ONCE A GENTLEMAN
Storm being an unconventional young man, it was not to be expected
that the private report on the Battle of Billingsgate which he sent
to Sir John Marker would be strictly in accord with conventional
ideas on the correct composition of such documents. Kit Arden had no
manner of use for formulas; jargon made him feel ill; in the presence
of the bugaboo of official phraseology he positively writhed. He
banged out his points with crisp simplicity, and framed them in
sentences like bullets.
The letter is worth quoting _in extenso_, for reasons which will be
apparent at sight.
When once the door of the sawmill had been opened, and the janitor
removed without noise, the fate of the Alpha Triangle hung by a hair.
In spite of the telephone call which told the men in the building
that their heavily armoured bag had lost its cat, they could not
forecast the minute in which the information so gained would be acted
upon. The future of the organisation was suspended by that slender
thread; our hope of being in amongst them, raising Hell, before they
could collect their wits. You already know how that thread was
snapped.
Whatever a man's genius, he cannot dream of terrorising a city--as
the Apex intends to do--without a large number of assistants. With
his young army of helpers locked away, he would have been
crippled--perhaps irretrievably.
However, we failed--so that's that. Anyway, all we made was an
attempt to maim, when our object is to kill.
One or two details stand over.
(1) Besides myself, two others got into the sawmill. One was Miss
Hawthorne, secretary to the late Lord Hannassay, who went simply in
search of adventure. The second was Joseph Blaythwayt, manager of
the City and Continental Bank, Lombard Street, who in his spare time
aspires to sleuthship. He is a friend of Inspector Teal, from whom
he had heard unpublished facts about the Triangle which (on his own
account) fired him with thoughts of honour and glory as an amateur
Sherlock. He is also one of the lives threatened by the Triangle,
which fact does not perturb him unduly.
(2) In my opinion, the telephone call which followed our departure
came by chance, and was not based on knowledge of any of our plans.
(3) Raegenssen's office was burgled last night, and the safe opened,
but I don't know if the men found anything. A lot of attention has
centred round Raegenssen lately, so I expect his obituary notice is
only a matter of days.
The Billingsgate raid having failed, I am basing my next move on the
Era advertisement. It will, of course, be risky; but if anything
goes wrong you will know what to do.
I can only guess how the Triangle will continue its campaign. I
probably have a better appreciation of that colossal mind than
anybody else; but if I gave you a logical prophecy, even you might
begin to regard me as an imaginative alarmist. The solid _fact_,
which you and everyone else has got to get hold of, is that for the
time being all the odds are on the Triangle. They have all the
advantage of surprise. Just now, the police aren't prepared.
Violent crime isn't familiar to them yet. They can't quite adjust
themselves to it--it'll catch them napping, and they'll take time to
get busy. There's a genius at the top of the Triangle--or a lunatic,
whichever you care to call him--and the police are neither geniuses
nor lunatics. They're just plain ornery men dealing with plain
ornery crooks, with all the odds on the crook. Crooks catch
themselves and each other, but there'll be no nosing the Triangle.
It can pay too well, and the little twisters follow the big money.
Gangs in the past have gone just because discontented members shopped
them. There will be no discontented members of the Triangle--why,
their chief can even pull them out of the hands of the police! The
rescue of the Billingsgate prisoners will add tremendously to the
prestige of the Apex.
I promised you the head of the Apex on a Triangle in a fortnight, and
that fortnight still has some time to run.
The brain of the Apex moves in such great leaps that nothing less
than genius could anticipate it from pinnacle to pinnacle. Against
that there is only one card to play--fear. Even genius has nerves.
Even genius can be made to worry about its neck.
I shall win.
The removal of Lew Mecklen from St. George's Hospital to Marlborough
Street Police Court was not advertised, but Storm did not doubt that
the Intelligence Bureau of the Triangle had its own sources of
information. He had asked for, and secured, a special escort from
Wellington Barracks, and they were served out with ball ammunition.
It was a wise precaution, for the soldier, being a lethal machine, is
less chary of using firearms than the London constable, who is a
civil institution into whose routine the more effective forms of
violence rarely enter. Apparently the Triangle admitted that Mecklen
was well guarded, for no attempt was made on the armoured car in
which the gunman rode with platoons of scarlet-coated men marching in
front and behind.
Lew was taken into the tiny court-room, and a stream of detectives
followed him and filled the rest of the space. Outside, uniformed
men blocked the tiled hall, and the military escort stood at ease in
the road.
The proceedings were brief, for attempted murder offers no option of
summary jurisdiction. Mecklen pleaded not guilty and declined to
instruct a solicitor. Evidence of arrest was taken, to which the
prisoner paid little attention. The verbal proceedings seemed not to
interest him, but he studied his surroundings curiously. He did not
cross-examine, and made no statement, and the whole business took no
more than ten minutes.
"Without a hitch," remarked Storm, in grim reminiscence of the formal
Press account of executions--"thanks to the Army!"
Mecklen was committed for trial, and, whilst the necessary papers
were being made out and signed, he was taken to a cell in the
adjoining police station. It was when they removed him and told him
that he would be taken immediately to Brixton Prison that he showed
his first sign of uneasiness. He asked if a message had come for
him, and, when informed that none had arrived up to that time, he
asked to be allowed to see a newspaper. On Storm's authority, the
request was refused, and Mecklen was handcuffed and led out between a
double rank of policemen. Teal went in front and Storm brought up
the rear, and as the cortège came into view of the street Teal halted
so suddenly that Storm trod on the prisoner's heels.
Pushing his way to the front, Arden found the detective staring up
and down the street with a ludicrously blank expression on his
sanguine countenance. Storm looked also, and his lean face hardened.
There was a cab rank in the road, and he went over at once and asked
a question of one of the drivers.
"About arf an hour ago," said the man. "Just after the man'd bin
taken in. A cop comes out an 'ands a note to the orf'cer, an' walks
away, an' then the orf'cer shouts _'Shun!_ an' off they goes."
"Did you see the constable's face?" asked Storm, and the chauffeur
scratched his head.
"S'pose I must 'ave, but I didn't take much stock of it. You don't
inspect every copper's dial wot yer sees--you'd get 'eart failure!
Just looked an ord'nary pleeceman to me. 'Ulkin' great feller,
oldish, walked as if 'e owned the earth--like they all do."
"Thank you," said Storm bitterly, and returned to the waiting group
on the station steps.
By that time the escort would be back in barracks. In the first
instance, there had been more than enough red tape, and no little
grumbling in high places about troops being called upon to do the
work of the police. A fresh escort would not be procured without
considerable delay, and perhaps not even then. And yet a military
guard Storm was determined to have. As it turned out later, he had
made a grave mistake in jumping to the conclusion that the dismissal
of the soldiery by means of a forged message was simply a ruse to
make him send Mecklen to the prison in the ordinary van and under
police escort only. Bearing in mind the Tower Hill affair, this was
the explanation he had reached, and it made him doubly set on
attempting no such hazard. He had Mecklen taken back to his cell,
and ordered a special watch to be mounted over him. Then he rang up
the C.O. at the barracks, and found that the two platoons had just
returned.
"You might find out if the officer kept my note," he said, and waited
until the requisite information was forthcoming. "He has? ... I'm
sending a constable round for it now; he'll give his number, which is
C2447.... Oh, no, nothing whatever, except that the note happens to
be a fake! ... That so? Well, you're not half so sorry as I am."
He listened for a moment, and then replaced the receiver with great
care.
"Started to quote me: _If you want a thing done well,_" he explained.
"On the whole, the observation's appropriate, but not the way he
meant."
Teal was looking glum.
"I don't like it," he confessed. "And yet, on the face of it, Lew's
almost as safe here as he'd have been in Brixton. But this
Triangle's a shade too snappy for Claud Eustace--they think of things
the ordinary crook'd laugh at, and they do 'em, and so far they've
got away with them every darned time by sheer nerve."
"There's a special guard," Storm said, "and you can spend the night
here yourself if you like. I'll see if I can see Marker and get a
special order for another parade to-morrow. We can't do any more.
Either the Triangle's thinking of raiding the station, or they're
planning to hold up the prison van, and I think the first is the
least likely to succeed."
Teal shook his head.
"I agree; but it doesn't make me happy. Triangles have three
corners, so I guess they might manage to have a prick waiting in two
places," he said prophetically.
Down at the Yard, however, a slight ray of hope awaited them, for the
call put out the previous day for Prester John had been successful,
and the burglar was even then being detained in Cannon Row pending
audience.
The man who had made the arrest foreshadowed the result of the
interview in his account.
"I took John in a bar in Camden Tower, where he often goes. He
didn't deny the charge, and said he was coming along to see Captain
Arden to-day, anyhow."
"He's got his wish, then," said Teal. "Send him up."
The facetious parent who, while replete with beer, had bestowed upon
Mr. John the prænomen of Prester must have been gifted with second
sight. The celebrated infringer of the laws of property resembled
nothing so much as an elderly parson. He was lank and lofty,
sallow-complexioned and blue of chin. He affected clothes of
clerical hue, wore a high Gladstonian collar and a black bow tie, and
generally gave the impression of sanctimoniousness incarnate.
"Good morning, brethren," he said politely. "I heard that my Lords
had need of men, and I came."
It was his invariable greeting when summoned before the police to
account for his lapses, and he accompanied it with an equally
automatic gesture, holding his elbows in to his sides, bringing his
forearms horizontal, and spreading out his flat palms in the same
plane, a mannerism which the irreverent Inspector Teal described as
"John's lo-and-behold mitt-flap."
"Acoustics excellent!" commented Storm. "I hear you visited Mr.
Raegenssen last night."
"On business," nodded Prester John.
"And was he pleased to see you?" asked Teal.
"He was--er--unfortunately unable to attend."
Storm passed his cigarette case to the pious one and, when John
declined, lighted a cigarette himself.
"How much was Mattock paying you?" he asked, waving his match in the
air to extinguish it.
"Mattock?"
"Raegenssen's clerk. He put you on to the job, didn't he?"
"Not that I know of--although, of course, since the name is
unfamiliar to me, he may have been the man. May I sit down? It
assists the train of thought."
Permission being granted, the man seated himself with a sigh and
hitched up his trousers fastidiously. Leaning back, he fixed his
eyes on the ceiling and pressed the tips of his fingers together like
a pedantic schoolmaster, and after a dramatic pause he deigned to
continue.
"The circumstances are--to say the least of it--curious," he said.
"To commence, then: I am, as you probably know by now, a member of
the society called the Alpha Triangle. You have heard of it, of
course?"
"No," said Teal, _sotto voce_.
"Not, you understand, that I associate myself in any way with the
outrages which they propose to commit," John explained hastily. "No.
I am simply a wage slave--an employee--an hireling. And, in passing,
the hire is worthy of the hireling. My employers pay me a salary,
which is very comfortable--thank you--and in return I undertake to
deal with such refractory locks and so forth as they wish to
penetrate. So far I have had little to do, although I was given to
understand that there would be an important piece of work for me in
the near future. The Bank of England, I think Surcon said--Surcon is
the name by which the Apex is known to his men. An assumed name, of
course, but we are not encouraged to discover his real one. There
was a man named Rodriguez--a Portuguese--who said he was going to
find out the real name and put the black--I believe that is the
correct slang, Mr. Teal?--and--er--where had I got to? Oh, yes, put
the black on. Polite people call it demanding money with menaces.
Rodriguez died the other day. Enteric, you know. I'm sure of that,
because I was able to take a swab from the hypodermic syringe Mr.
Surcon used when he treated Rodriguez to a shot of morphine. Surcon
says he qualified as a doctor. So did I. In my leisure moments, I
still dabble in bacteriology, and _bacilli typhosi_ are easily
recognised under the microscope by the trained observer. So--er--one
is not encouraged to be inquisitive, is one?"
"Quite," murmured Storm.
Inspector Teal cleared his throat noisily, fumbled aimlessly in his
pockets, and came across a battered cigar. He nipped the end from
it, and sought for matches. Instead, he found a virgin packet of
spearmint, and abandoned fumigation in favour of mastication. Then,
having returned the weary weed to his pocket and posted a wafer of
chicle in his mouth, he struck a match and absently wondered why
there wasn't anything to light.
Which seems to indicate a certain perturbation.
It does. Mr. Teal was familiar with the vanity of criminals, their
affectations and their powers of plausible invention, but the yarn of
Prester John was something which failed to enter the borders of his
experience. The germ of truth in it stuck out like the Eiffel Tower:
he had always known that Prester John had drifted to burglary, not
from Borstal, but from Balliol, solely because of the moral kink in
his nature. But the lying of criminals--which psychologists will
tell you is "pathological," whatever that may mean--is expressly
designed for the covering up of their defects and defections--not the
revelation of the same. Wherefore Prester John became an interesting
specimen.
A fact which seemed to have entered the mind of that oleaginous man,
for he allowed an appreciable time to elapse before he resumed his
confession--time during which the theatrical atmosphere piled up hand
over fist.
"Well--to return," he went on at last. "Last night I received a
telephone call in the name of the Apex, instructing me to proceed
with all speed to Scandinavia House, Cockspur Street. My lord had
need of me, so I went." Interval for the lo-and-behold mitt-flap.
"Entering the office to which I had been directed to proceed, I found
seated at a desk a masked man--that sounds a bit thick to you, I
suppose, Mr. Teal, but you've got to take my word for it. Er--a
masked man, as I said. Most extraordinary."
He had a trick of affecting to have lost the thread of his discourse,
and finding his place with an exaggerated effort of concentration.
"This man--masked, as I told you--er--where was I? Oh, yes; this man
explained to me that in his _rôle_ of Ezra Surcon--did I tell you
that the Apex called himself Ezra Surcon?"
"You did," assented Teal patiently. "He explained?"
"That he was, of course, disguised when he appeared before us, and he
had not had time to assume his disguise that night. Therefore, with
a solicitude for my own safety which, I may say, touched me to the
heart--therefore, he had donned a mask. And that was that. He
indicated a safe, and invited me to open it. Which, reasonably
enough--you understand--I did. And, when I got
in"--lo-and-behold--"the cupboard was bare!"
Storm tapped the ash from his cigarette. The revelation affected him
less than it did Inspector Teal; for he had already deducted much of
what he now heard, and the criminal's story came as little more than
a confirmation.
"Well, Mother Hubbard?" he prompted.
"And that was all," Prester John concluded with an eloquent wave of
his hand. "Shall I ask you to picture the scene? My masked friend,
shaking with baffled rage--quite upset, you know. Some people take
things to heart so. It's a thing I--er--as I was saying, shaking
with baffled rage; myself, calm and serene, rather like a turf
accountant's clerk as the horses pass the post, knowing that whoever
may have lost money his own wages are secure. . . . There's an
extraordinary attraction for me in gambling--I've always wanted----"
He caught a murderous gleam in Inspector Teal's eye, and tactfully
returned to the point. "So that was that. Shall I endeavour to
picture for you the scene--to--to delineate, so to speak, the
situation? Shall I----"
"No," said Teal with determination. "What happened after the
tableau?"
John shrugged.
"What would you? I went. My Lord's manner did not give me the
assurance which every gentleman requires before he continues to
inflict his company on a comrade, that he is welcome. You follow?
The moment did not appear propitious for bringing up such sordid
topics as my own remuneration. I folded up my wallet and silently
stole away."
He uncrossed his legs as though, his mission accomplished, he was
about to repeat that man[oe]uvre, but Teal's curiosity was no more
than whetted.
"Did you see any Triangles that night?"
"Er--no."
"Not this?" persisted Teal, and produced from his wallet the
cardboard insigne he had found in the safe.
Prester John examined it with interest, but he shook his head as he
handed it back.
"This is one of the badges which are issued to the inferior
members--the rank and file, so to speak," he said. "The higher
members have tokens of silver and enamel. My own--er--have you
finished with it yet, by the way?"
The question was ignored. Teal and Storm were busy with their own
thoughts, and both these ran in the same channel. Storm, who was
watching the methods of the two men dispassionately, allowed the
detective to give tongue.
"Why have you spun us this yarn?"
"Why? I--er--thought it might possibly be of some assistance," said
John deprecatingly. "As a matter of fact, I am giving up my illegal
activities altogether, and resigning from the Triangle. I heard this
morning that some obscure relative had died and left me
money--nothing great, you understand, but sufficient at least to
enable me to inhabit once more those haunts of culture and
respectability after which my soul hankers."
Teal grunted non-committally and made a mental memorandum to verify
this glad news. Prester John read the disbelief on the round red
face, and smiled faintly.
"That happens to be true," he said.
"Then can you help us to locate any other members--silver badge size
members, I mean--or any boltholes?"
John made a negative gesture regretfully.
"I wish I could," he said. "Unfortunately, I was never taken to any
rendezvous but the one at Billingsgate, of which you already know.
As for members, I have never--er--been in the habit of associating
with gentlemen in the same--er--line of business as myself. Now that
I am meditating a return to the straight and narrow path, my chief
ambition is to--er--rehabilitate myself with the police, bearing no
malice for the many tussles we have had in the past. But my
acquaintances are unhappily so useless for your purpose."
Teal knew that this was the truth, for one of Prester John's many
peculiarities was that he never mixed with other criminals, planned
and executed all his coups single-handed, and disposed of the
proceeds through channels unknown to the underworld.
"There's no clue you could give us about the masked man?" said Storm.
"Nothing. In fiction, a scar--a limp--a missing button. In real
life, nothing. Tall, and I should think well-built; but since he
wore an overcoat I shall not take the risk of--er--perjuring myself
on that point."
Storm himself opened the door to the reforming burglar, and,
receiving an almost imperceptible signal, followed the man out into
the passage.
"All I've told you is blowed-in-the-glass," said Prester John in a
rapid undertone, his pose having dropped from him like a cloak. "I
am really going straight, and I know no more than I've told you.
Except this. I know how it is between you and Miss Hawthorne--why,
if a split sneezes it's known all over the underworld in half an
hour. The order went out that she's got to go, and Lew's been told
off to do it. He's going to escape to-night--I suppose you knew
that? But that isn't Lew's way." He looked at Storm steadily. "The
difference between Lew and me is that I was once a
gentleman--whatever that may mean. But I was. Lew never will be.
His mind is so ... vulgar. Take a stable tip."
He held out his hand a little hesitatingly, and smiled when Storm
took it.
"Thanks," said Storm. "But why couldn't you say that in front of
Teal?"
"My--er--dear sir, one must make good exits--intriguing curtains."
He swung his stick, and once more his face was sanctimonious and his
voice treacly. "The worthy Inspector Teal has, in his blundering
fashion, crossed swords with me on many memorable occasions. Once,
he even succeeded in obtaining my--er--incarceration for a period of
three years---the only time I have ever been inside.
Painstaking--slow and sure--but not brilliant. I have taken a number
of years convincing him that the Church was my proper _métier_. His
mind is not elastic. I feared that if I--er--removed the mask of the
musical comedy parson the shock, you know--terrible, terrible,
terrible--all one's ideas dislocated--and so forth. You appreciate
my point?" he pleaded, and there was a peep of laughter in Storm's
grey eyes as he watched the lank figure pass mincingly down the stone
corridor.