Jack O' Judgment - Edgar Wallace (freda ebook reader .TXT) 📗

a happening, and, darling, you've got to face the future without any other illusions."

She winced at the word "other" but he went on, unnoticing:

"Boundary is a tiger. If he thinks there is reason to fear you, he will never let up on you till he has you in his grip. I tell you this," he said earnestly, "that for all the power of the police, for all their organisation and the backing which the law gives them, they may be helpless against this man if he has marked you down for punishment."

"I'm not afraid," she said quietly.

"But I am," said he. "I'm so afraid, that I'm sick with apprehension sometimes."

"Poor Stafford!" she said softly, and there was a look in her eyes which compensated him for much. "But you mustn't worry, dear. Truly, truly, you mustn't worry. I'm quite capable of looking after myself."

"And that's the greatest of all your illusions," he said, half-laughingly and half-irritably. "You're just the meekest little mouse that ever came under the paw of a cat."

She shook her head smilingly.

"But I tell you I'm speaking seriously," he went on. "I'll do my best to look after you. I'll have a man watching you day and night."

"But you mustn't," she protested. "There's no immediate cause for worry."

He saw her to the door of the restaurant and showed her into the taxi-cab which came at his whistle, and she leant out of the window and waved her hand in farewell as she drove off.

Two men stood on the opposite side of the road and watched her depart.

"That's the girl," said Crewe.


CHAPTER XIV

THE TAKING OF MAISIE WHITE


A week passed without anything exceptional happening, and Maisie White had ceased even to harbour doubts as to her own safety--doubts which had been present, in spite of the courageous showing she had made before Stafford King. Undeterred by her previous experience, she had made arrangements with another and a more responsible detective agency and had chosen a new watcher, though she had small hopes of obtaining results. She knew his task was one of almost insuperable difficulty, and she was frank in exposing to him what those difficulties were. Still, there was a faint chance that he might discover something, and moreover she had another purpose to serve.

She had seen Pinto Silva once. He had called, and she had noticed with surprise that the debonair, self-confident man she had known, whose air of conscious superiority had been so annoying to her, had undergone a considerable change. He was ill-at-ease, almost incoherent at moments, and it was a long time before she could discover his business.

This time she received him in her tiny sitting-room, for Pinto was somehow less alarming to her than he had been. Perhaps she was conscious that at the corner of the street stood a quietly dressed man doing nothing particular, who was relieved at the eighth hour by an even less obtrusive-looking gentleman from Scotland Yard.

She waited for Pinto to disclose his business, and the Portuguese was apparently in no hurry to do so. Presently he blurted it out.

"Look here, Maisie," he said, "you've got things all wrong. Things are going to be very rotten for you unless--unless----" he floundered.

"Unless what?" she asked.

"Unless you make up with me," he said in a low voice. "I'm not so bad, Maisie, and I'll treat you fair. I've always been in love with you----"

"Stop," she said quietly. "I dare say it is a great honour for a girl that any man should be in love with her, but it takes away a little of the compliment when the man is already married."

"That's nothing," he said eagerly. "I can divorce her by the laws of my country. Maisie, she hates me and I hate her."

"In those circumstances," she smiled, "I wonder you wait until you fall in love again before you get divorced. No, Mr. Silva, that story doesn't convince me. If you were single or divorced, or if you were ever so eligible, I would not marry you."

"Why not?" he demanded truculently. "I've got money."

"So have I," she said, "of a sort."

"My money's as clean as yours, if it is Solomon White's money."

She nodded.

"I'm well aware of that, too," she said. "It is Gang money, isn't it--loot money. I don't see what good I shall get out of exchanging mine for yours, anyway. It is just as dirty. The money doesn't come into it at all, Mr. Silva, it is just liking people well enough--for marriage. And I don't like you that way."

"You don't like me at all," he growled.

"You're very nearly right," she smiled.

"You're a fool, you're a fool!" he stormed, "you don't know what's coming to you. You don't know."

"Perhaps I do," she said. "Perhaps I can guess. But whatever is coming to me, as you put it, I prefer that to marrying you."

He started back as though she had struck him across the face, and he turned livid.

"You won't say that when----"

He checked himself and without another word left the room, and she heard his heavy feet blundering down the stairs.

And then she met him again. It was two nights after. She met him in a horrible dream. She dreamt he was flying after her, that they were both birds, she a pigeon and he a hawk; and as she made her last desperate struggle to escape, she heard his hateful voice in her ear:

"Maisie, Maisie, it is your last chance, your last chance!"

She had gone to bed at ten o'clock that night, and it seemed that she had hardly fallen asleep before the vision came. She struggled to sit up in bed, she tried to speak, but a big hand was over her mouth.

Then it was true, it was no dream. He was in the room, his hand upon her mouth, his voice in her ear. The room was in darkness. There was no sound save the sound of his heavy breathing and his voice.

"They'll be up here in five minutes," he whispered. "I can save you from hell! I can save you, Maisie! Will you have me?"

She summoned all the strength at her command to shake her head.

"Then keep quiet!"

There was a note of savagery in his voice which made her turn sick.

For a second she filled her lungs to scream, but at that instant a mass of cotton-wool was thrust over her face, and she began to breathe in a sickly sweet vapour. Somebody else was in the room now. They were holding her feet. The voice in her ear said:

"Breathe. Take a deep breath!"

She sobbed and writhed in an agony of mind, but all the time she was breathing, she was drawing into her lungs the chloroform with which the wool was saturated.

At two o'clock in the morning a uniformed constable, patrolling his beat, saw an ambulance drawn up outside a house in Doughty Street. He crossed the road to make inquiries.

"A case of scarlet fever," said the driver.

"You don't say," said the sympathetic constable.

The door opened and two men walked out, carrying a figure in a blanket. The policeman stood by and saw the "patient" laid upon a stretcher and the back of the ambulance closed. Then he continued his walk to the corner of the street, where he found, huddled up in a doorway, the unconscious figure of a Scotland Yard detective, whose observation had been interrupted by a well-directed blow from a life preserver.


CHAPTER XV

THE COMMISSIONER HAS A THEORY


"To all stations. Stop Ambulance Motor No. LKO 9943. Arrest and detain driver and any person found therein. Warn all garages and report.--COMMISSIONER."

This order flashed from station to station throughout the night, and before the dawn, nine thousand policemen were on the look-out for the motor ambulance.

"There's a chance, of course," said Stafford, "but it is a poor chance."

He was looking white and heavy-eyed.

"I don't know, sir," said Southwick, his subordinate. "There's always a chance that a crook will do the obviously wrong thing. I suppose you've no theory as to where they have gone?"

"Not out of town--of that I'm certain," said King, "that is why the quest is so hopeless. Why, they'll have got to their destination hours before the message went out!"

They were standing in the girl's bedroom, which still reeked with chloroform, and all the clues were piled together on the table. There were not many. There was a pad of cotton-wool, a half-empty bottle of chloroform, bearing the label of a well-known wholesaler, and one of a pair of old wash-leather gloves, which had evidently been worn by somebody in his desire to avoid leaving finger-prints.

"We've not much to go on there," said Stafford disconsolately; "the chloroform may have been sold years ago. Any chemist would have supplied the cotton-wool, and as for the glove"--he picked it up and looked at it carefully, then he carried it to the light.

Old as it was, it was of good shape and quality, and when new had probably been supplied to order by a first-class glove-maker.

"There's nothing here," said Stafford again, and threw the glove back on the table.

A policeman came into the room and saluted.

"I've cycled over from the Yard, sir. We have had a message asking you to go at once to Sir Stanley Belcom's private house."

"How did Sir Stanley know about this affair?" asked Stafford listlessly.

"He telephoned through, sir, about five o'clock this morning. He often makes an early inquiry."

Stafford looked round. There was nothing more that he could do. He passed down the stairs into the street and jumped on to the motor-cycle which had brought him to the scene.

Sir Stanley Belcom lived in Cavendish Place, and Stafford had been a frequent visitor to the house. Sir Stanley was a childless widower, who was wont to complain that he kept up his huge establishment in order to justify the employment of his huge staff of servants. Stafford suspected him of being something of a sybarite. His dinners were famous, his cellar was one of the best in London and because of his acquaintances and friendships in the artistic sets, he was something of a dabbler in the arts he patronised.

The door was opened and an uncomfortable-looking butler was waiting on the step to receive Stafford.

"You'll find Sir Stanley in the library, sir," he said.

Despite his sorrow, Stafford could not help smiling at this attempt on the part of an English servant to offer the conventional greeting in spite of the hour.

"I'm afraid we've got you up early, Perkins," he said.

"Not at all, sir."

The man's stout face creased in a smile.

"Sir Stanley's a rare gentleman for getting up in the middle of the night and ordering a meal."

Stafford found his grey-haired chief, arrayed in a flowered silk dressing-gown, balancing bread on an electric toaster.

"Bad news, eh, Stafford?" he said. "Sit down and have some coffee. The girl is gone?"

Stafford nodded.

"And our unfortunate detective-constable, who was sent to watch, is half-way to the mortuary, I presume?"

"Not so bad as that, sir," said Stafford, "but he's got a pretty bad crack. He's recovered consciousness