With intent to deceive, p.17
With Intent to Deceive, page 17
“Tell me.”
James was definitely not of those who have a supply of stories ready on tap. He floundered mentally, and his dancing deteriorated.
“Better mind what you’re doing,” said his partner severely. “Never mind the story, you can tell me that later.”
Hyde rested, with a sigh of relief, while Adam gave an exhibition of how the tango should be danced. Half an hour or so passed, till at last the glass doors were pushed open and three men came in. There was a small bar near the entrance, little more than a serving hatch; the men sat on stools in front of it and the manager in person rushed to attend to them. A sort of awed hush fell upon the assembly, and a few people gathered up coats and handbags and left.
Adam caught a passing waiter. “Who are those men, do you know?”
“They say,” said the waiter, “that the tall one is Chief-Inspector Bagshott from Scotland Yard, and the younger man nearest the door is Detective-Inspector Ennis. I don’t know who the third man is. Nor what they’ve come for,” he added in a worried voice, and passed on his way.
“Bagshott,” said Adam in Hyde’s ear, “is the man I spoke to on the telephone.”
“The third man can’t be a policeman,” said Hyde. “He’s not tall enough. See him looking round? He doesn’t look as though he’d miss much, does he?”
At that moment a man came up to a girl who was just in front of Hyde and said, “Do you see that fellow who’s just come in? Not the tall one, the short broad-shouldered one with fair hair. That’s Tommy Hambledon.”
“Tommy Hambledon?” said the girl. “Who’s he?”
“British Intelligence,” said the man in an awed voice. “What the devil brings him here? If I had a pain in my conscience, I’d flee, by gosh I would.”
“The others are Scotland Yard men, I heard somebody say so,” said the girl. “Something’s very much up, I wonder what. Scotland Yard’s bad enough, but Thomas Elphinstone Hambledon! Phew!”
Hyde and Adam glanced casually at each other and went on sitting still. In Hyde’s case this was a matter of necessity; he felt that if he stood up his legs would not support him.
“Are these cocktails unusually strong?” he asked after a few minutes.
“Not more so than usual,” said Adam. “They aren’t a teetotal drink. Why?” “I feel rather as though they were affecting my legs,” said James. “I have a sense of noncooperation. Do you think it’s the cocktails?”
“It might be,” said Adam, and laughed. “Wait a bit, perhaps the effect will pass off.”
Hambledon and the two Special Branch men at the bar finished their drinks and went out; James stretched out his legs in front of him and looked at them with curiosity.
“I feel better now,” he said simply, and again Adam laughed.
“You aren’t the only one,” he said. “Notice how the place is cheering up?”
“Laughter and babble break out afresh,” said James. “Very gay, very enlivening. Do you think we might go home soon without causing remark? I think I’m tired.”
When they reached the hotel Hyde sank with a sigh of relief into his favorite chair, the same which had treasure hidden between the springs. He smiled rather sheepishly at Adam and said that it was nice to be home again.
“Yes, sir. I trust the evening’s entertainment came up to your expectation?” “Oh, can it, Adam. Dear me, where did I pick up that phrase? Do you suppose that fellow whom I hit will die?”
“No loss if he does; it will save the cost of trial and execution. You might apply for a rebate of your income tax on the ground of having effected a saving in public expenditure.”
“But weren’t the C.I.D. looking for whoever did it? By the way, what about that ruler?”
“I wiped it clean and put it back on the table. As for the C.I.D., I hope they will think that one of Jacaro’s pals did it and left him there to take the blame for Race’s murder. I admit that I spoke on the telephone with just that trace of a foreign accent which I thought artistically correct. It might help.”
“Anyway,” said Hyde, “they’ve got Jacaro, alive or dead. One more missing from the clan Gatello. What happens next?”
“I think,” said Adam slowly, “that Race’s murder is a nuisance, in a way. Scotland Yard is now in full cry after the Gatello gang, and if we want to poke our noses in, too, we shall have to be careful. And quick.”
“I can’t think why Gatello shot him. Surely it was a very stupid thing to do?” “Gatello gets into blind rages. Besides, Race knew too much. They meant to dispose of you too, of course, after you’d told them where the money was.
Then they’d collect the money and return to the Argentine. Quite simple.” “But two bodies,” objected Hyde.
“Oh, they’d leave them in the flat. They must have paid three months’ rent in advance or they wouldn’t have got it, and it was nobody’s business to go up there.”
James turned rather green.
“I expect Race was tiresome,” continued Adam, “so Gatello shot him. Then they came to look for you and you weren’t there; so disconcerting. They cleared out, bag and baggage, and left one man outside somewhere to keep watch on the place. If the police hadn’t arrived they would have returned later and collected Jacaro.”
“If you hadn’t rung up the police,” said Hyde, “the scheme would probably have worked.”
“Yes. By the way, I was giving you another five minutes and then coming up to look for you. I didn’t want to if it could be avoided, because it would almost certainly have meant a shooting match, and then the Metropolitan Police would have been looking for me instead of for the Gatello gang. The thought alarms me. Your way out was much better.”
James glowed with pride but only said: “I merely saw a chance, and took it.”
“That’s all anyone ever does. What I was going to say was this. If we’re going on with this, we’d better act quickly, or the police will bag the birds first.”
Hyde sat up. “ ‘If we’re going on with this’? What d’you mean?”
“Actually, the job’s done, isn’t it? Mr. Selkirk’s idea was to let them get into mischief and destroy themselves, wasn’t it? They’ve done it now. They’ve murdered Race, and your evidence will hang them. I don’t know whether the C.I.D. can prove they murdered Mr. Selkirk, too, but it doesn’t really matter; they can only be hung once. A line to the police telling them where the Gatello gang are to be found, and that will be that.”
“I see,” said James, and leaned back in his chair. “Have we got any coffee readily available, Adam, without too much trouble?”
“Of course,” said Adam, and turned to the door. “I’ll get some at once.” “I want to think this over,” murmured Hyde.
Chapter Fifteen. The Anxious Butterfly
When Hambledon and Bagshott came to the flat above the Red Macaw, the police inspector who had greeted them at the entrance led them first into the small room on the right which now contained, in addition to a table, a chair, and a telephone, one unconscious man. He was lying upon the floor with a cushion under his head; the inspector said that they had found him in a heap across the doorway and that they had straightened him out in the course of examination. He had been hit on the head.
“Doctor here yet?” asked Bagshott.
“Not yet, sir. He’ll be here in a moment, I expect.”
“This fellow doesn’t look too bad to me,” said the chief-inspector. “Watch him carefully if he shows signs of coming round, he may be dangerous.”
“This gun was under him, sir, when we turned him over,” said the inspector, and indicated a large revolver lying on the table.
“What a cannon,” said Hambledon. “Where’s the other man?”
“In the room at the end of the passage.”
“Don’t leave this man unwatched for a moment, Inspector.”
“Very good, sir.”
In the large room at the end of the passage Race was lying across the hearthrug with his head in the fender among a litter of cigarette ends and similar debris. He had knocked over a chair in falling and that, in turn, had upset a table with a bottle on it which had broken, and a pool of red wine had soaked into the floor. Race had a small hole in the middle of his forehead and had obviously died at once.
“Yes, that’s Race all right,” said Hambledon, bending over him.
“There must have been a considerable crash when he went over,” said Bagshott, “besides the report of the gun. You would think somebody would have heard something.”
“Not with that band playing downstairs,” said Hambledon. “Incidentally, I don’t hear the band.”
“Perhaps it isn’t playing,” said Bagshott, and sent a constable to find out. The man came back and said that they had just started another tune, but no sound of it came into the flat above.
“The floors must have been soundproofed,” said Tommy. “Well, I should do that if I lived over a nightclub.”
The police doctor arrived, followed by the official photographer, the fingerprint expert, and Detective-Inspector Ennis. The room filled with busy men and Hambledon said that he was only in the way. “I’d like to interview the man Jacaro,” he said, “as soon as he can talk. I suppose it is Jacaro?”
“I’ve got his particulars,” said Bagshott; “I’ll look him over and make sure. I’d like him in the cells first, though. I think we’ll have him removed at once. See to it, Inspector, will you? In the meantime, Hambledon, what about having a look at the night club downstairs? Ennis, I think you’d better come too.”
“Good idea,” said Hambledon. “We might even get a drink to take the taste of this room out of our throats. What’s in these other rooms?”
“Very little, sir,” said the inspector. “One’s a kitchen, one’s a bathroom, though I don’t think they worried the bath very often, it’s thick with dust. The third’s a bedroom with two beds in it and nothing else. Doesn’t look as though it was used much.”
“They didn’t really live here, then. Perhaps the owners of this property will be able to help us,” said Bagshott. “I’ll get onto them early tomorrow. Their tenants may have given some other address. I don’t think we need stay up here, Hambledon, so if you really want a drink we’ll go down. The attendant at the door of that nightclub might be able to tell us something.”
The doorkeeper at the Red Macaw said he was sorry but he hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. There were a lot of dagoes who habitually passed the door on their way to and from the flat above, but he knew nothing about them and didn’t want to know them. So long as they didn’t attempt to enter the club he wasn’t interested. Patrons were coming in and going out all the evening; he was sorry, but it was quite impossible to say who came or went at any particular time. As they could see, the gentlemen’s cloakrooms were through another door on the landing outside the actual club premises; members were passing through the club’s outer door all the time and no one could be expected to remember them all. He was, after all, only human.
“Oh, quite, quite,” said Bagshott soothingly. “I don’t expect impossibilities. Did you by chance happen to see any one or more of your members going upstairs or coming down?”
The doorkeeper said he had not. His business was merely to keep an eye on people actually passing through his door; particularly, of course, those coming in. Where they went when they went out was no business of his, and he was much too busy to concern himself over what didn’t matter to him.
Bagshott, who had not really hoped much, was not much disappointed. He and Hambledon, accompanied by Ennis, paid a short but refreshing visit to the bar and looked about them. The place was a nightclub like any other nightclub, all chromium plating and frosted glass with red macaws decoratively represented in all the obvious places, and none of the people present was of any immediate interest to the police so far as they knew.
They finished their drinks and went out again; if anyone there sighed with relief to see them go, the emotion was not obvious. Detective-Inspector Ennis returned to the flat; Hambledon said that if Jacaro had regained consciousness he would go and talk to him, if not it didn’t matter as tomorrow was also a day. He yawned.
“We’ll drive round by the police station and see,” said Bagshott. “Cold water has a very reviving effect, especially on those who aren’t used to it.”
At the police station they were told that the prisoner had indeed recovered consciousness. No, he had given no trouble so far, merely asked where he was. Yes, the superintendent had checked over the description supplied of a man named Ramon Jacaro, wanted for murder in America, and in his opinion this was the man.
Bagshott said that he and Mr. Hambledon would interview the man in his cell and it would be a convenience if a shorthand writer was available—oh, good. Let the said constable attend, and they would begin at once.
Jacaro was a bigger man than is usual with his race, with heavy features and a sullen expression. He did not look much the worse for his adventure except that he winced slightly when he turned his head. Hambledon pulled a chair forward and began.
“Your name?”
“George Washington. What’s yours?”
“That will do,” said Hambledon sharply. “You are detained here upon a charge of being concerned in the murder of Walter Race in the flat where you were found this evening. You will be tried in the English courts and if you are found guilty you will be hanged. If you are acquitted you will be handed over to the police of the United States of America. Now then!”
“Seems like it don’t matter what I say, then, don’t it?”
“Insolence won’t help you. What is your name?”
The man stared at Hambledon for a long minute, but Tommy had met this sort of thing before. The Argentine was the first to look away.
“Find out,” he said.
“I have. You are Ramon Jacaro.”
The man stared again, with astonishment this time.
“You come from the Argentine,” said Hambledon, pursuing his advantage. “You were implicated in a bank robbery there. You are wanted by the American police for a murder down near the Mexican border. You were probably involved in the murder of another man at Putney on Tuesday, April the second, this year. Now there is this other murder tonight. I think you are in rather a tight corner, Jacaro. Don’t you?”
Jacaro nodded.
“Now. What happened at the flat tonight?”
“I don’t know a thing about any murder. Nobody was bumped off while I was there.”
“Listen, Jacaro. In that flat tonight a man was shot dead. When the police got there, all your friends had gone, leaving you behind. You were lying on the floor, and,” added Tommy significantly, “somebody rang up the police.”
“Who done that?”
“Chief-Inspector Bagshott, here, took the call, I believe.”
“Somebody rang up,” said Bagshott, “saying that they were speaking from the telephone in that flat. That was in the room you were found in. Some man, he didn’t give a name. He said that Walter Race had been shot dead and that
Ramon Jacaro had been knocked out. He added that the American federal police wanted you, if we didn’t. We can’t check up on the call because it’s an automatic exchange, but we went round to the flat at once and it was all quite true.”
“And who else could have known about it except your friends?” added
Hambledon, driving the point home.
“Framed,” said the Argentine. “Framed.” He rose slowly to his feet.
“Sit down,” said Hambledon sharply.
Jacaro looked at him as though he had forgotten that Hambledon was there and was surprised to see him. He sat down again and said: “What you want to know, huh?”
“Who was in the flat tonight?”
“Angelo Gatello. Pacorro Pagote. Tadeo el Caballero. Cesar Mariposa. That’s all.”
“How many more of you are there?”
“Only Giuseppe Mantani, and he’s gone. Don’t know where. He’s skipped, I
reckon. Got the wind up.”
Neither Hambledon nor Bagshott enlightened him as to what had happened to Mantani.
“Varsoni’s dead, of course,” said Hambledon thoughtfully, “and so is Pietro
Gatello.”
Jacaro grunted, and Hambledon asked again what had happened that night.
“There was two men the Boss wanted brought in. They come to that Red Macaw joint below us. We got ’em on the stairs and persuaded ’em to come on up.”
“Who were they?”
Jacaro hesitated. “One of ’em I never seen before. Little weaselly guy. Don’t know if the Boss knowed him.”
“And the other?”
“One of the Selkirk gang,” said Jacaro undecidedly.
“Not Selkirk himself?”
“No. He’s dead. Varsoni gave him his, down at Putney.”
“You’re sure?” persisted Hambledon.
“Course I’m sure,” said Jacaro, but there was an undertone of doubt in his voice. “Had this guy right in front of me tonight as near as you are. He was very like that guy Selkirk, but it wasn’t him. Brother, I reckon.”
“Oh. Well, we’ll pass that for the present. You got these two men up to the flat. What happened then?”
“The Selkirk guy started actin’ tough and the Boss says, ‘Take him out while
I talk to this other guy.’ So him and me goes and sits in the office. Where the telephone was.”
“What did the Boss want to talk to the other guy about?”
“When we come out of the room,” said Jacaro, “the Boss was sayin’: ‘Now you tell me who that man is.’ “
“So the Boss wasn’t sure.”
Jacaro shrugged and asked for a cigarette, which Bagshott gave him.
“You and this man went and sat in the office,” prompted Hambledon.
“I call that to mind quite plain,” said the Argentine. “He sat on the table and me in the chair by the door. After that I can’t remember nothin’. I woke up here. Reckon the roof must have fell on me; I don’t pass out that easy.”
“The murdered man’s name was Race,” said Bagshott. “Walter Race.”
