Complete works of peter.., p.227
Complete Works of Peter Cheyney. Illustrated, page 227
'Quite,' said Selby. 'An' you've got something up your sleeve that may cause them to drop the murder charge?'
Callaghan grinned.
'Like hell I have,' he said. 'I know that Wilfred Riverton didn't shoot Raffano. All I'm worryin' about is how I'm goin' to prove it without startin' some more trouble! Good day, Mr Selby.'
Selby watched the door close behind Callaghan. His mouth was wide open.
'Good God!' he said.
EFFIE THOMPSON brought Callaghan's cup of tea into his office at four o'clock exactly. He had his feet on the desk and the ashtray was filled with cigarette stubs. She put the cup down on the corner of the desk.
Callaghan said:
'Effie, who's outside in the staff-room? Is anybody there?'
'Nikolas is there,' she answered. 'He's finished that cinema case.'
'Send him in,' said Callaghan. 'Has anybody phoned?'
'No,' said Effie. 'Were you expecting a call? Did you mean Kells? He hasn't been through.'
'No,' said Callaghan. 'I didn't mean Kells. He won't be comin' through any more.'
Effie raised her eyebrows.
'So he's not working for you any more,' she said.
'That's right,' said Callaghan rather grimly. 'He's not workin' for me any more. I wonder if you'll miss him pinchin' your behind, Effie...'
She said: 'Did you sack him for that?'
'No,' he answered. 'I wouldn't do a thing like that. I feel like pinchin' it myself sometimes... but I lack the necessary courage.'
He smiled at her.
She looked at him through half-closed eyes.
'Like hell, you do,' she murmured, as she went out.
Nikolas came in. Callaghan threw him a cigarette. Nikolas caught it and lit it. Callaghan said:
'It's five-past four. If you go round to the Yellow Lamp now, you'll find the proprietor in. His name's Perruqui. He gets there about this time to do the accounts. You bring him round here in a cab. I want to talk to him.'
'I s'pose he'll come?' asked Nikolas.
Callaghan looked at him with one eyebrow raised.
'If he gets funny about comin' round,' he said, 'you tell him that, if necessary, I'll go round to that dam' club of his an' take him by the scruff of the neck an' kick him every inch of the way round here. Tell him I mean business. He'll come all right.'
'I see,' said Nikolas.
He went out grinning.
PERRUQUI sat in the big arm-chair by the side of the fire in Callaghan's office. He looked affronted and unhappy... almost tearful. His expression showed a deep sense of indignity and hurt.
Callaghan, busily engaged in stirring his third cup of tea, regarded the Italian with equanimity.
'So Nikolas had to be a bit tough with you to get you round here,' he said. 'You didn't like comin' round, did you? You didn't like comin' round because you're a decent, honest, law-abidin' citizen who keeps his nose clean an' keeps the law so carefully that the DDI at Vine Street bursts into tears every time he hears your name mentioned... you louse!'
Perruqui sat up.
'Meester Callaghan,' he said. 'I lika you. I have all the time lika you. Why should I be insult lika thees? I wanna know!'
Callaghan grinned.
'You'll know all right,' he said. 'I'll tell you.'
He lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the old one. 'Last Friday night I came round to your place an' had a little talk with you,' he said. 'I had a little talk with you about where young Riverton was gettin' drugs from. You gave me a tip off about Henny The Boyo. All right, directly I'd gone, you got through on the telephone or sent somebody round pretty quick to tip off Azelda Dixon. She tried to beat me in gettin' round to see Henny at the Privateer Bar. Well, she didn't make it. When I went downstairs there she was just comin' out of his room. I knew she'd been in there to see him to tell him to keep his mouth shut an' say nothin'.'
He blew a perfect smoke ring and watched it sail across the room.
'So I didn't even worry to talk to Henny,' Callaghan went on. 'I just contented myself with havin' a word or two with Azelda. Then I sat down an' waited for ten minutes to give her time to do a little phonin' an' get in touch with the tough guy that Henny had tipped her off about. The guy who was waitin' for me at the end of the passage, the feller who was goin' to carve me up with the razor blades he'd got fixed on his glove.'
He paused and looked at Perruqui.
'Of course you don't know anything about all that, do you, Perruqui?'
'I don' know a goddam theeng,' said Perruqui. 'I don' know nozzing...'
He wriggled a little in his chair.
'You tell me what I want to know or I'm goin' to fix you,' said Callaghan. 'An' when I say fix you I mean it. I'll make things so dam' tough for you that you'll wish you hadn't been born. I've got enough on you an' that lousy night haunt of yours to stick you inside for about five years. Well, how do you feel about it?'
Perruqui spread his hands.
'I don' know why you treat me like thees,' he muttered. 'I've always been a good fren' to you, Meester Callaghan... any leetle theeng you wanna know...'
'All right,' said Callaghan. 'You take it easy an' relax. Now you tell me if I'm right an' don't make any mistakes.'
He got up and stood over Perruqui, looking down on him.
'First of all, some of the Yard boys have been around talkin' to you, haven't they?' he asked. 'Gringall's boys. They've been askin' questions about young Riverton, haven't they? They've asked you about his takin' dope an' where he got it from, an' you've told 'em you don't know. Right?'
Perruqui nodded dumbly.
'An' the next thing they wanted to know,' Callaghan went on, 'was whether you'd seen young Riverton around your place with Jake Raffano. They wanted to know what you knew about young Riverton an' Jake Raffano. They knew that The Mug had used your place plenty. They knew that you were a guy who used to make a bit on the side by introducin' people to gamin' places around the West End an' Mayfair districts. They asked you whether you knew anything about The Mug playin' at Raffano's places, an' you told 'em that everybody knew that The Mug was losin' money like hell to Raffano, but that you didn't know where the play used to go on. Right?'
Perruqui nodded again.
'They asked you whether The Mug had ever had any rows with Raffano. They asked you whether you'd ever heard of him threatenin' to kill Raffano and you said you had... didn't you?'
'Yes,' said Perruqui. 'Eet was the trut'. I had. I 'ear Meester Riverton say that two t'ree time....'
'You're a liar,' said Callaghan. 'You never heard him threaten Raffano. You never got the chance. All right. Well, what else did they want to know?'
Perruqui shrugged his shoulders.
'They ask me a lot of dam' fool questions,' he said. 'They ask eef I know where Riverton was living. I say no, I don' know. They ask me eef I know the women he ees getting about with. I tell 'em I don' know. Then they take a statement from me. They take a statement about the time I say I 'ear Riverton make a t'reat against Raffano.'
Callaghan grunted.
'Was there anybody else there except you when he made it?' he asked, grinning.
'No,' said Perruqui. ''E was talking to heem in my office by heemself.'
'I see,' said Callaghan. 'An' I bet you were able to give 'em the names of some other people who had heard The Mug threatenin' Raffano, weren't you?'
'Yes,' said Perruqui. 'I tol' 'em two t'ree people had heard heem.'
Callaghan lit another cigarette.
'All right, Perruqui,' he said. 'You get out an' you take a tip from me. You go back to that club of yours, get into your office and stick there. You try some telephonin' to your friends about this little conversation we've just had an' see what I'll do to you. By the time I've finished with you they'll be able to pick up the pieces in a dust-pan.'
Perruqui got up.
'Me... I'm not gonna do a goddam theeng, Meester Callaghan,' he said. 'I onlee do what I gotta do... I don' wanna get myself meex up in thees. I don' wanna get anybodies inta any troubles at all...'
Callaghan laughed.
'That's a good one,' he said. 'You listen to me, you dam' fool.'
He produced the Riverton statement from his pocket and tapped it. 'We're supposed to be tryin' to defend The Mug,' he said. 'Our only chance is to persuade a jury that he shot Raffano in self-defence. He admits he shot him... he's dam' fool enough to say here that he fired first. Well, what a hell of a hope we've got if you an' everybody else round at that dam' club of yours is tellin' the police that Riverton had been threatenin' Raffano for days. Can't you see that, you double-barrelled fool?'
Perruqui shrugged.
'I see now... Meester Callaghan,' he said. 'Eef I'd known you didn't want it said I wouldn'ta said one goddam word....'
'All right,' said Callaghan. 'The harm's done. You get out and keep your mouth shut from now on... understand?'
Perruqui said he understood. He went out quietly.
Callaghan looked at the Riverton statement. On the front of the folded document Gagel had written: 'Strictly Confidential'. Callaghan grinned. Then he began to tear the statement into small pieces. He threw them into the fire.
A SLEETING rain was beating in Callaghan's face as he stood pressed against the wall at the end of the Mews opposite Court Mansions. Soon after eleven o'clock, the hall porter came down the steps and whistled for a taxicab. Two or three minutes later, Azelda Dixon, well wrapped in a fur coat, came out, got into the cab, and drove off. Callaghan breathed a sigh of relief and lit a cigarette, his eyes still on the doorway on the opposite side of the street.
Ten minutes passed, then a cab drove up. Fred Mazely got out. Callaghan wondered what scheme Darkie was pulling to get the hall porter out of the way. Mazely went into Court Mansions, leaving the cab at the door. He came out five minutes later with the hall porter. They both got into the cab, which drove off.
Callaghan turned up his overcoat collar and walked quickly across the road. He entered Court Mansions, walked up to the first floor along the corridor until he found No. 17. He took a bunch of keys out of his pocket and tried them one after the other until he found the right one.
He stepped into the Dixon flat, closing the door softly behind him. He found the light switch. He was in a small square hall. There was a door opposite him and one on each side of him. He tried the one on the right.
As he opened it an odour of warm stale perfume greeted his nostrils, the kind of smell that emanates from a room where the windows are hardly ever opened. Callaghan stepped inside and switched on the light. It was Azelda's bedroom—the sort of bedroom that Azelda would have. The bed—the expensive silk cover lay untidily on the floor—looked as if it hadn't been made for days. Drawers were half-open with articles of feminine lingerie hanging out. The dressing-table was chaotic. On a tallboy on the left of the bed were a bottle of brandy half-full, two empty gin bottles and some dirty glasses.
Callaghan saw that the curtains were drawn, began to search. He started on the right-hand side of the room and worked systematically round, opening every drawer, turning out every box, even looking under the cover on the dressing-table. He found nothing. He turned out the light, went into the sitting-room. It was half-past eleven. He worked quickly through the sitting-room but with no results.
He tried the doorway on the left of the hall. Behind it was a short passage. At the end of the passage was the kitchen and on the left another door leading to a bathroom. On the right-hand side of the passage was a third door. Callaghan opened it.
It was a small windowless room ventilated by an air-shaft let into one of the walls. It looked like a spare sitting-room. It was crowded with furniture and knick-knacks. Open cardboard boxes containing dresses were thrown about the floor. In one corner was a woman's dress stand with a half-finished costume hanging on it. In another corner of the room a pile of clothes had been thrown down higgledy-piggledy. Sticking through the top of the pile was the top frond of a rubber plant.
Callaghan began to throw all the clothes into the middle of the room. He searched through everything. Nothing missed his eyes and his fingers. Underneath the pile of dresses and odd garments which surrounded the rubber plant in the corner was a cardboard box filled with an odd miscellany of articles—electric light bulbs, old advertisements, empty cigarette boxes, letters demanding payment of accounts.
Callaghan grinned. Azelda was running true to type. He had seen flats like hers before. He took the box into the middle of the room and began to work through it. He was hoping. He knew that Azelda's type of woman—the type whose brain is never really clear and who is either suffering from a hangover from dope or doing a little drinking after one is well over—seldom has sufficient concentration to be tidy or to burn or destroy anything. He worked quickly but carefully, opening every piece of paper in the box. Down almost at the bottom of the box he found it—a screwed-up ball of paper.
He opened it and read it. The paper laid out flat showed itself to be a quarto sheet of cheap typing paper. The words on it were typewritten. Callaghan began to grin. He read:
Somewhere around Mayfair.
To Wilfred Riverton, Esq., Grand Master of the Worshipful Order of Mugs.
Dear Bloody Fool,
Aren't you the complete, the utter mug? It almost hurts to see you being separated from your dough. Didn't anybody ever tell you that Raffano hasn't ever played a straight game in his life? Don't you know that every party, every game you've been in on has been crooked? That all the little spielers around town, where some of your lady friends have taken you, were just set-ups for a mug like you? Why don't you get some sense, or do you like being twisted? If you don't why don't you go after your dough—before it goes to America with Jake?
A Friend.
Callaghan took the letter under the electric light. He read it through again carefully, noticing one or two faults due to bad mechanism in the typewriter. It had been a very old typewriter, he thought.
He looked at his wrist-watch. It was five-past twelve. He folded the letter, put it into his waistcoat pocket. Then he replaced the box in the corner of the room, threw back the mass of oddments that he'd taken out of it, began to throw the old dresses and garments around it and on top of it round the base of the rubber plant.
Then he saw something. The rubber plant was in an earthenware pot, three-quarters filled with earth. The top of one side of the earth in the pot seemed a little looser than that on the other which was hard and dry from non-watering. Callaghan knelt down and began to scrape earth out of the pot with his gloved hands. A couple of inches down he found something hard. He was almost laughing as he pulled it out. It was a .32 Spanish automatic—an Esmeralda.
Callaghan put the gun into his pocket, and continued turning over the earth in the pot. Almost at the bottom he found a cardboard box. On it, printed in Spanish, were the words '50 Rounds Esmeralda'.
Callaghan took the box out and opened it. Inside, closely packed, were forty rounds of .32 ammunition, and in the empty space from which the other ten rounds had been removed were ten leaden slugs. Callaghan put the box into his pocket, replaced the earth, threw back the remainder of the clothes over it, switched off the light.
He went back to the untidy bedroom, walked round the bed, pulled the cork out of the brandy bottle and smelt it. It was brandy. Callaghan wiped the neck of the bottle carefully with his handkerchief, put the bottle into his mouth and took a long swig. He replaced the bottle on the tallboy, walked to the front door of the flat, opened it a little, listened. He heard nothing. He slipped quietly out, walked quickly down the stairs, out of Court Mansions into Sloane Street.
It was cold and the slanting rain stung his face. Callaghan looked almost happy. He walked quickly to Knightsbridge tube station and went into a telephone box. He rang through to the Silver Bar and asked to speak to Gallusta—the barman in the upstairs bar. He waited while they fetched the man.
'Hallo, Gallusta,' said Callaghan. 'This is Mr Callaghan. Mr Maninway's in your bar, isn't he, with a lady?'
Gallusta said he was.
'How's the lady?' asked Callaghan.
Gallusta said she was a little tight but only pleasantly so.
'All right,' said Callaghan. 'You go upstairs an' bring Mr Maninway down to the telephone. Tell him a lady wants to speak to him. Don't mention my name.'
After a minute Maninway came on the line.
'Listen, Maninway,' said Callaghan. 'This is Callaghan speakin'. I understand that Azelda's a little tight.'
'Just nicely,' said Maninway. 'She's being quite pleasant.'
'All right,' said Callaghan. 'Well, you see that she has a few more drinks an' you can mix 'em if you like. It's a quarter-past twelve now. You keep her up there in that bar until twelve thirty-five. Then suggest that you're goin' to take her home. When you get outside, look around for a taxicab parked close by with the driver readin' a newspaper. Put her in that cab. One of my boys will be inside. Just shut the door an' go home. He'll look after her. You can call in for your money in the mornin'.'
'Right,' said Maninway. 'I suppose you know what you're doing.'
'Any time I don't I'll come to you for advice. Until then keep your dam' remarks to yourself,' said Callaghan.
'My mistake,' said Maninway. 'I beg your pardon.'
'Granted as soon as asked,' said Callaghan. 'Good night.'
He waited a minute or two and then rang through to Darkie.
'Listen, Darkie,' he said. 'Get Fred Mazely to go round quickly an' get that cab of Horridge's. He'd better borrow Horridge's cap, too. He's to drive right away to the Silver Bar. You go with him. Get Fred to park the cab just down the road an' read a newspaper.
'At twelve thirty-five Maninway'll come out of the Silver Bar with a woman. He'll put her into your cab. She'll be pretty high. If she tries to do any shoutin' put your hand over her mouth. When she's quietened down a bit tell her that you've had instructions to take her down to your place until tomorrow night. Tell her that there's a bit of trouble flyin' about over the Riverton business an' that your boss thinks she'll be better out of the way for a bit. If she wants to know who your boss is, tell her not to be silly an' that she ought to know that questions like that don't get answered.
