Four Strange Women (24 page)

Also he intended to try to get admittance to the meeting by declaring himself a visitor interested in Psychical Research.

“Which I am,” he said grimly, “when it's this sort. If it does happen to be a genuine show, I don't see why they shouldn't let me in, or anyhow tell me enough to make it clear they really are all right. I'll offer to pay my subscription on the spot. That ought to work the oracle. It would with most societies, they can no more resist a subscription than a cat can cream. If it's not a genuine do, then they'll turn me down and we'll know there is something wrong. Only—”

“Only what?”

“Well, it may be some kind of crooked game and yet they may let me in all the same, and if it's like that, then I shan't be sorry to know there's someone waiting outside to see that I come out again.”

Marsh whistled.

“As bad as that,” he said.

“Oh, I don't know, it's only an idea,” Bobby answered. “Just as well to take precautions though, and I know the cellars there had a beastly chill, grave-like feeling about them. There were hooks in the ceiling exactly like some I remember when I was a boy in a big barn on a farm near. They used to sling the pigs up on them for slaughtering.”

“Bit nervy, aren't you?” Marsh asked with a touch of patronage in his voice. “They wouldn't dare—not with a police officer.”

“No, perhaps not,” agreed Bobby. “Luckily there is still a divinity that doth hedge about policemen, even if it has a bit forgotten kings. All the same, if I do get a chance to get inside, I hope you'll wait till I come out again—even if it does make you miss your train.”

“I don't want to do that,” Marsh said in a somewhat alarmed voice, with visions of the wrath of his superintendent if he were not there at the right time to see the morning duty men duly dispatched. “Besides,” he added, “what's it all about? haven't you any idea?” he repeated, for he had asked that question more than once before.

“Not the faintest,” Bobby repeated, as he had answered previously. “I've thought of everything I can think of— from Nazis plotting to seize Broadcasting House down to religious revival services. If I didn't go to sleep so quick I expect I should have stopped awake all night worrying. As it is, your guess is as good as mine—and probably better.”

They separated then, Bobby watching the front entrance from a shadowy doorway just across the street, Marsh hanging about at the back where no such convenient observation post existed, and both at intervals going to look at the side door where Bobby had looped a bit of string round the handle so that the door could not be opened without displacing it.

The hours came and the hours passed and nothing happened. No passer-by seemed even to give so much as a glance at the hall where it lay dark and silent and solitary in the night. Visits at intervals to the side door showed the loose loop of string still undisturbed. By nine Marsh was growing impatient, Bobby uneasy. At ten Marsh said suspiciously that it looked like a washout, and Bobby felt that by a ‘wash out' he really meant a ‘take in', such being the intricacies of British slang. At eleven Marsh announced firmly that he must go, or he would miss his train, and at half past he was back again.

“Thought I might as well see it through,” he said, “just in case.”

“Hope Mr. Oxley wasn't annoyed at being rung up so late,” Bobby observed, quite sure Marsh would never have run the risk of being absent from duty next morning, unless he had received permission—and permission could only have been obtained over the 'phone.

“What do you mean?” Marsh asked, disconcerted and a little angry, too. “Been following me?”

“Gracious, no,” Bobby protested. “Can't a full blown detective have a ‘hunch' as they call it?” He added:— “While you were away, someone lighted up and drew the curtains.”

‘‘Did you see who it was?”

“No, they didn't go in this way. The string I put on the side door isn't in position now, though. Look!” A woman who had been coming briskly up the street turned in sharply as she reached the entrance to the hall. “Things beginning to move,” remarked Bobby. “That wench had a business-like air.”

“I'll go round to the back,” Marsh said.

Other people began to arrive—generally on foot, one or two on bicycles, none in cars or taxis.

“Don't mean to run any risk of being traced by registration numbers,” Bobby reflected. “Have to inquire if taxis have been putting fares down near or if stray cars have been parked hereabouts.”

That precautions, careful precautions, against identification were being taken was sufficiently evident. All the watchers could make out was a succession of dark and shadowy figures, so muffled up that even sex was difficult to decide, faces concealed by scarves or veils, by upturned collars and downpulled hats. Silently they came, one by one, slipping through the night, many of them betraying by their hurried and uneven footsteps their inner excitement and unease.

Bobby, watching intently from his shadowy doorway, became more and more convinced that whatever the object of the meeting, it was one they had good reason for wishing to conceal. One thing he felt fairly sure of was that they all belonged to the prosperous classes. Their clothes seemed well cut, some of the furs the women wore looked expensive in the light of the street lamps they slipped by so furtively, the sound of their footsteps in that quiet street suggested they were well shod, their gait did not show the tired slouch that too much manual labour—or too prolonged a search for it—presently imposes.

Bobby wished he dared stop and question one or other of them. Not difficult to invent some charge or cause for arrest on suspicion. It is a useful procedure at times. One may have to eat a big helping of humble pie afterwards, of course, to grovel in apology. A risk of the profession. There may even be public rebuke, but none the less in this way useful evidence may sometimes be obtained and would have been procurable by no other means. There was, for example, a certain share pusher who was once arrested on an entirely unjustified charge of pickpocketing, who had to be offered the most abject apologies, who even had to be paid compensation, but the examination of whose dispatch case none the less provided that address of the headquarters of the conspiracy which had been searched for so long, so earnestly, and, till then, so fruitlessly.

But that sort of thing can only be done under authority and not in London by obscure police officers from the provinces. Nor, for that matter, was it by any means certain that identification of any of these people would reveal the full scope and purpose of whatever was here going on in such secrecy and darkness.

Leaving his post in the doorway from time to time, Bobby ascertained that other visitors were slipping in through the side door in the fence that ran along the main road. Others, Marsh told him, were arriving by the back, but all alike, it seemed, had to go to the door at the front in order to gain admittance to the hall.

“I'll have a shot at getting in,” Bobby told Marsh. “Not that I'm very hopeful. There's something jolly queer going on, though I can't imagine what, and I don't much fancy they'll exactly welcome visitors.”

They went together back to Mountain Street, and Marsh waited there, while Bobby walked through the small forecourt to the front door, trying as he did so to look as assured and purposeful as though he knew all about it.

The door was closed, but he had been able to make out that it was not necessary to knock. All that was needed apparently was to push and enter. So Bobby did, and found himself in a small, dark lobby or porch-like entrance, closed by other doors at the further end. A harsh, metallic voice said:— 

“Please give your name and address and admission number before entry.”

“Oh, you know my name and I never could remember numbers,” Bobby answered cheerfully, hopeful that even so crude a bluff might possibly succeed.

Complete silence followed; and when Bobby took out his pocket torch and flashed it around he was slightly disconcerted to find himself entirely alone, though the voice had sounded quite close. Feeling distinctly uncomfortable, wondering what had become of whoever had spoken, he switched off his torch and tried the inner doors. They were securely fastened. He pushed hard, though cautiously, but without result. Something unpleasantly ominous, he thought, in this utter silence after that first brief greeting whereto his response had evidently been found inadequate. It was rather a relief when he tried the outer door to find it was still unfastened so that at least his retreat had not been cut off. Not that he had any intention of retreating, though none the less it was comforting to know that retreat was possible. He would wait developments, he decided. Only there were none, and he was wondering what to do next when he heard someone from without fumbling at the door admitting to this sort of porch or lobby where he stood. He drew back into a corner. The door opened. Someone entered. The same harsh, metallic voice that had greeted Bobby, boomed out:—

“Please give your name and address and admission number before entry.”

That was one mystery solved. Evidently opening the door set in motion mechanism operating a gramophone record on the principle adopted in, for instance, some lifts on the London tube stations. The newcomer plainly knew, as Bobby had not, what to do, and at once spoke into a mouthpiece at one side of the inner doors, a mouthpiece Bobby had failed in the darkness to notice. In a voice that was clearly feminine, and that ended in a squeak of amusement, the newcomer announced:—

“George Bernard Shaw, The Adelphi. Number 73.” 

This was evidently regarded as satisfactory for, after only the briefest delay, the inner doors swung open. The newcomer darted through and Bobby followed into a well- lighted inner lobby.

Luck always plays its part in all police work, and if so far fickle fortune had been distinctly on Bobby's side, as witness the ease with which from Count de Legett's casual remark, he had discovered Leonard's habitation, now she failed him miserably. For bending over a small table was an exceedingly big man, apparently consulting a typed list lying there, and he looked up and said:—

“Here, there was only one name—blimey, it's Mr. Owen.”

On his side, and very sadly, Bobby recognized a man named Evers, better known as Batter Evers, partly because of a reputed fondness for batter puddings, partly because he was supposed to ‘batter' his opponents, partly again because ‘batter' was held to be less ‘la-di-da' than his correct name ‘Bertram'. Mr. Evers was, in fact, a former heavy-weight boxer who had been at one time put forward by hopeful backers as a pre-destined world champion. That ambition had never been realized, nor had he indeed ever actually been accepted as challenger. To-day he no longer appeared in the ring. But he was still a fit and formidable personage, and once it had been Bobby's duty to escort him—happily in mild mood and unresisting—to an adjacent police station, there to be charged with race-course offences that had resulted in his retirement from the world for nine months in the second division, this last addition meaning nothing at all, but being added as a polite recognition of the fact that Mr. Evers had made no use of his fistic prowess to avoid arrest.

He had indeed been very pleased by so courteous a comment on his self-restraint, and his gratitude had been further earned by certain financial assistance Bobby had helped to secure for Mrs. Evers during a nine months of some financial embarrassment for her and for a baby due to arrive during that period. Incidentally, it would surprise many people who appear to regard the police as a mere invention for the annoyance of motorists, to learn the amount of hard cash that goes out of police pockets to help the many tragic cases of distress of which under the compulsion of their duty they have been in a sense the indirect cause.

It was as a consequence therefore of this earlier acquaintance that Bobby's hopes of wangling a way into the meeting as an interested visitor vanished utterly, but also it was a further result that there was no hostility but only much surprise in Evers's expression as he turned towards Bobby.

“Why, Mr. Owen,” he said, “this isn't up your street, is it?”

“Why not?” asked Bobby cautiously. “Pretty queer goings on, aren't they?”

“That's right,” agreed Evers with a broad grin, “but it ain't nothing against the law. It ain't a raid, is it?” he asked anxiously.

“Might be,” said Bobby. “What's going on? What's it all about? I've had my eye on this place for some time. What's all this rot about admission numbers? why did that girl call herself Bernard Shaw?”

He spoke with a great show of authority and more confidence than he actually felt. For he had no standing, little to go on, it might all turn out to be no more than some elaborate piece of foolery. If Evers told him to clear out and quick about it, he would have no option but to obey. Fortunately, Evers had far too great a respect for the majesty of the law in general, and for Bobby in particular, to dream of attempting any such presumptuous action. He said:—

“Oh, the whole boiling of 'em takes fancy names. I've got a Neville Chamberlain, Downing Street, here.” He indicated the typed list on the table near. “And the Bishop of London, Fulham Palace, and a Sigmund Freud”—he pronounced it “Frood”—“and John Smiths and Polly Browns as well. A hot lot, they are, and unless they give a name and address on the list here and the correct number, I don't let 'em in, and how you got in, Mr. Owen, sir, I don't know.”

“Walked in,” said Bobby briefly. “Now then, Evers, what's it all about?”

“Lor', Mr. Owen, there ain't no harm to it, not what you could call harm. Nothing at all. Real class they are as you can tell at once, and most respectable, and if they choose to behave disgusting like—well, it ain't against the law. I don't say there isn't time I wouldn't like to take a pail of disinfectant to 'em—strong it would have to be, too. But no business of mine and good pay and nothing against the law like, and nothing you can do nothing about, Mr. Owen, sir, now is there?”