EDGED TOOLS
The grip of a London dawn was in the air as Fay rounded the hedge,
within the foliage of the house next door to Saidee Isaacs’. He found
his tweed overcoat, into the pockets of which he crammed his gloves.
He went out then into the silent lane and struck toward the east with
long swinging strides which carried him past constables, early morning
workers and the heavy lorries which were streaming Londonward.
His eyes were sanguine and held high. His elbows bent at his sides. The
absence of sleep from the moment he had been awakened by the turnkey at
Dartmoor was unnoticed. He was free! The world was wide! And there was a
woman in it for him!
He thought of Saidee Isaacs as he hurried along. She had come up out of
the underworld. She had prospered and gained in strength and beauty.
More than these two things, she represented the entire sex to him. He
knew that the five years of prison life had glorified women and lowered
men in his estimation.
The mystery of her position, her close touch with the Yard, her
willingness to send him on the mission to Holland, which was bound to
prove dangerous, caused him concern as he reached Hyde Park Corner and
passed the iron-grilled fence of Apsley House.
The City roared a warning. The rattle of busses and cabs over the
pavements clashed with his thoughts. It was all new and terrifying to
one who had never known fear. He felt, instinctively, that he was being
followed. He fled eastward without glancing behind him. He reached the
entrance to Berkeley Street and turned northward.
The two emotions struggled with his soul. Five years of silence and
solitude had left their mark. The constant eyes of the guards in the
prison still were there. He felt them in the center of his brain. They
haunted, despite his attempt to dismiss their presence. His early
buoyancy died.
He was passing through the experience that every released prisoner
knows. He was fagged from lack of sleep. The excitement of the game to
come had worn off. There remained only weariness and dejection.
A park, hedged about with plane trees and towered over by neat
boxed-houses, brought him to the realization of his locality. North, lay
Brooke Street and Oxford. A mews was at his right, between two mansions.
He took this narrow passage, passed hostlers grooming horses, and
emerged upon a street which would lead him to Soho Square and Burlington
Arcade.
He came, with the same swift glide, to a coffee house under the sign of
a brown cup. There he wheeled and flashed a defiant glance back and over
the street. He searched each face that passed him. He swept the throng.
No one of all of them was familiar. He was not being followed. The
thought had been the distillate of a tired brain.
Braced on two cups of black coffee, and quieted by the dragging fumes of
a cigarette, he went on into the city and was swallowed up by the three
who toiled and cheated and gamed out the day.
The alchemy of sleep—in a Soho hotel noted for its cleanliness—removed
the last vestige of weariness from his mind. He glanced at his watch as
he called for cold water and plenty of it. He bathed and dressed
hurriedly, then took stock of his possessions.
There were the cuff-links and the pin and the cigarette-case which
MacKeenon had brought to Dartmoor. There were the tweed coat, the little
silver greyhound, and the bank notes and gold. More than these was
Saidee’s diagram of the embassy. He studied this before opening his
door.
The plan flashed over his brain. He memorized the details like a
draughtsman reading a white-print. He closed his eyes and repeated each
item. Then, and naturally, he struck a match on his heel, held out the
blazing paper and dropped its ashes along the narrow hallway where they
would never be noticed.
Keen-brained from the sleep, and with eight hours ahead of him, he
plunged into the opening meshes of the game. There was much to do in
that short time. A plan had already mapped itself out. It would not do
to go to Holland without every necessary tool for the operation of
opening the strong-box. These, he knew, were to be found at a certain
shop on Ludgate Street.
He strolled north and east through familiar lanes. He stopped now and
then, and glanced at the windows. His actions, though natural, had one
purpose. The Yard had let him go free. And yet, he knew, there were
serious-faced young men about who were waiting for him. It was not in
the cards that Sir Richard and MacKeenon would remain passive. Every
inspector from that dingy house near the Embankment had received orders
to watch out for any overt act on the part of Chester Fay, just out and
dangerous.
The many faces of the crowd flowed before him like a stream. He
registered each one, but found none upon which he could fasten his
suspicion. The Yard and Sir Richard would be more than keen to know how
the great safe in Hatton Gardens had been opened. They had declared at
the time that it was by far the best piece of cracksman’s work ever done
in the city.
Fay had the pride of his profession. Secrecy was the one thing which had
been ground into him. He moved off from the windows and plunged into the
throng of drab clerks and shoppers. He twisted and turned and retraced
his steps. He dropped into the Tube and came out again. Satisfied, then,
that there was no shadow behind him, he turned into Ludgate Street and
sought for the shop.
It had been over five years since his last visit. The sales people
surely had forgotten him. He glanced up at the familiar sign and
entered. He made his way along aisles of polished cases and came to a
protection ledge behind which was an array of medical instruments laid
out for inspection.
The salesman who stepped out of the gloom with an encouraging smile was
the same who had been there five years and more before. Fay realized
this fact with quick intuition. He watched the man’s face for some sign
of recognition. There was none.
“My eldest brother,” he said with a winning smile, “has sent me to you.
He’s stationed in Mesopotamia. Rather far from here! He cawn’t come
himself, y’know. I’m a bit doubtful if you remember the Sir Roderick
Findlayson who went with the expedition. He practiced up St. John’s
Woods way.”
The salesman rested the tips of his fingers on the polished case and
puzzled his memory.
“Awkward of me, but I just can’t now. Is there anything I can do to help
you out?” he asked.
Fay was on rather thin ice, and he knew it. The instruments he wished
had queer names among the medical profession. It was possible the
salesman was not a surgeon.
“Yes!” he blurted. “You can help me out. My brother—Sir Roderick
Findlayson—wrote for me to send him certain things. Unfortunately I lost
the letter. But I remember about what he wanted.”
The salesman glanced at the case beneath the array of instruments. “We
have the largest supply in London,” he said. “Could you pick what you
want from this assortment?”
“Well, there was a satch—, a doctor’s bag, for one thing. Something nice
in black alligator. Say a three-pound bag. Would it be about this long?”
Fay spread his hands to show two feet in length.
“We have that size in genuine alligator for three and ten.”
“Nicely!” said Fay. “I take one. Now,” he added, “I may as well pick out
the instruments for my brother. You can get the bag later and put them
in it.”
The salesman opened the case and started lifting up trays filled with
highly polished instruments. Fay set aside a tempered artery-forceps
which would also answer to turn a key in a lock. It was known in the
underworld as an “insider.”
“My brother,” he said lightly, “will be pleased with this. Now what is
that big instrument?”
“That is used in obstetrics.”
“Just what he wanted. Put that with the forceps.” Fay shaded his face
and smiled. The obstetric instrument when taken apart would make a
high-grade jimmy.
He leaned down and indicated a tray. “Three of those,” he said, pointing
to bone saws which could be employed equally as well against wood or
iron.
The salesman polished these with a piece of cheesecloth and laid them on
top of the obstetric instrument.
“I think that’s all at this counter,” said Fay, eyeing the collection.
“The next will be rubber gloves and collodium. You see my brother has
many infectious cases.”
The salesman opened the back of a near-by case and brought out samples
of gloves. Fay inspected them as the clerk went for the collodium, which
was a sovereign cure for finger-prints.
Fay’s next purchase seemed an afterthought. Without it he would have
been an amateur. It was a very high-grade stethoscope, such as army
doctors and surgeons use to determine the right ventricle’s action or
the little flaws and flutters of the human heart. It had been made by
one of the greatest houses in London. The clerk insisted that it was
powerful enough to hear a fly walk ten feet away.
Fay arched his brows at this statement.
“How about the chest?” he asked.
“Perfect, sir. All one has to do is to press it to the left breast and
place on the ear-pieces. The instrument registers every valve motion and
defect.”
“Your price?”
“Eight pound, ten—the same price we charged the British Royal Flying
Corps. They were used extensively in the examination of the flying men.”
Fay had another purpose for the stethoscope. It worked equally as well
upon the door of a strong-box just over the combination dial. This is
the nearest spot to the padded slots into which certain tumblers drop
with a tap which would sound like a bolt falling by use of a sensitive
micro-phone diaphragm.
“I’ll take it!” he snapped. “That completes my purchases. Now, let me
see the bag.”
The bag proved all that the salesman claimed for it. Fay fondled each
instrument, laid them in position, and turned the key in a little
nickle-plated lock.
He paid his score and was out in the street, pressing his way like a
doctor on a hurried call. He caught his reflection in a window. It was
of a British surgeon, in cap and long tweed coat, carrying the little
insignia of the office. He expected momentarily to be grasped by the arm
and led to a street accident.
The matter of the instruments had been carefully thought out. There
remained a second purchase equally as important. Fay was doubtful of the
propriety of purchasing a heavy-caliber revolver in the open shops.
He turned into Cheapside and sauntered along. An ancient armorer’s sign
caught his darting glance. He crossed the pavement and stared into the
window. A half-circle of British regulation revolvers lay in the center
of other hardware. Also, there was a blue-steel American automatic with
a business-like muzzle.
Fay smiled at this as if greeting an old friend. Mike the Bike and Big
Scar, of western memory, always carried a .44 automatic. They called
them “maggy-guns” or “smoke wagons.”
He went inside the shop and explained to the proprietor that he was en
route to Mesopotamia. “I’ll take that American revolver,” he said.
“That, and one hundred cartridges. Never can tell what the Turks are apt
to do.”
Emerging from the armorer’s, with the automatic clinking against the
tools in the bag, he glanced at the time. It was three o’clock. Fog was
drifting across the dome of St. Paul’s. He had five hours before meeting
MacKeenon!
Swirled now with the first grip of the game, he decided to visit one or
two of his old haunts. No one would be likely to know him in the guise
of a British surgeon.
He chose to first drop in at the Monica, and from there make his way to
“Jimmy’s” or the St. James Hotel, which at one time was a meeting place
for international celebrities and flash denizens of the underworld.
The long bar at the Monica was strangely free from patrons. Fay ordered
Rhine wine and seltzer, which was equivalent to a soft drink.
The bar-maid turned away as he spun a shilling over the bar. Fay, on the
alert, and with the doctor’s bag between his feet, caught a glance
exchanged between the girl and a lone figure at the end of the bar.
He sipped the drink and searched his brain for an answer to the signal
which he had detected. It came to him with sudden flash. The man was
from the Yard. The girl had recognized an old acquaintance in the
plaid-capped visitor.
Fay acted with the quick wit of the professional. He glided along the
bar and held out his hand. The smile he bestowed upon the inspector
broke down a staid Scotch reserve.
“Well, have you found him yet?” he asked cautiously.
The man from Scotland Yard winced.
“I mean Dutch Gus,” whispered Fay.
“No!” The answer was solemn and from the heart.
“And it’s been five years?”
“Six and a piece.”
“You’re waiting for him to come in here?”
“Here or the other places. Can you help me out, Edward?”
Fay went back and lifted his bag. He passed close to the inspector, on
his way to the doorway.
“I never peach,” he said through tight lips. “But, if I ever change my
mind, that’s the man I’ll squeal on first. Good-by, MacPhee.”
Fay burst through to the street and the drifting fog. He had acted on
the spur of the moment in speaking to the inspector. The long watch at
the Monica bar was a sample of the work of Scotland Yard. It had once
been a favorite rendezvous of Dutch Gus and his mob. The watch was still
being kept for the German crook who had learned safe-breaking in the
States during the palmy days of the Chicago Drainage Canal. He had
transgressed once too often, in the estimation of Sir Richard Colstrom.
“And they’ll lag him,” said Fay, turning toward the south. “MacPhee
never lost a man.”
He became thoughtful as he reached Blackfriars Bridge and crossed the
Thames to the Surrey side. He still had three hours before meeting
MacKeenon at London Bridge Station. He had forgotten his intended visit
to “Jimmy’s.” The presence of the inspector on watch at the Monica bar
was food for thought. There seemed no way of escaping the nipper grip of
the Yard.
MacKeenon, Sir Richard, MacPhee, Saidee Isaacs, the cipher and the evil
visage of Dutch Gus appeared in the fog as Fay leaned over the Albert
Embankment and stared toward the curtain which blotted out London.
Fingers seemed to reach and clutch for him. Coils were thrown. There was
the south, and Brighton and the Cape boats, for a get-away. The bag with
its gun and surgical instruments could be tossed in the Thames. No man
could catch him, if he chose to exercise caution. The world was wide,
and a new life in another country could be started without suspicion.
He felt in a reflective mood. Belligerency would follow this mood as
certain as the dawn would rise on foggy London. He recalled the ancient
vows of getting square with the police of the world. The five years of
cell life—of waiting and watching—had not shaken him from his purpose to
gain a little place in the sun, and there bask with the smiles of those
he cared for and understood.
The cipher mission had not gripped him in the manner it should. He did
not see the great commercial war which was settling upon a torn world.
The factories of London, Manchester, Leeds and the Scotch districts
might be pouring their smoke into the English air in an attempt to stem
the tide of imports from over the North Sea. They were building the last
battlements of a people who would be free. He did not care! Had not
England penned him for five long years in a living hell? Was that
punishment to be forgotten lightly? Was it a reason for falling in with
the plans of Sir Richard and the hounds of the Yard?
He smiled bitterly. He wanted freedom of action. He had the wherewithal
to gain this desire. The money in his pocket, the open road to the south
through Surrey, and a change of costume would effect an escape. There
was no way to prove that the Yard would not send him back to Dartmoor if
he failed in the Holland mission.
He turned away from the stone rail and stared through the gloom to where
arc lights were stretched in an unending row. They shone blurred and
torch-like in the murky air. Beneath them, pedestrians and lorries
moved, like a procession of sad mourners. It was the tide of London folk
pouring home at the day’s end.
Tapping his heel against the black bag at his feet, he saw from the
corner of his right eye the arched bridges which spanned the Thames.
They, also, were thronged with a dark mass of outpouring humanity.
He seemed alone. He was in the backwater of strife and bustle. An open
space was between his position at the rail and the nearest sidewalk.
This space was shimmered over with damp mist. Across it, flashing
eastward, there passed a smart, black motor car, with a driver bent at
the wheel and a single figure in the tonneau.
Fay heard, as distinctly as if the voice had been at his side, a call
and a warning. It rang in his ears after the car had vanished in the
shadowy street on his left hand. He repeated the words: “Look out,
Chester!”
“Now, who in the devil was that?” he asked himself, standing erect and
glancing after the car like a thoroughbred who had scented danger.
The mystery of anyone in London knowing his name or figure, gripped with
strength. He wondered if the voice that struck across the night had been
a guilty tug at his own brain. It could hardly have been real. He
recalled that the car was smaller and of less horse-power than the one
which had brought him up from Dartmoor. It was not the same motor. Nor
had there been “H.M.S.” plates on its trunk rack.
The roar of the city confused him as he waited. It was possible that he
had but reflected his own thoughts when he heard the warning. He
dismissed the matter and started to turn toward the river. His chin had
described half a circle when there flashed across his vision the true
warning of coming danger. It had taken him many years of training to act
as he did. He ducked, stepped aside and sprang out and away from the
stone rail.
A hurtling form, bunched and aggressive, crashed past him and rebounded
from the stone. A bitter oath cracked the night. A man straightened and
jabbed with a long dagger. Fay backed and held his hand in a warding
position. It was Dutch Gus who faced him. The German crook had missed
his prey by the scant margin of an eye flash.
Fay acted with the lightning dart of a professional wrestler. He knew
the mettle of the man he faced. Dutch Gus was over-burly. He lacked the
fine points of the thoroughbred. He held the knife like a bayonet—before
him, with no chance to recover if he missed the stroke.
The jab missed by narrow inches. The crook stumbled from the force of
his wasted blow. Fay twisted his head, stooped down, grasped the German
about the hips, and flipped him over his shoulder. Dutch Gus crashed
against the stone rail and hung there.
Fay reached and swiftly opened his little black bag. From this he drew
the revolver and held it against the German crook’s head. He cocked the
trigger. He waited. He thrust the man further outward. A coward’s cry
sounded as Fay pressed Dutch Gus over the rail and down toward the murky
flood of the Thames.
A splash was followed by silence. The ripples widened and merged with
the pall that hung over the river. Out of this murk there rose an arm,
and then the blond head of Dutch Gus. He treaded water and then sank.
“Curse you!” said Fay, clasping the weapon and waiting for a sight.
“Curse you, Dutch Gus! I wonder if that’s your end?”
Fay turned, backed against the rail, and searched the gloom on the
Surrey side. He waited grimly for other evidences of the ambush. He saw
none, although it was hardly possible that the German had acted alone.
It came to him, as he uncocked the automatic, that in some unknown
manner the German had gotten wind of the project to Holland. It flashed
through his brain that, after all, there was a reasonable answer to the
attempt on his life. Dutch Gus had followed Saidee Isaacs. It was no
coincidence then, that she had called from the tonneau of the black car
and her trailers had discovered his presence. The thing worked out. He
pocketed the automatic, picked up his bag, glanced at the river, then
started toward London Bridge Station. It was seven o’clock.
As he moved swiftly, his eyes searched the throng across the pavement.
He wondered if a shadow would be there. He was dealing with not only the
Yard, which was too solicitous for his welfare, but also with a
determined clique that had already attempted to obtain the key to the
cipher. Dutch Gus had searched for Saidee Isaacs and had found her house
in Richmond Hill. The German crook, or one of his gang, had held the
trail—even to London Bridge Station. Fay felt gripped in the skeins of
an enterprise which might have almost any conclusion.
He was not surprised to see the tail-light and then the polished tonneau
of the little, black motor where it stood before the station. He crossed
the street and stared at the driver. He went on and into the train shed.
A youthful-appearing figure in a long tan coat and green hat passed him,
stooped, fingered the top button of a fawn-colored spat and said
tersely:
“Carry high, Chester. There’s your man over by the booking office. Look
out for Dutch Gus and remember your promise.”
Fay set down his black bag, grasped the lapels of his tweed coat and
coughed to hide his astonishment.
The figure in the tan coat was Saidee Isaacs. She finished with the
spat, straightened, twinkled over the floor and darted out toward the
motor car.
MacKeenon worked through the waiting passengers and touched Fay on the
arm.
“This way, mon,” he said. “Ye are punctual.”
Fay was still staring at the doorway through which Saidee Isaacs had
vanished. He turned and picked up the bag. He glanced at the inspector’s
long face. Upon it was written a sly satisfaction that one sees on old
dogs that have cornered their quarry.
“The siller greyhound?” said MacKeenon dryly as Fay followed him out to
the waiting boat train.
“It’s in my pocket.”
“Put it on, mon. It’ll carry ye far.”
Fay set down the bag, reached in his right trousers pocket and brought
forth the insignia of the King’s couriers. He pinned it in place upon
his left lapel and covered it with his overcoat.
The station-master approached the inspector and indicated that the train
was about to pull out.
MacKeenon held up two fingers and smiled. The station-master nodded at
the secret signal. Fay felt clutched in the swing of events. He watched
the Scotch detective anxiously.
“Weil, mon,” said MacKeenon, “ye’re off. Here’s your ticket for the boat
to—where ye’re going. Here’s twa envelopes. Guard them well. There’s
money in one—there’s Sir Richard’s instructions in th’ other.”
Fay reached, took the envelopes and the ticket, and crammed them in his
inner coat pocket.
“How about getting through at Dover?” he asked.
“Shew th’ siller greyhound, lad. They will ask ye no questions at all.
Many’s the time A’ve done it.”
Fay glanced at the train. The semaphore ahead was set for “go.” The
steam plumed from the engine and merged with the fog at the end of the
shed.
A bell rang as he thrust a cold finger out to MacKeenon, clutched the
little black bag and sprang for the running-board of a first-class
compartment. The train started, stopped, then lunged on through the
clammy shed. Fay opened a door, tossed in his bag and stumbled aboard.
He overlooked one trifle.
MacKeenon had drawn a white handkerchief from his coat pocket—where it
was most conveniently handy—and had shown all the evidences of a man
doubled up with Spanish influenza.
A little Scot—with a bundle and a hacking cough—passed the inspector and
clutched wildly for a handrail on the car behind the first-class one. He
hung there by grim strength, and finally succeeded in getting inside a
compartment as the train roared out of the station shed and started to
tunnel the murky night.
The inspector’s smile was that of a sly gray fox as he turned and
hurried from the station. He crossed the bridge on a swift run, barked a
surly order to the waiting driver of a two-wheeler, and settled back as
the whip cracked smartly over the haunches of a perfectly good horse of
the better order.
The driver knew his book. He drove northward and deposited MacKeenon at
Liverpool Street Station, where a train was waiting by which a number of
British North Sea ports could be reached.
Although he had overlooked it, Fay had company going to a certain
neutral country, and company coming by a roundabout route.