Mystery of Mr. Jessop (5 page)

“Has not the greatest and wisest of British newspapers admitted that their enfeebled country is faced with defeat and disaster if it continues to oppose our great leader's will?” one of them was demanding passionately of his applauding, convinced, and enthusiastic auditors, of whom the first was an elderly Arab visiting England on the strength of the substantial sum for which he had sold his property in Palestine to a grasping Jew, and not without hopes of getting the land back for nothing in order to sell it again to some other grasping Jew. He answered for the East when the Moment came; as the second of those present, an eager Bengal law student, answered for India, from which country he had landed the week before; as the third and last of them, an earnest, solemn, elderly Irishman from Cork, answered for the rest of the world. He it was who long before had invented that splendid slogan, “Ourselves Alone,” which now by its own force and value has spread from Ireland all across the world till to-day, like the cross the Emperor Constantine saw on the eve of battle, it hangs above the universal struggle with the message written around in letters of fire: “In this sign, perish.”

Of some of these various parties, groups, assemblies, Bobby had some slight knowledge. He rather hoped that he would one day be one of the party to raid that private film show, and of course the solemn, elderly Irishman's reports were read at Scotland Yard, whither a photographic copy was always dispatched by his group leader in return for a small but regular remuneration. But with them he had no concern to-night, and soon he identified the fine old house now occupied by the firm of Jessop, Jacks & Co., Court jewellers, established in the year of the accession of her late gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria, whose declaration at that moment, “I will be good,” now causes Chelsea and Bloomsbury to rock with inextinguishable laughter. Though the interior had been largely remodelled, outwardly the house remained much as when built in the time of good Queen Anne by a merchant of the City of London who had just made a fortune through buying up all the available supplies of pepper and then releasing them again at an increase of price so small it was hardly noticeable, except, indeed, by those of a mean and grudging disposition. Even the iron extinguishers on each side of the finely proportioned front door were still in place, nor indeed was there much to show the building was now a shop – except that during the day the front door was always open and a uniformed commissionaire always on duty, and that at times there would appear in the discreetly curtained window some such article of rare and precious jewellery as, for example, the famous Fay Fellows necklace itself.

The ground floor was occupied by the showrooms – luxuriously fitted up, nothing in them so vulgar as a counter – and the private rooms of the partners. On the first floor were the offices of the manager, Mr. Wright, and the staff, and one special showroom reserved for more important transactions, and, occasionally, for clients wishing to do a deal by stealth and most unwilling to blush to find it fame – as, for example, when there arose some question of disposing of family jewels without troublesome and pedantic heirs having a chance to make unnecessary fusses.

This, indeed, was the apartment in which Miss Fay Fellows had shown to the enraptured eyes of the firm her magnificent necklace she had purchased in the days when the mere lifting of her eyebrows shook Hollywood to its depths, when a regular clause in her contracts stipulated that at least a million dollars had to be spent on any picture in which she was to appear, when no palpitating director had ever known until she had actually signed whether she might not ask for another ten thousand dollars a week he knew he would have to concede if she made the demand.

But now things were different, as they so often are. She had even been asked to call on a director instead of being able to regard it as mere routine to keep the fellow waiting an hour or two while she finished her grape-fruit – true, he had apologised, but it was a sign, even a portent – and the public had shown a disgraceful tendency to flock in less enthusiastic and embarrassing numbers than usual to her last two or three pictures. So she had decided that diamonds were a little vulgar, and, one or two firms in Paris and New York having ridiculously refused to give her its full value of £100,000, the sum she had herself paid for it, she had come incognito to London – she always preferred to travel incognito, as she found it attracted so much more attention – and, the sale still hanging fire, had left it with Messrs. Jessop & Jacks for them to dispose of at the best figure available over the reserve of £50,000.

“And, in the present state of the market, lucky to get as much,” Mr. Jacks had declared gloomily, though Mr. Jessop's views were slightly more optimistic.

The basement of the building, where once had been the kitchen and domestic offices, and below them the wine and coal and other cellars, had been transformed into a strong-room in concrete and steel, fitted up with a door in armour plate that after business hours could only be opened by three keys, one each in the possession of Mr. Jessop and of Mr. Jacks, and one in that of their manager. On the second floor were the workrooms, and storerooms for articles of small value, and above them again were the attics, converted to serve as living-rooms for the caretaker, who was also the magnificent commissionaire of business hours, and whose wife presided over, and even assisted in, the labours of the charwomen responsible for the cleaning and tidying of the premises.

No caretaker or charwoman answered, however, the summons Bobby beat upon the front door, using for that purpose a knocker that was a remarkably fine piece of eighteenth-century ironwork, though that was not a fact Bobby was in any mood to notice. There was a bell, too, that he rang with equal vigour and equal lack of success, and he was turning away to find a call-box wherefrom to ring up Scotland Yard, report his failure to obtain a reply, and ask for the further instruction he was gloomily certain would condemn him to sit on the doorstep till someone did arrive, even though that were not till the following Monday morning, when by good luck the constable on the beat came by, and, seeing another uniform man where none was to be expected, came across to investigate.

Bobby introduced himself, explained his presence, learnt that a caretaker did live on the premises, that his name was Kendrick, and that on Saturday nights he and his wife always went to visit relatives from whose house they did not return till late; but by good luck the constable knew that Mr. Jessop's new secretary occupied a one-room flat in a block not far away.

“Kendrick told me about her,” the constable explained. “Quite swanky about it he was – young lady name of Hilda May come to them straight from being secretary to a duchess, no less.”

“What's the joke?” asked Bobby, for the constable was smiling broadly.

“Well, it's funny,” he said. “Bit of a coincidence, but I've just been pulling in the young fellow that took her job with the duchess – found him trying to climb a lamp-post to get a light for his cigarette. Fair soaked he was; been getting it at the Cut and Come Again; been sitting there soaking all evening, he said, and wanted to take me in for a drink. Of course, the Cut and Come Again lot swore they hadn't seen him all day – pretty thick, even for them, when I had seen him myself coming out of their place.”

“Like them; like their cheek,” agreed Bobby, for the Cut and Come Again was a club that balanced more delicately upon the edge of the unlawful than ever did a world financier upon the narrow line between the legal and the swindle.

Their chief line of defence, when challenged, was always bland denial, always expressed in the form of a “Don't quite remember,” for there's no crime in a feeble memory, and failure to identify the man you served with a drink not two minutes past may be due to that exceptionally bad sight, hearing, memory, from which all the staff of the Cut and Come Again suffered – though, fortunately, only intermittently. But there was nothing crude about the Cut and Come Again. If they there defied the law, they did so not blatantly, but with a subdued and subtle insolence – Bobby was indeed surprised to hear that anything so crude as a drunken member had been permitted to appear in visible form anywhere near their premises. Generally drunken members were either made so drunk they passed into peaceful slumber, or else were swiftly conveyed by a back way into another street, where they could be as noisy as they wished.

“They didn't half like it, either – him making that row right in front of their place,” the uniform man went on. “He hadn't any coat or hat or umbrella. Soaked through he was; it was raining hard just then. But they wouldn't turn his things up, though they must have had them all right. Rather let him get soaked some more than admit he had been there. Said he never wore a hat, and must have got his raincoat pinched or something.”

“How did you know who he was?” Bobby asked.

“He told me,” grinned the policeman. “Told me he worked for a duchess, and she wouldn't stand having one of her staff run in. Luckily a cruising car came along, and he went with them like a lamb – seemed to sober up sudden. Perhaps they'll just drop him where he lives and not bother charging him.”

“Did he say who the duchess is?” Bobby asked.

“Westhaven,” the other answered. “I expect Miss May got the push so he could have the job instead – he's one of those high lookers you don't often see off the pictures. Just like a picture himself – curly hair and teeth like an ad. for tooth-powder; just the sort these old dames fall for. He said he had been on the films, but jealousy had done him down. Told me a lot, he did; he must have taken in enough liquor to float the
Queen Alary
, and I will say he's enough to make any female heart work overtime.”

“Doesn't sound as though the duchess has made a good exchange as far as work is concerned,” remarked Bobby.

An odd coincidence that, after his recognition of the monogram on the half-smoked cigar by the dead man's side as that of someone who was a friend of the duke's, now the name of the duchess should crop up in this entirely incidental fashion. No more than a coincidence, of course, but Bobby's experience in the police force had given him a certain distrust of coincidence.

He thanked the other for his information, said what a help it was when the man on the beat kept his eyes and ears open and he would say as much in his report, and so went on to the block of flats near by, where Miss Hilda May occupied one of those modern and up-to-date cupboards so many young people of to-day mistake for a home.

The building was not far, and he was soon there, but it was midnight now, and the porter regarded Bobby's uniform with distrust. He implied that unless it was cars, which of course all even – even specially – tip-top swells, are liable to, the reputation, standing, and social importance of all tenants of the building made visits from the police as unnecessary as unwelcome, and, more likely than not, if there were any trouble, it would be the sack for him, the office being like that. So, if Bobby wouldn't mind going away and returning when the office was open and the responsibility theirs, he would be much obliged. And Bobby explained there was nothing he himself would like better, but his own “office” was even more autocratic and insistent than the porter's, police business would never wait, and would the porter kindly get out of the way – unless, indeed, he wanted the trouble he feared to take place then and there. He added an assurance that only an address was wanted, though wanted immediately, even at the cost of knocking some out of bed and disturbing the beauty sleep of others, and so was finally allowed to speed upward in an automatic lift that conveyed him to the top floor, where proximity to the heavens reduced the rents by £20 a year.

Miss May's flat was situated at the very end of the corridor on which Bobby emerged. He was a little afraid he might, as the porter had suggested, find its tenant retired for the night, but was reassured, as he drew near, by seeing that the door was open an inch or two. Then it opened more widely, and there appeared a tall, good-looking, fair-haired young man with flushed cheeks and untidy hair, as if an agitated hand had recently been run through it. He was looking back into the room he had just left, so that, his head being turned away and his attention occupied, he remained unaware of Bobby. He said loudly and angrily:

“I tell you I mean it – by the Lord, I do – so you needn't think I don't.”

There was an emphasis of passion and of feeling in his voice that made Bobby wonder what it was he meant with such intention, and then, coming nearer, he was able to see within the flat through the open door, and was aware there of a tall girl, sedately dancing.

It was an odd sight, and Bobby stood still to watch it. He was no amateur of dancing, but no one could fail to perceive the grace and harmony of her movements, or how utterly she was absorbed in what she did, so that all know-ledge of place and time had passed from her. To and fro she swayed, every movement of head and limbs and body in perfect unison, forming, as it were, a process to some significance onlookers felt but did not know. It was as though she wove a spell that opened paths hitherto unseen and undreamed of, and still she danced gravely on, and still the young man watched her, and Bobby also, silent and intent, behind.

She had kicked off her shoes, and now on the points of her toes, now with both feet changing so swiftly the eye could hardly follow them, she continued in the same almost solemn rhythm, about which there was no suggestion of abandonment or excitement – so, in a way, purposed and controlled did it seem, so like the working out of some propounded problem. The flat was small, tiny even: there was the furniture, too, further to confine and limit: and yet in that narrow space in which she moved – and moved without changing her actual position by more than an inch or two – she conveyed most strangely the impression of boundless expanse, as though no walls nor anything held it apart from the universal whole.