Collected works of j s f.., p.174
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 174
Leaving the taxi-cab at the entrance to Frascati’s, Wirlescombe led his companion a few yards along Oxford Street, and turning up Rathbone Place, steered him into a district which looked as if nothing short of a general conflagration would redeem it from dirt, disorder, and dilapidation. To Graye, its principal features seemed to be cheap gin-shops, swarms of more or less unhealthy and miserable children, groups of slatternly women, and slouching men and youths who supported life and themselves on the street-posts or at the most convenient corners. There was a fine flavour of dirt, of stale liquor, and of oleaginous fish about the place, and the detective sniffed.
“This is your beautiful London!” he said ironically. “This is the same town in which Park Lane and Mayfair are to be found. But nobody of any consequence ever strays into these recesses, so it doesn’t matter. It only matters to the people who’ve got to live in them. And I don’t know that it matters such an awful lot to them — they’re born to it, most of ’em. Nice hole, isn’t it, Mr. Graye? And here’s Turnpike Passage — old clothes, fried fish, fruit stalls, and the usual places where you get bad ale and fiery gin. There’s Shipps’s establishment. If I were a betting man I’d lay you ten to one that Shipps is a Jew.”
“And you’d have won,” murmured Graye as they entered a shop, of which the doorway was literally festooned with cast-off garments of all sorts and conditions, and encountered a little man of decidedly Hebraic cast of countenance, whose head was ornamented by an elaborately-embroidered but very greasy smoking-cap. “He is — if I know anything of physiognomy.”
Wirlescombe produced Mr. Shipps’s card and held it out to him in silence. Mr. Shipps started, smiled, and began to rub his hands.
“Ma tear thir!” he exclaimed. “You are from the Yard — yeth? Mithter Wirlethcombe — yeth? I called there. I alwaythe like to help the polithe if it ith in my way to do tho. The young gentleman, now?”
“The young gentleman is with me,” said Wirlescombe. “What is it?”
Mr. Shipps rubbed his hands and smiled benignantly but slyly upon his principal visitor.
“What thall I get, ma tear thir?” he said, cajolingly. “What thall I get if I tell you thomething?”
CHAPTER XI
FOR THREE HALF-CROWNS
WIRLESCOMBE, WITH A scarcely perceptible glance at his companion, tapped Mr. Shipps on the shoulder and pointed to an inner door at the back of the shop.
“I see you’ve got a quiet little place in there,” he said. “Let’s step in and talk quietly.”
Mr. Shipps moved aside with alacrity.
“By all meanths, ma tear thir!” he said. “With plethure. Motheth,” he added to a curly-headed youth who had been engaged in some remote recess since the visitors’ entrance. “Mind the thop, Motheth, and don’t do any bithneth without conthulthing me. Now, gentlemen!”
Mr. Shipps opened the door which the detective had indicated and ushered his visitors into a small apartment which immediately communicated a mingled odour of strong waters and equally powerful cigars. It was crowded from floor to ceiling with odds and ends of everything imaginable, and Wirlescombe at once formed the opinion that while Mr. Shipps’s ostensible trade was the purchasing and selling of cast-off, second-hand, and misfit clothing, he also did another trade in buying and disposing of any likely thing that came his way, even to books, pictures and musical instruments, not to speak of silver and electro-plate. There was, indeed, scarcely room to move, and, at first sight, nowhere to sit down, but Mr. on Shipps hastily removed various articles from a decrepit sofa which stood in a corner and waved his visitors towards it as if he had been a Sultan and they Imperial ambassadors.
“You’ll thmoke a thigar and take a little thomething, gentlemen?” said Mr. Shipps, hospitably and ingratiatingly, as he trotted into another crowded corner and opened a cupboard. “I can give you a drop of the finetht Hollandth gin that ever came into the country, and you’ll find thothe thigarth of the very firtht quality. There are thingth to be found even in Turnpike Pathage, you thee, Mithter Wirlethcombe, eh?”
“Trust you for that,” answered Wirlescombe, giving Graye a look which signified that he was to accept the old Jew’s hospitality. “Gentlemen like you generally have a drop of good spirits and a well-kept cigar somewhere about.”
“Hee — hee — hee!” tittered Mr. Shipps as he set glasses and water and a dusky-looking bottle on the table. “Well, you thee, ma tear thir, it’h all the amuthement one geth in a monotonoth life, eh? Now, you couldn’t buy Hollandth like thith, Mithter Wirlethcombe, and you couldn’t, young gentleman, becauthe you wouldn’t know where to get it, you know. It’h like milk, I athure you. Your very good health, Mithter Wirlethcombe, and yourth, young gentleman.”
Graye observed with astonishment that the glasses which the old Jew took out of his cupboard were of the very finest crystal and exquisitely shaped. He was further astonished to see that the cigars which he produced were of a noted and most expensive brand, and were all wrapped in foil and packed in tea. The old Jew, who had sipped at his spirits and lighted a cigar himself, noted the look in the lad’s eyes, and leaning back in the crazy old armchair, into which he had dropped, chuckled with satisfaction.
“Ah! young gentleman, you won’t get a thigar like that every day!” he said. “Thmoke it thlowly — thmoke it thlowly! You’re the young gentleman that wath in the flat that night when the poor gentleman wath put away, aren’t you! Oh, yeth! I concluded tho.”
Graye glanced at the detective. Wirlescombe answered for him.
“Yes, this is the young gentleman,” he said. “Now, then, what did you want to see me about, Mr. Shipps?”
Mr. Shipps rubbed his hands on the shiny knees of his trousers.
“And a very unpleathant thing it mutht have been to wake up in the morning and find the old man with a knife thtuck into him,” he remarked, ruminatively, still regarding Graye. “Oh, very unpleathant! Ah! And,” — he turned his attention to Wirlescombe, bending forward and dropping his voice. “And what about the reward, ma tear thir? “What about the little reward?”
“There isn’t any reward,” answered the detective. “No reward’s offered.”
Mr. Shipps lifted his hands.
“No reward! Oh, ma tear Mithter Wirlethcombe, what a mithtake!” he said. “No reward for gentleman what have thomething to tell. Oh, dear me, you can’t expect to do no bithneth on terms like thothe, Mithter Wirlethcombe! It’h unnautural. ‘Tithn’t bithneth. Everything hath it’h value in thith world, Mithter Wirlethcombe, don’t it?”
“I never said it hadn’t,” replied Wirlescombe. “I only said that so far there’s no reward offered in this affair.”
Mr. Shipps leaned still further forward and laid a daw-like hand on the detective’s knee. His eye glittered.
“But thereth going to be, ma tear Mithter Wirlethcombe!” he said. “Thereth going to be, of courth, ithn’t there! Oh, it wouldn’t be proper, Mithter Wirlethcombe, if there wathn’t a reward. Never heard of such a thing in ma life!”
Wirlescombe stared the old Jew in the face for a full minute before he spoke.
“Look here, Mr. Shipps,” he said. “Let’s get to business. There’s no reward offered. Officially, there isn’t likely to be a reward offered. But, unofficially, it might be well worth the while of anybody who knows anything to tell what they know. I gather that you’ve been reading the newspapers!”
“I have read the newthpapers. Altho the two dethcriptionth of the girl and the man,” answered Mr. Shipps. “It wath a great mithtake not to put five hundred poundth reward on top of thothe dethcriptionth, Mithter Wirlethcombe — oh, a great mithtake!”
“We’re talking business,” said the detective. “You know something!”
Mr. Shipps inclined his head and took another sip at his glass.
“Is it about the missing man or the missing girl!” asked Wirlescombe.
Mr. Shipps bent forward again and lowered his voice.
“The mithing girl!”
Wirlescombe felt Graye start. He gave him a slight nudge. Once more he gave the old Jew a steady stare.
“You’re sure of it!” he asked.
“As thure ath one can be thure of anything,” answered Mr. Shipps. “Yeth — I’m thure of it. the will you be, Mithter Wirlethcombe, if you like to find out what it ith that I’m thure about.”
“Aye, of course!” said Wirlescombe. “That means you want paying for what you can tell?”
Mr. Shipps rubbed his knees and chuckled.
“Everything hath ith value, ma tear thir,” he observed. Wirlescombe looked at Graye. His look said plainly enough, “Shall I bargain, on your behalf, with this old money-grabber?” And Graye, with a single glance, answered just as plainly, “Yes.”
The detective took two or three meditative pulls at his cigar before he spoke. Then he gave Mr. Shipps a glance full of meaning.
“I’m not going to buy a pig in a poke,” he said.
Mr. Shipps spread out his hands deprecatingly.
“Ma tear Mithter Wirlethcombe!” he exclaimed. “That would not be bithneth!”
“It might be from your point,” said Wirlescombe imperturbably. “It certainly wouldn’t from mine. Now then, this young gentleman, Mr Adrian Graye — you’ve seen his name in the newspapers, so it’s no use concealing it here — is anxious that this young woman, Gemma Graffi, should be found. Can you give us any clue to anything about her? Can you tell us anything that might put us on her track?”
Mr. Shipps nodded solemnly three times.
“I can!”
“Go ahead, then!” said the detective. “What is it?” Mr. Shipps smiled. The smile began somewhere underneath his beard and moustache and gradually opened up his face to his eyes and forehead — even his smoking-cap seemed to wrinkle with it.
“The termth, ma tear Mithter Wirlethcombe,” he said, with tender inflexion. “The termth? — Bithneth — ith bithneth.”
Wirlescombe growled.
“There’s no doing anything with men like you unless you get some money in hand!” he said. “Now, then, look here. I happen to know that Mr. Graye is sufficiently well-off to give you what I shall call a handsome reward if you tell us anything that will lead to the finding of Gemma Graffi. You know me, or you know of me. Ill guarantee that you’re paid. Now, then, five pounds down on the spot, and forty-five more when the girl’s found!”
Mr. Shipps smile gave place to a stare of blank amazement. He lifted both hands.
“Oh, ma tear Mithter Wirlethcombe — impothible! I couldn’t think of it!” he exclaimed. “What of my valuable time, ma tear thir? I come down to the Yard at the bithietht part of the day!”
Wirlescombe stirred impatiently and growled again.
“How much?” he demanded. “What do you want!”
“Twenty-five pound down, and another hundred when the girl ith found,” answered Mr. Shipps promptly.
Wirlescombe looked at his companion. Graye plunged a hand into his breast-pocket and drew out a chequebook.
“All right, Wirlescombe,” he said. “Ill write a cheque. Let’s hear what it is he has to tell us.”
“Stop a bit,” said Wirlescombe, as the old Jew hastily produced writing materials.
“We’ll have all that down in black and white. Ill write the terms out myself — give me a sheet of paper, Mr. Shipps.”
Mr. Shipps carefully read over what the detective wrote. He watched Graye sign it. He took up a pen to append his own signature, but paused before he put pen to paper.
“Underthand, Mithter Wirlethcombe,” he said. “Underthand. I take no rethponthibility for the actual finding of thith girl. All I do ith to put you on thomething that will thet you on her track — you mutht do the actual finding yourthelveth, you know, in your own vay.”
“All right,” said Wirlescombe, motioning the Jew to sign. “Set us on the track — that’s all we want.”
Mr. Shipps scrawled his signature beneath Graye’s. Graye wrote out his cheque and passed it over. Mr. Shipps, putting on a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, inspected it with great deliberation, folded it in three with equal deliberation, and drawing out a large and greasy-looking pocket-book, solemnly bestowed it within one of its compartments.
“Now then — out with it,” said Wirlescombe.
Mr. Shipps rose. He went over to a chest of drawers in the rear of his crowded room. He opened a drawer; he brought out a cardboard box, of the sort used by milliners to send home their customers’ gowns. He set the box on the table; he took off the lid; took off certain pieces of paper which concealed something that lay inside. He took the something out — held it up.
A girl’s tailor-made coat and skirt of dark-blue serge.
Graye uttered a sharp exclamation. Wirlescombe felt him jump.
“By God!” he said. “These are the things Miss Graffi wore that night! As sure as we’re here, Wirlescombe, they are!”
“Wait!” said Wirlescombe. “Wait!”
Mr. Shipps was running his claw-like fingers over the material. He chuckled.
“Ah!” he said, “for three half-crownth I bought thith little matter at eleven o’clock on the fifth of November from a woman who came into the shop there and offer it to me. Three half-crownth! — a good bargain, Mithter Wirlethcombe, eh? It ith, you thee, nearly new, thith tailor-made coat and thkirt. All I think of at the time ith that I make a good bargain, eh? I put it away in thith box, and prethently think no more about it. Then at night I thee your dethcription of Mith Graffi — ah, ah, I think, a blue coat and thkirt — I will have a look at vhat I buy in the morning. Then I look, and — thee here!”
Mr. Shipps adroitly turned the skirt inside out; turned its pockets inside out, too. There, inside the pocket, was a little white linen work ticket, “No. 1341. Miss G. Graffi, Austerlitz Mansions, W. John George, Ladies’ Tailor, 5,500 Edgware Road, W.”
“Now, gentlemen,” said Mr. Shipps.
Wirlescombe had drawn out a note-book.
“Describe the woman,” he said, curtly.
“Middle-aged Italian woman — dark eyeth and hair, stout build. Thaid the cothtume had belonged to her dead daughter, and she couldn’t bear to see it about,” answered Mr. Shipps. “Perfect thranger to me, of courthe.”
“I’ll take that away with me,” said Wirlescombe. “Pack it up.”
“But — my three half-crownth?” said Mr. Shipps.
Graye with an exclamation of disgust, flung a sovereign on the table. A moment later he and the detective were outside the shop. And Wirlescombe shook his head.
“A middle-aged Italian woman — dark — short!” he groaned. “Lord, there are hundreds of ’em!”
Leaving the detective to return to New Scotland Yard Adrian Graye went slowly away to meet his friend, Herbert, at his rooms in Gower Street. The interview with Mr. Shipps had made him feel more than unusually moody and taciturn. Herbert, on his arrival, could get little more out of him than a bare account of his doings with Wirlescombe during the afternoon. He looked at Graye narrowly as the younger student lay back in an easy-chair, sucking at the stem of a big pipe, which he had filled with tobacco and then forgotten to light.
“I tell you what it is, Adrian,” he said. “And you’d better face the fact and have done with it. You’re in love with that girl.”
Graye flushed and made an impatient movement.
“Don’t talk rot!” he said testily. “Can’t a fellow be, interested in a girl’s fate without being in love with her! If you’d met her you’d be anxious to know what’s happened to her.” —
“Well, and what do you think has happened to her?” I asked Herbert quietly.
Graye frowned and shook his head.
“I’m sure there’s been foul play.” he answered. “How did that woman who sold her clothes to old Shipps get hold of them? Bobbed her, of course. May have murdered her. Some of those foreigners would kill their grandmothers for five shillings.”
But Herbert shook his head in his turn.
“No!” he said. “I don’t believe Gemma Graffi is murdered or even in distress. I should say that if we could only get at the real truths Gemma is safely away from England. And I don’t believe that she either killed her grandfather, or ever even knew that he was killed when she went — if he was killed then. I don’t believe that the old man’s murder had anything whatever to do with the girl’s flight.”
Graye stared at his friend in surprise that was not unmixed with a certain cynical scorn.
“Oh, you don’t, don’t you?” he said. “And pray what do you think? It’s an ingenious theory, no doubt.”
“I think,” answered Herbert quietly. “I think that after you’d all got to your own rooms that night Miss Gemma suddenly took it into her head to run away, and that she did run away there and then. I think that old Graffi was murdered after she left.”
“And by whom?” demanded Graye.
“Possibly by the man you met; possibly by an accomplice of his,” replied Herbert. “Remember, the man had keys which admitted to the building and to Graffi’s flat. Probably this man and his associates had a reason for getting rid of the old man, and got rid of him. But I do not think that had anything to do with the flight of the girl.”
Graye looked doubtful.
“What about her clothes, then?” he said.
“That’s just what makes me think as I do,” answered Herbert. “She had somewhere to go and she there doubtless disguised herself. The woman who sold the costume to your second-hand clothes dealer — what do you call him? — Shipps? — was probably the provider of the disguise. Eh?”
Graye growled decided dissent.
“From what I heard and saw,” he muttered, “the girl scarcely knew London, or anybody in it. And how could she escape on that particular night, when there was such a thick fog? No — I say there’s been foul play!”
