MEETING PETER
Leslie came striding briskly along the Thames Embankment. It was a
bitterly cold night, and the nutria coat was not proof against the icy
norther that was blowing. The man who walked by her side was head and
shoulders taller than she. He had the gait of a soldier, and his
umbrella twirled rhythmically to his pace.
“Suicide on the left,” he said pleasantly, as though he were a guide
pointing out the sights.
The girl checked her pace and looked back.
“Really? You don’t mean that, Mr. Coldwell?”
Her eyes were fixed upon the dark figure sprawling across the parapet,
his arms resting on the granite crown, his chin on his hands. He was a
gaunt figure of a man, differing in no respect from the waifs who
would gather here from midnight onward, and strive to snatch a little
sleep between the policeman’s visits.
“It is any odds,” said Mr. Coldwell carefully, “when you see one of
these birds watching the river in that way, he is thinking up a new
way of settling old accounts. Are you interested--sentimentally?”
She hesitated.
“Yes, a little. I don’t know whether it’s sentiment or just feminine
curiosity.”
She left his side abruptly and walked back to the man, who may have
been watching her out of the corner of his eyes, for he straightened
himself up quickly.
“Down and out?” she asked, and heard his soft laugh.
“Down but not out,” he replied, and it was the voice of an educated
man, with just a trace of that drawl, the pleasant stigmata which the
universities give to their children. “Did I arouse your compassion?
I’m sorry. If you offer me money I shall be rather embarrassed. You
will find plenty of poor beggars on this sidewalk who are more worthy
objects of--charity. I use the word in its purest sense.”
She looked at his face. A slight moustache and a ragged fringe of
beard did not disguise his youth. Chief Inspector Coldwell, who had
come closer, was watching him with professional interest.
“Would you like to know what I was really thinking about?” There was
an odd quality of banter in his voice. “I was thinking about murder!
There is a gentleman in this town who has made life rather difficult
for me, and I had just decided to walk up to him at the earliest
opportunity and pop three automatic bullets through his heart when you
disturbed the homicidal current of my thoughts.”
Coldwell chuckled.
“I thought I recognized you. You’re Peter Dawlish,” he said, and the
shabby figure lifted his hat with mock politeness.
“Such is fame!” he said sardonically. “And you are Coldwell: the
recognition is mutual! And now that I have hopelessly committed
myself, I presume you will call the nearest city policeman and put me
out of the way of all temptation.”
“When did you come out?” asked Coldwell.
The girl listened, staggered. They had been discussing this man not a
quarter of an hour before; she had spent the afternoon thinking of
him; and now to meet him on that wind-swept pavement, he of all the
millions of people in London, was something more than a coincidence.
It was fatalistic.
“Mr. Dawlish, I wonder if you will believe me when I say that you’re
the one man in London I was anxious to meet. I only knew to-day that
you were--out. Could you call and see me to-night?”
The man smiled.
“Invitations follow thick and fast,” he murmured. “Only ten minutes
ago I was asked into a Salvation Army shelter! Believe me, madam----”
“Mr. Dawlish”--her voice was very quiet, but very clear--“you are
being awfully sorry for yourself, aren’t you?”
She did not see the flush that came to his face.
“I suppose I am,” he said, a little gruffly. “But a man is
entitled----”
“A man is never entitled to be sorry for himself in any
circumstances,” she said. “Here is my card.”
She had slipped back the cover of her bag, and he took the little
pasteboard from her hand, and, bringing it close to his eyes, read, in
the dim light that a distant lamp afforded:
Will you come and see me at half-past ten? I shan’t offer you money; I
won’t even offer to find a job for you cutting wood or sorting waste
paper. It is a very much bigger matter than that.
He read the name and subscription again, and his brows met.
“Oh, yes. Really--yes, if you wish.”
He was, of a sudden, awkward and uncomfortable. The girl was quick to
recognize the change in his manner and tone.
“I’m afraid I’m rather a scarecrow, but you won’t mind that?”
“No,” she said, and held out her hand.
He hesitated a second, then took it in his. She felt the hardness of
the palm, and winced at the significance of it. In another second she
had joined the waiting Coldwell. Peter Dawlish watched them until they
were out of sight, and then, with a little grimace, turned and walked
slowly toward Blackfriars.
“I knew about the smallness of the world,” said Coldwell, swinging his
umbrella, “but I had no idea that applied to London. Peter! It’s years
since I saw him last. He was rather a weed five years ago.”
“Do you think he really is a forger?”
“A jury of his fellow countrymen convicted him,” said Mr. Coldwell
cautiously, “and juries are generally right. After all, he needed the
money: his father was an old skinflint, and you cannot run a hectic
establishment, and escort pretty ladies to New York, on two hundred
and fifty pounds per annum. He was a fool; if he hadn’t taken that
three months’ holiday the forgery would never have been discovered.”
“Who was she?” Leslie asked; she felt that this question was called
for.
“I don’t know. The police _cher-chezed la femme_--forgive my mongrel
French--but they never ran her to earth. Peter said it was a chorus
girl from the Paris opera house. He wasn’t particularly proud of it.”
The girl sighed.
Near the dark entrance of Scotland Yard Mr. Coldwell stopped.
“Now,” he said, standing squarely before her, “perhaps you will cease
being mysterious, and tell me why you are so frantically interested in
Peter Dawlish that you have talked Peter Dawlish for the past three
days?”
She looked up at him steadily from under the lowered brim of her hat.
“Because I know just why Peter Dawlish wants to kill and whom he wants
to kill!” she said.
“Druze! A child would guess that!” scoffed the detective. “And he
wants to kill him because he thinks Druze’s evidence sent him to
jail.”
She was smiling--a broad smile of conscious triumph.
“Wrong!” she said. “If Druze dies, it will be because he doesn’t love
children!”
Mr. Coldwell could only gape at her.