A REAL FATHER
It seemed to Peter Dawlish that he had been unconscious for an
eternity when he turned over on his back with a groan and carefully
felt his damaged head. His face was wet and sticky, and when he
essayed to rise to his feet, it seemed that the whole of the building
was oscillating violently. Presently, however, he was up, keeping to
the wall for support, and, grasping the handle of the door, he jerked
it open and was instantly gripped with hands of steel.
“Hullo, who are you?” asked a stern voice.
“I don’t know--Dawlish--something happened. I saw a light and came
over--and then the door opened and I don’t remember much more.”
The detective recognized him.
“The door opened?” he said anxiously. “Was somebody in the flat?”
Peter nodded and winced.
“Give me a drink,” he said, and the detective guided him by the arm
and led him upstairs to Leslie’s room.
A glass of ice-cold water revived him and he was able to tell a
coherent story of his experience.
“It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes ago,” said the detective.
“I went round to see my opposite number and I’ll swear I wasn’t gone
for more than that time.”
Suddenly he stooped to the floor and took up something. It was a loose
native slipper that had slipped from the foot of Leslie’s captor in
the hurry of departure. The light he had shown when he searched for
this was the light that Peter saw.
“Just wait! I’ll call Mr. Coldwell.”
Inspector Coldwell was at dinner when the message came.
“Hang on, I’ll come down,” he said. “I’ve had a wire from Miss Maughan
that she’s going to Plymouth, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
He was in the flat twenty minutes later. By this time Peter’s wound
had been roughly dressed, and he had washed the stains from his face.
Save for the throb of the wound, he was little the worse for his
experience.
“They coshed you with a rubber club; it is rather a good method,” said
Coldwell callously.
He looked round the room with pursed lips and a frown.
“It doesn’t follow that because those birds were here, she was here,”
he said, and glanced at his watch. “Too early for Miss Maughan to have
arrived at Plymouth. Just wait! I want to make sure.”
He drove to the telegraph office from which the message had been sent,
and was fortunate to find the postmaster just leaving his office.
“I want to see the telegram that was sent from here about five o’clock
to-night addressed to me.”
“You want to see the original telegram, I suppose? That won’t be
difficult.”
It was more difficult than he supposed, and half an hour’s precious
time was wasted before the pencilled form was produced. Coldwell had
only to glance at the writing to know that it was not in Leslie’s
hand. Yet a woman had written it; that was obvious from the
characteristic writing.
He returned to the flat and sent the detective in a cab to Scotland
Yard and Peter employed this interval to tell him of what he had found
in Mrs. Inglethorne’s box.
“I pretty well guess that,” said Inspector Coldwell. “So did
Leslie--Miss Maughan. ‘The son’ meant nothing. This unfortunate lady
had intended to keep the child with her if it was a girl, and that was
not the wish of the gang who were bleeding her. They told her she had
a son. But I’m going to make sure about that before we go any further.
Somehow I’m not so scared about Leslie Maughan as I ought to be
perhaps. She’s got a sort of gun.”
A quarter of an hour later, his cab drew up before the gloomy doors of
Holloway Prison and after a strict scrutiny of his credentials he was
admitted and conducted to one of the main halls of the jail, where the
remand prisoners were housed. The chief wardress opened the door and
went in. Presently she came out and beckoned him into the cell.
Mrs. Inglethorne was sitting, a scowl on her face, her big, raw hands
clasped before her. She knew Coldwell, and lifted her lip in a grin of
rage.
“Don’t you come in here!” she said shrilly. “I’m not going to talk to
you. If you want to find that kid, you go and find her! And that’ll
take you some time, I’ll bet!”
“Listen!” Coldwell had a very direct way with criminals. “Whether
you’ll get a nine-month or more depends on the answer you give me,
Mrs. Inglethorne. There’s just a chance that you may get something
worse.”
She scowled up at him.
“What do you mean?”
Very deliberately he sketched a portion of her life: told her where
she had lived, and how long she had stayed in her various places of
abode. She made no comment or correction, looking down at her hands,
and only when he paused did she meet his eyes.
“Is that all?” she asked insolently.
“Not quite all. You have been engaged in baby farming for the past
twenty years. In 1916, in the month of July, you received from one
called Arthur Druze a baby boy of a few days old. Where is that
child?”
“You’d better find out,” she said.
The detective’s eyes narrowed.
“It is for you to find out,” he said, in that hard, metallic voice
which he adopted on occasions. “You have to prove to me that that
child is alive or there’s another charge against you.”
“Eh?” She was startled. The big mouth trembled. “You can’t charge
me----”
“I’ll charge you with murder, and I’ll dig up the garden of every
house you’ve occupied in the past six years to find evidence.”
Mrs. Inglethorne’s many-chinned jaw dropped; her eyes stared wildly,
and in their depths Coldwell read the very terror of death.
“I’ve done nothing--like that!” She almost screamed.
“You were Martha’s servant, weren’t you?”
She nodded dumbly, and then, throwing herself on the couch, she
writhed like a woman demented. And in her dementia she broke the habit
of a lifetime and told the truth.
A policeman was standing outside the door of Leslie’s flat when
Coldwell came back, and a dozen men stood about on the sidewalk. He
beckoned Peter to him.
“You had better come along,” he said.
“Where are you going?”
“To Wimbledon. Do you feel fit enough? There may not be a scrap, but I
rather imagine that her supreme and exalted highness will die
fighting.”
“Is Leslie there?”
Coldwell nodded.
A hundred yards short of May Towers the policemen stopped and the
little army of men got down. On the journey Coldwell had made his
arrangements. Four of the detectives were to make their way to the
back of the house; the remainder were to force the entrance. It was
Coldwell who rang the bell. In his right hand he gripped an ax, ready
to strike at the chain the moment the door was opened.
Standing behind him, Peter saw him stoop his head.
“Can you hear anything?” he whispered.
“No, sir.”
“Thought I heard a scream.”
He waited a few seconds longer, and then:
“Give me the crowbar.”
Somebody passed him up the long steel bar, and with a swing he drove
the clawed ends between door and lintel. Again he struck, and this
time he succeeded. Pulling back with all his strength, the door
cracked open. Two blows from the ax broke the chain, and they streamed
into the dark hall and up the stairs.
The squat Javanese stooped and lifted the girl without an effort, and
as he did so the little men who stood around clapped their hands
rhythmically. Leslie heard and set her teeth, as she felt herself
raised in the strong hands of this hideous little man.
She had a glimpse of Anita Bellini. The hate in her eyes made her
shudder in spite of herself.
“Good-bye, little Maughan!” she mocked. “You are going to your death.”
And then she stopped, her eyes glaring toward the door.
“Stand fast, everybody! Tell these fellows not to move, Bellini!”
It was Coldwell’s voice. Leslie felt herself slipping from the
encircling arms. Then, suddenly, somebody caught her, and she looked
round into the haggard face of Peter Dawlish.
“No gun play,” said Coldwell gently, “and there will be no trouble. I
want you, Bellini! I suppose you are prepared for that?”
“I am called Princess Bellini,” she said.
“Whether you’re Princess Bellini or Annie Druze or Alice Druze is a
matter of supreme indifference to me,” said Coldwell, as he caught her
wrist. “But you have the distinction of being the first woman I’ve
ever handcuffed.” He snapped the cold circle about her wrist. “But
then, you see, most of the ladies I’ve pinched have been gentle little
souls compared to you.”
She made no reply. That old look had come into her face again which
Leslie had seen before.
Then Anita Bellini did an unexpectedly generous thing. She nodded to
the wondering group of natives, shepherded behind three armed
detectives.
“These men have done no harm,” she said. “They have merely carried out
my instructions in ignorance of the law.”
She said something in Javanese to the man who had held Leslie, and he
grinned and answered in the same language.
“My head boy here”--she nodded to him--“will accept responsibility for
the other natives.”
And then, with a sidewise jerk of her head and a hard smile, she said:
“Well, here is the very end of the Druzes.”
“Not quite.” Leslie’s quiet voice interrupted her. “Martha has still
to be disposed of.”
There was anger, but there was fear also in Anita Bellini’s grimace.
“Martha? What do you mean--Martha?” she asked sharply. “I have not
seen her for years.”
Leslie smiled.
“I saw her two days ago, so I have the advantage of you,” she said.
They waited only long enough for Leslie to gather a change of dress
and a coat for the prisoner, and thereafter Anita Bellini went out of
her life forever, except for the day when Leslie stood in the witness
box and testified against the monocled prisoner, who did not look at
her but sat staring straight ahead at the scarlet-robed judge.
Before she collected the clothes, she went in search of Elizabeth, and
found her weeping in her bed in the little dressing room, and
persuaded her to dress. By the time the princess was out of the house
and on her way to Wimbledon police station, the child was arrayed in
her rags. Leslie stood in the doorway looking at her, and she was very
near to tears.
“Elizabeth, do you remember how you used to pretend you had all sorts
of nice fathers?”
The child nodded and smiled.
“Well, I’m going to introduce you to a real one.”
“A real father?” asked the girl breathlessly. “My father?”
“And you’ll never guess who he is.”
Suddenly the child was clinging to her, her arms locked about her
neck. Thus Peter found them, weeping together.