Delphi collected works o.., p.203
Delphi Collected Works of Peter Cheyney Illustrated, page 203
Jeremy said nothing. He had picked up his hat. He was watching Callaghan.
‘If I were you,’ said Callaghan, ‘I’d just run along nicely and go into a huddle with your lady friend Mayola about what you’re goin’ to do. It looks as if life is goin’ to be a bit tough for you four Meraulton fellers, doesn’t it?’
Jeremy still said nothing. He turned on his heel and walked out of the office. Callaghan listened to his footsteps as he descended the stairs.
Callaghan waited for a few minutes. Then he went over and locked the door. Then he took from his pocket half a dozen closely written sheets of paper which represented his work between the time he had left Gringall in the afternoon until the time had come for him to telephone through to Darkie.
He folded up these sheets, pinned them together and placed them with the confession he had taken from Paul Meraulton in a stout envelope which he took from the drawer. He addressed this envelope to Detective-Inspector Gringall, at Scotland Yard. Then he put it back into his breast pocket, switched off the light, closed and locked the office doors and went down the stairs.
He was still grinning.
XII. INCLUDING KIDNAPPING
CALLAGHAN TURNED INTO Chancery Lane and began to walk towards the Holborn end. It had begun to rain, and he turned up his coat collar, kept in the leeway of the wall.
As he walked he began to think of the night when the Meraulton case had started. It had been raining then. He ruminated on the question of rain, cursed quietly to himself at the thought of the nights he would spend walking up and down Chancery Lane, going to or from the office, settling a case or looking for one, bribing somebody with a fiver or trying to get his hands on a fiver for himself.
He realized with something akin to surprise that he was sick of being a private detective. Callaghan Investigations gave him a pain in the neck. He, Callaghan, gave himself a pain in the neck.
There was no ending to the business of being a private detective. He wondered what happened to them when they got old, when they were too tired to go running around town getting old ladies and gentlemen out of trouble, snooping about, talking to the lousy people, the near crooks, the complete crooks that made up the rather extraordinary panorama of the life of a private investigator.
Of course there were men who had got away with it in a big way — Pinkerton — now there was a successful man for you with a big organization, a nation-wide organization in the States where a private dick with a good reputation meant something.
William J. Burns was another. Callaghan, fumbling for the inevitable cigarette, wondered why the devil he was thinking about successful private detectives. It was all the tea in China to a bad egg that he wasn’t ever going to be like that. The best he could do would be to ‘get by.’ If you could ‘get by’ you were doing pretty well, some people said. But who the hell was going to be satisfied with that?
Fumbling for a match, his fingers encountered the £180 in notes in his trouser pocket. That was a devil of a lot of good, wasn’t it? One way and another he’d got £1180 out of the Meraulton case and could have stuck to it, and played along with Gringall. But he’d parted with a thousand to Paul just because it was indicated, and to tell the truth, necessary.
Darkie would want another £80 for his work, and the boys would want a bit, Fred Mazin and the other boys who’d helped. By the time he was through with the job he’d make a fifty-pound note clear — if he were lucky.
But he knew why he’d handled it the way he had. He just wasn’t keen on admitting the fact that he’d fallen for a woman, and fallen hard. Cynthis Meraultons didn’t come across the path of Slim Callaghans every day in the week. He’d fallen for her like a sack of coke the first time he’d seen her. She had everything that he liked in a woman and probably a lot more than he knew about or guessed. He shrugged his shoulders.
He turned off Holborn into a narrow street, walked along until he came to a dark cul-de-sac, turned in and knocked on the ramshackle door at the end. A minute later it opened and a very old and wizened face looked out.
‘Hallo, Slim,’ said the owner of the face. ‘How’s things? Want somethin’?’
Callaghan grinned.
‘You didn’t think I’d come round here to ask what the time was, did you, Grandpa?’ he said. ‘You give me one of those little bottles of easy knock-out drops an’ I’ll give you a pound note.’
The old man screwed up his face.
‘I usually get a fiver, Slim,’ he said. ‘A pound don’t get very far these days.’
‘I’m payin’ a pound,’ said Callaghan. ‘An’ don’t make the dose too stiff. I just want to use it on a handkerchief.’
‘All right,’ said Grandpa. ‘I’ll do it for you, Slim, but I wouldn’t do it for anybody else. How long do you want it to work for?’
‘Two hours or so,’ said Callaghan.
‘Then you want chloroform,’ said Grandpa. ‘It ain’t no good me givin’ you that ether mixture if you want it to go two hours. You wait, I’ll get a bottle.’
Callaghan waited, drawing on his cigarette, tapping with his foot on the doorstep.
Five minutes afterwards Grandpa returned with the bottle.
Callaghan paid his pound, said good-night and walked to the garage in Lamb’s Conduit Street. He paid an account of nearly four pounds against which they had been holding his car, and took possession of it with a cynical survey of its antiquity. It was a 1929 saloon with tyres worn flat and a permanent wheeze.
He got in and looked at his watch. It was a quarter to one.
He drove westwards.
Callaghan stood in the middle of the floor and looked at Cynthis Meraulton. He looked her over with the same calm appraisal that he had used on the night of their first meeting.
She had seated herself on the other side of the fireplace. She was wearing a figured crepe-de-chine day gown with black satin court shoes and beige stockings. Callaghan thought that every time he saw her she looked colder, more desirable.
Stacked up against the wall were two kit bags, ready packed. A black coat with a fur collar, a small hat and gloves lay beside them.
Callaghan grinned apologetically. His fingers in his overcoat pocket twisted the chloroform bottle, fumbled with the handkerchief with the cotton wool inside it that lay beside the bottle.
‘I’m always apologizin’ to you for something, I know,’ he said, grinning cheerfully. ‘But my business is a funny business. It doesn’t always go the way you want it to go.’
She looked straight at him.
‘Mr. Callaghan,’ she said, ‘I think that you are a liar, and not a particularly good one. You said that you would be bringing Willie with you tonight. That was a lie. You said that he was, or had been, in Edinburgh; that was another lie.’
Callaghan shrugged.
‘One lie’s as good as another sometimes, madame,’ he said. ‘But how did you know about Willie?’
‘He telephoned through this evening,’ she said. ‘He told me that you had asked him not to contact me, but naturally he was worried. If it hadn’t been for you, for your continued trickery, he would have been here before.’
‘Fine,’ said Callaghan softly. ‘How did he know you were here? Still, I reckon I can answer that one. Gringall told him, I’ll bet a quid!’
She looked amazed. Her eyes, searching, looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and contempt.
‘Gringall,’ she repeated. ‘Isn’t that the police officer in charge of the case? Isn’t he the reason why you got me to come here, so that he shouldn’t be able to find me. How could he have told Willie?’
‘Gringall’s known you’ve been here for some time,’ said Callaghan. ‘But he hasn’t done anything about it. He knew he could get you if he wanted to. Gringall’s no fool.’
She said quietly:
‘I don’t suppose he is, and I don’t suppose you are, either. It seems to me that the only people who are fools are Willie and me — and possibly Bellamy — Bellamy, that poor, drink-sodden, dope-ruined person that you subjected to the indignity of arrest merely in order to get some more money for yourself. You seem to have done pretty well out of the Meraulton family, Mr. Callaghan.’
Callaghan smiled.
‘Not too badly,’ he said. ‘By the time I’m through I shall be doin’ quite well. You see I haven’t rendered my final account yet. But tell me something: Where did you get that information about Bellamy? Has he been talking, too?’
‘What would you expect?’ she said contemptuously. ‘Bellamy arrested on a charge which he knows merely conceals a serious suspicion of murder naturally talked to save himself. He was forced to talk about me, forced to throw further suspicion on me in order to obtain his freedom.’
‘Maybe,’ said Callaghan, ‘but still you realize...’
‘I realize that you’re thoroughly dishonest,’ she said. ‘I realize that you have used all the trouble that has been brought on all of us — even the death of August Meraulton — to get money and still more money. In order to keep things going your way you have not scrupled to do anything that suited your own ends. Well, Mr. Callaghan, this is the end of you. Your little act is over.’
Callaghan smiled again. His smile was quiet, vaguely superior, almost maddening.
‘No, it isn’t,’ he said. ‘By heck it isn’t! My little act isn’t over by a hell of a long way. An’ I’d like to tell you something else, madame, whilst I’m on the job. You seem to be damn satisfied with yourself in this business. Maybe you’ve got a great deal of sympathy for yourself, an’ maybe you think you’ve been given a tough time merely because you’ve been kept out of the way an’ not allowed to see your boy friend. Well... what of it?
‘I suppose it never occurred to you that when you came around to my office to see me that first time you were startin’ something that you’ve got to finish, even if I have to stick by you to see that you do. I didn’t ask you to come to Callaghan Investigations in the first place, did I? You did it to suit your own book. Why in the name of blazes didn’t you disclose the fact that you were a lily-white innocent without any brains in your head when you came round? You tell me that.’
Callaghan paused and lit a cigarette.
‘You’ve got to realize that I’m not in the habit of receivin’ visits late at night in my office from perfectly innocent young women,’ he said. ‘I’ve always reckoned that if young women were perfectly innocent they didn’t have to do things like that.’
He allowed the smoke to trickle out of one nostril. His eyes never left her face. She was sitting as if petrified, speechless.
‘There was just one thing I didn’t think of,’ he went on. ‘I didn’t think that any woman could be so damn brainless as you are. If I had I wouldn’t have got myself in the jam that I did over you — a jam that I’ve been tryin’ to get myself out of ever since.’
‘I see,’ she said, slowly and bitterly. ‘So you’ve been thinking of Mr. Callaghan all the time. I’ve always disliked you from the moment I set eyes on you, but I had a faint idea that you might have one good quality, that you might be loyal; apparently I was wrong there, too.’
‘Maybe an’ maybe not,’ said Callaghan. His lips twisted up into a cynical grin. ‘An’ that is a point that I don’t propose to argue with you here an’ now. I’m just tellin’ you that you puttin’ on that damn fool act in my office even took me in that you’d got something to be good and frightened of, an’ so I start fakin’ alibis for you an’ gettin’ myself in bad with one an’ all.
‘All right. Well, one bad thing leads to another. Because I fake that alibi, I get pulled in by Gringall before I’ve got time to do anything or fix anything, an’ I have to start something else. I had to get time, so I pulled that fast one an’ planted some fake evidence on Bellamy that got him pinched. Well, that’s how it was, an’ if I was in the same position tomorrow I’d do it again.’
‘I expect you would, Mr. Callaghan,’ she said. ‘And I expect that you’d use exactly the same method on anyone else that you wanted to get money from. Even if I believed that it was necessary for you to implicate Bellamy, I still think it was low and beastly of you to get that money from him, money which you got under a false pretence of protecting him after you’d carefully arranged that nothing could protect him.’
Callaghan spread his hands.
‘That was a little bit fast, I grant you,’ he said. ‘But still you’ve got to admit that it was clever. It takes Callaghan of Callaghan Investigations to be as clever as that!’
He stood smiling at her. She got up. She was trembling with rage.
‘Please leave here at once,’ she said. ‘Get out, do you hear? I never want to see you again. But I would like to tell you one thing before you go: When I see Mr. Gringall I propose to tell him the whole of my experiences with you, of the lies, trickery and deceit which you have used on every one with whom you have come in contact. You once told me that your reputation at Scotland Yard was not very good. Well, when they’ve heard what I’ve got to say you’ll find it will be infinitely worse. I wouldn’t even be surprised if you find yourself in prison!’
She stood in front of the fireplace, one arm on the mantelpiece. Her lips were trembling with rage. Her whole person radiated a furious indignation.
Callaghan thought that she looked superb.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘please get out. Don’t talk any more because, if you do, I shall ring and have you turned out!’
Callaghan found another cigarette in his left hand coat pocket, brought it out and lit it.
‘No, madame, you won’t,’ he said. ‘You won’t do that because I’m goin’ to show you that that would be the last thing in the world that Willie would want you to do.’
He inhaled. He was still watching her closely.
‘You’re not feelin’ so good about me,’ he went on. ‘Bellamy’s been at you, an’ told you a lot of nasty bits about me, an’ Willie has been through an’ you’ve found out that I’ve told you one or two little fairy stories about where he was an’ why you two couldn’t meet.
‘Well, I admit all that, an’ maybe I admit some of the other things an’ maybe not. But there’s one thing I would like to say an’ that’s this.
‘I can see you’re all packed an’ ready to leave here. I suppose you’re goin’ to meet Willie. Maybe you two are plannin’ a quick marriage, but I still think that you’re goin’ to agree with me when I say that before you get married you ought to clear yourself of any suspicion of havin’ had anything to do with this murder.’
She raised her head disdainfully.
‘That is for Willie to decide,’ she said, ‘and he has decided.’
‘I see,’ said Callaghan. ‘He’s decided to get married to you before this thing’s cleared up. Well, all I can say is I don’t think much of you for doin’ it. I think you’re pretty good when it comes to tellin’ people like me just how lousy we are, but when it comes to doin’ the right thing yourself you’re not so good!’
She was almost speechless with rage. She controlled herself with difficulty, spoke with a little gasp.
‘Exactly what do you mean by that?’ she said.
‘I mean that I expect Gringall to make a serious arrest tomorrow mornin’,’ said Callaghan quietly. ‘I think the person he’s goin’ to arrest will be a very good-lookin’ and, at the moment, angry young woman by the name of Cynthis Meraulton, an’ I say that if you marry Willie with that hangin’ over your head you’re not the woman to tell me where I get off the tram!’
She gazed at him in amazement.
‘Listen,’ said Callaghan. ‘I told you just now that I’ll bet that Willie got your address here from Gringall. Well, Willie probably knows that Gringall’s goin’ to get you tomorrow, so he does the right thing an’ thinks his job is to marry you first. You know — hero stuff, you read about it in books.’
She sat down suddenly. Then she put her head between her hands. Callaghan watched her, his face serious.
‘I’d like you to know that I’m not leadin’ you up the garden path this time,’ he said. ‘An’ I’ll prove it to you. Listen to this—’
He walked across the room to the telephone. He turned and looked at her as he dialled the number. She was still sitting with her face hidden.
Callaghan listened. He heard the dialling tone buzzing regularly. He thought it wouldn’t be so good, just at this moment, if Willie happened to be out or somewhere where he couldn’t hear the telephone ringing.
He experienced a sense of relief when he heard Willie’s voice.
‘This is Callaghan,’ he said. ‘I’m at Delvine Court — with Cynthis, and she’s not likin’ me very much at the moment. She thinks I’ve double-crossed everybody on this business, including you.’
Willie did not speak. Callaghan went on:
‘I had to tell her that I think it would be damn silly of you two to get married,’ he said. ‘I told her just now that it looks to me as if Gringall will be gettin’ busy tomorrow, that he might want a very detailed statement from her, that he might even go so far as to arrest her. I’ve known stranger things.’
‘I know...’ Willie’s voice was troubled. ‘I know, Callaghan,’ he repeated, ‘but all the same, whatever happens I think that the best thing is for us to get married. Cynthis needs a friend now more than ever before. I can at least show her that I have the most perfect trust in her.’
Callaghan grinned amiably into the telephone.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I can guess how you’re feelin’, but the thing I’m concerned with just at this moment is how much trust have you got in me?
‘You know this has been a pretty tough job from the beginning, an’ you know that I’ve done my damnedest right the way through to play this thing the way you wanted it, an’ I’m tellin’ you that I think it will be mad for you two to start anything fresh until we’ve got some of this business straightened out.
‘Let Gringall do what he wants to do, let him get busy and clear the job up an’ then you can get married every day and twice on Sundays.’
Willie hesitated.
