Murder in Piccadilly (30 page)

“Can I do anything for you, sir?” It was the policeman again.

“No—er—no—thanks—I'll walk home.”

When he reached Shaftesbury Avenue, almost rendered virginal by depopulation, he stopped to glance in search of a taxi. In the same moment he dug his hands into his pockets and discovered by contact with the few coins they contained that he had not the fare to the remote hinterland of Fulham where Galahad Mansions reared its head above the woes and worries of its impecunious tenantry.

Measured by his despair and disappointment it was the longest journey he had ever made; measured by the fear that seized him half way it was the shortest, for the arrival at the colourless frame of wood that formed the hall door of Galahad Mansions produced a choking sensation as if the prison walls had closed in on him. But he could not bring himself to pass the block of flats and he dived into the gloomy hall and trudged up the three flights of stairs to where he was wont to fumble for a place in the lock with his key. Not a sound anywhere, not a breath of air, not any sort of rival to his tempest of baffled hopes, gloom and dread.

In the sitting-room he switched on all the lights and drank in, as if it were a dose of poison, all the evidences of poverty it contained. Something of the painful ecstasy of the martyr in his agonies seized him and again a flood of self-pity rose to the surface as he dwelt fondly on the spectacle of himself as a particularly unfortunate victim of Fate.

With a dramatic gesture he seized a siphon and would have found its companion, the whisky decanter in the same manner, had he thought of it, but he was acting mechanically to an audience of himself, and it was of himself that he thought and nothing else.

“Ten thousand a year a few hours ago—and now!” It was very theatrical and stagey, but genuine to him, and he enjoyed the sensation of pain and sacrifice and suffering because he was convinced all three were undeserved.

“What's that?” He started as a noise like the patting of a carpet disturbed the silence which he had claimed as his own.

“Only me, Bobbie.”

Through the open doorway his mother appeared, clad in a dressing-gown and looking beautiful and young in spite of her pale face and tear-filled eyes. To Bobbie she was a ghost of all that might have been until he saw the tears and was frightened by them.

Was it possible that she had heard? Perhaps the family solicitor had sent a special messenger with the terrible news!

“Oh, Bobbie,” she said in a voice of anguish, “I've had a letter from the solicitor this evening and since reading it I haven't stopped crying.”

Then she did know!

“It can't be helped, mother,” he said, valiantly.

She looked at him quickly.

“You can't know,” she said confidently. “It was about your uncle's will. Bobbie, he did love me, after all, and, perhaps, if he had proposed I might have married him. Who knows! Especially if you married and I was lonely. But he didn't forget me, Bobbie, and although it's only little more than a thousand pounds it's all left to me. I am the only person he names in his will. Do you wonder at my tears now?”

She covered her face with her hands and sobbed, and Bobbie knew that had he been a woman he would have sobbed too, though not for the money she had gained but for the fortune he had lost.

Chapter Fourteen

Mr. Nosey Ruslin sat on the edge of his ramshackle bed, striving to master his rage so that he might be able to evolve a scheme to counter the dangers of his immediate future. He had not undressed on his return home at a quarter to four, but to his surprise he had discovered that since throwing himself on the bed he must have slept for several hours, for it was nearly noon and the world was alive.

The first admission had to be the loss of the fortune for which he had so cunningly marshalled his forces. It was useless drugging himself with doubts of the genuineness of Annie Smithers' claim to be the widow of Massy Cheldon and the mother of the new owner of the Cheldon estate. That thought had occurred to him the very moment she had startled the company with the disclosure of her marriage. He had even tried to persuade himself that it was a trick of Chief Inspector Wake's, but a little reflection had convinced him that such a ruse would be altogether foreign to the stolid, clever and shrewd Scotland Yard detective. Wake was crafty and full of ideas, but not of this brand. He moodily admitted as much as he stared at the yellowish wallpaper confronting him, and deducted from it the necessity to take steps towards self-preservation.

He must be prepared for the worst now, and the worst would begin with the arrest of Billy Bright. They had discussed the possibility and had agreed on the course to be pursued if the dancer found himself in gaol. But that did nothing to lessen the strain of waiting for the sequel to the tragic destruction of his castle of gold.

A smile illumined the gloom of his countenance for a moment and vanished. Poor Nancy! What would she do now? Would she marry young Cheldon for his gentility alone? What would she do if all the details of the conspiracy were revealed? What——?

The shout of a newsboy under the window electrified him, and to the accompaniment of curses which were an antidote for terror he ran to the door. The newsboy had gone, but at the end of the street there was an old man crouching beside a collection of newspapers.

“Quick, give me one. Here you are.” He flung a sixpence at the perturbed veteran and with the “early sporting” gripped in his right hand ran homewards.

PICCADILLY MURDER.

SENSATIONAL ARREST.

“It's Billy!” he gasped, and choked.

He had been fully prepared for the news, and yet, now that it was there in print before him it had the startling effect of a totally unexpected catastrophe. For quite five minutes he was helpless in the tentacles of a monstrous terror, but with the gradual return to power of his thinking faculties the imminence of danger compelled him to assert himself.

It was the bulwark of his hopes now that he and Billy had anticipated this disaster and had prepared for it.

“They can hang us together, Billy,” he had whispered to the dancer in a corner of Nancy's room the night before. “But they can't hang us separately. If they take you don't forget to deny that you and I were partners. Swear until you're black in the face that you know nothing of the murder and nothing of me so far as the murder is concerned. If they take me I'll do the same. But remember, Billy, that if you turn yellow and give me away you'll only make certain of tying the rope around your own neck. Think it over and see if there's a flaw in that reasoning. It's only suspicion they can arrest you on—nothing more—but the suspicion will be proof if you blab about me. Old Wideawake regards me as the leader and if he can prove that I was behind you—well, God help you, Billy.”

He had insisted on discussing that point again and again, afraid lest Billy Bright should not fully understand it. He had never been such a fool as to expect loyalty from the dancer, and from the beginning of the conspiracy against the life of Massy Cheldon he had fashioned his plans in such a manner that Billy at least could not betray him without sacrificing himself.

Yet he was not really satisfied or quiet of mind now. You never could tell what stupidities Billy the Dancer might perpetrate in the initial terrors of arrest. He must be prepared for the worst, although the worst could be brought about only by Billy Bright committing suicide. That was how Nosey put it to himself.

“They may be after me soon,” he said aloud, and in that moment swept aside all irrelevant thoughts.

He was fully conscious of the necessity for action based on a frank realisation of the facts of the case. And the first unpleasant fact was that the Cheldon fortune had been lost.

Having assured himself that the door of the flat was locked and barred he excavated from under the boards near the firegrate a small box containing three pieces of paper which a dozen hours previously he had regarded as of almost priceless value. Slowly and with a faintly expressed reluctance he examined them. First, the letter from Massy Cheldon which had accompanied the revolver, then a note from Bobbie, and finally the dispossessed heir's promise to pay ten thousand pounds after he had become the owner of the Cheldon estate. Nosey fingered them with a slowness of movement which revealed his state of mind and he was still in the act of prolonging the farewell when the voice of a newsboy proclaiming that day's “runners and betting” reminded him of the earlier message and he jerked himself into action.

A few minutes later all the once-precious papers were reduced to a tiny collection of ashes, and as if to make assurance doubly sure these ashes were dispatched into the air from the window.

“Now if Billy carries out our plan all will be well,” he muttered, and returned to his bedroom to repair and decorate himself for a day which was certain to be a memorable one in the autobiography of Nosey Ruslin.

Carefully and with remarkable steadiness he shaved his two undulating cheeks, and with equal care and precision arrayed himself in such garments as he considered consistent with the weather and the colour of Shaftesbury Avenue. All the time he kept up a noiseless running commentary, interspersed with questions and answers, on the problems created by Billy Bright's arrest. There were many rocks ahead, but he was not afraid of those he could see. It was the unknown and the uncertain that he feared. Thank goodness, he had terrified Billy into a condition of commonsense which, if it lasted, must have the effect of saving his, Nosey's life, even if it did not open the prison gates to the dancer.

In the Piccadilly teashop where he breakfasted with a magnificent disregard of privacy he listened with a smile to the excited chatter of the waitresses about the arrest of the “Soho dancer”.

“I've met him,” one girl boasted with a fearful joy.

A fresh breeze strengthened the golden wine in the air, and Nosey, replete and confident, sauntered towards Shaftesbury Avenue, the man of means and of leisure to the life. It was one of Piccadilly's glamorous days when the cares of life are forgotten because it is difficult to think of them. All around him was the noise and the traffic and the excitement. At the entrance to the Underground railway where Lower Regent Street touched the Haymarket, he paused to watch the descent into the scene of the crime of a regiment of men and women whose dormant curiosity had been revived by the news of Billy Bright's arrest.

When he had had his fill of watching he resumed his journey to his native land, the stretch of roads and pavements bounded on one side by the Circus and on the other by Tottenham Court Road. He had become anxious for friendly human speech, and he knew it was certain to be found in Greville's restaurant now that the hour of one had struck.

“Why, that means I owe Wake a fiver! Good Lord! I hope he may get it. I wonder if there's anything running today I might have a flutter on.” He spoke from the text of a passing newspaper contents bill.

“Hello, Nosey!”

The greeting came from a burly little man with a square face and a triple chin. Nosey identified him as the former proprietor of a night club which had been struck off and its owner fined a hundred pounds. But the feat of memory was due entirely to the ease with which one can recollect the obligations of a debtor, and Nosey fell into line with him hopefully.

“So it was Billy the Dancer, was it?” asked the stout man with the conscious virtue of a crook whose misdeeds had not as yet brought him within measurable distance of the scaffold. “Between you and me, Nosey, I'd never have thought he had the guts.”

“You forget he's mostly Italian and has a nasty temper,” said Nosey, who was trying to estimate the degree of solvency the new lounge suit indicated. “How are things, Solly? They're a bit blue round the chin with me.”

“More than the same here,” was the depressing reply. “Was hoping you'd be able to stand me lunch. But fancy Billy!”

Nosey sauntered on alone through the crowd converging on Piccadilly during the lunch hour so as to make the pilgrimage to the scene of the Underground murder. The ex-pugilist identified several plainclothes men with whom he was not on speaking terms, but their proximity did not disturb him. He had less than five shillings and unless the newspapers took his appetite away he would have to lunch at Greville's. No other restaurant would do, for to strengthen and buttress his confidence he must show himself where he was best known.

At twenty-five minutes past one he was on the very doorstep of the Italian restaurant with the Elizabethan name when a newsboy brought into view a contents bill bearing the words “Piccadilly Murder—Victim's Secret Romance.” In that moment Nosey, who had successfully withstood the painful sensation created by the news of Billy Bright's arrest nearly collapsed.

“A paper,” he gasped, and fumbled with a penny.

The boy snatched at it and resumed his flight, while Nosey, leaning against the wall, ought to have blessed the modern habit of telling the whole of a story in a few headlines.

There it was in all the naked impressiveness of print. Some enterprising journalist had found Annie Smithers and had listened to her.

“The beautiful Hortense Delisle, whom many will remember for her brilliant performances as the leader of the far-famed dancing troupe appropriately named ‘The Seven Fairies', has come back into the limelight again with a story no novelist could have invented, a story of a secret marriage to a wealthy Sussex squire, the head of a great county family. Interviewed by our representative, Miss Delisle, or, as she now is, Mrs. Massy Cheldon, told how…”

Nosey read and read until he became so interested that he quite forgot all that it had meant and still meant to himself. Once he smiled when he reminded himself that not once in the two columns was “Annie Smithers” mentioned. It was Hortense Delisle who had met Massy Cheldon in “a fashionable night club”—the description was good enough for another laugh—and had fascinated the wealthy clubman. They had been married in a Manchester register office and had never disclosed the marriage even to their most intimate friends. Circumstances—that was the word either Annie or the interviewer used, and Nosey thought it very diplomatic— had compelled them to keep it quiet until Mrs. Massy Cheldon, living with her son and heir in an obscure Cornish village, heard of the murder of her husband and came at once to claim her rights.

Not once, Nosey observed to himself, did Annie express regret for the loss of her husband. It was of “her rights” and “my son's rights” that she talked.

“Gorblime!” exclaimed Nosey, nearly tearing the paper in his newer and greater excitement, “what's this?”

The inability to resist a betrayal of his semi-illiteracy was always a sure sign of Nosey's utter abandonment to emotion.

“Good lad!” he cried, unable to restrain himself, and not in the least embarrassed by curious stares.

With the most aggressive of smiles he entered the restaurant and took a table which was a favourite of his.

“Something costing five bob including a bottle of red wine,” he said to his friend the waiter, and buried himself in the newspaper again.

“When our representative called on Mr. Robert Cheldon, the nephew and hitherto the generally accepted heir to the late Mr. Massy Cheldon, he was assured that the disclosure of his uncle's secret marriage was no surprise to him. ‘I have known it for some time,' said Mr. Cheldon, pleasantly, ‘and I am sure my young cousin will be a worthy head of the family when he is old enough to shoulder his responsibilities. I understand that my uncle's widow is the daughter of a solicitor's clerk. If so it is appropriate that she should be the mother of the heir, for the founder of the family fortunes in the late eighteenth century was a clerk in a lawyer's office in the City of London who went to India.'”

There was more, but Nosey's delight was confined to Bobbie's statement that he was not surprised and not at all disappointed to find himself no longer the heir to the Cheldon estate.

“A good lad,” he murmured with moist lips. “More brains than I ever suspected he had. Must see more of him when this little bit of trouble is over.” A shadow fell across the table. “Hello, Inspector!” He laughed. “If you've called for that fiver you'll have to give me time to collect the fiver first.”

Chief Inspector Wake's gravity did not relax.

“The bet was only a joke, Nosey,” he said quietly. “I looked in to tell you that the superintendent would be grateful if you'd drop in at the Yard for a few minutes' chat.”

“Must have lunch first, inspector,” said Nosey complacently. “Never any good at talking until I've stoked and oiled the old tum.”

The detective took the chair opposite him.

“I'll lunch too,” he said quietly, “and if you're short I don't mind paying the bill.”

The arrival of the waiter created an armistice which was not broken until the double bill was presented forty minutes later.

“I'll pay,” said Wake shortly. “Ready, Nosey?”

It was a critical moment, a moment which could influence every moment of Nosey's life that was to follow it. Should he show resentment? Dare he display anger?

The answer was characteristic of Nosey Ruslin's easy-going nature when there was nothing to be gained by a display of truculence.