PESSIMISM OF MR. TEAL
Morini was the first to recover his equilibrium. He swept a deep bow.
"You're welcome," he said. "Come right in--how did you get in, by
the way?"
"The door was open," said Storm. "So, as we meant to pay you a call,
we thought we wouldn't put you to the trouble of locking and bolting
it."
Teal was inspecting with interest the playing cards and markers that
lay on the table.
"What's the game?" he asked inquisitorially, addressing the
redoubtable Horring; but that holdup expert was less suave than his
confrère.
"I'd like to know the meaning of this intrusion," he broke out
heatedly. "I don't know what sort of a country you call this, if a
few friends can't get together for a round of cribbage without
policemen----"
Teal cut short his protest with one raised reproving hand.
"I shan't argue," he stated mildly. "I suppose _-age_ does enter
into it."
He could be subtle on occasions, could Mr. Teal.
Storm wandered over to the loud-speaking telephone and examined it
curiously. Eventually he traced the flex which contacted with the
telephone plug, and disconnected it. He looked round for the
telephone proper, and, locating it, fetched it over and connected it
up.
"2 LO seems to have closed down," he remarked. "A pity--I love
listening in!"
He looked at Morini with a quizzical smile, as though expecting the
obvious rejoinder to come from that quarter; but, if this was his
hope, he was disappointed. Then he lifted the receiver and waited
with it held to his ear.
"Exchange? ... I've just been called, and I think we've been cut off.
Can you tell me where the ring came from? ... What's that? ... Are
you stone-cold certain? ... Well, pass me on to Supervisor ...
Supervisor? ... I'm Captain Arden of Criminal Investigation
Department. I want you to make absolutely certain whether any call
has been put through to this number during the last hour...." There
was a longer delay, and then he got his answer. "Thanks very much.
Good-bye."
He turned his back to the table and lounged against it, his eyes
narrowing.
"I'm told," he said, "that this number hasn't been called since this
morning. Broadcasting with an ordinary telephone is a joke I'm not
going to buy!"
Their dumbfounded faces were his answer. It was as clear as anything
ever has been that they were no more able to account for the facts
than he was. Even Morini's composure suffered a jar, and the pucker
that appeared between his eyebrows indicated that he was endeavouring
to reach an explanation.
Storm examined the wall plug, and found two insulated wires running
down the wainscot and stretching along the floor in the groove
between the ceil and the carpet. They led him halfway round the room
and then right-angled round the frame of a door. Trying the handle,
Storm found that it was locked.
"I'll have the key, please," he requested.
"We haven't got it." It was Morini who made the disclaimer. In the
absence of any acknowledged leader, he automatically answered for all.
"Explain!" Storm rapped back.
Morini shrugged.
"You want a whole lot of help, Captain," he gibed. "I thought you
were Mother's Infant Prodigy. If you don't know, I'll tell you that
door opens into a flat that's really part of this one, but the dame
who lives there's gotten very proper notions about ladyhood, and we
poor common folks aren't allowed to go in. She's just the obliging
owner who lets us use this room to talk in--there's two entrances,
and she keeps her own one private."
"What name?"
"Ask me again, Doc. We've never seen her."
Storm reached to his hip and took out a compact wallet from which he
selected a skeleton key of a type appropriate to the make of lock.
He was successful at the first attempt, and the door creaked open on
unoiled hinges.
"Look after these gay birds, Teal," he ordered, and passed into the
other flat.
He found himself in a tastefully furnished sitting-room in the
decoration of which the work of a woman's hand was evident. He only
stopped to glance behind and under the chesterfield, and then went
through the door which faced him. He arrived in a light airy double
bedroom, and here again the signs of feminine habitation were not
lacking; but this, too, was empty, though he peered under the bed and
tentatively prodded the dresses which hung in the wardrobe in quest
of a cached fugitive. He moved on to the bathroom, but discovered no
one lurking there.
After that futile search he recollected the telephone wire, and went
back to trace it. It ran around the sitting-room and disappeared
over the sill of a window. Leaning out, he saw that it hitched over
a common porcelain insulator--from which it swept off to join the
junction of other telephone wires. The result dissatisfied him, and
he tracked the wire a second time, and on this journey he found that
it was tapped very neatly, the secondary wires running under the
carpet out of sight. Without compunction he shifted all the
furniture which stood in the way, and rolled back the rugs,
disclosing twin threads that crossed the floor. Following them up,
he trailed them to a bookcase, and saw that they vanished into a hole
trimly bored in the base.
He stood up and scrutinised the shelves. One row of leather-bound
volumes struck him as being rather too good to be true, and he
essayed to open the glass-fronted door in order to make a closer
study, but found that it was fastened. Once again he had recourse to
his wallet, and after a few minutes' work with a small steel
instrument he had the case open. He now found that the row of books
was simply a range of dummy backs, which he could pull wide like a
second door, revealing a small cupboard. Within he brought to light
what he had more or less expected--a phone transmitter mounted on a
bracket, and a pair of radio headphones. These he removed, and then
pushed back the secret door and, after some difficulty, relocked the
case over it. The rest would keep; and he left the instruments on a
chair and went back into the larger sitting-room, closing the
partition door behind him.
"What're we going to do with these people?" he interrogated the
detective, and Teal spread out his hands.
"Suspected of conspiracy--Vine Street _pro tem_. We didn't hear much
of that broadcast sermon, but we did hear somebody telling 'em to
express me to a better world," he added with grim amusement.
Morini's hand went to his hip, and in answer to that movement Teal
shifted something in his hand so that the light caught it. He did
not seem to have stirred a fraction--his jaw still vacillated
mechanically, and his tired eyes showed little sign of animation.
But the fact remained that a wicked-looking Webley had flown into his
right hand and was even then focused upon the gunman.
To his concealed surprise, Morini smiled, and brought up his hand
with nothing in it more lethal than a cigarette-case.
"You're too suspicious, officer," Gat observed. "Shooting you with
Captain Arden for a witness would be foolish. No. I was just about
to point out that police stations and Flying Squad vans haven't
exactly proved to be the real original cat's pyjamas so far, have
they?"
Storm conferred aside with the detective.
"Would conspiracy to murder be a sound charge?"
"Granted it only gets two of 'em--you've got special powers, haven't
you?"
"I doubt if my special powers'd be superior to a writ of _habeas
corpus_" Storm objected.
Teal shrugged.
"It's worth trying," he said. "The only thing is, we'd have to send
'em to Pentonville right away--stations don't seem to hold 'em. Even
if we put 'em in stir straight off, I shouldn't bet on their staying
put--the Triangle might turn up with an amateur Army Corps and
besiege the jail," he added morosely, and Storm laughed.
"Pollyanna--you little ray of sunshine--shut up!"
The Triangle menace was festering to a head, and for all the
lightness of his tone he knew it. It was the season for striking
swift blows, here, there, and everywhere. From then onwards the gang
must be attacked and raided wherever and whenever the dimmest spook
of half an opportunity showed its tail. The risk of lowering police
prestige still further by giving the Triangle the chance to make yet
another daring coup must be taken. The Triangle must be set on the
run, and kept there--hazed, harassed and bulldozed into confusion,
till they didn't know whether they were coming or going.
Storm telephoned the prison and ordered a van with double escort to
be sent immediately. It would take some time to arrive, and he
followed the order with a call to Vine Street asking for a dozen men
to guard the prisoners meantime. He had seen the microphone attached
to the loud speaker. Already the Big Triangle knew of his presence,
and he did not put it above the capabilities of that stupendous brain
to organise a lightning sortie to rescue their captives before a
conveyance could reach Cornwall House.
"Put your hands high over your heads and face along that wall," he
commanded the prisoners, and they obeyed without demur.
Their position did not seem to trouble them at all, and this earnest
of their confidence in the Apex was somewhat disquieting. Storm and
the detective watched them, cat-eyed, until the men from Vine Street
arrived. Then the captives were searched, and Storm sat down to
smoke a cigarette while he waited for the prison van. It came
surprisingly quickly. The prisoners were rushed down the stairs into
the street, loaded into the Maria, and three of the Vine Street
plain-clothes men crammed in on top of them to reinforce the warders.
All the captives were handcuffed together in a string and the end
handcuffs were locked over staples on the inside of the van.
"They'll be blistering miracles if they get out of that mess!" said
Storm, watching the red tail-light speed down Piccadilly.
After that the other detectives were dismissed, and Storm and Teal
returned to make a more thorough search of the inner flat. They
stopped en route to look over the assembly room, and it was while
they were there that Storm distinctly heard the sound of a door
closing in the next flat.
Teal's ears intercepted the dull click at the same time, and the two
jumped for the partition door. The sitting-room was empty, but in
that cursory glance round Storm saw that the headpieces and
transmitter he had left on a chair had vanished. He jerked open the
bedroom door and ran through into the bathroom, but there was no one
to be seen. And then a second door slammed, and he whipped round
with a frown. Almost at once he grasped his mistake.
"Je-rusalem--the hall!" he snapped, and led the way back through the
sitting-room.
Besides the door into the bedroom there was another which he had
missed, masked behind a heavy curtain. He flung it open and entered
a tiled lobby furnished only with a hat-stand and an occasional
table. Opening the farther door, he found himself in the corridor,
and sprinted for the stairs.
He overtook nobody in his headlong descent, and he saw nobody he
recognised in the street. The porter's cubicle at the entrance was
empty, and while Storm stroked his chin in perplexity that worthy
toiler came across the road singing a little tune.
"I run out of fags," he replied to Storm's brisk query. "I just went
over to a slot machine up the street. No, not five minutes
ago--shortly after all those men came out."
"Have you seen any other guys come out or go in?" asked Storm, and
the man shook his head.
Kit climbed the stairs again with a frown, and found Teal ruminating
torpidly in the bedroom. The detective was dangling a flimsy article
of feminine underwear in one of his vast paws.
"This is embroidered 'J.S.'," he said. "Sounds like my old friend
Joan to me."
Storm scowled.
"D'you know we're a couple of dyed-in-the-wool mutts?" he demanded.
"I'm willing to bet the Big Triangle was lying doggo in the vestibule
all the time I was making that first search--I never spotted the
hall. And when I went back to the big room he must have padded back
and listened to everything we said.... _God's Glory!_"
The oath cracked out like the lash of a stock-whip, and Teal's eyes
opened wide at the sibilant intensity of it.
Storm had picked up a brass candlestick, and he smashed it into the
glass front of one of the compartments of the bookcase. He wrenched
Open the dummy line of books, and then stepped back with his lips
lifting from his white teeth.
The headphones and mouthpiece were back in their places, connected up.
"Great Thor in hell!" he breathed.
In an instant he was back to the outer sitting-room. He grabbed up
the telephone and gave a number even as Teal, moving with astonishing
speed, arrived behind him.
"Hullo," snapped Arden. "_Hullo_ ... Pentonville? ... How long have
you been on duty? ... Right. Then what time did you get my order for
the prison van? ... I see." Storm's voice suddenly became gentle.
"You're absolutely certain no call could have come through and been
taken by someone else? ... Oh--about half an hour ago.... Arden,
Central Office, five-double-seven--you poor fish. Why not think of
asking before? ... Well, get me the Governor.... My dear good soul,
I don't care if he's asleep--I don't care if he'll be furious--I
don't care if he's dying! _Get--me--the--Governor_.... Thank you."
A lengthy pause, and then a querulous growl:
"Yes?"
"Colonel Dayne?"
The affirmative was unprintable.
"I called you up about half an hour ago and ordered your van to
Cornwall House. A van came, but apparently it was a fake. I want
you to send a man down to your garage and find out if your van is
there."
Storm got his answer in about ten minutes, and then he set down the
receiver and whistled musically, strolling up and down the room. The
expression on his face made it unnecessary for Mr. Teal to ask any
questions.
The Triangle had scored again, right under their noses. The fake van
must have been waiting for just such an emergency, and the Apex had
had all the odds in his favour--he had heard Storm and Teal come,
heard their plans, and was already tapped in on the telephone to
waylay their message and send a totally different one along to his
confederates. The luck of the game had been his down to the last
milligramme.
"The only consolation is that the Press won't hear about our wiped
eyes," said Teal gloomily, and Storm stopped whistling to grin.
"Don't bet on it," he recommended. "The Triangle might mail a
graphic account to all the News Agencies. If I were the Apex, and
I'd scooped the kitty like that with a pair of deuces, I'll say I'd
sing about it!"
It took a lot to upset Storm. The inevitable cigarette lofted
heavenwards between his smiling lips, his hands were deep in his
pockets--that boyish enthusiasm, which nothing could damp, shone in
his eyes. It was an attribute of his which, delightful in the
ordinary way, could be incredibly aggravating in moments of stress,
and Inspector Teal glared at him moodily.
_Zzzzzzing! ... Zzzzzzing-zing! ..._
Through the other flat the hall bell jingled shrilly.
"One rings!" said Storm brightly. "Teal, be a good boy and come
greet the visitor!"
He went through to answer the door, Teal following. As he flung it
wide the corridor light outside showed up a stumpy, rotund form
surmounted by a chubby pink face which split in a jovial beam as it
recognised the two men who stood in the hall surveying it.
Teal reached out a languid arm and took the newcomer by the wrist,
drawing him inside and kicking the door shut behind him.
"Come right in, Uncle Joe," said Mr. Teal with savage cordiality.
"Come right in and open your sweet heart to old Uncle Claud Eustace.
He wants to hear a little fairy tale about loud-speaking telephones!"