“This is where some one stood”--he looked meaningly at Bat Sands--“when
he koshed Ike Steen--Ike with the police money in his pocket, and ready
to sell every man jack of you.”
“Who’s in the next house?” a voice asked suddenly.
Goyle laughed. He was the virtual landlord so far as the hiring of the
house was concerned. He closed the cupboard door.
“Not counting old George, it’s empty,” he said. “Listen!”
In the deep silence there came the faint murmur of a voice through the
thin walls.
“Talkin’ to himself,” said Goyle with a grin; “he’s daft, and he’s as
good as a watchman for us, for he scares away the children and women
who would come prying about here. He’s----”
They heard the front door shut quickly and the voices of two men in the
passage below.
Goyle sprang to his feet, an evil look on his face.
“That’s Jimmy!” he whispered hurriedly.
As the feet sounded on the stairs he walked to where his coat hung and
took something from his pocket, then, almost as the newcomers entered
the room, he slipped into the cupboard and drew the door close after
him.
Jimmy, entering the room in Connor’s wake, felt the chill of his
reception. He felt, too, some indefinable sensation of danger. There
was an ominous quiet. Bat Sands was polite, even servile. Jimmy noticed
that, and his every sense became alert. Bat thrust forward a chair and
placed it with its back toward the cupboard.
“Sit down, Jimmy,” he said with forced heartiness. “We want a bit of a
talk.”
Jimmy sat down.
“I also want a bit of a talk,” he said calmly. “There is a young lady
in this house, brought here against her will. You’ve got to let her go.”
The angry mutter of protest that he had expected did not come, rather
was his dictum received in complete silence. This was bad, and he
looked round for the danger. Then he missed a face.
“Where is our friend Goyle, our dear landlord?” he asked with pleasant
irony.
“He hasn’t been here to-day,” Bat hastened to say.
Jimmy looked at Connor standing by the door biting his nails, and
Connor avoided his eye.
“Ah!” Jimmy’s unconcern was perfectly simulated.
“Jimmy wants us to send the girl back.” Connor was speaking hurriedly.
“He thinks there’ll be trouble, and his friend the ’tec thinks there
will be trouble too.”
Jimmy heard the artfully-worded indictment unmoved. Again he noticed,
with some concern, that what was tantamount to a charge of treachery
was received without a word.
“It isn’t what others think, it is what I think, Connor,” he said
dryly. “The girl has got to go back. I want Reale’s money as much as
you, but I have a fancy to play fair this journey.”
“Oh, you have, _have_ you,” sneered Connor. He had seen the cupboard
door behind Jimmy move ever so slightly.
Jimmy sat with his legs crossed on the chair that had been placed for
him. The light overcoat he had worn over his evening dress lay across
his knees. Connor knew the moment was at hand, and concentrated his
efforts to keep his former comrade’s attentions engaged. He had guessed
the meaning of Goyle’s absence from the room and the moving cupboard
door. In his present position Jimmy was helpless.
Connor had been nervous to a point of incoherence on the way to the
house. Now his voice rose to a strident pitch.
“You’re too clever, Jimmy,” he said, “and there are too many ‘musts’
about you to please us. We say that the girl has got to stay, and by
---- we mean it!”
Jimmy’s wits were at work. The danger was very close at hand, he felt
that. He must change his tactics. He had depended too implicitly upon
Connor’s fear of him, and had reckoned without the “Borough Lot.” From
which of these men did danger threaten? He took their faces in in one
comprehensive glance. He knew them--he had their black histories at his
finger-tips. Then he saw a coat hanging on the wall at the farther end
of the room. He recognized the garment instantly. It was Goyle’s. Where
was the owner? He temporized.
“I haven’t the slightest desire to upset anybody’s plans,” he drawled,
and started drawing on a white glove, as though about to depart. “I am
willing to hear your views, but I would point out that I have an equal
interest in the young lady, Connor.”
He gazed reflectively into the palm of his gloved hand as if admiring
the fit. There was something so peculiar in this apparently innocent
action, that Connor started forward with an oath.
“Quick, Goyle!” he shouted; but Jimmy was out of his chair and was
standing with his back against the cupboard, and in Jimmy’s ungloved
hand was an ugly black weapon that was all butt and barrel.
He waved them back, and they shrank away from him.
“Let me see you all,” he commanded, “none of your getting behind one
another. I want to see what you are doing. Get away from that coat of
yours, Bat, or I’ll put a bullet in your stomach.”
He had braced himself against the door in anticipation of the thrust of
the man, but it seemed as though the prisoner inside had accepted the
situation, for he made no sign.
“So you are all wondering how I knew about the cupboard,” he jeered. He
held up the gloved hand, and in the palm something flashed back the
light of the lamp.
Connor knew. The tiny mirror sewn in the palm of the sharper’s glove
was recognized equipment.
“Now, gentlemen,” said Jimmy with a mocking laugh, “I must insist
on having my way. Connor, you will please bring to me the lady you
abducted this afternoon.”
Connor hesitated; then he intercepted a glance from Bat Sands, and
sullenly withdrew from the room.
Jimmy did not speak till Connor had returned ushering in the
white-faced girl. He saw that she looked faint and ill, and motioned
one of the men to place a chair for her. What she saw amidst that
forbidding group was a young man with a little Vandyke beard, who
looked at her with grave, thoughtful eyes. He was a gentleman, she
could see that, and her heart leapt within her as she realized that
the presence of this man in the fashionably-cut clothes and the most
unfashionable pistol meant deliverance from this horrible place.
“Miss Kent,” he said kindly.
She nodded, she could not trust herself to speak. The experience of the
past few hours had almost reduced her to a state of collapse.
Jimmy saw the girl was on the verge of a breakdown.
“I am going to take you home,” he said, and added whimsically, “and
cannot but feel that you have underrated your opportunities. Not
often will you see gathered together so splendid a collection of our
profession.” He waved his hand in introduction. “Bat Sands, Miss
Kent, a most lowly thief, possibly worse. George Collroy, coiner and
a ferocious villain. Vennis, who follows the lowest of all grades of
dishonest livelihood--blackmailer. Here,” Jimmy went on, as he stepped
aside from the cupboard, “is the gem of the collection. I will show you
our friend who has so coyly effaced himself.” He addressed the occupant
of the cupboard.
“Come out, Goyle,” he said sharply.
There was no response.
Jimmy pointed to one of the ruffians in the room.
“Open that door,” he commanded.
The man slunk forward and pulled the door open.
“Come out, Goyle,” he growled, then stepped back with blank
astonishment stamped upon his face. “Why--why,” he gasped, “there’s
nobody there!”
With a cry, Jimmy started forward. One glance convinced him that the
man spoke the truth, and then----
There were keen wits in that crowd--men used to crises and quick to
act. Bat Sands saw Jimmy’s attention diverted for a moment, and Jimmy’s
pistol hand momentarily lowered. To think with Bat Sands was to act.
Jimmy, turning back upon the “Lot,” saw the life-preserver descending,
and leapt on one side; then, as he recovered, somebody threw a coat at
the lamp, and the room was in darkness.
Jimmy reached out his hand and caught the girl by the arm. “Into that
cupboard,” he whispered, pushing her into the recess from which Goyle
had so mysteriously vanished. Then, with one hand on the edge of the
door, he groped around with his pistol for his assailants. He could
hear their breathing and the creak of the floorboards as they came
toward him. He crouched down by the door, judging that the “kosh” would
be aimed in a line with his head. By and by he heard the swish of the
descending stick, and “crash!” the preserver struck the wall above him.
He was confronted with a difficulty; to fire would be to invite
trouble. He had no desire to attract the attention of the police for
many reasons. Unless the life of the girl was in danger he resolved to
hold his fire, and when Ike Josephs, feeling cautiously forward with
his stick, blundered into Jimmy, Ike suddenly dropped to the floor
without a cry, because he had been hit a fairly vicious blow in that
portion of the anatomy which is dignified with the title “solar plexus.”
It was just after this that he heard a startled little cry from the
girl behind him, and then a voice that sent his heart into his mouth.
“All right! All right! All right!”
There was only one man who used that tag, and Jimmy’s heart rose up to
bless his name in thankfulness.
“This way, Miss Kent,” said the voice, “mind the little step. Don’t be
afraid of the gentleman on the floor, he’s handcuffed and strapped and
gagged, and is perfectly harmless.”
Jimmy chuckled. The mystery of Angel’s intimate knowledge of the
“Lot’s” plans and of Connor’s movements, the disappearance of Goyle,
were all explained. He did not know for certain that the occupant of
the “empty” house next door had industriously cut through the thin
party-walls that separated the two houses, and had rigged up a “back”
to the cupboard that was really a door, but he guessed it.
Then a blinding ray of light shot into the room where the “Borough Lot”
still groped for its enemy, and a gentle voice said--
“Gentlemen, you may make your choice which way you go--out by the front
door, where my friend, Inspector Collyer, with quite a large number of
men, is waiting; or by the back door, where Sergeant Murtle and exactly
seven plain-clothes men are impatiently expecting you.”
Bat recognized the voice.
“Angel Esquire!” he cried in consternation.
From the darkness behind the dazzling electric lamp that threw a narrow
lane of light into the apartment came an amused chuckle.
“What is it,” asked Angel’s persuasive voice, “a cop?”
“It’s a fair cop,” said Bat truthfully.