THE HOUSE IN PIMLICO
At five minutes to eight on the following evening, Desmond Okewood took
his seat at the table which had been reserved for Mr. Murchison at the
Hexagon. Next to the door, two tables away, the McKenzie girl was
seated, eating her dinner with the air of quiet simplicity that Desmond
had already remarked in her. She was again in black, but the Spanish
comb was gone, and she now, wore a smart little black hat whose curving
brim and sweeping black aigrette emphasized the rather wistful piquancy
of her features. Desmond fancied he could detect about her a vague air
of excitement, of expectancy. At any rate, there was a faint glow of
colour, in her pale cheeks.
Desmond Okewood was feeling particularly pleased with himself. I, who
had known him all his life, came in with a party and passed him by
without recognizing him, as he told me gleefully afterwards. And yet, as
the Chief had said, very little disguise had proved necessary. With
grease-paint and powder Desmond had blocked the healthy tan out of his
face, a touch of rouge on the cheek-bones had altered the set of his
features, and a subtle change had been wrought in the expression of his
eyes by the simple process of shaving off the outer corner of the
eye-brows and correcting their line with a black pencil. The sacrifice
of his moustache and the addition of a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles
had sufficed to achieve the Chief’s object, which was to render
Desmond’s general appearance both nondescript and negligible.
Suddenly the young man felt a little tingle of excitement. Bessie, the
flower-woman, whom he had noticed offering her wares among the serried
ranks of loungers at the long bar, was crossing the room. A man at a
table on the edge of the dancing-floor bought a bunch of violets for the
girl with him. A nasty-looking old woman, Desmond decided, as Bessie
approached, with small eyes, dull and lifeless, and thin lips set in a
fixed, unmeaning smile.
She passed him by and stopped at the McKenzie girl’s table. From her
basket rested on the white damask she took a cluster of deep red
carnations and laid them silently, with her eternal smirk, beside the
girl’s plate. No word was exchanged between them; with a grateful smile
at the woman the girl pinned the flowers in the front of her dress and
Bessie passed on.
Desmond waited. Excitement had dulled the edge of his appetite, and he
made a pretext of eating while he narrowly watched the girl. Once or
twice he caught her glancing archly at him from under her heavy black
lashes, and now, as he looked at her, she let her dark eyes rest
invitingly on his.
He beckoned to the waiter.
“Ask the lady in black by the door whether I may offer her a glass of
champagne,” he said.
The man nodded understandingly, and the next moment Desmond was facing
Madeleine McKenzie across the table.
Her complete self-possession was the first thing that struck him, for
she was obviously quite young. She was not coy about the informality of
their meeting, and she received his introductory banalities about the
crowd and the band and the food with an air of amused indifference which
piqued him.
She made him talk about himself, parrying with skill all his efforts to
draw her out. Little by little, so sure and sympathetic was her touch,
Desmond found himself entering into the spirit of his part, talking of
the life of Munich, the Opera, the little _théâtres intimes_, the huge,
noisy _brasseries_.
“You are used to a life of excitement, then?” she said.
It was Desmond’s cue. Swiftly he took it.
“Indeed I am,” he answered. “I’ve been only a few hours in London, and
I’m sick of it already. Does any one ever have a good time here?”
The girl flashed a glance at him from under her long lashes. “If you
know where to look for it,” she said softly.
“I bet you know your way around,” Desmond replied.
She shrugged her shoulders prettily. “My ideas of a good time might not
agree with yours,” she countered.
“What are your ideas of a good time?” he asked.
She sighed. “Gambling!” she answered, “if I could afford it.”
Desmond grew alert on the instant. Was this the secret of Finucane’s
disappearance, cleaned out in a _tripot_ and ashamed to show his face
again?
“Now you’re talking,” he said. He lowered his voice. “Tell me, do you
know where there’s a game?”
She scrutinized his face, turned up to hers. “If I thought you were to
be trusted . . .” she began.
He shrugged his shoulders. “If you think I’m a police spy! However, I
dare say I can find my own way to the roulibouli!”
“Now I’ve offended you,” she said, and laid her hand on his arm. “Are
you really keen?”
“Keen? Gambling’s the only sort of excitement worth while, and I’ve
tried most sorts. The shaded lights, the green cloth, the click of the
ball, the scrape of the rakes—the night should have four and twenty
hours if I had my way!”
“Come closer!” said the girl. “Leave me here and drive to the clock
outside Victoria Station at the entrance to the Vauxhall Bridge Road.
Wait for me there. I mustn’t be seen leaving with you. The police watch
the Hexagon!”
The crucial moment had arrived. Desmond glanced quickly round the room.
There was no sign of Francis or any of the Chief’s men. Well, his orders
were to go through with the adventure. He paid the bill and left the
girl at her table. Half an hour later, as he waited in front of the
clock-tower at Victoria, a taxi drew up and a white hand tapped softly
on the glass.
The girl stopped the cab in front of one of those tall, gloomy houses
that face the river in Grosvenor Road. Behind them, over an arch of
lights, the trams thumped across Vauxhall Bridge; before them, beyond a
wilderness of warehouses and wharves, the glow of South London shone
luridly in the night sky.
The house was dark and, save for the taxi quietly chugging at the door,
the street was deserted. The girl jumped out first and, a latchkey in
her hand, was already at the front door as Desmond alighted. For an
instant he hesitated. What had happened to Francis and the others? Had
the Chief failed him? Should he go on? His orders left him no choice. He
had to play his part and leave the rest to the Chief. He felt in his
jacket pocket for the reassuring chill of his automatic as he turned to
pay the cab.
“How much?” he asked the driver, an apple-cheeked greybeard.
“Something’s gone wrong, Des.,” replied the man in a low voice, the
voice of Francis Okewood. “The Chief’s people were to have followed us.
Back out of this while you can!”
“Psst!”
From the top of the steps the girl was signalling to Desmond to make
haste.
“Have you change for a ten-shilling note?” Desmond said aloud to his
brother, and added in an undertone: “I’m going to see it through. But
get help quickly!”
And with that he followed the girl into the house.
They crossed the hall, a dingy place in which a gas-jet in a
stained-glass lamp burned dimly. The girl stopped at a door at the end
and, producing another key, unlocked it. They entered another lobby,
very spick and span with its white paint and red Wilton pile carpet and
brilliantly lighted. The murmur of voices came from swing-doors that led
off it and the air was heavy with the fragrant aroma of cigars.
At the end of the lobby, with their backs to the entrance door, a man
and a girl stood. The man had his arms about the woman and his face was
buried in the aureole of her golden hair. Desmond heard a sharp
exclamation from Madeleine.
“Paul!” she cried sharply.
The couple sprang apart. Like a fury Madeleine turned on the woman.
“What are you doing with my husband?” she demanded, and advanced
menacingly towards her, her eyes blazing with anger and her thin hands
shaking. “He’s mine, you . . . you painted slut!”
The woman gave a cry of terror and bolted through the door into the
adjacent room. Madeleine would have followed her, but the man stepped
between them and seized the girl by the wrists. He was a big, showy
fellow, in the forties, in evening dress, very well groomed, with sleek
dark hair and a dark moustache.
“Stop that, d’you hear?” he commanded. He spoke with a marked foreign
accent.
Furiously the girl wrenched herself free, “I’m sick of it all!” she
cried. “Sick of being trifled with. Do you understand? Haven’t I lowered
myself to the dirt for you? Haven’t I acted the part of a common
prostitute to help you, and this is all the reward I get? . . .”
The man looked apprehensively at Desmond.
“Come, come,” he said to Madeleine in a voice that was intended to be
persuasive; “don’t make a scene in front of our friend here! It was—ha,
ha—only a joke of mine—to make you jealous, little woman . . .”
“Lies, lies, always lies!” the girl burst in. “But I’m through with you
now. Do you understand? You’re welcome to your Lotties and your Nancys
and your painted French women! I do no more dirty work for you after
this!”
The man bit his moustache. His eyes were very evil. He controlled
himself with an effort.
“Dirty work?” he said. “What a horrid word, Mado! Come, now, take your
cloak off! I’m sure our friend wants a game . . .”
But the girl would not be pacified. “Horrid word, is it? Then what
became of the other I brought here for you?”
The man’s face darkened horribly. “That’s enough. Do you hear?” he
cried, and clapped his hand over the girl’s mouth. But, with a fierce
effort wrenching herself free: “Go, go!” she cried to Desmond. “For the
love of God, get out of this house! If you don’t . . .”
But her voice died away on a stifled scream. Two men in evening dress
had suddenly appeared, and, lifting her bodily up, bore her struggling
away up a stair that curved upward from the end of the hall. Desmond,
springing instinctively forward to her aid, found his way blocked by
Paul. Behind him, in the doorway leading off the vestibule, against a
background of dim green light, sullen and forbidding faces now scowled.
And a burly, thick-set man in a dinner coat, with a broken nose, had
quietly posted himself between Desmond and the door.
“Miss McKenzie,” said Paul suavely, “is subject to these _crises de
nerfs_. I must apologize for the disturbance, Mr. . . . Mr. . . .”
“Murchison!” said Desmond abstractedly.
He was wondering whether he had alarmed himself unnecessarily. It was
not the first time he had been in a London gaming-hell, and the curious
muted hush beneath the green-shaded lamps of the room off the lobby was
as familiar to him as the dim figures he could descry about the table
watching with painful intensity the measured movements of the banker as
he drew the cards from the shoe. Perhaps the scene he had just witnessed
was merely one of the habitual encounters between a bully and his
victims.
Yet the girl’s warning had obviously been sincere. Who was “the other”
of whom she had spoken? Finucane? . . .
“My name is Geyer,” the man Paul was saying. “Felix, take the
gentleman’s coat.”
So saying, with a gesture of odious familiarity, he clapped his arm
about the young man. Before Desmond realized what he was up to, Paul had
drawn from the other’s jacket pocket the automatic pistol.
“You don’t mind?” he said. “It’s a rule of the house!” And he handed it
to the man he had called Felix.
With a sinking heart, for now he knew he had the worst to fear, Desmond
silently followed his mentor through the swing-doors.
An air of expectancy rested over the card-room. The atmosphere was warm
and so thick with the fumes of tobacco that at first Desmond was
conscious only of a sea of white faces turned towards the door. The
throng about the table parted to make way for him as Paul Geyer led him
up to the table.
“A new member of our circle, my friends,” Geyer’s voice trumpeted
triumphantly through the room; “a desperate gambler who loves the green
cloth!”
He stood between Desmond and the table, his hands very white in the pool
of light shed by the low-hung, shaded lamps. He stepped aside.
Desmond found himself facing The Man with the Clubfoot.
Grundt was holding the bank. His great hairy hands were spread out on
the table, one resting on the _sabot_, the other with its knotted
fingers sprawling over swathes of shining playing-cards. His vast torso
was leant back in his chair and his red and fleshy lips drew noisily on
a glowing cigar held securely between his strong, yellow teeth. Beneath
their shaggy, tufted brows his dark eyes flamed defiance, insolence,
triumph; indeed, there was an indescribable air of arrogance about his
whole attitude and demeanour.
Desmond’s first thought was Francis. How long would he be in procuring
assistance? Help could not arrive yet awhile, for it was not half an
hour since they had parted. Was not the immediate question rather how
long could Desmond hold Clubfoot off?
And then, with a sudden thrill of hope, he remembered his disguise.
Grundt would, he knew, murder Desmond Okewood out of hand. But might not
Murchison of Munich gain a brief respite? Yet would the disguise,
summary as it was, stand the test of those keen and terrible eyes that
even now were searching his face?
There was no light in the room, Desmond reflected with satisfaction,
other than the shaded table-lamps; and, for the present, the features of
Murchison, fully described and circulated through the medium of the
Chief’s “double-cross,” were uppermost in Clubfoot’s mind. But—and with
a pang the realization came to Desmond—the voice was the great betrayer.
If he must speak—and he could not remain dumb without arousing
suspicion—disguise his voice as he would, Grundt must inevitably
recognize it.
But now Grundt was addressing him. “Herr Murchison, hein? Es freut mich
sehr! A gambler, was?”
He grunted and puffed meditatively at his cigar. “Gambling is a very
pleasant pursuit,” he continued amiably. Then his voice grew grim: “But
it has its drawbacks, Herr Murchison. The loser pays!”
With an effort he straightened himself up in his chair, shook the ash
from his cigar into a tray, and leaned across the table.
“Who’s been leaking to you?” he demanded.
Herr Murchison’s hands were shaking violently. His pallid features
seemed to be distraught with sheer fright. Through his large goggles he
blinked feebly, idiotically, at his questioner.
“My friend,” said Grundt, placing one black-thatched hand palm downwards
on the green cloth, “your activities in South Germany are inconvenient
to me. With your English gold you have been corrupting my wretched
compatriots, plundered and pillaged by the rapacious French, your
allies . . .” His fingers clawed up a card. “I shall crush your
organization, you and your helpers and your helpers’ helpers . . . like
that!” The gleaming millboard wilted in his powerful grasp. “Where are
your headquarters?” he rapped out, snarling, and added over his
shoulder: “Meinhardt, take a note of his answers!”
Herr Murchison cast a panic-stricken glance round the silent, forbidding
circle of attentive faces.
“Answer me, you dog!” thundered Clubfoot. “I’ve plenty of means at my
disposal to banish coyness! Come on! Out with it! I’m not going to waste
my time tearing it out of you piecemeal! Are you going to make a clean
breast of it? Yes or no!”
Herr Murchison extended two trembling hands. “Give me time!” he murmured
weakly. “I will tell you what I can!”
A light of sudden vigilance appeared in Clubfoot’s eyes. The man’s whole
manner changed on the instant. He seemed to bristle. “Time?” he repeated
as though to himself. “Paul,” he called, “come here!”
Paul Geyer crossed the room and stood behind Grundt’s chair. Clubfoot
whispered something in his ear. Without leaving his place, Geyer gave a
muttered order to a man at his side, who noiselessly left the room.
Grundt took out his watch and laid it on the table before him. “I have
exactly five minutes to spare,” he said. “In that time I propose to turn
you inside out, my friend, or, by God, we’ll see what the old-fashioned
methods of cross-examination will do!”
He moistened his lips with his tongue, like some great beast of prey
licking its chops.
“I’m waiting!” he said.
Shaking in every limb, Herr Murchison opened his lips to speak. “My
headquarters are . . . Munich!” he said in a strained voice.
“Turn your head to the right!” shouted Grundt suddenly. “Turn your head,
I say! Meinhardt, Felix! Thrust him down under the lamp!”
Strong arms forced Herr Murchison brutally forward until his chest
rested on the cloth. His spectacles fell off. The bright light streamed
full in his face.
“Desmond Okewood, bei Gott!” roared Grundt. “You poor fool, did you
think you could hoodwink me? Don’t you know that a man can never
disguise his ears? Himmelkreuzsakrament, you and I have a long account
to settle, and this time”—his voice shook with concentrated fury—“I’m
going to see that it’s paid!”
Then came a hoarse shout from without: “The police!” and the sounds of a
violent scuffle. Immediately the room was a mass of scrambling, jostling
figures. The light went out almost simultaneously . . . at the very
moment that Clubfoot clawed a great automatic from his pocket. In the
clammy, noisy darkness Desmond flung himself across the table straight
at the throat of that sinister gigantic figure facing him.
His opponent struggled fiercely, but the chair impeded him. Desmond hung
on grimly, determined that, this time, his old enemy should not escape
him. Then the light went up and Desmond found himself looking into the
mocking face of Paul Geyer. Two uniformed constables pounced upon him,
and Desmond relaxed his grip.
“I’ll have the law on you,” gasped Geyer, tugging at his torn collar.
“Though I do keep a table, that’s no justification for half murdering
me! Take his name and address, Inspector!”
Touching his cap, the Inspector drew Desmond Okewood aside. “You’ll be
Major Okewood, I’m thinking,” he said. “Your brother has been like a
wild man about you!”
“Where is he?” asked Desmond.
“There’s a passage under the road to a wharf beside the river,” the
Inspector answered. “It connects with the house here by a trap in the
back hall. There’s a lame man escaped that way . . .”
“A lame man?” queried Desmond in dismay.
“Aye! Mr. Okewood went after him with a couple of my chaps!”
He was interrupted by the appearance of Francis himself, breathless and
dishevelled. Only his taximan’s uniform remained to recall his disguise
of the night.
“He’s away!” he gasped, answering his brother’s unspoken question.
“Vanished into the night! The men are beating the place for him, but
those blasted wharves are a regular rabbit warren, and it’s as dark as
be-damned outside. Who’s your fat friend?”
He indicated Geyer, who, violently protesting, was being led away by his
captors.
“When the light went out,” said Desmond, “Clubfoot changed places with
him. He knew this fellow only risked a fine for keeping a gambling-den.
It was my own fault. I over-acted and put the old man on his guard.
Where’s the girl?”
“Disappeared. We’ll get her at Duchess Street, I shouldn’t wonder!”
“What’s the bag here? Do you know?”
Francis made a grimace. “Nothing very great, I’m afraid. Some vague
foreigners and a brace of bruisers. None of Clubfoot’s gang, at any
rate. They must have smelt a rat, for as we were picking the lock a
fellow unexpectedly opened the front door and gave the alarm!”
“I know,” said Desmond. “Clubfoot got suspicious when I asked him to
give me time, and sent this chap out to see if there were any police
around. By the way, what happened to the Chief’s crowd?”
Francis raised his eyes to heaven. “Somebody will be sacrificed for this
night’s work. Their car burst a tyre in Victoria Street and they lost
sight of my taxi. The arrangement was, you see, that they were to follow
the girl and not you. Instead of ringing up headquarters to report, they
went careering all over Belgravia, and when I rang up the Chief on
leaving you they hadn’t turned up. So we simply asked the nearest police
divisional headquarters to raid this place as a gambling-hell. It seemed
the quickest way of getting assistance!”
They were silent for a moment. Then Desmond said: “I must say I should
like to have known how those flower signals were worked.”
“We pinched old Bessie to-night,” his brother replied, “and she spilled
the beans. A confederate, instructed by Grundt, tipped her off the
colour by means of a handkerchief as he stood at the bar—red, blue and
white, or white. As to the meaning of the various colours, I think the
Chief’s diagnosis was correct. Clubfoot apparently had found out that
Finucane was an habitué of the ‘Hex.’ in the old days and laid this plot
to trap him. Poor Finucane! The girl got the signal of red carnations
for him, too!”
A week later a tug off Charing Cross Pier fished up in its screw the
dead body of Finucane, bound hand and foot, with a bullet through the
head. The Hexagon Buffet knew the McKenzie girl no more. Nor did she
ever return to Duchess Street. As an old offender, Paul Geyer was given
a month’s imprisonment for keeping a gaming-house, and, as an alien—he
was Russian-born—recommended for deportation. In respect of the death of
Finucane no charge was brought against him, for want of evidence.
Meanwhile The Man with the Clubfoot remained at large.