Elk 03 The Twister, page 12
From one man on whom he called he heard an extraordinary story. The brother of the chauffeur lived at Greenwich and he had heard that there was a riverside factory which was engaged in manufacturing diamonds by artificial means!
“Which, of course, is punk!” said Tony. “It’s quite possible to make diamonds, but they are so minute that they have no commercial value; and the cost of production entirely puts them out of the competitive field.” Yet he was intrigued…Greenwich!
Guelder lived at Greenwich and, as he had heard, owned a small factory. The man was a scientist, brilliant, by all accounts. Was it then true that Julian was behind the slump? He had no illusions about Julian’s importance; he was a struggler who made an impressive show but was, he knew, without any strong financial backing. Julian lived from hand to mouth; in some years he had made enormous sums of money. In other years—and this was not so widely advertised—had lost even larger sums—but he was without sound or stable foundation. Tony had done his best, by hints and suggestions, to convey this fact to the young man’s uncle, but Frensham suffered from an exaggerated sense of loyalty and had, too, a genuine faith in the ability of the younger man.
Chapter 20.
AT nine o’clock that night, when Tony was debating whether he should go to his club, where he knew he would find one or two men interested in the latest market development, or whether he should return to Ascot, the telephone bell rang. His man did not answer the ring. He was rather inefficient and was sulking under notice to leave. Tony went to the instrument, and after a little while he heard Elk’s voice.
“I’ve been ringing you up in the country—it cost me ninepence. When I say ‘me’ I mean the Government. I want you to come down here.”
“Where are you?” asked Tony.
“At Woolwich.” He gave the address. “And, Mr. Braid, do you think you could bring along the young lady?”
“Lady Ursula Frensham?” asked Tony, in surprise.
“Yes. I want her more than you.”
“What is the idea?”
He was evidently considering how he should reply. “It’s a matter of identification. A coat that’s been found. I wouldn’t trouble you, but it’s rather important.”
“But how on earth can she identify a coat?”
“I’ll tell you when you come. The local inspector got on to Reef, but happily for all concerned he was out. Will you bring her down?”
“Certainly, if it’s necessary, and if I can get her.”
“And, Mr. Braid, it’s raining down here, so don’t come in your convertible. I’m hoping you’ll be able to give me a lift back to Town, and I hate the cold. If you’d bring the Rolls—that big red one—I’d be obliged. You used to keep a silver cigar-box under the seat?”
“I will bring the Rolls and the cigar-box—and I will see that the cigar-box is filled, you old mendicant!”
“How’s that, Mr. Braid?” asked Elk’s anxious voice. “Mendisomething? Oh, I get you! The Coronas—if they’re too big to go in the box you might put ‘em in the boot.”
As soon as he had rung off, Tony got on to Ursula and told her what had happened. “Why he wants you, heaven knows, but he’s very serious about it. Do you feel like taking a flight into the wilds of Woolwich?”
“I’d love it,” she said. “I’ll come down in my car—”
“I’ll come up in mine,” said Tony. “Elk particularly asked for the Rolls.”
She was waiting for him when he arrived. The rain at Woolwich had reached the west of London by the time he had picked her up, and most of the way they drove through a blinding storm which reached its zenith by the time they reached Blackheath.
She had not seen him since Guelder’s call, and she was able to give him a full account of what had passed. To her surprise, Tony did not scoff at the story which the Dutchman had put forward.
“That sort of thing, the exchanging of shares, must have been going on all the time,” he said. “I’m afraid that your father was the most unbusinesslike man that ever undertook to run a company! If it came to law, we might have a very big difficulty in proving that your two hundred thousand shares do not belong to somebody else! The transfer books were vilely kept; and to my knowledge big bunches of stock were still in Reef’s name. As a matter of fact, I am responsible for this demand. I found a number of shares hadn’t been duly transferred and sent the papers to Julian. From this the great scheme must have been born.”
“It terrifies me, Tony…no, no, not Julian. I feel so contemptuous of him that he somehow doesn’t count, it’s Guelder! I can’t describe to you how vile he is—it’s not his words or actions; it’s his eyes.”
He felt her shiver, sought and found her hand in the dark. “Greenwich will be in mourning for Guelder if he comes to see you again,” he said. “I think I’ll have a little private talk with him.”
“It’s stupid of me,” she protested. “You have met men like Guelder before.”
He had to open the window that separated them from the chauffeur and give him the direction when they reached Woolwich, for although Elk had been explicit in his directions, it was some little time before they passed into the silent street where the warehouse was situated.
Elk, sheltered from the rain, was waiting in the doorway by the side of a policeman in shining oilskins.
“Sorry to bring you down here, Lady Ursula, especially on a low receiving case. Has that bargeman arrived?” He addressed the question to somebody invisible in the darkness, and a voice answered in the affirmative. “This way, Lady Ursula—mind the step.”
He flashed a light before them and they passed down a short passage which smelt damp and unpleasant. At the end of the passage was a door, which he opened. Ursula found herself in a room illuminated by a very dim light hanging from the raftered ceiling and affording just enough light to reveal the hopeless confusion of the place. There were shelves and racks covered with shadowy packages; huge canvas covered bales littered the floor. Even the dusky rafters were hung with shapeless bundles.
“Mind how you walk.” Elk took her arm and guided her between the impedimenta into a small office at the farther end of the room. Here the lighting was more adequate. An old roll-top desk, a table and a chair comprised the furniture. There was a year-old calendar hanging on the wall, attached to which were a few dusty shelves covered with torn papers and ancient office books. On the table was spread a dark overcoat; and Tony knew that it was the garment which had brought them to Woolwich.
“I’m not going to tell you a long yarn about this man Weldin,” said Elk. “Anyway, it’s not my story, but Inspector Frame’s.” He nodded to the tall, good-looking man who had followed them into the office. “Frame’s in charge of the case. Now this is the tale I’m going to tell you. We found the coat—or rather the inspector did—amongst others, and we searched it to see if there was any chance of finding the owner. We found the owner first pop: his name is written on the inside of the pocket by the tailor, and he is a mutual friend of ours.”
“I think I know who it is,” said Tony.
“We’ll come to that,” said Elk. “We put an inquiry through to the gentleman—”
“Julian Reef?”
“Mr. Julian Reef. He wasn’t in. Then we found that the coat had been honestly bought by Weldin and sold by the honest seaman outside. There was a record of it in Weldin’s books. Now bring in that bargeman.”
Inspector Frame disappeared and came back accompanied by a tall, thickset man with a weather-beaten face and a mop of grey hair, who seemed a little terrified by the sense that in some vague way he was associated with wrong-doing.
“Now what’s your yarn, mister?” asked Elk.
“What I told you before, sir,” said the bargeman, in a deep, gruff voice. “A week or so ago I was coming down the river at the tiller of my barge. She was empty—Polly Ann her name is—having been up to Kingston to take a cargo of bricks. We were being towed down the river by a tug arid I was at the helm, half asleep I’ll admit, because I’d only had four hours’ sleep the night before. The tug-master sounded his siren just before we went under Westminster Bridge—I think there was a boat in the way—and that woke me up, though I could have slept without any danger, because we were lashed to another barge. We passed under the bridge and just as we were clear, something fell over my head. It gave me a rare start. I thought my mate was having a lark with me. When I pulled it off there was nobody in sight except the man at the tiller of the other barge, and I decided that somebody must have dropped it from Westminster Bridge. It was that coat. I didn’t know what to do with it; I’m too big a man to wear a thing like that, so after keeping it in my cabin for a trip I sold it to Zonnerheim’s in Artillery Street—”
“That’s another name for Weldin. He had lots of collecting places;” explained Elk to Tony. And then, to the bargeman: “Thank you, Mr. What’s-your-name. The police accept your story. Mr. Frame has got your address if he wants you.”
The man seemed very thankful to be released from his embarrassing obligation.
“It’s a very interesting story,” said Tony; “but I don’t quite see why you brought us down, Elk. I’m not in a position to identify Julian Reef’s clothing, and I’m perfectly certain that Lady Ursula isn’t.”
But apparently she was. “Yes, I know the coat. I’ve seen Julian wearing it,” she said and picked it up.
It was of dark-blue serge, very light of weight and the lining was of silk; it was, to Tony’s experienced eye, almost new.
“Show ‘em the paper, Frame,” said Elk.
Inspector Frame took a sheet of thin paper from his pocket and spread it out on the table. It had evidently been badly crumpled; rolled into a ball, Tony guessed. There was a line and a half of writing.
“Read it,” said Elk; and, bending over, Tony read: ‘For years I have been engaged in foolish speculation. I confess…’
Tony frowned. The words seemed familiar. “Well?” said Elk, watching his face.
“May I see it?” asked Ursula.
Elk handed the paper to her; and Anthony saw her mouth open in amazement. “Why, this is the—” She did not finish what she had to say, but looked from one to the other in amazement.
“That’s right,” nodded Elk.
“It is what Father wrote before—before—”
Then in a flash Tony remembered. The words were identical with those which had been found by the side of Frensham’s dead body.
“Do you recognize the handwriting, Lady Ursula?” She was silent. Too well she knew that writing. “Do you recognize it?”
Her lips trembled. “I don’t know…I shouldn’t like to say. What does it mean? Will you tell me just what depends upon my identifying this writing?”
“Not much,” said Elk, to her infinite relief. “There are scores of other people who could recognize it. Do you know it, Mr. Braid?”
Tony read it again. “Yes,” he said—quietly. “It is Julian Reef’s.”
Again Elk nodded. “That’s what I thought. Queer, the first lines of the confession…same words as Frensham wrote, but in a different hand. What do you make of that, Mr. Braid?”
Tony shook his head. “I can make nothing of it,” he said. “It is staggering.”
“It doesn’t stagger me any,” said Elk. He took the paper, folded it and put it in his pocket. “I’ll keep this for the Yard. We’re very fond of curios there…Exhibit A. I’ll give you a receipt for it, Inspector. It doesn’t really belong to this case, but to another. And I’ll keep the coat, which is pretty important. I want a sheet of paper to wrap it.”
Elk sat by the chauffeur on the way back to town; the open glass partition brought him into the party, he said.
“Life’s full of coincidences,” he mused, puffing luxuriously at the long, cigar which he had accepted as his due. “If you put these things in a book, nobody would believe ‘em. The Weldin case is a big one, but it’s got nothing to do with the late Lord Frensham; and here we’ve picked up a fact that has got a lot to do with him. Here’s a bargee sitting at home in the bosom of his family and telling his fat wife—I’ll bet she’s fat—of the awful time the police have been giving him about an old coat. If he hadn’t been at Kingston delivering bricks, that coat wouldn’t have been in this car.”
“What does it signify…the coat and this paper? I—I don’t understand it.”
Elk was uncommunicative.
“Everything means something,” he said tritely. And, to Tony: “You don’t mind going back through Greenwich? It’s not the best road by a long chalk, but I’ve got an idea. How would you like to be a detective, Lady Ursula?”
“I should hate it,” she said frankly.
The reply afforded Mr. Elk a great deal of amusement, and he chuckled for a long time.
“Would you like to be one tonight? I thought of just giving the once—over to that Dutchman’s family mansion.”
“Does he live at Greenwich?” she asked.
“He does, and Greenwich is a very nice place,” said Elk, surprisingly. “I was born there. I was the only man ever born in Greenwich, as far as I know. At least, I’ve never met anybody else.”
Every now and again he gave a new instruction to the driver. They had left the main road and were threading a way through a labyrinth of small streets and always bearing to the right.
“That’s the river.” Elk pointed between two tall buildings.
Somewhere in the rain a red light glowed.
“Ship,” said Elk, briefly. “He’s anchoring there, waiting for the tide. They’ve got to be careful of the top of Millwall Tunnel.”
Now they were taking rather a wide detour and were back in the main road again. Tony wondered why the detective had: left him, but Elk offered no explanation. He did those kinds of senseless things which had not only apparently but absolutely no reason. He was intensely curious, he confessed, and liked visiting familiar places. Later, Tony learnt that the detective had deviated for purely sentimental reasons—he wished to pass the house in which he was born and which he had not seen for thirty-five years.
Chapter 21.
THEY left behind the great grey palace, where kings had died, and again plunged into a wilderness of little streets, until they came to a crooked and deserted thoroughfare, so narrow that two cars would have found it difficult to pass.
“We’ll stop here,” said Elk. “The other chauffeurs will think we’re one of the gang.”
Tony leaned forward and peered through the rain-blurred windscreen. There were undoubtedly other cars in the street big ones, judging by the headlights.
“Guelder’s giving a party,” suggested Elk. “Do you mind waiting here?” He got out of the car and disappeared into the night.
“I think that is the house and the factory on the right,” said Tony, letting down a window.
Ursula looked and shivered. “Horrible, isn’t it? There’s a menace about this place which makes me go cold. It’s so sinister, so macabre. Why on earth does he live here?”
“Because he’s sinister and macabre,” said Tony.
She thought he was going to get out and clutched his arm. “Don’t leave me, please. Look at that little doorway…like some horrible old prison. There are no windows and that street lamp on a wall bracket is like something out of a picture of Old London. Ugh!”
“I have no doubt it has a beauty in Guelder’s eyes,” said Tony. “In fact, it’s rather picturesque by daylight.”
Tony had seen some figures moving in the light of a street lamp and he put his head out of the car window. They were chauffeurs, as the keen-eyed Elk had seen. He spoke to his own chauffeur in a low tone and the man got out and drifted away. “I want to know who these visitors are,” he said. “There is a certain freemasonry among car-drivers, and I dare say he’ll be more informative than Elk.”
It was the detective who returned first. “Can’t quite make it out,” he said. “This fellow Guelder’s giving some sort of lecture to the alight—elite, is it? Where’s your chauffeur?”
“I sent him to find, out who these car-owners were.”
“Good!” said Elk. “I didn’t want to ask, but these fellows are talkative. There are some big people in Greenwich tonight—I saw two big cars in the street, besides ours.”
The chauffeur returned soon afterwards and was very informative. “Mostly gentlemen from the City,” he reported. “One is Mr. Sleser—they say he’s a millionaire—”
“Sleser?” said Tony quickly, and remembered his bearded friend’s suggestion. “Who else?”
The chauffeur told him two names which were familiar to him, but men who operated indiscriminately in all markets; they were the supreme gamblers of the City and were prepared to take a flutter in mines or provisions or rubber, as opportunity arose.
“Did they ask you who you were?” demanded Tony, and the chauffeur grinned.
“I said I was a hired car that had brought a gentleman from Grosvenor Place,” he said, and was commended for his unveracity.
The car had to be backed from the narrow street. Not until they had struck the brightly illuminated main road did Ursula breathe freely.
“I was terrified,” she said. “Isn’t that childish of me? And I’m not usually like that, Tony. Why did these important people come in their cars to Guelder’s house?”
“I’d give a lot to know. You didn’t by any chance find your way into Guelder’s place, did you, Elk?”
Elk had not, though he had tried. “I knocked at the door, and an old lady came—must have been about a hundred years old: possibly more; and she couldn’t speak English. I know six sentences in French and I tried ‘em all, but she’s German, I guess—or Dutch. The door was on the chain, too, all the time she was talking. There was a nice smell of cooking: I guess they’re stopping to supper. It was pretty tough on me, the only genuine starving man in London. If you ask me to supper after that, Mr. Braid, I’ll never forgive myself. I’m always giving people the impression that I’m a moocher and I’m the most generous man in the world. I’ve given more folks away than anybody I know. But if you did ask me to supper—and I’d die of shame if you as much as mentioned it—what’s the matter with Kirro’s? You needn’t dress if you feed on the balcony, and you can get a drink up till one.”
